Support, of a sort, from an Unexpected Quarter

Michael Dummett, who has penned several essays of an anti-Realist cast, yet confides in the Preface to a major collection of his works (Truth and other enigmas (1978), p. xxxix):

I once read a paper, which I have not included in this collection, arguing for the existence of God, on the ground, among others, that anti-realism is ultimately incoherent, but that realism is tenable  only on a theistic basis.

This is a brave statement.  We do not disagree.  We might indeed go further, and suggest that the Pathos of Penguins, and the Wonder of Ducks, is comprehensible on that basis only; but that would be wide of our brief.   The stated aim of the essays on this site, is to support Cantorian Realism; the yoking of this to theism  could quite justifiably strike many readers as gratuitous, a long shot.   So it is nice to have such distinguished company as that of Professor Dummett.

*

William James is an ally of a different sort.  The unexpectedness stems simply from his role as a laboratory psychologist;  these tend to be more agnostic than mathematicians (though not perhaps more agnostic than Unitarians, or contemporary Anglican divines).

He argues, not for Realism per se, but for theism:  yet not in the positive way of the Ontological Argument, the Cosmological Argument, or any preacher on TV ;  his approach is not Realist, but pragmatist.  His celebrated predecessor in this approach, is Pascal’s Wager; and James -- ever a man of honor -- has the honesty to cite this explicitly, and to decry it. 

When religious faith  expresses itself thus, in the language of the gaming-table, it is put to its last trump. … If we were ourselves in the place of the Deity, we should probably take particular pleasure in cutting off believers of this pattern  from their infinite reward.

(Sidenote:  Are readers generally aware how witty is William James?   Particularly in comparison with his overrated dull brother -- what's his name -- Henry.  Hank.  Something like that.)

Basically:  If it works at all, it works too well, applying  as it does, without alteration, to belief in the Great Pumpkin.  Whose claims, on that tack, are if anything even stronger:  for the Great Pumpkin offers whatever Yahweh offers plus French fries and unlimited cable;  whereas his wrath towards unbelievers is terrifying to imagine -- you do not want to be in his bad books.

Anyhow.   In The Will to Believe, James offers, not proofs or even probabilities for the existence of God,  but a (well-reasoned) defence of whoso should believe

in spite of the fact that our merely logical intellect  may not have been coerced.

His strategy is, not to prove His existence, but to undermine fallacious arguments against it.   (This is the strategy I took in the chapter “Tumbnail Sketches of Arabic”, in Semantics of Form.)

In the much shorter lecture, Human Immortality:  two supposed objections to the doctrine, he likewise attempts to deflect scientific scorn:  yet, I regret to report, with little success.  His exposition rings, not of the self-delusion or excess of a religious true-believer, but of the plain wackiness characteristic of many a worldview put forth by English-speaking scientists in that period:  e.g. the statistician Karl Pearson, with his “ether squirts”  (see Theodore Porter’s fine biography).

Realism: What

[We choose a classic Lockean title-style for this chapter, and begin with a middle-of-the-road definition.]

Realism Defined

First, a plain-man's characterization of what we might call minimalist/core/plain-vanilla Realism:

Outside our heads  there is freestanding reality.  Only madmen and a scattering of constructivist philosophers doubt its existence.

-- Edward O. Wilson, Consilience (1998)

This view may also be referred to as Platonism (though cf. a special restriction of this term  to mathematics, outlined below):

One issue that has traditionally divided philosophers  is whether ther are abstract objects.  Nominalists have held that there are not;  realists (in a special sense of the word) or Platonists (as they have been called  to avoid the troubles of ‘realist’), have held that there are.

-- W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object (1960), p. 233

Now for the more careful distinctions of professional philosophers:

A. E. Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics (1903; page references to the University Paperback reprint), p. 67:

By Realism is meant the doctrine that the fundamental character of that which really is, as distinguished from that which is only imagined to be, is to be found in its independence of all relation to the experience of a subject.  What exists at all, the realist holds, exists equally  whether it is experienced or not.

Within this, he distinguishes (p. 68) two subtypes:

Agnostic Realism, while asserting the ultimate dependence of our experience upon a reality which exists independently of experience, denies that we have any knowledge of the nature of this independent reality.

Sic:  not “full knowledge”: any knowledge.  Which is absurd.

