What is the pedantic definition of “mathematical extension” in this writing? Does anyone know?
Without that, I can’t be certain of any of what is being said. I probably should take this opportunity to drop out of this particular distraction.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/witt … 0formalism.
i want you to go in there, read all that shit, and explain to me what the crap it all means. you’re way smarter than me so you’re gonna have to drive. but look i’m telling you W was a beast, man. if he said sumthin’, a muthafucka sat down and listened. you ax any of the big brains from back in the day and they’ll tell you; when big W came around, he was getting ready to sort you out whether you liked it or not.
go look at his pic on wikipedia. see that crazy left eye that doesn’t match the right one? that’s what i’m talking about. sumthin’ about that dude was sketchy as fuck.
now i need you and sil to get your shit together and stop bickering so we can pull together and make some headway.
alright but wait. watch what happens…
planet x has completed 10 orbits today
planet y has completed 12.5 orbits today (2.5 more than planet x)
planet x completed 9 orbits yesterday
planet y compelted 11.5 orbits yesterday
and so on down to… when?
the paradox: if they’ve been orbiting eternally, they never began orbiting. and yet if planet y has always completed 2.5 more orbits for every one orbit planet x completes, there had to be a time when planet y was orbiting before planet x made its first orbit. but that’s impossible, because they’ve both been orbiting for eternity.
fun with actual infinities.
oh damn the POleece just rolled up to the coffee shop. i’ont like the POleece so lemme holla at you in a minute. i gotta roll.
May I query this explanation?
Does “You are not adding to the set. You add to your position within the set” mean something like the following:
Infinite set represented as: {…, x, y, z, …}
Add 1 at position y:
New set looks like: {… x, y+1, z, …}
??
I would like to query the meaning of a series being “infinite”. Skip to the last paragraph if at any point you get frustrated with the following, but coming back to it afterwards will make more sense if you do:
I see no issue in using the synonym “endless” or “boundless” to aid in my explanations, since these are literally what infinite means by derivation as well as definition. Substitute “infinite” back in when I use these terms if you wish, the meaning won’t be changed if you do.
Consider the example (1+1+1+…+1), is it agreed that the “…” represents an endless string of "1+1"s?
If the example of (1+1+1+…+1) is intended to represent an endless string of "1+1"s, any given “1+1” has no specific position relative to any start or end, because an endless string has no start or end. All positions are therefore undefined and cannot be pinpointed as specific, and are therefore arbitrarily interchangeable.
Picking any one non-specific position of a “1+1” and adding a 1 such that it is now “1+1+1”, is the string still endless?
Put another way, picking any non-specific position of a “1+1+1” and removing a 1 such that it is now “1+1”, is the string still endless?
I would say it is endless both before and after in both cases.
I would also say that infinite (endless/boundless) does not communicate quantity by definition - I would say that it does the exact opposite of conveying quantity, which is what infinite means: undefined or quantity-less are synonymous as well.
With or without the “1+1+1” or “1+1” the endlessness is indistinguishable, the endless set is endless before and after the addition or subtraction, the positions picked are equally arbitrary and non-specific, they cannot be counted because there is no “end” from which to begin counting their position.
One (…+1+1+1+…) appears no different from any other, and this representation confers endlessness better than (1+1+1+…+1), which suggests there’s a beginning end and a finishing end, which contradicts the notion of infinity being literally endless. Squeeze a 1 in or take 1 away, the “quality” of endlessness applies either way. The appearance remains the same, the tracability of any change is equally impossible as there is no end from which to check it relative to. It’s both impossible to confirm any change after it has occurred and impossible to equate the series before and after as there is no specific (end) point of reference to use to do so. It’s only possible to present the change as happening as it happens, because it is in finite terms at that point. Even adding in another (…+1+1+1+…) to any given point in the previous one presents the added series as a specific series, representing the infinite with specificity treats it as it was a finite series to inject. Yet afterwards, we see no difference, because it wasn’t finite - it was only represented that way.
