[lbo-talk] Review of Badiou's Number and Numbers

mart media314159 at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 28 05:22:23 PDT 2009


alot of this stuff has been gone through many places before.

i would say i find it empirically implausible to think that space is not a neccesary component of experience. theoretically, no problem (and there are essentially whole theories in physics which essentially assume space (azd time too) are just illusions or conveniant representations of experience for imperfect humans; (the relation between kantianism and physics is essentially the middle way between plato and say, b f skinner or other constructivists ('it from bit')).

one amusing take is by frank tipler ( who is a physicist and recently, for example, proved from quantum theory and general relativity that abortion is wrong, contra Obama and Lawrence Tribe---his paper is on the web---that's my style, you just have to make sure he got the signs right).

the brain operates in space. (alot of people do try to deduce from first principles why experienced space is 3 dimensional---H weyl did one, and i think badiou cites him, from the 20's.)

in modern physics, typically time and space are in a sense complementary or dual variables. you can't really seperate them (eg motion or velocity is defined by changes in position through time).

--- On Mon, 7/27/09, Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:


> From: Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Review of Badiou's Number and Numbers
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Monday, July 27, 2009, 8:48 PM
> I'm not sure that space is a good
> starting point for this sort of
> thing, since space is not a necessary component of
> experience... Chris
> Doss
>
> chuck, your best bet is to hunker down and go through the
> two big
> books.  i will say, however, two things, in response
> to you and to
> ravi. Jeffery Fisher
>
> --------
>
> First, Jeff. Yes your right about the necessity of reading
> Badiou. But
> jeus my apartment is full of books I've started but
> haven't
> finished. The other thing is I am not really mounting a
> critique of
> Badiou. I was presenting a sketch of how I conceive the
> idea that math
> is ontology. I was being as sincere as I could get, mostly
> in support
> of the idea, just reconceptualized.
>
> This kind of philosophy is very tough to do and to follow.
>
> Now for Chris. I think most philosophies don't start with
> either space
> or time, but start with some logical assertion. That way
> they skip the
> problem of a concrete ontology. If you pick something that
> also has a
> concrete or physical analog you have to back pedal and
> justify it with
> some logical sounding argument. Heidegger (I think) want to
> concretize
> an ontology through subjective experience, or through an
> analysis of
> the phenomenology of mind. The dynamic nature of
> conscienousness is
> its experience in or as time.
>
> Now in my philosophy of mathematics, the concept of time is
> developed
> as a concept of the real number system as used in physics,
> counting
> and what have you. In the deeper philosophical sense our
> concept of
> time is intimate linked with the concept of Measure as in
> set of
> measure X. Space on the other is given a mathematical form
> as geometry
> or topology.
>
> Also there is an external motivation. I want to get to a
> theory of
> mind that can be used in empirical studies of the mind that
> can also
> be extended to animals. While us and furries both share
> spacetime in a
> 3-d eucidean space, it is a lot easier to account for the
> similarities
> of mind between us and animals if you convert over to
> space
> constructions and studies. It is a lot more difficult to
> account for
> some similarity of mind between us, if we have to start
> with the
> nature of the phenomenon given to conscieousness in the
> sense of a
> time like experience. We damn well know animals navigate
> space. We
> don't necessarily know they experience pain or what we
> might mean by
> that.
>
> So that is another of my excuses for starting with some
> ontology of space.
>
> There is yet another issue. We know our world hasn't
> changed its physics,
> so we share that with all our past ancestors and the
> animals and plants. So
> that forms a constant against an ever changing relativity
> of views, thoughts,
> theories, etc.Space is one of those constants with lots of
> physics associated
> with it.
>
> CG
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>



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