----- Original Message ----- From: "andie nachgeborenen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Platonists would say that numbers and the relations between exist independently of us in something like the way that distant galaxies do, or this one did before we were here. These are abstract entities, not physical objects, so it's no use looking for them on Alpha Centuri. We know them by doing maths. This no more strange than saying that lots of stuff we can't observe exists. Subatomic particles, for example. The unconscious mind. ================= As C.D. Broad once remarked [sorry don't have the ref. handy]: 'well, then sir, you may as well posit God at once.' But seriously, for those that are interested in the anti-Platonist position some excellent recent work that's well written is worth a peek: "Ad Infinitum The Ghost in Turing's Machine: Taking God out of Mathematics and Putting the Body Back In" by Brian Rotman "Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being" by George Lakoff & Rafael Nunez "Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics" by Mark Balaguer Ian "Plato is not *even* wrong; he is simply out of the question." [Gerald Edelman]
