Re: Mathematical Logic, Podnieks'page ...

From: John M <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 16:44:59 -0400

Dear Bruno, let me segment your long reply (thanks) and reflect now in the
1st part to your comments on "truth". (I may come to the others later, I
just beware of milelong posts).
I interleave my response.
John Mikes

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruno Marchal" <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Sunday, July 04, 2004 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: Mathematical Logic, Podnieks'page ... (1st part)
> At 06:57 03/07/04 -0400, John M wrote:
>
> >(Bruno: am I still in your corner?)
>
> OK. Let us see.
>
> >Dear Kory, an appeal to your open mind: in the question whether
> >...."we discovered math or invented it"...,
> >many state that the first version is 'true'.
> >Beside the fact that anybody's 'truth' is a first person decision,
>
> Then I would decide to have food when I am hungry, to have water
> when I am thirsty. I would decide Riemann hypothesis true and even proved
> by me, and I would decide to get those million dollars.
> I would decide you to be a platonist, my friend, ...
> I would decide peace everywhere,
> ...if truth was a matter of first person *decision*.
> Seriously, I am afraid you confuse the luckily adequate first person
feeling
> the first person lives in front of truth and truth itself.
>
JM:
I think we got into a semantic quagmire. I feel a different meaning in my
(5th language English) "TRUTH" from what I read as the (4th language French)
'verité'. I use 'truth' as the OPINION one accepts as being not false. What
you imply sounds to me as 'constructing a reality". Truth has nothing to do
with decisionmaking. "Decision" comes into the picture only in the 1st
person thinking to "decide" whether the item is not false. If I agree, it is
(my) truth as well.
>
> >the fact
> >that anything we may "know" (believe or find), is interpreted by the ways
> >how our 'human' mind works -
>
> SURE! (but it is invalid to infer from that that truth itself depends on
our beliefs and findings).
>
Sorry, Bruno, you sound in the parethetized remark as a person who believes
in some eternal 'truth' chisled in the (nonexistent) stone of (nonexistent)
supernatural 'law', - or rather: takes something like 'truth' as the
installations (facts??)of the world. There is no such thing as "THE TRUTH -
ITSELF" at least not among people who think... Maybe some religious fanatic
fundamentalists know "the truth", the only ONE, worthwhile killing (-dying)
for.
Even the "facts" are explanations for observations - and we saw lately
discussions on observers.
The flat Earth: a fact (Ptolemaios), hell: a fact (A. Dante), the atoms in
the molecules I synthesized: facts, then all these things turned into
fiction. Props of some belief system.

Now let me take a deep breath and if I am still 'on' this list, later I will
come back to 'math'.
(I don't know Wilfried Hodge, will not read him for this purpose.)

Till then, I celebrate July 4th

John Mikes

> SNIP the rest>
Received on Sun Jul 04 2004 - 17:02:00 PDT