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I think that's using the cart to pull the horse... | 709 comments | Create New Account

Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.

I think that's using the cart to pull the horse...

Authored by: Wol on Saturday, May 11 2013 @ 01:22 PM EDT

There's disagreement over what's what, but philosophy is the use of logic to
understand the world. And if you use boolean logic, then you can prove it is
complete and self-consistent.

As such, assuming that philosophy == logic == mathematics, then mathematics in
its most basic, provably correct, form has nothing whatsoever to do with
numbers, ie quantity.

Only when you bring peano numbers in to try and prove the concept of number do
you fall foul of the incompleteness theorem.

So mathematics is the manipulation of SYMBOLS, not quantities, because
mathematics still has meaning in the absence of the concept of number. Boolean
algebra is not arithmetic.

Okay, we use arithmetic in a computer to represent boolean algebra, but that's
because the central part of a computer is the ARITHMETIC LOGIC unit but, as I
say, boolean algebra exists on its own without needing number, let alone
algebra. On the other hand, arithmetic would be impossible without boolean
algebra.

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

It is simple.. - Authored by: jesse on Sunday, May 12 2013 @ 03:10 AM EDT
- That's probably just as well :-) ...nt - Authored by: Ian Al on Sunday, May 12 2013 @ 04:13 AM EDT

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