Language and thought

[GePap]

First of all: honestly, I have nothing against either you Asher or Agathon, but...

You clog too many threads with these long bickering matches you two have. If you want to bicker, make a thread called "the Asher and Agathon show", and go at it there. You can reach 500 posts, then start II and II and so forth..OK?

Now, back to the issue:

I must agree with Ramo on the issue of mathemitics simply being a different language form instead of some seperate thing. If, for example would we have calculus? And the "invention" of 0: was it the discovery of something? or simply the creation of a new term?

I also do think some thoughs obviously come up in some languages and not others..if not I think the transfer of words accross languages would be far less, if everyone had a word for the one concept that came up first. For example, schadenfreude..would such a notion ever have come up in English?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by GePap
First of all: honestly, I have nothing against either you Asher or Agathon, but...

You clog too many threads with these long bickering matches you two have. If you want to bicker, make a thread called "the Asher and Agathon show", and go at it there. You can reach 500 posts, then start II and II and so forth..OK?

Now, back to the issue:

I must agree with Ramo on the issue of mathemitics simply being a different language form instead of some seperate thing. If, for example would we have calculus? And the "invention" of 0: was it the discovery of something? or simply the creation of a new term?

I also do think some thoughs obviously come up in some languages and not others..if not I think the transfer of words accross languages would be far less, if everyone had a word for the one concept that came up first. For example, schadenfreude..would such a notion ever have come up in English?

I have no desire to bicker with Asher at all. He follows me around the forum making snide comments about things that he doesn't appear to have a good grasp of and then refuses to answer when pressed. All in all it's got pretty boring.

Anyway, back on topic:

Do you think there is such a thing as an untranslatable language?

[The Vagabond]

In what concerns mathematics, I have not read the whole discussion (too long), but IMHO Agathon is right.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Ramo
There is no truth" in mathematical assertions. The conventions you use are totally arbitrary.

Not completely arbitrary. For example, the system of axioms you choose should be noncontradictory.

[Agathon]

You done much philosophy V? From your other posts you sound reasonably clued up.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Asher
Mathematics and stuff like physics are constructs created by man to help understand natural phenomenon.

So if mathematics "helps understand" natural phenomena, this means that it corresponds to something real in the real world. What is what you are arguing about, Asher?

You don't seem to understand what mathematics is in the first place. You should realize that mathematics are rules and theorems based upon what we observe to be the case, not the actual cases themselves.

What is 'Asher'? Is it a person or a name of a person?

[Asher]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
In what concerns mathematics, I have not read the whole discussion (too long), but IMHO Agathon is right.

How is it right?
By the very definition of mathematics, it's man-made.

Agathon doesn't grasp the difference between mathematics and the actual phenonemon that occur that mathematics measure.

In very typical philosophical style, he tried to make the discussion so incredibly complex and longwinded when it's a simple matter. He didn't know what the word meant, when confronted with a definition he scoffed and mentioned some laughable excuse about OED not know anything about truth values.

[Asher]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
So if mathematics "helps understand" natural phenomena, this means that it corresponds to something real in the real world. What is what you are arguing about, Asher?

"Correspond" != "equal to"...

Mathematics is the study of the natural phenomenon that Agathon and you are mistaking for "mathematics". Mathematics is the STUDY of that phenomenon, not the phenomenon itself.

That's a very important distinction.

What is 'Asher'? Is it a person or a name of a person?

Asher is the name, there are probably hundreds of thousands of people named Asher.

Not to mention it's not even my name.

Good question, helps illustrate my point.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Agathon
You done much philosophy V? From your other posts you sound reasonably clued up.

Well, just a regular Soviet course of philosophy. I am not a connoisseur of philosophy. I just happen to have sincere respect for it.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Asher

"Correspond" != "equal to"...

Mathematics is the study of the natural phenomenon that Agathon and you are mistaking for "mathematics". Mathematics is the STUDY of that phenomenon, not the phenomenon itself.

That's a very important distinction.

Of course it is just the description of the phenomenon, not the phenomenon itself.

What you're incorrect about is that mathematics is just a man-made system of conventions and has nothing to do with the truth about the real world.

[Asher]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
Of course it is just the description of the phenomenon, not the phenomenon itself.

What you're incorrect about is that mathematics is just a man-made system of conventions and has nothing to do with the truth about the real world.

I've never said anything about the truth of the real world. Agathon went on a weird tangent about that and I've ignored it since it's irrelevant.

