I like to re-use older threads, but the Rationalist thread is full of bad karma, so I am creating a new one for this topic.

But no one pays attention to the pre socratics these days.

Not quite true: Among other things, some pre-Socratic Greek Stoics did creditable work on what we now call the sentential calculus; that the logic of the syllogism eclipsed it is a fact of history that I think retarded both science and logic/mathematics…

Disregarding the ahistoricity of the view that there were any Stoics before Socrates, what makes the syllogism inferior and the propositional calculus superior? Specifically and at length please. And in your own words, no links to external writers thankyouverymuch.

Or, since the argument from authority seems to be inevitable for you, let's try this way too:

(Yes, I do think that the "modern" first-order predicate calculus should have been recognized and formalized in the Middle Ages. Instead, we had to wait until 1879… )(Popper himself said this.*)

In a few summarising sentences, what did Popper say as per you? And why should the first-order predicate calculus have been invented in the middle ages? What seemed to be leading up to it? What necessitated it? Or what would have been the benefits, had it been invented?

(Mind you, in my native language it's a strict impossibility to use "invent" in this way. Logic and its glory can only be a discovery, not invention. To speak of invention here is like saying that Columbus invented America.)

Do numbers "exist" before they are constructed? Was the square root of two (or negative one) an entity before someone considered them?
Consider π: We do really know that it is an irrational and transcendental number. (Don't we?) And that it is merely the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter… (Not an unusual nor certainly bizarre notion!) Why is it thus?

It's to do with the nature of things. The ratio of the circumference to the diameter is what it is independent of your opinion. It also stays as it is regardless of your inventions, reinventions and attempts to improve it.

Have you recanted your belief in Platonic ideas, and accepted the Nominalism of common sense?

Can you state the basic tenets of Nominalism and explain in a few words why it's better than Platonic ideas? Then I will follow up with questions how and why nominalism should be regarded as common sense.

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Philosophy, Logic, Formal Systems

2014-07-02, 04:31:10

I like to re-use older threads, but the Rationalist thread is full of bad karma, so I am creating a new one for this topic.

But no one pays attention to the pre socratics these days.

Not quite true: Among other things, some pre-Socratic Greek Stoics did creditable work on what we now call the sentential calculus; that the logic of the syllogism eclipsed it is a fact of history that I think retarded both science and logic/mathematics…

Disregarding the ahistoricity of the view that there were any Stoics before Socrates, what makes the syllogism inferior and the propositional calculus superior? Specifically and at length please. And in your own words, no links to external writers thankyouverymuch.

Or, since the argument from authority seems to be inevitable for you, let's try this way too:

(Yes, I do think that the "modern" first-order predicate calculus should have been recognized and formalized in the Middle Ages. Instead, we had to wait until 1879… )(Popper himself said this.*)

In a few summarising sentences, what did Popper say as per you? And why should the first-order predicate calculus have been invented in the middle ages? What seemed to be leading up to it? What necessitated it? Or what would have been the benefits, had it been invented?

(Mind you, in my native language it's a strict impossibility to use "invent" in this way. Logic and its glory can only be a discovery, not invention. To speak of invention here is like saying that Columbus invented America.)

Do numbers "exist" before they are constructed? Was the square root of two (or negative one) an entity before someone considered them?
Consider π: We do really know that it is an irrational and transcendental number. (Don't we?) And that it is merely the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter… (Not an unusual nor certainly bizarre notion!) Why is it thus?

It's to do with the nature of things. The ratio of the circumference to the diameter is what it is independent of your opinion. It also stays as it is regardless of your inventions, reinventions and attempts to improve it.

Have you recanted your belief in Platonic ideas, and accepted the Nominalism of common sense?

Can you state the basic tenets of Nominalism and explain in a few words why it's better than Platonic ideas? Then I will follow up with questions how and why nominalism should be regarded as common sense.