On 24 January 2014 11:51, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 1/23/2014 2:40 PM, LizR wrote: > > This appears to be the fundamental "bone of contention" between you and > Brent. He appears to believe arithmetic is a human invention which relates > to reality because, well, (waves hands, and cunningly slips "AR" hat on) > ... it just does, somehow. > > It relates to reality as we experience it because we invented arithmetic > by abstracting and generalizing from that experience. >
If we abstract and generalise something from experience, I would say the standard usage is to say that we have discovered something, rather than invented it. For example, Isaac Newton invented an equation which he called "the law of gravitation". He did so by abstracting and generalising from observations of the world. However, most people (outside philosophy departments) would say that his equation describes (or attempts to describe) a feature of the world that is genuinely "out there". Similarly, if we abstracted and generalised in order to invent "2", presumably we did so in order to describe something we discovered, something that is genuinely "out there"... I would say most people use "invented" to mean that something had no counterpart in reality, in any sense (abstract or otherwise) until someone brought it into existence. So in that sense, I would claim we didn't "invent" arithmetic or gravity. Do you agree, or would you say that arithmetic is an invention, in this standard usage? (Or did you have some other sense of "invent" in mind that I've missed?) > It's not surprising that our ideas relate to what we experience. > You seem to be trying to have this both ways. Or maybe it's just me not getting quite where you're coming from. Is arithmetic a genuine feature of reality that we have discovered, or is it not? -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