Contrast (p. 69):

Dogmatic Realism, of which Leibnitz and … Herbart are the most important representatives … while maintaining that real being is independent of experience, at the same time  holds that it is possible to have positive knowledge  not only of its existence, but of its nature.

Sic:  postive knowledge, but not necessesarily full knowledge.  And in this form I heartily subscribe, despite the invidious label conferred by its opponent Mr. Taylor.   As William James put it, in The Principles of Psychology (1890), vol. II, p. 634:

Reality exists as a plenum.  … But we can neither experience nor think this plenum.  What we experience, what comes before us, is a chaos of fragmentary impressions  interrupting each other;  what we think is an abstract system of hypothetical data and laws.

Full knowledge -- plenary knowledge of Reality in all its fullness -- not only in some rarefied ding-an-sich sense, but in the ordinary sense of the sciences -- is doubtless impossible in the case of anything so wildly complex as an acorn or a rock;  but in the case of something simple, like Hilbert Space (infinite-dimensional, it is true, but tamed by a norm that is based upon an inner product), we can perhaps come close to exhausting most of what can be known of it.

Taylor fancies he has refuted Realism in all its varieties, summarizing his triumph thus:

Produce any instance you please, we said to the realist, … and we will undertake to show that it derives its reality for you  from the very fact that it is not ultimately separable from the experience of a subject.

Note the crucial bait-and-switch!   He whisks Reality -- an ontological category, and a big deal -- under the thimble, and takes out -- “Reality for you”, a miserable psychological gewgaw of no general interest whatever.   This latter concept is, we readily concede, drenched in irreducible subjectivism;  no need to bother to argue the point.  And bearing, it may be, little relation to Reality, whether theoretically or empirically.

For:  Reality, in reality-for-X, is an incomplete symbol.

Thus for instance:   It is not possible to survey the roster of extant men, and finally lay your finger upon one specimen, the average man.  The Average Man is not a real, but an ideal, to which various actual men may approximate to one degree or another.  And Real-for-Joe-Blow is not a real, but a figment, which may reflect more or less of an actual reality, with greater or lesser distortion.

~

~  Posthumous Endorsement ~

"Were I alive today, and in the mood for a mystery,

this is what I would be reading: "

I Don't Do Divorce Cases

Murphy on the Mount.

(I am John Locke, and I approved this message.)

~         ~

~

A more carefully phrased importation of subjectivism into the debate  is provided by Michael Dummett, in “Truth” (1959), repr. in Truth and other enigmas (1978), p. 23f:

The claim … should be rejected by a realist, who might, and I think ought to, agree to the following weaker principle:  that a statement cannot be true unless it is in principle capable of being known to be true. […]  The anti-realist interprets ‘capable of being known’ to mean ‘capable of being known by us’, whereas the realist interprets it to mean ‘capable of being known by some hypothetical being  whose intellectual capacities and powers of observation  may exceed our own.’ … The issue between realism and anti-realism … is one of the most fundamental of all the problems of philosophy.

Thus here, clearly, we are once again confronted -- like it or not -- with the question of theism.

So:  if you are a full-bore, double-barrelled, two-seed-in-the-spirit, dyed-in-the-wool copper-bottomed no-holds-barred Cantorian Realist … (we pause for the roars of approval to subside) … even in merely so much as mathematical Platonism:  must you therefore, of logical necessity, be a theist in the sense of the Abrahamic tradition?

Perhaps not; certainly, we have not shown so.  (Nor do we so much as aim to show more that that.   At this point, Jews Muslims and Christians are all singing kumbaya together in one big tent.)   You could, in principle, construct for yourself an ontological halfway-house, with a non-omnipotent, though omniscient, Knower.   And who might this Wiser Being be?  Why -- none other than Babar, the Elephant King!

*

In these essays, we are concerned mainly with the form of Realism known (in a mathematical context) as Platonism, defined as

the theory that mathematics describes a realm or system of real and independently existing objects, whose nature is known to us through proof, but which are entities  over and above the proofs by whch we discover them.

-- Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy (1994), p. 384

(This is fine, but don’t let’s squabble about “objects”; “patterns” or “truths” would do just as well.  We’re not interested in reifying anything, but merely in claiming that we’re not just making it all up arbitrarily.)

