[Inquiry] Fractured Frege Tales -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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FFT.  Discussion Note 1

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KM = Kirsti Määttänen

Re: FFT 1.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002462.html
In: FFT.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2462

KM: Thanks for the quote.  What interests me, is the considerable time
    it took after Frege introduced the notion to the time it became the
    leading notion, not only in logic, but more generally in philosophy. 
    The reason for my interest lies in the relation between how Peirce 
    described and defined realism vs. nominalism and how the relation
    is described and defined in analytical philosophy by and after the
    time Fregean notion of object became such a success in philosophy.
    In other words, my interest lies in a change (or a set of changes)
    in dominant ways of thinking, which I would call a paradigmatic
    change, following Wittgenstein's ideas of "paradigmatic", not
    those Kuhn introduced.

KM: My hypothesis is that the notion Frege introduced underwent a change
    in meaning when transferred to the predominant thought-frame (context)
    of the later date.

KM: I'm interested in any ideas & quotes you might have, if any, related to this.

Kirsti,

Sorry to mislead, but my title was meant to telegraph
a tongue-in-cheek if not downright sardonic sense of
absurdity about any such idea entering anyone's head.

There are a large number of these modernist origin myths,
like the idea that quantification was not discovered until
Frege invented it in the late 1800's, and so on.  There are
indeed genuine discoveries that have come to light in recent
times, but objects and quantification are not among them, not
by a long shot.

What did happen was that certain notations came into prevalence for
a period of time, and these were derived in an attempt to formalize
what was already longstanding prior art in mathematics, and certain
philosophies of notation came along with them -- which was the egg
and which was the bunny I do not know.  Aside from that strangely
happy compromise of essentialism and nominalism which is content
to say there is nothing more to having an essence than having
a name, there was the arrogance of a millennial modernism,
which thinks the sun rises and sets for its eyes alone.

There are two lights under which we should examine these fractured orgin myths:
In so far as they are fictions, they are symptoms of the above-mentioned isms;
In so far as they are true, and there really is some novelty in the notions
of individuals, objects (abstract and concrete), and quantifications, then
we really ought to test them in clinic and in field and back to the lab
a lot more thoroughly than we have so far, and not just take them as
improvements because they are advertised as "new".

As it happens, much experience with field testing these notations
and philosophies of notation has already accumulated in the times
since Frege and Russell.  In my own experience with this, I would
have to report that the thrust of the intervening lessons has the
effect of taking us back to the prescient anticipations of Peirce,
many of which he himself did not have the chance to fully develop.

Jon Awbrey

Incidental Musements:

http://members.shaw.ca/fffff/fft.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553099809/104-5331855-4667958

Browser Advisory!  This one will jam up old bowsers, like mine:
http://www.brownielocks.com/fracturedfairytales.html

E-joy!  (but browse responsibly ...)

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