Re: Relations as primitive

On Jan 11, 3:49 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Marshall wrote:
>
> > Relations are a specific kind of set. The usual foundational
> > approach is to take (general) sets as primitive. However
> > we could instead take a more specific kind of set as
> > primitive, namely relations.
>
> > Marshall
>
> I am not sure what we hope to accomplish by doing so. Goedel
> awaits at the end of the line regardless.

Him and Turing and finite computing resources and so forth.

Actually, that relates to one of my goals: having a logic which is as powerful as FOPL but for which there is a large, easily identifiable, *decidable* subset.

> Certainly, I take comfort in the power of the relational formalism. I
> try not to get too hung up on the philosophy of mathematics stuff.

"Philosophy of mathematics" as I understand the term is not something I'm interested in. However I enjoy playing around in the subbasement of mathematics and looking at all the ducts and exposed wires and such.

People I know professionally occasionally ask me what the heck I think I'm doing with these pursuits, and frankly I'm not entirely clear. I have an intuition that I'm pursuing something worthwhile, and not merely different for different's sake. But I can't prove it.

And of course the whole pursuit is greatly hindered by the time I spend playing Halo, reading usenet, etc. The other day I was carrying the missile pod and *two* loaded warthogs carroomed up to our base, guns-a-blazing, and although I died in the process, I blew both of them to smithereens. It was awesome.

Marshall Received on Sat Jan 12 2008 - 01:56:52 CET