Mathematics

Computers and the Mind – What’s the Difference?

This post discusses the widespread notion that the mind is some kind of computer; that the computer is able to represent knowledge, and this knowledge can be about the world. As we shall see, this notion is quite silly, although people—who are either not physicists, mathematicians, or computer engineers, or just happen to have an academic title without an understanding of these subjects—tend...

How Meanings Change the Use of Logic

While writing mathematical equalities, we assume that if A = B, then B = A. But this principle doesn’t hold in logic when we employ two concepts, one of which is more general than the other. For example, “cat is a mammal” doesn’t imply that “mammal is a cat” because even dogs are mammals. Logic tries to solve this problem using...