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That’s more a modern interpretation coloring history. “Applied mathematics” has always disagreed with reality. It’s only recently that we’ve gotten so good at u

by Retric 1y ago

That’s more a modern interpretation coloring history. “Applied mathematics” has always disagreed with reality. It’s only recently that we’ve gotten so good at understanding the world that the differences seem less pronounced. Ancient Egyptians didn’t know why the height of a pile of grain doesn’t grow linearly with the amount of grain in a column etc, instead mathematics was seen as a useful shortcut. Which has always been what applied mathematics ends up as. > You might argue that physics and math aren't "philosophy" There’s a far longer list of famous people including philosophers, scientists, etc who disagree with that idea than agree with it. Fundamentally they operate in different directions with philosophy attacking from the top down and science and mathematics from the bottom up. Plato specifically disagreed with the notion that observation alone can lead to truth.

kragen 1y ago
Nonsense. You seem to want to redefine "philosophy" to mean "philosophy that doesn't work", which admittedly is a widespread definition today among the common people. But if we stipulate that definition, it has the practical problem that we cannot tell whether what Chalmers is up to here is "philosophy" or not until we find out whether it was a productive line of inquiry or not, perhaps in two or three hundred years. Whether Plato believed that you could figure out the area of a triangle or the composition of matter from pure logic, or whether that required empirical observation, is irrelevant to the fact that he considered figuring out the area of a triangle or the composition of matter to be properly part of philosophy. This is an assertion that it would never have occurred to anyone to challenge until very recently, with the advent of the useless popular definition of "philosophy" you seem to be championing for some random reason.
- Retric 1y ago
  Sure, nonsense meanwhile you seem to misunderstand one of the earliest philosophical debates. Plato specifically argued for truth independent of physical reality where Aristotle believed in empiricism. As to your edit> You seem to want to redefine "philosophy" to mean "philosophy that doesn't work", which admittedly is a widespread definition today among the common people. But if we stipulate that definition, it has the practical problem that we cannot tell whether what Chalmers is up to here is "philosophy" or not until we find out whether it was a productive line of inquiry or not, perhaps in two or three hundred years. Hardly, I specifically mentioned that some philosophers are open to observation but they get there as a philosophical stance first. Meanwhile Thomas Aquinas and many others argued that truth flowed from religious text. It’s easy to dismiss such reasoning especially when it disagrees with observed reality but that doesn’t erase such people from history. Edit2: I’m done responding to your edits.
  - dr_dshiv 1y ago
    They are united together in Pythagoreanism. Which Newton, Copernicus and Galileo claimed to be… For a Pythagorean, the world is made of math: “All is Number.” The math exists in immaterial reality — and harmonies in math manifested as harmonies in the material world (ie “harmony of the spheres”). Plato merely critiqued that a focus on empirical mathematical modeling distracted from how geometry and other pure mathematics revealed basic truths about reality. I can provide source texts as well.
    - Retric 1y ago
      I’m not disagreeing based on how Plato viewed math but rather physics. Edit: He didn’t take the real world as a 1:1 mapping with Forms. So, deeper truths flowed from his abstract ideals, but they didn’t directly describe the physical world. We think of physics as descriptive an electron with respond this way to an electrical field, but that wasn’t how he thought of physics. Which is why he would argue studying the world isn’t a path to truth.
      - dr_dshiv 1y ago
        What’s your reference on this? I’ll admit it is very difficult to say what Plato thought, rather what ideas he discussed. I know very little about how he viewed physics, apart from the Timeaus. There, I’m familiar with how Plato associated the four classical elements—earth, air, fire, and water—with specific geometric solids: Fire: Tetrahedron Air: Octahedron Water: Icosahedron Earth: Cube The geometrical properties corresponded to the physical properties; for instance, the sharp points of the tetrahedron caused the penetrating nature of fire; whereas the cube produced solidity, etc.
        Retric 1y ago
        > your reference on this? It’s not a single line but rather a mental model I found that makes reading what he wrote seem more consistent. I can support the argument, but there’s a reason people write long books about several thousand year old works. Trying to wade through ancient philosophy even when reading translations is a difficult process as they fundamentally think in different terms. For us the moon and the stars are just different physical places we could in theory visit, I’ve touched moon rock and seen photos taken on other planets. However, for much of human history it wouldn’t seem unreasonable to treat the stars as other. I can’t really prove how someone thought that, but it definitely fits a great deal of writing.

