You can't prove a negative existential

you can't prove a negative is pseudological pseudophilosophy

The rhino is anywhere OP isn't looking

that's creepy

>russell is a faggot
pshhhhh yeah right op
next you'll be telling me dawkins is a fucking retard too i mean come on bahahahaha as if

seconding this question

I thought "Is there a rhinoceros in this room?" was him prodding Wittgenstein's "the world is the totality of facts" line

Oh fuck, was this a thread to trick people who don't read philosophy into hopping off of Wittgenstein's dick? delet these posts mods

This is the case for maths but I don't think it's possible for a posteriori statements since we'll always be limited by our senses

there's a difference between
>there's no rhinoceros in this room.
and
>it's impossible that there could ever be a rhinoceros in this room.
the latter is something provable. For example, if the room is so small that no rhino could ever fit in it.
People who use this "you can't prove a negative", in regards to God/Creator, have to prove that God/Creator is impossible in order for atheism to become a fact, and not just a faith-based belief.

>Looking at this room from the outside, without seeing the inside of the room, I can't be sure that there couldn't be a rhinoceros in the room because it's possible that there could be, since the room is, at the very least, big enough.
>Looking at this room from the outside, without seeing the inside of the room, I am sure that there is no rhinoceros in there, because the room itself is simply too small to accommodate any rhinoceros.

Could be a smaller rhino. A midget rhino. I will call him Danny Devito but Rhino version.

Negative Existential:
>There does not exist an integer n larger than all other integers.

Proof (by contradiction):
>Suppose some integer n is larger than all other integers.
>Addition is well-defined on all integers.
>Therefore, we can construct some integer m such that m = n + 1.
>But this is impossible, because n is larger than all other integers.
>Therefore, there cannot exist a largest integer.

I seconding the "Did he really say this?" line ("this" denoting the greentext)

"The world is the totality of facts, not things," was something Russel took issue with.

For the thread:

>Is there a rhinoceros in the room? One of the earliest encounters between Bertrand Russell and the young Ludwig Wittgenstein involved a discussion about whether there was a rhinoceros in their room. Apparently, when Wittgenstein 'refused to admit that it was certain that there was not a rhinoceros in the room,' Russell half-jokingly looked underneath the desks to prove it. But to no avail. 'My German engineer, I think, is a fool,' concluded Russell. 'He thinks nothing empirical is knowable-I asked him to admit that there was not a rhinoceros in the room, but he wouldn't.'[1]
>The crux of the dispute appears to be a thesis held by Wittgenstein at the time concerning 'asserted propositions.' According to Russell, Wittgenstein maintained that 'there is nothing in the world except asserted propositions' and refused 'to admit the existence of anything except asserted propositions.'[2] But what this thesis amounts to and how it is related to his remarks about nothing empirical being knowable and about whether there is a rhinoceros in the room is difficult to determine. For one thing, it is difficult to see how Wittgenstein could be arguing that nothing empirical is knowable given the central importance for his early thinking of his idea that only propositions of natural science can be said. For another, his reported claim that there is nothing in the world except asserted propositions is hard to square with his contention in the 'Notes on Logic' that there are only unasserted propositions.

I somehow found this on "rhino resource center . net". Huh.

>I seconding
I-was-seconding

...

Negative existentials are possible only if we are dealing with a finite set.

but there is no reason to believe there may be a rhino, whereas the entire universe kinda gives rise to the belief their might be a creator, seems like a dumb comparison.

>whereas the entire universe kinda gives rise to the belief their might be a creator

>Integers are a finite set

>proof by contradiction
yeah into the trash it goes, LEMming

Given that a name refers to a person, try to make sense of the phrase "Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist."
So "Sherlock Holmes" doesn't refer? Then what does that phrase logically mean?
It's complicated. Kripke did a lot of work on this.

You posting a uncanny valley version of a Spongebob Squarepants episode screencap doesn't negate what he's saying. The same could be applied to Santa Claus and all the other similar stuff.

