[Inquiry] Re: Semiotics Of Misrepresentation -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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SOM.  Discussion Note 2

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TG = Tom Gollier

Re: SOM-DIS 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/002556.html
In: SOM-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-April/thread.html#2556

La Grippe of 1918

TG: Your dictionary may be leading you astray.  It seems
    to me a concept like the Platonic notion of "form"
    is the last thing a modern formalist, of any stripe,
    would admit to.  A mediating conceptual reality?
    Heaven forbid.

Tom,

Your sense of the word "modern" may be leading you astray.
The condition that you name, much like La Grippe of 1918,
was a deadly but thankfully transient affliction having
its hey day contemporaneously with that other Influenza,
and I consider it my duty to resist the post-traumatic
stresses that it's put on the health of our language.

TG: Try the Wikipedia definitions.

    | A certain school in the philosophy of mathematics,
    | stressing axiomatic proofs through theorems
    | specifically associated with David Hilbert.

Since we've discussed this at length before, I'll start out as briefly
as possible this time.  Wikipedia can be useful -- I just used it to
find out that the "Spanish Flu" was called the "French Flu" in Spain --
and we may hope that it improves over time, but overall I will trust
my dictipnary on this one.  The inadequacies of that wiki-gloss are
too abundant to be covered before "Numbers" comes on TV at 10 PM.

TG: This would seem to reasonably denote the logics in the
    tradition of Frege and Russell.  And, my assertion is
    that such logics -- revolving around "axiomatic proofs"
    of tautological "theorems" -- are particularly unsuited
    to dealing with deceptions and misrepresentations, or
    basically with the world at large.  They certainly pose
    no threat to the propaganda assailing us today.

Another can-o-worms (barrel-o-monkeys?) that I will have to
put off till the morrow.  But I actually give Russell credit
for at least trying to address the matter of false witnessing.

TG: And Wikipedia also has a more general definition.

   | In the study of the arts and literature, formalism
   | refers to the style of criticism that focuses on
   | artistic or literary techniques in themselves,
   | in separation from the work's social and
   | historical context.

TG: There are any number of logics that, while they don't bother to produce
    formal proofs, do manage to operate "in separation" from any "social",
    "historical", or in general, any factual context.  If I could put it
    diagrammatically, they work within the symbols and rules of a diagram
    (their logic) paying no attention either to how that logic might be
    grounded on the one side or how the results of making transformations
    within it might be applied on the other.  If they do make a gesture
    toward either, it's not with an eye to changing the diagram.  I would
    refer to these as "formal" as well, and they display the same kind of
    impracticality.

I'm not really in favor of any isms, except prisms.

TG: Of course, if you actually want to discuss these things,
    we might have to go into a little more detail, but that
    should do for a start.

Indeed it do.

TG: Oh yeah: Did you make "syntacticism" up?
    Or is there actually something worse
    out there?

I diagnose 'em like I see 'em.

Jon Awbrey

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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