File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1997/bhaskar.9710, message 111


Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 08:26:10 -0400
To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: Doug Porpora <porporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu>
Subject: Re: BHA: math's street address


Howard,

You raise a number of interesting points.  First, i don't think Bhaskar
originates the ascription of reality to things by virtue of their causal
effects.  Far from radical, my understanding is that that goes back fairly
far in philosophy.

You make me wonder whether we might say that the importance of tangibility
is a matter of judgmental rationalism but that what is tangible is a matter
of epistemic relativism.  Tangibility is at least relative to technology so
that, as you note, all kinds of things are tangible now that were not
before.

As Tobin observed a while back, the quality of being greater than can --
but need not -- be associated with tangible causal effects.  I think,
however, that exerting a causal effect is only one marker of reality.  So
if the number of stars in our galaxy is prime and that is just an
effectless fluke, I think we would still want to say it is a real or actual
feature of our galaxy.

Despite the reservations he notes, I liked the way Louis proposed speaking
of mathematical "groups":

>group theory applies to any ensemble of things that satisfies
>the axioms of group theory, whether or not there are any such things.

There are groups whose axioms are not satisfied by anything actual.
Therefore, the relational properties of those groups have no causal
effects.  Are those relational properties real?  What I find ontologically
peculiar -- although as I say, not peculiar to math -- is that while these
non-actual groups are knowingly invented, their relational properties are
not knowingly invented. In some sense,  like the relational properties we
invent with the rules of Capital ownership, those relational properties are
actually there to be discovered. Or are they just really there?  I don't
know.  I'm getting confused.






doug porpora
dept of psych and sociology
drexel university
phila pa 19104
USA

porporad-AT-duvm.ocs.drexel.edu




     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005