stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
|
| Quote | 116
eigenstateSeptember 12, 2015 at 11:16 am
There’s confusion and conflation at work here regarding what A=A represents, epistemically. I get a chuckle reading Barry stumble around the analytic/synthetic distinction, when this is precisely the problematic concept for him. As I recall, Barry was concerned that that Jupiter was somehow at risk of not being Jupiter in a view that wasn’t confused about the nature or limits of A-A. Stephen B here demonstrates the same confusion in regaling us with — I kid you not — his reasons why he is not Denali. Big cannot be small… gotcha.
I understand Learned Hand’s point, and agree. But LH, help the brothas out instead of fueling their confusion, eh. A=A is infallibly true and not dubitable as an analytic proposition. That’s the nature of a tautology. It’s prescriptive, it’s true by definition, and it’s indispensable as an analytic process. Barry (and apparently StephenB and others) only understand the LOI in a crude folk sense, so this distinction needs to be pointed out again and again. Barry invokes the terms, but he doesn’t understand them, or how to apply them. If he did, he wouldn’t be using an analytic concept as the “proof” of a synthetic proposition — see Jupiter, Denali, particle/wave duality, etc.
If we are devising tools for thought, creating definitions and axioms for thinking and communicating, they are simply true by definition. They are not true (or false) as statements about the extra-mental world. To confuse these is to confuse definitions (analytic) with real word dynamics (synthetic).
It’s pointless to insist on A=A being dubitable as an analytic proposition. Definitions are not subject to doubt. Those definitions may be ill-advised for employing for purposes of engaging the real world, but a definition is just a definition.
As soon as Barry or others want to insist on A=A as a synthetic “law”, as a scientific or physical principle, they have gone off the reservation, and do not have a leg to stand on. Nature is not beholden to our definitions. We can define terms and deploy axioms for reasoning all we like, but the extra-mental world is under no obligation to comply. As it happens, the physical world a macro-scales does have a consistent and regular nature that makes many of our foundational concepts, including LOI, useful, successful in developing and refining (synthetic) knowledge. But these tools are only as useful as they are successful, and for all of pre-modern experience of the world, intuitive folk-philosophy–shot-from-the-hip did not militate against simplistic jumps from analytic A=A to some synthetic analog, that a physical thing is “only one way, to the exclusion of other ways (or modes)”.
Whoops. That’s just not compatible with the knowledge and experience we have, now. A=A remains as unassailable as an analytic concept as every. Axioms cannot be assailed. But the conflation of analytic and synthetic, which Barry has made a trusty habit in his posts, puts one square at odds with our experiences with the real world. More, um, agile thinkers can step back a bit and, for instance, apply the LOT even to particle/wave duality, by observing that such a duality subsists in a way still excludes other modes of being, and thereby complies with A=A at a higher level of description, even though it confounds the country bumpkin way of thinking about the LOI.
In any case, in reading through this thread, the cringe factor is high, even for UD, because of the confusion that pervades the LOI-fetishists’ comments, repeatedly using A=A interchangeably as a definition and as a physical principle that is somehow binding on nature because we loves ourselves some definitions, y’all. |
poor dumb angry barry
|
. When is (BxA) =/= (AxB)?