And:

… the subject matter of mathematics as realistically (i.e. platonistically) construed.

-- Colin McGinn, “Truth and use”; in: Mark Platts, ed.  Reference, Truth and Reality (1980), p. 35

 But for the record, there are other sorts:

Do we wish to say that there is a moral reality, which underpins our moral judgements  and guarantees their truth?  Some philosophers have argued for such a view (‘moral realism’).

-- Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy (1994), p. 98

Scruton himself is far from being a moral relativist or nihilist, but seems not to feel forced to accept such moral realism, at least in the form of what we might call a moral Correspondence Theory (as opposed to the real existence of God and his laws).    Indeed, he compares (we shall call it) Aesthetic Realism:

It is obvious that St Paul’s Cathedral is beautiful, and the new Lloyd’s building  repulsive;  but is there some ‘aesthetic reality’ that makes these judgements true?

You readily see how problematic this is:  Saint Paul’s to a Wahhabi or an Iconoclast would lack appeal; and presumably the people who designed and paid for the Lloyd’s building  felt it had a certain something.   I still think a kind of case might be made out (which I’ll not pursue), that it’s not just all a matter of personal preference, and that de gustibus certe dispundandum est.   The argument would proceed by analogy with the much tighter case in mathematics.  Many things are obvious to the expert which are not obvious at all to the general public, and which indeed could never be made obvious to them no matter how hard you tried (sheaf theory, for starters).  And more tellingly,  the Man on the Clapham Omnibus will pronounce some things obvious (particularly in the area of probability, e.g. the Monty Hall problem) that are demonstrably mistaken (though some will understand the demonstration, and some will not).    We do not conclude from this that mathematical truth is just a matter of taste (“we” here referring of course to men of good sense, and excluding the Postmodernists).   Some are more qualified than others to grasp certain truths.    Quite possibly the same is true in the field of aesthetics, as regards, say, the Goldberg Variations, on the one hand, and “Who Let the Dogs Out”, on the other.   One would have to make out the case that those who exalt the latter and contemn the former have certain other things wrong with them as well.

[Update]   I have just come across an intriguing analysis relevant to the case of the “Lloyd’s building”, and that buttresses the Aesthetic Realist conjecture above, to the effect that it’s not all just a matter of mutually incomparable ‘tastes’, but that there are objectively different levels of aesthetic competence, owing to the importance of informed appreciation.  The analysis appears in a delightful essay, “The Gherkin”, by John D. Barrow, in his book 100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know (2008;  the book is better than its title).  The “gherkin” in question is a new building in the City of London, a.k.a. “the Pine Cone” for its pocked appearance:   “Prince Charles sees it as symptomatic of a rash of carbuncular towers on the face of London”.   Yet it won the Stirling Prize for architecture.  What gives?

It turns out the building is, from an engineering standpoint, quite ingeniously designed, and that principally with a view towards eco-friendliness.  Thus it narrows somewhat at the bottom, to defeat the wind-tunnel effect that annoys pedestrians; and tapers again towards the top, which “opens up more of the sky and reduces the dominating effect of the structure because you can’t see the top from close-by on the ground.”   Even the pocks have their point:  “They bring light and natural ventilation deep into the heart of the building”, saving greatly on energy costs.  And more details in this vein.

I’ve never seen it, but it sounds … beautiful …

~

Realism in psychology:

According to his friend and biographer, Freud “had a high and serious respect for the reality of psychological facts.  They were as real and concrete to him  as metals are to a metallurgist.” (Ernest Jones, Freud: Years of Maturity (1955), p. 432)

[continued here]

Further juicy quotations:

As a Platonist, he saw everything on earth as broken arcs, which merely suggested the perfect rounds above.

-- Louis Auchincloss, The Rector of Justin (1964), p. 92

Realists [with a capital R] are not the same thing as ‘realists’ in daily life, who are men who expect neither themselves nor others to be any better than they ought to be, and generally much worse.

-- Ernest Gellner, “The crisis in the humanities” (1964), collected in The Devil in Modern Philosophy (1974), p. 15

To mathematicians who study them, moduli schemes are just as real as the regular objects in the world.

