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[kaijyuu]

Philosophy is the study of knowledge. That encompasses most everything.

[Frumple]

It's the study of a few things, actually. You're thinking of epistemology there, mostly

Which is actually the study of belief, of which knowledge is a particular subset, but eh.

[The Darkling Wolf]

I was mostly just answering a not question overelaborately.

[kaijyuu]

Bah, it's been years since phil 101 and I never took anything further. I forget some specifics

[MaximumZero]

AUGH WHY IS THE STARTROPICS THEME IN MY HEAD!? I HAVEN'T PLAYED THAT GAME IN YEARS!

[GlyphGryph]

Philosophy is the study of knowledge. That encompasses most everything.

This clearly encapsulates every single thing I hate about philosophy.

[miauw62]

AUGH WHY IS THE STARTROPICS THEME IN MY HEAD!? I HAVEN'T PLAYED THAT GAME IN YEARS!

Quickly, deploy other VGM to get it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyoMQg3d5cs

[Loud Whispers]

AUGH WHY IS THE STARTROPICS THEME IN MY HEAD!? I HAVEN'T PLAYED THAT GAME IN YEARS!

Old memories never die. They just sit in your brain, waiting to pop up or drive you into dementia...

[kaijyuu]

Philosophy is the study of knowledge. That encompasses most everything.

This clearly encapsulates every single thing I hate about philosophy.

Well too bad. You're stuck with it All the basics of science, politics, religion, etc etc etc started out with some philosopher dude writing down logic and theory.

[RedWarrior0]

Yeah, in the xkcd "fields by purity" thing, the philosopher is so far to the right he's off the screen.

[Graknorke]

Yeah, in the xkcd "fields by purity" thing, the philosopher is so far to the right he's off the screen.

But... but...
maths 

[Frumple]

It's fair to note that, for most people in most situations, they can mostly just assume a generally accepted axiomatic base (science, engineering, psychology, mathematics, whatever) as untroubling and move on to well-meaning ethical functioning within the system -- GG's "mechanical instead of conceptual", which is just saying you've got a sufficiently functioning system, at least for the situation in question, and you want to know proper action toward a goal within that system (i.e. ethics).

You can't escape philosophy, no, but for a lot of modern stuff a great deal of the work's already been done and practical ethicists (like an engineer!) can get a lot done without really paying attention to the system's axiomatic base slash philosophical foundation. So some avoidance of the subject by folks that are getting what they need from a particular system is understandable, I suppose ♫

[kaijyuu]

IIRC, it's generally accepted that "math" and "logic"* are two separate tools humans use to understand the world. Neither is based on the other. So in terms of "purity," math and logic are on the same level, and higher levels of philosophy would be akin to physics or whatever (they kinda converge, as science is based on both logic and math in many cases).


(logic being in this case, if A = B, and B = C, A = C, whereas math is strictly numbers)

It's fair to note that, for most people in most situations, they can mostly just assume a generally accepted axiomatic base (science, engineering, psychology, mathematics, whatever) as untroubling and move on to well-meaning ethical functioning within the system -- GG's "mechanical instead of conceptual", which is just saying you've got a sufficiently functioning system, at least for the situation in question, and you want to know proper action toward a goal within that system (i.e. ethics).

You can't escape philosophy, no, but for a lot of modern stuff a great deal of the work's already been done and practical ethicists (like an engineer!) can get a lot done without really paying attention to the system's axiomatic base slash philosophical foundation. So some avoidance of the subject by folks that are getting what they need from a particular system is understandable, I suppose ♫

I suppose I'd say it's the difference between knowing how to drive a car and how to make one. Knowing how to drive is sufficient for most people, but if you want to get into specifics about what makes one car better than the other, you'll need more intimate knowledge. Similar with those abstract concepts and their philosophical foundation.

[da_nang]

Counting to one is not well defined. Or more precise, "Counting to x" isn't well defined. It basically says iterating until the number one but you don't specify from where, over what elements nor in what order.
We know where dealing with numbers, but what numbers? ℕ, ℤ, ℤ₊, ℚ, ℝ, ℂ (or even ℍ)? Merely saying "count to x" means I can take any path that leads to x in, say, the complex plane (or quaternion space). For example, let's say we have the set A ⊆ ℂ and let A = {-1, 1, 3.14, π, 1+i}. "Count to one" says I can choose any path in A that ends in 1. That could e.g. be 3.14, π, 1+i, -1, 1.

If you specify order, then you can throw out complex numbers and quaternions as they're not an ordered set. What we're left with are the reals and with them you can specify two directions, but you will still have infinite paths. But let's say you go in an increasing order. Great, one direction, but still infinite paths. For the sake of practicality, you limit yourself to the integers, ℤ. Still infinite paths since the lower boundary is not determined yet. For whatever reason, say simplicity or design, the lower boundary is set to 1, implying further restricting us to ℕ. Thus we have a definition on "Count to x":

First, define the well ordered set A = {∀y | ∃x ∧ x,y∈ℕ ∧ 1 ≤ y ≤ x}, ordered in increasing order from left to right. (Example, A = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} for x = 6)
"Count to x", call it a function C(x), is then defined as iterating through each element in set A from left to right where x is the upper limit as shown in the set's definition with the same restraints.

Now we get to the question. What about C(1). Based on the definition above, you have A = {1}. You iterate through it. What do you get? 1. That's it.

If you still want to argue about "to", how about this compromise:

Every set contains the empty set (including the empty set itself!). Lists are sets, in mathematics, computer science and everyday life. Thus A = {Ø, 1}.
Counting to 1: Ø, 1.

But that's just me.

[Descan]

My eyes have been glazing over because of this forum far too frequently lately.

Quick, someone make a DF joke!