Bob Meyer

Bob Meyer just has died, of a heart attack after a year-long battle with cancer.  Bob was a long-time member of the Philosophy Program in the Research School of Social Sciences here at ANU, and even after he moved across the university and then retired, was a ubiquitous presence here.  He was a larger-than-life character who was enormous fun to be around.  

Bob was well-known for his work on nonclassical logic, especially relevance logic (or as Bob always insisted, relevant logic).  He was also famous as Maximum Leader of the Logicians Liberation League, whose manifesto (presented at Indiana University in 1969 complete with a cream pie attack) ends as follows:

Beware you snakes of the Philosophical Power Structure, which you have created and which you maintain to put down the logician; you have caged the eagle of reason, the dove of wisdom, and the lark of a definite, precisely formulated formal system, with exact formation rules, a recursive set of axioms, and clear and cogent rules of inference, and you have made them your pigeons. Oh, you filterable viruses, we will shake you off and fly once more.

Bob was author of one of my all-time favorite philosophy articles (which I read in graduate school long before knowing him), "God Exists!", published in Nous in 1987.  This article demonstrates that the existence of God is equivalent to the axiom of choice.  One direction is easy (just let God do the choosing), while the other direction requires a bit more work, applying Zorn's lemma to infinite causal chains.

Bob's cancer was said to have a 97% fatality rate, but he had high hopes for being in the 3%.  He wrote to me a while back: "I do remain (stupidly?) cheerful--after all, I worried for years that all that smoking would lead to cancer. I don't have that worry any more."  I'll remember him coming to a party last year as Wonko the Sane (pictured here with his wife Bobi, daughter Dorothy, and me; here are some more photos of Bob), the character from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who took his house to be the only pocket of sanity and the rest of the world to be the Asylum.  That captures something of the Bob Meyer worldview.  His many quirks were grounded in an enormously warm humanity.  We'll miss him.

Comments

[Alan]

My most heartfelt condolences Dave. Having just lost my own good philosophical friend--I know very well how this feels. A toast to good lives lost, but to them also continued in our own.

[Jc Beall]

Nicely said, Dave. Thanks. You'll have to attend the Melbourne AAL this year, and we'll all toast to Bob. (See Greg's site for equally spot-on sentiments: consequently.org.)

I had just received copies of my /Spandrels of Truth/ (OUP, 2009) when I got the news from Ross Brady. In the Acknowledgments section of that book, Bob's name is up front, and his work (with Routleys) is at the foundation: they provided the basic semantics/logic for the whole theory! (I clearly recall writing the acknowledgments. I added "the late" to Val Plumwood and Richard Sylvan's names -- well, their Logicians' Liberation League names (viz., Lady Plumwood and Peer of Plumwood, respectively) -- as well as to David Lewis' name. As I wrote out the acknowledgments, listing folks with whom I've discussed the given issues, etc. over the last few years, I was happy not to write "the late" in front of Bob's name....) He's already very missed. ...At least some of us got to see him in his element at the 4th World Congress of Paraconsistency whereat, once again, he discussed the "key to the universe and everything else".

At some point, I should publish the list of the Logicians' Liberation League names that Bob sent to me last year. (Maybe you can publish it. Send an email if you want it.)

As Bob would've signed (but with "Maximum Leader" in place of "Archbishop of Connecticut"):

AML, Archbishop of Connecticut, LLL

(AML: all my love; LLL: logicians' liberation league.)

[Paul Pritchard]

I don't know you David, but I knew Bob well, and your remarks are indeed spot-on.
I heard the news from Errol Martin, one of Bob's PhD students at ANU.
I was a PhD student in Computer Science, but was attracted to the logic group by Bob's magical brew of intellect, humor, eccentricity and warmth.
What a guy! The Maximum Leader is dead; there will never be another.
I remember him insisting on taking us to the opening of the first McDonald's "restaurant" in Canberra.
There must be uncountably many great stories about him.
I hope to hear some more here.

[Gail]

More stories about my father? Oh, where oh where do I begin?

Yes, all those trips to McDonald's circa early 1960s, perhaps to one of the originals, while he was working on his Ph.D. at Pitt. He'd load whichever kids were around, and off we'd go. He had a lifelong passion for their double cheeseburgers, although McDonald's didn't rival Dairy Queen on his list of quirky obsessions. An ice cream cone at all hours of the day and night (mostly night) was a compulsion I never quite understood.

My father was funny and kind, and oh so smart, and more than a tad eccentric. One of the things that I appreciate most about him is that he never lost touch, even though oceans and divorces and life's callings took him further and further away from "home."

He wasn't here for the big things; in fact, barely acknowledged them -- the marriages and the graduations and the babies and the celebrations -- but when he was here, he was fully here. My father had an intense ability to connect, fully present, fully aware.

Interesting that you mention "God Exists." I just finished reading a long letter he wrote to his own father in 1957, just before setting sail to Japan for missionary work. Is there a way I can access the full article?

Thanks for sharing your memories and for making my day. This was a nice surprise when I googled his name (looking for his obit, but the Canberra newspaper doesn't appear to post them online).

Gail in Pennsylvania