VazScep wrote:

Mick wrote:I'm sorry, it is a logical truth that 'Craig is'? Are you freakin serious? Is it a logical truth that god exists too? Or is this an objection to how I expressed 'Craig is'?

I can't be more clear: Ex. x=c is a theorem of predicate logic. Obviously, then, it cannot be how you express "Craig is."

If I had the power, and I should, I would revoke your licence to write formal logic. People's infatuation with logic is annoying enough as it is, leading to all sorts of obfuscatory wank as a result. That people such as yourself spout formal logic without having an elementary understanding of it is just layering on the unnecessary confusion. If you don't know how existentials and constants work, then predicate logic isn't going to help you a jot towards clarity and rigour. Stick to English.

Calilasseia wrote:

Mick wrote:I reluctantly breezed through some of the posts by Cali and a few others, but I have found no good reason to be concerned with Turing machines.

So the fact that a mindless entity can test the truth or falsity of propositions doesn't worry you, or your apologetics about thoughts? Quelle surprise.

Mick wrote:IThe reason why a computer operates the way it does is that it has been designed by us to do just that.

Oh wait, if the laws of logic possessed the magic properties you assert them to possess, then according to your apologetics, the mechanisability of the propositional calculus would be an impossibility. Because according to your apologetics, thoughts purportedly need a mind. Where's the "mind" in a piece of silicon?

Congratulations on providing nothing more than another version of the failed Dunsapy Bop.

Mick wrote:Its operations ape the linguistic features and their logical relations

Which again, would be impossible, according to your apologetics, if the propositional calculus possessed the magic properties you assert them to.

Oh by the way, computers don't "ape the linguistic features", because, wait for it, programming computers to possess an understanding of natural language is a non-trivial task, and still the subject of much active research in the artificial intelligence field. Even writing compilers for high-level languages takes effort. But wait, the fact that the process of program compilation is mechanisable, and can be performed by a rock, once again tells us something important here.

Mick wrote:but none of that is inherent to any property of the computer any more than it is within ink marks on a piece of paper. We impart it onto them—it is not derived from them.

Which misses the point totally. Namely, that according to your apologetics, the laws of logic possess fantastic magic properties needing a mind, and moreover, a mind purportedly far more powerful than a human mind. The ability of those laws to be instantiated on a machine destroys that apologetics.

Mick wrote:A computer would generate ‘Socrates is a mortal’ from ‘All men are mortal’ and ‘Socrates is a man’—but the semantic content of those sentences is irrelevant. We could substitute their meaning with anything.

But as Quine observed, the substitution process is itself non-trivial, and runs into the synonym problem. If careful attention isn't paid to this, you end up with garbage syllogisms, a point you failed to understand in your other trainwreck thread.

Mick wrote:That their semantic meaning is irrelevant to this process is great reason not to think of those sentences as thoughts, since thoughts and inferences are justified in virtue of their semantic content.

Oh but wait, AI researchers are addressing this, and seeking to bestow the ability to discern meaning to computers. Research into concept networks dates back to the 1980s.

Mick wrote:That aside, I don’t even see where I am supposed to be concerned.

Quele surprise.

Mick wrote:Even if we grant that this computer can generate inferences and sentences, they would still be tokens of a type.

Oh dear. here's a relevant paper covering this very topic.

Mick wrote: Nothing suggests that propositions are physical or that they are not thoughts.

Only because you manifestly prefer your own music of the spheres to real data.

Mick wrote:Nothing is said about the nature of propositions.

Ahem, once again, if the laws of logic possessed the magic properties you assert, all of this would be impossible.

It's really funny seeing someone type this apologetic guff on a machine whose capabilities destroy that apologetics.

Mick wrote:Actually, I was taught to write this way, since I was taught to formalize English names by name-letters unless it leads to inadequate formalization (I would not write 'Craig does not exist' as -Ex x=c). The idea here is that my formalization is good enough, even if it has some problems. In fact, I am unsure how else to say it in classical logic, nor did you provide a better analysis for my purposes. In fact, for my point to go through, it wouldn't even matter if it happened to be a truth of logic.

Let me show you something. Click on link below and see how the sentence "Socrates is" is formulated, and it is attributed to none other than Frege-Russell. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall ... existence/.

I haven't a clue as to why you lot me into the group of people infatuated with formalism. The point of the thread for which you refer was to exclude classical logic as useful. I almost never write in formal logic, and i have criticized Teuton for using it unnecessarily.

OlivierK wrote:Mick, you were the one who brought up your Craig argument here, in this post.

Prior to importing that piece of specious bullshit from another thread, you had not been arguing against the usefulness of classical logic, you had been (ab)using classical logic to show that propositions transcended humanity. If you do not think classical logic is useful, then why were you doing that?

Why don't you get back on topic here, and address this: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/gener ... l#p1862260 ?

Mick wrote:The point would remain that the computer pays no attention to semantics, and therefore its deductions are quite unlike thoughts in terms of their justification.

Mick wrote:also: do you follow me around? Every thread I go in, there you are. It is a little creepy.

Mick wrote:

OlivierK wrote:Mick, you were the one who brought up your Craig argument here, in this post.

Prior to importing that piece of specious bullshit from another thread, you had not been arguing against the usefulness of classical logic, you had been (ab)using classical logic to show that propositions transcended humanity. If you do not think classical logic is useful, then why were you doing that?

Why don't you get back on topic here, and address this: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/gener ... l#p1862260 ?

