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Article 3505 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: biesel@javelin.sim.es.com (Heiner Biesel)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence Testing
Message-ID: <1992Feb5.180356.25845@javelin.sim.es.com>
Date: 5 Feb 92 18:03:56 GMT
References: <12325@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Organization: Evans & Sutherland Computer Corporation
Lines: 22

gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:

...[ ]...
>Formalism, as I used it in the above quoted sentence, is a philosophy,
>not a method.  Specifically, it is the philosophy that mathematical
>objects are nothing more than meaningless symbols and that mathematics
>is nothing more than a game played with meaningless symbols.  The
>formalist theory fails in that it cannot explain how our manipulations
>of these meaningless symbols manage to give us information about the
>real world.

I take it that you assert that mathematics, as distiguished from mathematical
physics, provides us information about the real world. Unless you mean to
include mathematical objects and constructs in your definition of the "real"
world, I would dispute your assertion. Mathematics per se speaks of nothing
but mathematics; the association between mathematics and certain perceived
regularities in the physical world is fortunate, and useful, but says nothing
about the meaning of mathematics. Given this state of affairs, I do not see
how the formalist theory of mathematics is refuted.

Regards,
       Heiner biesel@thrall.sim.es.com


