[MD] Julian Baggini: This is what the clash of civilisations is really about

John Carl ridgecoyote at gmail.com
Tue Jun 9 11:15:07 PDT 2015


Ron,

Without getting into what I meant before, let's just riff off what you
replied, because it lines up with what I've been reading lately about
Absolute Pragmatism...

On Mon, Jun 8, 2015 at 7:49 PM, Ron Kulp <xacto at rocketmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Ron:
> Does that mean the square root of 144 equals potato has the possibility
> Of being a viable answer ?
>
>
Written in 1907:

"The non-Euclidean geometry, strange to say, is not a discovery that we are
any freer than we were before to think as we like regarding the system of
geometrical truth. It is one part only of what Hilbert has called the
"logical analysis" of our concept of space. When we take this analysis as a
whole, it  involves a deeper insight than Euclid could possibly possess
into the unchangeable necessities which bind together the system of logical
relationships that the space of our experience merely exemplifies. Nothing
could be more fixed than are these necessities. As for the numbers, which
Dedekind called "freie Schopfungen" - well, his own masterpiece of  logical
theory is a discovery and a rigid demonstration of a very remarkable and
thoroughly objective truth about the fundamental relations in terms of
which we all of us do our thinking.

His proof that all of the endless wealth of the properties of the ordinal
numbers follows from a certain synthesis of two of the simplest of our
logical conceptions, neither one of which, when taken alone, seems to have
anything to do with the conception of order or of number, - - this proof, I
say, is a direct contribution to a systematic theory of the categories,
and, as such, is, to the logical inquirer, a dramatically surprising
discovery of a realm of objective truth, which nobody is free to construct
or to abandon at his pleasure.

If this be relativism, it is the relativism of an eternal system of
relations.
If this be freedom, it is the divine freedom of a self-determined, but, for
that very reason, absolutely necessary fashion of thought and of activity."


So... no, I don't think the square root of 144 is potato.  And furthermore,
I understand why I don't think that.

John



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