Deety's and Lewis Carroll's game of sorites in TNOTB - did Deety's 6 statements lead to "Gay Deceiver is a time-traveling machine"?

[loupgarous]

Working down my bucket list, I find myself at pages 351-352 of the Fawcett Gold Medal paperback edition of RAH's "The Number of the Beast" (heretofore "TNOTB"), in which Deety and the Reverend Doctor Charles Dodgson (aka "Lewis Carroll," the author under that name of "Alice in Wonderland" and under his own of "Symbolic Logic") engage in a six-statement game of sorites.

I've always been troubled that the six statements Deety comes up with fail to satisfy the definition RAH gives (page 351 of TNOTB: "statements incomplete in themselves but capable of intended to arrive at only one possible conclusion.").

Deety's six statements (the bottom half of page 352, TNOTB):
"1) Everything, not absolutely ugly, may be kept in a drawing room;
2) Nothing, that is encrusted with salt, is ever quite dry;
3) Nothing should be kept in a drawing room, unless it is free from damp;
4) Time-traveling machines are always kept near the sea;
5) Nothing, that is what you expect it to be, can be absolutely ugly;
6) Whatever is kept near the sea is encrusted by salt."

followed by (from Dodgson/Carroll): '"The conclusion is true?" he asked.
(Deety:) ' "Yes."
For the first time he stared openly at Gay Deceiver.
"That, then - I infer - is a 'time-travelling machine?' "
Yes.. although it does other things as well."

Ok, Members of the Massed Minds, I drew it out in Venn diagrams (which, from my travails in sixth grade, has been how I sort out statements in sequential logic unless coding in a programming language).

By statement 1,The set "Everything, not absolutely ugly" contains those things that may be kept "in a drawing room."
("may" is a permissive operator that does not confine "Everything, not absolutely ugly" to the inside of a drawing room);

Statements 2, 3, 4 annd 6 establish that Time-traveling machines are ALWAYS kept near the sea, are thus encrusted by salt, are never quite dry, and should, therefore, never be kept in a drawing room (by order of inclusion in successively nested logical sets).

Statement 5 is interesting. A new set, "things that are what you expect them to be," is introduced by Deety and placed inside the set of "Everything, not absolutely ugly."

But Deety uses the operators "may" and "should" to define the set of what is placed in a drawing room. You MAY keep "Everything, not absolutely ugly" in a drawing room but are not compelled to do so - the set "Everything, not absolutely ugly" includes the inside of a drawing room, not vice versa.

A little more controversial is the proposition "Nothing should be kept in a drawing room, unless it is free from damp" but by Victorian English conventions, I think we're intended to accept "should" as an absolute condition excluding damp items (like "time-traveling machines") from "in a drawing room."

My question - does the text actually lead Charles Dodgson/"Lewis Carroll" from those six statements to the true conclusion that Gay Deceiver is a time-traveling machine?

I don't think so, either from logic or an appreciation of the geography of south-central England. The rest of page 352 establishes that Dodgson and his three nieces are a day's walk from Christ Church College, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. Having walked through Oxford University and the surrounding streets of Oxford with my wife and driven the roads of England between Oxford and the English seashore several counties away, I can testify Gay Deceiver was not "near the sea," either by road miles, as the crow flies, or in the frame of reference of someone who had to wake two young girls up and herd them and their sister Alice back home by foot.

Since (as Dodgson admits at the end of page 352) he had no logical grounds for expecting Gay Deceiver to be anything in particular, Statement 5 fails logically in any case.

But I'm open to any logical arguments I may have overlooked that Deety's statements don't lead to only one possible outcome, that being that Gay Deceiver is "a time-traveling machine." Honestly, the only outcome one can arrive at from rigorous logical analysis of those six statements is a two-fold one:

(a) Time-traveling machines should not be kept in a drawing room;
(b) Things that are what you expect them to be may be kept in a drawing room.

Nothing in Deety's six statements seems to me to connect the two folds of the outcome as I've stated it. I hope someone can show me where I went wrong on that analysis.

Vance P. Frickey

"I aim to misbehave." Captain Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity"

[loupgarous]

correction: RAH's definition of "sorites" ought to read "statements incomplete in themselves but intended to arrive at only one possible conclusion."

