Aug. 01 2010

The Permutation Game

Kant had already said that this proof was baloney, because “exis­tence” wasn’t a pred­i­cate like good­ness or knowl­edge. But Rus­sell and ana­lytic phi­los­o­phy took it one step fur­ther. In math and for­mal logic, exis­tence isn’t a pred­i­cate — it’s a quan­ti­fier. Like in the sen­tence, “For every nat­ural num­ber, there is a larger nat­ural num­ber.” We’re not mak­ing deep exis­tence claims here, just sin­gling out an ele­ment in a system.

So if we can come up with a model that’s foun­da­tion­ally and struc­turally sound, and works, let’s use it. What looked like an impos­si­ble prob­lem wasn’t a prob­lem after all; we’d just got­ten twisted up in the way we talked about it.

So phi­los­o­phy of math­e­mat­ics => math­e­mat­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. Change of gram­mar => change of perspective.

shaking off logical ambiguity.

Jun. 05 2010

What's your time perspective?

i’m a combo of “past positive” and “present hedonistic.”

Sep. 07 2009

…Looking at life like this has changed my perspective.  I’ve been able to make different decisions based on a more clear mind.  I’ve been able to set goals for myself and take my time away from the superfluous and focus on finding things that work with what i want to do.  First of all, change comes from within.  That being said, you must believe in yourself that you have the answer to your dreams.  Having a lack of confidence won’t help here for you’ll realize that you are trying to find who you are through other people, things, and ideas.  Look inside yourself and realize you create your own life.  Never give yourself up.

alex ratcliffe-lee: opposites

broseph talks about value judgements.