Sure. I think we're all familiar with this paradox. However I don't
think in this venue that you quite recognize that you yourself are a
participant and not a teacher nor are we your students.

Regards - Lester

If all Cretans are liars, and a Cretan admits, "I am a liar," is (s)he
telling the truth?

On 24 Jan 2004 01:47:36 -0800, yvan pierre wrote:

Quoting : lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) wrote in message news:<4011496d.97854767@netnews.att.net>...

But I don't think it reasonable to render a criticism and not
explain it and suggest that I need to research Russell in order to
understand the criticism.

Regards - Lester

I fully agree with this last argument.

I don't. As a teacher, I know that "You aren't yet capable of understanding
X" is something people must face up to. As I sometimes advise people in
another forum, "This book will answer questions you didn't know you had to
ask." If Lester can't see that his definition of "The Ps and Qs..." is a
version of the circular paradox, then he really should study logic, set
hierarchies, etc. I referred him to Russell because Russell wrote a number
of books for intelligent adults, and also writes well and amusingly. But
Lester can do something on his own, if he wants. He can study the Cretan
paradox, which motivated Russell's investigations:

If all Cretans are liars, and a Cretan admits, "I am a liar," is (s)he
telling the truth?

Sure. I think we're all familiar with this paradox. However I don't

In article <4012945b.7376596@netnews.att.net>, Lester Zick
lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net> writes
On 24 Jan 2004 01:47:36 -0800, y.pierre@skynet.be (yvan pierre) in
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

Quoting : lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) wrote in
message news:<4011496d.97854767@netnews.att.net>...

But I don't think it reasonable to render a criticism and not
explain it and suggest that I need to research Russell in order to
understand the criticism.

Regards - Lester

I fully agree with this last argument. But, we may recognise
different levels in a discussion. The final or ultimate level, if it
ever exists, being when the jugement on the truth value can simply be
based on the use of formal logic or facts (at least recognised as
such). There are many other levels such as the use of metaphor,
associativism (not sure it's the right word), intuition (why not),
imagination ... all this, if the objective is not the appropriation of
a dominant position by the ego but a really constructive procedure
toward some truth, may be very positive. Even no mathematics without
irrationality because one needs "irrationality" (dangerous word here)
even to invent how to prove a theorem.

Now what I like in the initial post is the the concept of "difference"
which seems a sort of definition for "reality", or I am wrong? My
"intuition" on the subject would be that our language and discussion
tool is designed (long time ago) for action not for the research of a
static truth.

Amazingly however it turns out to be exactly that. The problem is that
most people view science as a bottom up process

It's certainly a "bottom up" process when it comes to what you have to
say about behavior science - and possibly also when it comes to what
you've got to say about the rest of science.

If I didn't think better of it, I'd suggest you either stopped taking
the drugs or that you asked for a forebrain MRI. You certainly don't
appear to be interested in contributing anything sensible, nor do you
appear to be interested in learning from others.

Try reading "From Stimulus to Science" by Quine.

I would have thought I should ask for an anal MRI.

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:57:41 +0000, David Longley
David@longley.demon.co.uk> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

In article <4012945b.7376596@netnews.att.net>, Lester Zick
lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net> writes
On 24 Jan 2004 01:47:36 -0800, y.pierre@skynet.be (yvan pierre) in
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

Quoting : lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) wrote in
message news:<4011496d.97854767@netnews.att.net>...

But I don't think it reasonable to render a criticism and not
explain it and suggest that I need to research Russell in order to
understand the criticism.

Regards - Lester

I fully agree with this last argument. But, we may recognise
different levels in a discussion. The final or ultimate level, if it
ever exists, being when the jugement on the truth value can simply be
based on the use of formal logic or facts (at least recognised as
such). There are many other levels such as the use of metaphor,
associativism (not sure it's the right word), intuition (why not),
imagination ... all this, if the objective is not the appropriation of
a dominant position by the ego but a really constructive procedure
toward some truth, may be very positive. Even no mathematics without
irrationality because one needs "irrationality" (dangerous word here)
even to invent how to prove a theorem.

Now what I like in the initial post is the the concept of "difference"
which seems a sort of definition for "reality", or I am wrong? My
"intuition" on the subject would be that our language and discussion
tool is designed (long time ago) for action not for the research of a
static truth.

