"Book burning"

[Nostromo]

Math is playing with number, which are a human invention anyways.

So there's no difference according to you between math and, say, George Foreman's Indoor Grill? They're both inventions.

[Agathon]

Actually, no, they invented a particular logic. There are many logics (propositional, for instance).

There was no logic of any kind before this. Parmenides is probably the first person to have given an explicitly logical proof.

And it clearly isn't enough to fully describe the world.

Most philosophers would argue that logical truths are not about the world and that logic does not describe anything -- logical truths being tautologies.

AFAIK there isn't a formal logic that exists that's powerful enough to fully describe the world (at least efficiently; the CS people may actually have figured out one that powerful). That's why we use language, which is not a formal logic.

And people accuse philosophers of BS.

None of the other disciplines are really interested in the metaphysical or epistemological status of logic. They propose axioms, but don't really do too much on explaining why those axioms are the right ones, or how the statements of their logical system are meaningful.

[GePap]

Originally posted by nostromo


So there's no difference according to you between math and, say, George Foreman's Indoor Grill? They're both inventions.

They are both works of artifice. Numbers are not "natural" in that sense, NO. They are a good explanatory tool, but numbers are no more real than words and the results, while more satisfying, carry not greater absolute truth.

[Agathon]

They are both works of artifice. Numbers are not "natural" in that sense, NO. They are a good explanatory tool, but numbers are no more real than words and the results, while more satisfying, carry not greater absolute truth.

And words aren't real?