/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.13942178]

Imagine considering yourself a "philosopher" and not knowing math.

[Anonymous No.13942195]

>>13942178
To what standard? I derp'd my way through Calculus I-III, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math, College Probability, and Formal Symbolic Logic, but that doesn't mean I know what any of it actually means. My big takeaway from all that math is that thing always goes into other thing to get third thing. And most of the math that I do know the meaning of I understood the meaning of intuitively before I encountered the formalization of it. So what's the fucking point?

[Anonymous No.13942199]

>>13942178
Why?

[Anonymous No.13942212]

[Anonymous No.13942994]

>>13942195
This, OP is right in principle but in pratiche the way Math is taught is counterproductive for the aspiring philosopher. The /lit/ choice is studying it by yourself.
Some Good books to learn Math as an autodidact ñ?

[Anonymous No.13943003]

>>13942178
The beauty of philosophy is that it doesn't require math neither does it exclude it.

[Anonymous No.13943048]

>>13942994
Just get yourself a baby Rudin, it starts from the fundamental axioms of math

[Anonymous No.13943076]

>>13943048
It doesn't cover Peano arithmetic; run through that, some basic logic and group/ring theory first then as long as you have high school algebra down pat you should be able to Rudin.

[Anonymous No.13943081]

lemme learn math real quick so i can...

not use it at all

[Anonymous No.13943089]

>>13942178
>My linguistic system for representing numeric value is so great isn't it guys?
>G-guys?
>What do you mean it isn't valuable?
>I-it suffers from the same ontic, linguistic, and epistemic vagueness that all linguistic systems suffer from?
>REEEEEE! MATH IS OBJECTIVE TRUTH! YOU JUST DON'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT MATH!

[Anonymous No.13943093]

>>13943076
Meh, the first chapter gives the conditions for fields which basically builds arithmetic and gives you everything you need from ring theory.

[Anonymous No.13943098]

>>13943089
What are you on about? Mathematical results and proofs are independent of the linguistic system used to represent it.

[Anonymous No.13943153]

>>13942178
The problem with trying to apply math to philosophy is that most people get caught up in abstraction, and will quickly descend into horrible arguments "by analogy." But I guess there are two really important things to understand about math. First, continuous and discrete formulations of math (calculus and algebra, respectively) are irreconcilable, for reasons that Zeno pointed out thousands of years ago, and Cantor doubled down on more recently. Second, discrete math is nothing more than an abstraction over the perception of objects; it's accounting without the dollar signs. All these foundations-of-math retcons, about recursive embeddings of sets, are just obscure ways of saying, "Numbers are objects, you know, as they're obvious to you in your everyday life. One plus one equals two because if you have one apple and pluck another off a tree, you have two apples."
There are ways in which it's fine to hitch your wagon to all of this, but you're not going to find the one true totalizing abstraction here.

[Anonymous No.13943216]

>>13942178
That. Fucking. Equation.

[Anonymous No.13943254]

Continental philosophy
>What is a tree? Is there an abstract "treeness" like the old Aristotelian etiology or Platonic metaphysics? Or is it just some kind of base set of elements, or "matter," obeying laws? If that's the case, what are the laws? Are they abstracts? What is the non-material ground of matter? Or is matter somehow self-grounding? Even more importantly, how is it even possible for us to be certain in our judgments about any of these things? Can we ever be certain? Can we even know things about the world? Who's to say there isn't a real nature out there, whether it's abstract "treeness" or some kind of base essence of matter and cosmological laws, except it's the nature of consciousness not to be able to know those essences and laws? Are we locked into our experience of the world, which pre-theoretically "makes sense" to us, only to be irritated any time we try to look beyond that pre-theoretical experience and really KNOW things? But how does that make any sense? Surely not everything can be subjective and "social," can it? The basic of the subjective must be the objective; or maybe a unity of the two that is higher than both? Maybe one way to know the "outside" is by better understanding the "inside," since both spring from the same source; yet a lot of philosophers are pessimistic about this, and think we are trapped in language. It's like we're right back where the Greeks started.. How are we to live in a world where we can't even get a firm footing on what it means to "be?"

