Re: Platonism
From: Lester Zick (lesterDELzick_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 12/06/04
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Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 16:19:37 GMT
On Sun, 05 Dec 2004 22:08:04 GMT, "robert j. kolker"
<nowhere@nowhere.com> in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:
>
>
>Eray Ozkural exa wrote:
>
>>
>> It has empirical constraints. It may just be that most mathematicians
>> delude themselves and think they are free of the world. They can't
>> really imagine an alternative to our universe.
>
>Nonsense. We have Euclidean worlds, a variety of non Euclidean worlds,
>many flavors of logic and multiple theories about physical reality that
>are not compatable. We have alternatives up the ying yang. The only
>constant demand in all this is logical consistency.
While not disagreeing, I nonetheless have to ask according to which
axioms of logic?
>> Wrong. Every mathematical thought has an intersubjective empirical
>> basis, I think I already elaborated on that.
>
>>
>> Even a mind which has had no sensory history would be empirical in the
>> mathematics it does, simply because some facts of the matter can only
>> be found empirically and not with a "proof"!!! Otherwise, we would
>> expect to be able to *reduce* all mathematics to ZFC, which is clearly
>> not the case as Godel, Chaitin. Calude and others tell us.
>>
>> If you did not understand the last sentence for the "quasi-empirical"
>> nature of mathematics, I can elaborate, although it's possible that
>> the oh-mathematics-is-so-above-science camp will try to sabotage the
>> discussion.
>
>Mathematics is clearly not above science, since some of it is so useful
>to scientists. Mathematics has a different agenda. Science tries to
>figure out how the (physical) world works. Many mathematicians like to
>spin patterns of ideas on the looms of imagination. Mathmatics is more
>like art than science, in spite of its usefulness in applied fields.
>
>How empirical is a totally abstract painting, other than the fact it
>must use some physical medium (canvass and paint) to be presented? Is a
>totally non representational piece of art empirical?
Tautologies are necessarily composed of empirical observations.
So even tautological systems rest with one empirical foot in the
quagmire.
Regards - Lester
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