Re: Platonism

From: Lester Zick (lesterDELzick_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 12/01/04 

Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 16:18:42 GMT

On 01 Dec 2004 02:22:10 GMT, tchow@lsa.umich.edu in comp.ai.philosophy
wrote:

>In article <41ad93bf.41579978@netnews.att.net>,
>Lester Zick <lesterDELzick@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>But platonism? I don't think so.
>
>Why not? I maintain that platonistic beliefs about the set of all integers
>are why mathematicians don't spend time trying to solve the "open problem"
>of the consistency of PA. Nelson illustrates what happens if you remove
>those beliefs.

I don't know that Plato had any beliefs about numbers. And I don't
know what platonic beliefs about numbers would be, and I really don't
think we should describe beliefs about numbers, axioms, and math as
platonic or not. They're just beliefs, attitudes, quidities, or
whatever and can be handled or analyzed that way instead of whether
they're platonic or not. Otherwise you're arguing the wrong thing. I
have lots of very specific arguments regarding the foundations of math
but I don't run around trying to argue that they're platonic or not. I
try to focus on whether they're correct or not.

Regards - Lester

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