Category Archives: Questions in Logic

Where are questions, a universal part of language, in logic?

Numbers are Metaphors

28 Saturday Sep 2024

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Mathematics proposes numbers to measure real things. There are notches corresponding to numbers on the measuring tape, but even if the notches succeed in referring to that real position. (although they remain a sign of the real object), gaps are still on the measuring tape with no notch and no number to describe the intermediate positions.The real number system attempts to fill the gaps that most numbers leave when describing something real, removing the need for metaphor. “Metaphorical language is language proper to the extent that it is related to the need for making up for gaps of language”(Giuliani, 1972, p. 131). The system “covers the gaps” and does the job of describing physical reality (and more) without metaphor. But how do real numbers go about covering the gaps?

The work of covering the gaps and freeing real numbers from metaphor is done with The Axiom of Completeness:

A bounded increasing sequence has a least upper bound (that is a real number)

Why would the axiom of completeness cover all the gaps of a real line?

A good example is in the act of measuring a plank with a straight-looking side. One compares the plank with a measuring tape and measures the whole meters, but there is still some plank left to measure. (The number of whole meters is the first number (position)in the sequence.) So one counts the number of decimeters left (the resulting position is the second number in the sequence), but there still remains more plank after the largest marker for decimeters. The process continues until the precision of the measuring tape is exhausted, eyesight fails, or the measurer loses interest. Even though one must fail in measuring the exact length of the plank, the axiom of completeness provides assurances that there exists a real number for the “actual” length of the plank (and that there is an “actual” length of the plank). But the process cannot take the full measure of the plank, and so we remain in the poetic world of metaphor, “a process, not a definitive act; it is an inquiry, a thinking on” (Hejinian, 2000).

We want to talk about something real, something as simple and straightforward as the length of a plank. We have an apparatus of controlled inquiry, tools and will-more than the casual use of words, but we still fail.

We must admit that the measurements (words) we have used remain metaphorical and the actual measure of the plank (object) ultimately falls into the gaps of language. The words (measurements) we started with in our task of measuring the plank are no less metaphorical than the measurement we have when we stop. How can we wake up from metaphor?


(PDF) Many Roads from the Axiom of Completeness. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327227248_Many_Roads_from_the_Axiom_of_Completeness [accessed Sep 28 2024].

21 Friday Jun 2024

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"Sitting is better than standing, and lying is better than sitting,

Better than lying, asleep, and better than sleeping: dead. »

Arthur Schopenhauer, Poems, translated by Métayer Guillaume in Catastrophes No. 45:

--

—

asleep is better than dead
lying down is better than asleep
sitting is better than lying down
walking is better than sitting
running is better than walking

sprinting endlessly, absolute tension over and against every thing

The flies eat the irritated skin everywhere your body can touch
eyes-on-fire, wretchedness and pain in every thought

two directions in a fork... which one will you choose?

i po dad green

20 Thursday Jun 2024

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i po dad green
 
red is unique
red is unique 
red is unique
108 shades and hues of red

now,
green in the end of spring
the red flowers die
the quick and dirty sex just over
gently now

the shades of green are so many yet common
they show themselves in the hues of trees and undergrowth

Green makes us high, dizzy, 
a disoriented drive down trip town

there is no need for events

the shade of trees is free, it is offered to everyone, 

take it or leave it

Shades of green are made

to be free everywhere and to tame the spells of death

A prophecy of red 
because you have been trained to follow,

nourished on green 
are the hot, screaming butterflies.
The coolness of the green night, 
wandering endlessly through the city,
 
until the dew

Ancient Cave Paintings

15 Saturday Jun 2024

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If you'll allow my own special crudeness
A disability of being born a caveman
In a world where we have become powerful.

I like deer and buffalo.
I don't get hungry as often as you do, you have to eat all the time
yet my hunger is deeper.

My work is a triumph, it is pure magic
To make a likeness 
On how animals move and still themselves.
there is nothing more excellent.

Everyone is a genius; I mean that; we jostle for attention.

I tried to follow this world, not knowing the many worlds under this thin veil. the one the Goddess changes to suit her mood. Cling to her veil and get swept away

(the Goddess is busy being glorious, voluptuous, serene.)

Genius does not depend on competition or collaboration.
It does not depend on what other people are doing or what they have or believe. 

The pioneers that get ignored, enumerated.

1) A monkey's hands are a pure genius.
2) A bird's beak is genius
3) The designs of spiders
4) The Stygian hollows of a wasp nest
5) sloths are lazy? Whatever it is they do is genius.
...

Some say our magic gets more and more real,
As if real or unreal was something I could weigh in my hand.

I see these animals and plants as they are to me,
their liquid intelligence commanding such graceful movements
stooping for water, hunting and praying to escape a hunt
why am I not recognized as being among them?

Is my magic still excellent? 
even if I find myself in this time?

we still need our own liquid grace, our houses like the wasps, 
we need the Art of the Sloth more than we know.

Now the old magic is called vandalism.
Is it because I stoop for the water and food I find
in an urban wilderness? I join the fox and the bird in drinking from a puddle in the park. What is good enough for them, is good enough for me.