Analytic philosophy
>◇ ∃p ≡ q{d~p} ∀m ⊢q∥~p ⊃ d p ⊧ ~p ∄ p
>∴ Matter is material.
>Ergo, mid-20th century market liberalism is objectively correct, as is every conception, ca. 1965 in Oxbridge, UK, of the ideas and culture of all past and future civilizations. Read John Rawls and John Locke every day. Ethics was solved by the Bloomsbury circle.

[Anonymous No.13943510]

>>13943216
Amazing isn't it

[Anonymous No.13943515]

>>13942212

>posts a failed engineer

[Anonymous No.13943519]

I dont know why but I have problem visualising fractions when they have more than 3 variables. I cant understand math without visualisation. Somehow I cant grasp the idea in totality. I want to improve but it seems my brain cant do it. Is it normal? I am not talking about doing math but understanding it.

[Anonymous No.13943522]

>>13943098
Oh I would LOVE to see you work this one out. You have my full attention. Please expand on this.

[Anonymous No.13943525]

>>13943519
Also books dont tell me why, they just post numbers. I need to know the reasons why and no longer have the time to ponder 10 hours a day on it when it was solved already. I just need to know why it works, why is it done in such a way, how it works and such.

[Anonymous No.13943581]

>>13943098
>he thinks anything real could possibly exist independently from language
here's a silly picture since we're just being silly

[Anonymous No.13943603]

>>13943089
>retard
Yes, baby. Math IS objective truth. Pic related, the Fibonacci progression.

[Anonymous No.13943606]

Everyone knows math to some extent, anon. Do you mean a certain type of math? Do you think of mathematics as bosses in Dark Souls?

[Anonymous No.13943614]

>>13943581
It does. Pi is Pi indipendently of You counting in base 10 or 6. The cyphers change obviously but It's still the same universal constant with the same uses.
Kiddos like you shouldn't be talking about grown up stuff.

[Anonymous No.13943616]

low-iq persone here who hated math in high-school. I am 22 years old and have started working in the creative industry. Is it too late to learn math? Should I bother? If yes, what use will it be to me and where should I start?

[Anonymous No.13943622]

>>13943616
Yes you should bother. The universe runs on math, why wouldn't you want to know how things actually work?

[Anonymous No.13943725]

>>13943614
You still haven't proven that it exists independently of language, you've just said that you can use different signs to refer to the same thing, which has brought you exactly as far as the sense/reference distinction and not one inch closer to your intended point.

[Anonymous No.13943734]

>>13943725
>You still haven't proven that it exists independently of language, you've just said that you can use different signs to refer to the same thing
Slowly re-read what you've just written.

[Anonymous No.13943744]

>>13943734
If that was a little too much for you, let me give you an example.

Ghost = Geist = fantasma

Since there are different linguistic/symbolic reference points refer to the same thing, we can safely conclude that ghosts exist, using the same logic that apparently makes you so certain that pi exists independently of language.

[Anonymous No.13943764]

>>13943744
But anon, ghosts do exist.

[Anonymous No.13943832]

>>13943616
>in the creative industry

Please.

[Anonymous No.13943834]

>>13943744
I actually agree with you, believe it or not, but replace anything you don't believe in with "ghost" and the point remains.

[Anonymous No.13943873]

>>13943764
Sorry,
>>13943834
is meant for you.

[Anonymous No.13943967]

>>13943603
Why are math fags OBSESSED with funny lookin' broccoli?

[Anonymous No.13943982]

>>13943254
All that indicates there is that analytic philosophy applies the kind of certainty that mathematicians have about a priori logical constructs over to real, experienced beings.

[Anonymous No.13944003]

>>13943089
damn he's right but STEMtards don't read books, so they repeat notions of philosophers being retards. nice board you got

[Anonymous No.13944052]

>>13944003
The fact that I can understand something like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or Heidegger's Being and Time, but not undergraduate level Abstract Algebra or Real Analysis textbooks makes me feel like maybe I'm not really that intelligent, and that it's not really necessary to be anywhere near a genius to understand philosophy.

