Truth is Relative

crashfrog responds to me:

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That said, who cares about the object?

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You do.

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No, I don't. If I did, I would have said. Instead, I used an abstract term, "object." It is indicative of the fact that the specifics with regard to things other than number are immaterial with respect to the question of number. That is, number is not dependent upon color, mass, or socially constructed representations of fiduciary transactions. Those are other properties which number can come along with, but is not dependent upon.

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If one object doesn't have the property of being "one," then what is it?

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Asked and answered. It's one object.

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Then you agree that it is "one." Thank you for admitting that numbers do exist in nature.

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Are you just going to repeat questions I've already answered?

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What? I thought we just settled it: Number exists in nature. If it isn't "one," then is it "two"?Hint: It may just be that you haven't answered the question.

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Huh? Where did that come from?

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It came from your logic. Do you really need me to quote you again?

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Yes, you do. For it did not come from me. I was talking about number. You're the one who suddenly decided that apples and dollars were the same thing.If a "red" apple and "red" cherry are both examples of "red," then "five" apples and "five" cherries are both examples of "five." But an "apple" is not a "cherry." If we need an "apple," then it doesn't matter how many cherries you give for what we are looking for is an "apple," no matter how "candy-apple-red" it is.Thus, my question to you: Objects can't have more than one property?

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I really have no taste these days for your preferred method of arguing.

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Then do yourself a favor and don't respond. Nobody is forcing you to do anything you don't want to do, are they? You are in complete control of your posts.

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Hint: Being a "Platonist" in the mathematical sense is not the same thing as being a "Platonist" as in Plato's Parable of the Cave.

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Hint: it was just a slogan I used in summation.

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But you meant it. And unfortunately, the word doesn't mean what you think it means. You are falling for the same error of equivocation that creationists fall into when they try to claim that evolution is "just a theory."And as to your "analysis" of my debating style, well, I guess I'll fulfill one of your prophecies:Physician, heal thyself!Edited by Rrhain, : Fixed a grammar error and the use of the wrong adjective.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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That such a statement is wrong: Numbers do exist in nature. They are part and parcel of existence. Existence cannot be without number.

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Unfortunately you aren't addressing what I was addressing in Message 21, Message 30, or Message 36.You are addressing quantity, I am not. My statement was in response to Parasomnium's example of an absolute truth.

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You are confusing symbology with substance. The specific characters in the specific sequence, "red," is not the actual color. It is just a symbol.

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I'm talking about the symbology since the statement concerned rational numbers, which should have been obvious from my comment in Message 36: I can't point to a rational number in nature. That was my point concerning nature and Parasomnium's example of an absolute truth.I agree that quantity exists in nature; but since the symbology depicts negatives, do negative quantities exist in nature?Is it a true statement that there are infinitely many quantities in nature?Edited by purpledawn, : Corrected link.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

I think a clarification is in order here. When I gave my example of an absolute truth, I was no longer referring to the "outside world" of my previous example of a relative truth. I also stated in a later post that it doesn't matter in what way rational numbers are deemed to exist, Platonic or otherwise. I said this because the absoluteness of the truth of my example, rather than about their actual existence, is more about the infinity of the set of rational numbers, in the following way: once the ancient Greeks proved that the set of rational numbers is infinitely large, they saw that this had always been true. And it has ever since been true, and it always will be.Sorry if I inadvertently sparked a debate about the reality of numbers, I never meant to. Actually, I would have been more interested in such a debate about my other example, the reality of the colour red.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

No it doesn't. Numbers are mental abstractions. Perception of 'red' is perception of some property in a thing, but assigning a number to a set of objects is a purely mental operation. For example, if I have two golden finches, can you point to any property in either finch that contains its 'twoness'?And it is because numbers are purely mental phenomena that we can have absolute certainty about the statements we make about them. If they were real properties of things, we would have the same difficulty we have with other properties of things - i.e. any statement we made about them could only have high probability associated with it, never absolute certainty. (This, at bottom, is the difference between science and mathematics).

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'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

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Sorry if I inadvertently sparked a debate about the reality of numbers, I never meant to. Actually, I would have been more interested in such a debate about my other example, the reality of the colour red.

