[lit-ideas] Re: (no subject)
- From: Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2010 14:32:24 -0500
He lives....
Julie Krueger
On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I've been wondering about this for the last few years.
>
> - Is mathematics a feature of nature, or is it imposed on nature by
> the sentient mind? Counting cows is easy, but what about pi and
> sophisticated mathematics? See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_mathematics
>
> - The same for logic. Are the rules of logic also the laws of nature?
> Or again, is this part of the human mind's way to understanding
> nature? This becomes a problem with quantum mechanics: sub-atomic
> particles don't obey the laws of the human-visible world.
> Teleportation, persistence, and so on.
>
> yrs,
> andreas
> www.andreas.com
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Torgeir Fjeld <torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > Donal writes:
> >>>>
> > We may say there was no number system on earth before humans invented
> one. This would not mean such a number system could not apply to what is
> 'out there'.
> >
> > Consider two number systems:- (a) '1, 2, 3, 5, more than 5'; and (b) '1,
> 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, more than 10'. The farmer with exactly 8 cows
> using (a)can truthfully say he has 'more than 5' cows; and using (b) can
> truthfully say he has exactly 8 cows. Without the man-made invention of a
> number system he could say neither, but that does not mean the invention
> cannot be used to describe what is 'out there'. A farmer with 8 cows but no
> counting-system would still have 8 cows; this fact is true by virtue of what
> is 'out there' irrespective of whether he has the means to express or know
> this fact. A farmerless field with exactly 8 cows in it also has 8 cows in
> it - no more, no less - irrespective of whether humans or any other creature
> have a number system to say so.
> >>>>
> >
> > There's a loophole in this reasoning. When Donal states that "A farmer
> with 8 cows but no counting-system would still have 8 cows; this fact is
> true by virtue of what is 'out there'", is not the reason why the farmer has
> 8 (not 7 or 9) cows that Donal states in the premise that he has that
> amount? The appropriate question is not whether the farmer has 8 cows due to
> it being so /out there/, but whether the 8 cows appear so /to the farmer/
> (and not to some dislocated, ephemeral theorist outside the practice of
> farming). And in order to answer this question the farmer's reportoire of
> articulation is highly relevant.
> >
> > Best,
> > Torgeir Fjeld
> > Norway
> >
> >
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