Dear Bruno, let me segment your long reply (thanks) and reflect now in the 1st part to your comments on "truth". (I may come to the others later, I just beware of milelong posts). I interleave my response. John Mikes
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruno Marchal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, July 04, 2004 10:32 AM Subject: Re: Mathematical Logic, Podnieks'page ... (1st part) > At 06:57 03/07/04 -0400, John M wrote: > > >(Bruno: am I still in your corner?) > > OK. Let us see. > > >Dear Kory, an appeal to your open mind: in the question whether > >...."we discovered math or invented it"..., > >many state that the first version is 'true'. > >Beside the fact that anybody's 'truth' is a first person decision, > > Then I would decide to have food when I am hungry, to have water > when I am thirsty. I would decide Riemann hypothesis true and even proved > by me, and I would decide to get those million dollars. > I would decide you to be a platonist, my friend, ... > I would decide peace everywhere, > ...if truth was a matter of first person *decision*. > Seriously, I am afraid you confuse the luckily adequate first person feeling > the first person lives in front of truth and truth itself. > JM: I think we got into a semantic quagmire. I feel a different meaning in my (5th language English) "TRUTH" from what I read as the (4th language French) 'verité'. I use 'truth' as the OPINION one accepts as being not false. What you imply sounds to me as 'constructing a reality". Truth has nothing to do with decisionmaking. "Decision" comes into the picture only in the 1st person thinking to "decide" whether the item is not false. If I agree, it is (my) truth as well. > > >the fact > >that anything we may "know" (believe or find), is interpreted by the ways > >how our 'human' mind works - > > SURE! (but it is invalid to infer from that that truth itself depends on our beliefs and findings). > Sorry, Bruno, you sound in the parethetized remark as a person who believes in some eternal 'truth' chisled in the (nonexistent) stone of (nonexistent) supernatural 'law', - or rather: takes something like 'truth' as the installations (facts??)of the world. There is no such thing as "THE TRUTH - ITSELF" at least not among people who think... Maybe some religious fanatic fundamentalists know "the truth", the only ONE, worthwhile killing (-dying) for. Even the "facts" are explanations for observations - and we saw lately discussions on observers. The flat Earth: a fact (Ptolemaios), hell: a fact (A. Dante), the atoms in the molecules I synthesized: facts, then all these things turned into fiction. Props of some belief system. Now let me take a deep breath and if I am still 'on' this list, later I will come back to 'math'. (I don't know Wilfried Hodge, will not read him for this purpose.) Till then, I celebrate July 4th John Mikes > SNIP the rest>