To be truly wild is to live like a flame
brilliant, fragile
I feared for my life among cavemen, 
and if I made a mistake I would be dead.

we have greater fear now

fear made us live, goading us to nourish our senses, of smell, of bare touch on soft cold earth, the brush that paints dew on our skin. 

Plants appeared mighty then. A plant for every illness, every wellness, every star in the ancestral night sky. Their deep magic was dominant, not to be enslaved. A factory conformity of plants, called farming, should we allow that kind of life into our circle, where some of us are weeds? What does it mean to live as a farmer, and not a hunter?

Fear is collectively generated. 

We cannot blame a few men or one god.

the colors I have touched on a cave wall, my magic of likenesses 
On the subject of grace in the animal life, Now 
I cannot paint them in a way that they are 20,000 years old. 

My work earns destitution, donations of fear disguised as care, and a place among the gods... the one we created so we could deposit our fears into him.

such monstrous collective activity. 

yet, I accept your fear because that is what you need. 

I will be that foolish god for you, because a caveman knows not to guard his precious bulk against all the pain that courage brings. 

I anoint you with a prayer for grace, and

"There is a hell of a good universe next door, let's go." --ee cummings

Riv9n

11 Tuesday Jun 2024

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Father Raven

Intelligence is a scavenger

A hoarder of shiny ideas, or 
A collector of things of every color
mixed and stirred into black
A foolish lover of roads
A Monster 
that only mates 
with members of the same social class.

Speaker for the dead
Eater of the dead 
leaves, leaver of marks.
They can grow to love, to collect an inedible fruit.

An inedible
apple

Coveted by hungry black
eyes.

The Silver Mind Keeps Dying

08 Saturday Jun 2024

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The Silver Mind Keeps Dying

        Consciousness is the feeling of negation: in the perception of ‘the stone as grey,’ such feeling is in barest germ; in the perception of ‘the stone as not grey,’ such feeling is in full development. (Whitehead, 1929: 161)

“I,” who supports myself on the shoulders of rocks,

cannot be counted in the coffers of knowledge.
This feeling of negation is a desire for knowledge.
No, it is not a knowledge of these rocks.
My knowledge is something better than rocks, something I can’t see, like the arch of the sky.

I ignore rocks because of the treasures in my mind.
I bet you don’t even know what I am thinking. You just see rocks.
Rocks with emerald carpets of moss, with tiny iridescent mushrooms.
A rock in the shape of a heart, or with the same care-lines of your very face, my love.

Rocks are the new clouds.
Watch from one to the next, watch with the blessing of ages, how they change shape.
Their darkness that weighs.
Their fault is their honesty, and they don’t care.
Lift one from the paths of memory and find your true self.
Lift it, carry its body home and carefully wash away the moss and soil.
You will find a naked man inside, blinking at your face like the new sun.

No, I like my theory better, because it belongs to me:

  1. language is the damp nether of a forgotten boulder
  2. the brightest words are worthless
        to the brilliant nose of a dog.

sensitivity is an excess:
too much from a shapely line of text,
a sensuality of braille,
or the silent song.

It is like this (Ajarn Sumedho)

02 Sunday Jun 2024

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I wrote in one of my poems about the chemical name of heroine. It actually happens that they create new chemicals similar to heroine but have no name yet in the US law. The US keeps adding new chemical names to the laws to ban heroine, but there is always a substance that is slightly different and has no name, then it can be sold in stores legally for a while until the US lawmakers catch up, and it goes back and forth like this, forever.
Our chemical names are too precise to capture heroine and make it illegal, but the US cannot accept vagueness in language, so it fails to keep its own laws.
yes a few vague words are better. so one great monk I was lucky enough to listen to in person is famous for the meditation practice of saying "it is like this" the words are so vague that you go looking for what it means in the here and now.

“i” am no more than mist

19 Friday Apr 2024

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The mists have birthed a new toy soldier.

The mists twist as the heat and steam rises from Leon’s open wounds.

Just before his shadow in the mist disappears, a warrior emerges and plants her feet.

She enters a battle stance as her legs ripple with muscle, her right arm wrapped around her longspear, shield poised, she is naked. The male opponent’s weakling reaction to her visible body is against their own will. This clear vision of Her is rare, because she moves so fast you only see a blur, cloaking her nakedness and beautiful form.

In this vision you recognize one of her many blue tattoos clearly reading “Dierdre”. Her secrets are many, the spells of protection and strength woven in her tattoos.

The mists will not answer your futile strikes, but you will find Dierdre’s blade exactly where you are not looking.

Jung

12 Tuesday Mar 2024

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The roots make the branches grow, and the branched leaves nourish the roots for growing. The growing goes back and forth from branch to root, root to branch, until this growing passes beyond our limited visions. 

We may say that the root is first, or the green spring, yet we cannot be sure how each seed will burst into life. And if, beyond our vision, the roots reach hell, only then can the high branches reach heaven. If our branches, reaching, touch heaven, the same reaching touches hell with our roots.