On 3/1/2014 6:43 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote:
*From:*[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] *On
Behalf Of *meekerdb
*Sent:* Saturday, March 01, 2014 1:31 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: If it's all math, then where does math come from?
On 3/1/2014 12:28 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 01 Mar 2014, at 07:04, meekerdb wrote:
On 2/28/2014 9:22 PM, LizR wrote:
Nevertheless, it does seem to be. That is, 17 is a prime number
regardless of
whether anyone knows it is, or even knows what numbers are, or indeed
whether
anyone is even alive (e.g. it was prime in the first instants of the
big bang -
maths has been used to work out what happened in the early universe,
with
observable consequences now). There's a lot of hand waving going on to
deny
this, but I haven't seen a knock down argument (or even a suggestion of
one) to
indicate otherwise.
To deny what? That 17 is prime? That's a tautology. It's our theory that
the
world consists of countable things - whether it really is, is questionable.
Well, in the comp theory, there are no countable things, and non
mechanically
countable things, etc. Both in the math, the physics, the theology, etc.
>>Arithmetic doesn't include countable things, aka "numbers". I think you're slipping
into mysticism, Bruno.
Brent ~ are you saying that arithmetic is the operation (with potential ordering &
grouping) that takes numeric input and produces numeric output? I find it hard to
conceive of math without also contemporaneously envisioning enumerable entities.
I think I could conceive of some math without enumerable entities; for example parts of
topology and real analysis don't seem to depend on counting. But I was just expressing
incredulity with Bruno's post. He says we only need believe that "17 is prime" to use
arithmetic realism. Then he says there are no countable things in his theory....!??
Brent
--
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.
