That's different. 1+1 ain't empircally proven to be 2, it is *defined* to be 2. (or more precisely, given the normal definition for the symbols 1, +, = and 2 this is a true statement. I agree that they are defined that way. Now look at the empirical facts:
one apple and another apple make two apples; 1 pound + 1 pound = 2 pounds;... now we can
overload our + operation: 1 apple + 1 orange = 2 fruits, etc. Aren't these empirical
facts that are true statements?
I should re-read that one. My only memory of that work revolves around its cutting first-person exposition of sin's nature and workings (to use an older vocabulary.)
The way I remember it, the guy in the book was not even a sinner, just
an endlessly miserable dude who is unreasonably sensitive and protest
to pretty much everything, from the way people behave to 1+1=2, but
embraces his toothache as the "proof" of his existence (Nietzsche was fond
of Dostoevsky, and also wrote about his pain that is always with him and he
counts on that faithful friend to be there like his pet, or something
similar).
I didn't take anything away from Derrida that wasn't already clear from Wittgenstein or Rorty,[...]
I'm not very familiar with Rorty, so I should read some of his stuff.
I found some logical positivists that I read somewhat repulsive in their
over-eagerness to destroy metaphysics, kind of too aggressive due to the lack of
argumentation.
[...]and found some of Derrida's writing so convoluted as to be discouraging.
Perhaps it takes some time to get used to it. What I like about him is the
rigor with which he dissolves the rigour of strictly logical thinking.
You should read Derrida. You can try to read it too, [...]
This line is Derridian: "You" in the previous line has no fixed meaning: it
refers to two different persons, but also to a single person, and who is "you"
is determined within the context. If we simplify it to state: "You should read
Derrida. You should read Derrida", we have by the repeating of one sentence
twice both insisted that some "you" should read Derrida but also produced two
messages to two different people which might mean two different things to each
of them. But surely we can close the meaning by the context? Not quite, claims
Derrida, because there is no "universal context" (that would come from within metaphysics)
in which every sentence or a text have determined, or fixed, meaning.
He goes further: attempts to fix the meaning can be deconstructed
(in this case for instance, "to fix" means to make it stable or permanent but it also means
to cheat), via showing all kinds
of different ways in which a certain power structure is attempting to remain in
power by constructing an appropriate
context (trivial examples: DRMA is good for kids, Microsoft does not mind the
piracy of their software; nontrivial example: over-and-over again since Plato
implied or stated superiority of the spoken word over the written word), or
suppressing what they deem to be undesirable or bad behavior (like masturbation
etc).
Still, many whose ideas I've come to respect cite Derrida's influence,
so I'll assume it's a matter of my Anglophone provincialism interfering with my
comprehension of his writing.
In the context of Anglosaxon philosophy, one classic is "Limited Inc",
about Austin's speech act theory ("How to Do Things With Words").
Very amusing, fun, and with deep implications... Generally,
any full-proof system has a crack through which one can get out of it: Austin
wrote something like: for simplicity I will restrict myself to spoken
utterances, and sure enough, Derrida asked why and deconstructed it (in
contradistinction to "analyzed it", "criticized it" or "read it in a certain
way", all of which can sometimes be also deconstructed). So he went on about
the parasites (which are something bad, right? Dostoyevsky's character can
also be labeled as a parasite within the society), how the copyright
establishes the authorship (which also means the identity of the
author), the connection between corporations and academia, and so on.
Most of his books I read were in English and, as always, some
bits would have been better appreciated when read in French but it seems that most
of it gets through.
(This is likely the reason for my failure to grasp Heidegger, although everyone seems to think he's
Descartes himself all but acknowledges that the cogito is pretty useless... right where he says:
"If it is ever found that the speed of light is anything other than infinite then it may be said that I know nothing in matters of philosophy".
I think thats just about a done deal nowadays, no? He was definitely one helluva computer expert, like when he says that addition is to be preferred to multiplication as being the simpler operation to perform.
If you're interested in these philosophical issues, I would recommend Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. People slate it as difficult, but it seems to me that many of these people are looking too hard for an epistomological system (a theory of knowledge) in the book, although none is either asserted or contained therein. Indeed, the author generally avoids technical language, yet managed to become perhaps the most influential 20th-century philosopher. If you're interested in these philosophical issues, I would recommend Descartes...