Amazingly however it turns out to be exactly that. The problem is that
most people view science as a bottom up process

It's certainly a "bottom up" process when it comes to what you have to
say about behavior science - and possibly also when it comes to what
you've got to say about the rest of science.

David has a sense of humor. Are the heavens falling?

If I didn't think better of it, I'd suggest you either stopped taking
the drugs or that you asked for a forebrain MRI. You certainly don't
appear to be interested in contributing anything sensible, nor do you
appear to be interested in learning from others.

Try reading "From Stimulus to Science" by Quine.

I would have thought I should ask for an anal MRI.

Regards - Lester

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 23:04:05 GMT, Lester Zick wrote:

Sure. I think we're all familiar with this paradox. However I don't
think in this venue that you quite recognize that you yourself are a
participant and not a teacher nor are we your students.

Regards - Lester

Never said you were. I merely pointed out that my experience as a teacher
taught me a few things, some of them not the kinds of things you like to
hear, is all.

BTW, another thing it taught me is that a good student is one who subjects
himself to the discipline, not to the teacher.

I don't necessarily disagree on either count.

On 24 Jan 2004 01:47:36 -0800, yvan pierre wrote:

Quoting : lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) wrote in message news:<4011496d.97854767@netnews.att.net>...

But I don't think it reasonable to render a criticism and not
explain it and suggest that I need to research Russell in order to
understand the criticism.

Regards - Lester

I fully agree with this last argument.

I don't. As a teacher, I know that "You aren't yet capable of understanding
X" is something people must face up to. As I sometimes advise people in
another forum, "This book will answer questions you didn't know you had to
ask." If Lester can't see that his definition of "The Ps and Qs..." is a
version of the circular paradox, then he really should study logic, set
hierarchies, etc. I referred him to Russell because Russell wrote a number
of books for intelligent adults, and also writes well and amusingly. But
Lester can do something on his own, if he wants. He can study the Cretan
paradox, which motivated Russell's investigations:

If all Cretans are liars, and a Cretan admits, "I am a liar," is (s)he
telling the truth?

HTH

On 24 Jan 2004 01:47:36 -0800, y.pierre@skynet.be (yvan pierre) in
comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

Quoting : lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net (Lester Zick) wrote in message news:<4011496d.97854767@netnews.att.net>...

But I don't think it reasonable to render a criticism and not
explain it and suggest that I need to research Russell in order to
understand the criticism.

Regards - Lester

I fully agree with this last argument. But, we may recognise
different levels in a discussion. The final or ultimate level, if it
ever exists, being when the jugement on the truth value can simply be
based on the use of formal logic or facts (at least recognised as
such). There are many other levels such as the use of metaphor,
associativism (not sure it's the right word), intuition (why not),
imagination ... all this, if the objective is not the appropriation of
a dominant position by the ego but a really constructive procedure
toward some truth, may be very positive. Even no mathematics without
irrationality because one needs "irrationality" (dangerous word here)
even to invent how to prove a theorem.

Now what I like in the initial post is the the concept of "difference"
which seems a sort of definition for "reality", or I am wrong? My
"intuition" on the subject would be that our language and discussion
tool is designed (long time ago) for action not for the research of a
static truth.

Amazingly however it turns out to be exactly that. The problem is that
most people view science as a bottom up process whereas in point of
fact it actually turns out to be a top down process. We have all these
vague notions about reality and real and unreal things and we try
desperately to figure out what all these things mean and can mean by
investigating the things themselves assiduously on the assumption that
the general reality of things lies in the things themselves rather
than in the way things are realized in our minds - when the properties
of things in themselves are only relevant to the nature of the things
studied and not to reality in general.

Reality in general can only be studied by means of the one analytical
tool appropriate to the realization of things generally and that one
tool is language in definitive terms. And the implications of that
tool with respect to the origin and nature of reality in general are
what define reality as a subject of science.

For my own part I define metaphysics as the science of reality in
general and predicates as the essence of what it means to be real.
Consequently the predicates of predication determine the nature of
reality and the only thing common to all relations between predicates
and in effect the middle term common to all predicates is differences.

Thank you for the comments. I think you're beginning to get it.

