[Wittrs] Re: Nominalism / Neil
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 22:07:33 -0700
On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 8:20 PM, iro3isdx<xznwrjnk-evca@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "jrstern" <jrstern@...> wrote:
>
>
>> Symbol, to me, is first of all a physical particular.
>
> No, that does not work.
>
> Think back to November, 2000 and the election in Florida. We had this
> little problem of "hanging chads".
>
> If symbol is a physical particular, and computation is done with such
> physical particulars, then the punch cards were the physical
> particulars that represented the votes. If the computation was dealing
> with those physical particulars, then dealing with hanging chads is
> part of computation. And, in that case, Turing's thesis completely
> fails for it does not handle the case of hanging chads.
>
> If, on the other hand, a symbol is an ideal object created by human
> intentions, then dealing with the hanging chads happened outside of any
> computation. Rather, the chads were dealt with as part of constructing
> the ideal objects to be tallied in the vote total computation. And, in
> that case, Turing's theory applies quite well.
This would seem to connect to Wittgenstein's characterizations of
"ideal machines" in RFM, i.e. those which appear to show what they do
next based on a kind of logical rule following that doesn't involve
the actual movement of parts, in which case there's the possibility of
a misoperation or breakage.
Ideal machines let us factor out breakdowns.
He then compares these to logical proofs, which go step by step from
start to finish in some seemingly inevitable way.
In the case of Florida, you have this ideal of one eligible-to-vote
person one vote, with all the obstructions, the mounting pile of
exceptions (chads just the tip of the iceberg).
Irregularities, quite often intentional, may be ignored or occluded
(covered up) by this "logical picture" of how Florida should operate.
"Idealism" sometimes just means shutting one's eyes to the facts on
the ground, is a kind of denial.
Kirby
PS: some more of that namespace stuff:
http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=1983423&tstart=0
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