| I'm just reiterating now: Sure, the underlying structure of math and computer science may be entirely logical. But to delve at that, we develop a language of terms and a culture of understanding that is inherently human and inherently fuzzy - which yes, connects to things like ethics and religion. The choices in how we study logic, which areas we care about, how we represent it and how we use it put our fuzzy cultural signature all over it - which is rife for study. Now, can math and logic be defined without some arbitrary cultural signature? Maybe. But I've yet to see it, and as I've pointed out it would be quite hostile to human understanding - at least until we could define human understanding in logical terms. Also there's the no-self-defining Godel thing (sorry, just meant "made famous in Godel Escher Bach") which I'm pointing out might also imply that you can't really define logic without using our inherently fuzzy language and understanding as a parent. The baseline I'm talking about is our human understanding (or ability to understand) - which is inherently fuzzy. Fuzzier still when we pass it on through education and it picks up all these unique cultural characteristics. The baseline you're looking at is the foundational rules of how logic and mathematics work in a defined system, which we can glimpse at through our cultural lense. Now, can your baseline exist independently of mine? Does it exist at all? I do not know. I certainly won't try to challenge that here - though I know it has been argued before. What I do know is the educational subjects of Math and CSC as they stand today are highly enmeshed with the fuzziness of human historical understanding, rife with choices that are based on human opinion, and pulled from particular moments in time and cultures. Ethics would study those choices and how they affect society. Religious studies might conclude the culture being created has its own similarities to worshippers of the past. We are unfortunately inescapably enmeshed in culture, and the choices we make inherently affect everything else and leave us open to alternative interpretations - we can't just claim we're free of Ethics because we (try to) study foundational logical rules without injecting human opinion. That's simply not true. Though personally, I believe you're right and there is something unique and universal underlying logic - which probably reveals a fundamental property of the universe. But I think we have to admit at least that there's a strong observer effect where trying to look at it inherently imprints our fuzzy cultural understanding on it - which unfortunately is the only state we have ever really known as a species. |
It only makes sense to discuss what the majority agrees to observe consistently and assume that, these observations are true independent of observation.