Dispelling the notion that philosophy is magical

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mkm
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Re: Dispelling the notion that philosophy is magical

Post by mkm »

carnap wrote: Fri Apr 13, 2018 2:41 pm For example the correspondence theory of truth asserts that a proposition is true if accurately describes a situation in the world. So does pure mathematics describe the world? What exactly does it describe?

Then you need to specify what does it mean "accurately", "world", "situation", and what tools can we use. Are senses enough? Repeated experiments? When do we allow inductive reasonings to kick in? And then maybe we need to know what does it mean for example for a statement "senses give me legit information about the world" to be true, since clearly it's not the same "truth", or else you have such silly circular statements like

"senses give me legit information about the world because they accurately describe a situation in the world".

I don't see how it's more clear than truth in mathematics, you have to have a concept of truth at the meta level anyway, you just try to hide it. And I'm ignoring in your favour the whole deal with uncertainty of information given by senses, because it's not that important right now, but still a problem. For you ;)
carnap wrote: Fri Apr 13, 2018 2:41 pm But why would that be the case? An obvious counter-example is above, the correspondence theory of truth provides a "clear" notion of truth for the empirical statements but not mathematical ones.
Yeah, "clear". Isn't it just a restriction of the "true concept of truth" to physics anyway?
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