Now.
I think I have been hearing protestation this whole time by some that the infinite series of (…+1+1+1+…) was already full, saturated perhaps. If this is the case then I ask what “ends” are resisting any further addition? If all the positions are all already occupied, and there are no empty positions left to fill, how are you judging the beginning and end of these positions? Do these positions have finite ends within this infinite series? Does this suggest that infinite series have finite bounds internally? Finite positions would appear to be a feature of representing infinite series with finite terms like the “1+1+1” in (…+1+1+1+…), or however you wish to represent the set. However, does this “accurately” represent an infinite series? If “infinite” is consistent with itself, including internal consistency, then each “1” would not have a finite bound to its position, it would be a (…+1+1+1+…) in itself, inception style.
Thank you for the compliment but I could write a whole 3 volume book on the request you just made, not on Wittgenstein, on the request to go read that article and all it implies to responsibly do so.
First realize that the article is about what someone thinks Wittgenstein meant to say. It is written by a third party, Victor Rodych. Reading the article is about like watching MSNBC or CNN report the “news”. To know what really happened concerning any news, you really have to go to the source because in the case of CNN, the truth will invariably be different than what was reported, MSNBC a little less so even though they read from the same scripts. They depend very heavily on us not having the time or inclination to check their sources.
That might not be so much the case with Victor Rodych but until I go read Wittgenstein himself, I couldn’t trust what someone else interpreted from him. And that takes a lot more time than I have, much like trying to untwist the true story from whatever CNN might have said. You have to take the time to go to the source (which they often hide if it existed at all).
That is what I am doing regarding James. And it takes a great deal of effort to try to see the world from another person’s perspective just to ensure that you are not mis interpreting what they are trying to say. What was their environment? Who were they speaking or writing to? What were they trying to accomplish? What words did they use? What references? And finally, what did they really intend to relay to their audience at that time? And that isn’t even getting into who the person really was all about.
So who is this Victor Rodych and why should I believe what he says about anything? He was raised to be a liberal in England, got his BA at Brandon, Phd at York. He seems to have focused primarily on Wittgenstein and Popper, both notable anti-logic promoters - “one can only believe the witnessed” , pro-mindless science. And that should be expected from a well published liberal now associated with the elitist Lethbridge University.
So what did the man report that Wittgenstein was trying to say? By just a quick scan of the article, I run across this quip, “the only genuine propositions that we can use to make assertions about reality are contingent (‘empirical’) propositions, which are true if they agree with reality and false otherwise”. Immediately I observed a “contingent” issue - ,“we can only make true assertions about reality if they are true”. And is what we witnessed what was really there?
Without the ability to reason, to use logic, even what we think we see is dubious, especially if it is some video or TV program. A hundred scientists can witness something that never happened. The senses can be easily fooled. And the instruments can be very easily misinterpreted. That is what skeptics and critical thinkers are for. But critical thinking involves logical and rational thinking, not instantly assuming that you have seen the truth.
I noted that James stated that the “Godwannabes” are the cause of ALL the world’s problems. I have always felt that it is assumption that is doing so. But then James also states that “presumption is the seed of all sin.” So in that regard I guess we actually we agree.
But note the reasoning assumed in that one statement, “genuine propositions are empirical and true only if they agree with reality”. Sounds fair upon simpleminded viewing, but there is a problem. He is saying that logical reasoning is not genuine, supposedly then to not be accepted as true (whether reality agrees or not). The only things we should have any faith in is what we see directly. But does what we see directly agree with reality? How could we know? Well that is easy, “if it is true, then believe it, otherwise don’t”. Yeah.
I think as it turns out, we can only know if our empirical evidence agrees with reality through logical thinking. But logical thinking is not allowed, it is mere “pseudo-proposition”, not to be taken seriously.
