A colossal accident?

[James1215]

It doesn’t matter what analogy you use or how much you try to justify it. If you make knowledge dependent on physical experience, its a logical contradiction as Russell pointed out.

You’ve stated your view, I’ll get the counter.

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

I do not think you can gain knowledge of the world from maths until you see that the object in question conforms to the mathematical model being used.

You’ll have to pardon me if I find your supposition intenable. As I’ve indicated in a previous example, it’s impossible to derive pi empirically, which is used in so many real world applications. Again, why is validating mathematic proofs with empirical evidence ontologically required?

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

My own belief is that everything that exists is material, but I am prepared to be flexible on that or to accept that that is ultimately a matter of faith.

You are on the way to understanding the essential issue that is being debated. Futhermore, material existence can be comprehended and knowledge can be attained but empiricism isn’t the only way this can be done.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

lol you’ve actually misread me. I said that nothing in maths can be discovered in the sense that it is all there in the most basic principles.

?So only the most basic principles are forms? That still agrees to a world of forms.

I do not need to prove that the empirical exists…

Then you can hardly say that you have it. You can only say that you reason that we have it anyway.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

You’ve stated your view, I’ll get the counter.

Not just my view, the historically proven fact.

 

[davidv]

Before I work my way through the other objections, can you tell me how exactly I am wrong?

How you are wrong has been expressed to you numerous times in several different ways. What didn’t you understand about those explanations?

Here is my attempt to tell you:
You have used an unproven, and I believe a proveably false basis for your argument. Namely that all knowledge comes from physical evidence.

Any conclusion you reach based on this premise is unsound and likely false.

Doubt is a feeling… feelings are experienced… experience constitutes empirical evidence.

As to maths being a separate issue: can I mathematically walk down the road and catch a bus? Conversely, can I do anything in reality that affects maths? Can I cut a corner of a die and in doing so change the meaning of ‘cube’? No.

What are you try to say here?

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I do not think you can gain knowledge of the world from maths until you see that the object in question conforms to the mathematical model being used…

The rules of logic haven’t changed since the last time we pointed out that verificationsim is a logical contradiction.

 

[James1215]

You’ll have to pardon me if I find your supposition intenable. As I’ve indicated in a previous example, it’s impossible to derive pi empirically, which is used in so many real world applications. Again, why is validating mathematic proofs with empirical evidence ontologically required?

Do we need empirical evidence to say that maths exists? Difficult question, because I think that it is a logical system that has to be thought of to meaningfully exist. The principles which it is based on are easy to get from thoughts based on the empirical - counting objects, simple functions etc. Even if not thought of it might be considered existent or to have being, though my point is that I do not thing maths is in the same category of being as the rest of reality because it does not affect the empirical nor is it altered by the empirical. Certainty with regards to maths is not the same as certainty with regard to statements about perceptible reality either. The former does not need evidence and cannot be had merely through faith (ridiculous to have faith in maths); the latter can only be accepted with evidence and is different from faith.

As to pi, that is a mathematical concept which is used when things in the real world approximate circles. Saying pi is wonderful does not remove the empirical, the empirical is necessary for the appreciation of pi in engineering.

 

[James1215]

The rules of logic haven’t changed since the last time we pointed out that verificationsim is a logical contradiction.

That was not verification (though you are keen to try to stick it to anything I say) and verification is not necessary to empiricism anyway.

 

[James1215]

How you are wrong has been expressed to you numerous times in several different ways. What didn’t you understand about those explanations?

Here is my attempt to tell you:
You have used an unproven, and I believe a proveably false basis for your argument. Namely that all knowledge comes from physical evidence.

Any conclusion you reach based on this premise is unsound and likely false.

David, it seems like you’ve not been following it all. I said that perceptible reality does not mean the same as physical reality unless one is a materialist. The empirical is the perceptible or experienced, not necessarily the physical.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

…The principles which it is based on are easy to get from thoughts based on the empirical - counting objects, simple functions etc…

Frege disproved that by merely pointing out that one can perform math on objects we imagine. That have no analog in reality, quantity does not rest on empirical data, its an imaginary concept that we can or cannot apply to the world around us as we choose

 

[James1215]

You are on the way to understanding the essential issue that is being debated. Futhermore, material existence can be comprehended and knowledge can be attained but empiricism isn’t the only way this can be done.