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As would I.My science and math are basic, so I was trying to understand your examples. They seemed reversed when I thought of it from a natural standpoint. I had commented more on color in Message 30 and Message 36 if you want to comment.I still have no idea what Rhrain's point is concerning the topic or what I was saying.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

OK, I'm game. In messages 30 and 36 you're effectively saying that the colour is the pigment. But how does that square with the fact that when I see a red rose in the dim light of a watery morning sun, its colour looks quite different than when I look at it in the bright light of noon? Clearly the pigment hasn't changed, but the colour - or at least my perception of it - has.That's my point really: colour is nothing but perception. "Outside", there are only molecules and light waves. Red is in my head. And only there.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Butting in...It's critical to recognize that "red" has two distinct meanings. You don't want to get caught up in disagreeing because you're both choosing different meanings; that's boring!"Red" has a physical definition through physics. It is correct to say that "red" is light of certain wavelengths."Red" also has a psychophysical meaning, along the lines of what you're describing.Second point is to define what constitutes reality. Any time you discuss things having to do with the "Mindspace", this is a must. Do you believe there to be meaning in discussing the "reality" of things which in principle cannot be shared (e.g. things in the "Mindspace")? Will we be able to establish any common basis for discussion? I answer "no" to both of these questions, and as such, I think the meaningful part of the discussion with that approach ends very quickly.If reality must, by definition, be explained in terms OUTSIDE of the "Mindspace", then... here's some suggestions for the meaning of "red":
- "red" is the stimulation of specific sets of neurons in secondary visual cortex.
- "red" is the set of stimuli evoking the response "red" from native English speakers not under a variety of impairments, including youth, psychoactive drugs, or lesions of the nervous system.Peace,
Dr. Skinner(P.S. Para, if you are interested in me addressing your "mindspace-speak", or mind-speak (meak?) for short, I can do that. Just let me know if so, if that's more fun)

Ben, I'd be happy to talk about things "mindspace", please go ahead.I realize that "red" is a kind of shorthand for light of certain wavelengths, but in essence light can be completely described in physical terms without referring to colour. There's energy, wavelengths, light speed, frequencies, particles even. Colour, as a concept, is not necessary to describe the physics of light. Colour only comes into play when we want to describe what it is like when we see light, and then we can't describe it. That's the meaning of the word 'colour' that I'm talking about.To me, the essential thing about red is what it is like to see a picture like the one below. I can, in principle, completely describe what happens physically when I look at the picture, from the reflection (or emission, in the case of a computer screen) of light from the picture and its refraction by my eye's lens, to the excitation of my retinal cells and the subsequent neural firings in my brain. Nowhere along this path do I need to invoke the concept of colour. Although such a concept might be handy in part of the description of what happens in the retinal cells, it is not strictly necessary, I can also speak about wavelengths to describe exactly what happens. And if I could have the experience of, say, an insect when seeing a rose, it might even be flatly wrong to describe the physical process that causes the experience in terms of specific colours.But when it comes to describing the experience itself, no words are sufficient and no physical concepts convey the meaning. The only way to tell you what it is like for me to see red is to have you look at the same thing and hope that your experience is similar to mine. Although I cannot express what it is like for me when I see the picture above, I have reason enough to assume that it is similar to what it is like for you, because biologically and physically you and I are very much the same, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that our experiences are very similar. But I can't be sure of course.However, even if - unprovably - your experience of the picture above would be very different from mine, I still think that whatever either of us would think is the essence of colour, is our pure perception of it, because everything else about the processes that cause us to see colour can be described in words and concepts without any reference to colour whatsoever.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.Edited by Parasomnium, : No reason given.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

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That's my point really: colour is nothing but perception. "Outside", there are only molecules and light waves. Red is in my head. And only there.

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I understand what you are saying about perception.I guess what makes me think there is more to it in nature is when I see creatures whose "color" changes to help camouflage it or creatures whose color has "evolved" to match it's surroundings etc.The hare that changes from brown to white to blend in with the snow and vice versa. The "color" changes as the length of the days change.Some insects have the ability to change their "color" to blend with their surroundings.Some creatures have markings that help to camouflage them.What we call anything is relative to language. We can say dirt or we can give the specific chemical makeup. That doesn't mean that the ground doesn't exist outside of our mind.

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Clearly the pigment hasn't changed, but the colour - or at least my perception of it - has.

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What shades we see may depend on the light but you still see the red color, it doesn't change to yellow.For the natural world to use "color" for camouflage or mimicry something has to exist.Maybe we're saying the same thing and I'm just looking at it differently. Don't know.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

A quite amusing example in this context is the pigment Brazilin, which has the chemical formula C₁₆H₁₄O₅. You can see its molecular structure in this picture: The funny thing about Brazilin is that it can have two different colours: in an alkaline solution it appears red; but in an acidic solution, it appears, wait for it, yellow. Now, if pigments have an intrinsic colour, as you seem to suggest, then in the case of Brazilin we're facing a dilemma as to which intrinsic colour to assign to it. Is it intrinsically red or yellow? I am not denying that something exists that causes colour experiences in us and in other animals. I just think that to say that something is red is to say nothing about the thing itself, but everything about what it is like to see it.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

So then you would not agree with Betrand Russell?He thought (given universals and particulars, concepts and percepts, and two patches of white, predicates and substances(I'll get the quotes next time)) that a color DID say something about what is colored no matter what the percept was.I guess you are saying something like James back, two centuries ago, that all is causality mixing or are you more like Wittgenstein instead? see relations to more recent discussions The contingent identity of particulars and universalsEdited by Brad McFall, : Russell info

purpledawn responds to me:

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You are addressing quantity, I am not.

