"Project Logic" #1

[wleg]

Project Logic will pay ten US dollars for each propositional sentence submitted that enhances philosophical knowledge. The Project will buy one thousand sentences which create the knowledge foundation for logical philosophical thinking. Ten thousand dollars will be divided (after one thousand sentences are collected) according to the number of propositional sentences each person sells.

The Project is looking for Propositional Sentences supported by a logical argument.

WARNING!! Propositional sentences posted that can not be supported by logical argument and obviously are not intended to enhance philosophical knowledge will result in dollars being deducted from any future earnings.

Project Logic is now activated to buy submitted propositional sentences it believes form a foundation for logical philosophical knowledge.

Wayne Leggette Sr.


Small print: Project Logic may or may not be hypothetical or it might be a test to determine if what it seeks to accomplish is possible.

[The Voice of Time]

May I ask from what foundation of logic your "Project Logic" is gonna build on? Logic is very varied, and a very rich field. What are the axioms?

[wleg]

You set the "axioms", if Project Logic believes your propositional sentence enhances philosophical knowledge it will buy your sentence.

Wayne Leggette Sr.

[The Voice of Time]

doomed to fail when everybody builds their own sets of axioms. Besides, takes a long time and a lot of effort to think out any such set. Not worth it. You might as well ask us to work a year in a Chinese shoe factory.

[chaz wyman]

Project Logic will pay ten US dollars for each propositional sentence submitted that enhances philosophical knowledge. The Project will buy one thousand sentences which create the knowledge foundation for logical philosophical thinking. Ten thousand dollars will be divided (after one thousand sentences are collected) according to the number of propositional sentences each person sells.

The Project is looking for Propositional Sentences supported by a logical argument.

WARNING!! Propositional sentences posted that can not be supported by logical argument and obviously are not intended to enhance philosophical knowledge will result in dollars being deducted from any future earnings.

Project Logic is now activated to buy submitted propositional sentences it believes form a foundation for logical philosophical knowledge.

Wayne Leggette Sr.


Small print: Project Logic may or may not be hypothetical or it might be a test to determine if what it seeks to accomplish is possible.

What are the criteria? Is any statement independently logical?

[chaz wyman]

doomed to fail when everybody builds their own sets of axioms. Besides, takes a long time and a lot of effort to think out any such set. Not worth it. You might as well ask us to work a year in a Chinese shoe factory.

ohhh sounds a but pessimistic, though I completely agree with you.

[chaz wyman]

Logical Positivism was tried, but where are they now?

Do you have a link for this. I'd love to see what a $10 logically supported statement looks like.
Or is your name a hint at your MO.
Post and then Leg it!

[The Voice of Time]

well when people post stuff like this every sane person will have to be pessimistic. As I said, one year in a Chinese shoe factory, that's about the same money you are gonna get from doing this, and no less work.

My impression is that real philosophers spend years producing just the proper axioms. I remember some quote about that guy who wrote Principia Mathematica, Russell or something, who said he spent "3 years staring at a blank piece of paper". That was to produce mathematics though, but it was largely a logical piece of work, dealing with the foundations of mathematics, or the Philosophy of Mathematics, in a way, or logic at least.

[Kelly]

Hi, I noticed this thread on my last visit when checking to see if there was anything interesting happening on this Forum. I have participated in a few philosophy forums in the past and have always been disappointed because there never seemed to be an interest in developing philosophical knowledge. “Project Logic” is certainly an interesting approach and I would like to try my hand at submitting a propositional sentence or two.

The one piece of knowledge that always seemed to me to be the most important to developing philosophical knowledge is understanding the nature of knowledge itself. How is it possible to construct knowledge without first understanding the nature of knowledge to understand how knowledge is constructed? If a thing exist, has existed in the past, or can exist in the future then it is possible to have knowledge to understand the nature/existence of that thing. We can have knowledge of a thing if we can recognize it from every other thing. The only way it is possible to recognize a thing as itself, and not another thing, is to recognize it attributes. Things are different because they have different attributes and our knowledge of a thing is the attributes we recognize that make it different from any other thing.

I submit this proposition sentence: Knowledge is a condition of memory when we remember which attributes relate to the existence of things.

Kelly

[chaz wyman]

well when people post stuff like this every sane person will have to be pessimistic. As I said, one year in a Chinese shoe factory, that's about the same money you are gonna get from doing this, and no less work.

