From: Newberry on
On Feb 25, 4:28 am, Frederick Williams <frederick.willia...(a)tesco.net>
wrote:
> Newberry wrote:
>
> > How can you arrive at the conclusion that something is true other than
> > by a proof?
>
> If you ever come across a paper of Tarski's called Truth and Proof you
> should read it: Scientific American, late sixties.  If you want a
> precise reference I'll find one for you.

I wonder if you can answer it in your own words.

> > BTW, there cannot be any intuition or probability that ZFC
> > or PA are consistent.
>
> Oh come, come, how do you know what people can intuit?

Needless to say, I meant that if PA were the model of people's thought
processes then they could not have any intuition that PA is
consistent.

>
> Why did Dedekind frame Peano's axioms in just the way he did?  Because
> they squared with his intuitions.

From: Don Stockbauer on
"Darlene, I want to have relations with you."

"Are they true or false?"

"Forget it. Let's post to sci.math/sci.logic instead."
From: Jesse F. Hughes on
Newberry <newberryxy(a)gmail.com> writes:

> For what I know ordinary mathematics may well go on by using "there
> are no counterexamples to GC less than 27." But if you want to do
> any work in the foundations of mathematics you need higher
> precision.

So you say, yet curiously folks who *do* work in the foundations of
mathematics do *not* seem to share your view.

Honestly, this is a Quixotic battle you're waging, as far as I can
tell. Good luck with it.

--
Jesse F. Hughes

"You're ketchup, so I'll put you on meatloaf!"
-- Quincy P. Hughes, age five, tries his hand at insults
From: Aatu Koskensilta on
Newberry <newberryxy(a)gmail.com> writes:

> For what I know ordinary mathematics may well go on by using "there
> are no counterexamples to GC less than 27." But if you want to do any
> work in the foundations of mathematics you need higher precision.

In ordinary mathematical language and reasoning there is no distinction
between "there are no counterexamples to GC less than 27" and "it's not
true that there are counterexamples to GC less than 27" and thus nothing
to be highly precise about. We can of course introduce whatever ideas
and semantics we want on which such a distinction can be understood, but
in the wider scheme of things such novelties have any interest only in
so far as we can relate them in some informative manner to our actual
mathematical experience and reasoning.

To take another example, consider Priest's suggestion that there are
true arithmetical contradictions, of the form "there is a natural n such
that P(n) and not-P(n)" with P a decidable predicate. He also defines a
non-standard semantics (essentially, just a bit of standard mathematics)
on which we can make sense of this. However, absent some account of how
this semantics relates to our actual mathematical reasoning about
naturals, the idea, that number theorists might one day solve, say, the
Goldbach conjecture by showing that there is an even natural greater
than two that can't be expressed as the sum of two primes but can be
expressed as the sum of two primes, remains baffling and entirely
vacuous. The same is true of your various musings and logical fiddling.

--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta(a)uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
From: Newberry on
On Feb 27, 4:40 am, "Jesse F. Hughes" <je...(a)phiwumbda.org> wrote:
> Newberry <newberr...(a)gmail.com> writes:
> > For what I know ordinary mathematics may well go on by using "there
> > are no counterexamples to GC less than 27." But if you want to do
> > any work in the foundations of mathematics you need higher
> > precision.
>
> So you say, yet curiously folks who *do* work in the foundations of
> mathematics do *not* seem to share your view.  
>
> Honestly, this is a Quixotic battle you're waging, as far as I can
> tell.  Good luck with it.

Do you have anything to say about the substance?