What it amounts to is that if you try to take logic out of witnessing and observing to discern truth, you can never know if you have discerned truth. But maybe that is the goal, to be never sure to be always in doubt, always insecure. That does sound like things I have heard about Wittgenstein. And it was a part of the political arena during that era.
I really don’t have the time to go find out what Wittgenstein really meant to say. But what our “sources tell us” is that Wittgenstein thought that people should not think (largely paraphrased) but believe whatever they see on face value.
Apparently Wittgenstein proposed (I guess that was a “pseudo-proposition”) that “2+2=4” is only a pseudo-proposition proposed by mathematics advocates and might not actually be true. We must empirically test the proposal before we can believe it. And if we multiply 947 times 627294, we should only believe our calculation after we go count the empirical items on display.
“Wittgenstein maintains that “mathematical propositions” are not real propositions” - Victor Rodych
In essence, he is saying that maths and logic are not to be trusted.
It appears that his argument is that maths and logic are merely language and thus don’t really mean anything because we invent language, implying that we could have invented it differently and caused “2+2=5”. If it is true that Wittgenstein really believed that, I would have to say that the man, as a philosopher, wasn’t very bright (despite his reputation, which is ALWAYS a product of politics, not performance).
As far as the infinities, one particular paragraph stands out in
It seems that early in his philosophical endeavors Wittgenstein rejected the very idea of an infinity (which to me would have been dumb). But later he expressed more acceptance, although insufficient for certainty. Again, that quote indicates that I would have to go read and investigate the mind of Wittgenstein myself in order to MAYBE discern what he eventually ended up believing about something, infinities, that I don’t really have any doubts about. So it is seriously not worth my time. I have a real life to worry about. Normally, I wouldn’t even be taking the time for these discussions.
I always try to keep in mind that reputation is strictly and entirely about politics, not performance.
Stop there. You have already made a mistake. Planet y could never have made only 12.5 orbits - never.
You stated that both planets have been orbiting for all time. That means that no matter how far back in time you go, both planets have already been orbiting a prior infinity of orbits. There was never a first, so there can never be a 12th. You cannot count from 0 orbits upward. The only thing that you can do is start counting at some arbitrary point in time and declare that to be zero. You can count both forward and backward eternally. But you have to start your count at some point that you arbitrarily choose to be “point 0”. The same is true of the calendar. It is only “2019” because it was arbitrarily chosen to start the years 2019 years ago, for whatever fanciful reason.
There is a part of the problem. The “actual infinities” are not what your problems are about. The actual problem is understanding what it means to exist yet never begin.
if what you say is true, the following would make no sense (correct me if i’m missing something):
we pick an arbitrary time ‘now(t1)’ to begin counting the number of times each planet will make a complete orbit, and will stop counting in 24 hours(t2). after 24 hours has elapsed, we observe that planet x has made five orbits, and that planet y has made 2.5 more orbits than planet x, putting it at 7.5 orbits. (btw, obviously ‘.5’ of an orbit would be half way… 180 degrees).
now even though they’ve been orbiting for eternity, we still notice that planet y has made 2.5 more orbits between t1 and t2… and yet we wouldn’t be able to say it despite the fact that we just watched it happen.
even though we pick an arbitrary starting point to begin counting, and one to stop counting, we still observe an unequal number or orbits. now assume a hypothetical being that has also existed for eternity and has been watching these planets make their orbits. any time he picks an arbitrary starting and ending point for counting orbits, he notices planet y orbits 2.5 more times that planet x does.
clearly this would mean that planet y has been eternally orbiting 2.5 more times than planet x… but if they’ve both been orbiting eternally, how could planet y possibly make more orbits, and how could our hypothetical being be mistaken about what he has counted?
furthermore, both planets are approaching a point at which planet x has fallen infinitely behind planet y. and yet, being ‘actually’ infinite, as you suppose, their completed orbits are somehow magically identical?
as a disclaimer, i should inform you that i probably have a fourth grader’s comprehension of math… something i’ve never regretted seeing that i’ve never needed to know much of it, or that any of my philosophical thinking has ever required a knowledge of it. that being said, if you become impatient and feel like you’ve got better things to do, by all means do so. becoming impatient with people is something i’m no stranger to, so i fully understand.
