On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 04:19:53PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: > On 5/30/2013 3:43 PM, Russell Standish wrote: > >On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 12:04:13PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: > >>You mean unprovable? I get confused because it seems that you > >>sometimes use Bp to mean "proves p" and sometimes "believes p" > >> > >To a mathematician, belief and proof are the same thing. > > Not really. You only believe the theorem you've proved if you > believed the axioms and rules of inference. What mathematicians > generally believe is that a proof is valid, i.e. that the conclusion > follows from the premise. But they choose different premises, and > even different rules of inference, just to see what comes out.
Fair enough, although if you're a Platonist, I guess you believe in some axioms - the PA ones, for instance. Anyway, this is rapidly departing my area of expertise :). Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
