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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:16
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quote:
Originally posted by JimmyCracksCorn
What Kuci isn't understanding is that logic is a system of reasoning, and reasoning is entirely subjective and culturally specific. Mathematics is simply one system of reasoning and one that is really rooted in western perceptions of quantity. For instance to the traditional Inuit, who didn't have numbers beyond ten, mathematics as we know it would not be "logical" at all. |
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I believe that's called. The idea that we are cognitively limited by our culture and upbringing. It's generally rejected nowadays. The Inuit have no cause to think about mathematics in their daily lives, but given time they could understand it, bearing in mind that language problems will significantly delay things. Now quit threadjacking, please, all of you. Or start a "fight with Kuci" thread, like this one was made for Agathon. 
In the situation Agathon mentioned, the correct response is to rigorously point out the holes in its theory, contradict and refute it. Trying to destroy it will drive it underground, convince those who like the theory that they're persecuted martyrs, and fail to solve the root problem, which is a vast undercurrent of antisemitic rage. Shutting up debate on a problem does not equate with solving it.
Suppressing free speech momentarily is, as the SCOTUS has ruled, sometimes necessary, as when a Klan rally's rhetoric appears to be on the verge of inciting a riot. Where immediate public safety is an issue, the specific instance can be silenced temporarily to stave off disaster, but such a response cannot work in the long term. Especially in the modern age, now that we have so many alternate modes of communication. But even before now, book-burning was only possible in a totalitarian state, such as Nazi Germany (no, I'm not Godwinizing, this is just an example).
In order for such a scheme to "work," you need not only to destroy the books but to ensure that they are not being propagated in spirit, that nobody is reading secretly printed copies or starting an even more ignorant oral tradition. Nowadays, the ideas can also propagate on newsgroups or forums. I should think that such a massive invasion of privacy would be worse than the disease it frequently fails to "cure." But to be fair, I still don't get what exactly Agathon is asking of me; how exactly can I "prove" this except by citing every example I can think of, as I have done? This argument is limited to hypotheticals until such time as we have a free population of people to manipulate for an experiment, assuming we're sick enough to do that.
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JimmyCracksCorn
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Macedonia - Sovereign country north of Greece.
Dec 2002
time: 05:16
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quote:
The idea that we are cognitively limited by our culture and upbringing. It's generally rejected nowadays. |
Ummm... not quite. Unless you mean limited in the sense of cognitive capability, in which case that wasn't what I meant at all.
quote:
The Inuit have no cause to think about mathematics in their daily lives, but given time they could understand it |
Of course, but that would require cultural conversion. They would need to subvert their own logic to adopt ours. Logic is entirely subjective, while Kuci sees it as objective.
But for the record, I'm against book burning/censorship too... for the same reasons you mentioned in the OP. I was just reacting to Kuci's "I'm the smartest teen in the universe" routine.
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:16
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quote:
Originally posted by JimmyCracksCorn
Of course, but that would require cultural conversion. They would need to subvert their own logic to adopt ours. Logic is entirely subjective, while Kuci sees it as objective.
But for the record, I'm against book burning/censorship too... for the same reasons you mentioned in the OP. I was just reacting to Kuci's "I'm the smartest teen in the universe" routine. |
Dude, everyone does that here, there's no reason to assume it's confined to Kuci. Sapir-Whorf isn't just intellectual capacity, it's the idea that our culture is a hard limitation on our understanding. While cultural barriers can be formidable, in practice they can always be overcome, and not just by subverting logic. The Inuit don't believe, so far as I know, that one plus one equals sixty. They just don't place a strong emphasis on math because they never saw value in it. Hence they never think of the subject. However, if they were given practice in understanding the system of numbers it would "make sense" to them. Kind of like organic chemistry is not necessarily "illogical" to me, it just utilizes whole branches of thought that I never bothered to learn. I'll probably have a hard time learning those things if ever I try, but that will be due more to personal inadequacy than to cultural limitations.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:16
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quote:
Math hasn't had anything to do with empirical claims since the 19th century. |
Statistics has, and that's been my claim. So my point stands. Physics is also at root an empirical science.
And your point seems to me to rely on a false dichotomy. It is a big claim to say that math is logical because it is not empirical. It could be neither -- but that's another can of worms.
quote:
Everything and their mother has been formalized since then. Math pwns philosophy in terms of logical rigor. |
That's just not true (well it might be true if you waste your time with Continental Philosophy, but not if you work in the Analytic tradition), and you are forgetting that there really aren't two separate subjects here - there are just different areas of focus.
And logicism is generally thought to be false, so mathematics does not rely solely on logic in the way that philosophy does.
And philosophy beats math hands down for rigour since mathematicians generally do not worry about the epistemic status of their axioms, or the metaphysical implications of what they are speaking of.
In any case, if you want the most rigour, become a Classicist. Mathematicians are girls compared to them.
Last edited by Agathon on 07-04-2005 at 19:59
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
That would be in line with Aggies all too frequent espoused goal. |
I used the Heine quote because of its prophetic nature, but I could just as easily have mentioned William Tyndale and his translation of the Bible into the vernacular:
" Tyndale, the great communicator, meanwhile continued with his translations of both testaments into his beautiful, flowing English taken up and finally encapsulated in the King James Bible which was to be printed in 1611. His Bibles had to be printed in pocket size editions in order to smuggle them across the Channel to those waiting eagerly in England to use them. How many were brought over will never, according to the Exhibition, be known. What is known, however, is that in 1527 William Warham the then Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to all his bishops requesting them to share the costs of collecting all the Tyndale bibles which could be found and to burn them.
[...]
Thomas More, who had written in Latin against Luther with his Dialogue Concerning Heresies in 1529, now had to write in English condemning Tyndale, but the later, as was the custom of the time, replied publicly with his Obedience of a Christian Man, a treatise on the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
... and Tyndale, branded as an arch-heretic, was captured in Brussels, imprisoned for over a year, tried and condemned for heresy. On 6th October 1536 he was put to death by the gruesome method of being partially strangled before being burned at the stake. "
http://www.domini.org/chelsea-old-c...exhibition.html
Or the early Christian church on the works of the Greek poet Sappho, or....
but you get the drift, of course.
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07-04-2005 10:55
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