I don’t understand what you mean by “we wouldn’t be able to say it”.
I think that states the crux of your confusion. And let me try to answer your question by asking you a question, - koan for conk. Perhaps realize that neither past nor future actually exist. The universe knows nothing of either. Time is entirely a mind-made invention, as is counting. But still we must keep our minds clear with consistent (logical) thought.
You say that this eternal being has been watching eternally and counting the whole time. Counting is a serial process from 0 up (or down).
When did he begin counting such as to pass the one million mark?
First, there is no “falling behind”. Planet y has always been “behind”. Then secondly, who said that their “completed orbits are identical”? Does that come from the false notion that all infinities are equal? Just because two things are endless doesn’t mean that they are equally endless.
Let me repeat:
Hey man I’m in a bar right now on a phone so this will be brief. I’ve been reading up on this infinity thing and I gotta tell ya, i think we’re both in over our heads here. This matter is not as simple as it’s being made out to be in this thread, and if the existence of actual infinities was so obvious, I wouldn’t be reading about all these badass mathematicians and shit who say it isn’t. And when I say badass, I mean the kind that don’t hang out at philosophy forums.
Yeah so there’s a unique and turbulent history to this matter and believe me, it’s one hellacious, mind bending rabbit hole.
Just posting this so I don’t leave you hanging. I’ll be back when I have a standard keyboard at my fancy.
So since we’re ignoring my last post, which says this same thing, I would like to enquire how you reconcile this with what you said here:
If you cannot count via a “serial process from 0 up (or down)” to any “position within the set”, how can you finitely ascertain your position with the set?
Also covered by my last ignored post, what is stopping you, in an infinite set never mind a finite set, from adding a position between current unascertainable positions to add to the set?
Is that “finite” position already taken?
Well either finitude is preventing further positions from being taken, defying the “infinity” of the set, or infinity is so saturated that u can’t possibly square it, double it, or anything because it’s so saturated that nothing can be squared or doubled etc on top of it.
Aren’t you wanting to have your cake and eat it here?
This was also covered in my last ignored post.
I ask how two endless things can or can’t be “differently” endless when they are both endless.
Endlessness doesn’t imply quantity, and quantity is necessary to imply equality. Infinity is by definition the exact lack of quantity: the exact opposite of quantity, even. Endlessness is a quality that by definition defies quantity.
Again, are you trying to have your cake and eat it?
Agreement or disagreement for each point - as you requested. The reason I ask is that this all comes back to that “infA[1] + infA[2] = 2 * infA” that you’re insisting I “missed”. And we can work back from there.
You had asked me for advice. I provided that advice and as part of it, an explanation of how to discuss or debate with me. Then I asked you a question related to our ongoing disagreement. Afterward, I made a prediction concerning your posting behavior.
You completely ignored the advice.
You completely ignored the question that I asked.
But you exactly followed the prediction:
Although tempted to go into a long detailed discussion of why you were so predictable (there is a little Kim Jong-un dominating your mind), we weren’t done with your last batch of debacles and here you divert to a new plethora of fallacies and then complain that your new distraction has been ignored.
Did you want to pickup where we left off?
I can’t really argue with that but that doesn’t mean that no one is right. Although as you say, “the kind that don’t hang out at philosophy forums”.
I was actually hoping to get into some political discussions but I quickly discovered that same symptom on this board is as bad, if not worse, concerning politics.
