To use Descartes’ famous example, a mental image of a chiliagon (a 1,000-sided figure) cannot be clearly distinguished from a mental image of a 1,002-sided figure, or even from a mental image of a circle. But the concept of a chiliagon is clearly distinct from the concept of a 1,002-sided figure or the concept of a circle. — Wayfarer
Most interesting! — Ms. Marple
Perception smoothes the grainy world structure. The water feels like a continuous stuff. — Landoma1
Conceptually distinguishable (rationalism) but perceptually not (empiricism). — Agent Smith
What if we are AI? — Agent Smith
Conceptually distinguishable (rationalism) but perceptually not (empiricism). — Agent Smith
You're defending the empiricist view that all concepts are derived from experience — Wayfarer
Quite right! That is the point at issue, which here you appear to be conceding. — Wayfarer
The 'law of the excluded middle' didn't come into existence when it was discovered by h. sapiens; it would be true in all possible worlds — Wayfarer
This is the point of the a priori nature of the pure concepts of reason in Kant — Wayfarer
So universal concepts are not created by thought, but can only be discerned by a rational intellect — Wayfarer
If universal concepts were not created by thought, then the universal concepts of love and hate could be discovered in a mind-independent world. — RussellA
My point is that dead matter seems to obey many mathematical structure — Landoma1
I think before going further, you should explain further what you mean by your term 'ontologically exist'. — Wayfarer
Then we're fucked! Do you really think consciousness can be programmed? — Landoma1
No. Concept and percept are not separable or even two really existing categories. The distiction is purely theoretical. — Landoma1
Correct. One of your sporadically insightful observations. :wink: — Wayfarer
The mind is of a different kind to the mind-independent world
Realism is the belief that the world comprises the mind and a mind-independent world. — RussellA
I think all participants here know about the statement of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Shouldn't we, rather, speak of it's reasonable effectiveness? I can't see nothing unreasonable about it and can't even imagine how else it could be. — Landoma1
...Every empirical law has the disquieting quality that one does not know its limitations... We may lose interest in the "ultimate truth,"... Such a situation would put a heavy strain on our faith in our theories and on our belief in the reality of the concepts which we form. It would give us a deep sense of frustration in our search for what I called "the ultimate truth."
Let's not forget though where we apply it. To dead Nature. In the human realm it seems unreasonable if effective indeed
The language he uses is deeply religious throughout — Moliere
The language he uses is deeply religious throughout. — Moliere
It's funny you say that - his Wikipedia page says he was a convinced atheist. Maybe the fact that it reads as 'religious' is because the kind of mathematical Platonism he seems to be suggesting goes against the grain of philosophical naturalism. There's a remark in another essay about philosophy of maths that I've read, saying 'Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” (i.e. like numbers) makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.' — Wayfarer
Wigner wrote - "The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve" — RussellA
it would be more true to say that the language he uses is deeply metaphorical rather than religious. — RussellA
The language he [Wigner] uses is deeply religious throughout — Moliere
It's funny you say that - his Wikipedia page says he was a convinced atheist — Wayfarer
. He had no use for organized religion, but was something of a disciple of Tielhard de Chardin, an intellectual and Catholic priest who advanced the idea of an Omega Point, toward which the world moves and reaches in its final days. — jgill
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