Logic Matters

Occasionally, I twitter links to The Daughter’s wonderful cooking blog (parse that either way: it is both a wonderful cooking-blog and also — since she takes after her mother —  a wonderful-cooking blog). A couple of days ago, I posted this:

Dirty weekends in Paris versus wearing Playboy bunny ears in a cheap motel @rumandreason:  http://bit.ly/aLPuWl

The Daughter is much amused to report that this teasing pointer — read very largely by philosophers who follow the tweets (or the emphera here) — got her the highest number of daily page-hits ever. As she tartly observed, “I thought your lot were meant to be intellectual”.

But I’m of course sure that you were all just after the recipe for chocolate ice cream …

As I mentioned in the last post, it fell to me to introduce the last two chapters in Part III of Field — namely,  Ch. 17 in which he rounds out his key technical construction, and Ch. 18, ‘What Has Been Done’. And having got to the end of Field’s core presentation of his story, we are going to call it a day. Since it was the last meeting, I took my cue from Ch. 18 and offered some very quickly written reflections on what has (or rather hasn’t) been achieved. Here they are. Comments more than usually welcome: what am I missing?

A few survivors are still battling through Field’s desperately ill-written Saving Truth from Paradox in a reading group here (just on the matter of writing, contrast, e.g. Scott Soames beautifully lucid book Understanding Truth). We are going to stop having got a reasonable sense of Field’s positive proposals. I think it is fair to say he isn’t carrying conviction! Clever, no doubt: but the techno-flash isn’t generating philosophical insight. It falls to me to try to introduce the last session tomorrow and reach some kind of overview. I’m struggling, so I rather doubt that many of my words of wisdom will appear here!

Just to note, however, that I have slightly revised some notes I posted here before on Ch. 4 of Field’s Saving Truth from Paradox. Not that these notes are at all exciting. But still, if they are going to be “out there”, they should at least be in a better version.

Andrea del Verrocchio, Head of a woman (detail), c. 1475.

To London today for the annual meeting of the Analysis Committee. The journal seems in cheering health (though it seems as if the now out-of-control “publish or perish” pressures are leading to almost absurd numbers of submissions).

Then, across the road from the Senate House to the British Museum. I’d clean forgotten that there is an exhibition of Italian renaissance drawings on there, some from the BM itself, some from the Uffizi.

So that was an absolutely delightful surprise — some wonderful drawings, very beautifully presented, and not so many on show as to be overwhelming. Go (it’s on until  July 25).

The third double-CD has recently been released of Imogen Cooper’s stunning journey through late Schubert in her QE Hall recitals in 2008 and 2009.

The first two pairs of disks got some extraordinarily warm reviews, and this too strikes me as just wonderful. Thoughtful, deep, utterly persuasive. And lyrically beautiful.

At the end of the second of the new disks she reaches the pinnacle — an amazing performance of D. 960.  I’ve accumulated over too many years recordings of this sonata played by Schnabel, Richter twice, Brendel three times, Schiff, Kovacevich, Perahaia, Uchida, and Lewis as well as the earlier Imogen Cooper; and yet here are new insights, a wonderful overall architecture, and an utterly compelling performance. This could well become my “Desert Island” choice of  all those performances.

Proceed to Amazon right now: you couldn’t possibly be disappointed.

In the official words of the Cambridge University Reporter,

The Council submits the following Graces to the Regent House. … (3) That the Professorship of Philosophy (1896) be retitled as the Bertrand Russell Professorship of Philosophy.

This means that when my colleague Simon Blackburn retires at the end of next academic year, his successor will glory in a splendid title – and because we have raised funding for the chair, the post will indeed be filled, even in these straightened times. (Not of course that Russell himself ever held this chair: its previous holders have, however, included Moore, Wittgenstein, Anscombe and Mellor). And wouldn’t it be good if the new incumbent had Russell’s passion for logic and the philosophy of mathematics, to maintain and enhance that thread of Cambridge interest? Potential applicants watch this space for an early warning about when the appointment process starts later in the year!

I fear, however, that things aren’t looking at all good for the filling of my post when I have to go at the same time as Simon. (Oh dear. I can feel a rant coming on, about the absurd bloating of the central administration and the proliferation of ludicrous expenditure away from the university’s core purposes, at the cost of running down core humanities departments. But that would be boring, so I’ll have another wee dram of Talisker instead.)

Heck, that’s rather surprising! Over sixteen hundred and sixty people have now downloaded the notes on the Galois connection between syntax and semantics which I posted a link to here just a few days ago. Who knows why some pieces really hit the button and others seemingly provoke no interest at all?

(Now, c’mon guys, if you like the Galois piece, your students might just love my intro logic book, which I happened to be checking out today. It would be nice if that book were used some more, having made the effort to write it, as it isn’t at all bad, although I say so myself …)

Given that casinos aren’t my thing and old Nassau is half an hour away and hardly worth more than a short morning, there’s not much to do on New Providence but go to the nearby beach and then sit in the shade reading. But what’s not to like about that? For the beach is stunning (and up this end of the island deserted too). And view from the deck is pretty good too …

The unrelenting heat is perhaps not exactly conducive to settling down to serious writing: but I’ve been enjoying reading quite a bit about early twentieth century logic and the confluence of ideas which eventually leads to the emergence of model theory as a distinct area of enquiry. (Any suggestions on what else to read about the pre-history of model theory gratefully received!)

In an idle moment (well, it is very hot here in the Bahamas!), I’ve put together a page of links to various bits of stuff from the last three years which were dashed off in the interstices of book-writing. Mildly cheering to see that I haven’t been quite as idle as I thought I’d been. Enjoy!

A couple of posts ago, I expostulated about Field’s over-hasty rejection of what I called the no-proposition response to the Liar. As it happens I found myself this morning reading (in the welcome shade of some pines at the top of a deserted beach on New Providence, if you must know) Dorothy Grover’s ‘How Significant is the Liar?’, in the Beall/Armour-Garb collection Deflationism and Paradox. I am very much in sympathy with her general approach which is firmly in the no-proposition camp. Recommended, if you want to get the beginnings of a sense of how the position might be defended.