--- ravi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Devine, James wrote: > > according to many philosophers of math (according > to JKS), math > > exists outside of us whether we use it or not. > > > > well, what does 'exist' mean? physical existence?
Are you getting all Clinton on us, "depends on what the meaning of 'is' is"? -- Why the prejudice that something must be a "physical" object to exist? Does the working class have a physical existence? The English language? Would it destroy you if it turned out that the mind wasn't the same as the brain, that it consisted (say) of nonphysical functional states? And anyway, what makes you so sure you know what "physical" existence is? Platonists think there are numbers that have certain relations, that we don't make them up, their not dependent on human choices or conventions, that the relationships are discovered or found and not stipulated, and that the relationships are there whether or not we can prove them. (This last is the main think that intuitionists deny.) You wouldn't ask "where" the numbers are, because they don't have a physical location, it's sort of like asking "where" the English language is. Or the meaning of Hamlet. (I have it right here!) Or how much they weigh or how fast they are or what color they are. Those questions are just category mistakes, as an older generation of philosophers would say. I don't see what is so problematic about the idea of abstract entities. The world is full of weird entities that it is useful to posit -- that is, to say that they exist. Classes. Quarks (those are physical, but strange). Meanings. Minds. Why not numbers? But if we say that they exist, at least in my book, we mean it, it's not "as if," it's not pretend. I know some people have an urge -- Ive had it myself -- to make everything explicable in physical terms. But that's a metaphysical prejudice. Why does everything have to be physical? jks _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com
