August 1, 2014 at 5:56 P.M. I am in receipt of what purports to be yet another letter from Fernando Fernandez dated July 29, 2014 by way of Google email.
This latest communication from Mr. Fernandez contains an alleged email from "Michelle Castro" at Invicta Watch Company stating: "there is proof of prior payment but there is still a pending charge of $28.00 return shipping. The watch has exceeded 30 days [It sure has!] and will be returned unrepaired if you do not make payments."
In fact, both money orders -- one for $48.00 and the other for $28.00 -- have been sent, received, cashed and ACKNOWLEDGED by Invicta.
A copy of the exchange of letters and copies of my money orders have been received by Invicta Watch Company, 3069 Taft Street, Hollywood, Florida 33021, USA, by certified mail, return receipt signed for on July 28, 2014 by Invicta employee "Maria Uribe." Ms. Uribe's handwriting is nearly identical to "Cecilia Luce's" writing to say nothing of "Sheldon" and "R. Schnezler."
I will send another package by certified mail, return receipt requested to Ms. Letitia James and Invicta Watch Company with copies of these recent communications, including another handwritten note from Fernando Fernandez (who is probably also Michelle Castro), along with copies (again) of the two money orders cashed by Invicta.
I should point out that the Public Advocate's office in New York is located in zip code 10007 while the letter from Mr. Fernandez was sent from a Post Office meter stamped at zip code 10001.
The Public Advocate's office has its own postage meter with the appropriate zip code indicated.
Is "Fernando Fernandez" a.k.a. "Michelle Castro" also "George Johnson" of the Times? ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")
July 28, 2014 at 1:47 P.M. When I signed-in just now to computer number #06, NYPL, Inwood Branch, I was greeted not with the library's home page, but with a "customer survey" (purportedly from the library) which I have copied. The address for this "survey" is Survey Monkey, Inc [US] https//www.surveymonkey.com/s/W6JY9W2
The New York Public Library does not request personal information from library patrons concerning finances or their sex lives. I assume this survey request is bogus. ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")
July 26, 2014 at 4:41 P.M. I have just received a letter from Fernando Fernandez at the NYC Public Advocate's Office indicating that Mr. Fernandez contacted Invicta Watch Company explaining that all payments ($70.00) have been made but no watch has been received by me.
The response received, allegedly, from Michelle Castro, Customer Service Representative, mcastro@invictawatch.com is "Can you provide the tracking number from when you sent it in?"
This CAS or tracking number appears on all of my letters -- both to the NYC Public Advocate and to Invicta -- as well as being written on the money orders cashed by Invicta Watch Company.
I will send a copy of this latest letter to Ms. Letitia James, NYC Public Advocate by certified mail, return receipt requested, copy to Invicta, possibly with a copy also of this online posting. ("Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.")
The email address for Fernando Fernandez, allegedly, is ffernandez@pubadvocate.nyc.gov The copy of these emails sent to me, however, bears the following address at the bottom of the page: http://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/ui=2&ik=a9d8ea7bad&view=pt&search=sent&the=1476... (7/24/2014)
I did not realize that the NYC Public Advocate's office makes use of google email for their communications.
A handwritten note from Mr. Fernandez says: "We are getting close to obtaining your watch. 212-669-3571 (no mes, [sic.] please)."
The handwriting of this note seems to be a woman's writing.
July 26, 2014 at 2:57 P.M. I have been waiting for a Time/Warner service person since 8:00 A.M. How curious? A call from "METRO CABLE" explained that the Time/Warner person would "reschedule" for an hour later, every hour, since 8:00 A.M. This is only to replace two cable boxes and remove four other cable boxes, since we have been sent four packages (so far) filled with cable boxes. Evidently, all of this is necessary in order to get HBO. Anything is possible now. (Again: "Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.")
My appointment with Time/Warner has been rescheduled for Monday between 4:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M., allegedly. I have been paying for HBO and additional service since last Wednesday and, eventually, I may be able to see the channels for which I am paying good money.
Julian Baggini & Jeremy Stagroom, "Conversation With Mary Midgley: On Murdoch and Morality," in What Philosophers Think (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2003), pp. 125-133.
David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World (New York & London: Viking, 2011).
Herbert B. Enderston, A Mathematical Introduction to Logic (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970).
Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry (New York & London: Routledge, 2001).
Ernest Nagel & Robert Newman, Godel's Proof (New York: NYU Press, 1958, 1967), pp. 100-102.
Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Nathan Salmon, "The Limits of Human Mathematics," in Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Meaning: Philosophical Papers, Volume 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), p. 243.
Erwin Schrodinger, What is Life?: With "Mind and Matter" and "Autobiographical Sketches," (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967, 2000), pp. 128-140.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey (London: Penguin, 1994), pp. 382-396. ("Philosophy of Mathematics.")
Stuart Shapiro, Foundations Without Foundationalism: A Case for Second-Order Logic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). (This work deals extensively with the very topic of Mr. Johnson's article to the extent that there is a topic in the Johnson article.)
George Johnson, "Beyond Energy, Matter, Time and Space: In Looking for Understanding About Existence, Some Calls to Stretch the Search Boundaries," The New York Times, Science Times, July 22, 2014, p. D6.
A recent article appearing under the byline of "George Johnson" (probably a fictitious name) purports to comment upon some timeless mysteries surrounding the limits of mathematics and reality.
Among the surprisingly missing thinkers from Mr. Johnson's discussion are Immanuel Kant and Kurt Godel. Their absence suggests that Mr. Johnson is new to this discussion and these vexing issues.
Is "George Johnson" also Bob Menendez ("Maria Uribe"?) or someone affiliated with Senator Menendez?
Thomas Nagel is mentioned by Mr. Johnson as is Max Tegmark. I am pretty sure, however, that neither book -- Thomas Nagel's nor Max Tegmark's book, nor any of their ideas, for that matter -- has been fully absorbed by Mr. Johnson.
We are told by Mr. Johnson that "everything from physics to biology, including the mind comes down to four fundamental concepts: matter and energy interacting in an arena of space and time."
This statement by Mr. Johnson contains at least 6 concepts: "matter, energy, interaction, arena, space, time."
It may be that the author(s) of this article confused the four fundamental forces of physics (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces) for the totality of the conceptual structure used in the sciences. As it stands the statement about only four concepts is absurd or laughable. ("Robert Brandom's 'Reason in Philosophy'" and "Hilary Putnam Is Keeping It Real.")
Mary Midgley discusses Iris Murdoch's philosophy and concludes:
"I think that Iris and I share the thought that it's terribly important to see the whole and that one is usually deceiving oneself if one says X is only Y. Sometimes there's good reason to attend only to Y. But the illusion that particular scholars tend to have is that their subject has explained everything completely." (Baggini & Stagroom, p. 128.)
Biology, for example, is concerned with a concept of "life" which is important to the discussion of some "concepts" used in this Johnson article, such as "mind" and "consciousness."
This phenomenon and concept of "life," strangely, is not among Mr. Johnson's four concepts, nor can it be satisfactorily or necessarily included within the listed concepts since the boundaries of life have yet to be determined in all possible permutations, perhaps as life will be discovered elsewhere in the universe someday.
There are grammatical errors and lapses by Mr. Johnson that lead me to believe that "George Johnson's" first language is Spanish and that this person(s) is Cuban-American, probably at least one person writing this article is a woman located in Miami, Florida or Union City, New Jersey.
Perhaps "Mr." Johnson also writes letters on behalf of Invicta Watch Company, or has friends at Time/Warner, or uses the name "Fernando Fernandez," or conducts surveys for the New York Public Library. ("Does Senator Menendez have mafia friends?")
"The answers, he [Thomas Nagel?] believes, may be found through science, but only by expanding it [?] further than it may be willing [does science "will" things?] to go." (emphasis added!) ("Metaphor is Mystery.")
This sentence may illustrate Nagel's point concerning teleology. ("Thomas Nagel's Guilt by Association.")
Mr. Johnson is seriously confused when it comes to the concepts of consciousness and mind, intelligence and order, epistemology and ontology as well as metaphysics, or mathematics in fact. ("Mind and Machine" and "Consciousness and Computers.")
The most severe problem in this article concerns the use of the word and concept of "reality," also unclear is what is meant by the universe/multiverse as distinct from mathematics, which is taken to be both different from and identical with the empirical universe, whose workings mathematics describes.
