#quine

[quinemajo]

[anaxerneas]

A "direct quotation" is a record of verbal behavior which depends more explicitly upon a knowledge of the conditions under which the behavior occurred. It is often, however, little more than an acoustic or phonetic transcription which permits the reader to reconstruct relevant properties of the original behavior. The spoken report that someone said It is four o'clock actually reconstructs an instance of verbal behavior. A written report permits the reader to reconstruct it for himself.

A technique which permits the reconstruction of a datum is unusual. Science does not generally resort to models or mimicry; its descriptions of events do not resemble those events. In the field of nonverbal behavior we usually do not report behavior by imitating it. Yet in speaking a language under study the scientist uses mimicry in lieu of the more usual method of description which bears no point-to-point correspondence with the thing described.

No matter how tempting it may be to utilize the special possibility of phonetic transcription or direct quotation to reconstruct the behavior being analyzed, it must be emphasized that from the point of view of scientific method an expression such as It is four o'clock is the name of a response. It is obviously not the response being studied, because that was made by someone else at some other time. It simply resembles that response in point of form. The conditions responsible for the original response may not share anything in common with the conditions responsible for the response on the part of the describing scientist. This practice, called hypostasis, is an anomaly in scientific method. The field of verbal behavior is distinguished by the fact that the names of the things with which it deals are acoustically similar to the things themselves.

As Quine has said, "A quotation is not a description, but a hieroglyph; it designates its object not by describing it in terms of other objects, but by picturing it." Quine is speaking here of the written report of written verbal behavior. In no other science is this possible, because in no other science do names and the things named have similar structures.

B.F Skinner, Verbal Behavior

[skyeqt]

I wrote a quine, without strings, in a calculator

Okay so I should probably clarify some things, the calculator in question (dc) is more of a "calculating tool", it is built into most linux distributions, and it is a command line tool. I should also clarify "without strings", because dc itself does support strings, and I do actually use strings, however, I do not use string literals (I'll explain that more later), and I only use strings that are 1 character long at most.

So first of all, why did I decide to do this, well, this all started when I found a neat quine for dc:

[91Pn[dx]93Pn]dx

If you're curious about how this works, and what I turned it into, it'll be under the cut, for more technical people, you can skip or skim the first text block, after that is when it gets interesting.

So first of all, what is a quine, a quine is a computer program that outputs its own source code, this is easier said than done, the major problem is one of information, the process of executing source code normally means a lot of code, for a little output, but for a quine you want the exact same amount of code and output. First of all, let's explain dc "code" itself, and then this example. Dc uses reverse polish notation, and is stack-based and arbitrary precision. Now for the nerds reading this, you already understand this, for everybody else's benefit, let's start at the beginning, reverse polish notation means what you'd write as 1+1 normally (infix notation), would instead be written as 1 1 +, this seems weird, but for computers, makes a lot of sense, you need to tell it the numbers first, and then what you want to do with them. Arbitrary precision is quite easy to explain, this means it can handle numbers as big, or as small, or with as many decimal points as you want, it will just get slower the more complex it gets, most calculators are fixed precision, have you ever done a calculation so large you get "Infinity" out the other end? That just means it can't handle a bigger number, and wants to tell you that in an easy to understand way, big number=infinity. Now as for stack based, you can think of a stack a bit pile a pile of stuff, if you take something off, you're probably taking it off the top, and if you put something on, you're probably also putting it ontop. So here you can imagine a tower of numbers, when I write 1 1 +, what I'm actually doing is throwing 1 onto the tower, twice, and then the + symbol says "hey take 2 numbers of the top, add them, and throw the result back on", and so the stack will look like: 1 then 1, 1, then during the add it has nothing, then it has a 2. I'm going to start speeding up a bit here, most of dc works this way: you have commands that deal with the stack itself, commands that do maths, and commands that do "side things". Most* of these are 1 letter long, for example, what if I want to write the 1+1 example a little differently, I could do 1d+, this puts 1 on the stack (the pile of numbers), then duplicates it, so you have two 1s now, and then adds those, simple enough. Lets move onto something a little more complex, let's multiply, what if I take 10 10 * well I get 100 on the stack, like you may expect, but this isn't output yet, we can print it with p, and sure enough we see the 100, I can print the entire stack with f, which is just 100 too for now, I can print it slightly differently with n, I'll get into that later, or I can print with P which uhhhh "d", what happened there? Well you see d is character 100 in ASCII, what exactly ASCII is, if you don't know, don't worry, just think of it as a big list of letters, with corresponding numbers. And final piece of knowledge here will be, what is a string, well it's basically just some text, like this post! Although normally a lot shorter, and without all the fancy formatting. Now with all that out of the way, how does the quine I started with actually work?

