Le 21-août-06, à 18:55, David Nyman a écrit :
>
>> I don't think Bruno and Stathis are arguing that numbers are
>> neceesarily
>> the only things that exist (although a standard Platonist might argue
>> that
>> that they are the only things that exist necessarily..)
>
> But aren't they claiming that numbers are the only things necessary
> (together with the operations required for CT+YD, whatever they might
> be) to account for *our* existence? If not, what else is required?
Since the failure of logicism, by Godel's theorem, we can argue that
numbers does not necessarily exist. Numbers does not come from logic
alone. If you want them, you have to do a ontological commitment. To
believe, like all mathematicians, in the structure (N,+,*,0,1) is
enough for that (actually to believe in (N,+,*,0,1) is too much, but I
don't want to enter in the technical details before it is really
necessary).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Wed Aug 23 2006 - 05:49:47 PDT