[Anonymous No.13944087]

>Self study math

What's the point if your line of work doesn't require it? Convince me and I'll upload my mathematical textbook collection that my friend gave me

[Anonymous No.13944155]

>>13944087
Literally the same one as studying philosophy: beholding impressively well built ideas.

[Anonymous No.13944162]

>>13944155
Do you have an article that supports this?

[Anonymous No.13944169]

>>13944162
None. It's just my opinion, brought about from my experience studying both subjects.

[Anonymous No.13944177]

>>13944169
Does your line of work require some degree of complex maths? How did Mathematics help to improve your critical thinking?

[Anonymous No.13944199]

>>13944052
Well you're obviously not dumb. I'm sure if you had the right personal instructer you could get it. Also I think there's the difference between reader and creator, it took Kant 10 years to write and formulate the Critique.

[Anonymous No.13944203]

>>13944177
I'm just a dumb CS student who likes mental masturbation. Literally nothing beyond Linear Algebra could ever be useful for me, yet I still like to go to the library and flip through advanced mathematics textbooks just for fun. I think of most upper-level mathematics as art instead of as a tool, no differently from paintings, sculptures, musical compositions, poetry, prose writing, and even metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.13944209]

>>13944052
IQ isn't simply intelligence, it's the average of numerous kinds of cognitive abilities. Philosophers typically have about the same IQ as mathematicians; even though there are some commonalities, they use different faculties of the mind.

[Anonymous No.13944213]

>>13942178
>thing equal other things
who cares

[Anonymous No.13944223]

Pure math is to analytic spergs as applied math is to continental chads.

[Anonymous No.13944232]

[Anonymous No.13944235]

>>13944223
Are you that guy who once posted about HxH on a manga collection thread on /a/, claiming that you place it alongside Gaddis and Rilke on your bookshelf?

[Anonymous No.13944239]

>>13944235
HUN
TER
CHADS

[Anonymous No.13944662]

>>13944087
Somehow, I have difficulty taking seriously anyone who has never experienced a sudden pang of cosmic consciousness upon apprehending some glorious mathematical truth.
It's judgmental and snobby. I know. I'm sure most people see no value in developing an awareness of a seemingly bottomless reality that transcends our day to day experience. Contemplating a great artwork or reading really good fiction and poetry can have a similar effect, but the absolutely emancipating combination of logical rigour and conceptual beauty that defines pure mathematics stands alone.

[Anonymous No.13944732]

>>13942178
>>13943089
Math is a fiction. Statements like: "2+2=4," "murder is wrong," and "Claudius is slain by Prince Hamlet," are all *true* in their respective fictions. They're "useful" fictions in so far as they help us construct bridges; structure societies; and pass literary exams. There is nothing ultimately objective about math outside its own structured fiction, all that is objective is matter and it's some sort of movement.

[Anonymous No.13944908]

>>13944732
imagine being this confidently retarded

[Anonymous No.13945094]

>>13942994
Whitehead and Russel: Principia Mathematica.

[Anonymous No.13945097]

>>13943967
Based

[Anonymous No.13945104]

>>13945094
you are out of your fucking mind if you think this will help anyone learn mathematics. This is an attempt to ground arithmetic in pure formal logic, not a textbook to help people learn.

[Anonymous No.13945146]

>>13944662
so its just mental masturbation for dimwits who cant get any satisfaction from actually creating something
got it.

[Anonymous No.13945153]

>>13945094
Retroactively refuted by Parmenides

[Anonymous No.13945155]

>>13942178
>e^ipi +1=0
How the fuck does this work exactly

[Anonymous No.13945183]

>>13945153
Whitehead's metaphysics might've been btfo by Parmenides, but their logical work on the foundations of mathematics can only be said to be incomplete.

[Anonymous No.13945233]

>>13944732
I'm amazed you managed to enter this site and post that shit with that low iq

[Anonymous No.13945238]

>>13945155
Euler identity formula,
e^i*(theta) = i*sin(theta) + cos(theta)
where theta is an angle.

