Now that's some strict finitism

I just ran into this quote from L. Graham and J-M Kantor, Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity:

Alexander Yessenin-Volpin [was] a Russian logician of the ultra-finitist school who was imprisoned in a mental institution in Soviet Russia. Yessenin-Volpin was once asked how far one can take the geometric sequence of powers of 2, say (2e1, 2e2, 2e3, ... , 2e100) [sorry, I don't know how to do superscripts, so for "2e1" read "2 to the first power," and so on]. He replied that the question "should be made more specific." He was then asked if he considered 2e1 to be "real" and he immediately answered yes. He was then asked if 2e2 was "real." Again he replied yes, but with a barely perceptible delay. Then he was asked about 2e3, and yes, but with more delay. These questions continued until it became clear how was going to handle them. He would always answer yes, but he would take 2e100 times as long to answer yes to 2e100 than he would to answering to 2e1. Yessenin-Volpin had developed his own way of handling a paradox of infinity.

2 to the 100th power is well over 10 to the 30th, so if he took a tenth of a second to decide that 2 to the 1st power is real, then once you ask him about 2 to the 100th, you can go get a cup of coffee while you wait. In fact you better get something to eat too, because you won't have to come back for over [performs quick 'n' dirty calculation] 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. I wonder how far they actually got. I should mention that just because it was in Soviet Russia, in which mental institutions were routinely used as de facto prisons for political dissidents, that Comrade Yessenin-Volpin was institutionalized, this need not mean that he wasn't actually insane. In fact this sad tale should be a lesson for us all.

Resistance is futile

No doubt this one will sweep the geekblogosphere. Too bad there aren't more avatars though.

Get Your Cyborg Name

HT: Wilkins

Pitching forty Troy sag is: reports say hello

Here's the transcript from the ESPN video recap of Tuesday's Red Sox game, as rendered by its state-of-the-art speech-to-text technology, which "may not be 100% accurate":

What are year old rookie Rick -- sell on the bowl forty Troy in search of its seventh win [...] Red Sox sag is drug DE trade Jason Bay -- his hacks against the young reports say hello that's sixteenth jacked up you're the third -- lasting sport. At Byrd gave up three runs on seven hits his counterpart Daisuke Matsuzaka came in -- three -- 8082 ERA. Gets cleats on his with a six k's over five range Magglio Ordonez followed the ERA still over seven but he gets his first win the -- Terry Francona it was 500 victories Red Sox give them.

Okay, what? Here's what I get from the audio of announcer Jim Basquil's drawl:

Twenty-year-old rookie Rick Porcello on the bump for Detroit in search of his seventh win [...] Red Sox and Tigers from Detroit: Jason Bay taking his hacks against the young Rick Porcello, and that's his sixteenth jack of the year in the third, Porcello lasting four and a third; [he] gave up three runs on seven hits. His counterpart Daisuke Matsuzaka came in 0 and 3 [with] an 8.82 ERA; gets Clete Thomas, one of his six K's over five frames; Magglio Ordonez follows. The ERA still over seven but he gets his first win, and helped Terry Francona to his 500th victory as Red Sox skipper.

Interesting how the program has no problem with "Daisuke Matsuzaka," the syllables of which are after all very unlikely to make up any other phrase; but it stumbles all over "Rick Porcello" (nice try with "reports say hello") and "Clete Thomas" ("cleats on his"). It's clearly primed to use words which are common in ESPN videos, which is how "from Detroit" becomes "drug DE trade." I just wish it wouldn't use the word "trade" (or "drug," for that matter) in such close proximity to the phrase "Jason Bay" -- that just about gave me a heart attack.

"Lasting sport. At Byrd" looks funny (for "lasting four and a third"), until you remember that Paul Byrd pitched for the BoSox last year. But if they can get it to use proper names like that, as well as football terms like "DE," you'd think it could learn to use baseball announcer jargon, however ugly ("bump" = pitching mound; "frames" = innings; "jack" = home run). I wonder what it says for "goes yard."

Also re: BoSox, here is Bill Simmons's take on a key issue, led off by an uncaptioned but heart-rending photo of an all-too-typical moment (yikes).

Four quarks for muster mark

Blog aficionados will want to head over to Three Quarks Daily, a site with which you will want to become familiar in any case, to nominate your favorite posts for one of four annual prizes. Plus you can see which posts everyone else likes; plus a big photo of Head Quark Abbas R. Check it out here!

Hassellmania

Jon Hassell is one of my fave musicians/recording artists, and his new record Last Night The Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street is – if I may gush like a fanboy for a moment – like, totally great. Join a discussion about it here. And buy the record!

Williamson interview

Interview with Timothy Williamson, here. The money quote:

[Vagueness] seemed to present the strongest challenge to the classical, realist picture that has always rung true to me, on which the world is largely independent of us, and the principle of bivalence holds ― every proposition is either true or false (and not both), even if we do not and perhaps cannot know which ― and other standard principles of logic hold too. The problem was that, on an unqualified realist picture, there must be a point at which subtracting just one grain from a heap takes it from being true to being false that there is a heap in front of you, which seems to be incompatible with the vagueness of the concept of a heap, which has no precise definition. For a long time I could see no satisfactory way round that objection. Then, as I was finishing my first book, Identity and Discrimination, I started thinking about the way in which ordinary knowledge requires a margin for error. It dawned on me that the need for a margin for error would explain why, even though ordinary concepts have sharp boundaries, we can’t know where those boundaries are located. That explanation solved the main objection to the logical view that I had always wanted to hold. So the hard part was working out the epistemology; the logic was the easy bit. The larger purpose underlying my book Vagueness was to argue for realism like this: if realism is wrong about anything, it is wrong about vagueness (that premise was generally agreed); but realism is not wrong about vagueness; therefore it is not wrong about anything. [my bold]

Well, that's one view of the matter, anyway. Or we could just marvel at how no nettle can be too sharp for the desperate realist to grasp. I had heard this before, actually – that he was trying to defend realism against what seemed to him to be its toughest challenge – but sometimes it's better to learn to crawl before you try to walk.

