Re: [ontolog-forum] Truth

[Chris Menzel <chris.menzel@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 10:39 PM, ravi sharma <drravisharma@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I was wondering why the whole number and truth are not related and as to why the the issue of numbers being true or false, does not come up?

Because it is simply nonsense to talk about numbers being true or false. Truth and falsity are properties of sentences, statements, or propositions, that is, things that are asserted, things that make claims. It makes no more sense to attribute truth to the number 1 as it does to attribute it to an apple.

 

Similarly how many combinations of fractions make up a whole number say 1?

I'm not sure what this is supposed to be similar to, or what it even means. There are obviously a countable infinity of true statements of the form <algebraic _expression_> = 1 (countable simply because the standard language of real (or rational or natural) number theory is countable). And there are polynomials of the form <algebraic _expression_> = 1 with variables ranging over reals that are made true by uncountably many values — e.g., in the simplest case x/x = 1, which is true when x is any non-zero real. I fail to see how these facts are relevant to any questions about the nature of truth.

 

To mathematician 2 is a concept but to engineers and physicists at best asymptotic approximations such as 1.99999....and degrees of accuracies?

No engineer or physicist in his right mind would confuse the number 2 with an "approximation", i.e., with a number other than 2 but "close" to it (relative to some relevant context). All you are pointing out is that engineers and physicists often round empirical measurements or the results of calculations based on empirical input up or down when small differences don't matter in order to simplify the mathematics.

-chris

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