Regards - Lester

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 10:16:40 -0500 (EST), "Wolf Kirchmeir"
wwolfkir@sympatico.can> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:11:34 GMT, Lester Zick wrote:

So the language is adequate to describe problems but not sufficiently
adequate to describe solutions?

Regards - Lester

It's inadequate for both.

I'll give you a little hierarchy I ran across when I was developing a
unit on
"problem solving." It talks about "knowledge," but since knowledge is
expressed in language, it illustrates the issue quite nicely.

A) we may not know enough to recognise there is a problem.
B) we may recognise there is a problem, but not know enough to figure out
what the problem might be
C) we may be able to figure out what the problem might be, but not know
enough to tell whether there is a solution
D) we may know that there is a solution, but not know enough to figure
out a
solution
E) we may know enough to figure out a solution, but not know enough to
tell
whether it's the solution to the original problem
F) we may know enough to figure out a correct solution to the original
problem, but not know enough to tell whether our original problem was the
one
that needed solving
G) etc.

See?

I've always seen what you describe above and agree completely. However
none of the "may's" indicated above mean that we necessarily cannot
and do not.


BTW, IMO A) is the normal condition of humankind. :-)

Often so.

There is also the insight that every solution generates a new problem...

Of course. Science is a never ending process because there is always
some difference between different predicates. However science can and
must have a definitive beginning in the idea of differences and
differences among differences. Science is not circular in this regard.
It is iterative in the sense of having a definitve beginning but no
end. Amen.

Regards - Lester

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:30:41 GMT, Lester Zick wrote:

Well I don't see any obvious reason why the language we use is
necessarily inadequate to explaining the problems we phrase in the
language.

Well, it's _human_ language, isn't it? That's an obvious enough reason for
me.

"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.can> wrote in message news:<jbysxveflzcngvpbpna.hrwqx04.pminews@news1.sympatico.ca>...
On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:30:41 GMT, Lester Zick wrote:

Well I don't see any obvious reason why the language we use is
necessarily inadequate to explaining the problems we phrase in the
language.

Well, it's _human_ language, isn't it? That's an obvious enough reason for
me.

Human languages are extensible, so I think that any problem that can
be posed can be explained. Does someone have an example of a problem
that can't be explained?

--
Ron

On 27 Jan 2004 21:28:01 -0800, Ron Peterson wrote:

"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir@sympatico.can> wrote in message news:<jbysxveflzcngvpbpna.hrwqx04.pminews@news1.sympatico.ca>...
On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:30:41 GMT, Lester Zick wrote:

Well I don't see any obvious reason why the language we use is
necessarily inadequate to explaining the problems we phrase in the
language.

Well, it's _human_ language, isn't it? That's an obvious enough reason for
me.

Human languages are extensible, so I think that any problem that can
be posed can be explained. Does someone have an example of a problem
that can't be explained?

--
Ron

Nice question. I'm not sure what you mean by "explaining" a problem. It seems
to me that posing a problem is equivalent to explaining it. So I'll shift the
ground, perhaps unfairly, to solving problems rather than explaining them.
Granting this shift, we see that posing a problem is not the same as solving
it. Mathematics is full of examples of problems that can be clearly stated
but whose solution is by no means clear. You may object that mathematics
isn't what you mean by an extension of language. But I would argue that
mathematics is an extension of language, and then some. I suppose we can
dismiss those problems of which we know that there is no solution, since
showing that no solution is possible is a type of solution.

Here follow a few examples that I know of, and to some extent understand:
There are problems that cannot be solved because the universe will not last
long enough to arrive at a solution. There are problems that cannot solved
because we cannot determine whether the algorithm that could solve them will
ever arrive at a solution. (This is "the halting problem.") There are others
of which one cannot say whether they have a solution. (This is the
decidability problem.) If one may paraphrase Goedel's theorem in terms of
solving problems, one may say that there are problems that cannot be solved
within the system in which they are posed. (But I'm not sure that this
paraphrase of Goedel is permissible, which in itself shows that not all
problems that can be posed can be solved.) There are problems of which one
cannot say that they are solvable, or if solvable, whether the solution is
optimal. There are problems of which one can say that a solution exists, but
one cannot say what that solution is (this is sometimes enough to inspire
work that produces a solution, so some of these problems don't answer your
question.)