Mr. Johnson's view may be described by some readers as incoherent to the extent that it is meaningful at all.
Among Johnson's errors and confusions is the false assumption that Plato's idealism is the only alternative to the view that mathematics is "about nothing other than itself."
Plato's theory in the philosophy of mathematics is now called "mathematical realism." In metaphysics this same position is called "anti-realism or idealism."
All thinkers about the nature of mathematics seem to agree that numbers are "real" -- in some sense of the word "real" -- given the various kinds of reality at issue in the discussion. Existent, real, Being -- these are exceedingly difficult concepts deployed in the analysis of the ultimate nature of numbers and the world.
To admit mathematics into "science as one of nature's irreducible parts," as Mr. Johnson writes, may confuse the language used to describe regularities found in the empirical universe for the material contents (or furniture) of the cosmos.
This confusion by Mr. Johnson is a somewhat serious "difficulty" or befuddlement resulting from an unfortunate reductivism. As Roger Scruton explains (I urge Mr. Johnson to purchase and read the work quoted below):
"On Kant's view, mathematical propositions are a priori but synthetic -- and in this he agrees with Plato. But this explanation of the claim removes its metaphysical force: we can accept it, [epistemologically,] without making mathematics into the paradigm of objective knowledge [metaphysically] that it has been since antiquity."
Modern Philosophy, pp. 382-383. (See the discussion of Kantian Constructivism and then my essay "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
Numbers may be "objects" and/or "objective" (epistemologically) without being "material" (ontologically).
The completion of this Kantian insight and, perhaps, the destruction of "absolute logicism" -- if that is Professor Tegmark's position, which I doubt -- is Godel's "Incompleteness Theorem."
This famous theorem establishes that there can be "no proof of the completeness of arithmetic which permits a proof of its consistency, and vice versa." (Scruton, p. 395.)
"It also follows that almost all mathematical statements are undecidable: [in ultimate terms] there is no proof that they are true, and no proof that they are false. Each of them is either true or false, but there is no way of using physical objects such as brains or computers to discover which is which. [noumenal] The laws of physics provide us only with a narrow window through which we can look out on the world of abstractions. [phenomenal]"
Please underline this next paragraph:
"All undecidable statements are, directly or indirectly, about infinite sets. To the opponents of infinity in mathematics, this is due to the meaninglessness of such statements. But to me it is a powerful argument ... that abstractions exist objectively. [emphasis added] For it means that the truth value of an undecidable statement is certainly not just a convenient way of describing the behavior of some physical object like a computer or a collection of dominoes." (Deutsch, pp. 184-185.) ("Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism" and "Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")
To suggest that the universe is a mathematical structure may mean: 1). that the regularities in nature operate in calculable ways for which mathematics, as a language and system of representation is useful, exclusively for modeling the forces of nature or "what is"; or 2). it may mean that numbers are ontologically real entities discovered, empirically, floating around in (or as) the universe.
The first claim is epistemological; the second claim is more metaphysical. Any of these claims will be connected to understandings of the concept of "Being" or "is" and/or "reality."
Without clarifying this elementary distinction or how terms are used all subsequent discussion is of limited value or may be totally worthless. ("The Mathematics of Love.")
Accordingly, the opposition between Mr. Johnson's questions "Is mathematics, for all its power, only the root of reality? Or is it a product of the human mind?" vanishes when we grasp that the human mind and its products are quite "real." Kant and Einstein insist on this point to say nothing of William Shakespeare.
Mathematics may be a product of the human mind and nevertheless real and objective, like chemistry and the Harry Potter books, or Sherlock Holmes. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" and "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Author.")
Mr. Johnson has indeed "come far" in describing the "vast beyond."
"If the theorem-knowing machinery of the human brain is a computer, then the human mind surpasses the human brain or humankind does not deserve credit for creating pure mathematics (or, as some might see it, humankind does not deserve the blame). Thus, the human mind either presupposes the very organ in which it evidently resides or else it is not responsible for the existence of pure mathematics -- or both, as Godel himself believed (and I agree)." (emphasis added!)
Salmon, "The Limits of Human Mathematics," pp. 245-246 (emphasis added).
Godel was led by this Kantian insight to develop an argument for the existence of God based on reworking the ontological argument: Please see my essay "Is it rational to believe in God?"