Hell, for you probably something simpler would be more appropriate, but I just don't know of any such thing.
With the "cogito", however, I can't find a way to argue, because by arguing, I would be proving my own existance. You can argue with cogito very well: read "Notes from Underground by Dostoyevskii". You can try it too.
[something] most influencial 20th-century philosopher You should read Derrida. You can try to read it too, although I can't guarantee you anything.
Not true: mathematical theorems are true (capable of absolute proof) within their own axioms[...] Said Goedel. I'll spell it for you since you probably don't even know what you wrote (which by the way proves that you do not exist according to Descartes): In a sufficiently complex system of axioms (that can be very simple) there are theorems that are true but do not have a proof. Neither relative nor absolute, whatever those might mean.
the mathematically-inclined Descartes You meant metaphysically-inclined Descartes, right?
[...]along the same vein as Wittgenstein's analysis of mathematical truth: "I exist" is necessarily true in grammar, because of the assumptions made by "I." It conveys no information in language, and is a phenomenological report, no more provably true or false as a condition of existence than numerous competing phenomenological or grammatical analyses that posit the non-existence of a "I" (Buddhism is a ready example.) which brings us back to Nietzsche who said that the grammar is metaphysics of ordinary people. I don't mean of you, considering my prior proof of your non-existence, I mean of Wittgenstein. I didn't know that you can prove things by a "ready example" of Buddhism, especially considering that none of the above mentioned dudes were Buddhists.
The cogito sure does "make sense," though, and this is because experience suggests it. But what if experience lies? You know, I'm talking about Descartes meditations.
Descartes would ask - how do you know the rules of logic are correct (obviously, I mean in the physical, not logical sense)? What if all humans share the delusion that logic is correct? Theorems are merely the selective application of the rules of logic on a set of sentences. On behalf of Descartes I must notice that it is exactly him who proposed that the mathematical reasoning should be the starting point of all physical sciences...
A more succinct defense than I would probably have been able to come up with myself. Thank you. You're welcome.
I think what's causing confusion is that there are some questions which are absolutely not empirically testable, by definition, regardless of what scientific equipment you might ever be able to point at the task. The question of whether there is a God is one of these. There's just no way to do it; there's no test you can perform which would invalidate God, because you can always back God up slightly and find a place for Him. But then what you say implies that God retreats from empirical. "He" is defeated in advance by the empirical. But does not the science retreat from it too, and in a more difficult way, by conquering the empirical? Isn't the science then stronger than "Him" in respect to the empirical?
Even your next comment is bound by the empirical:
There are other questions, the great majority of questions, which may be or even probably are empirically testable, somehow, we just can't perform (or even conceive of) the test methodology right now. "What happened before the big bang" is one of these. I've no idea how you would actually test it, but there's no particular reason why you couldn't in the same way that the God-question is by definition untestable. It's just really, really hard, and would probably require some sort of fundamental redefinition of how we conceive the universe(s). But not absolutely impossible from the get-go. But what if (as it is usual in physics) "the test methodology" will be produced one day from within the appropriate theory of Big Bang? Then God would have to retreat even more...
[...]the fact that there are some questions which cannot be tested, ever, by anyone. Is this the fact?
It's important to note that when a scientist says "This will be provable someday", what he means is, "It will be testable someday" which in turn means "It will be falsifiable someday." This means, in particular, that he is allowing for the distinct possibility that it will be disproved. Therein lies the difference. You mean the difference from a belief system? What you wrote sounds to me a lot like a belief system.
You don't hear about the millions of reasonable, open-minded religious people who are capable of realizing that the Bible doesn't actually say how old the earth is and Genesis [...] Oh, that changes quite a bit indeed.
I'm sorry to respond with a question, but have you watched any movies recently? They're just the retelling of stories from a bygone time. There may be some differences here and there, but it really is all the same. You should try some torrents for refreshment.
