Well, this took a little longer than I expected to finish, but after a couple more long replies have been dealt with, I will return to my regular posting habits. Enjoy.
scilosopher said:
It is an easy road in debate to systematically misunderstand what someone says to attempt to make them seem incorrect or subordinate to oneself in reasoning, but this is a counter-productive act that makes the act of debate less meaningful.
That is when I interpreted your statement, I wrote: "
From this statement, I tend to get the impression that...", so as to make it clear that I may actually be misinterpreting your post, and give you an opportunity to clarify your meaning.
scilosopher said:
However, it is clearly diluted by a tendency to focus on ill founded attacks (at least in my case, I'm not always sure exaclty what other people mean)
Again, due partly to a misconception on your part and a lack of clarity on my part.
scilosopher said:
which led me to running out of patience before I reached the end.
It happens to everyone sometimes.
ProCop said:
Field of mathematics is too limited to provide understanding/insight in/of the universe phenomenon as experienced by a conscious being.
Yes, one could say that, since it is not the goal of Mathematics to do so, however, it is akin to saying that a blender is too limited to make toast, i.e. it is not truly a fair comparison to say something is too limited to address a problem it was not designed to solve.
ProCop said:
(Phys/maths view is that it came into being from nothing in the Big Bang
I do not feel it appropriate for me to speak on the current views regarding the universe in Physics, but I can state that how the universe came into being has no effect upon Mathematics, and Mathematics puts forth no such theory as to how the universe began, simply because it is not a concern of the field.
ProCop said:
Further more in your model the man can be (and should your model be true).
To my knowledge, I put forth no "model", but let's see where you take this.
ProCop said:
<i> will </I>be replaced by the computer because the computer, has higher mathematical faculty than the man and the man is less suited to exist in the universe than the maschinery is
Doubtful. Are ants less suited to live since they, (
by most accounts) have less Mathematical prowess than humans? No. Do humans destroy ants because of this reason? Most likely not. Thus, one can see that your argument is flawed. In reality, until computers attain sentience, their theoretical Mathematical abilities will be far below that of humanity. Even sentience is no guarantee of Mathematical ability. Why? Ask anyone who claims to do poorly in Mathematics, and you'll find a sentient creature that does not posses considerable Mathematical skill.
ProCop said:
Mathematical knowledge has put you in a capsule of an illusion that if you partial model is proved correct - then you understand everything.
Proofs (
Which I believe you are referring to, please correct me if I am wrong.) are based upon assumptions, i.e. axioms and definitions, which are assumed to be true. If one accepts these assumptions, then the "model" is complete.
ProCop said:
Anyway the knowlege you got at school was largely structured by Aristotle,
Unless Aristotle contributed to Mathematics in some way unknown to myself, I doubt it. Even if he did, it would be a contribution to the system of education in general, and not the
field of Mathematics.
ProCop said:
and you (I suppose) live under the democratic government composed on Plato' s ideas of the Republic...naturaly you can ignore that and concern yourself with the fact that you know for sure that 1+1 = 2).
Again, you are missing the issue. I asked for an example of Philosophy aiding
the field of Mathematics, not those who study it.
Quantum Quack said:
It could also be considered that philosophy is about everything and that everything includes mathematics.
It could be said, but it is incorrect, for reasons already described earlier regarding subfields.
yinyinwang said:
The proposition or axiom has no constrains, not any statement. And if any statement is true depends on what kind of logics you are following, so with the same subject, there are different math statements, for example, we have many geometries, Euclidean or non.
This is correct. By "axiomatic" I thought you were referring to the axiomatic system, not the axioms themselves.
However, if the axioms are not what most would consider to be reasonable assumptions, then they are essentially useless. I could build an axiomatic system where all additions are off by 1, i.e. 1+1 would equal 3 instead of 2. Most likely, alternate versions of all other theorems that exist could be derived, but they would not be what almost any person who studies Mathematics would consider reasonable, since they were based on a premise most would consider false. Thus, your (
implied) assertion of freedom of choice with the axioms is a bit off kilter. Not necessarily incorrect, but not truly reasonable. (
Such is the English language, eh?)
yinyinwang said:
You don't quite undertand the problem, we are not in short supply of Phi-man, but short of young ones.
Ok, so I don't get the point you're driving at. Would you mind clarifying it? What is the relevance of the lack of young Philosophers?
Quantum Quack said:
maybe it's just that there is more money to be got for a math person than a philosopher.
Not much money in philosophy hey?
