QED: Math is empirical

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QED: Math is empirical Anonymous 04/27/15 (Mon) 12:57:36 9c918f No.1441

Take 2 apples.

O O

Add another 2 apples to your original two.

O O O O

Put them all together, and you have a number called 4, which can be verified by counting.

1 2 3 4

O O O O

Anonymous 04/29/15 (Wed) 06:04:40 82b8f7 No.1459

math isn't real

Anonymous 04/29/15 (Wed) 06:24:27 b2032f No.1460

OP, arithmetic is babby tier to explain. Fucking everyone since Plato knew this because it's intuitively obvious... for basic arithmetic.

Philosophy of mathematics gets interesting once you begin to try to explain the relation of higher mathematics and the world. Explaining what calculus is really about, limits or infinitesimals; explaining why shit like the Rieman zeta function has any correlative power to real world patterns even though it is an equation about a relation of purely mathematical abstraction (prime numbers) is what is really interesting. Your simple observation is just kek.

tl; dr: Mathematics begins as the science of quantitative empirical relations. That's not hard to see. What's hard to fathom is how what basically amounts to how relations of abstract relations that are not even quantitative, but purely abstract numeric shit, somehow has any correlation with reality. That's how I see it anyway.

Anonymous 05/08/15 (Fri) 00:45:25 02e491 No.1512

>>1460

>that are not even quantitative

The arguments evidentialists and people like OP have is that all mathematics is quantitative because its fundament is quantitative. Sure it becomes more and more abstract, but it still deals with numbers, natural or not, and those are quantitative. So then it's also unsurprising that higher mathematics is applicable to the world. It's difficult to explain why and how precicely, but that it works is not a huge mystery.

That said, the argument isn't exactly flawless.

Anonymous 05/08/15 (Fri) 01:50:54 5b07e2 No.1515

>>1441

QED: Math isn't empirical

Take 2 mathematical theorems.

Add another 2 theorems to your original two.

Put them all together and you have a number called 4, which can be verified by counting.

1 2 3 4

% % & &

It isn't as easy as looking at things widely considered empirical, and then relating them to numbers. Numbers can also relate to non-empirical things. Sets can have other sets, etc.

Anonymous 05/09/15 (Sat) 10:46:45 2a1c91 No.1519

>>1460

>What's hard to fathom is how what basically amounts to how relations of abstract relations that are not even quantitative, but purely abstract numeric shit, somehow has any correlation with reality.

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