From here it's going to get more technical, if you're lost, don't worry, it will get even more technical later :). So in dc, you make a string with [text], so if we look at the example again, pasted here for your convenience

[91Pn[dx]93Pn]dx

it makes one long string at the start, this string goes onto the stack, and then gets duplicated, so it's on the stack twice, then it's executed as a macro. In technical language, this is just an eval really, in less technical language, it just means take that text, and treat it like more commands, so you may see, it starts with 91P, 91 is the ASCII character code for [, which then gets printed out, not coincidentally, this is the start of the program itself. Now the "n" that comes afterwards, as I said earlier, this is a special type of print, this means print without newline (P doesn't use newlines either), which means we can keep printing without having to worry about everything being on separate lines, now what is it printing? Well what's on top of the stack, oh look, it's the copy of the entire string, which once again not coincidentally, is the entire inside of the brackets, so now we've already printed out the majority of the program, now dx is thrown on the stack, which as you may notice is the ending of the program, but we won't print it yet, we'll first print 93 as a character, which is "]", and then print dx, and this completes the quine, the output is now exactly the same as the input. Now, I found this some time ago, and uncovered it again in my command history, it's interesting, sure, but you may notice it's not very... complicated, the majority of the program is just stored as a string, so it already has access to 90% of itself from the start, and just has to do some extra odd jobs to become a full quine, I wanted to make this worse. I started modifying it, doing some odd things, which I won't go into, I wanted to remove the numbers, replacing it entirely with calculations from numbers I already have access to, like the length of a string, this wasn't so hard, but then I hit on what this post is about "can I make this without using string literals"

Can I make this without using string literals?

Yes, I can! And it took a whole day. I'll start by explaining what a string literal is, but this will largely be the end of my explaining, from here it's about to get so technical and I don't want to spend all day explaining things and make this post even longer than it's already going to be. A string literal is basically just the [text] you saw earlier, it's making a string by just, writing out the string. In dc there's only 1 other way to make a string, the "a" command, which converts a number, into a 1 character string, using the number as an ASCII character code. Strings in dc are immutable, you can only print, execute, and move them around with the usual stack operations, you cannot concatenate, you cannot modify in any way, the only other things you can do with a string, is grab the first character, or count the characters, but as I just explained, our only way to make strings creates a 1 character string, which cannot be extended, so the first character is just, the entire thing, and the length is always 1, so neither of these are useful to us. So, now we understand what the restriction of no string literals really is (there are more knock on restrictions I'll bring up later), let's get into the meat of it, how I did it.

So I've just discussed the way I'll be outputting the text (this quine will need text, since all the outputting commands are text!), with the "a" command and the single character strings it produces, let's now figure out some more restrictions. So any programmers reading this are going to be horrified by what I'm about to say. If I remove string literals, dc is no longer Turing Complete, I am trying to write a quine in a language (subset) that is not Turing Complete, and can only output 1 character at a time**. You can't loop in dc, but you can recurse, with macros, which are effectively just evaling a string, you can recurse, since these still operate on the main stack, registers, arrays, etc, they can't be passed or return anything, but this doesn't matter. Now I cannot do this, because if I only have 1 character strings via "a" then I can't create a macro that does useful work, and executes something, since that would require more than 1 command in it. So I am limited to only linear execution***. Now lets get into the architecture of this quine, and finally address all these asterisks, since they're finally about to be relevant, I started with a lot of ideas for how I'd architect these, I call these very creatively by their command structure, dScax/dSax, rotate-based execution, all-at-once stack flipping, or the worst of them all, LdzRz1-RSax (this one is just an extension of rotate-based execution), I won't bother explaining these, since these are all failed ideas, although if anybody is really curious, I might explain some other time, for now, I'll focus on the one that worked, K1+dk: ; ;ax, or if you really want to try to shoehorn a name, Kdkax execution, now, anybody intimately familiar with dc, will probably be going "what the fuck are you doing", and rightly so, so now, let's finally address the asterisks, and get into what Kdkax execution actually means, and how I used it.

*"Most commands are 1 character long, but there are exceptions, S, L, s, l, :, ; and comparisons, only : and ; are relevant here, so I won't bother with the rest, although some of the previous architectures used S and L as you may have seen. : and ; are the array operations, there are 256 arrays in dc, each one named after a character, if I want to store into array "a" I will write :a, a 2 character sequence, same for loading from array "a" ;a, I'll get into exactly how these work later **I can only output 1 character at a time with p, P, and n, but f can output multiple characters, the only catch being it puts a newline between each element of the stack, and because I can only put 1 character into each stack element, it's a newline between each character for me (except for numbers). I'll get into what this means exactly later ***I can do non-linear execution, and in fact, it was required to make this work, but I can only do this via single character macros, which is, quite the restriction to put it lightly