Still anyone familiar with Sherlock Holmes understands what it means.

>an uneven number in a set defined by the image of the function f when f(x)=2x with a natural domain

Danny DaRhino

That's the puzzle.

Good post

> say "there is a rhino in the room"
> guy cant say i'm wrong without admitting he is as well

>>Looking at this room from the outside, without seeing the inside of the room, I am sure that there is no rhinoceros in there, because the room itself is simply too small to accommodate any rhinoceros.
Rhino DNA?

um, 'there is such thing as fictional characters'

Bertrand Russell stopped being a mathematician because Godel proved that mathematics is either inconsistent (2+2=4 and 2+2=5 are both valid, so math is just made up or BS) or incomplete (we know certain statements to be true but it is impossible to prove them as such).

>Bertrand BTFO

>Wikipedia tier Gödel

lol
i love the
>can't prove a negative

I'm a math major and I do that shit all the time

example:

that's not what that means at all brainlet

anyways russell quit math because Z&F's approach got preferred over his and Godel basically killed foundations as an active research area in math

Holy... So, this is the power of anglo philosophy... I want more...

numbers don't exist, but they kind of do. You dont need to go looking for and discover the number 5 in the wild when or mine some 29's when you need to write an equation.

Russell's teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence

>>you can't prove a negative existential
>>there is no rhinoceros in this room
>what did he mean by this
What does this have to do with literature?

>implying going into the math of godel numbers is effective for Veeky Forums

>implying talking about a topic you don't understand is effective in any way.

go into them, brainlet

you're saying mathematics is platonic? That's what I affirm. The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural world is a good inductive argument for its platonic existence.

And i'll check out that analogy

oh yeah? You think I don't understand this stuff? How about lets go toe-to-toe on Peano Arithmetic or on Tarski's undefinability theorem and see who comes out the winner

>math is effective for the sciences therefore mathematical objects are platonic
>but they can't interact with anything or play any causal role in scientific theories
>yet somehow we know about them because ???????

ok

>Peano arithmetic
Bruh, you are the one talking lightly about topics you clearly don't understand. Keep trying to prove yourself!!1!!1!

research.ibm.com/people/h/hirzel/papers/canon00-goedel.pdf a quickie

>never read either

Its effectiveness it's not unreasonable, we create models using the tools we have.

After a semesters worth of reading this fuckstick, i can sayy this is the only valid response in this thread

yeah bro? I solved Hilbert's Paradox of the grand hotel when I was 16.

I also found a crucial error in the banach-tarski paradox (If 1 sphere can be divided into two then the surface area will have to double, but that's impossible so the paradox is false)

Tell me, what have YOU done with math?

take it easy, Tao.

TERRRYYYYY

>yeah bro? I solved Hilbert's Paradox of the grand hotel when I was 16.
Anyways, here's my proof:

1. Let N be the number of rooms in a hotel
2. Let M be the number of guests in the hotel, either with a room or waiting

3.a. Now, assuming each guest gets one room:

3.b. If the hotel is full and one guest arrives, M = N + 1

3.c. The Hotel is overfilled by M - N guests, which is equal to 1 in this case

3.c.i. Demonstration:
M = N + 1
M = N + O
M - N = O
N = M - 1
M - M - (-1) = O
0 + 1 = O
O = 1

4. Now, assume the hotel is infinite (premise)

5. Since the hotel is infinite N = aleph-null

6. Therefore M = infinity plus 1 = omega (from 3b)

7. O = limit(N->aleph-null, M->omega) 1

8. O = 1

9. O =/= 0

10. Therefore the hotel is overfilled, and the paradox is dissolved

Q.E.D.

I'm kind of surprised it took mathematicians so long to figure this one out desu senpai

2 plus 2 is four, minus 1 that's 3, quick maths.

>Implying posting on the wrong board isn't a sign of stupidity.

>The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural world
Why is mathematics effectiveness in the natural world unreasonable?

It detracts from the mathematician's delusions of grandeur and general pretension of profundity.