-- David Mumford, Forward to Mircea Pitici, ed., The Best Writing on Mathematics 2012, p. xi

Scorecard

In these essays, I am not concerned to tussle in detail with any of the panoply of agnostic philosophies currently on offer in the cultural Mall of America, nor even particularly to distinguish among them.  Their various designating terms may even be used loosely, as the phrase requires -- “nattering nominalists”, “sodden solipsists”, "deviant deconstructionists", "prurient proctoscoptists", and so on.  The point is rather to explicate, and make more plausible, Cantorian Realism, with a nod in the direction of its nice fit with theism.   I capitalize the word Realism, not to exalt it, but to distinguish it from the everyday use of the word, which can shade over into almost an opposite meaning, as in Realpolitik (the capitalization there is an artefact of German).   I don’t capitalize nominalists because, well, they suck.

Nor, despite the keystone role of “visibilium omnium et invisibilium”, am I the least interested in any philosophical debates about Abstract vs. Concrete.   The integers could be made of green cheese, for all that matters.

So, here’s all you need to keep track of the action:

The Good Guys (in the golden jerseys):

Realists

A typical Realist, in native dress

The Bad Guys (in the purple jerseys):

nominalists, solipsists, subjectivists, perspectivalists, epiphenomenalists, eliminativists,  phenomenalists, behaviorists, occasionalists;
finitists, intuitionists, constructivists, formalists [these, all in the mathematical sense -- in particular, game-formalists];
fatalists, predestinarians; instrumentalists [by which I mean, not strummers of the ukelele, but the theory-dissing attitude to science],
idealists [in the non-idealistic sense],
sociologismists [an awkward coinage, but we need to distinguish these from actual sociologists, who are  in principle  honest souls  like plumbers];
gnostics;  cultural constructionists, moral relativists, ‘internal’ ‘realists’, situation ethicists, irrationalists, tribalists, identity-politicians, deconstructionists, post-modernists, nihilists, diabolists, atavists, primitivists, Donald Trump, bestialists, methodological onanists, proctoscopic introspectionists, ……

A clowder of Nominalists

Guys we bar, though there is something to be said for them :

empiricists, verificationists, logical positivists; existentialists

Guys that maybe get a bad rap:

mysterians, mystics, quietists; coherentists

The score so far:

Good Guys: 700000.    Bad Guys:  0.

And Now For Something Completely Different

 As you all know, today is Piglet’s Birthday (as is tomorrow, and the day after that.  February is funny that way.)  In commemoration of this joyous event, we intend to post (if we are spared) a number of items bearing no relation whatsoever to Cantorian Realism.   This will come as a blow to the Cantorian Realist Community: but hang in there, inshallah we’ll be back.

Let the festivities begin!

Taking a Breather

The trickle of traffic   does not alas justify continuing with quasi-daily posting, which has been the rhythm of this site since its inception.   I’ll check back from time to time, and see if things have picked up; if they do, I might resume the project, “Theologia Mathematica” in particular.

In the meantime, you will find much food for thought in what has already been posted.  Browse around.   Click on labels, for thematic continuity.  And please -- if something strikes your fancy, pass it on.  There is doubtless an audience out there somewhere for Cantorian Realism and penguinistics and what have you, though they form but a set of measure zero in the wide world as a whole.  Perhaps you have a cousin who is Cantorian-inclined; who in turn has an in-law, who once met a guy at a party, who’s a raving Realist.  Six degrees of separation and all that.

Au revoir/ adieu / (on verra).

The Ontology of Logic (updated)

Since logic and set theory themselves -- at least as I imbibed them at the bosom of Quine -- are all about ontology, this may seem a queer thing to single out.   One reason to do so  is that the question of the ontological status of various abstract entities  is, in mathematics, seen through a glass darkly (typically going undiscussed unless challenged), whereas here --  face to face.

This will, like its sister essay The Ontology of Physics, be simply a corkboard for posting stray thoughts and choice quotes.  For a more general take on all this, click here.  As for the ontology of mathematics proper, we need no special post, since that is an ongoing theme in the "Theologia Mathematica" series. For that, click here.

Here we go.

Frege took all classes as rock-bottom objects  on a par with individuals.

-- W.V.O. Quine, “On Frege’s Way Out” (1954)

This is the bold, the manly path, of Cantorian Realism.   We do not merely accept sets (classes, collections) as, well, okay, “real” in some pale, some Meinongian sense, though in no wise privileged to belly up to the bar as equals with such unquestionably real individuals as Piglet:  No, they are rock-bottom objects, pardner, fit to drink with any man.

