hey /his/
I need some help understanding Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics (if it's even possible for anyone other than Wittgenstein to do so).
I tried asking /sci/ first, but was directed here.
I've not been able to find much accessible material on the subject and I am woefully uneducated, so I need help from you to translate the technical language into lay terms.
Thanks in advance.
What subjects of math do you know by heart?
>>873606
In case you haven't read it, plato.stanford.edu is always a decent source of philosophical information when you want help understanding something.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein-mathematics/
However I don't know enough about Wittgenstein nor his philosophy of mathematics to personally help you.
>>873612
None, unfortunately. Like I said, I'm uneducated (highschool drop-out). In all likelihood I couldn't even do basic algebra.
It might help if I explain why I'm asking. Recently I was introduced to the philosophy of mathematics when a family member asked me if I thought numbers were "real" or not. It seemed like a strange thing to ask and my initial reaction was that it didn't make sense as a question. I can't explain why I feel that way, though, because of the huge gaps in my knowledge. The only way I could try to describe what I felt was by saying something like "2 + 2 = 4 doesn't describe a relationship between actual objects, but it's more like a rule".
Not being able to understand my own intuition was very frustrating as you can imagine, but I wasn't able to find much by googling because I don't know the terms. All I found was that Wittgenstein believed something vaguely similar, but when I tried to read his work, I couldn't understand it. That brings me here.
>>873629
Thanks for the link anon. I've tried reading this previously, but it was too dense/scholarly for me. I couldn't quite get my head around it.
>>873606
He tried to emperically prove that certain numbers were lucky or unlucky.
He had a very large fear of the number 17. You will notice none of the sentences he ever wrote had 17 characters or 17 words, this is specifically done because he was convinced it brought "sickness and death"
>>873649
Well, you are going to struggle a lot with many concepts if you aren't even acquainted with basic math (at a uni level). That means proofs, axiomatic systems etc. Read how to prove it for an introduction and try to read about predictive logic. Then try to tackle philosophy of math.
>>873662
Thank you for the advice anon. I guess it was too much to expect an easily-digestible answer in a subject like this. I'll take the long route.
>>873653
Where the fuck have you pulled that from? Your ass?
