Re: Numbers

From: <peterdjones.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 07:29:15 -0800

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> Le 17-mars-06, à 00:10, peterdjones.domain.name.hidden a écrit :
>
> > Dualism says there are two really existing realms or substances.
>
> This is Descartes' dualism between mind and body.
>
> > Saying the physical realm is concrete and real and the mathematical
> > realm is abstract and unreal is not dualism.
>
>
>
> Well, it is not Descartes' dualism, but it is sometimes called Plato's
> dualism, between the observable world and the invisible reality.


No it isn't: Plato thought the physical and mathematical realms are
both real, and the mathematical is the more real of the two.

> Like you I prefer to keep the term of "dualism" for the cartesian one,
> especially in the comp-or-weaker frame where the two notions interfere.
>
>
> >
> >> Both view seem to have their champions here. I guesse that
> >> when saying "This has to be saying simply that the multiverse
> >> IS a mathematical object." Tom (daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden) defends
> >> the monist view as obvious and the only one making sense while
> >> when saying "[The universe] has real existence, as opposed
> >> to the other mathematical objects which are only abstract."
> >
> > Well, I've never seen a mathematical object. Have you
> > ever seen the number 3?
>
>
> Have you ever seen something material? Of course you can tell me: "oh
> yes I have just seen a cup of coffee this morning". What makes you so
> sure it is material?

It is tangible, massive, etc.

> We "see" only immaterial pictures, like in dream.

No, we see things. We are not a little homunculus sitting inside
our own heads. No such being has been detected.

> We *infer* "matter", and today both reasonable theories (QM, comp) and
> experiments (Aspect for example) put difficulties on the aristotelian
> (stuffy) conception of matter.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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Received on Fri Mar 17 2006 - 10:30:16 PST

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