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Jethro Bodine

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    Ph.D Mathematics, 1995 UCDavis Professor Lone Star College, Montgomery Conroe, TX
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    Lone Star College, Montgomery
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  1. Jacob 86 wrote You are conflating reason with logic as most people do. What is more, by assuming a primacy of consciousness, you are not so much proving a proposition as acknowledging an hypothesis. I will uphold the primacy of existence and in so doing, even the rules of logic cannot be taken as primaries. You belittle my position as frantically pushing specs of dirt in my eyes. All the while you demonstrate that you don't even know what logic is or that there are a plethora of logics. You are only aware of one so you continue beating that drum. The discussion goes nowhere because while boy and girls keep telling you about other lands, you dismiss their claims. I cannot continue this discussion when you are so closed to new ideas. Jethro Bodine
  2. Jacob 86 wrote Au contraire mon ami. You claim that one must have a "rigorous" logic round before reference to experience, but your principles of logic come as a jolt out of the blue. Which logic should you choose? You choose standard logic probably because that is the only one you were trained in. Since there are many logics, why should I choose yours? Since all logics are created axiomatically, why should we choose any of them? As I mentioned to you before, logic is not a first order concept. What is more, there is good reason to reject standard logic which is based on principles that seemed reasonable to ancient Greeks, but seem less reasonable in light of modern developments. A "rigorous" logic round would recognize that there are many logics and no obvious way via logic to choose between them. Each logic yields a different notion of truth. "Truth" is of little importance to the scientist because you cannot put truth into a bottle to determine it's properties. The scientist is only concerned with measurable distinctions. It is from a proper understanding of measurement, and all perceptions are measurements, that one abstracts notions of logic. Jethro Bodine
  3. The situation is actually worse. One may have a whole body of knowledge of a deductive sort, such as Euclidean Geometry, that one has validated the claims of to the best of one's local experience and deductive capacity. One may deduce that the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. However, we now know that Euclidean Geometry is empirically false in this solar system, and the sum of the angles of triangles is greater than 180 degrees if drawn about massive objects. Theories that we have validated In a local context may be invalid in a larger context. Also, a simple deductive proof is insufficient for validation. Another example applies to superstrings. There is no empirical evidence supporting these theories so belief in any such theory is premature. Even so, a theory must have a future possibility of empirical validation to qualify for serious consideration.
  4. Jacob86 wrote Your question is valid, and I would like to read any responses. However, to focus on this is to miss my point that even the rules of logic require validation by reduction to perception. Logic is not a primary or first order concept. You may deduce theorems to you heart's content, but those theorems still require additional validation.
  5. Jacob 86 wrote You forgot to add Reductio ad absurdum at the end of your proof. At least, all such proofs require the Law of the Excluded Middle.
  6. Jacob 85 Wrote: As a member of the village, I would say, "Let's go on a journey to find out!" The villagers are capable of validating or invalidating the claims of the boy by their own experience. Until that trip is made, there is no reason to believe the boy's story. If the trip cannot be made and the boy could not possibly have made the trip, having claimed to have received special knowledge in a dream, then the claim must be held to be arbitrary and invalid. I perceive another error you make in that you claim to be able to deduce the existence of something not observable. Let me give you a similar example. Cantor's Theorem in Set Theory says that the cardinality of a set is strictly less than the cardinality of its power set (set of all subsets). The proof is very simple and is by Reduction Ad Absurdum. An immediate consequence of Cantor's Theorem is that there are in infinity of infinite cardinalities, each of different size. One can either accept the proof that there are different sizes of infinite cardinality, or one can suspect that a premise upon which the proof lies is false. Most mathematicians make the former choice because the alternative is that the Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) is false and this would fly in the face of two millennia of mathematics. Of course, no experiment can be performed to make a distinction between the cardinality of two infinite collections of objects. Philosophically, occam's razor indicates that the latter choice is the proper one. However, without empirical evidence one way or the other, does it really matter? Ah, but with the advent of quantum physics came quantum logic, which specifically violates LEM. One could say that LEM is empirically false and with it all Reductio Ad Absurdum proofs. Now, you have used just such a proof in your argument for the existence of absolute truth. I reject this argument, not only because I reject the Law of the Excluded Middle but because every theory, no matter how logically arrived at, requires validation by reference to perceivable reality. A claim that cannot be reduced to observation is rejected on its face, regardless of how reasonable. In fact, if a claim can be deduced that cannot be verified, it is better to start looking for weaknesses in the underlying hypotheses. Jethro Bodine
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