*

Commercial Break

A private detective  confronts the uncanny;

an ecclesiastical mystery:

Murphy Calls In a Specialist

[Kindle] [Nook]

*

~

If  to be is to be the value of a quantified variable, then it matters what sort of quantification we are talking about.  Quine frequently raises this knotty issue.

Substitutional quantification makes good sense … no matter what substitution class we take -- even that whose sole member is the left-hand parenthesis.  To conclude that entities are being assumed that trivially, and that far out, is simply to drop ontological questions.

-- W.V.O. Quine, “Existence and Quantification”

Quine footnotes this:  “Lesniewski’s example, from a conversation of 1933 in Warsaw.”

The heart stops cold.  1933 in in central Europe -- not a good place and time.  Yet to have been Quine, even Quine, young and thrusting, in Warsaw with Lesniewski -- very heaven!

Quine goes on: 

Lesniewski did not himself relate his kind of quantification [i.e., substitutional as opposed to objectual] to ontological commitments.

And indeed was right to do so, since

Where substitutional quantification serves, ontology lacks point.

~

Andrew Gleason,  Fundamentals of Abstract Analysis (1966), p. 1, offers a notably practical definition of set from the standpoint of a working mathematician:

A set is any collection of mathematical objects which is sufficiently well defined to be the subject of logical analysis.

Since the word collection itself is often used by mathematicians as a synonym of set, you might deem this definition circular.  But here collection is being used entirely informally, referring to our pre-theoretic intuitions;  he could just as well said bunch or (even better) passel.

Indeed, from this perspective, Gleason is offering what amounts to an ostensive definition.  It is comparable to such a classic ostensive scenario as this:  “See that creature over there?  Assuming that it is not a mirage or an animatronic gimmick, that is what we refer to as a capybara.”

~

In Set Theory, you start with any object, which can be anything.  Indeed, even one will do: it can be zero, x, or even Piglet, for soon you contrast the-set-containing-Piglet, and off you go.  Indeed, in the most abstract set-theory, you don’t even need objects, just start from the empty set.   Even so, the enterprise smacks of ontology, since you have … let’s call them ‘thingies’, so as not to be dragged into any philosophical presuppositions about objects (thingies being more like the Cheshire-Cat-smile memories of objects), but even so, we are forming sets which consist of such thingies, and ask which contain which, and which are equal to which, and how many of them are there -- tangible things like that.

In Category Theory, you put childish things aside, and say Goodby to All That.  As one practitioner puts it:

Since a category consists of arrows, our subject could also be described as learning how to live without elements, using arrows instead.

-- Saunders MacLane, Categories for the Working Mathematician (1971; 2^nd ed. 1998), p. vii

[Update -- Lent 2013 -- Let us try, for a time, to live without elements...]

~

Of all the sciences -- nay, of all human cognitive activities -- mathematics is ontologically the most venturesome.   For among its key tools is the ancient method of reductio ad absurdum or modus tollens.  Here we work -- calmly and logically -- with Impossible Posits;  and when the smoke has cleared, all is once again as it should be, and we know something new.

Thus, take the question of how many prime numbers exist.  Lots, no doubt;  but it is not initially obvious that they go on forever.    The bigger a number gets, the harder it is for it to pass through the inflexible Sieve of Eratosthenes:  the mesh gets finer and finer as the number of primes -- of your possible submultiples -- grows and grows.

A direct way of proving the infinitude of the primes would be to come up with a formula that could serve as a primal generator:  plug in a number, out pops a prime.   But no such formula is known, and probably none exists.  

So the standard move, known already to the ancient Greeks (men like gods, like very gods) is to turn on your heel and spin about and say:  Fine!  Be like that!  Let’s assume that there are not infinitely many primes.  (Your finitist opponent -- a fat and greasy Nominalist -- emits an oily smile;  but he soon shall taste the wrath of Modus Tollens.)  So there are only finitely many (smile, nod);  so there’s a biggest one (nod, but a fading smile, as our finitist realizes that something is about to go very, very wrong);  let us call this largest one M.  (Suspecting a trap, the finitist objects;  you don’t make an issue of it; let’s call it N instead.)

