Joe, from the recent changes log I get the feeling you are getting interested in philosophy of science in general, and logical positivism in particular (with the references to Popper's work etc). As you know I have a degree in philosophy (with a focus on philosophy of science and epistemology), so if there's anything specific you're trying to figure out, maybe it can take a shot at it? Or, more accurately, say something about what other people have had to say about it. (BTW, I have not yet figured out what does and what doesn't count as a "major edit".)
I think one benefit of working on this wiki is the chance to talk philosophy with the denizens. I think we all qualify as "freelance philosophers". Its fun; my only concern is that it needs to be balanced with coding! The scholium system is partly about balancing code with text in a nice way: maybe all of our philosophy can be implemented in code at some point :).
My main concerns at present are (1) a logic and linguistics problem, mentioned on the page about hdm's formal system in the "Expressing formal math in hcode" section. I'm still sort of worried about finding the appropriate lowest level language for hcode, even though I suppose we can start with examples and work our way down as needed; getting the philosophical/metamathematical basis of hcode worked out seems a little tricky; (2) I'm also very interested in the fact that a lot of the ground that has been covered by AI researchers was already covered by phenomenologists. What a surprise! This was described in a book called "The Artificial Intelligence Debate" (amazon page), in an essay by Hubert and Stewart Dreyfus. That article is definitely recommended reading for everyone on AsteroidMeta.
Those are a couple of areas in which I could use some freelance help. Its also just fun to spin your philosophical yarns and get feedback; feel free to post new Discussions at will.
--jcorneli Sat Jun 25 01:47:48 2005 UTC
I haven't read Dreyfus' book, but it's certainly true that AI researchers have been rather naive with respect to philosophy. "Rather naive" is actually an euphemism – most of them were completely ignorant about every major development in philosophy since Descartes. So it should not be so surprising that they did some philosophical blunders early on.
As for the lowest level for hcode, I am very interested in coming to grips with that too. I feel I can't really start doing serious work on the parser until that matter is somewhat settled --shargestam
It may be best not to worry too much about the lowest level for hcode: it could be better to worry about how we can move from a given level (e.g. the contents of the current Version Zero) to a lower level. Every time you encounter math, it will be in some mathematical vernacular. I don't think we can write a language that covers all mathematical vernaculars off the top of our heads. Rather, we should write a language that we know is "downwards-compatible" (as well as upwards compatible) with various vernaculars. (We do want a flexible parser: a good parser is one "metalanguage", of a particularly abstract sort.)
--jcorneli