On Friday, March 7, 2014 10:59:06 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 07 Mar 2014, at 17:05, Gabriel Bodeen wrote: > > > An argument on its own merits is presumably either valid or invalid, and > either sound or unsound. Regarding UDA's soundness: I have no problem > saying Yes Doctor. Similarly I have no problem with the Church thesis. > But when it comes to Arithmetical Realism, I don't know of any convincing > reasons to believe it. > > > You don't believe in the prime numbers? > > All theories presuppose arithmetical realism. Many notions, like the > notion of digital machine presupposes arithmetical realism. Comp or just > Church thesis don't make sense without AR. > AR is not an hypothesis in metaphysics, it is the name of the beliefs in > elementary arithmetic. It is a set of mathematical hypothesis, together > with its usual semantic the structure (N, +, *). >
Heh, yes, I believe in prime numbers. But in "The Origin of Physical Laws and Sensations" you wrote of AR that it is "the assumption that arithmetical propositions ... are true independently of me, you, humanity, the physical universe (if that exists), etc." A couple other accounts of how things might be that I take seriously are (1) physicalism in the sense that arithmetical propositions might only be true when physically realized, or even (2) relativism in the sense that arithmetical propositions might only be true for humanlike brains, with an alethiology of the sort preferred by the American pragmatist school of philosophy. And a third meta-account is that reality might be a way that doesn't make sense to me. Four options plus an ignorance prior and little evidence gives me about 25% confidence for each. :) -Gabe -- 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/d/optout.
