On 3/14/07, David Nyman <david.nyman.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
> On Mar 14, 9:44 am, "Stathis Papaioannou" <stath....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> > On 3/14/07, Kim Jones <kimjo....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> > It is
> > conceivable that the physical world might not exist, or God not exist,
> or
> > God exist but not make the physical world, but it is not conceivable
> that
> > circles or integers or the UD not exist as mathematical objects.
> >
>
> In what sense 'not conceivable'? I don't find it hard to conceive of
> mathematical objects not existing, given that nothing else does
> either. 'Nothing else' here simply but radically entails that whatever
> you say you can 'conceive', my response is 'not that either'. This
> 'nothing' precisely is the nothing from which *nothing* can come. Our
> own existence contingently rules it out, which is what makes it so
> hard to think about. Such a 'possibility', being in fact necessary in
> 'all possible worlds', paradoxically abolishes the conceiver at the
> moment of conception.
>
Perhaps using the term "existence" for mathematical objects is misleading.
It doesn't mean they exist as separate objects in the real world, just that
they exist as concepts. This is mathematical Platonism.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Wed Mar 14 2007 - 18:25:42 PDT