So I feel like I've been dancing around it now, what does my quine actually look like, well, I wanted to keep things similar to the original, where I write a program, I store it, then I output it verbatim, with some cleanup work. However, I can't store the program as strings, or even characters, I instead need to store it as numbers, and the easiest way to do this, is to store it as the char codes for dc commands, so if I want to execute my 1d+ example from before, I instead store it as 49 100 43, which when you convert them back to characters, and then execute them in sequence, to do the same thing, except I can store them, which means I can output them again, without needing to re-create them, this will come in handy later. So, well how do I execute them, well, ax is the sequence that really matters here, and it's something all my architectures have in common, it converts them to a character, then executes them, in that order, not so hard, except, I'm not storing them anymore, well then if you're familiar with dc, you might come across my first idea, dScax, which, for reasons you will understand later, became dSax, this comes close to working, it does store the numbers in a register, and execute them, but this didn't really end up working so well. I think the next most important thing to discuss though, is how I'm outputting, as I mentioned earlier "f" will be my best friend, this outputs the entire stack, this is basically the whole reason this quine is possible, it's my only way of outputting more characters from the program, than the program itself takes up, since I can't loop or recurse, and f is the only character that outputs more than 1 stack element at once, it is my ticket to outputting more than I'm inputting, and thereby "catching up" with all the characters "wasted" on setup work. So now, as I explained earlier, f prints a newline between each stack element, and I can only create 1 character stack elements, and because in a quine the output must equal the input, this also means the input must equal the output. And because I just discovered an outputting quirk, this means my input must also match this quirk, if I want this to be a quine, so, my input is limited to 1 character, or 1 number, per line, since this is the layout my stack will take, and therefore will be the layout of my output. So what does this actually mean, I originally thought I couldn't use arrays at all, but, this isn't true, the array operations are multiple character sequences yes, but turns out, there actually are multiple characters per line, there's also a linefeed character. And since there is an array per ASCII character, I am simply going to be storing everything in "array linefeed"! So now, with all of this in mind, what does the program actually look like.

Let's take a really simple example, even simpler than earlier, let's simply store 1 and then print it, this seems simple enough, 1p does it fine, but, lets convert it to my format, and it's going to get quite long already, in order to prevent it getting even longer, I'll use spaces instead of newlines, just keep in mind, they're newlines in the actual program

112 49 0 k K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : 0 k K 1 + d k ; K 1 + d k ; 0 k K 1 + d k ; a x K 1 + d k ; a x

now, what the fuck is going on here, first of all, I took "1p" and converted both characters into their character codes "49 112" and then flipped them backwards (dw about it), then, I run them through the Kdkax architecture. What happens is I initialise the decimal points of precision to 0, then, I increment it, put it back, but keep a copy, and then run the array store, keep in mind, this is storing in array linefeed, but what and where is it storing? Its index is the copy of the decimal points of precision I just made, and the data it's storing at that index, is whatever comes before that on the stack, which, not coincidentally, is 49, the character code for the digit "1", then I do the same process again, but this time, the decimal points of precision is 1, not 0, and the stack is 1 shorter. So now, I store 112 (the character code for p), in index 2 of array linefeed, now you may notice, the array is looking the exact same as the original program I wanted to run, but, in character code form, it is effectively storing "1p", but as numbers in an array, instead of characters in a string. I then reset the precision with 0k, and start again, this time with the load command, which loads everything back out, except, now flipped, the stack originally read 49 112, since that's the order I put them on, the top is 49, the last thing I put on, but after putting them into the array, and taking them back out, now I'm putting on 112 last instead, so now the stack reads 112 49, which happens to be the exact start of the code, this will be important later. For now, the important part is, the numbers are still in the array, taking them out just makes a copy, so, this time I take them out again, but rather than just storing them, I convert them to a character, and then execute them, 49 -> 1 -> 1 on the stack, 112 -> p -> print the stack, and I get 1 printed out with the final x. Now this may not seem very significant, but this is how everything is going to be done from here on out.

So, what do I do next? Well now's time to start on the quine itself, you may have noticed in the last example, I mentioned how at one point, the stack exactly resembles the program itself, or at least the start of it, this is hopefully suspicious to you, so now you may wonder, what if my program starts with "f" to print out the entire stack? Well, I get all the numbers back, i.e. I get the start of the file printed out, and this will happen, no matter how many numbers (commands) I include, now we're getting somewhere, so if I write fc at the start of my program (converted into character codes and then newline separated) then I include enough copies of the whole Kdkax stuff to actually store, load, and execute it, then I can execute whatever I want, and I'll get back everything except the Kdkax stuff itself, awesome! So now we come onto, how do I get back the "Kdkax stuff", and more importantly, what are my limitations executing things like this, can I just do anything?

Well, put simply, no, I cannot use multicharacter sequences, and I actually can't this time, because it's being executed as a single character macro, I don't have a newline to save me, and I just get an error back, so okay that's disappointing. This multicharacter sequence rule means I also can't input numbers bigger than 1 digit, because remember, the numbers get converted into characters and then executed, and luckily, executing a number, just means throwing it on the stack, so I'm good for single digit numbers. Then in terms of math (I know, this is a post about a calculator and only now is the maths starting), I can't do anything that produces decimals, since the digits of precision is constantly being toyed with, and I also can't use the digits of precision as a storage method either, because it's in use. I can actually use the main stack though! It's thankfully left untouched (through a lot of effort), so I'm fine on that front. Other multicharacter sequences include negative numbers, strings (so I can't cheese it, even here), and conditionals.

