Reply to auroraloose
@JaniSIr I'm not sure that's relevant to the particular analogy he and I were making, about the qualia of color and whether we all see the same green. He was saying that the possibility that some organism evolved sight that somehow didn't involve dimensional perception wouldn't disprove the existence of spatial dimension. I didn't want to get too deep into it, but I was actually going to discuss how bringing in the evolution of perception didn't matter, because we don't understand how the human perceptory apparatus translates sensory signals into perception, so it doesn't matter if we all evolve the same kind of apparatus. Even beyond potential immaterial considerations, there could be material differences between each person's sensory organs that tweak how we perceive color.
You're right of course that here sound is still a material phenomenon, while circles are more abstract. I really do think circles have some kind of real existence, and I do think the evidence of math and physics is overwhelming, but the problem is formulating what that existence actually is. Acting like it's obvious, so it doesn't matter, is the wrong choice philosophically.
You're right of course that here sound is still a material phenomenon, while circles are more abstract. I really do think circles have some kind of real existence, and I do think the evidence of math and physics is overwhelming, but the problem is formulating what that existence actually is. Acting like it's obvious, so it doesn't matter, is the wrong choice philosophically.
| @auroraloose Bringing up colour perception is sort of just off topic to the original discussion. It's an interesting topic, but doesn't matter either way for platonism. I have a good definition of existence: Something exists, if there is a way to interact with it, at least in some theoretical sense. It's based on the principle that two things are only different if you can pinpoint out why they are different. Existence and non-existence would be such two things. Example: I have an egg in my fridge. You can verify this by flying over and looking at it. If it doesn't exist, you won't find any traces of it. I have an invisible ethereal egg in my fridge that you cannot touch or smell, but trust me bro, it's real. Just based on the claim you can immediately reject it, because you will find the exact same things as in the first case, if the egg doesn't exist. All of Platonic objects therefore are immediately non-existent. You can touch 2 eggs, you can't touch 2 itself. |
| Nietzsche's philosophy is the worst I would say he is much more suitable to be a poet than philosopher Wittgenstein's is the best for me Direct to the point, with few pages of Tractatus already convey a lot that are on point |
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| Physics is a field of study for balding old men. |
  |
 People often act offended when wealthy people flaunt their wealth on social media, but they are never shocked by the fools who flaunt their stupidity online. You guys don't deserve a serious reply, and I will simply say that the individuals who criticise on social media the great philosophers of the past such as Plato, Descartes, and Nietzsche have typically never read or understood them the slightest. Plato is the architect of the mathematical castle that all mathematicians have built and will continue to build in the history of mankind. @JaniSIr You are speaking about the existence of axioms instead of their consistency which proves once more than you have absolutely no idea about what you are talking about. Being a working Platonist allows one to do original work in mathematics, and this assertion need not even be proven for it is an obvious observation to anyone with a vague understanding of the field. |
Reply to Meusnier
People often act offended when wealthy people flaunt their wealth on social media, but they are never shocked by the fools who flaunt their stupidity online. You guys don't deserve a serious reply, and I will simply say that the individuals who criticise on social media the great philosophers of the past such as Plato, Descartes, and Nietzsche have typically never read or understood them the slightest. Plato is the architect of the mathematical castle that all mathematicians have built and will continue to build in the history of mankind.
@JaniSIr You are speaking about the existence of axioms instead of their consistency which proves once more than you have absolutely no idea about what you are talking about. Being a working Platonist allows one to do original work in mathematics, and this assertion need not even be proven for it is an obvious observation to anyone with a vague understanding of the field.
| @Meusnier That's a pretty bad castle, if the foundation is fundamentally rotten... Like come on, mathematics does not need Plato's unfounded assertions of concepts existing independently of humans. Plato isn't even mentioned in math classes anywhere. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that consistency argument, but as far as I know there is no proof that ZFC is actually consistent, we just haven't found a contradiction yet. |
JaniSIr said: @Meusnier That's a pretty bad castle, if the foundation is fundamentally rotten... Like come on, mathematics does not need Plato's unfounded assertions of concepts existing independently of humans. Plato isn't even mentioned in math classes anywhere. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that consistency argument, but as far as I know there is no proof that ZFC is actually consistent, we just haven't found a contradiction yet. I am not surprised that you had never heard of this metaphor that is a poetic description (I know that I have already lost you here) of the logical building of thought that can be embraced in one glance by any mathematician (Descartes had already mentioned the necessity to build such a castle to have a true understanding of any topic). I used the term working Platonist because mathematical thinking exactly proceeds, whenever one tries to make discoveries, from the assumption that you are trying to access a truth that is already there. And it is also a Platonic idea (Meno) that one needs not have Plato introduced in class to intuitively use this principle. In other words, doing mathematics is a form of observation of reality, of the mathematical real whose "existence" will always be to me more palpable than any physical sensations. Mathematics exists entirely independently of us, for once one fixes a set of axioms (assuming consistency—which is by no means a restrictive hypothesis), the true, false, and undecidable assertions are uniquely determined. Therefore, the set of all possible consistent axiomatic systems is the mathematical universe and this object does not require any human intervention to be conceived, and we cannot change it, merely access it (with considerable efforts!). There is no contradiction to be found in the first place. You cannot prove the consistency of ZFC in ZFC, I knew that you had no real expertise on this topic. In fact, modern physics rests on the implicit assumption that all choices of consistent axiomatic systems (that are large enough to allow you to send rockets to Mars) lead to the same values of truth for theorems of fluid mechanics. Otherwise, you would not be able to ever use mathematics to describe the physical reality, and we know that it has been prodigiously successful in the last two millennia (and we are very lucky to live in an age where physical intuition can also lead to mathematical discoveries—the work of Witten and mirror symmetry come to mind at once).  |
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