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Article 5210 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Godel's Incompleteness Theorm
Message-ID: <1992Apr23.013140.11455@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 23 Apr 92 05:31:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Apr23.013140.11455
References: <OZ.92Apr22012511@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> <1992Apr22.090427.11413@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Apr22.173139.7504@unx.sas.com>
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In article <1992Apr22.173139.7504@unx.sas.com> 
sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:

>In article <1992Apr22.090427.11413@husc3.harvard.edu>, 
>zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>|>In article <OZ.92Apr22012511@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> 
>|>oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:

MZ:
>|>>It is also predictably content-free, in a collection otherwise ranging from
>|>>ground-breaking to insightful, to informative.  Why anyone would think that
>|>>Wittgenstein's remarks on the significance of G\"odel's Theorem were of any
>|>>interest in the investigation of the latter, is altogether beyond me.

GM:
>I *knew* when I saw this remark that you were courting trouble.  I have
>just been involved in a similar discussion concerning Wittgenstein in
>sci.philosophy.meta.  I was going to send in a brief followup saying
>something like "Now you are going to get it from the Wittgenstein groupies."
>But I thought better of it.  (I probably should have thought better of
>this!)

Well, I had thought better of following up on your valiant efforts; the
mere thought of enduring a personal message from Hakki Kocabas had cooled
whatever ardor I possessed...

MZ:
>|>It so happens that I read that article, along with the rest of the book,
>|>about two years ago.  What struck me at the time was not so much the
>|>quality of its research and writing, which was at least serviceable, but
>|>the triviality of its subject matter, which was remarkable, even in the
>|>light of the general negligibility of Wittgenstein's remarks on the
>|>philosophy of mathematics.  In other words, it's not that the author
>|>doesn't understand his subject matter, but that his subject has nothing
>|>interesting to say about it.

GM:
>We're dealing not so much with mathematics or philosophy here, but with
>a personality cult.  Arguments will rage, but nothing will be settled.
>It will be unclear what the dispute is all about.  I once served on the
>dissertation board for a Ph.D. candidate who was doing her dissertation
>on Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics.  At that time I was quite
>familiar with the Wittgenstein corpus of course.  Your characterization
>strikes me as fairly accurate.  But look:  you just *can't* go around using
>words like "negligibility of Wittgenstein's remarks" and "has nothing
>interesting to say about it"!  These kinds of remarks about the master
>*cannot* be tolerated.  They are evidence of *your* failure to understand.
>Give it up and repent while there is still time.

Well, I have a theory about this.  It seems that the oracular style of LW
fulfils a desperate need for certainty that haunts a certain class of
people.  Why attempt to solve the classic problems of philosophy, when you
can regurgitate an endless array of indistinguishable meta-propositions
about them?  Why argue, when you can pronounce? an argument calls for a
modicum of knowledge of your subject matter, whereas a Wittgensteinian
meta-pronouncement requires nothing more than an Eliza-like ability to
parse the original question, returning blithely: "What would it be like to
{propositional attitude verb} that X?"  Paradoxically, it is by advancing
this kind of open-ended skepticism, that the Wittgensteinian adept submits
to his master's dogma.  Worse, even as he denies the transcendental norm,
he gladly submits himself to the tyranny of the lowest common denominator,
the hallowed billion-headed idol of the descriptive linguist.

A few years ago I was sufficiently impertinent to challenge Alonzo Church
about the semantical adequacy of the Logic of Sense and Denotation, asking
him if he ever wondered whether the fanatical monodenotationalism of his
system accorded well with the semantical workings of natural languages.
Characteristically, he replied: "I was never very impressed with the way
natural languages worked."  At first, as a fan of several natural
languages, I couldn't quite stomach his attitude; later I came to realize
that our prescriptive capacity had to be as much of a part of the natural
order as the rest of our linguistic competence.  It is a profound error to
arbitrarily privilege one over the other, as do both Wittgenstein and
Chomsky; unlike Saint Ludwig (Montague's derision of TG notwithstanding),
the latter, at the very least, is not motivated by a profound ignorance of
the rules in question.

ObShanker: of all the papers in the G\"odel volume, only the last one cites
Hofstadter's magnum opus.  Copiously.  More than it cites G\"odel himself.


`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'`'
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: Connais pas! Connais pas!                                 think    :
:                                                             so     :
: Mikhail Zeleny                                                     :
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