New answers tagged realism
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
If mathematics is real, in what sense is it real
This answer does not claim to speak for "mathematical realists" in general, but only for myself as a mathematical realist.
There is ...
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
One way to explain it part way is the time reversal symmetry of physics, which according to David Albert is THE law that has survived physics the longest, is closely related to the timelessness of ...
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2
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
The physical universe does not adhere to Mathematical principles, but instead, Math was inspired by the physical universe.
If I have an apple and you give me an apple, I can think how they both look ...
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
Mathematics is the systematic study of identifiable relationships. (Like IN, WITH, NOT, SAME, ADJACENT, and MORE.)
All relationships are expressible as relationships, and the terminology that is ...
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Nietzsche about philosophical Realism
Nietzsche does not think there is absolute truth.
To the extent to which knowledge has any sense at all, the world is
knowable: but it may be interpreted differently, it has not one
sense behind it, ...
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2
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
The issue is thorny; see the well-known Wigner 1960 article on The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences: in the end, the applicability of mathematics borders on the ...
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0
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
The question is sort of backwards, in the following sense. A certain school of philosophy argues that the applicability of mathematics in the natural sciences is an argument in favor of realism. The ...
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
Both mathematics and physics is about neccessity.
Mathematics is about that which is logically necessary. Whilst physics is about that which is physically necessary.
It's not surprising then that ...
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6
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
I think that there is an underlying assumption that we "found" mathematics and that it just "happens to" align with physical reality, but there is no reason to believe that this is ...
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
Physics doesn't follow any rules. Physics just is. If physics stops following our rules, we don't say physics is wrong. We have to adapt our rules.
Many of the rules and patterns we discover in ...
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12
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
why does the physical universe adhere to mathematical principles?
It might not. The adherence is generally understood to be the other way around. We have proposed mathematical models that adhere to ...
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How do mathematical realists explain the applicability and effectiveness of mathematics in physics?
From a classical point of view no explanation is known, see Eugene Wigner's famous paper.
An exotic modern hypothesis is the simulation hypothesis - and its objections. See Brian Greene The Hidden ...
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4
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Nietzsche about philosophical Realism
The issue is not simple...
See e.g. Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 1991), page 1:
Nietzsche's position on truth seems to amount to a denial that any human beliefs ...
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5
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Are mental images of mathematical entities persistent?
Two books that might be relevant:
Mathematical Epistemology and Psychology, by E.W.Beth and Jean Piaget
This is a remarkable book - product of the cooperation between a Dutch mathematician/logician/...
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3
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Are mental images of mathematical entities persistent?
You mentioned last time the essay “Bernays, Paul. Zum Symposium "Ueber die Grundlagen der Mathematik. Dialectica 25, no. 3/4,”
I stumbled on his remark on p. 177:
Zuzugeben ist, dass wir keine
...
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7
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Are mental images of mathematical entities persistent?
The view that mathematical objects are mental models is called psychologism. It is not a popular view of mathematics for several reasons. Perhaps the most pressing is that it implies that ...
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Did Bernays change his mind?
See Paul Bernays, Sur le platonisme dans les mathématiques (1935).
From the English translation [all emphasis mine]:
An example of this way of setting up a theory can be found in Hilbert’s ...
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