"Determined by"? This I object to outright. Math is a language and corresponds with relationships. It doesn't determine them.
Very interesting objection. I found the results of this question the most fascinating of all of them. 12 people picked 1, 2 or 3, two people picked 10, one picked 8 and one 5, plus your objection to the whole question (which I think is basically a 10, but it was better that you explained it). When writing this question, it went through several different phrasings. It started out as "is materialism false?" and then went through several changes and elaborations because I imagined various objections to the phrasing of it, and wound up being what I feel like is the issue at the heart of materialism, but perhaps not strictly equivalent to it. It's basically the question of supervenience, but phrased in a way that I prefer so that it avoids speaking of "physical properties" and instead speaks of mathematical relationships. Also interesting is that the 2 people so far who picked 10 are the people with the heaviest philosophy backgrounds, whereas the 12 who picked 1-3 mostly have science or engineering backgrounds. I picked 3, but if you'd asked me a year or two ago I would have said 1 or 2... although I still debated whether to pick 2 or 3 for it. I'm getting significantly more open-minded I think!
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-06-07 09:02 am (UTC)"Determined by"? This I object to outright. Math is a language and corresponds with relationships. It doesn't determine them.
Very interesting objection. I found the results of this question the most fascinating of all of them. 12 people picked 1, 2 or 3, two people picked 10, one picked 8 and one 5, plus your objection to the whole question (which I think is basically a 10, but it was better that you explained it). When writing this question, it went through several different phrasings. It started out as "is materialism false?" and then went through several changes and elaborations because I imagined various objections to the phrasing of it, and wound up being what I feel like is the issue at the heart of materialism, but perhaps not strictly equivalent to it. It's basically the question of supervenience, but phrased in a way that I prefer so that it avoids speaking of "physical properties" and instead speaks of mathematical relationships. Also interesting is that the 2 people so far who picked 10 are the people with the heaviest philosophy backgrounds, whereas the 12 who picked 1-3 mostly have science or engineering backgrounds. I picked 3, but if you'd asked me a year or two ago I would have said 1 or 2... although I still debated whether to pick 2 or 3 for it. I'm getting significantly more open-minded I think!