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Laws Of Form
''Laws of Form'' (hereinafter ''LoF'') is a book by G. Spencer-Brown, published in 1969, that straddles the boundary between mathematics and philosophy. ''LoF'' describes three distinct logical systems: * The primary arithmetic (described in Chapter 4 of ''LoF''), whose models include Boolean arithmetic; * The primary algebra (Chapter 6 of ''LoF''), whose models include the two-element Boolean algebra (hereinafter abbreviated 2), Boolean logic, and the classical propositional calculus; * Equations of the second degree (Chapter 11), whose interpretations include finite automata and Alonzo Church's Restricted Recursive Arithmetic (RRA). "Boundary algebra" is a term for the union of the primary algebra and the primary arithmetic. ''Laws of Form'' sometimes loosely refers to the "primary algebra" as well as to ''LoF''. The book The preface states that the work was first explored in 1959, and Spencer Brown cites Bertrand Russell as being supportive of his endeavour. He also t ...
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Mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many areas of mathematics, which include number theory (the study of numbers), algebra (the study of formulas and related structures), geometry (the study of shapes and spaces that contain them), Mathematical analysis, analysis (the study of continuous changes), and set theory (presently used as a foundation for all mathematics). Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of mathematical object, abstract objects that consist of either abstraction (mathematics), abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicspurely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. Mathematics uses pure reason to proof (mathematics), prove properties of objects, a ''proof'' consisting of a succession of applications of in ...
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Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul Weiss, Peirce was "the most original and versatile of America's philosophers and America's greatest logician". Bertrand Russell wrote "he was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century and certainly the greatest American thinker ever". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for thirty years, Peirce meanwhile made major contributions to logic, such as theories of Algebraic logic, relations and Quantifier (logic), quantification. Clarence Irving Lewis, C. I. Lewis wrote, "The contributions of C. S. Peirce to symbolic logic are more numerous and varied than those of any other writer—at least in the nineteenth century." For Peirce, logic also encompassed much of what is now called epistemology and the philoso ...
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Nature (journal)
''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features Peer review, peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. ''Nature'' was one of the world's most cited scientific journals by the Science Edition of the 2022 ''Journal Citation Reports'' (with an ascribed impact factor of 50.5), making it one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals. , it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month. Founded in the autumn of 1869, ''Nature'' was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander MacMillan (publisher), Alexander MacMillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the j ...
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Stafford Beer
Anthony Stafford Beer (25 September 1926 – 23 August 2002) was a British theorist, consultant and professor at Manchester Business School. He is known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics, and for his heuristic in systems thinking, "the purpose of a system is what it does." Biography Early life Anthony Stafford Beer was born in Putney, London, on 25 September 1926. His father was William John Beer, chief statistician at Lloyd's Register, Lloyd's Register of Shipping, who shared a birthday with Stafford's mother, Doris Ethel Beer. At the age of 17 Stafford was expelled from Whitgift School. He enrolled for a degree in philosophy at University College London before leaving to join the British Army as a Gunner (rank), gunner in the Royal Artillery in 1944, during the Second World War. He soon received Commission (document), commissions, first in the Royal Fusiliers, and then as a company commander in the 9 Gorkha Rifles, 9th Gurkha Rifles. ...
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Philosophy Of Mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness and the nature of particular mental states.Siegel, S.: ''The Contents of Visual Experience''. New York: Oxford University Press. 2010.Macpherson, F. & Haddock, A., editors, ''Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Aspects of the mind that are studied include mental events, mental functions, mental property, mental properties, consciousness and neural correlates of consciousness, its neural correlates, the ontology of the mind, the nature of cognition and of thought, and the relationship of the mind to the body. Dualism (philosophy of mind), Dualism and monism are the two central schools of thought on the mind–bo ...
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Philosophy Of Language
Philosophy of language refers to the philosophical study of the nature of language. It investigates the relationship between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of Meaning (philosophy), meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought. Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell were pivotal figures in analytic philosophy's "linguistic turn". These writers were followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein (''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''), the Vienna Circle, Logical positivism, logical positivists, and Willard Van Orman Quine. History Ancient philosophy In the West, inquiry into language stretches back to the 5th century BC with philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Linguistic speculation predated systematic descriptions of grammar which emerged in India and in Greece. In the dialogue ''Cratylus (dialogue), Cratylus'', Plato considered the question of whether ...
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Boolean Algebra (logic)
In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variable (mathematics), variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denoted by 1 and 0, whereas in elementary algebra the values of the variables are numbers. Second, Boolean algebra uses logical operators such as Logical conjunction, conjunction (''and'') denoted as , disjunction (''or'') denoted as , and negation (''not'') denoted as . Elementary algebra, on the other hand, uses arithmetic operators such as addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division. Boolean algebra is therefore a formal way of describing logical operations in the same way that elementary algebra describes numerical operations. Boolean algebra was introduced by George Boole in his first book ''The Mathematical Analysis of Logic'' (1847), and set forth more fully in his ''An Investigation of the Laws of Thought'' (1854). According to ...
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Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure of arguments alone, independent of their topic and content. Informal logic is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. Informal logic examines arguments expressed in natural language whereas formal logic uses formal language. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a specific logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Logic plays a central role in many fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises that leads to a conclusion. An example is the argument from the premises "it's Sunday" and "if it's Sunday then I don't have to work" leading to the conclusion "I don't have to wor ...
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Cognition
Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, imagination, intelligence, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision-making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge to discover new knowledge. Cognitive processes are analyzed from very different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the fields of linguistics, musicology, anesthesia, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, education, philosophy, anthropology, biology, systemics, logic, and computer science. These and other approaches to the analysis of cognition (such as embodied cognition) are synthesized in the developing field of cognitive science, a progressively autonomou ...
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Consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, and theologians. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of it. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination, and volition (psychology), volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling, or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, metacognition, or self-awareness, either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions, and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked. Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: ordered distinc ...
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Whole Earth Catalog
The ''Whole Earth Catalog'' (WEC) was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by author Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. The magazine featured essays and articles, but was primarily focused on product reviews. The editorial focus was on self-sufficiency, ecology, alternative education, " do it yourself" (DIY), and holism, and featured the slogan "access to tools". While WEC listed and reviewed a wide range of products (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds, etc.), it did not sell any of the products directly. Instead, the vendor's contact information was listed alongside the item and its review. This is why, while not a regularly published periodical, numerous editions and updates were required to keep price and availability information up to date. In his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs compared ''The Whole Earth Catalog'' to "a sort of Google in paperba ...
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Heinz Von Foerster
Heinz von Foerster (; November 13, 1911 – October 2, 2002) was an Austrian-American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely attributed as the originator of second-order cybernetics. He was twice a Guggenheim fellow (1956–57 and 1963–64) and also was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1980. He is well known for his doomsday equation, published in a 1960 issue of ''Science'', predicting that the hyperbolic growth of the Earth's population will result in the instantaneous disappearance of all humans on Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026. As a polymath, he wrote nearly two hundred professional papers, gaining renown in fields ranging from computer science and artificial intelligence to epistemology, and researched high-speed electronics and electro-optics switching devices as a physicist, and in biophysics, the study of memory and knowledge. He worked on cognition based on neurophysiology, mathematics, and philosophy and was called ...
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