Metaphysics of Sign-Use

Quote:
Originally Posted by Macrobius
Main answer to side topic now in this thread:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26744
'Liberalism, Calvinism, Positivism, and the Religion of Science'

My Reply

Religion and science do not begin from the same place (assumptions) in determining what is true. "The Religion of Science" is an obfuscating take-out except as literary psycohistorical flourish.

[quote]I believe the best way forward for this topic is a critique of Positivism, because there seem to be a lot of implicit theses, both political and epistemological that are up and about in this forum -- not particularly your posts, which are rather explicit as to politics and epistemology. However, understanding where our various political positions tie in to the enterprise of 'Positive Science' (as perhaps distinct from Science in general) could clear the air a bit.{/QUOTE]

All science is Positive, from the epistemic standpoint; all dogma, tradition, superstition (Medieval Aristotelianism, mediatd by Muslims, before 1500) is Denying force ("Negative", in re experimental, self-correcting, systematic knowledge) in respect to scientific knowledge (if it is knowledge -- if it's not, it won't be corrected from the side of religious psychology, though that might well inspire Critique, if it is Positive Religion, such as Calvinism: there's no excuse for falling short in it).

The chief feature of positivism relevant here, as elsewhere, for me, is merely the psychosemiotic stipulation "no word intended for literal reference to particular objects predicated or generalized over in a scientific language (artificially re-constructed so that sentences for resoluable truth value for sentences) shall lack exemplification

(=> this rules out hypothetical constructs as metaphysical primatives by Occam's razor; logically pursued, it leads to => the principle of acqaintance: roughly, the language of science shall contain no predication on objects unobservable-in-principle -- i.e., inferentially related to objects of Kantian sense perception (modern science) or stand in referential relation to more than one object ("x = x" for all x =a, with Leibniz' principle of identity of indiscernibles to rule out 'hidden particulars' smuggled in by cunning shifts in S*- uses, to attribute non-existent particularities and/or project false geometries, as "Gods Creation", when they are actually the result of a fucked up bunch of well meaning spiritual goons trying to keep alive the remnants of a far, far distant set of truths mediaed on earth by the Very Saintly Jesus Christ as adopted political imperative, not mentioning any names, but many worship YHWY.) These stipulations, and the discipline to follow through with them, appear to be the bones of contention I will stick with. The 5 senses are the interchanges with great nature from which common knowledge arises and is verified; the source of all appearances that must be saved.

Please say "I specifically deny that" if you do (leave 'why'? optional -- following your suggestion of nailing down a floor plank.


Quote:
Secondly, the actual views of the Positivists themselves (and doubtless Mill as well) are important context for Frege's famous 'anti-psychologism'. We can't have this all ways. If we like modern Logic (Frege), we have to ditch the Positivists.


1. Frege is just one source of modern logic. He defned the quantifiers, preparing for the unification of propositional and class logic , but did not carrying through the deduction of arithmetic, nor could have done so, since his system lacked the theory of types, yielding self-contradictions. I'm not sure Wittgenstein and Ramsey ever read him. Would have gone the way of Polish notation unless towed into the 20th by Principia Mathematica ( assume we both know that)

2. As to his anti-psychologism, THAT was OK. It leads to rigorous logicl syntax. Even Russell's use of the word "implication" (connoting a mental process, collapsing the 'formal' (syntactical) vs. 'material' distinction that emerges in the reconstructed symblolism, to the annoyance of Carnapians) and "predicate". I use it deliberately as a psychosemiotic constant, but it is also a pre-psychologized (though exemplified) construct that became distastful to later Quine-Frege "sentence" (vs "proposition") threaders. Here is where I part ways with the purely formal syntacticians, ALL of them (from Goedell to Hilbert to Carnap, whoever): the metalanguage of logic is in ordinary discourse, which, with what it communicates, is the undeniable premise of the possibility of knowledge or non-knowledge. The formalists GAVE UP on the idea of a tacit thorough-going logical matrix inherent in ordinary grammar language. I haven't; nor, as I think, have you. But they must be kept separate. They belong to different sectors of the metalanguage, one for thought (text), the other for consciousness (token).

The Positivists threw out consciousness -- the baby with the bathwater. All MIT computerized AI Thought processors as metaphysicians do this -- they'll define that Turing difference for you. (With 1/3 of their brain-systems functioning -- 1/2 half side of that).


Quote:

If we ditch the Positivists ...


Well, one doesn't ditch certified knowledge, to which the formal logicians can claim to have contributed, by unifying the field of logic and mathematics. Nor (see argument above), does one ditch the principle of acquaintance as a necessary condition for empirical science, without a Critique of objective sign-use. It is a proven fact that power-possessing beings (politicized S* users) will introduce false, or inwardly staged fake references to themselves as "thinking, feeling human beings" and commence dispensing warnings about Punishments From God and Jihad based on "gut feelings".

No, not to ditch logical empiricism. Add an adequate theory of consciousness to it. (Vygotsky, Bergmann, Harre, to lesser extent)

This relativises APPLICATION of the formal apparatus to levels of predicates; at every level up to S*7 (where the logos of Consciousness Itself ingresses) the same formal rigor in reasoning must apply in langauge intended for descriptive discourse -- communication of what is real.

The formalized use of "levels" provides an order of predicates over domains of individuals (of individuals, of individuals -- a law of extensionality comes in) down to/through: material objects in three dimensions-to-phenomena-to-neurophysiological base. This, I hold, is descriptive ('material', non-analytical) metaphysics.

The objects to which logical language applies depends upon which type of token (S*7- *1) is used in context. Thus, moral predicates (right and wrong, of actions: S*4) presuppose intentions of agents (S*5 things), applied to the S*3 domain of causal consequences, etc., but still fall under the laws of non-contradiction, etc.

The formal apparatus then slides up and down the scale S*7- *1, as it were; relativizing the system of predicates to subjects by APRIORI level of asserted content: built into the condition of representation, not into the conditions of existence of objects represented (but not barring it, [i]pace[i] metaphysical posotivists, who are silly).

We are on level S*6 - philosophical -- which has its own 7 'notes'. It is here, in consciousness, raised to metalangauge of content, that the difference between Biology and Physics is addressed as two different ways we relate to the three-dimensional container, as the type of "brained" being we are. (cf. Protagoras)
(See my post on psych. The crux of metaphysics, after cutting through the fal de ral and getting down to experience, is what is taken as the objective basis of self-observation -- what content of consciousness, how described, constitutes objective human knowledge. I don't imagine we know this at birth, as John Locke pointed out to Descartes. I do imagine -- insist, in fact -- that a systematic, thorough-going Critique is required to complete the project of rationally determining what we can about human knowledge.

Please understand, Macrobius, future effort, energy and focus expenditure, for me, must be channelled through this simple, but all-encompassing system for representing content of consciousness under Sign-use, namely "The System S*", as the Formal Matrix (grammar and template)
of metaphysics of sign-use. One who had done the work to arrive at it would be making labor lost to do otherwise.,
I ask no one to use it, but hold that it cannot be denied without self-contradiction, so where it applies is apt to appear a harsh animus, but I insist is not. (naturally) No time left for history unless it's currently visible in the dynamic. Being-controntative logic is all it's about, now.

(I will look at your post on the other thread, though, but but it's busy time...don't do a Nero ... can't make that scene.)