So I come with disabilities. — Tom Storm
They may question whether mathematical concepts truly represent universal truths or if they are constructed within specific cultural contexts. — Tom Storm
does this point to maths being more arbitrary than we think? — Tom Storm
They may question whether mathematical concepts truly represent universal truths or if they are constructed within specific cultural contexts.
— Tom Storm
struck me as inherently plausible as a PM position, but inherently implausible as a serious position per se. Im not sure how it could be argued that natural numbers, for instance, are culture-bound as a concept. — AmadeusD
Asking whether math is different in other cultures is like asking whether chess is different in other cultures. — Lionino
1200–1700: Origins of the modern game
The game of chess was then played and known in all European countries. A famous 13th-century Spanish manuscript covering chess, backgammon, and dice is known as the Libro de los juegos, which is the earliest European treatise on chess as well as being the oldest document on European tables games. The rules were fundamentally similar to those of the Arabic shatranj. The differences were mostly in the use of a checkered board instead of a plain monochrome board used by Arabs and the habit of allowing some or all pawns to make an initial double step. In some regions, the queen, which had replaced the wazir, or the king could also make an initial two-square leap under some conditions.[64] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#1200%E2%80%931700:_Origins_of_the_modern_game
↪Joshs Does that to you then imply that something like 1 + 1 = 2 is constructed within specific culture contexts, such that the quantity "1" is arbitrary rather than ubiquitously universal? — javra
including whether it is a basis for all other numbers or whether it is derived — Joshs
AFAIK, no one, including any p0m0, has ever pointed out a 'culture' wherein mathematics does not work — 180 Proof
Enumeration represents what Husserl calls a free ideality, the manipulation of symbols without animating them, in an active and actual manner, with the attention and intention of signification.
So rather than a perception of things in the world, counting requires turning away from the meaningful content of things in the world. The world is not made of numbers, the way we construct our perceptual interaction with the world produces the concept of number, and this construction emerged out of cultural needs and purposes , such as the desire to keep track objects of value. — Joshs
Some argue that the concept of 2 is more fundamental than 1. Theses disputes suggest in a subtle way the cultural basis of concepts of number. — Joshs
P.s. In large part posting this in a want to see if any more formally mathematical intellect would find anything to disagree with in what was here expressed. — javra
what postmodernism has to say about mathematics. — Tom Storm
This makes sense as "mathematical foundations," is simply not something most people care or even know about, and so it's not a good place to "challenge power dynamics," at least not for any sort of social effect. Math classes, however, are an entirely different story. — Count Timothy von Icarus
There is already a lot of pluralism and "questioning all assumptions," in the foundations of mathematics/philosophy of mathematics, so it's hard to see what a post-modern critique of mathematics would find worth critiquing. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The world is not made of numbers, the way we construct our perceptual interaction with the world produces the concept of number, and this construction emerged out of cultural needs and purposes , such as the desire to keep track objects of value. — Joshs
Does your language here suggest that you take post modernism to be a posturing deceit?
Just taking as the starting point anti foundationalism and the notion that all human knowledge is radically contingent. What does this mean for maths and how do post modernist theorists assess it's reliability and, presumably, its lack of grounding?
they are there to argue against the objective truth — L'éléphant
What I am interested in is the notion that mathematical knowledge is not inherently objective but is shaped by cultural, historical, and social factors. — Tom Storm
That's the issue right there isn't it. If there are variations in how maths is done, this does not appear to undermine its capacity to produce consistent results every time. — Tom Storm
1 + 1 = 2 is universal and hence not culture relative or in any way socially constructed. — javra
the universality of arithmetic-geometry (Kant) is inescapable — 180 Proof
So rather than a perception of things in the world, counting requires turning away from the meaningful content of things in the world. — Joshs
Some argue that the concept of 2 is more fundamental than 1. — Joshs
Challenging mathematics lack of grounding is already a major issue in mathematics. It's all about what else is true if the axioms are true, how could a tautology be unreliable? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Challenging mathematics lack of grounding is already a major issue in mathematics. It was the defining historical trend in the field over the 20th century. — Count Timothy von Icarus
So, attacking the grounding would be nothing new — Count Timothy von Icarus
whereas attacking the reliability seems extremely difficult if we're not talking about applied mathematics — Count Timothy von Icarus
But a mathematician talking about post modernism... that might be interesting. — Banno
This recognizes the issues at the foundations of math but also fixes "math as math" in itself, as a long-form tautology. From within the tautology of math, there is no room for cultural or historical influence. Or maybe the culture is that of universe, and its history is all time, and the society is the society of minds. Only such influences will produce a math, and because these influences are so simple (universe, mind, all time) that math is so simple and need never change - we've fixed it that way in its own axioms. — Fire Ologist
I don't think we ever can or will. Math is sort of how we think, not what we think. Math turns whatever we think, objective. It makes objectivity by being math. It is therefore, non-cultural. It is just human. — Fire Ologist
One way of putting that is to say that some philosophers of mathematics and foundationally inclined mathematicians were becoming postmodern even before postmodernity. (Alternatively, perhaps these concerns are not postmodern at all but are quintessentially modernist) — Jamal
. The deflationary theories of truth that came out of undecidablity, incompleteness, and undefinablity seem in the same wheelhouse (more an inspiration for POMO, or ammunition for it, than possible targets) — Count Timothy von Icarus
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