Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Mathematics, Science and Language' and 'works'

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4 ideas

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 1. Mathematics
18119 Mathematics is a mental activity which does not use language [Brouwer, by Bostock]
     Full Idea: Brouwer made the rather extraordinary claim that mathematics is a mental activity which uses no language.
     From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Mathematics, Science and Language [1928]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 7.1
     A reaction: Since I take language to have far less of a role in thought than is commonly believed, I don't think this idea is absurd. I would say that we don't use language much when we are talking!
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 4. Using Numbers / g. Applying mathematics
18118 Brouwer regards the application of mathematics to the world as somehow 'wicked' [Brouwer, by Bostock]
     Full Idea: Brouwer regards as somehow 'wicked' the idea that mathematics can be applied to a non-mental subject matter, the physical world, and that it might develop in response to the needs which that application reveals.
     From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Mathematics, Science and Language [1928]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 7.1
     A reaction: The idea is that mathematics only concerns creations of the human mind. It presumably has no more application than, say, noughts-and-crosses.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 2. Knowledge as Convention
1556 By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias]
     Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature.
     From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / c. Turing Test
3178 A fast machine could pass all behavioural tests with a vast lookup table [Block, by Rey]
     Full Idea: Ned Block proposes a machine (a 'blockhead') which could pass the Turing Test just by looking up responses in a vast look-up table.
     From: report of Ned Block (works [1984]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 5.3
     A reaction: Once you suspected you were talking to a blockhead, I think you could catch it out in a Turing Test. How can the lookup table keep up to date with immediate experience? Ask it about your new poem.