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If you have words with absolutely precise meaning, you have a branch of math, pure or applied. That happens all of the time. Philosophy is a big, weird fuzzy fi
by theonemind 6y ago
If you have words with absolutely precise meaning, you have a branch of math, pure or applied. That happens all of the time. Philosophy is a big, weird fuzzy field because when the ideas get precise enough, they start to get regarded as math or science, and no longer the domain of philosophy. Likewise, sufficiently precise language would simply get reclassified as math, always leaving language "fuzzy" right by fuzzy philosophy.
Probably suffering from the blub paradox, but English seems pretty good for conveying ideas. It has a lot of unfortunate spelling and some weird conjugations, but the basic sentence has a subject, object, and verb, and then, it rather promiscuously imports words, which means we have a word for everything, and if we don't, we'll just take it from any language that does, no problem. This ideal language must have a large, precise vocabulary, like English (though you can argue the "precise" bit). English can really cut through to a point, in my opinion.
- wodenokoto 6y ago> when the ideas get precise enough, they start to get regarded as math or science, and no longer the domain of philosophy That's quite interesting. Do you have any examples?
- kmill 6y agoI'd thought math was the part of philosophy dealing with ideas that are precise enough to say things with certainty. (No matter how well-qualified and vanishingly relevant those ideas might be ;-) )
- atoav 6y agoWhen I studied philosophy she had a logic seminar. There is a big field of philosophy where logic (also in the mathematical sense) plays a huge role, and there are works in math that have philosophical implications (Gödel's work for example).