So it was somewhere around here, I started to rely on a python script I wrote for some of the earlier testing, and I modified it to this new Kdkax architecture when I was confident this was the way forwards. It converts each character into a character code, throws that at the start, and then throws as many copies of the store, load, and execute logic as I need to execute the entire thing afterwards. This allows me to input (mostly) normal dc into the input, just keeping in mind that any multicharacter sequences will be split up. So now I can start really going, and I'll speed up from here, effectively, what I need to do, is write a dc program, that can output "0 k", then "K 1 + d k :" repeated as many times as there are characters in my program, then "0 k" again, then "K 1 + d k ;" repeated just as many times, then "0 k" again, then "K 1 + d k ; a x" also repeated just as many times, without using strings, multicharacter sequences, loops, branches, recursion, any non-integer maths, with a newline instead of a space in every sequence above. Doable. The program starts with fc, like I mentioned, this prints out all the numbers at the start, and leaves us with a clean stack, I'll explain in detail how I output the "0 k" at the start, and leave the rest as an exercise to to the reader. I want to do this by printing the entire stack, so I want to put it on backwards, k first, k is character code 107 in decimal, and I can't input this directly, because I can't do anything other than single digit numbers, so maths it is, here I abuse the O command, which loads the output base, which is 10 by default, and I then write "OO*7+a", which is effectively character((10*10)+7) written in a more normal syntax, this creates "k" on the stack, and then I can move onto 0, for which I write "0", since a number just puts itself on the stack, no need to create it via a character code, I can just throw it on there, keep in mind this will all get converted to 79 79 42 55 43 97 48, but the python script handles this for me, and I don't need to think about it. The stack now reads "0 k" and I can output this with f, and clear the stack, I then do the same deal for "K 1 + d k :", the next "0 k", "K 1 + d k ;" but here I do something a little different, because I want to output "K 1 + d k ; a x" next (after the "0 k" again), I don't clear the stack after outputting "K 1 + d k ;", and instead, I put "a x" on the stack, and then use the rotate stack commands to "slot it into place" at the end, this is a neat trick that saves some extra effort, it makes printing the "0 k" in between more difficult, but I won't get into that. For now the important part, is the output of my program now looks something like this "(copy of input numbers) 0 k K 1 + d k : 0 k K 1 + d k ; 0 k K 1 + d k ; a x" this is amazing, this would be the correct output, if my program was only 1 character long at this point, now keep in mind I'm writing non-chronologically, so my program never actually looked like this, but if you're following along at home you should have this at this point:

fcOO*7+a0fcaO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**afcOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**af0nOanOO*7+anOanOO*2O*+aOO*3-a08-R08-Rf

definitely longer than 1 character, you might think at this point, it's just a matter of spamming "f" until you get there, but unfortunately, you'll never get there, every extra "f" you add, requires an extra copy of the store, load, execute block in the program, so you're outpaced 3 to 1, so what do you do about this? You print 4 at once! I want the stack to look like "K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k :" and similarly for the other steps, and then I can spam f with greater efficiency! This was somewhat trivial for the first 2, but for the ax, because I'm using the rotate to push it at the end, I need to do this 4 times too, with different rotate widths, not too hard. And now, I can finally get there, but how many times do I spam f? Until my program is exactly 3/4s printing on repeat, which makes sense if you think about it, and below, is finally the program I ended up with

fcOO*7+a0fcO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**affffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffcOO7+a0fcO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**affffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff0nOanOO*7+anOanOO*2O*+aOO*3-a08-R08-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a082-R082-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a083-R083-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a084-R084*-Rffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

I say finally, but this is actually pre-python script! The final program I actually ended up with will instead be included in a reblog, because it really needs its own cut. But anyway, this was how I wrote a quine, for a calculator, without using string literals.

[bocadosdefilosofia]

«Tomemos, por ejemplo, el caso Pegaso. Si no hubiera tal Pegaso, arguye McX, no estaríamos hablando de nada cuando usamos la palabra; por tanto, sería un sinsentido incluso decir: 'Pegaso no es'. Y pensando que eso muestra que la negación de Pegaso no puede ser mantenida coherentemente, McX concluye que Pegaso es.

Pero McX no puede convencerse a sí mismo plenamente de que alguna región del espacio-tiempo, próxima o remota, contenga un caballo alado de carne y hueso. Si pues se le urgen ulteriores detalles sobre Pegaso, dice que Pegaso es una idea presente en la mente de los hombres. Aquí, empero, empieza a manifestarse una confusión. Por amor del argumento podemos conceder que hay una entidad, y hasta una entidad única (aunque esto ya resulta muy poco plausible), que es la mental idea-Pegaso; pero esta entidad mental no es precisamente aquello de lo que uno habla cuando niega a Pegaso.»

Willard Van Orman Quine: Desde un punto de vista lógico. Ediciones Paidós Ibérica, pág. 40. Barcelona, 2002.

TGO

@bocadosdefilosofia

@dias-de-la-ira-1

[tagitables]

Happy Birthday Quine ! 🎂

[globalintellectualbeverage]

[quinloki]

I think the wildest thing about the TikTok Ban is that TikTok decided to adhere to it beyond the letter of the law.

They bent their knee willingly and gave up space and a platform they did not have to. They consciously decided to fuck over their user base when there was no valid reason for them to do so.

