This first post to the X-Logic blog inaugurates a new phase
in X-Logic, so I will briefly say where it has been and where
I hope it is going.
.
My first start on X-Logic was in January 2000, as an open
source project hosted at SourceForge.net.
That year was not a good one for me and things ground to a
halt in the summer before I had even got off the ground.
At that time I was keen to get something done, so I was
hacking around with XML technologies and not spending much
time writing up what I was trying to do.
The most important thing, I think in retrospect, which I did
then was come up with some small formal models for some
aspects of the X-Logic idea, and these models have kept the
idea alive for me since then even though I haven't
progressed them (other than in my head).
.
I did also produce a small collection of scripts of various
kinds which made it possible to transit my web writing to
XML and made it possible to convert ProofPower formal
specifications and proofs into web pages. These things I
still use, though my formal work is done in LaTeX->PDF these
days.
.
The general conception was then easiest described as some
modern pluralistic distributed approach to Leibniz's lingua
characteristica and calculus ratiocinator. (which I also
think of in my mind as what the QED project should have been
trying to do).
.
Since then, though I kept the idea alive, it has scarcely
moved forward. I have moved forward myself, and one of the
ways I have moved forward is: more exclusively into
philosophy. So whereas I then thought of myself as having a
wide range of interests, including philosophy, I now have
pretty much the same range of interests but consider them
all to be philosophy, so my expectations about what to do
about those interests have shifted. Notably away even from
the possibility of prototyping software. But not away from
high level (architectural) design. Which, when we are
talking about cognitive systems, I think of as "Philosophy
as Engineering".
.
Now, truth be told, even back in 2000 it was these top level
ideas I was interested in working with. But then I didn't
have confidence in the merits of doing design which might
never be implemented. Having spent so much longer, since
then, trying to do philosophy, that doesn't sound so futile
to me now.
.
January 2010 and I am rejigging my philosophical
aspirations, slowly getting a firmer grip on what kind of
philosophical project I might be able to deliver on.
The upshot is "The HOT philosophy project", (for more
details of which see the Roger Bishop Jones blog or
RBJones.com).
This is a book in three parts, the third is "X-Logic", and
alongside this is to be a formal modelling project also
called X-Logic. This one more tightly focussed than the
original X-Logic project and hosted at Google code.
So there is to be one third of a book giving the fullest
story which can be given in English prose, and as much space
as I like for the formal development of a theory about: a
way of organising heterogeneous propositional knowledge
which supports fine discrimination in what we know about the
propositions in question.
.
There is a response to scepticism here, a response to the
idea that one never really knows. And the response is an
elaboration of the pyrrhonean "appearances appear" and the
positivists insistence on science not going beyond the
evidence. The presumption is that, rather than merely
storing what we suppose to be true, we store information
about the grounds we have for believing in the truth.
.
This permits us to reason with uncertain premises (which is
all we ever have) and say something reasonably definite about
the strength of our grounds for belief in the conclusions.
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I won't go further right now, except to say that I now have
these two principle tracks to get moving.
.
The first is the philosophical, and will begin with an
account of the various considerations which influence my
present conception of X-Logic. This is to be the third part
of the HOT philosophy book. The second is the formal
modelling. I could make a start on this before clarification
at least to the extent of putting together a suitable formal
environment to do the kind of modelling I envisage, and
checking this out by re-doing the models I already have, in
that environment.
.
I would guess that here on the X-Logic blog I will post a
skeleton of the philosophical account which will go in the
book. For more detail, the drafts in PDF and HTML will be
available at RBJones.com
.
I'm not expecting much feedback for a long time, but it
would be welcome.
.
RBJ
