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I don't think you are addressing the concern that the GP brought up. Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty is not an essay about nihilism. Briefly, [Mathematics]
by tree_of_item 16y ago
I don't think you are addressing the concern that the GP brought up. Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty is not an essay about nihilism.
Briefly,
[Mathematics] will be seen as the creation of finite human beings, liable to error in the same way as all other activities in which we indulge. Just as in engineering, mathematicians will have to declare their degree of confidence that certain results are reliable, rather than being able to declare flatly that the proofs are correct.
- Helianthus16 16y agoThat was intentional. As he could not or did not condense the points of the paper (partly because he didn't personally agree) I did not have anything to work with; as there wasn't a link to the article, I did not have anything to read; as my point was never about mathematical certainty the question of mathematical proofs being true is irrelevant. As described in your quote, mathematical truth is not the same thing as whether any thought can be true. Though while I'm here, I'd say that it's some weird ego-thing that humans think they've 'created' math while simultaneously thinking it's flimsy. Math is a property of the universe.