Back to Kant

Justin Walsh jwalsh at bigpond.net.au
Fri Oct 12 01:51:38 UTC 2001


Thanks Ken!
You've got my drift.
You have introduced some very salient points. They deserve considered
response(s).
I would hate to miss the opportunity to include others who might like to
understand what philosophy is really all about (and perhaps understand why I
and many others dislike it so. I personally think it is intellectual
warfare).
Like bacteria philosophy is in all of us. Nature provided us with it to
survive. Conditions switch them on.
It is just unfortunate that when "The Creator" deployed us he forgot to
include the Instruction Manual.
Sorry! He/She/It/X really did. We are just reading it upside down.
I've supplied some Encarta (Thanks Bill) addresses to difficult words. As
well as my usual stuff.
Now to your point 1.

1. A language designer is designing a world with an ontology and
episptomology. I think this is what Alan mean by Smalltalk being too
Platonic. Think about the different world views inherent in a class based
OOPL than in a prototype based one.

The first sentence is correct: Alan is a Language Designer and a good one.
The particular language was that of a child. He was influenced by the the US
philosopher Dewey (I suspect) and  Jean Piaget the (Kantian) child
Behaviorialist. I think we can put that one to bed now.
Alan has only one world view. To hack into Squeak to enable isomorphy  is to
corrupt his original purpose.
Morphic is not another world view. It is simply another class of activity.

Adults determine the responses they get.
Determinism throws a spanner in the works of Alans original purpose.
There is no error in Alans original design. Just an error in the employment
of our reason. St80 does not accomodate that.
A bit like ,"nature doesn't make mistakes our mind does". If I were Alan I'd
be very satisfied with Smalltalk the way it is right now. He has
demonstrated that with Squeakland.org and his association with Apple and
Disney(land), lifes good. He deserves a welcome rest.
But for mature (geriatric) adults like myself (as boring as it might seem to
my children), I need and want  more reasoning content. Who cares if its for
.com or dot .org in principle it is the same.
Since Alan, no "Language Designer" has provided anything qualitively new. A
complete scientific, rethink is necessary. A total new "from first
principles", (bigtalk maybe) is needed. There is a Logtalk that runs under
Linux. Not convinced the "first principles" are any better.

Below, under science, it say systematic study. Not just a shallow (sophist),
philosohical investigation where people just slug it out.
Politics, Market, Philosophy, Conflict are not scientific diciplines. When
Charlemagne created the Holy Roman Empire 800 -814 AD. he set up the
Scholastic System: higher education was called Trivium (rhetoric, grammer,
logic). These trivial "skills" was all that was necessary to manage the
above four subjects.
Today, 1200 years later we are still using the same trivial methods to
design complex systems and the same trivial methods to maintain them. I
don't mind if those trivial systems don't bother me. But they do.
If anyone out there knows of a safe hiding place, please tell me. It
certainly aint here down-under.

I have yet to get to the point. Probably won't this time round.
What is more important than umpteen instances of vague "problematics", like
"feminism", and all the other proto-religions like "faschism", "communism",
"environmentalism" "militarism" .. phew! read (Edward DeBono " The Happiness
Purpose"), it's quicker.
It  is the dedication to good (non-sexist) science that matters. Just threw
that one in to stop any flaming.

Good science like all things A Priori , starts off with good definition. I
think it was called BNF in the old days.
I include John Clarkes effort to help others discover the order in Kants
difficult work.
It's is an example of a person who likes an orderly workbench, even if only
for thinking.

FOR EXAMPLE

Again Ontology and Epistemology are both investigations: Hamlyn Encyclopedic
World Dictionary.

ontology; the science of being, as such. The branch of metaphysics that
investigates the nature of being and of the first principles, or categories,
involved.

epistemology; the branch of philosophy which investigates the origin,
nature,methods and limits of human knowledge.

science; the systematic study of man and his environment based on the
deductions and the inferences which can be made, and the general laws which
can be formulated, from reproducible observations and measurements of events
and parameters within the universe.

metaphysics; that branch of philosophy  which treats of first principles,
including the sciences of being (ontology) and of the origin and structure
of the universe (cosmology). It is always intimately connected with a theory
of knowledge (epistemology).

theory; a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of
explanation for a class of phenomemena: Newton theory of gravitation.

AND SO ON ...

When I've finished laying out my tools I'll get back to the point. Meanwhile
John Clarke and Encarta is interesting stuff. Then I'll read thoroughly
(even if it kills me) that paper.

Cheers (bad spelling n all)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Kahn" <kenkahn at toontalk.com>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 4:37 AM
Subject: Re: Back to Kant


> Philosophy intersects programming languages at least in two places:
>
> 1. A language designer is designing a world with an ontology and
> episptomology. I think this is what Alan mean by Smalltalk being too
> Platonic. Think about the different world views inherent in a class based
> OOPL than in a prototype based one.
>
> 2. As Justin Walsh pointed out in his message, philosophers have something
> to say about the process of designing languages or software in general.
E.g.
>
> > Kant stresses the urgency of getting the System right before you start.
=
> > Don't enter a tunnel unless you can see the light: know exactly how you
=
> > can get out. Does that sound a little like the early Stack Computing =
> > Technology, (forerunners of RISC and CISC) which made contextual muddles
=
> > practically impossible?
>
> My reaction to this is that there probably are some very good insights in
> Kant and others but there is also a danger. The danger is in excluding
other
> ways of thinking. The best paper I know of on this topic is
"Epistemological
> Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete" by Sherry Turkle and
Seymour
> Papert ( http://www.papert.com/articles/EpistemologicalPluralism.html ).
> They categorize hard (Kantian?) and soft approaches to building software
and
> to doing science. Here's short sample:
>
> "Observation of the soft approach to programming calls into question
deeply
> entrenched assumptions about the classification and value of different
ways
> of knowing. It provides examples of the validity and power of concrete
> thinking in situations that are traditionally assumed to demand the
> abstract. It supports a perspective that encourages looking for
> psychological and intellectual development within, rather than beyond, the
> concrete and suggests the need for closer investigation of the diversity
of
> ways in which the mind can use objects rather than the rules of logic to
> think with. "
>
> Epistemological pluralism is an argument that software, teaching
materials,
> courses, etc. should support and value multiple ways of thinking.
>
> Best,
>
> -ken kahn ( www.toontalk.com )
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Cosmology_-__Encarta_=AE__.url?=
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 202 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20011012/829b927e/iso-8859-1QCosmology_-__Encarta_AE__.obj
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Epistemology__-_Encarta_=AE__.url?=
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 208 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20011012/829b927e/iso-8859-1QEpistemology__-_Encarta_AE__.obj
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Metaphysics__-_Encarta_=AE__.url?=
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20011012/829b927e/iso-8859-1QMetaphysics__-_Encarta_AE__.obj
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: =?iso-8859-1?Q?ontology__-_Encarta_=AE__.url?=
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 200 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20011012/829b927e/iso-8859-1Qontology__-_Encarta_AE__.obj
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.url
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 154 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20011012/829b927e/KantsCritiqueofPureReason.obj


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list