Then I ask you to prove tI've been doing quaddition, not addition. — Patterner
Draw 57 tally marks. Ask the skeptic how many there are. If the answer is "57", draw 68 more. Have the skeptic count them all. That should be a good enough answer for him. — RogueAI
Draw 57 tally marks. Ask the skeptic how many there are. If the answer is "57", draw 68 more. Have the skeptic count them all. That should be a good enough answer for him. — RogueAI
You lay out 68 marbles and then you lay out 57 marbles in a separate row, then you ask the other "what are the names of the numbers of marbles in the two rows". Then you push them together and ask the other to count all the marbles and say what the name for that number of marbles is. — Janus
As far as I can see this solution dissolves the supposed problem. Much ado about nothing... — Janus
Isn't counting adding 1 to the previous number? — RogueAI
Rather, rules are post-hoc classifications and inferences we impose on our own behavior. — Apustimelogist
I think I'd respond by saying you're doing counting, which is neither addition nor quaddition. — Moliere
I don't think rules are imposed, they describe behaviors — Janus
Depends on what you mean by arbitrary. There is a reason we tend to label things in a certain way and its to do with how our labelling and descriptions are literally physically, mechanically caused by a complicated brain that has evolved to infer statistical structures in our sensory inputs and learn. — Apustimelogist
so it is not we who construct, but we who are constructed from moment to moment — Janus
but that means no more than that imagining ourselves having been different involves no contradiction. How can we find out if it is really possible? — Janus
It seems obvious we can interpret what we observe in different ways; that is different people can. Or one person may be able to imagine other possibilities than those which are simply found to be the case. — Janus
Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are all, as far as i can see, basically counting, and counting is basically naming different quantities. Think about the abacus. — Janus
so it is not we who construct, but we who are constructed from moment to moment
— Janus
Semantics really, isn't it? — Apustimelogist
Well you start to get into a slippery slope here because modality is something we make use of all the time whether in daily life, intellectual discussion, conceptualizations etc. This kind of skepticism, while very fair, is also I think is an argument against all your thinking, not just in this discussion. — Apustimelogist
Yes, and what is in question is whether there is a fact of the matter about who is correct. — Apustimelogist
Similarly we can count marks, or we might know the the arabic numerals, but we may not know how to solve an addition problem without some sort of knowledge of figuring sums. — Moliere
If you wanted to count a hundred objects you could put them in a pile, and move them one by one to another pile, making a mark for each move. Then if you wanted to add another pile of, say, thirty-seven objects you just move those onto the pile of one hundred objects, again marking each move. And then simply count all the objects or marks. — Janus
The article is paywalled on the links I found, so I guess we will have to take your word for it. — Banno
Basically I'd say that arithmetic is more complicated than counting. — Moliere
Not really, I think it is literally true that we are being created moment by moment—until we are not. — Janus
I don't see a slippery slope, but rather a phenomenological fact that we make a conceptual distinction between what is merely logically possible and what might be actually, physically or metaphysically, possible. We don't know what the real impossibilities are, but we inevitably imagine, whether correctly or incorrectly, that there are real, not merely logical, limitations on possibility. — Janus
I think we mostly do assume that there is a fact of the matter, but of course we have no way of knowing that for sure or of knowing what a "fact of the matter" that was completely independent of human existence could even be. — Janus
If you wanted to count a hundred objects you could put them in a pile, and move them one by one to another pile, making a mark for each move. Then if you wanted to add another pile of, say, thirty-seven objects you just move those onto the pile of one hundred objects, again marking each move. And then simply count all the objects or marks. I don't see why we should think that all the basic operations of addition, subtraction, division and multiplication cannot be treated this way. We really don't even need to make marks if we have names for all the numbers and we can remember the sum totals. — Janus
Talking about the nature of the self is does not really have an impact on what I mean when I say we construct concepts, at least not in this context from the way I see it. — Apustimelogist
And my point ia you are doing this with pretty much every conversation you are having about philosophy. Philosophy is an armchair science so a huge amount of its arguments rely on this same kind of conceivability of what seems correct, what seems possible, logical, metaphysical or otherwise. — Apustimelogist
I don't think there can be a fact of the matter independent of human experience and even within experience, people find themselves unable to determine a solution to issues like this quus one. Its chronically underdetermined, there is no objective way to see it that can definitely rule out all of the others. Thats the vision that makes most sense to me anyway. — Apustimelogist
You said earlier that you don't even really know the causes of your thoughts or how they arise. So you know the causes of your understanding of addition? Or quantity itself? — Apustimelogist
My point in making that distinction was that some concepts, like counting and addition come naturally, and other concepts like quaddition are arbitrary artificial constructs. — Janus
I don't see the phenomenological dimension of philosophy as "armchair speculation", but rather as reflection on what we actually do. — Janus
I see the quus issue as not merely under-determined, but trivial and of no significance, and I wonder why people waste their time worrying about such irrelevancies; but maybe I'm too stupid to see the issue, in which case perhaps someone can show me that I'm missing something. — Janus
The causes of our thoughts are presumably neuronal processes which have been caused by sensory interactions; my point was only that we are (in real time at least) "blind" to that whole process. I don't believe we are phenomenologically blind to activities like counting and addition and I think it is a plausible inference to the best explanation to say that these activities naturally evolved from dealing with real objects. I'm not claiming to be certain about that, just that it seems the most plausible explanation to me. — Janus
Of course I agree that arithmetic is more complicated than counting, all I've been saying is that it is basically counting. It is the symbolic language of mathematics that allows for the elaborations (complications) of basic principles. — Janus
And I would also argue that it all finds its basis, its genesis, in dealing with actual objects, Thinking in terms of fractions, for example, probably started with materials that could be divided.
There can be no doubt that all our cognition begins with experience...But even though all our cognitions starts with experience, that does not mean that all of it arises from experience — Kant
I keep harping on the square root of 2 — Moliere
I'm not sure how much the symbolic language matters. — Moliere
There can be no doubt that all our cognition begins with experience...But even though all our cognitions starts with experience, that does not mean that all of it arises from experience — Kant
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