Re: What's the name for this?
From: Stefan Ljungstrand (md9slj_at_mdstud.chalmers.se)
Date: 04/29/04
- Next message: Richard Riehle: "Re: Programming is not as much fun/more fun than it used to be."
- Previous message: Bradley K. Sherman: "Re: Programming is not as much fun/more fun than it used to be."
- In reply to: Edward G. Nilges: "Re: What's the name for this?"
- Next in thread: CBFalconer: "Re: What's the name for this?"
- Reply: CBFalconer: "Re: What's the name for this?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 15:04:45 +0200
On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Edward G. Nilges wrote:
> Chris Sonnack <Chris@Sonnack.com> wrote in message news:<408E83AA.7ABF189B@Sonnack.com>...
[snip]
> Platonism is in large measure the belief that the contents of our
> minds, whether mathematical or not, are partial shadows of real
> entities that exist in a timeless "world of forms".
>
> For example, the initial dialog of the Republic is a discussion of
> what "justice" means. The conclusion is that in the "real" world of
> Athens there is only partial "justice" because the arrangements of the
> state don't make it possible for men and women to be just, therefore
> Socrates as Plato's mouthpiece describes an ideal society, in which
> men would be perfectly just.
>
> This has been interpreted as a serious, practical program, but recent
> scholarship indicates that it's more of an ideal or
> thought-experiment.
>
> As to mathematics, Platonism is the belief that mathematical
> statements when true, even in the real world, are necessarily true
> because they describe entities that don't exist in the real world but
> in the world of forms.
>
> It is challenged by Intuitionism which is based on Kant's claim that
> our experience necessarily takes place in an inescapable framework of
> space and time, and therefore bases the truths of mathematics on their
> constructibility by step by step arguments which, rigorously, assume
> no "Platonic" knowledge of a world other than the space-time manifold
> in which we live. For example, many Intuitionists reject the
> proposition "if a is not true it is false" the so-called law of
> excluded middle.
Erm, IIRC 'not' is often defined in intuitionist logic as
not A = A implies false
So 'not true', is then just 'true implies false' which is equivalent
to just 'false' (By "(true implies A) <=> A").
ITYM "A or not A".
(Though, there is some interesting work on connections between
computation and classical logic (as opposed to intuitionistic logic).)
> There's a connection, in the Intuitionist challenge to Plato, to
> programming, for Intuitionists have the attractive humility of the
> "structured" programmer who uses good structure because this ensures
> he makes his goal in a step-by-step fashion. The best debuggers are
> natural born Intuitionists for they make sparse assumptions.
>
> Platonism in mathematics is also challenged by Marxism which points
> out that despite all of Plato's ravings, mathematics was actually
> developed by ordinary slobs in Sumeria, China and elsewhere who were
> trying to divvy up goods and earn a living. The connection with CS is
> that the actual history of CS is the post-facto dignifying of
> discoveries by that species of ordinary slobs called programmers of
> how to accomplish a job of work, with impressive sounding theories.
(Mathematics is also about proofs and why things are true.
And abstraction, of course.
(Both these are relevant for programming, IMHO.)
)
> In our own lifetime we see how discoveries made by ordinary employees
> of IBM become "theory" once the academics have at them, and this is a
> good thing as long as we can remember that the original practice
> wasn't theory. The point is not privileging EITHER the practical
> inventors or the academics.
(What is "theory" ?)
> Another challenge to Plato came from David Hilbert who claimed that
> mathematics is a game we play with symbols. His spiritual cousin is
> the person for whom the computer is a game playing machine.
>
> However, Platonism is dominant in the academy for the very good reason
> that academics like to think of themselves less as the servants of
> practical men and more like Plato's vision of the philosopher, who
> emerges from the cave to see the sun of absolute reality, illuminating
> a world of forms strangely like the precise visions of advanced
> graphics.
>
> A typical result is the overly ambitious system (more an artifact of
> the prehistory of software before C and unix taught us all humility,
> in some cases too much) which attempts to be the corporation's or
> government's World of Forms which, on the nacreous computer screen,
> expresses truths more True than the messy ambiguity of daily life.
>
> A recent dialog with Plato was constructed by Jacques Derrida, a
> French philosopher, who pointed out that at the dawn of writing, Plato
> (despite all of his "academic" credentials) suspected and even feared
> writing. Plato approvingly told the story of Thamuz, who when
> presented by an ambitious scribe with the new invention of "writing",
> rejected it as unnecessary and even dangerous for it would cause men
> to forget things and give them the vanity of false knowledge, false
> because it wasn't "inscribed" on their hearts.
>
> Derrida pointed out that the very language used to REJECT writing has
> to ASSUME writing which means that for Derrida, "writing" was never
> "invented", like Thomas Edison invented the electric light in a lab
> illuminated by gas lamps. Instead and for Derrida, writing and speech
> are both as old as language and are constituted in the differences
> between linguistic forms of life; speech is an attempt to write upon
> the soul of another.
>
> Derrida claims that the (unconscious) privileging of speech over
> writing and the very idea that writing is a second fiddle to speech
> (including the literally false idea that writing represents speech) is
> something constitutive of Western philosophy since Plato.
>
> The relevance to CS is deep. This is because CS is the invention, if
> it is anything at all, of a new form of more intense, "active"
> writing, programming. But in proportion to its importance, programming
> and its practioners must be relegated to deep left field just as
> writing is considered to be the "weaker" term.
(<ot>Reminds me of Myst :)</ot>)
> The result is that in a completely unconscious form, end users
> continually have a blind spot such that they cannot see that an active
> writing is what makes the "magic" and consistently underestimate its
> materiality...as do programmers themselves.
[snip]
-- Stefan Lj md9slj The infinity that can be finitely expressed is not the true infinity
- Next message: Richard Riehle: "Re: Programming is not as much fun/more fun than it used to be."
- Previous message: Bradley K. Sherman: "Re: Programming is not as much fun/more fun than it used to be."
- In reply to: Edward G. Nilges: "Re: What's the name for this?"
- Next in thread: CBFalconer: "Re: What's the name for this?"
- Reply: CBFalconer: "Re: What's the name for this?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Relevant Pages
|