[Anonymous No.13945269]

>>13945094
Proactively refuted by Gödel

[Anonymous No.13945270]

>>13943616
you probably hate math cause your teachers were bad at teaching math beyond rote memorization. learn how to solve problems instead of plug and chug and you'll likely enjoy math more and get better at it. outside of actual learning disabilities anyone should be able to get through calc 1

[Anonymous No.13945303]

>>13945155
once you know about taylor expansions (writing suitable differential functions as series aka infinite polynomials), you compare the exponential function with sine and cosine and figure out eulers identitity: plugging in imaginary numbers into the exponential function turns out to rotate stuff in the complex plane. then, rotating by pi = 180° just means reaching -1 from one, which is what exp(i pi) = -1 actually means.

[Anonymous No.13945307]

I totally agree, OP. All of these shitheads who grew up failing math and reading books thought that you could make philosophy out of narrative alone. This is why c*ntinental philosophy is dying (and good riddance!)

[Anonymous No.13945319]

>>13945307
cuntinental philosophy??

[Anonymous No.13945332]

>>13943048
Go fuck yourself. Stop recommending that meme tier book to people trying to self study, its a horrible book to self study from.

If you want to learn analysis, then read pugh. It's a great book to self study from, a lot of pictures and explanations. inb4 rigor autism. Math is not all about autistic rigor, go rigor mortis yourself rudin fags.

[Anonymous No.13945395]

>>13944732
>>13944908
>>13945233
Certified mensan since childhood here who holds a fictionalist view on mathematics, ama.
>Inb4 expired card
I don't know where I put my new one, fuck off.

[Anonymous No.13945412]

>>13942199

Math asks "what can we know about these constructs we call 'numbers'?" Sounds like philosophy to me.

[Anonymous No.13945460]

This post is pure bait. Why tf do I need maths for my political theory. Also have you ever read an "analytical philosophy" paper? It's pure circlejerk about the hard problem over and over. Boring af. I prefer my Deleuze you fuckwit

[Anonymous No.13945481]

>>13945094
And after Gödel the only place it could go was the trash can

[Anonymous No.13945486]

>>13945460

Jesus Christ. You are a brainlet that needs everything to be a compelling story, you are literally incapable of systematic thought

[Anonymous No.13945503]

>>13944732
>They're "useful" fictions in so far as they help us construct bridges
Which is something a political philosophy probably ought to be able to do

>>13945460
see above

[Anonymous No.13945730]

>>13943525
I have the same problem. Without the visualization of how these equations work I find myself questioning whether I should be pursuing math at all. It's all meaningless to me if I can't construct a proper understanding of what I'm doing. I'm only into philosophy because I hate the rote memorization inherent in today's pedagogy.

[Anonymous No.13945749]

>>13945395
Imagine actually taking those tests to join a group of smug psuedo-intellectuals. Does being a member of Mensa actually deliver any meaning into your barren life? Or is it just another form of social capital you love to exploit?

[Anonymous No.13945760]

>>13945146
some people actually like solving problems.
maths and science creates technology you moron. faggot literature/art creates nothing kys brainlet

[Anonymous No.13946060]

>>13942178
someone explain the meaning and implications of euler's identity to these brainlet /lit/ fucks

[Le SS officer No.13946078]

>>13942178
I could not stand math,but platon&co. were among my favourites (not even gonna mention logics which is entirely difficult from math and far easier to comprehend)

[Anonymous No.13946820]

Man some of you guy are so far up your own as you literally sound retarded.
Math is objective. Destroy all structure of language and civilization and people will rederive that 2 rocks plus 2 rocks equals four rocks and how to use pi to calculate angles if they make it pass the stage of wallowing in mud and fucking each other in the ass.

[Anonymous No.13947159]

>>13945395
Is there any actual advantage in joining mensa?

[Anonymous No.13947198]

>>13946820
Arithmetical operations involving physical objects are different from mathematics proper, which is very much NOT objective. Hell, even today, mathematics and philosophy of mathematics can't agree on some fairly foundational ideas, or even on the respective primitiveness of number and quantity.

You sound like a freshman STEM student at best, and I'm being generous.

[Anonymous No.13947466]

>>13947159
Nah not really. You get to flex on pseuds online and you might occasionally meet another cool mensan, that's about it.