I wouldn't clutter up the NG with this correction, but it's a nit that OUGHT to be picked considering the question I ask in the post. Thanks, people.

[Simon Jester UK]

loupgarous wrote:
...

I'm open to any logical arguments I may have overlooked that Deety's
statements don't lead to only one possible outcome, that being that Gay
Deceiver is "a time-traveling machine." Honestly, the only outcome one can
arrive at from rigorous logical analysis of those six statements is a
two-fold one:

(a) Time-traveling machines should not be kept in a drawing room;
(b) Things that are what you expect them to be may be kept in a drawing
room.

Nothing in Deety's six statements seems to me to connect the two folds of
the outcome as I've stated it. I hope someone can show me where I went
wrong on that analysis.

Vance P. Frickey

"I aim to misbehave." Captain Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity"

----

I don't believe you are wrong, Vance - do you remember the post/essay by
"Gharlane of Eddore" on TNotB?

[loupgarous]

No, but thanks for the suggestion, and for responding, Simon.

I'm a little reassured that several years on what Gregory House, MD calls "those tasty Vicodin" for assorted pains and ills hasn't dulled my ability to parse logical statements :-)

[Simon Jester UK]

loupgarous wrote:
> On Friday, September 28, 2012 1:47:52 AM UTC-6, Simon Jester UK wrote:
>> loupgarous wrote:
>> ...
>> I'm open to any logical arguments I may have overlooked that Deety's
>> statements don't lead to only one possible outcome, that being that Gay
>> Deceiver is "a time-traveling machine." Honestly, the only outcome one
>> can
>> arrive at from rigorous logical analysis of those six statements is a
>> two-fold one:
>>
>> (a) Time-traveling machines should not be kept in a drawing room;
>> (b) Things that are what you expect them to be may be kept in a drawing
>> room.
>>
>> Nothing in Deety's six statements seems to me to connect the two folds of
>> the outcome as I've stated it. I hope someone can show me where I went
>> wrong on that analysis.

...

>> ----
>>
>> I don't believe you are wrong, Vance - do you remember the post/essay by
>> "Gharlane of Eddore" on TNotB?
>
> No, but thanks for the suggestion, and for responding, Simon.
>
> I'm a little reassured that several years on what Gregory House, MD calls
> "those tasty Vicodin" for assorted pains and ills hasn't dulled my ability
> to parse logical statements :-)

Here's a page on the Heinlein Society website, that includes his essay:
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/numberbeast.html

Particularly relevant:
"THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST is the most massive and wonderful practical joke
ever played on the Speculative Fiction genre-reading public ... [the author
is] demonstrating a kind of conscious ineptitude at his own craft, for a
joke.... because only when you understand it, only when you are *aware* of
it, can you purposely botch it up with such skill, and produce something
that is *still* good enough to keep the people who DON'T realize what's
going on ... reading."

It's my opinion that Deety's set of statements is another of the author's
jokes - the logical conclusion is that a time-travelling machine is never
something you would expect it to be (since time-travelling machines are
excluded from the set of things that are what you expect them to be).

Since Gay Deceiver is the only obvious vehicle in the vicinity, it must
obviously be the time machine - and therefore, it *cannot* be the time
machine!

However, you would only spot this apparent "ineptitude" with logic if you
followed the reasoning all the way through...

[loupgarous]

RAH does this sort of thing again (and at about the same time in his career, IIRC) in Friday. The coded signals at the breakfast bar communications screens throughout North America ("you have (n) days to live... ") deliver a consistent-SEEMING message which falls apart when you try to analyze it logically.

I once tackled those messages cryptologically here in AFH, and the only possible "key" I found was the call codes in the messages - the alphabetical sequences in the call codes ("LEV," et cetera) seemed to be references to books of the Bible. If you try to seriously tease out a meaning, you make a logical pratfall (of course, it wouldn't have been the first one I made in this NG :-) ).

