Submitted by BernardJOrtcutt t3_y6c1wy in philosophy
Gentlerwiserfree t1_it26nyc wrote
Reply to comment by Capital_Net_6438 in /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | October 17, 2022 by BernardJOrtcutt
Mathematicians didn’t decide that 5 is a number.
The fact that you can pick up one rock, then another rock, then another, then another, then another, then stop, means that five is a number.
If some government decided that they were only going to register numbers in binary, or base 3, or base 4, then 5 would still be a number, it would just be written differently (say, as 101, or as V, or as ○, or 五… but it’s still the same number).
Physicists, artists, whoever you’d consider the “authority” on color didn’t decide what wavelengths of light are visible to the human eye.
When light enters the majority of human eyes that are considered “healthy”, the rods and cones in those eyes notice things about the wavelengths of the light, and send signals to the brains they’re connected to, and call it “colors”.
Doctors could decide that actually, colorblind people are the healthy ones, and seeing color is a disease. That wouldn’t change the fact that the majority of human eyes recognize light with 550nm wavelengths as a thing that English calls “green” (some languages don’t have a separate word for “green”, and use the same word for 470nm (“blue”) light as green).
(Tipping point of human biology after which point, humans who can’t detect red outnumber those who can).
Capital_Net_6438 t1_it34az1 wrote
I apologize if i said something to suggest I believe mathematicians made it the case that 5 is a number through some actions of theirs. I definitely do not believe that. But the hypo remains re the mathematician convention etc. That seems intriguing to me. But maybe it doesn't seem like an intriguing hypo to you. Or not possible. Or whatever.
Gentlerwiserfree t1_itb63gk wrote
If “they” didn’t decide that 5 is a number in the first place, how could they change and decide it’s not?
If some group of professors got together and decided to declare that 5 isn’t a number, how could that affect the real world?
They could send out some guidance of how math teachers are supposed to teach differently, but schools would all ignore it. There just isn’t any organization with that kind of power in most of the world.
Even if in, say, North Korea, they decided to try that, it would probably involve creating a new symbol or word for 5.
Math simply does not work if you try to pretend that adding 4+1 is impossible.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that there is no “they”. There is no board of experts that can make a declaration like that. It’s an extremely childish worldview to believe that there could be (again, aside from places like North Korea).
Humans realizing that they were wrong to label Pluto the same way they labeled Neptune, Uranus, etc. does not affect anything that happens in space. It’s the reverse, actually — when humans realize that their labeling systems are wrong, the humans must change. If a human scientist insists that since they learned xyz when they were a child, xyz must be true, despite evidence, then that human is not a true scientist and is harming humanity.
Saying “Actually, Pluto isn’t really a planet” (that is, “Actually, bodies in space under a certain size have certain properties that make them different from planets”) is no different from saying “Actually, the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around” all those centuries ago.
The whole “dwarf planet” thing was done to placate people who are uncomfortable with science, and that’s something any thinking person should be uncomfortable with.
(Also, if there were a board of scientists that powerful, tobacco would no longer be a thing. If only.)
Capital_Net_6438 t1_itbh3zt wrote
It seems like you are missing the thrust of the number 5 example. Here goes again. Possible: math professors get together to discuss (er) math. Possible: after much deliberation, math professors announce that 5 is not a number. They’ve recalculated, so to speak.
Do you agree the above are possible? So far we’re just talking people doing things of varying degrees of normalcy and weirdness.
Then enters philosophy: how should I as a person who strives to be cognitively responsible, respond? I assume I can’t just waive it out of hand. A lot of weird stuff has been discovered. Allegedly, a spatially located object could be neither in location A, nor B, nor… That’s a thing right? I mean if that weren’t already a thing and physicists announced it tomorrow, I’d say: what the what. Pass the joint, physicists.
Again: what mathematicians say don’t make it so it not so.
Gentlerwiserfree t1_itblnle wrote
Those aren’t possible.
You have no understanding of math or science.
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