I've seen people talking about how you absolutely do not want to obey ahead of authority, and to see TikTok do it is... weird. It's unsettling. It feels like a dangerous stunt.

Specifically, it feels performative. It's got the marks of a Great Drama™, and given Trump's first 4 years and his absolutely bonkers love for theatrics over anything else, this just feels hollow. Like TikTok is trying to turn it's - generally younger - user base into "fans" of the republicans.

They can't really scoop up youths any other way, honestly. But using a big impactful story and putting Trump as the "hero" who saves their beloved platform.

It's not even the 20th and I just don't like how this new administration is starting. I do not like a private company complying beyond the letter of the law in advance of that law either. Because the only thing the law laid down was that they couldn't update the app on Apple and Google.

There wouldn't have been any fines or legal ramifications.

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of Ontological Commitment

Ontological commitment is a philosophical concept that deals with the assumptions and entities that a theory or belief system posits as necessary for its truth or coherence. It stems from the broader field of ontology, the study of what exists and the nature of being. When philosophers and scientists create theories, they often implicitly or explicitly commit to the existence of certain entities or concepts, which forms the basis of ontological commitment. The idea is essential in understanding how different theories relate to the world and what they imply about the nature of reality.

Key Aspects:

Quantification and Existence: Ontological commitment often revolves around the use of quantifiers in logical expressions, such as "there exists" or "for all." These quantifiers can indicate the existence of certain entities, leading to a commitment to their reality.

Theories and Models: In the context of scientific and philosophical theories, ontological commitment refers to the entities that must be assumed to exist for the theory to be valid. For example, a theory of physics might be ontologically committed to the existence of particles, fields, or forces.

Quine’s Criterion: Philosopher W.V.O. Quine is closely associated with the idea of ontological commitment. He proposed that a theory's ontological commitments are determined by what the theory quantifies over. According to Quine, "To be is to be the value of a variable," meaning that if a theory requires something to exist in order for its variables to have value, the theory is committed to the existence of that thing.

Debates in Ontology: Philosophical debates around ontological commitment often involve discussions about whether certain entities are "real" or merely useful fictions. For instance, are mathematical objects like numbers and sets real, or are they simply convenient tools for describing reality?

The philosophy of ontological commitment is crucial for understanding the assumptions underlying different theories and beliefs. It forces us to confront the question of what we are implicitly assuming to exist when we adopt a particular worldview or scientific theory. By examining these commitments, we can better understand the implications of our beliefs and refine our understanding of what it means for something to exist.

[dog-uncrushed]

Obviously the question is meaningless—as meaningless as asking which points in Ohio are starting points

[vonneumannmachine]

¿Qué es la ciencia?

En vista de la reciente publicación del libro de Antonio Diéguez La Ciencia en Cuestión (libro que aún no he leído pero que está ya encargado), vamos a hablar un poco de Filosofía de la Ciencia, tema que hace mucho que no tocábamos en el blog. Además, vamos a entrar por la puerta grande con la nada pretenciosa intención de intentar definir la ciencia, asunto que, como no podía ser de otro modo,…

[quinemajo]

I made fanart for "A Hoard of Witchers" Witcher fanfiction

[anaxerneas]

What is the relationship between logic and metaphysics? It goes without saying that we want our metaphysics to be logical; but do we want our logic to be metaphysical? To put it another way, do we want logic to do any metaphysical work? Logic is essentially a tool for getting at truth; it is the tool, for without it no reasoning is possible in any field of human enquiry whatsoever. But it cannot get to truth without already having truth on which to work: as G. K. Chesterton once remarked, "you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."' Armed with truth, we use logic to get more truth, even if what we get is "only" the actual combination or division of ideas that were already potentially combined or divided in the truth with which we started.

Since logic is a tool for truth, and since truth is about being, logic must in this sense be metaphysical. But since logic can be applied to fairies and phantoms as much as to bed knobs and broomsticks, we cannot say that logic must be about what is. I imagine Quine would agree with this last sentence. All propositions, for him, have the form of either assertions or denials of existence. In reasoning about the world, proponents of rival theories (his preferred term) advance competing existential claims (and denials). A claim is true only if the predicates it contains are true of the values of the variables. When we do not reason about the world, we do logic by evaluating existence claims that we entertain without necessarily asserting, and hence which quantify over objects to which we are not necessarily committed.

David S. Oderberg, "Predicate Logic and Bare Particulars", in The Old New Logic: Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers

[philosophie-21]

09 - Un paradoxe véridique, c'est quoi ? (Quine; De Morgan, Russell)

[quin-ns]

Cherry (Joel Miller x Reader)

Word count: 3K

Summary: you didn’t except that the first time joel said he loved you that he would mean he was in love with you. you did love him. like a friend. even a father. but you always wanted to hear those words, and you couldn’t break his heart, could you?

