Remoteness and Computation
- 1. Remoteness and Computation Dave Robertson
- 6. Fae da Grund, Vagaland
- 7. Peter of Spain (thirteenth century)… was the author of a standard textbook on logic, the Tractatus, which enjoyed a high renown in Europe for many centuries…One of the most important elements in Peter's logic concerns the doctrine of supposition… The primary semantic property of a word is its significatio, in Peter's definition, the "representation of a thing by a word in accordance with convention". It is a natural property of a word, the presentation of some (universal) content to the mind… The counterpart of significatio, the formal constituent of every meaning, is the word's capacity to "stand for" different things (even though its significatio remains the same), depending on the context in which it is used. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Editor's Notes
- #3: Slide 2 To find the skerry you have to go to Shetland which is far out in the North Sea near the edge of the continental shelf, between Scotland and Norway.
- #4: Slide 3 Then you need to head to the north end of the Mainland island, near the ferry to the island of Yell.
- #5: Slide 4 Then you need to take your boat into Yell Sound: among some of the strongest tides to be found around the British coast.
- #6: Slide 5 The skerry lies between the isles of Little Roe, Brother Isle and Laama. You can only land at certain tides and at one landing stone. Don’t mistake it or you will die alone
- #7: Slide 6 Shetland has hard weather and long winters. These breed stories of visitors with knowledge of secret places. They will lure you to join them but once you’ve passed over there’s no return.
- #8: Slide 7 Salamanca. One of the oldest universities in the world and one of the more remote. I travelled there recently on a long bus journey from Madrid through arid plains in midsummer. Eight centuries ago, within these walls scholars were discovering how it was possible sometimes to reason about truth in an abstract world. They could never connect to this abstract world but I can, and you have.
- #9: Slide 8 I was born to a quiet inlet on the edge of Yell sound. The house is the dot to the right on the far side of the voe. On the left is the school. Midway, you can just see the noost where we had our boat hauled out.
- #10: Slide 9 For part of summer, when I was young, I went with my father on seal hunting trips to the isles. Through this I experienced the beauty and harshness of nature and this made me want to be a biologist. There being no biologists in the family, and, at that time, very little view of “professions” other than the standard five (teacher, doctor, lawyer, minister, failure) the destination was unclear.