–“Hi, Curt! Reading your latest piece on Facebook starting as “DEAR MISEDUCATED WORLD”. Interesting piece. I wanted to learn math on my own to accompany my job in life sciences, but was always taken away from the simplistic nature of perspective. I wonder, how do you approach learning logic, the ternary “science” as you suggest? I know you are right, at least on an intuitive level, but I would like to know more.”—- A Friend.
I came to my current understanding primarily because in my work, I’ve studied arguments in literally every field. BUT I have spent most of my time in computer science, which sits as bridge between engineering and mathematics. And so if you think in science, in engineering, in computer science, in mathematics, in logic, and in philosophy, and in law, you just come into contact with all these terms that everyone uses in each discipline that when studied whole simply refer to very different conditions. And by trying to resolve the conflicts between these disciplines you sort of get the insight into what ‘was wrong’.
I don’t think anything i’m saying here is terribly radical, in fact, I think it’s all understood. But no one has put a comprehensive argument together that includes testimony and reciprocity before (that I know of) while at the same time relying upon falsificationism (survival of an idea in the market for criticism).
Honestly there isn’t much more to know than:
a) what is the difference between an axiomatic and justificationary proof, and a theoretic and critical hypothesis? What is the difference in information in each formulation of argument.
I mean really, if you get that, then you just ignore anyone who uses the word ‘true’ until you figure out if they mean:
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clearly stated (non conflationary)
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logically possible (at least non contradictory)
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axiomatically provable(justficationary) OR operationally constructable(critical)
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theoretically survivable (externally correspondent)
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morally reciprocal
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fully accounted (did you consider all the inputs outputs costs of transformation, and externalities, such that you know the limits of your proposition.
Then you can go back to the previous article you just mentioned and look at how the word true is used. and you say, “Well they mean they can construct a proof of possibiilty, but that’s just justificationary, we don’t yet know if that survives external correspondence yet” etc.