02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Logic as Magical Thinking
These battles over definition are not taking place in the same universe as the one in which men throw around these terms online. But for the Logic Guys, the purpose of using these words — the sacred, magic words like “logic,” “objectivity,” “reason,” “rationality,” “fact” — is not to invoke the actual concepts themselves. It’s more a kind of incantation, whereby declaring your argument the single “logical” and “rational” one magically makes it so — and by e... 1 
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notes25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
Children's Art Has Its Own Logic
Even simple scribbles are meaningful. While it was once thought that kids only scribbled to experience the physical sensation of moving their arm along the page, “now it’s been shown that when children are scribbling … they’re representing through action, not through pictures,” said Boston College’s Winner. “For example, a child might draw a truck by making a line fast across the page and going ‘zoom, zoom,’ and so it doesn’t look like a truck when the child is done, but i... 1 notes
notesThis reminds me of Sagan's pumpkin-carving, where he made random cuts and took out chunks to make it scarier with more "bloody guts."
27 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
History of the Concept of Art
Nowadays when someone speaks of "art" you probably think first of "fine arts" such as painting and sculpture, but before the twentieth century the word was generally used in quite a different sense. Since this older meaning of "art" still survives in many idioms, especially when we are contrasting art with science, I would like to spend the next few minutes talking about art in its classical sense.
In medieval times, the first universities were established to teach the seven so-called "liber... 1 notes
notes16 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Buckminster Fuller's Advice to a Youth
The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done—that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or Try making experiments of anything j^
Try making experiments of anything you conceive and are inten...
1 Find things that need doing, but aren't being done, experiment, and understand that words are tools.
06 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Artificial Intelligence's Assumption
Artificial intelligence is based on the assumption that the mind can be described as some kind of formal system manipulating symbols that stand for things in the world. Thus it doesn't matter what the brain is made of, or what it uses for tokens in the great game of thinking. Using an equivalent set of tokens and rules, we can do thinking with a digital computer, just as we can play chess using cups, salt and pepper shakers, knives, forks, and spoons. Using the right software, one system (the...Folksonomies: artificial intelligence intelligence
Folksonomies: artificial intelligence intelligence
1 notes
notesThat intelligence works with symbols and logic that can be replicated in other mediums.
05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Think in Letters Not Figures
I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2 2=4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a b=c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of figures. Folksonomies: arithmetic formlae
Folksonomies: arithmetic formlae
1 notes
notesHolmes breaks down all logic into a cause/effect equation.
01 FEB 2012 by ideonexus
Biology has Principles and Logic
I took biology in high school and didn't like it at all. It was focused on memorization. ... I didn't appreciate that biology also had principles and logic ... [rather than dealing with a] messy thing called life. It just wasn't organized, and I wanted to stick with the nice pristine sciences of chemistry and physics, where everything made sense. I wish I had learned sooner that biology could be fun as well. 1 notes
notesFrancis Collins describes how he came to love biology after initially dismissing it as rote memorization.
30 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Philosophy Without Empiricism is Nonsense
Logic is not concerned with human behavior in the same sense that physiology, psychology, and social sciences are concerned with it. These sciences formulate laws or universal statements which have as their subject matter human activities as processes in time. Logic, on the contrary, is concerned with relations between factual sentences (or thoughts). If logic ever discusses the truth of factual sentences it does so only conditionally, somewhat as follows: if such-and-such a sentence is true,...Folksonomies: empiricism
Folksonomies: empiricism
1 notes
notesEmpirical science is the only thing capable of determining if a sentence is true.
14 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Logic and Math are the Rules We Work Within
The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.Folksonomies: mathematics logic
Folksonomies: mathematics logic
1 notes
notesThey cannot be anything other than universally true.
30 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
Honorable Description of Thomas Addis
Injustice or oppression in the next street...or any spot inhabited by men was a personal affront to Thomas Addis and his name, from its early alphabetical place, was conspicuous on lists of sponsors of scores of organizations fighting for democracy and against fascism. He worked on more committees than could reasonably have been expected of so busy a man... Tom Addis was happy to have a hand in bringing to the organization of society some of the logic of science and to further that understand... 1 notes
notesThe man was a humanist, charitable and sponsor of organizations fighting for democracy.
