From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsh!gls Mon Dec 16 11:00:52 EST 1991
Article 2013 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Xref: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca rec.arts.books:11400 sci.philosophy.tech:1368 comp.ai.philosophy:2013
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>From: gls@windmill.ATT.COM (Col. G. L. Sicherman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Existence
Message-ID: <1991Dec10.175006.28600@cbnewsh.cb.att.com>
Date: 10 Dec 91 17:50:06 GMT
References: <12563@pitt.UUCP> <1991Dec4.212727.6154@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Dec6.204854.2218@arizona.edu>
Sender: gls@cbnewsh.cb.att.com (Col. G. L. Sicherman)
Followup-To: rec.arts.books
Organization: Save the Dodoes Foundation
Lines: 35

In <1991Dec6.204854.2218@arizona.edu>, bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU writes:
> 
> 	William Chesters, Wadham College, Oxford:
> >Platonism isn't the only philosophy of mathematics you know!  There are 
> >people who (horror) don't think real numbers exist.
> 
> 	Mikhail Zeleny, Harvard, Mass:
> >Their opinions are absolutely irrelevant to mathematics as it stands.
> 
> The word at issue here is "exist". [...] 
> If we remember that words are only defined as precisely as they
> are used -- including words such as "existence" and "truth", we
> will avoid a lot of useless squabbling.

It's not useless.  It keeps the philosophers squabbling with one another
instead of with us.  Besides, it's bad karma to discuss existence on the
Net -- you may stir up the o--------sts.

In my youth I sat through a debate between a Platonist and a Hilbertian.
Round and round they went, with never a doubt that "exist" meant something
precise or that they meant the same thing by it.  It was obvious to me that
they did not -- but as a student I had grown accustomed to sitting quietly
to the sound of somebody else's voice, so I stuck it out.  It left me with
a suspicion that the average doctor of philosophy in mathematics knows no
more about the philosophy of mathematics than the average garter snake
knows about ballroom dancing.

Much later I confirmed this hypothesis by reading sci.philosophy.tech.

-:-
	"'PATAGEOMETRY: The study of those mathematical properties
	 that remain invariant under brain transplants."
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
gls@windmill.att.COM