Our mathematician now has what proves to be a powerful weapon: N, the Biggest Prime in the Universe.   That no such number exists (as we soon shall find out) does not lessen its devastating effect, while we hold it in mind and operate with it -- working in an anti-universe, as it were, on the far side of Alice’s looking-glass, and yet where otherwise all the usual laws continue to hold.

So we form the factorial of N and add a unit:  N! + 1.  It is larger than N;  and yet it must itself be prime, since, by elementary arithmetic, no number (let alone a prime number) no larger than N, can divide it.   Our quixotic posit of a largest prime  has managed to unhorse itself.

Modus Tollens, skewering an Impossible Posit

Note that we really have been operating according to God’s own laws of logic, yet operating -- temporarily, like Jack Bauer saving the day by working in a radioactive chamber -- in a universe not made by His hand:  namely, one in which a largest prime exists.   Like the Devil’s inventions, this universe self-destructs -- but in a fashion that is constructive for ourselves.

   "Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth."
   -- Hamlet

This process of assuming a falsity to come up with a positive result  is really quite extraordinary.  It is generally stated that, if a logical system allows you to derive a certain statement as well as its negation, then the whole system falls apart, since then you can derive anything at all,  (p & ~p) => q   being analytic.  But obviously the structure of mathematics is more resilient than that.

In vain might one seek such fruitful use of counterfactuals outside of math.  It is as though, in order to solve some particularly perplexing crime, one were to falsely accuse someone and put him on trial; then, in the course of the proceedings, the forensics and cross-examinations, the real truth would out.  (Come to think of it, that is exactly the plot of many a courtroom drama.)

[Footnote]  G. H. Hardy, in A Mathematician’s Apology, gave the classic expression of the audacity of this move:

The proof is by reductio ad absurdum,  and reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician’s finest weapons.  It is a far finer gambit  than any chess gambit:  a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece,  but a mathematician offers the game.

 
A serious-humorous example of positing an impossible object -- yet here, not with modus tollens in mind, but as a kind of calculational convenience:

Assume that the bubbles in a foam  are regular polyhedrons, whose faces are regular polygons with n sides, and that the angles between these sides are all 109° 28’.  Since no such object exists, let us call it the ‘follyhedron’, and pretend that it does anyway.

-- Ian Stewart,  How to Cut a Cake (2006), p. 126

[Meta-footnote]

Logic … operate[s]  in terms of quite unidentified  but none the less definite ‘objects’, which then  do or do not fall into classes … I do not know whether it can deal with jelly-like or cloud-like entities, with mushy viscous messes  that do not break up into manifest units.  I suspect that nothing is beyond the technical ingenuity of men …

-- Ernest Gellner, Language and Solitude (posthum. 1998), p. 53

An expert review of Dennis Hesseling, Gnomes in the Fog:  The Reception of Brower’s Intuitionism in the 1920s (2003), by Sam Adams on Amazon, summarizes: 

Brouwer's position arises from the assertion that the ontology of mathematics is determined solely by epistemology, and thus a statement which has not been determined to be true or to be false cannot be determined to refer to a state of affairs … Since mathematical meaning derives from emergent, epistemologically generated ontology, it follows that logic itself is not a formative and central structure of cognition, but rather is itself an emergent, structural overlay.

Penguins & Politics

 Heartwarming:

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2011/02/13/ne_aquarium_plays_matchmaker_to_african_penguins/

And like the lady says, at the very end:

“Raising a family  is a two-penguin job.”

-- A line which, until a few years ago, would have evoked little but nods and smiles.

But now this simple fact  is everywhere under attack.  Cf., just yesterday:

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-cardinal-adopted-children-need-both-a-father-and-a-mother/

The problem addressed above is but a tiny slice (and largely the result) of a more general problem:  rampant single-motherhood.   The core of who we are, as human society,  is crumbling  -- savage rats ravaging  the fragments from without.

Fortunately, most of us still believe in this, even though it becomes ever less politically correct to say so.  From this morning’s Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021602577.html

La Manif pour tous, le 13 janvier, sur le Champ-de-Mars.

This is serious, folks.   This blog was created to explore Cantorian Realism, and to show forth its ties with theism:  because that’s a little something I happen to know.  But it pales in importance  to these basic truths:

=>  Marry in faith.

=>  Nurse your babies.

=>  Stay loyal to the day you die.