[Anonymous No.13947552]

>>13942195
>And most of the math that I do know the meaning of I understood the meaning of intuitively before I encountered the formalization of it.
This is actually philishopically correct. Math is just a way to represent what we intuitively know. Anyone who thinks the formalization of math is 'the point' is a fucking retard

[Anonymous No.13947777]

>>13947198
Mathematical philosophy IS NOT mathematics.

[Anonymous No.13947862]

>>13942178
Wait what does i stand for?

[Anonymous No.13947871]

did socrates or plato know math
fuck off my board

[Anonymous No.13947895]

>>13947871
>did socrates or plato know math
Unironically yes.

:3

[Anonymous No.13947914]

>>13947862
the square root of -1

[Anonymous No.13947930]

>>13947862
You tell us, anon.

What -do- you stand for? :3

[Anonymous No.13947934]

>>13942994
Algebraic Geometry by Hartshorne is a good textbook for basic algebra and geometry

[Anonymous No.13948273]

>>13943048
baby rudin is a dogshit text

doesn't work as a self study text, too abbreviated to be a reference text

[Anonymous No.13948308]

>>13942994
Spivak's calculus is sublime

[Anonymous No.13948313]

>>13947934
Kek

[Anonymous No.13948322]

>>13947552
>we intuitively understand how to take root of a negative number
absolute brainlet outed

[Anonymous No.13948689]

>>13948322
Listen I can't break down every single fucking concept for you
>b-but they're called 'imaginary' numbers
Jesus fucking Christ someone kill me I'm so fucking sick of it his goddamn hell earth

[Anonymous No.13948706]

>>13948689
not him. I know that it has been argued that they should be called "lateral" instead of "imaginary", but could you proceed?

[Anonymous No.13948775]

>>13942195
smells like CS major

[Anonymous No.13948781]

>>13948689
>posts pic not related
>requests mercy killing
sorry i caught you on a bad night anon. catch some zzzs and when you wake up you can explain how you intuit something simple like notion of an infinite number of primes

[Anonymous No.13948782]

>>13948775
>shitting on CS majors

Majority of modern CS majors are the equivalent of classical mathematicians. So get the FUCK off of that high horse of yours, you goddamn Rob Schneider posting pseud.

[Anonymous No.13948785]

>>13945094
236 pages to show that 1+1=2, that will be a no for me

[Anonymous No.13948819]

>>13948782
>modern CS majors are the equivalent of classical mathematicians
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.13948933]

>>13947198
I have a PhD focused on game theory. How about you genius?

[Anonymous No.13948953]

>>13943519
You can never totally visualize something in math.
You can only approximate, your understanding is always approximate.


https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/11267/what-are-some-interpretations-of-von-neumanns-quote

[Anonymous No.13948967]

>>13948781
How does that notion help explain the concrete world, exactly? Increasingly self-referential systems aren't especially relevant to philosophy, since philosophers are attempting to describe the concrete. Rigorous philosophy strives to employ the minimum amount of abstraction necessary, so as to avoid undue assumptions.

[Anonymous No.13948971]

>>13948819
He thinks because he knows everything Newton knew that makes him as good as Newton.

[Anonymous No.13948991]

>>13942178
I studied math as an undergraduate and took a lot of "graduate level" courses. Basically I stopped after taking some algebraic topology. For someone who does not explicitly intend to become a mathematician or theoretical physicist, there is no reason to learn more than that.

And I've tried reading through some of the more advanced textbooks that explore more functional analysis. I mean I get why people enjoy it, but at some point it becomes clear that without a job which requires me to know this material, there will be no reward for learning it, ever. It is far beyond what engineers, financial analysts, statisticians, etc. will ever use. Theoretical physics absolutely, but I am not studying that.
At this level it also becomes clear that to learn anything at all in depth one must essentially focus on just one field, so the prospect of becoming a master of all mathematical fields is out of the question.

My point is that when you can see exactly what books and methods you would have to use to learn something in detail and have already mastered the basic tools for proving things and constructing new concepts, such that nothing but practice and memorization remains, learning math is not an enlightening activity.

