[Corpora-List] PS:minimal changes in a paragraph (based on a corpus it appeared) ... (2nd attempt (after first one was deleted))

[Bill Louw]

Dear Angus and John
 
I agree with your sentiments. However, it is quite plain that long-standing debates and models can now have their robustness tested computationally. None of the analytic philosophers, except possibly Quine, had access to computers. If Quine did see computational evidence he should have realised that the game is up for the cognitive.He may have drawn the line for himself by sending (unbidden?) a biographical entry on his own work to the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy.
 
The point is that the application of Russell's criteria to natural language manifestly impressively extracts subtextual detail to a point at which the differences between logical languages and natural language can now be compared outside of the mind. Philosophers deal with knowledge that is not yet settled, but if findings emerge from these forms of experimentation that show that Russell had crossed the line into science, modern philosophers ought to have no qualms about handing such knowledge over to science. Russell thought Plato's axioms were science. His falsification of them with Whitehead's assistance is proof that movement between philosophy and science takes place. We ought to encourage more work in this area. 
 
We need to find out if our discussion has assisted Albrecht ... Best wishes, Bill
 
I am involved in testing aspects of theories. 

--- On Tue, 9/8/11, Angus Grieve-Smith <grvsmth at panix.com> wrote:


From: Angus Grieve-Smith <grvsmth at panix.com>
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] PS:minimal changes in a paragraph (based on a corpus it appeared) ... (2nd attempt (after first one was deleted))
To: corpora at uib.no
Date: Tuesday, 9 August, 2011, 16:11


On 8/9/2011 11:22 AM, Bill Louw wrote: 





Russell continues:'IT IS A LANGUAGE THAT HAS ONLY SYNTAX AND NO VOCABULARY WHATSOEVER.(My emphasis). Barring the omission of a vocabulary I maintain that it is quite a nice language. It aims at being the sort of language that, if you add a vocabulary, would be a logically perfect language.' He adds that actual languages are not logically perfect in this sense... 
    Then it's not a language, it's a model of a language.  I'm sure it's a very nice model, and useful for all sorts of purposes.  But Gödel showed that in general models can never completely capture reality, and that Russell's models specifically can never completely capture language.  One of the biggest mistakes a scientist can make is to reify their own model.  It is a dangerous form of hubris that can lead science off course for generations.
-- 
				-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
				Saint John's University
				grvsmth at panix.com

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