From: Lester Zick on
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:27:05 -0400, Tony Orlow <tony(a)lightlink.com>
wrote:

>> A few days ago you asked about what I mean by "mechanics" or an
>> "exhaustive mechanics" and this is what I mean. You're welcome to
>> assume one mechanism but then you have to show how that one mechanism
>> produces every other aspect of the "mechanics" involved.
>
>That's what I TRIED to do.

Yes but you didn't show how that was done. All you did was assume it
was done.

~v~~
From: Lester Zick on
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:27:05 -0400, Tony Orlow <tony(a)lightlink.com>
wrote:

>> And I believe it obvious that the one "mechanism" has to be the
>> process of "alternation" itself or there is no way to produce anything
>> other than our initial assumption. A chain is no stronger than its
>> weakest link and if you make dualistic apriori assumptions neither of
>> which is demonstrably true of the other in mechanically exhaustive
>> terms you already have the weakest link right there at the foundation.
>>
>
>Again, please comment on my use of "not" to define the relationship
>between true() and false().

Okay that's an improvement. But one of the things I don't see is how
you produce and "truth values" between 0 and 1 using not.

~v~~
From: Lester Zick on
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:27:05 -0400, Tony Orlow <tony(a)lightlink.com>
wrote:

>> Well this comment is pure philosophy, Tony, because we only have your
>> word for it. You can certainly demonstrate the "truth" of "truth" by
>> regression to alternatives to "truth" by the mechanism of alternation
>> itself and I have no difficulty demonstrating the "truth" of "truth"
>> by regression to a self contradictory "alternatives to alternatives".
>> Of course this is only an argument not a postulate or principle but
>> then anytime you analyze "truth" you only have recourse to arguments.
>>
>
>If you're discussing logic, you have the additional recourse to the
>mechanics of logic itself, the basics of which are well understood, if
>not widely.

What kind of logic do you have in mind? Boolean conjunctive logic,
truth value logic or what? I don't see these as mechanical.

~v~~
From: Lester Zick on
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:27:05 -0400, Tony Orlow <tony(a)lightlink.com>
wrote:

>>> Truth tables and logical statements involving variables are
>>> just that. If I say, 3x+3=15, is that true? No, we say that IF that's
>>> true, THEN we can deduce that x=4.
>>
>> But here you're just appealing to syllogistic inference and truisms
>> because your statement is incomplete. You can't say what the "truth"
>> of the statements is or isn't until x is specified. So you abate the
>> issue until x is specified and denote the statement as problematic.
>
>Right. The truth of the statement 3x+3=15 cannot be determined without
>specifying x. That's my point.

But my point is that even with x you still haven't established the
truth of the axioms on which such statements are based.

~v~~
From: Lester Zick on
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 09:27:05 -0400, Tony Orlow <tony(a)lightlink.com>
wrote:

>> The difficulty with syllogistic inference and the truism is Aristotle
>> never got beyond it by being able to demonstrate what if anything
>> conceptual was actually true. The best he could do was regress
>> demonstrations of truth to perceptual foundations which most people
>> considered true, even if they aren't absolutely true. But even based
>> on that problematic assumption he could still never demonstrate the
>> conceptual truth of anything beyond the perceptual level.
>
>Now you're the one lapsing into philosophy, so I'll oblige.

Where am I lapsing into philosophy? Just because I mention Aristotle?

>The only thing we can ever really know is that we exist, ala Descartes.
>Beyond that, there is always the chance that our perceptions are
>entirely false. However, one has to ask oneself why that would be. Where
>would these illusions come from? I don't see any explanation for why a
>seemingly consistent universe should not be considered to be just what
>it seems. So, we have to start with the assumption, and that's just what
>it is, that this is not all an illusion, despite the fact that our
>perceptions may be flawed or limited. Having accepted that, we apply
>scientific method, either formally or intuitively, to detect "truths",
>and the only measure of a truth is whether it consistently predicts
>measurable facts from other measurable facts. Where we detect a formula
>which "works", we have detected a "truth" of some sort or another. Of
>course, we may never truly understand the most fundamental nature of
>what we observe, but we can still "know" something about it, in that sense.

~v~~