Tags: (18+), cw: dark themes, age gap, biting, loss of virginity, unprotected sex, couch sex, complicated/unhealthy relationship, mutual desperation, not dubcon but heed the adjacent warning (joel doesn’t know how yn really feels), sorry I don’t know what came over me guys I wanted something with some insane desire, angst, and smut

A/N: guys… I haven’t written for joel in almost 2 years that’s actually crazy… how?? he’s literally my fave dilf ever?? what a fic for me to come back to joel with tho wow enjoy fellow freaks I’ll write fluff for him soon too

tlou masterlist + main masterlist

It didn’t matter how long Joel had tried to convince you that he had just done the right thing, you still believed you owed him your life. Because he saved your life.

And after a period of Joel insisting you stay away from him for your own good, back when you lived in the QZ, he eventually took you under his wing. Now, he was intent on keeping you there.

It was his responsibility to protect you. It was his responsibility to make sure you had everything you needed. It was his responsibility to make sure you never got consumed by the darkness of this world like he had. It was his job to keep you safe. And you? You loved it.

More like you loved Joel, but you never bothered to separate the man from his actions. Why would you? You loved him. You really did. And he did the same for you.

The love you had for him was all consuming ever since he had told you, “I want you by my side, no matter what.”

Being in Jackson brought peace and security, and you were assured that your connection wasn’t merely out of necessity. You continued to choose each other. You would always choose him over everything else. It was just what you did.

You loved him because he saved you, but it was more than that. So, so much more.

You loved him like a friend, who you could talk to about anything. Your age difference hindered your ability to relate to one another on a lot of things, like the way you looked at the world, or how you solved problems, but even when you weren’t agreeing, you at least understood one another in a way no one else could.

In Jackson, it had been suggested that you could live with some other girls closer to your age, but Joel ended that discussion. Instead of a two bedroom house, he took up residence in one with three. You never would’ve wanted to live apart from him and Ellie, but you were relieved he had been the one to decide. It reaffirmed that you were just as important to him as he was to you. You needed that reassurance more often than you’d ever let him know.

When you first arrived, before you found your place in the community, you would hide out in the house. It was hard for you to grow accustomed to the way of life here, and even harder to trust people. Joel made sure you never stayed alone too long. When Ellie was out, which was more often than you but less than Joel, he would end up returning. Some days you found yourselves talking nearly every waking hour, and laughing together more than either of you could’ve expected.

He knew you loved him like a friend, but you loved him like a father as well. You never told him that flat out. You could just hear the grumbly comments about making him feel old, and even though it would be light hearted jokes, you wanted to keep the relationship as it was.

Joel was a toughened person, but he treated you delicately when he could. It would get to a point where you thought the label ‘fragile: handle with care’ was printed on you, but he never talked down to you. You liked that he protected you and made you feel safe without controlling you like he would a daughter. Not like how he was with Ellie. You were fine seeing him as a father without him seeing you as a daughter. It was best this way.

Needless to say, you loved him simply as the person he was. It overwhelmed you sometimes.

No, not sometimes. Often.

Everything he did made you okay with the fact that he had never said the exact words. He’d come close, had said them in many other ways, had proved to you that he did, but you never got the real thing. That was something you had thought you could live with as long as you could feel it. And as long as you could continue to love him as well.

So with Joel, now, sitting on the couch by your side, facing you and saying, “I love you. I have for a while,” your heart jumped from your chest. It changed everything in an instant.

You were smiling before you registered that he wouldn’t meet your eye. And was that… shame, maybe, in his voice? The way he kept it low, like he wasn’t sure he should be speaking.

Joel, in the distant past, would get frustrated with your naivety before it became a thing that endeared you to him.

It took you a long moment to get it. Then, all at once, you did. You wondered if he could read the shift in your face. From the moment your awe became tainted with understanding.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Joel continued. “But you know I hate lying to you, and not telling you… it felt like lying and I couldn’t do it anymore.” He swallowed. “I love you,” he repeated, to both you and himself.

Deep brown eyes that held years of life you couldn’t even begin to understand met yours, and you couldn’t seem to speak. Those words felt forbidden from him. You had spent so much time wanting to hear them, longing to hear them, before you made peace with the fact you wouldn’t. You had become okay with never hearing them from Joel because he consistently proved it to you in every other way.

And now, here he was, telling you he loved you, and you hadn’t leapt at the chance to say it back.

You knew why, and so did he. You could see him searching your face and with every second that passed, you watched his confidence crumble.

Joel was hurting. Your silence made him ache.

He took a long breath, bowed his head and shook it a little to himself. Experiencing regret in its entirety.

“I’m sorry,” he uttered finally. It felt like a knife to hear the defeat in his voice. He turned to face forward. “I- I should’ve known better.” He dragged a hand down his face. “I’m so much older than you, and I’ve done things that I can’t come back from, and you…” Joel stole a lingering glance. “You’re so perfect.”

You were the furthest thing from perfect, but you believed that Joel believed you were. It was the way he said it. He was so sure and you loved him for it. For seeing you in ways you couldn’t even see yourself.

You watched him, knowing that the man you loved was hurting. It didn’t seem fair to let him continue when you knew you were the only one that could make it stop.

It was almost an out of body experience, the way you moved. First closer to him, so close your legs were touching. Then your hand reached for his, your smaller fingers wrapping around it to squeeze. When he met your eyes, you saw the moment hope replaced pain, and you couldn’t help but smile.

