humans and logic

[Rainy]

On 12 Jun 2001 10:15:32 -0700, thinkit <thinkit8 at lycos.com> wrote:
> In article <9g5h4c01rba at enews2.newsguy.com>, "Alex says...
>>
>>"thinkit" <thinkit8 at lycos.com> wrote in message
>>news:9g5d3p0f0p at drn.newsguy.com...
>>> humans should use a power of 2 as a base.  this is more logical because it
>>> synchs with binary, which is at the very heart of logic--true and false.
>>it is
>>> more natural perhaps, to use decimal--
>>
>>Perhaps.  It seems to have been used by most cultures throughout
>>the world, though far from all.  Octal was used by some American
>>tribes, and some linguists believe they find decisive traces in
>>Indo-European and Japanese to show that their common root (so-
>>called Nostratic) used octal.  Vigesimal was clearly popular
>>recently enough that French still says "seventy" as "sixty and
>>ten", "eighty" as "four twenties", "ninety" as "four twenties
>>and ten".  Sexagesimal, used by Sumer and Babylonian astronomers
>>(they used decimal for most computation), has left indelible
>>traces in our time-measurement (60 seconds to a minute, 60
>>minutes to an hour) and angle-measurement (ditto).
>>
>>> but logic should, and will, win out.
>>
>>Perhaps.  It never did, so far, but it sure seemed to for LONG
>>times.  For example, Parmenides used logic to prove ZERO was
>>unusable nonsense (his disciple Zeno, not to be confused with
>>the founder of Stoicism of course, bult beautiful paradoxes to
>>illustrate his master's thesis), and thus did logic manage to
>>make arithmetic almost unusable for 1,500 years in the West.
>>
>>Fortunately, in the end, the Eastern mystics won out, putting
>>logic in its place and celebrating the Abra Kad' Abra ("air void
>>of air" -- aren't these Sanskrit words STILL the ones that
>>come to mind most readily when thinking of a spell of mystical
>>incantation?-), Non-Being, the Void at the Core of All, etc,
>>etc.  At long last, the illogic and absurd Zero got into the
>>number system -- eventually, since Practicality Beats Purity,
>>its use became universal.  Nowadays, of course, the adorers
>>of Logic try to sweep THIS little tidbit of the history of
>>science and mathematics under the carpet...:-).
>>
>>I highly recommend in-depth study and comparison of the
>>Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (a genius in his twenties
>>trying to fix precisely the conditions in which Logic will
>>let us speak) and the Philosophical Investigations (the
>>same genius, 30 years later, explaining WHY logic will
>>never work as the One True Way of human discourse...).
>>
>>As eminently NON-logical William Blake had written, "If
>>the fool would but persist in his folly, he would become
>>wise" -- few logical fools have shown the same persistence
>>and greatness as Ludwig von Wittgenstein, to enable them
>>to reach the wisdom of mysticism by dint of inflexibly
>>consistent application of Logic...:-).
>>
>>
>>Alex
> 
> um...?  see, this is exactly what i'm talking about.  binary is simple...this is
> not.  i don't really care about a bunch of old men who wanted to argue over the
> number 0.  maybe they just got tired of jerking off and decided to spew some
> garbage to sound smart and score more chicks.  just my guess.

Well, since some of them were your fellow 'logic > *' philosophers, this guess
is almost comically self-referential ;-)

> and i suggest a look at lojban, a logical language.  you can learn it without
> referring to a bunch of old dead farts.  http://www.lojban.org .

I don't follow - as opposed to all other languages, which also can and are
learned without referring to dead philosophers? 

If you're a partisan supporter, you're doing a bang up job ;_)

-- 
True sailing is dead
        - Jim