Refutation of the \"Language-Only\" Interpretation of Math (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 17, 2010, 20:57 (5146 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: In truth, mathematicians admit there's no existence proof for numbers, but the prof I pseudo-quoted told me something like "At the end of the day, and behind closed doors, few mathematicians feel they are studying something that isn't real."-Apart from people who study fantasy, I don't suppose many folk devote their lives to studying something they think is not real. But in this case, since maths is an integral part of so much that is demonstrably real (e.g. physics, architecture, engineering), I'm still not convinced that the philosophical "is it or isn't it?" matters very much.-You referred me to a wikipedia article on Nietzsche's perspectivism, which doesn't seem to tell us more than that all views are subjective. In my subjective view, the Schacht interpretation of Nietzsche's aphorisms is, if anything, considerably less comprehensible than the aphorisms themselves, and in the preceding analysis I can't see any difference between concepts defined by the circumstances surrounding individuals and peoples, and concepts evaluated according to culture and context.-You yourself wrote: "It may well be that it is absolutely impossible to divorce yourself from a perspective. (Even agnosticism is a perspective.) Only by analyzing all competing perspectives can we possibly reach a truth, if one even exists."-This is a much clearer line of argument than the wikipedia one, and I think you should forget Nietzche (and Schacht!). If by "truth" we mean unsolved mysteries like the existence of God, the nature of consciousness, the origin of life, then I'd say there has to be an absolute truth. Whether we are equipped to find it, I don't know. If we mean the material truths of our current world, I think many of them are accessible to science without the interference of perspective. If we mean non-material "truths" ... ethics, aesthetics, philosophy ... then in my view there's no objective truth, no matter how many perspectives you analyse. As for your parenthesis, I agree completely ... agnosticism is indeed a perspective, though I'd go so far as to say it's a more comprehensive one than theism and atheism, since it allows for both.