Thomas Easton arrived at pretty much the same conclusion about Friday (in his review of the book in _Analog_) as the one reached in the Heinlein Society essay you quoted - that the coded messages are an "in-joke" designed to fool those who think themselves MOST familiar with the RAH canon. The obvious candidates for "fool-ee" would have been Alexei Panshin and H. Bruce Franklin (Venceremos 'Brigade' veteran Franklin looming especially large as a sententious sucker ready for pants-ing with a literary hoax - and in Lazarus Long's description of the "Critics' Lounge" in _TNoTB_, he actually foreshadows such a prank).

David Silver describes what may have been RAH setting Franklin up for hoisting by his own petard in an AFH post:

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.heinlein/browse_frm/month/2010-03?pli=1

"Four years after his hiring at Rutgers, in 1979, Franklin was
commissioned by an editor from the Oxford University Press to write the
first of a projected series on science fiction, the first volume of
which was to be entirely on Heinlein. He contacted the library at UC
Santa Cruz to research the Heinlein papers collection. He had earlier
written Ginny and also asked the archivist to arrange an interview with
Heinlein. Heinlein, convalescing from his cranial by-pass surgery
earlier that year but aware of Franklin's notoriety, after two weeks of
discussion with Ginny and the archivist, agreed to see him and spent a
full day in August with Franklin, the well-known interview when, as
Franklin entered the front door at Bonny Dune, US Navy reserve Lt. Cmdr.
Ginny Heinlein went out the back.

During the interview, Heinlein evidently told Franklin he was in the
process of rewriting _The Number of the Beast_ and agreed to send
Franklin a copy of the final draft to review and include in his book.
Perhaps in exchange Franklin agreed to send Heinlein a copy of
Franklin's final draft to review. Both complied. Franklin wrote his
final chapter to include a review of Number; and Heinlein evidently
communicated his input regarding Franklin's draft for Franklin in his
forward thanks Heinlein for his kindness including correction of some
errors and, even, arguing him into a change of mind in some unidentified
points.

Nevertheless, Franklin's book concludes by consigning, finally, most of
Heinlein's writings including his latest (_The Number of the Beast_) to
what his branch of political thought considers the slag heap of the
failed historical concerns of 20th century America, those of a people,
or culture "undergoing extreme stress and transformations," with what
this critic described as having "no chance for heroism and glory,
because all enemies are imaginary, all goals equally illusory, with the
only combat the battle of the sexes, where the prize is a papier-mache
relationship with a being one creates in one's own mind." _Robert A.
Heinlein: America As Science Fiction_, at 210-11."

The hilarious subtext to that last quote only becomes obvious in retrospect AFTER the Cold War, when Franklin leaps off his ideological high-horse long enough to write America's epitaph intertwined with RAH's - the epitaph itself being informed by Franklin's Marxist outlook. Postmodernism itself is getting ready for another such pratfall.

[MajorOz]

I DO miss David's takes, which, taken with his sense of history, make for such great reading.

[MikeC]

<snippage of many times quoted material- much good work there Vance, Simon>

>> <David's words quoting a section of Franklin's book>

>> Nevertheless, Franklin's book concludes by consigning, finally, most of
>> Heinlein's writings including his latest (_The Number of the Beast_) to
>> what his branch of political thought considers the slag heap of the
>> failed historical concerns of 20th century America, those of a people,
>> or culture "undergoing extreme stress and transformations," with what
>> this critic described as having "no chance for heroism and glory,
>> because all enemies are imaginary, all goals equally illusory, with the
>> only combat the battle of the sexes, where the prize is a papier-mache
>> relationship with a being one creates in one's own mind." _Robert A.
>> Heinlein: America As Science Fiction_, at 210-11."

>> The hilarious subtext to that last quote only becomes obvious in retrospect

>> AFTER the Cold War, when Franklin leaps off his ideological high-horse long

>> enough to write America's epitaph intertwined with RAH's - the epitaph itself

>> being informed by Franklin's Marxist outlook.

>> Postmodernism itself is getting ready for another such pratfall.

On 10/4/2012 3:02 PM, MajorOz wrote:
> I DO miss David's takes, which, taken with his sense of history, make for such great reading.

I too miss his verbage couched as questions, his statements posed as
facts, and his take on the answers suggested by history. His ability to
see what others might or might not observe was a welcome interlude.

Mike C