No, we are on the way to understanding why the essential issue has been missed so often in this debate. This is the assumption that empirical evidence must be physical.

 

[davidv]

David, it seems like you’ve not been following it all. I said that perceptible reality does not mean the same as physical reality unless one is a materialist. The empirical is the perceptible or experienced, not necessarily the physical.

What is seems to you may not be what it is. It seems to me that you have created the confusion by conflating several term critical to understanding the topic at hand.

 

[James1215]

Frege disproved that by merely pointing out that one can perform math on objects we imagine. That have no analog in reality, quantity does not rest on empirical data, its an imaginary concept that we can or cannot apply to the world around us as we choose

Trouble is, unless someone was born and raised in an entirely dark cardboard box, they would have experienced empirical objects upon which to base abstract thought. Hence ‘objects we imagine’.

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

Do we need empirical evidence to say that maths exists?

I think the more pertinent question is why you believe empirical verification of mathematic proofs is necessary, other than to validate your personal belief.

Difficult question, because I think that it is a logical system that has to be thought of to meaningfully exist. The principles which it is based on are easy to get from thoughts based on the empirical - counting objects, simple functions etc. Even if not thought of it might be considered existent or to have being, though my point is that I do not thing maths is in the same category of being as the rest of reality because it does not affect the empirical nor is it altered by the empirical.

Just because mathematics can have empirical analogues doesn’t make them one and the same. Mathematics is simply evidence of the properties reality and not reality itself.

Certainty with regards to maths is not the same as certainty with regard to statements about perceptible reality either. The former does not need evidence and cannot be had merely through faith (ridiculous to have faith in maths); the latter can only be accepted with evidence and is different from faith.

Mathematics is evidence (and proof). That’s probably why you find this difficult having settled on an empirical mindset.

As to pi, that is a mathematical concept which is used when things in the real world approximate circles. Saying pi is wonderful does not remove the empirical, the empirical is necessary for the appreciation of pi in engineering.

Again, we are dealing with knowledge not whether or not appreciating the application of knowledge is empirically based.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

That was not verification…

You said…

“I do not think you can gain knowledge of the world from maths until you see that the object in question conforms to the mathematical model being used”…

Clearly you’re proposition here makes knowledge dependent on verification.

(though you are keen to try to stick it to anything I say)

As Russel pointed out, you cannot do what you keep trying to do. I don’t underrstand why that isn’t sinking in. You claim your position isn’t X, but then you turn right around and insist on making knowledge dependent on physical experience. Which is exactly the source of contradiction. No matter how you put it.

and verification is not necessary to empiricism anyway.

Verification was the theory meant to save empiric epistemology, and when that failed they turned to falsification, and when that failed, they gave up and admitted it wasn’t possible. Hence the death of empiric epistemologies in the 50’s. You aren’t arguing against just us, you are arguing against all the experts and the weight of history.

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

Trouble is, unless someone was born and raised in an entirely dark cardboard box, they would have experienced empirical objects upon which to base abstract thought. Hence ‘objects we imagine’.

We are also able to conceive, which is different from imagining. Conception allows us to evaluate, quantify and realize elements that are not necessarily subject to imagination.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

No, we are on the way to understanding why the essential issue has been missed

so often in this debate. Yes, all the experts who had doctorates in the matter and spent their lives on the issue are wrong. You, the guy who admits to little knowledge in the area have disproven them all!

This is the assumption that empirical evidence must be physical.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

What is seems to you may not be what it is. It seems to me that you have created the confusion by conflating several term critical to understanding the topic at hand.

He literally refused to use dictionary definitions. He refuses to use standard terminology.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Trouble is, unless someone was born and raised in an entirely dark cardboard box, they would have experienced empirical objects upon which to base abstract thought. Hence ‘objects we imagine’.

Objects we imagine need not have an empirical analog. As has been demonstrated to you many times