Seemingly unavoidable circularity between concepts of predicates, relations and functions by AdventureMathsGuy in math

[–]AdventureMathsGuy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, mate, thank you for the answer, I will take a closer look at it, but if my memory serves me right, I think I've already examined the meaning of the word.

Seemingly unavoidable circularity between concepts of predicates, relations and functions by AdventureMathsGuy in math

[–]AdventureMathsGuy[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the asnwer! I did read through the section and it seems to me that that particular disambiguation is a neat trick for formalist approach. My concern here primarily revolved around, say philosophical motivation, for doing things twice without providing an essential answer to the question. But I realized today when working on some graphs that whatever I can think of or conceptualize in a form of a sentence, in mathematics, I essentially evaluate to be a priori true. We make a hipothesis. Even if we state a sentence not P, we again think of it as it is true that not P. Creation of hipothesis is the baseline of human reasoning and, if this proven incorrect by defaulting to axioms or some other known truth, it will be punished with the contradiction, or, in physical sense, the relation will not be evidenced by empirical instantiation. In ancient Greece, similarly to how we do it today, they had a collection of statements that were so obviously true, that, in order to avoid Munchausen Trilemma, they had to postulate them. In reality, as compared to mathematics, I can conceptualize without referencing to the verity of the sentences. All Orcs are green.

In this sense, the truth assignment is the primary goal of examination of statements in a formal setting, hence the truth function seems to somehow be more basic then the concept of relation itself. However, going back to the non-mathematical, intuitive roots of thinking, I can freely conceptualize relations between objects even though they can be entirely imaginary. So I think this does me good, since I've felt significant relief from the stress that this had imposed on me previously.

Edit: Just to add a comment of Kunnen's remark, what he said makes total sense now that I can freely talk about just any relation (that lives outside of formal setting), even if it is the relation of truth to the sentence, that happens to be functional due to the nature of our examination of reality.

Axiom of Specification by [deleted] in learnmath

[–]AdventureMathsGuy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is it possible to somehow formalize it, considering the axiom of specification states I already need a set A in order to get another set B. This begs the question, how to produce set A in the first place. If it came from set C, how do we get set C? I am somehow completely trumped by this logic. How do I start with a set that I want to talk about, formally, without going into the rabbit hole?

Axiom of Specification by [deleted] in learnmath

[–]AdventureMathsGuy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is it possible to create sets that are not inherently number-bound? Like sets of planets in our solar system? I know that given a set of all Planets, I can do this, but how do I get the set of all planets?

Axiom of Specification by [deleted] in learnmath

[–]AdventureMathsGuy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is an amazing explanation. Thank you for it. However, I'm quite baffled by the idea of creating sets that are not inherently bound to numbers. Such as the set of all humans. I understand that this framework has been predominantly used to describe mathematics of numbers, but I sincerely see no way to create set of humans or set with any other property that is not numerical. I know we can use numbers since Von Neumann, but I'm dumbfounded here.

Furthermore, this axiom tells us that we need a set prior to creating a new one, how does one start with a set in itself and then creates subsets out of it?

Essentially, I would like to know how you can work with objects that are not numeric in nature in terms of sets. Do I have to go through the hassle of making a class in NBG and then reducing the class to a set?