[Anonymous No.13948995]

>>13943048
First fucking chapter explicitly says that it does NOT start with the fundamental axioms. Go read a book on logic and then set theory, category theory, type theory, etc. if you want all that.

[Anonymous No.13949019]

They biggest mistake that we make as a society is telling children that i is "imaginary." i is a lateral number, not imaginary, and very real. There's no need for math teachers to impress 15 year olds with "imaginary" numbers, let them find out about lateral numbers later when they get to it. And honestly? All math after 3rd grade, hell, all education period should be voluntary. If kids want to learn they should ask for it, otherwise they simply won't learn at all.

[Anonymous No.13949021]

I get that this makes me sound pretentious, but I find that very, very few people actually understand how dull and useless math becomes because they never actually study beyond the first few years of analysis, basic abstract algebra, or point-set topology. Not just in this thread, but almost everywhere I go, most people who think they "know mathematics" but don't have a pure math PhD or something have never gotten beyond this basic level.

[Anonymous No.13949029]

>>13949019
We also tell kids that infinity is not a number. It absolutely is. There are far bigger mistakes than this. Actual mathematicians pretty much never use any numbers besides 0, 1, and infinity anyway. There's genuinely no reason for anything else.

[Anonymous No.13949053]

>>13948991
That's why I think math and philosophy very much intersect, but learning higher level mathematics will only apply a little bit in becoming a better philosopher.
>My point is that when you can see exactly what books and methods you would have to use to learn something in detail and have already mastered the basic tools for proving things and constructing new concepts, such that nothing but practice and memorization remains, learning math is not an enlightening activity.
But I think there is a place where mathematicians get to that enlightening level, even if it is mainly within mathematics itself. But it's really advanced, compared to anyone getting in collegiate courses, so it's oriented around people specializing in mathematics and nothing else, and something even most math heavy fields don't intersect with at all.
>>13944052
I think the reasoning behind this is the way math is taught. Math is absolutely symbolic, and it's difficult for the same reason people find Kant and Heidegger hard to read: you need to know a lot of specific things and how they go together, and be familiar with them before you even approach the heart of it.
But when you learn Math in school, all the way up to college, you learn little about how math is constructed theoretically. It's entirely composed of procedures mathematicians have already formed. You learn the symbols and the procedures, and nothing else. It's purely sterile work, and you don't get many concepts to think through in secondary education. I assume philosophy kept your interest because it kept you engaged.

[Anonymous No.13949056]

>>13949021
Most people who study math underestimate how difficult advanced math actually is. It often seems like analysis, abstract algebra, or topology are "as difficult as it gets" because it's difficult to conceive of theories so general that they encompass all that is learned in these courses and yet are even more enlightening about these subjects.

[Anonymous No.13949085]

>>13949053
I could see it being interesting and enthralling for anyone surrounded by mathematicians, but for someone living with a family and working a typical office job, working through specialized textbook (anything that requires functional analysis) just feels like privately solving a really hard puzzle. It may as well be a puzzle of sudoku, because nobody around you understands it enough to discuss it and, critically, it has already been solved by others many times before. You will almost certainly not create new mathematical research in isolation. If doing this is "enlightening" then I would ask what point does this cross over into becoming "enlightening"? We can say almost irrefutably that this level of mathematics is not affecting the life of the one studying it if he is not such a mathematician, apart from the act of studying itself. If the "enlightening" part is a kind of cathartic release or a sharpening of the mind through logic inherent in math, that's fine. I'm just not sure I would call that "enlightening." It's fun the same way a really hard puzzle is fun, but for most people I think that's it. For the humanities, the benefits are self-evident because the humanities is about how one should carry out his life. For mathematics, I don't see how it's still enlightening or worth studying (apart from a general sharpening of the mind). Why should I study more math, really?

[Anonymous No.13949143]

>>13943254
I like what you wrote for 'Continental philosophy'.