I can assure you that almost no one embarks on a study of theoretical Mathematics because of financial reasons. Applied Mathematics is another story.
yinyinwang said:
Yes, any one can have his life philosophy and can challeng the pillar, that makes a success more difficult because there are limitless examiners around to attack you from all directions.
It also makes accomplishment of any result that could be considered significant nigh impossible as well, which was one of my earlier points.
yinyinwang said:
Dapthar
Quote/To the contrary, it makes it easier. Any point with a shred of truth to it can be argued just as well as an established idea, since there is no experimental evidence or previous standards to conform to, i.e. too much freedom, and too little structure makes a subject rather easy./
I don't quite get what you mean. Do you mean that the phi-man are talking baseless things or without care for logics?
No. Without a well-established set of ideas that are assumed to be true, logic is essentially useless. See my earlier example with the system where 1 + 1 equals 3.
yinyinwang said:
math use formula or symbol to argue or reason,
phi-man use langguang to do so most of the time because the case can not be generalised into a set of simple symbols and equations or > or <, that does not mean no reason or structure at all.
No, it doesn't. But since Philosophy utilizes language instead of symbolic logic, it inherits all of the flaws inherent in language itself, the vagueness, the paradoxes, etc.
Language is a tool to express ideas, not one to examine them with, e.g. one builds a circuit with completely different tools then one uses to examine it with. Why? Construction tools are generally not suited for diagnostics, and language is no exception to this assertion.
yinyinwang said:
BTW: you don't have to scream to big blue to make a point.
That was not my intention. My aim with the large blue text was to bring main ideas to other posters who may be skimming the thread in hopes of drawing more minds into the discussion. All of this was clearly explained in my note, which you apparently skipped or paid no heed to.
yinyinwang said:
Dapthar
Quote/It is true that in Mathematics, one is primarily concerned with self-consistency, since it is a measure of the strength of one's logic, but if one's constructs don't do something useful (In the context of Mathematics) then there isn't much point to it. Again, your example doesn't work either, since anything having to do with physical reality is not a concern of Mathematics. Frankly, if assuming the sun is made of gold led to an interesting solution of a long-standing problem, e.g. the Riemann Hypothesis, then Mathematicians would have no problem doing so./
A lot of math assumptions come as the abstractions from reality, or physical model, at least at the begining of its construction of any system, so you can not say that physical world has nothing to contribute to math, otherwise math become ghost depicting completely.
I should have stated that "physical reality is
no longer a concern of Mathematics", since that is what I meant. I recognize that the concept of a number arose, in part, from physical reality, but physical reality has not been a concern of Mathematics since then.
yinyinwang said:
... but if you do so as a phi-man, you become everybody's laugh stuff.
Dapthar
Quote/Do you realize you are contradicting yourself here? You were just lauding the freedom of Philosophy, and now are touting its system of checks and balances? /
You are assuming that which is not true. See above.
Please clarify. The only relevant prior reference I see is that of language being the tool of Philosophy, rather than symbolic logic, but, that does not seem to shed light on what you are referring to as my assumption or my error.
yinyinwang said:
Dapthar
Quote/I could create a philosophical paradox that states the sun is composed of a substance that only looks like Hydrogen and Helium to our instruments, but is actually composed of tiny strings of energy that no device can currently detect, (replacing "tiny strings of energy" with "tiny fragments of gold" will yield an analogue to your original example), but every measuring device that exists today cannot detect them, and this philosophical "paradox" currently has no resolution. It doesn't mean that it has any less validity since it goes against "Philosophical common sense", so even your absurd argument holds as much Philosophical validity as current Physics research./
You call it a paradox?
Yes, and I explained why, and you quoted my explanation. If you want further clarification, you will have to ask about a specific aspect of my post.
yinyinwang said:
Being so emotional does not help you think phi- or math-ly.(I hate long spelling)
Emotional? The only word that I noted that could be perceived as emotional was "absurd", and it was simply used as my choice of adjective with no emotional subtext intended.
yinyinwang said:
Without physical evidences any statement remains as assumptions, not only phi- ones.
what do you mean by "Philosophical common sense"?
Essentially, common sense. The "Philosophical" was something I neglected to delete prior to posting.
yinyinwang said:
Yes a philosopher will not be easy to adapt to any profession, not because of the difficulty but the professional glossary.