“I love you, too,” you said, because it was true.

It was both a surprise and not when he kissed you. It was soft at first, and it reminded you of the way he often was with you. When you didn’t pull away, it ignited something in him. Suddenly his hands were on your face, deepening the kiss.

You kissed him back because he needed you to.

When Joel felt your lips moving against his, it told him two things. One, it told him what he needed to know, which was that you loved him. And two, it told him what you wanted him to believe, which was that you wanted this.

Joel grew a little more sure, pulling you closer to him. He couldn’t get enough and was struggling to hold back. You could feel it. Both his want and his restraint.

You weren’t sure what to do with your hands, so you put them over his shoulders, rubbing the back of his neck, letting your fingers card in the longer ends of his grown out hair. You always wondered what his hair felt like.

Joel liked your curiosity and let his own get the better of him. His lips trailed from yours down to the side of your neck. You sucked in air, your face hot as you tried to catch your breath, when all of the sudden his kisses were replaced with a small, suckling bite. You gasped. You couldn’t help it. His hands moved, one resting on your back when the other held the back of your neck. Not hard, just keeping your close. You buried your face into his shoulder as he grew more confident with the use of his teeth.

The moan that escaped your lips when he soothed the harder bite with his tongue made his grip tighten. His breath hitched. You swallowed, flustered, unsure of yourself as your body shivered on its own. Joel pulled back to look at you, just long enough for you to see the desire clouding his eyes, and then he was crushing his lips against yours.

The weight of Joel’s body pushed you down onto the couch. You kissed him back, trying to keep up with his rough, hungry mouth, but your inexperience was catching up to you. You’d only ever kissed boys before, and now you had a man on top of you, his body pressed firmly to yours, his hands running down your frame as he devoured your lips and nipped at your skin. Muttering about how beautiful you were and that he was trying to be gentle but that you could tell him to stop if you wanted. He didn’t know you wouldn’t because as wrong as it felt, you wanted to give him everything he wanted. In turn, all you wanted was to hear him say he loved you again.

You didn’t need it before but now you couldn’t get enough. It wasn’t enough when Joel peppered kisses to your lips and neck. It wasn’t enough when he pressed himself between your legs and caused you to dig your nails into his back. You needed more. You needed him to say it again.

You let him take off your clothes when he asked so, so sweetly. You knew Joel was going to admire you, and he did, and that look on his face was worth the uncertainty you felt. He wouldn’t let you cover yourself, and it felt kind of nice when he kept your arms from crossing over your chest. It reminded you how strong he was, but how even with all that strength, and even when using it on you, he was careful. He didn’t want to truly hurt you, and you loved him for it.

“I’m gonna take care of you,” he promised, lips against your ear as his fingers settled between your legs.

“I know,” you managed, breathless.

It made him smile, which made you smile. You couldn’t stop staring at him when he lifted his head to look at you. That is, until he pushed a finger into you. Your eyes fluttered shut and he was immediately in your ear again, and you understood for the first time the term ‘sweet nothings’. His low, soothing voice against your ear helped you relax as he pushed in another finger, and after a few minutes, another.

You were wet, you couldn’t help it. You found yourself apologizing, but he encouraged it. He liked you squirming beneath him, liked that your body was responding.

“It’s okay, baby, you’re doing good,” he groaned. “I want you to be ready for me

You didn’t know what possessed you to say it, but the words, “I am,” slipped from your lips. It was all he needed to hear.

His fingers slid from your body. A little voice in the back of your head told you to get them back, but it was silenced when he pulled the rest of his clothes from his body. You felt the tip of his cock nudging at your entrance. You couldn’t look down, and you were too embarrassed to look him in the eye, so you shut yours.

A hand touched your face.

“Look at me,” Joel urged. “Don’t be shy. I wanna see you.”

You obliged, forcing your eyes open, watching him above you. You found it hard to believe you never fully saw how handsome Joel was.

When he began to push into you, the stretch was much more than his fingers. You had to open your legs wider. Joel ran his hands up and down your hips and waist, soothing you as he eased himself inside, telling you, “It’s okay, you’re doing great. Just relax. You’re taking me so well,” and you couldn’t help but bask in the praise. It hurt a little, but you were practically purring by the time he was fully seated inside. You didn’t mean to, but your body squeezed him, and his cock throbbed inside you.

Joel made a noise of pure bliss as he let his weight rest on you. You were so overheated, sweat slick between your bodies. When he started kissing you again you almost forgot about it. He was a good kisser, which made sense given he had more experience than you. A twinge of jealousy ran through you at the thought of him with anyone else and you pulled him closer. It wasn’t quite a laugh he let out, most just a sound of amusement at your actions.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.

One of his hands found the back of your head, holding you so your mouth was his and he could have his way. The other hand ran over your ass and down your thigh, encouraging you to wrap your legs around him. You did.

He started to move, then. Pulling back a little and pushing in. It was such a foreign feeling. You couldn’t keep your noises to yourself, but Joel savored them. When he started to move a little faster, his methodical motions turning into thrusts, he seemed to be seeking those reactions from you.