I think it is useful. I don't think it was useful there. That is, I don't think it is useful in solving the problem Krauss posed. It was Cali who brought up classical logic there, not me.

Mick wrote:also: do you follow me around? Every thread I go in, there you are. It is a little creepy.

VazScep wrote:

Mick wrote:Actually, I was taught to write this way, since I was taught to formalize English names by name-letters unless it leads to inadequate formalization (I would not write 'Craig does not exist' as -Ex x=c). The idea here is that my formalization is good enough, even if it has some problems. In fact, I am unsure how else to say it in classical logic, nor did you provide a better analysis for my purposes. In fact, for my point to go through, it wouldn't even matter if it happened to be a truth of logic.

Ask for your money back? If you want to say that Craig exists, then one way you could go about it is by having a predicate "Craig" and asserting "Ex. Craig(x)."

Let me show you something. Click on link below and see how the sentence "Socrates is" is formulated, and it is attributed to none other than Frege-Russell. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall ... existence/.

You can show me a page asserting that 2+2=5. The fact is that Ex(x = Socrates) is a theorem of classical predicate logic. So it doesn't formalise "Socrates is."

I haven't a clue as to why you lot me into the group of people infatuated with formalism. The point of the thread for which you refer was to exclude classical logic as useful. I almost never write in formal logic, and i have criticized Teuton for using it unnecessarily.

You might not be infatuated with it, but you're happy to use it without knowing the basics. That contributes more to the unending cesspool. I'd rather see infatuated logicians obfuscating prose who at least understood how existentials and constants worked.

Mick wrote:
I can also cite a book on logic that offers my interpretation. It later criticizes it as inadequate, but it is fine unless it creates problems such as the one I noted earlier. It takes a practical approach to it. In fact, when I read it, I thought of your insistence for practicality and usefulness.

Now, I could have said (Ex)Cx. I am perfectly aware of that. However, 'Craig' is a name, and I have been taught that names in English are supposed to be formulated with name-letters in classical logic. That raises issues in regards to names such as 'Vulcan', and Russell has famously argued to counter this problem by understanding names as definite descriptions. Frankly, I think he failed a bit, but that is besides the point. I've always been taught to treat English names as name-letters. Thus, on that basis, I wouldn't treat 'Craig' as a predicate. I also have some philosophical reservations about treat 'Craig' as a property.

That said, how would you state this: 'Craig is, and Craig is identical to Scott.' You could say something like Ex(Cx & Sx). But nothing of note would follow from that when we plug in the indescernibility of identicals. That's a concern of mine, one that I don't know the answer to. Another: 'Craig is, and Craig is identical to Craig.' It seems to be that you would have to switch: treat it as a predicate on the one hand and then a name letter in the next. Thus: (Ex)Cx & c=c. The other might be this: (Ex)Cx & c=s. What bugs me here is the switch.

Mick wrote:The idea here is that my formalization is good enough, even if it has some problems.

...snip wibble... Nothing suggests that propositions are physical or that they are not thoughts.

Nothing is said about the nature of propositions.

Mick wrote:I can also cite a book on logic that offers my interpretation. It later criticizes it as inadequate, but it is fine unless it creates problems such as the one I noted earlier. It takes a practical approach to it. In fact, when I read it, I thought of your insistence for practicality and usefulness.

Thus: (Ex)Cx & c=c. The other might be this: (Ex)Cx & c=s. What bugs me here is the switch.

Mick wrote:Btw, for those of you who seem to adore frege, he once proposed (Ex)x=s, or whatever else to stand singular existential statements. Before you go ahead and mock me for being uninformed and the like, piss poor at logic, and so on, perhaps it might be worthwhile to see what the fuss is about.

Eta: I confused the Frege with Quine. Funny enough, Quine didn't like names all too much. He wanted to interpret them to suggest little (if anything more) than all of the predictables that make that person, well, that person. Thus, rather than, say, (Ex)x=s where there is an x identical to Socrates, he would treat Socrates as a predicate for that which makes Socrates himself. The predicate might be socratizes. That is, there is an x such that x socratizes. I can criticize that up and down.

Mick wrote:(...)
However, again, I see no reason to think that I should be concerned about all of this. I see no reason to think that my idea renders this mechanization impossible. Propositions are thoughts. Propositions require a mind. Your computer does not "have" a thought because it is deducing this or that token sentence. I see that you provided a PDF, by I'll have to look at it when I'm not on my phone.
(...)

Reeve wrote:Mick you haven't said what thoughts are; only that they're unexplained and mysterious. I looked at the OP again and you point that the laws of logic are mysterious too. Your argument is essentially:

Here's one mysterious thing and here's this other mysterious thing so, because they both share the property of being mysterious, therefore they must be the same thing!

This is clearly a logically invalid argument.

Nebogipfel wrote:

Reeve wrote:Mick you haven't said what thoughts are; only that they're unexplained and mysterious. I looked at the OP again and you point that the laws of logic are mysterious too. Your argument is essentially:

Here's one mysterious thing and here's this other mysterious thing so, because they both share the property of being mysterious, therefore they must be the same thing!

This is clearly a logically invalid argument.

I think Mick´s argument is more: If there are no minds around to hold abstract concepts like true or false, how can anything be true or false?.

I would guess that the answer to this conundrum is just the fact that, yes, truth and falsehood are indeed terms invented by human minds, but in the absence of those minds and those concepts, what is, just is, and what is not, is irrelevant.

Obviously, I lack the correct technical vocabulary to express that properly (and I think OliverK probably already said it better )