[Post-script:  Plaudits to the First Lady:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/us/politics/18breastfeed.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=michelle%20obama&st=cse ]


[Post-postscript, as the story refuses to die:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/18/AR2011021805522.html
(The egregious Palin and Bachman  parade their pointlessness and ignorance.)

-->

It began with a modest remark during a roundtable discussion with reporters: First lady Michelle Obama said she supports making it easier for mothers to breast-feed their babies, because "kids who are breast-fed longer have a lower tendency to be obese."

Within days, the sentence - and a new Internal Revenue Service policy offering tax deductions for breast pumps - had touched off a political firestorm. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) blasted the Obama administration for trying to impose a "nanny state" on mothers. Another potential 2012 presidential candidate, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, mockingly said the first lady was trying to compensate for high milk prices.

Careful readers between the lines might have gathered that I am -- when not contemplating Hilbert Space -- something of a social conservative.  But I would not vote for these Tea-Party types  if you boiled me in oil.   That they are ignorant of science is for them practically a badge;  but you'd think they'd at least get this right.]

NEWSFLASH !! WDJ Joins the Internet Strike

Dateline Geneva, Global Headquarters building of WDJ International Worldwide Enterprises, UnLtd. --

In a surprise announcement, the celebrated Website “The World of Doctor Justice”, the premier destination for Internauts craving the latest on such burning issues as Cantorian Realism, Trinitarian minimalism, and monostichs in a range of languages, revealed that it too is joining such major competitors as Google and IcanHasCheezburger  and initiating a partial shutdown in protest of … well, let’s see.  There is so much to protest.  Since Google (That Which Must Be Obeyed) and Wikipedia (the All-Knowing, the All-Wise) have the SOPA bubble safely in hand, we needn’t worry about that, so let’s see … Hmm… Gotta get in on the action here, everybody’s doing it… I know !    Misleadingly large, intricate, and hard-to-open packaging of tiny products.    Like, this little whoosis here, hiding in a mostly ceilinged-off corner of a larger package, the top half of which turns out to be entirely empty, and the various inner walls and barriers  surprisingly resistant to prying.    You could probably get the product out via the “eversion of the sphere” maneuver, or maybe doing a Banach-Tarski reassembly[*] in which the packaging would be reconstituted at five times its previous size while leaving the product intact, at which point it could be extracted through the now-ample apertures.  But that would require the Axiom of Choice.

[*Note:  In solidarity with the Wiki strike, we linked here to the French version, which is still operational.]

Footnote:  We are also quite upset by the Independence of the Continuum Hypothesis, but shall reserve that protest for another day.

OK, so, In Protest, we are refusing for the next 24 hours to post anything funny.  No no -- don't beg -- we are firm in this resolve.  Wise, observant, philosophical -- no problem;  but nothing funny.  So there.

And those of you who think that this very post is funny (Russell-paradox-fashion), well, all I can say is, you are easily amused.

~            ~            ~

Avis à nos lecteurs francophones:

Cette abstention ludique ne s’applique évidemment pas aux communications d’expression française.  Alors, figurez-vous:  Un prêtre, un rabbin, et un capybara  entrent bras dessus-dessous  dans un bar …

~            ~            ~

Late-breaking update

Owing to howls of protest from Internauts demanding their daily dose of metafunny, WDJ is now willing to compromise, not to the extent of actually posting anything rib-tickling, but in linking to such fare elsewhere:

The creamy dame

Doctor Justice Declares a Caliphate

Doctor Justice Declares a Caliphate

or,  If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em

We were bemused at the ease with which a ragtag of runaways, renegades, and Zarqawiite thugs  could propel themselves to regional prominence, and declare their supremacy over the whole Umma of Islam.  And instead of being laughed off the stage, they have received bay`ah from group after group of former rivals (killing those that did not submit).

With a keen eye appropriate to their craft, the  Accounting Department of WDJ Worldwide Enterprises said:  Y’know, there might be money in this sort of thing.

Accordingly, as the long arm of al-Baghdadi  does not yet reach into our home state, we have decided to solidify our base, before it’s too late.  Thus, Doctor Justice, together with his hardy band of few but fanatical followers, hereby declares the

 => Riemannic State of Suburbia <=

a.k.a.  Riemannistan.