Dapthar
Quote/So you're stating that Philosophers posses the proper tools to adapt to other fields, and the only barrier are the technical terms? Are you serious? Philosophy is not that efficient of an exercise for one's mind. The concepts in Mathematics are what present the difficulty, not the terminology, and I assert that Philosophy doesn't prepare one for the mental acrobatics that Mathematics requires./
The study of Philosophy does not teach one wisdom, it teaches one
Philosophy, and these two concepts are not the same thing.
yinyinwang said:
Math is reputed as mind agility demanding. A laborman can not afford it. But mind agility is not enough for philosophy, transforming mind agility into wisdom needs other properties like sense of responsibility, being balanced emotionally, ie, dancing gracefully between subjectiveness and objectiveness, etc.
I already refuted a similar argument with a "superset/subset" rationale. It applies here as well, since if Philosophy was a more mentally demanding subject than Mathematics, it would be relatively easy for Philosophers to become Mathematicians, but, as reality contests, it obviously is not.
yinyinwang said:
axiomatic=/=difficult, neither.
"In Philosophy, almost all interpretations are equally valid, but this is not true in Mathematics." That is funny.
That is why we call it like ghost-depicting, because the concept comes before the extensions.
I believe in almost all subjects the concept must exist before it is extended. Perhaps you are referring to something else?
yinyinwang said:
How much effort is dependent on how much you want to gain, not the subject
Dapthar
Quote/To the contrary, the effort one must put in to a field to understand it is directly proportional to the difficult of the subject./
I did not see any "contrary" here.
The contradiction is that you asserted the effort one must put into a field is dependent on what one wants to gain, while I stated that the effort one must put forth is intrinsically related to the difficulty of the subject.
yinyinwang said:
My statement is also proportional. But I would like to make it clearer. With the subject held the same, the efforts by different people are different to achieve the same degree of understanding.
With this clarification, your statement now essentially agrees with mine, although the "same degree of understanding" may pose some problems later on.
yinyinwang said:
3,I doubt the statistics by this thread because who can be called a phi-man is highly questionable.
Dapthar/quote/I don't really get what you're saying here, perhaps that your original "rarity" argument was flawed since the number of people in a field is at best a mediocre indicator of its difficulty? Something else perhaps?/
How would you judge a person as a phi-man or not, a book? a degree? a review? and how would you grade them as successful ones?
A degree seems to be a reasonable option. What level of degree to consider (
Bachelor's, Master's or Ph.D.) can be decided by you.
yinyinwang said:
The number of participants in a game is decided by supply/demand of a mraket, but how many of them will become great is not. you can have a whole bunch of them being "mediocre".
A certain level of dedication must be put forth to posses a degree of some sort, thus (
hopefully) filtering out most of the "mediocre" applicants.
yinyinwang said:
4,difficulty exists in any profession and can deter any one, for instance, walking is simple but can you walk on hands, on one hand? on a finger? The same is true with math, you can build a math maze that no one can solve or simply there is no solution to it, but this is not an indication of wisdom.
Dapthar/quote/Neither is formulation of a Philosophical paradox, which is an analogue of the example you are trying to use. Again, a moot point, for it goes "against" both Mathematics and Philosophy.
I hope that you are going to return to supporting your ideas now that you are done with this aside./
I don't know if my answers are up to your satisfaction but feel free to ask.
If they aren't, I ask.
yinyinwang said:
Are you assuming phi as paradoxes or built on paradoxes?
No. You were attempting to reduce the difficulty of Mathematics to Mathematical Paradoxes, and using those to show that those "
[are] not [indicative] of wisdom", and I stated that the same argument could be applied to Philosophy, thus, it was a moot point.
shrubby pegasus said:
nothing a philosopher can ever say is universal.
wesmorris said:
Isn't that a universal statement? Does that mean it isn't true?
You falsely assume that S.P. is a Philosopher. If he/she is not, there is no paradox.
ProCop said:
You cannot compare/meassure the depth of science (or philosophy) - though it would be interesting if it were possible eg. on a boek cover would be printed:
<B>READABILITY</b>:
minimaly required IQ = 125, recomender 135 optimal = 150
That way we would be able to asses the "depth" of the subject of the book.
That would just be forcing some other arbitrary and controversial "standard", which would not achieve the purpose you seek. Frankly, it would only serve to be a self-reinforcing mechanism of IQ, since if someone with an IQ of say, 100 only reads books within their IQ range, they will most likely never improve. (
This is all under the assumption, that, for the moment, IQ is a valid measure of anything, which I personally believe it not to be.)
ProCop said:
Not true. Take eg.
flogiston theory Widely believed true in the scientific world for a long time before it was disproved.
I believe that if you take all of S.P.'s comments as referring exclusively to Mathematics, then everything he said is essentially correct. Once something is proven in Mathematics it remains true, if one assumes the axioms are true, of course.