My impression is that real philosophers spend years producing just the proper axioms. I remember some quote about that guy who wrote Principia Mathematica, Russell or something, who said he spent "3 years staring at a blank piece of paper". That was to produce mathematics though, but it was largely a logical piece of work, dealing with the foundations of mathematics, or the Philosophy of Mathematics, in a way, or logic at least.

Russell thought he could bring mathematics and logic together in one great work. Later reflection told him that his project failed. The history of philosophy since his pupil Wittgenstein unpacked it all, verified that Russell's project was more than a little ambitious.

I wonder if anyone out there who have studied either Maths or Logic have found themselves using Russell?

[The Voice of Time]

Russell was largely influential in why we have computers today. At least so I've heard, I once picked up the Principia Mathematica, but when I saw it was on the length of the largest Harry Potter books, that is 600-700+ pages, but this time of extremely heavy and tiresome logic, the prospect of reading it suddenly feels very much avoidable. I read something like 2 pages, of the preface. It was no less lengthy. Then again Russell is one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century, so no wonder he was able to go on and on like that.

So my knowledge of the book is largely limited to its size and to wikipedia articles and notations in other books/articles.

To say the book is a failure is wrong I think. That's not saying it was an absolute success. It was somewhere in-between. Some things very good, some things people could probably be without. It was probably more important in real terms than Wittgenstein's "Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung", which I've read slightly more of, in English known as the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". Although both books probably had their mistakes or irrelevances, they deserve more reverence than you give them Chaz.

[chaz wyman]

Russell was largely influential in why we have computers today. At least so I've heard, I once picked up the Principia Mathematica, but when I saw it was on the length of the largest Harry Potter books, that is 600-700+ pages, but this time of extremely heavy and tiresome logic, the prospect of reading it suddenly feels very much avoidable. I read something like 2 pages, of the preface. It was no less lengthy. Then again Russell is one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century, so no wonder he was able to go on and on like that.

So my knowledge of the book is largely limited to its size and to wikipedia articles and notations in other books/articles.

To say the book is a failure is wrong I think. That's not saying it was an absolute success. It was somewhere in-between. Some things very good, some things people could probably be without. It was probably more important in real terms than Wittgenstein's "Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung", which I've read slightly more of, in English known as the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". Although both books probably had their mistakes or irrelevances, they deserve more reverence than you give them Chaz.

I'm only saying what he himself said, that the project was a brave and futile attempt, tried when he was young and optimistic.
I started in computers and no one ever mentioned Russell when we were studying Boolean logic, so the reference to his contribution is unknown to me. Maybe you could elucidate?
His other work is highly accessible, and very wide ranging, in his 98 years he rarely stopped writing something, from nuclear disarmament, family planning, popular science and the history of philosophy. Many of these books he called 'pot boilers' due to their burn-ability.
Though I think he underestimated his appeal to a popular audience and his ability to bring complex topics to a popular audience.

[The Voice of Time]

Well Boolean logic was made by a man called Boole so I think that makes sense. But Boolean logic is not "mathematics", strictly speaking, I guess it's better to call it "applied logic".

On the other hand, knowing the foundations of mathematics would let you know how to transfer bytes, both as procedure of on's and off's (Boolean logic), and as chunks bytes with pre-defined meanings, into mathematical terms, in turn giving rise to how to make a computer compute, how to make it calculate.

Though I regret to give it as a source, Wikipedia says this:

"PM is widely considered by specialists in the subject to be one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy since Aristotle's Organon.[1] The Modern Library placed it 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century"

It may also be the fact that doing something wrong, gives other people the idea of the "existence" of the problem and realm at all, and makes them capable of doing it right, improving it, taking hints from the style but ending with different results... I don't know. Google didn't offer much information when I searched for "The legacy of the Principia Mathematica".

Remember that Boolean logic only defines a very tiny realm. It's not very useful to use Boolean logic to develop big systems (at least from the point of view of Machine Code or Assembly language). Somebody has to make it into proper mathematics, a realm which can deal with big complex jobs, and which has a wide and expansive and heavily developed framework. From the point of view of Theoretical Computer Science, it's all about mathematics anyways, how to find the most effective ways of calculating something.

[wleg]

Kelly, Project Logic will buy your propositional sentence. The argument supporting the sentence appears irrefutable. Email me the name of your PayPal account to receive the money.

Wayne Leggette Sr.

[chaz wyman]

Kelly, Project Logic will buy your propositional sentence. The argument supporting the sentence appears irrefutable. Email me the name of your PayPal account to receive the money.

Wayne Leggette Sr.

Never give account information out over the Internet unless you know who you are giving it to!