Mathematics is a man-made system, since man made it to help us understand how the world works. It "corresponds" to natural events because that's what it's designed to do.

It's a man-made system, regardless of truth values it has...

Philosophers have a really bad tendancy to obfuscate things beyond belief...

[Ramo]

It perhaps has an epistemic bearing on the question of how we come to know such things are true and what the truth makers for mathematical propositions are. The latter is what I am worried about rather than the former.

1. What is "epistemic?"
2. The only truth maker for a mathematical proposition is that it isn't contradictory (with itself or generally accepted work).

I think your argument about the apples is invalid, if I brought two apples together and one disappeared we would no longer be talking about the same fact.

Would you mind explaining this? I think I can see where you're going (you can never have a pair of apples in the first place), but I'm not sure how you reach the conclusion of invalidity of my argument. What do you mean by "no longer talking about the same fact?"

All I need to get my realist argument going is that in the natural world there are real sets of things like "three apples" and that such a proposition would be true even if nobody existed. I'm arguing that simple mathematical statements of addition and so on have truth conditions that are independent of our conceptualising activities (i.e realist truth conditions). After all it seems dumb to say that the possibility of three apples existing is mind dependent (as it would be if all mathematical notions were conventional).

1. Did you mean to say four apples instead of three?
2. I really don't follow your argument, at all. No offense, but this sounds like a lot of bull**** to me.

Whatever ontological moves one wants to make after this don't really bother me.

I have no clue what you mean when you use words like "ontological." I've never taken a philosophy class except logic.

My main annoyance with conventionalism is that it is like other forms of conceptual relativism in that it is on the face of it impossible for us to deny that 2 and 2 is 4 and no compelling evidence to assume that the opposite would ever be intelligible to anyone. While there is nothing wrong with non-euclidean geometries I find the notion of counter-logics less than compelling.

I think that 2+2=4 is possible to deny. Maybe because I've taken too much math.

And moreover the attempts to assert conceptual relativism as a general thesis violates its own prohibitions.

Ah, but it doesn't. The idea of conceptual relativism (unless it's some obscure term that isn't what it sounds like it should be) relies upon the same assumption that almost all math/philosophy relies upon, the equivalence of validity and non-contradiction. In fact, it follows directly from this assumption.

I'm not saying that all of it is thus far. And I'm not endorsing the claim that if it isn't absolute conventionalism is true. After all platonism about mathematical entities would do a better job of making sense of our intuition that some mathematical statements are true and others are false and would not make mathematical statements dependent on the physical world.

Platonism is silly, IMO. What is the meaning of the existence of an abstract "entity" like a group outside the context of minds of sentient beings?

That's roughly what I've been objecting to - the move straight to conventionalism without further argument. And it's one thing to say that mathematics is mind dependent but another to say that it is conventional all the way down.

What's the distinction between mind-dependent and conventional?

In fact I'm inclined more to the Quinean view that there is nothing which isn't dependent on the physical world

Is an assertion like "A is true" dependent upon the physical world? If so, how?

and that there are no a priori claims

I would agree with that.

Not physically respectable entities are they? Why do you assume that when I say "I have an idea in my mind" that I'm referring to an actual object?

If the idea isn't in your mind, where is it? The idea isn't some box labelled "idea," but a bunch of neurons acting in a certain manner creating what's considered an idea.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Asher
Mathematics is a man-made system, since man made it to help us understand how the world works. It "corresponds" to natural events because that's what it's designed to do.

It's a man-made system, regardless of truth values it has...

Certainly it is a man-made system, just as all other sciences.
But would you agree that it describes certain truth of the real world?

[Asher]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
Certainly it is a man-made system, just as all other sciences.

Thank you, this is what the argument was about.
Agathon tried (unsuccessfully) to argue the other way through smoke and mirrors.

But would you agree that it describes certain truth of the real world?

Sure, why not. It describes certain truths in our world. No problem there.

[Ramo]

Mathematics is the study of the natural phenomenon that Agathon and you are mistaking for "mathematics". Mathematics is the STUDY of that phenomenon, not the phenomenon itself.
That's a very important distinction.

Mathematics is a tool through which one studies natural phenomenon. Science is the study of natural phenomenon. There's plenty of math that's totally abstract and has virtually no connection with the physical world.

Not completely arbitrary. For example, the system of axioms you choose should be noncontradictory.

Well yes, all generally accepted math is based on noncontradiction.

Of course, you could come up with a mathematical system that isn't based on noncontradiction. It's just that such a system wouldn't be particularly useful.