by Retric 1y ago

kragen 1y ago

Nonsense. You seem to want to redefine "philosophy" to mean "philosophy that doesn't work", which admittedly is a widespread definition today among the common people. But if we stipulate that definition, it has the practical problem that we cannot tell whether what Chalmers is up to here is "philosophy" or not until we find out whether it was a productive line of inquiry or not, perhaps in two or three hundred years. Whether Plato believed that you could figure out the area of a triangle or the composition of matter from pure logic, or whether that required empirical observation, is irrelevant to the fact that he considered figuring out the area of a triangle or the composition of matter to be properly part of philosophy. This is an assertion that it would never have occurred to anyone to challenge until very recently, with the advent of the useless popular definition of "philosophy" you seem to be championing for some random reason.

Retric 1y ago
Sure, nonsense meanwhile you seem to misunderstand one of the earliest philosophical debates. Plato specifically argued for truth independent of physical reality where Aristotle believed in empiricism. As to your edit> You seem to want to redefine "philosophy" to mean "philosophy that doesn't work", which admittedly is a widespread definition today among the common people. But if we stipulate that definition, it has the practical problem that we cannot tell whether what Chalmers is up to here is "philosophy" or not until we find out whether it was a productive line of inquiry or not, perhaps in two or three hundred years. Hardly, I specifically mentioned that some philosophers are open to observation but they get there as a philosophical stance first. Meanwhile Thomas Aquinas and many others argued that truth flowed from religious text. It’s easy to dismiss such reasoning especially when it disagrees with observed reality but that doesn’t erase such people from history. Edit2: I’m done responding to your edits.
- dr_dshiv 1y ago
  They are united together in Pythagoreanism. Which Newton, Copernicus and Galileo claimed to be… For a Pythagorean, the world is made of math: “All is Number.” The math exists in immaterial reality — and harmonies in math manifested as harmonies in the material world (ie “harmony of the spheres”). Plato merely critiqued that a focus on empirical mathematical modeling distracted from how geometry and other pure mathematics revealed basic truths about reality. I can provide source texts as well.
  - Retric 1y ago
    I’m not disagreeing based on how Plato viewed math but rather physics. Edit: He didn’t take the real world as a 1:1 mapping with Forms. So, deeper truths flowed from his abstract ideals, but they didn’t directly describe the physical world. We think of physics as descriptive an electron with respond this way to an electrical field, but that wasn’t how he thought of physics. Which is why he would argue studying the world isn’t a path to truth.
    - dr_dshiv 1y ago
      What’s your reference on this? I’ll admit it is very difficult to say what Plato thought, rather what ideas he discussed. I know very little about how he viewed physics, apart from the Timeaus. There, I’m familiar with how Plato associated the four classical elements—earth, air, fire, and water—with specific geometric solids: Fire: Tetrahedron Air: Octahedron Water: Icosahedron Earth: Cube The geometrical properties corresponded to the physical properties; for instance, the sharp points of the tetrahedron caused the penetrating nature of fire; whereas the cube produced solidity, etc.
      - Retric 1y ago
        > your reference on this? It’s not a single line but rather a mental model I found that makes reading what he wrote seem more consistent. I can support the argument, but there’s a reason people write long books about several thousand year old works. Trying to wade through ancient philosophy even when reading translations is a difficult process as they fundamentally think in different terms. For us the moon and the stars are just different physical places we could in theory visit, I’ve touched moon rock and seen photos taken on other planets. However, for much of human history it wouldn’t seem unreasonable to treat the stars as other. I can’t really prove how someone thought that, but it definitely fits a great deal of writing.