[FOM] Three quick comments.

[Bill Taylor]

1:  An enquiry to Vaughn Pratt:

I greatly enjoyed your parable of Alice, Bob, Cathy, David and Eve; however,
their concerns seemed to be mostly generated by the conflation of...

(a) what it means to be a theorem, or to be true;                   with
(b) what it means for us to know a statement is a theorem, or true.

What would be your response to this comment?
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There have been a lot of people prickled by the term
"normal mathematician". Perhaps the phrase was unwisely chosen.  

Might I suggest "mainstream mathematician" would be less scary and emotive?
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-> Why are you bothered with certainty?  
-> It seems to me that the primary focus should be on truth

Perhaps even more urgent than either of these should be a primary focus
on CLARITY.  I suspect that for the next several decades, this may be our
most fruitful concern, and that polemical views about the others could wait.

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       Bill Taylor                   W.Taylor at math.canterbury.ac.nz
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       MATH:     the discovery, clarification and rigorous study of
            precise relationships in number, pattern, and structure.
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