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Several recent updates to literature at philosophy, the latest being
which is more into cognition and language problem, but still very relevant, and by a top mathematician. As these 2 are still manuscripts I put them under articles, though I should eventually classify those as books…
I have added few references at philosophy including to the Internet Encyclopedia of Mathematics. I noticed that in addition to the previous related entries section somebody made one more within the same page so I merged them. Then I noticed that someone is keeping a smaller parallel page with alike content philosophy of mathematics. I was reluctant to merge, though having our POV, intentions, content focus, contributor base and tendency for synthesis I think having two separate pages is more of a problem in maintaining and navigating than advantage. Anyway I copied few of the links from philosophy about books on philosophy of mathematics into the entry philosophy of mathematics.
Just to say that I find it self-evident that the entry philosophy should not focus on philosophy of mathematics and should remain distict from philosophy of mathematics and that literature on the philosophy of mathematics should go to philosophy of mathematics and not to philosophy (unless there is a particular reason otherwise).
We’ll have a hierarchy of entries
etc.
Oh, I see I fell into the usual trap of replying to a message that dates years back (#2).
But still, I find no need to conflate philosophy with philosophy of mathematics: What we have on the latter readers will look for in its dedicated entry, and we should not preclude that there is anything to be said about philosophy that is not related to mathematics!
Also I feel uneasy with blunt claims that “on the nLab we do” this or that.
Even if that’s really true now it may cease to be true in the future, and maybe for good reasons so. And who knows whether it’s actually true now, given that elsewhere we struggle to agree even on the most basic procedures of editing.
So I think this entry should start out with “Philosophy is…” and relegate discussion of what nLab-specific there is about it to a section of “Related nLab entries” or similar.
But still, I find no need to conflate philosophy with philosophy of mathematics: What we have on the latter readers will look for in its dedicated entry, and we should not preclude that there is anything to be said about philosophy that is not related to mathematics!
Also I feel uneasy with blunt claims that “on the nLab we do” this or that.
Completely agree with both of these points. No need to artificially restrict things.
(The above was me :-)).
I might try out an overhaul when (if ever) some clear time appears.
4,5,6 I might have been unclear in 2 (2017), but I was not advocating merging, as I consider philosophy and philosophy of mathematics essentially different (hesitating was meaning that I was against merge, despite temporary and a bit more of problematic duplication of content). Namely, I found that the entries were hugely overlapping at the time (I think too much things very specific too math at philosophy, where maybe a different emphasis) and that it seemed to me that this was a long term tendency (I was quoting observed “POV, content focus” etc. not as a wish but as a diagnosis for purposes of Forum discussion) hence a problem, if not recognized. Despite that the pages were almost identical, at the moment when I was expending by about 10 new references and few cross links, I have not gone with merging. I am sorry that word “hesitating” was too soft for my opposing to merging at the time very similar pages (merging was often the case with other similar pages in Lab). The point I wanted to promote is that people be aware that it is not enough to have two different titles, but the real distinction requires – and this was my call for it – making effort to contribute distinct – not solely math-focused – content at philosophy. I am sure that some did not know we had two entries. I myself contributed to some duplication in references as that was the only relevant and unsorted (not thought through yet enough) material which I had in my hands and considered important.
P.S. what I did merge at the time, were the two “related contents” subsections within the same entry philosophy (created by obvious error). Maybe my additional remark about this in 2 created additional confusion in interpreting the rest of badly written remark 2.
There are two dead links in the entry philosophy namely near the end there is:
and the here in the first and the youtube link in the second fail (at least for me0.
That post by Gavin Wraith is recorded here:
nforum.ncatlab.org/discussion/2472/book-on-philosophy-of-math/?Focus=21255#Comment_21255.
I doubt that it is worth recording this brief comment as a reference item.
In any case it is out of place in the entry on philosophy!
I suggest to just delete these broken bibitems.
If it seems worthwhile to record the observation that “badly-done X-theory is bad”, then add that as a remark to the relevant entry on X-theory, instead.
As per the above, I have removed those broken links from this entry, since even if theywere unbroken, they are out of place in the entry on “philosophy”.
If discussion of malpractice in category theory seems worthwhile to anyone (but I don’t encourage it, since the Lab is not about sociology), this should go either to category theory or maybe, if that anyone is ambitious, to a new entry on “philosophy of category theory”.
There is a book dedicated to the conference with the broken website: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53385-8:
To find “criteria of simplicity” was the goal of David Hilbert’s recently discovered twenty-fourth problem on his renowned list of open problems given at the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris. At the same time, simplicity and economy of means are powerful impulses in the creation of artworks. This was an inspiration for a conference, titled the same as this volume, that took place at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in April of 2013. This volume includes selected lectures presented at the conference, and additional contributions offering diverse perspectives from art and architecture, the philosophy and history of mathematics, and current mathematical practice.
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