I was talking to a woman who joined our collective who has epilepsy about this area of disability rights. The jargon term disabled has serious problems with the concept in terms of conceptualizing ability and not ability. But both of us agree this cognitive area is ‘the’ juicy area of social understanding what a left could take on beyond the original socialist view.

Much of math has considerable history of disabled thinkers doing the work. This implies that a model of math as an able bodied activity is off kilter. With Godel, why would he pick this area to do his work. According to historical accounts he was religious person. To me then one might ask questions of math activity, what sort of work roots it has in human cognition and why.
thanks,
Doyle

take a look at:

http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/eng/Raatikainen/rev-panu.pdf

For a review of Chaitin’s book and general ideas. Chaitin is definitely a lively character, if not as big a revolutionary as he claims to be ;-).

are you perhaps referring Gregory Chaitin’s Omega (the probability of picking a halting Turing machine, IIRC?)? Or are you talking about omega-consistency as defined by Gödel (and the issues of constructive vs existential proofs)? In either case, I would love to hear more!

I agree with you about Dennett and dualism. I find the reviewer’s take on Dennett not as an opposing but a different view. In particular, Dennett’s reasoning cannot underwrite his [leap of] faith in omniscience of reductionism. To some extent his seems nothing more than a psychological pose (machismo, in this case).

The latest Sci Amer has an interesting article where a disciple of Godel gives a mathematical reason why an omega (a special designated number to define an infinite range of numbers which can’t be theorized in math at all).

The writer in the NYT’s article seems to base his criticism of Dennett upon the idea that Dennett is superstitious. Which in my view is not a stable way to get at Dennett’s intellectual problems. It is enough that Dennett claims too much for genetics to see that Dennett has a flawed outlook on how rules work. Which the mathematician cited above addresses in math directly.

Dennett commits an error of Cartesian dualism by making DNA all powerful.
Thanks,
Doyle