[ExI] The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Gordon
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning


>>...Ja, that theory has the ring of truth.  spike  

>...This takes me back to my original puzzle. The argumentative theory of
reasoning is itself an argument about the nature of reason and arguments.
What does it mean to accept its reasoning and say the conclusion is "true"?
-gts



Gordon, you have read Hofstadter's Eternal Golden Braid, ja?  Godel's work
in philosophy demonstrates that every logical system has inescapable paradox
in some form.  This example you found fits under self-referential paradox.
No point in trying to fix it, it's a feature not a bug.  The exercise is in
finding the paradoxes in any system of reasoning.  Kurt Godel beats Bertrand
Russell.

If you haven't read EGB, by all means do so.  Excellent stuff, my favorite
book to this day.  Granted there is a lot of extra clutter in there, and it
is over three decades old, but I would argue that this volume contains the
most critically necessary philosophical groundwork for the transhumanist
movement, which was later detailed in Regis' Mambo Chicken, Broderick's The
Spike, Max's and other's papers and later works.

spike