As a marathon runner over the years I have noticed something with new runners that show up at our winter-spring clinics who have recently or are trying to quit smoking. The ones that stick with the regime (about 16 weeks) that it takes to prep for a marathon I have repeatedly told me that they lose their nicotine craving almost totally, and that the running seems to be a big part of it. These are people who were previously quite hardcore smokers for a number of years. Could it be that running (and other forms of exercise) that stimulates new brain cell production also rewires the brain from its nicotine addiction in smokers? As a heavy smoker/complete non-smoker I can tell you how it works: You can jack up your nicotine addiction to any level you want: let's say two packs a day for months. When you want to stop, well, you stop completely smoking and after several days you are nonsmoker. Then, let's say after several months of not smoking a single cigarette, you can try this again. Naturally, at first you won't be able to smoke as much as before, but, as I said, that is only natural. This goes along well with doing many sports although I have not tried marathon, maybe it takes longer to get rid of addiction when you are a marathon runner, I don't know. Friend of mine told me from his experience that as long as he shoots the heroin only occasionally, there is no addiction whatsoever.
For me, as a Computer Scientist, it's all about the packages. For me, as a Baptist, it's not. Just as long as we're tossing out unrelated qualifiers. Maybe little bit of knowledge of computer science would be useful for you to appreciate
Gentoo. But then, you being a Baptist, maybe not. Oh but wait, what Baptism has to do with
Computer Science? Nothing at all.
No other distro out there offers the depth and breadth of packages that Gentoo does. Interestingly, I feel the exact same way about Debian, and that's what kept putting me off of Gentoo - the packages I wanted just weren't there. Maybe you weren't interested in the right packages?
Maybe you should switch to Debian? Let's see:
I like Gentoo and still use it on some very old hardware where the extra 5% performance from "-fomit-instructions" actually makes a difference. Would 15%+ percent of gain from switching to Gentoo on newer 64 bit computers be interesting to you? I mean, you being a Baptist and... I forgot, you being a Baptist is unrelated qualifier... and Debian still trying to stabilize their AMD64 port.
Now you being a Baptist, which has nothing to do with anything,... I mean about you and Gentoo, or Debian, well, maybe you'd appreciate that even the Live Gentoo AMD64 distro comes with LISP on it, but then,
being a Baptist (which is kind of a thing you know about yourself and I am trying to recognize when talking about Gentoo, I mean you) and not computer scientist, then well, you might not find that interesting at all.
If Gentoo is in trouble because of petty squabbling, that's truly unfortunate. If, on the other hand, it's in trouble because it's no longer useful to its core constituency, then perhaps it's better that the project is in decline. Either a major shakeup will occur or it will die a natural death. So which is it? None of the above.
The people who really need the speed, those running clusters and such, aren't using Gentoo. Yeah right... check this out...
Most of the people running gentoo just seem to be home users who think they're seeing a speed increase,[...] when in fact they see the speed increase,
[...] but would probably get more work done if they didn't spend so much time compiling and tweaking. compiling is not that much longer than just installing a precompiled package, and tweaking...
what tweaking? Gentoo is fast without any tweaking.
As a porofessional developer, I find swearing at the monitor and ranting at my coworkers to be pretty effective and as yet, it hasn't got me fired. I have recently joined an XP shop (the company formally known as Connextra) so I could now try the extreme approach you describe. Next thing you'll tell me is that your ranting is part of the negotiating of contracts with your DbC team.
Does anything more need to be said about why "bang for buck" cowboys don't practice this method? You mean other than that they get more bang for less buck?
I agree. And I've never been afraid of law enforcement unless I knew I was doing something wrong. Seriously. I know it sounds trite,[...] It sound trite alright: I have friends in the US and Europe that do get scared when they see cops,
no matter how legal their activity, past, blahblah is. Try to study traffic patterns when you drive
on the highway through Ohio, and you'll see how bizarre peoples behavior becomes when the cop car is around. Just the tip of the iceberg...
[...]if you are afraid of the police, stop and ask why? because they carry guns, have power over you to question you at their will,... you gave one example
yourself:
I've been stopped for "drunk driving" when in fact I was sober as I've ever been. Just look how irrational this situation is: cops pull you over simply because they think that you're
driving drunk, based on what evidence? What's their suspicion based on? Now go one step forward and think about racial profiling...
yourself:
Wouldn't it add to Slashdot's ethos if UK posters had to submit every post under their full name? You mean, slashdot should submit to the rules of UK government in order to add to it's ethos?