It was a cycle. The rougher he moved, the more whimpers and moans he pulled from you, and then in turn the sounds spurred him on. You were holding onto him for dear life by the time he was pounding you into the couch, groaning your name, telling you how good you were.

“It’s like you’re made for me,” he grunted into your ear, and you hoped he meant it, because you believed it.

“I’m yours,” you told him.

“Tell me again,” Joel started in a grunt, thrusting forward. He held himself completely inside you for a moment, shuddering as your nails dragged down his back. It took your breath away, feeling so full. He pressed his forehead to yours as he said, “Do you mean it? You love me?”

“Yes,” you said without hesitation. It was true. It was the only thing you’d known to be true and maybe this wasn’t the way, wasn’t something you imagined, but it didn’t make that simple fact any less true.

“Say it.”

“I love you.”

Joel groaned, shoving his hips forward. You whimpered. He was already in you to the hilt.

“Again,” he groaned.

He needed it just as bad as you did.

“I love you, Joel. I love you.”

He pulled out before thrusting back in. Again and again you told him, and he moved, building back up to an even harder pace than before. You could hardly stand it but you told him over and over again like a chant;

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” and even breathless you never faltered. Even when Joel kissed you rough and needy, like he was starved, you still got out the words, “I love you.”

Your legs were barely holding on despite your effort. Your hands began to slide from his back but you continued to grasp onto him. One of his hands found your wrist. You would let him if he wanted to, but you didn’t want him to hold it down. You needed to touch him. Needed to feel him. Needed the security that he proved.

As if he could read your mind, he turned his face to kiss your palm, then let your wrist go. He gave you free range. You chose to run that hand fully through his hair. Every part of you needed to be touching every part of him. He invaded your mind and soul, the last step was your body, and he was accomplishing that this very second. You belonged entirely to him. Even as tears pricked in your eyes at how overwhelming it all was, to love and be loved by Joel was all you’d ever wanted and known for years.

He huffed out a half grunt half laugh when your body started to tense. He was pleased. Could read your body better than even you. You were so lost in the sensation that you let out a yelp when a hand moved between your legs, rubbing at you in tandem with his cock slamming into you.

“That’s it,” he coaxed. “Just let go.”

And you did. It didn’t even feel like a choice. It just happened. The pleasure became too much to handle. It rippled through your whole body as the knot in your belly snapped. You tensed and shuddered around Joel, holding onto him as your cunt clenched down around him, trying to keep him inside to allow you ride out the wave without feeling empty. Joel wasn’t keen on denying you. His thrusts became shallow but hard, sending jolts through you until you felt it. With a groan he stilled inside you, and then warmth flooded your insides. He rocked his hips forward a little as he spilled inside you, and you felt like you couldn’t breathe.

As the haze started to fade and awareness returned, something akin to dread settled over you. Everything became all too real all at once.

Joel kissed life back into you. His hand between your legs moved to run across your belly and thighs, while the other held your face so he had as much access to your lips as he wanted.

You started to move, feeling crushed, but Joel took care of that. He managed to turn your bodies so you were lying on top of him, but he was careful to not withdraw from you. He bucked his hips up a little and you whined. Joel chuckled as he wrapped his arms around you, hugging you to him. You turned your head to the side, your cheek resting against his chest. You listened to his heart rate come back down, unfocused eyes trailing around the living room. Joel kissed the top of your head and ran his calloused hands over your back.

“How did I get so lucky?” he asked, not really looking for an answer. You didn’t have one, anyway.

You wanted to crawl off of him. It was all becoming too much again. As good as it had all felt, it confused you, and you thought maybe you wanted to cry, but then came the words that had you subdued.

“I love you, Y/N,” Joel breathed.

You didn’t think he understood the power he had in his words. As far as he knew, you loved him the same way as he loved you. You would continue to let him think that if it meant you could protect him from the heartache, and if you could keep hearing him say the words you craved. You knew, eventually, you could learn to love him this way, too. If he was happy, you knew you could be too. Being loved by him was all you ever wanted. It didn’t matter how else you felt because that need would take priority over everything. You would always choose him over everything else. It was just what you did.

joel taglist: @the-ice-frozen-ground-red-rose @dontphunkwithmylove @cilliansangel @amethystwonders11 @frogsmuahh037 @andy-rocks @melllinaa @alitaar @melanie451 @b00kw0rmsworld @reverieisaway @avengersfan25 @aheadfullofsteverogers @strangeh0rizons @spideysimpossiblegirl @shannonmariebee @str84pedro @koukatsuki @darleneslane @larascorneroftheworld

I wasn’t sure whether to use the taglist for smut since I’d only written fluff for him before, so if you’re on the taglist and only want to be tagged in fluff not smut just lmk

if you would like to be added to the joel taglist just send me an ask or a message!

[tagitables]

19 September 2024, 06:25 AM

Hello Quine! 👋 & Carnap! :')

[perfeqt]

I don’t think people understand how stressful it is to explain what’s going on in your head when you don’t even understand it yourself.

Sara Quin