Its capital shall be the cul-de-sac wherein we dwell (Married People’s Circle);  our AOR, all the lands in which the Peano Postulates hold good.  

The state religion is Cantorian Realism;  public punishments for apostate Nominalists will be exemplary and fun to watch.

Dr Justice, wisely rendering judgment

 unto his subjects, beneath an oak 

Herewith our immediate, non-negotiable demands:

* Unlimited rights

* Egg in our beer

* A land corridor through Prussia

~

Fun Facts about Riemannistan:

*  Official language:  Latin

*  National anthem:  “Desolation Row”

*  State bird:  what do you think?

Notitia Dignitatum

Recent cabinet appointments :

* Bernard Riemann:  archon eponymous.
*  Dr Massey :  Oberreichslateinmeister

*  Carlos the Pirate:  Minister of Marital Affairs

*  Abu-Yahya al-Irbî :  Proconsul for Greater Jordan (includes all territories  claimed by the ISIL)

* Commander Buckwalter:  Minister of Misinformation, and Lord of the CAStLe

Honoris causâ :

*  Named U.S. wifeperson :  First Lady

*  Airman Bob :  Jihadi Performer of the Year [Note:  This position, being istishhâdi, is filled anew periodically.  Applications welcome.]

*  Fluffy the family hamster : Emblematic Animal (to appear on all stamps and currency issued by the RSoS)

Positions still unfilled :

* Ambassador to Azawad

* Chargé d’affaires for the Ottoman Empire

* Court poet

[Update]

The cursèd infidels of the next cul-de-sac over, “Chunky Chipmunk Way” (and here I am barely making anything up:  our town is full of cutesy street-names) have refused to swear bay`ah to Sultân Dawûd, and have set up a counter-caliphate !!!  This means war -- War to the knife!

Chunky Chipmunk delenda est !!!!

[Update, Bastille Day 2014]  Evidently inspired by Dr J’s bold proclamation of a local cul-de-sac-based Caliphate, another would-be imam has claimed a somewhat neglected slice of Africa:

The imam with his seven year-old daughter, Princess Emily,

showing off the flag that their family designed

as they claim a piece of land in the Eastern African region of Bir Tawil.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-man-plants-flag-claims-african-country-calling-it-kingdom-of-north-sudan/2014/07/12/abfbcef2-09fc-11e4-8a6a-19355c7e870a_story.html?tid=pm_pop

We welcome this new sacred territory, and have offered an alliance to Imam Jeremiah, to wage Holy War against the infidels of the so-called “caliphate” of Chunky Chipmunk Way.

(BTW, those dead-enders over at Chunky Chipmunk  are also pretty sloppy about recycling.  War to the knife!)

[Update 9 August 2014]  Doubtless inspired by Riemannistan’s righteous Holy War against the kuffar of Chunky Chipmunk Way (a.k.a the Dâr al-Harb), Obama has finally got his man-card back, and is going after the sole entity that can challenge America’s hegemonic rule -- The Islamic Caliphate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-expands-airstrikes-against-islamic-state-militants-in-northern-iraq/2014/08/09/1014c018-1fb7-11e4-82f9-2cd6fa8da5c4_story.html

[Late-breaking updeate -- Dispatch from the Front]   The raging battle between Riemannistan and the accursèd infidels of Chunky Chipmunk Way (upon whom be grease) has reached a stage of entrenched positions, of the sort familiar from the early years of the Great War: our territories are now separated by an impassable barrier composed of around half a dozen or so  orange traffic-cones.

Meanwhile, our supply lines and economic base have firmed up, relative to those of the foe.  Our yard sale last weekend did wa-a-ay better than theirs did, judging, not so much by the quantity as by the quality of the visitors who dropped by (their SUVs are tacky;  ours are swank).   We even sold an entire, only slightly wrecked swingset (Jenny having outgrown it -- she’s in second grade now)!  Match that, you Gehenna-dwelling Chunkies !!

~

Update: Riemannistan hosts refugees

[Dateline Riemannistan -- Associated Press]

Cousin Pete will be camping on our sofa for a few days.  His common-law wife Midge threw him out of the house.  The Riemmanic Caliphate is dispatching a crack diplomatic team to negotiate.

[Further exciting developments  here:
https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2015/10/riemannistan-claims-new-york-harbor.html ]