Or something?
Slashdot Mirror
I should re-read that one. My only memory of that work revolves around its cutting first-person exposition of sin's nature and workings (to use an older vocabulary.)
The way I remember it, the guy in the book was not even a sinner, just an endlessly miserable dude who is unreasonably sensitive and protest to pretty much everything, from the way people behave to 1+1=2, but embraces his toothache as the "proof" of his existence (Nietzsche was fond of Dostoevsky, and also wrote about his pain that is always with him and he counts on that faithful friend to be there like his pet, or something similar).
I didn't take anything away from Derrida that wasn't already clear from Wittgenstein or Rorty,[...]
I'm not very familiar with Rorty, so I should read some of his stuff. I found some logical positivists that I read somewhat repulsive in their over-eagerness to destroy metaphysics, kind of too aggressive due to the lack of argumentation.
[...]and found some of Derrida's writing so convoluted as to be discouraging.
Perhaps it takes some time to get used to it. What I like about him is the rigor with which he dissolves the rigour of strictly logical thinking.
You should read Derrida. You can try to read it too, [...]
This line is Derridian: "You" in the previous line has no fixed meaning: it refers to two different persons, but also to a single person, and who is "you" is determined within the context. If we simplify it to state: "You should read Derrida. You should read Derrida", we have by the repeating of one sentence twice both insisted that some "you" should read Derrida but also produced two messages to two different people which might mean two different things to each of them. But surely we can close the meaning by the context? Not quite, claims Derrida, because there is no "universal context" (that would come from within metaphysics) in which every sentence or a text have determined, or fixed, meaning. He goes further: attempts to fix the meaning can be deconstructed (in this case for instance, "to fix" means to make it stable or permanent but it also means to cheat), via showing all kinds of different ways in which a certain power structure is attempting to remain in power by constructing an appropriate context (trivial examples: DRMA is good for kids, Microsoft does not mind the piracy of their software; nontrivial example: over-and-over again since Plato implied or stated superiority of the spoken word over the written word), or suppressing what they deem to be undesirable or bad behavior (like masturbation etc).
Still, many whose ideas I've come to respect cite Derrida's influence, so I'll assume it's a matter of my Anglophone provincialism interfering with my comprehension of his writing.
In the context of Anglosaxon philosophy, one classic is "Limited Inc", about Austin's speech act theory ("How to Do Things With Words"). Very amusing, fun, and with deep implications... Generally, any full-proof system has a crack through which one can get out of it: Austin wrote something like: for simplicity I will restrict myself to spoken utterances, and sure enough, Derrida asked why and deconstructed it (in contradistinction to "analyzed it", "criticized it" or "read it in a certain way", all of which can sometimes be also deconstructed). So he went on about the parasites (which are something bad, right? Dostoyevsky's character can also be labeled as a parasite within the society), how the copyright establishes the authorship (which also means the identity of the author), the connection between corporations and academia, and so on. Most of his books I read were in English and, as always, some bits would have been better appreciated when read in French but it seems that most of it gets through.
(This is likely the reason for my failure to grasp Heidegger, although everyone seems to think he's
"If it is ever found that the speed of light is anything other than infinite then it may be said that I know nothing in matters of philosophy".
I think thats just about a done deal nowadays, no? He was definitely one helluva computer expert, like when he says that addition is to be preferred to multiplication as being the simpler operation to perform.
Growing more brain cells by exercise? Great. When are they gonna come up with something useful?
oh boy, according to your link the speed of light has been measured already in 1738...
Maybe you are reading the wrong thread?
Now you being a Baptist, which has nothing to do with anything,... I mean about you and Gentoo, or Debian, well, maybe you'd appreciate that even the Live Gentoo AMD64 distro comes with LISP on it, but then, being a Baptist (which is kind of a thing you know about yourself and I am trying to recognize when talking about Gentoo, I mean you) and not computer scientist, then well, you might not find that interesting at all.