Logic

The Logic of Is

 Logic, Philosophy  Comments Off on The Logic of Is
Apr 042012
 

Bertrand Russell adopted Frege’s predicate logic as his primary philosophical method, a method he thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. For example, the English word “is” has three distinct meanings by predicate logic: For the sentence ‘the cat is asleep’, the is of predication means that “x is P” (denoted as P(x)) For the sentence ‘there is a cat’, [more …]

 Posted by at 4:44 am

I am a Strange Loop

 Books, Logic, Philosophy  Comments Off on I am a Strange Loop
Oct 042009
 

I have not read Douglas Hofstadter very thoroughly, but I have perused some of his work and I enjoy and recommend him. He whets the appetite for something more, which is a good thing. He stirs the passion of the subject… What am I? After reading large chunks of I am a Strange Loop, I [more …]

Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem

 Books, Logic, Math  Comments Off on Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem
Oct 042009
 

In the preface of his book, Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, the late David Foster Wallace talks about the power of abstraction to suck you into an abyss of insanity. Mathematicians, who deal in pure abstraction, are more prone to insanity than poets and artists, he claims. Trying to define the mathematical [more …]

The Meaning of Life

 Logic, Philosophy  Comments Off on The Meaning of Life
Oct 042009
 

What is the meaning of life? You may have heard this question before. (Have you guessed the riddle yet? – Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland) Of course not. Because this question is actually logically invalid. See category mistake (the philosophical error of putting a thing into a class to which it does not belong). You [more …]

Fractal Logic

 Logic  Comments Off on Fractal Logic
Oct 042009
 

What is it? You may know of this by it’s common name, “fuzzy” logic. I prefer the term “fractal”, because it gets to the heart of the matter. We don’t have fuzzy dimensions, but we do have fractal dimensions. Fractal dimensions are “fractional” dimensions like 1.2 and 2.3. Likewise with “fuzzy” logic. As opposed to [more …]

 Posted by at 8:14 am