[Wittrs] Re: Nominalism / Neil
- From: "jrstern" <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:52:09 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <kirby.urner@...> wrote:
>
> 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.
In RFM IV-20, we have "If calculating looks to us like the action
of a machine, it is the human being doing the calculation that is
the machine."
Well, I hold that just wrong, and will be arguing the issue
at very great length. One should note LW wrote this before 1934,
when a calculating machine was in general a mechanical
adding machine, or the like. However, we can (that is, I must)
argue the matter on even the simplest machines - but, informed
by the more modern and complex machines we now call computers,
and I argue, justifiably so.
V-5 mentions 'Ideal object', but I cannot tell that is says
anything beyond the mention.
It's in PI 193 that we get, "The machine as symbolizing its
action: the action of a machine - I might say at first - seems
to be there in it from the start.
... We talk as if these parts could only move in this way, as
if they could not do anything else. How is this - do we forget
of their bending, breaking off, melting, and so on? Yes; ..."
Let me suggest that this is moving in the right direction.
Do you see why? Neil argues that we need an abstraction to
be general. But guess what - the actual machine itself
is general in just that way, without our little fantasies
of abstraction!
I had not quite thought of it that way before.
We all tend to think of Cartesian algebras and variables,
that we now look at as Lambda binding, that Frege called
unsaturated, that all sound like we have invented something
abstract, mathematical, what have you. The x in x2 + y2 = c
"behaves" for just those points on the circle. But so does
something as simple as a compass. For that matter, the
meat grinder is unsaturated, until someone drops in a
particular piece of meat. And then, just what/who is doing
the grinding, the person who turns the crank or the
grinder itself? And what if the grinder has a motor
and sensors? The question begins to dissolve, I suggest.
And for computers, much more so. Note that it is not
that we are so interested in enfranchising machines, the
question is always, what indeed is a thought, what is an
analysis? If indeed we want to dissolve questions, we
should celebrate upon seeing the dissolution.
Josh
ps - if my eyes did not deceive me and you decided in
another message upforum to revise your usage of the term
"nominalism" in some more appreciative form, I think that
will work out well for you and me, too.
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