So I’m not really planning on sticking around much longer anyway. I’m just waiting for my parsing program to get written.
oh no doubt. of all the subjects of philosophy, ethics and its extension ‘politics’ is a lived experience in which people have a real stake in something. it’s not a subject like epistemology or metaphysics where it wouldn’t matter much if you were wrong (if you even noticed at all). so people are especially impassioned about politics and tend to side with whatever defends and protects whatever position they’re at on the spectrum. if you’ve got economically advantaged people who are getting a free ride - e.g., business owners, stock traders, recipients of big inheritances, trust fund babies, etc., etc. - almost without exception they’ll be conservatives and employ all manner of philosophical sophistry in justifying and protecting these advantages.
the same goes for the liberal perspective, too. the beauty of the political debate is that the parties involved are not motivated by some stupid philosophical theory to hold their ground… and while they generally do end up producing a load of philosophical nonsense to defend their place, the material conditions from which they come are very real.
politics demonstrates that simplest of modus operandi; it begins with a battle over the fruits of labor… who has the ‘right’ to that fruit… and then develops into something extraordinarily complex, often for the purposes of obfuscating the simple premise from which it began.
the right’s best move would be to continue over-complicating the matter to keep it uncertain and obscure… while the left should be focused on deconstructing the conservative narratives produced by the right. this requires a surgical critique of history to reveal the ways in which conservative philosophy has secured its philosophical hegemony over the minds of people.
… if you want to see one interesting take on this deal with ‘infinity’, go check out Brouwer and the intuitionists. one thing i keep seeing as a cornerstone to this problem is how various mathematicians respond to what cantor did with the transitive infinite or the infinite transitive or whatever. i dunno what the hell it is, but it’s something important because i keep seeing it pop up everywhere i read. i’m probably wrong here, but i think the dispute is over this thing about defining a set as infinite. these dudes observe a continuum of divisibility within an arbitrarily chosen closed set of natural and real numbers, and then they’re like ‘see? i told you the set was infinite!’ but then the other dudes are like ‘but by virtue of it being a continuum, you never actually produce an infinite set, so you can’t call it that!’
little help here would be nice, fellas.
Asking the insane to bring sanity to the insanity?
I’m still reading and following… though not a fella 
lol
Shame you’ll be off when your parsing program ends, obsrvr524… what are your plans for the research data? and what are you hoping to realise from it?
i got this, 524.
he hopes to realize an infinitely affectant ontology of SAMs.
did i nail it or did i nail it, 524?
= “I disagree”
as you asked me to say if I don’t agree.
= “A simple reason”,
followed by the beginning of how it applies aaaaall the way back through your reasoning = “state only the beginning of it”
= “ask for agreement”
= “ask if (you) agree”
This is all very clearly included in my post that followed your advice on how delicately you want to be treated, if you’d actually read what I said.
So basically I followed your advice exactly and you are the one ignoring, I even made sure to explicitly address the question you asked:
Both the addition I used and the multiplication example you used were involved in my proof that you’re still trying to understand.
So basically:
is as I predicted 2 pages back:
and
and
This is confirmed by your repeated attempt to move away from logical content to instead politicise the discussion:
I read your excuse that:
followed in the same post by the obvious flaw in this approach:
In researching the history around the person to understand the context behind their works, you are injecting your own history of yourself and your own context into theirs, doubling the muddying their actual content instead of just analysing the logic behind their points and arguments. As I’m demonstrating using proof - neither your intention nor your strong suit.
So we see:
Objectively applies to what you keep doing and not to me in the slightlest as I’ve just proven through quotation and logic.
Buy a mirror for god’s sake.
I’m trying to help you and all you can do is - in the terms of James that you quoted yourself “sin” - through “presumption”, and give advice that when followed, you ignore.
Stop presuming your criticisms are correct and that the only thing left is to go back to them and admit this, disregarding the possibility that they are not correct and ignoring explanations of why their underlying assumptions are wrong, with accusations of “distracting”, unbacked claims of fallacies and no justification of debacle, to justify ignoring them. If you don’t see the connection yet, don’t presume there is none, let me explain it to you.