Human language is adequate for posing the problem and for posing the

SH: Number theory as a formal system is not constructed
only by logic. It requires axioms (unproven assumptions).
Peano Arithmetic attempts, I think, to have the human
experience with numbers guide the selection of axioms.
Godel's Inc. Theorem is a result about a formal system, not reality.

I think Incompleteness is not a synonym for physical uncertainty,
except for some formal system which postulates this relationship.

SH: Number theory as a formal system is not constructed
only by logic. It requires axioms (unproven assumptions).
Peano Arithmetic attempts, I think, to have the human
experience with numbers guide the selection of axioms.
Godel's Inc. Theorem is a result about a formal system, not reality.

Natural language also existed before any attempt was made
to formalize it. Cyc is a product of human ontolgists using their
intuition in an attempt to approximate the unknown rules which
generate natural language. The million common-sense rules that
Cyc uses to describe/simulate the function of language all act
as axioms, none are proven. There is no algorithmic method
to generate the actual rules (supposing there is a set of actual rules)
which compose the interaction of natural language. It is backwards
to claim that formal Incompleteness results back-propagate and cause
our incomplete knowlege of reality. The very act of representing
reality into a formal system creates self-referential artifacts.
Substituting equivalneces for Incompleteness such as lambda calculus
doesn't make a formal system any more authentic or of original import.

I think Incompleteness is not a synonym for physical uncertainty,
except for some formal system which postulates this relationship.

"Stephen Harris" <stephen.p.harris@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

SH: Number theory as a formal system is not constructed
only by logic. It requires axioms (unproven assumptions).
Peano Arithmetic attempts, I think, to have the human
experience with numbers guide the selection of axioms.
Godel's Inc. Theorem is a result about a formal system, not reality.


Yes. But while I write code for a
natural-language-to-formal-language-and-back interface, having to
target that formal system makes that formal system /be/ my reality for
the duration of the process. The binary nature of our current
computers requires it that this 'formal' reality is the /only/ one
that that I end up getting implemented in the resultant computer code.
If I cannot prove formally prove the correctness of my program, I
cannot reliably predict its termination.

To achieve the transformation from a semantically rich informal to a
semantically relatively poor ('relatively' because reduction
quality/quantity depends on the implementation you use) formal system,
I use the reduction and substitiution tools provided by the lambda
calculus. This means that I /know/ that incompleteness applies,
because I /introduced/ it.

The trouble is that, after the fact, I cannot determine precisely /how
much/ incompleteness I introduced, because part of the original
informal signal gets 'lost for good' in the translation: It cannot be
reconstructed, even though, theoretically as well as practically, the
computation might be reversible.

As I translate language from the informal (natural language) to the
formal (lambda calculus), I loose some of it, just as I loose some
energy as I translate it from the thermal to the kinetic. From the
point of view of an AI program (and therefore, for the person who
writes that program, while he/she is writing it), incompleteness is
inevitable, and has to be considered a factor for /every/
computation/state change.

As a programmer, my reality is focused on attempting to answer
questions like: "How the hell, from this point of my program, do I get
it to reconstruct the information it has just stripped off the signal
to be able to get here?" I find out that I can't do that, so the
question changes to: "How can I calculate an approximation to insert
that into the equation, then?" And: "How can I make that approximation
more precise, now?" "How can I build up from the Incomplete, if not to
the Complete, then to the More Complete?"

These, to me, are interesting questions, they figure as very 'real'
work-a-day problems in the lifes of some people, and they revolve
around incompleteness as a brute fact that determines the very
architecture of a natural language HCI, as well as the architecture of
physical robots that might use a NLP system.

I think Incompleteness is not a synonym for physical uncertainty,
except for some formal system which postulates this relationship.


Yes, but from the point of view of an AI, which, as a computer
program, exists in virtual reality, it is not relevant that
'incompleteness' is not a synonym for 'physical uncertainity' - it's
enough for it to know it as a synonym for 'virtual uncertainity', to
make it a relevant factor in its computations. And it better, because
in the case of its use in physical robots, there's the danger that
'virtual uncertainity' gets /translated into/ 'physical uncertainity'.
This happens every day in robotics labs the world over, and it's a
very real issue people work at.

All the best,

Dirk