[Anonymous No.13949197]

>>13949021
? Math becomes more interesting once you have the basics down and can see the structural similarities between the different areas. Beyond what you listed, courses in finite math, algebraic topology and differential geometry should suffice for someone to say they 'know math'. People should also, naturally, have experience with computing, and good solid experience doing lots of 'boring' computational things on paper (solving a bunch of coupled pde's, learning about special functions, fourier analysis, etc.) You don't need to have the knowledge of a PhD candidate to 'know math', though really that's just arguing over semantics.

[Anonymous No.13949211]

>>13943616
Nah, never too late. It's good for essentially forcing your brain to think clearly and rigorously. Try picking up a book on abstract algebra (Fraleigh is good for people inexperienced with proofs). The important thing is to do a lot of the problems, even though they might seem frustrating or impossible at first. It starts out really painful but you'll probably start liking it after a little while. If you don't, no need to torture yourself.

[Anonymous No.13949228]

>>13944052
Your intuition here is basically right, though it is still relatively hard to understand Kant or Heidegger. The difference is that there's no real test to determine whether or not you truly understand them (though this is more true of Heidegger than Kant). Math basically forces you to recapitulate a lot of arguments basically independently of the person who originally came up with that argument in order to understand a topic fully.

You don't need to be 'smart' to understand analysis or algebra, you just need to try hard and be willing to feel stupid in a way you can easily avoid when reading philosophy (esp. primary texts).

Have you tried reading philosophy textbooks and going over discussion questions/problems (in the case of phil of language, logic or epistemology) rather than just primary sources? It's a more effective way to learn philosophy, imo.

[Anonymous No.13949241]

>>13945460
Math helps you think straight, and it's pretty.
Analytical philosophy has its issues, but it's much more serious than the continental tradition. I enjoy reading continental philosophy for its literary merits and funny puns, but it's rare for me to encounter really interesting arguments or thought experiments, like Kripke's rule-following argument or Two Dogmas (both of which are naturally retarded in their own special ways).

[Anonymous No.13949248]

>>13947198
No mathematician is thinking about 'primitivity' of numbers. Primitive finite fields, maybe!

[Anonymous No.13949253]

>>13943725
>You still haven't proven that it exists independently of language
Let's get started with an easier question for you. Is there any thought independent of language?

[Anonymous No.13949274]

>>13949019
It's a remnant from a time when it was controversial. Same for many things outside i. A few post into the thread you have people thinking mathematics is primarily about 'numbers'.
The majority of people are brainlets that considered things not-serious if they don't relate to the feeling of touch.
ITT there are anons that cling to psychologist or realist interpretations.
The way mathematics is taught is also at fault though, I agree. Past high school people should go straight towards the notions of structures.

[Anonymous No.13949278]

>>13942178
Math just blindly expects you to trust in the axioms underneath, it's just going from one point to next.

[Anonymous No.13949282]

>>13943616
It's never too late, but unless you have a true motivation behind wanting to learn math, you won't.

[Anonymous No.13949285]

>>13945094
Dropped it at the axiom of reducibility.
At the time I thought I was harsh but based Godel and Tarski and Bourbaki had the same opinion.

[Anonymous No.13949293]

>>13947552
>Anyone who thinks the formalization of math is 'the point' is a fucking retard
It is precisely the point. Note that it is all intuitive too, as in formal categorical intuition.

[Anonymous No.13949380]

>>13949278
No, it doesn't. Math never claims to be "true." It is always a collection of theories, which are what theorems are, to create models. Axioms are relative to each individual theory. They are the foundation from which each theory is built. The theorems from one discipline of math are the axioms of others and so long as a particular theory holds without any known contradictions in its models the theory is mathematically valid. Even if the axiom is "wrong" in one theory, the theorems based on it in a different theory can be "right."

[Anonymous No.13949385]

>>13949293
>>13947552
You are describing aoplied math, not math. Math is just a collection of theories that forn a subset of mathematical logic, and when the rules are changed the math changes. That's it.

[Anonymous No.13949483]

>>13949380
And the fundamental axioms were just agreed to be true.

[Anonymous No.13949647]

>>13949253
let's say no

[Anonymous No.13949653]

>>13947862
The image of x in the quotient ring (field) R[x]/(x^2 + 1)

[Anonymous No.13949787]

>>13944203
you are kind of cool