[lbo-talk] Time to Get Religion

[Jerry Monaco]

On 12/5/06, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>
> The mathematician Doron Zellberger [sp?] writes that the Sokal prank is
> a cheap laugh at someone's language. There is (to my naive eyes) a sort
> of wilful reverse language incommensurability going on here with these
> "theory" or "ideology" analysis thinkers. It seems to me that Chomsky
> says, as seen even in the limited quotes offered by Jerry, what needs to
> be said at the theoretical level. It's just that he says it in a
> particular language (what Jerry calls common sense, and I would agree)
> that is unpalatable[?] or at least un-parse-able for members of other
> communities. I think there is a legitimate point to requiring the use of
> particular language both to avoid pitfalls in inference/analysis and to
> avoid hidden assumptions and plain old vagueness. However, typically, as
> long as the alternate language is used honestly and is rich enough (both
> of which are true of common sense and of Chomsky's usage) then it should
> be possible to demonstrate the errors of its users in that language
> itself (I am speaking generally; common sense is heavily tied to very
> human notions of sense and explanation, whereas some languages such as
> math can produce internally meaningful sentences that cannot be
> translated into common sense terms at all. Similar things may be true of
> poetry though it shares the tokens of common sense language).
>
> For example, Aristotle's long wordy text syllogisms are no different
> from their formal logical symbolic counterparts. Now, using the symbolic
> versions gives us two things: one, the possible manipulations of the
> tokens are better spelled out and catch ignored conditions, and second,
> because of the syntactic nature of the deductions they can unearth wrong
> conclusions in the syllogisms. Both results can however be explained in
> Aristotle's language.


>         --ravi
>
>

Yes, exactly.  Much better said.

And the name is "Zeilberger" and here is his home-page

http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/

I used to see him wandering around Rutgers when ever I trudged out to
that part of the world.  He has the air of someone lost in his
thoughts as he goes to class.  I think he is fond of practical jokes,
or so I have been told.

Jerry

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