On 5/20/2019 2:35 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Physics (and the other sciences) are unreasonably effective at
describing and accounting for our experiences. Platonism does not
have any runs on the board at all.
Platonism is a metaphysical position that is not in opposition to
physics or any of the other sciences, on the contrary.
Physicists are funny. You guys have the most successful of all
scientific fields, but not for the reason you imagine. You went so
deep that you came full-circle back to philosophy. But you refuse to
admit it, because of some weird insecurity.
Not at all. We're modest and don't claim to know the ding an sich
things. The way I put it is that we seek a virtuous circle of
explanation. Something like:
->physics->chemistry->biology->evolution->perception->intelligence->language->mathematics->physics->
although there are other ways of naming things drawing a loop. My point
is that we must always explain something in terms of something else we
understand. There is no "primitive" in explanations. We build up the
virtuous circle by extending its scope to, ideally, encompass
everything. Good explanations tend to have predictive power, but
prediction is not the same as explanation. Consilence is coherence of
explanations across levels.
Platonism is a strictly hierarchical scheme based on language, not
explanation or prediction. Platonist want to find a god of the
philosophers to replace the Big Guy in the Sky. It's not so much in
opposition to science as orthogonal to it. Mathematicians create
imaginary, but logically consistent worlds. Platonists want to live in
them.
Brent
"The duty of abstract mathematics, as I see it, is precisely to
expand our capacity for hypothesizing possible ontologies."
--- Norm Levitt
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