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[-] lemonwood@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

just like human language proofs require the reviewers brains to be bug free to a point. The repeated verification makes proofs as correct as anything can get.

Exactly, I'm glad you understand. There's no epistemological certainty in math, just like in normal language. We have to make do with being pretty certain, as good as it gets. I like lean for it's intended purpose: advancing math. No one involved in lean is seriously claiming it produces some kind of religious absolute certainty. Neither is anyone trying to replace philosophy.

Math can't elevate anything above philosophy, because in a sense, it is part of philosophy, one of the parts using specialized language, specifically the part that is concerned with tautologies.

Have you clicked on the links to the philosophy wiki I provided? Maybe read about what a brilliant mathematician and philosopher has written on the philosophy of mathematics to convince yourself, that philosophy of mathematics is valuable and necessary (wether you agree with his specific point of view or not). You're already engaging in philosophical debate yourself. Your claims about the nature of philosophical arguments and mathematical proofs are themselves philosophical in nature.

Also, though you haven't clearly articulated your philosophical position, it seems to be close to the one of the famous Vienna Circle , which was inspired by Wittgenstein, but later rejected by him. It's generally agreed today, that their project of logical empiricism has failed. You can find the critiques of the various points in the article above.

[-] pfried@reddthat.com 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

It's generally agreed

That's my point. Mathematical proofs aren't generally agreed. They are agreed by everyone to logically follow from the definitions and axioms started with. Every single statement in a mathematical proof evaluates to true or false, and if you don't believe a mathematical proof, you can directly point to a statement that is false. Philosophical arguments are "generally agreed" upon until the tools to take them out of philosophy are developed, and then the philosophical arguments are discarded entirely.

Your same argument that mathematics can be discussed under philosophy can be used to argue that mathematics can be discussed under the framework of wild untethered speculation. Neither one is a convincing argument that philosophy or wild untethered speculation is useful.

This is why ethics has failed. It has been built on the unstable foundation of philosophy instead of on the solid foundation of mathematics.

this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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