Comments on: Why programmers understand abstractions better than philosophers http://jed.jive.com/2006/03/why-programmers-understand-abstractions-better-than-philosophers/ "We must imagine [him] happy." Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:01:59 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Craig Hubley http://jed.jive.com/2006/03/why-programmers-understand-abstractions-better-than-philosophers/comment-page-1/#comment-4 Craig Hubley Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:48:17 +0000 http://jed.jive.com/?p=9#comment-4 "philosophers tend to treat abstractions as though they behave as defined, and tend to ignore the actual mechanisms (typically made out of human cognition and social interaction) by which those abstractions are maintained." Absolutely correct. Read "New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics", 1998 (2nd edition), Thomas Tymoczko, editor. All about mathematical practice as the new core focus of the philosophy of mathematics. This, and the embodied mind approach published as "Where Mathematics Comes From", Lakoff and Nunez, 2000, in which cognitive science was proposed as a more rational way to investigate mathematical metaphor, are two new and competing approaches to deal with the social and cognitive mechanisms respectively. Very highly recommended. “philosophers tend to treat abstractions as though they behave as defined, and tend to ignore the actual mechanisms (typically made out of human cognition and social interaction) by which those abstractions are maintained.”

Absolutely correct. Read “New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics”, 1998 (2nd edition), Thomas Tymoczko, editor. All about mathematical practice as the new core focus of the philosophy of mathematics. This, and the embodied mind approach published as “Where Mathematics Comes From”, Lakoff and Nunez, 2000, in which cognitive science was proposed as a more rational way to investigate mathematical metaphor, are two new and competing approaches to deal with the social and cognitive mechanisms respectively. Very highly recommended.

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