HT: Butterflies & Wheels

Man and kitty

Check out Frank Zappa and his kitty:



My old kitty, name of Karlheinz Stockhausen, liked to climb up on my shoulder like that. He would even, if you leaned over only ever so slightly, jump up directly onto your back and assume the Sphinx position. When this happened you had to scuttle over to a chair or table and tilt to one side to dump him off. (Once – exactly once – I tried to dislodge him by straightening up. The scars are barely visible now. Have I told this story already?) I got this picture from a site featuring lots of stars with their kitties, most of whom (the stars that is) don't seem to know how to hold a kitty properly. You don't just grab him around the middle, or hold him face up like a baby; you support his hind paws with one hand, so he feels like he's standing on something solid. Otherwise he's not a happy kitty. Thus endeth the public service announcement. Back to our irregularly scheduled programming.

Spring is here - let's party

Sorry, I've been neglecting my duties here (again). But here's another Carnival for you at least. I'd say a bientot but it might be a longtemps for all I know. (Sigh.)

Is this a philosophy blog?

Over at Leiter Reports, you may vote for the best philosopher of the 20th century, as well as, while you're at it, the best philosopher of the 19th century. However, due to the threat of contamination by the unwashed masses, "non-philosophy blogs" are urged not to link to these polls. So if you think this is one of those, you better not go over there. You have been warned. (Also, re: the first poll, see the (*cough*) lively discussion here.)

UPDATE [3/4]: The madness continues with a runoff pitting the 19th and 20th centuries in a head-to-head battle.

However, everyone is welcome at the Philosophers' Carnival!

Optical delusion?

Here's today's "Dinette Set" cartoon:


Note the logo on our bearded pedant's shirt ("Fale University"), as well as the text on the wall behind him: ("Optical Delusion Fair: Ignorant Public Welcome"). Hmm, I do believe we pedants are being tweaked. Which is fine, of course, but I can't just let it go without piling on some more pedantry in response.

Naturally we here at DR are all over aspect perception. Still, I had never really paid that much attention to the differences between pure figure/ground cases (like this one) and cases like the duckrabbit. For example, it does indeed seem that at least some of the former cases might be perceived in what we might call a "figure/figure" way ("two weirdos kissing a vase"), while no such option is possible for the duckrabbit. That is, I can imagine, after having had the aspects flip back and forth for a bit, seeing the drawing in an indeterminate way, as neither duck nor rabbit. Even this would probably take a conscious effort, to keep the perception from resolving into one or the other figure.

But it's very hard to imagine seeing it as both a duck and a rabbit at the same time. Wouldn't they be taking up the same space? How would you feed "it"? Where would you aim your hand? Toward its "mouths", which are located at the back of each other's head? I'm sorry, that's trying too hard. (Note: this is of course different from seeing it as a "duckrabbit", on the one hand, or as indeterminate in the above sense, on the other). And even if it were possible to do this, this wouldn't "refute" Wittgenstein's use of the example, as people sometimes try to do (an advantage of the "quietist" reading of Wittgenstein is to bring out how pointless it is to try to do this). Wittgenstein's point, as I see it, is to introduce the notion of aspect, by investigating the experience of "aspect-dawning", i.e. when we suddenly see (what we can't help calling) the "same thing" in a different way (pp. 196-7, in Part II):

The change of aspect. "But surely you would say that the picture is altogether different now!"
But what is different: my impression? my point of view?—-Can I say? I describe the alteration like a perception; quite as if the object had altered before my eyes.

"Now I am seeing this", I might say (pointing to another picture, for example). This has the form of a report of a new perception.The expression of a change of aspect is the expression of a new perception and at the same time of the perception's being unchanged.

I suddenly see the solution of a puzzle-picture. Before, there were branches there; now there is a human shape. My visual impression has changed and now I recognize that it has not only shape and colour but also a quite particular 'organization'.—-My visual impression has changed;-—what was it like before and what is it like now?—-If I represent it by means of an exact copy—and isn't that a good representation of it?—-no change is shewn.

And above all do not say "After all my visual impression isn't the drawing; it is this —— which I can't shew to anyone."—-Of course it is not the drawing, but neither is it anything of the same category, which I carry within myself.

The concept of the 'inner picture' is misleading, for this concept uses the 'outer picture' as a model; and yet the uses of the words for these concepts are no more like one another than the uses of 'numeral' and 'number'. (And if one chose to call numbers 'ideal numerals', one might produce a similar confusion.)

In context, Wittgenstein's proximal target is of course, as it is in other parts of the book as well, the (Cartesian) idea of an "inner picture", as well as the Cartesian subject one would have to be in order to "look at" such a thing.

Yet I can't help thinking of the idea of aspect perception as much more central to the entire book than do most readers – for example, as directly related to the concept of "perspicuous representation" (or "presentation"), which in §122 he describes as "of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things." The way we look at things. Given Wittgenstein's aims throughout the book, how could aspect perception not be central for them?