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What is quantity if not a physical manifestation of number?

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I'm talking about the symbology since the statement concerned rational numbers

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But numbers aren't symbols. They exist outside the symbology. Surely you're not going to say that the Arabic numeral 1 is somehow referring to something other than the Roman numeral I, are you?Just as it doesn't matter if you call it "red" or "rojo" or "rot," it doesn't matter if you call it "1" or "I" or "." They all refer to the same thing. The symbol is nothing but a convention to help us beings who use langauge discuss it.

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I agree that quantity exists in nature; but since the symbology depicts negatives, do negative quantities exist in nature?

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Of course. Have you never seen a hole? You even get imaginary numbers, or have you not done any systems engineering where you try to get the solutions to your equation to be in the left half-plane in order to ensure stability?This is the point of applied mathematics: Practical, real-world uses of the things pure mathematics finds. It's why, as my physics professor said on day one: Chemical engineering is really just applied chemistry. Chemistry is really just applied physics. And physics is really just applied math.The universe is inherently mathematical in nature.

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Is it a true statement that there are infinitely many quantities in nature?

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Quantities of what? I don't understand the question.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

JavaMan responds to me:

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Numbers are mental abstractions.

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So if you have "one" object, it isn't an example of "one"? What is it if not "one"? "Two"? What the object is is irrelevant. Number is abstract, yes, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.

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Perception of 'red' is perception of some property in a thing

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Indeed. And how does that not apply to number? If you have "one" object and then introduce another object, they start to behave differently. For example, they exert a gravitational force upon each other...a force that would not exist were there not a second object. And if you add a third, the model becomes so complex that we have yet to figure out how to do it directly. That's why it's called the "Three Body Problem."

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For example, if I have two golden finches, can you point to any property in either finch that contains its 'twoness'?

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Yes. The fact that they behave differently because there are "two" of them and not just "one" or "three." It's what defines them as a pair, a couple, a dyad, a duo. Show me how you can take "two" finches and somehow have them behave precisely and in all ways as "three."

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And it is because numbers are purely mental phenomena that we can have absolute certainty about the statements we make about them.

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And we can say the same thing about color since it, too, is a mental abstraction.

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If they were real properties of things, we would have the same difficulty we have with other properties of things - i.e. any statement we made about them could only have high probability associated with it, never absolute certainty. (This, at bottom, is the difference between science and mathematics).

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No, not quite. The problem with science is that as an observational process, we are never certain we have managed to observe everything. We might have, our model might be absolutely perfect, but we can never be sure. The process of mathematics is one where we can assert that we have. In the modeling of weather, we find that things can be extremely sensitive to initial conditions. It isn't that the model is wrong...it's that starting with 0.6254 isn't enough to completely define things.There's an old joke:Biologists think they're biochemists.
Biochemists think they're chemists.
Chemists think they're physical chemists.
Physical chemists think they're physicists.
Physicists think they're god.
And god thinks he's a mathematician.The very nature of the universe is inherently mathematical.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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The funny thing about Brazilin is that it can have two different colours: in an alkaline solution it appears red; but in an acidic solution, it appears, wait for it, yellow. Now, if pigments have an intrinsic colour, as you seem to suggest, then in the case of Brazilin we're facing a dilemma as to which intrinsic colour to assign to it. Is it intrinsically red or yellow?

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My thoughts are concerning what occurs in nature without manipulation by man. Grinding up the wood and adding an alkaline or acidic solution is something that man has done.Color seems to have a purpose in nature, that's why I feel it is incorrect to say that "color" does not exist.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

purpledawn writes:

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My thoughts are concerning what occurs in nature without manipulation by man. Grinding up the wood and adding an alkaline or acidic solution is something that man has done.

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Oh, not this tired argument...that somehow because a human being was involved in getting the substance into an alkali solution as opposed to an acidic one, that changes how the substance would have reacted and makes the entire thing artificial. That somehow, the mere presence of a human being forced the substance to change color in a way it never would have done had the exact same thing happened but the human being were not present.

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Color seems to have a purpose in nature

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Yes, but it is the perception of the specific ranges of wavelengths that are involved that causes the purpose.Personally, I do think that color exists. "Color" is simply a way to describe various wavelengths of light. We have imposed arbitrary and artificial divisions upon what separates "red" from "orange," but that's just a convenience for us to be able to communicate about the actual wavelength.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.