You separate one sentence (of a sidebar comment, no less) into two separate quotations, and then accuse “continued participation” after “protestations”, and spend the entirety of your post focusing on it…and then call it a “niggling matter” ask me about the fascination with it? And you want to lecture me about sincerity?
That’ll do, troll. That’ll do.
I see what you are trying to say, but math is considered to be abstract. Abstract thoughts != subjective. Some the links I provided for Mikachusetts were here and here and here.
I can try to find something more thorough than wikipedia about the subject, but it might take a while.
Thank you for the links, as this is a subject that interests me greatly. Dont trouble yourself too much, but I would appreciate anything you come across that seems worthwhile.
edited to add: those links dont clear anything up for me. Discretion is a subjective task. Discrete partitions dont exist outside of minds to perceive them. Numbers are a part of natural language, and operations performed on them are rational. Basically, “2+2=4” is as objective as the identity axiom.
Sun. 12/07/09 19:33 EDT
.post #213
John, I’ve edited my previous post in hopes of clarifying what I’m referring to as “a niggling matter.”
As augmentation, I’ll further explain here.
What the “niggling matter” is, is your fascination with whether I’m suggesting you’ve made a single, or multiple, “protestations.”
Okay?
I understand that my lack of faith in your sincerity (with regard to these two statements of yours) is a somewhat more serious matter.
Jeez.
Communicating with you is taking a lot of effort.
Just chill a bit, try to read what I write a bit more carefully.
Edit to (hopefully) improve clarity:
The “niggling matter” started here:
[url=David Gordon Layeth the Smackdown - #21 by John_James]
progresses to here:[url=David Gordon Layeth the Smackdown - #28 by John_James]
and appears at least one more time.
So hopefully, I’ve delivered what you’ve been asking for, even though it was sitting right there in my original post, all along.
I hope this makes the world a better place, in some small way.
Here are some more articles I came across. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy seems to be a very good site, but it is hard to search it well. However, one of their articles is full of shit, so it is not a perfect source. But the other links I am about to provide seem to be better, as they describe various philosopher’s thoughts instead of providing the author’s thoughts.
Abstract Objects (I recommend this one the most)
Anyway, some philosophers have stated that math is subjective, but it seems to be far more common for philosphers to state that it is abstract and not subjective. I’m trying to find articles on subjectivity and objectivity, but it is strangely hard to find one on the SEP, so you’ll have to wait some more. I’ll post a link when I find some good articles.
Thank you gotlucky
@ Mika:
All I am going to say is I really don’t agree with Long at all. Probably for the same reasons I don’t agree with his assesment of De Jassay or care much for his virtue ethics approach.
And if you are going to underpin economics with ethics, I would bet a small fortune you are going to end up here everytime:
Either way, I really have no taste for discrediting a person’s ethics, so I’m out - unless they are a supreme jackass like Stephan Molyneaux…in which case I’ll amuse myself from time to time in various ways on such a personality.
From this previous post:
no clue if this is true or not, but I found this comment about Rothbard, which I can’t defend one way or the other, but it struck a bit of an “intuitive ring” in my ears, and I found it interesting:
On the other side is Rothbard. Sqaurely a radical rationalist. He takes his inspiration from Catesian rationalists, and Hobbs, Rousseau, Bentham, and J.S. Mill. He opposes Smithian economics and moral philosophy. Those in the Rothbard camp are not rule utilitarians, but radical rational individualist utilitarians (though most deny they are utiltarians at all) who hold that moral acts are first and foremost rational acts, and can only be justified through our perfect reason. Man is first and foremost a happiness (pleasure maximizing)seeking individual, and codified traditional rules often repress the pursuit of ultimate(happiness).
To this camp of thinkers, the irrational is immoral, and therefore morality is derived like a cartesian construction. The higher self is the rational creature who has been liberated from the irrationality of the traditional social institutions which repress pleasure-seeking and intrapersonal freedoms. The market is a wonderful free for all, where everyone uses everyone else to boost his own happiness, just as long as negative liberties are enforced. Morality is often judged by the end result of the action, not the intent. The market is the ultimate arbitrator of morality, since it brings the greatest pleasure to the greatest number.
Malachi,
I found more stuff that should be more relevant:
Mathematical Platonism (I read the introduction, gonna read it tomorrow)
Objectivity (I read this one)
Interesting.
As far as anti-Platonist math goes, and I’m about to go WAY beyond my grasp here, ever hear of Mandlebrot’s fractal geometry?
@ Mika again,
What if I believed it was? You said that "If you want to acheive goal Y,
I think this would probably fall in a certain subset of an epistemological category that would just put me in the traditional camp of positivism / non-cognitivism at this point.
Anyone know if Molyneux has responded to Gordon’s response, and where to find it?