You realise it’s possible that you’re wrong, right? All that psychological projection of “People who say things like that are saying that only God can understand things that they don’t” onto others applies the other way around, you know.
But let’s make a prediction: you disregard this possibility and most likely this whole post, which does nothing more than prove your presumptions - in order to help you. I don’t want to have to do this, I want to stay on topic. It shouldn’t need typing out, but you need to stop letting anything like the “pride, politics, and stupidity”, of which you’re presuming to only apply to others, forbid you from growing. Or just continue to think it’s all the forum’s/other people’s fault…
oh my bad. what i meant was, even though we observed planet y make 2.5 more orbits than planet x in that 24 hour period, we wouldn’t be able to say ‘planet y has orbited more times than planet x’, because if they’ve both been orbiting eternally, one couldn’t have made more orbits than the other. i’m trying to point out one conceptual problem with actual infinities with this hypothetical planet thing i got from ghazali.
counting is, but not time. time, in its most essential description, is a period in which the difference of the motion of objects can be contrasted and/or compared. anytime there is movement, there is a relative change of position, and ‘time’ is the period of transition.
kant once mentioned something similar to this idea when he talks about what we call ‘time’ when we look at a clock. its not that the clock contains, produces or represents ‘time’, but that it simply generates the experience of it by its hands moving against a background. thus, time is essentially observed movement… that period of repositioning.
now of course things still move without being perceived (unless you’re a radical empiricist), so what we would call the passage of time, had we experienced such motion, still exists independently of our experiencing it. but yes, the counting is man made… or i should say ‘used’, since we really didn’t ‘make’ the possibility of objects belonging to groups that can be quantified.
i’ve always figured that time and space were infinite, but not necessarily energy. one problem i’m up against here though is explaining how, if space is infinite, energy wouldn’t also be infinite if it’s necessary that all space be ‘filled’ with objects. james is clearly espousing a ‘field’ theory of space which at a fundamental level means all space is occupied by something. so i’m almost forced to admit that energy is infinite unless i can conceive of a boundary to space. but that wouldn’t make any sense because there’d be something beyond that boundary… and wtf would i call it if not more space?
see this shit pisses me off because i’m being bombarded with conflicting views and information overload and frankly, i’m about to say fuck it and go hang out with biggy talkin’ bout ‘how is the problem of infinity even relevant to conflicting goods and dasein and stuff.’ look, i’ve never been faced with having to make a decision in life that depended on whether or not the universe was infinite.
‘oh wait… i’m not sure if i should do this, because the universe might be infinite. hold on, lemme think about it.’
no. i’ve never said that in my life, and i probably never will.
what we want are affordable solutions to modern, existential dilemmas. don’t we, biggs?
I thought I answered this at least in part, but it was not my intention to bombard you with just another view that conflicts with some others, I merely wanted to present it as what experimental evidence consistently shows, in line with the scientific consensus for centuries now, and why it makes sense. You can reject this like obsrvr and others have tried, based on attempted logical argument that’s based on understandings of infinity that I’ve also refuted - that’s up to you. I like the idea that there’s points in the consensus and my thinking that have been missed myself, but such things need less flawed groundwork than have been presented, or at least experimental evidence against the consensus that counters what’s been gathered so far, which nobody here is providing.
The evidence is that energy is finite and constant, as is mass, and that time hasn’t been going on infinitely so far - at least in the sense of the pre-Einsteinian “absolute time” that Einstein and others showed not to be valid. Space, however? Well if constant energy is getting spread out over a non-infinite time as evidence suggests, it’s dissipating across space that may as well be infinite, but isn’t necessarily infinite. My line of inquiry explores how space and time aren’t exactly finite or infinite. It is inspired by the experimental evidence that time and space curve under extreme conditions of gravity and speed - such as back in the singularity as experimental evidence suggests that things used to be. Let me know if previous posts on this thread about this subject have lost you, I am happy to explain what I mean in further detail and to receive criticism on these ideas.