I understand that you may well be brain dead Squeers?

Please Bushbread ; be at ease , you can only borrow something if it exists ; Obviously Squeers intelligence does not , so there is no guilt to bare;
You may think I am being hard , but enough is emough; They can rot in the nest they creat. End of mission.

Squeers,
Did I understrand you properly that you see yourself as a “poststructuralist firmly in the sceptical Humean tradition”?

I am not familiar with Hume’s ideas about mathematics except that in the meantime e.g. non-Euclidean geometry, Cantor and Gödel dramatically changed the way mathematics is understood. My (and others’) opinion, expressed here a couple of times, is that mathematical entities are BOTH constructed AND discovered.

>>Dogmatic objectivism has been cast in doubt ever since (though you wouldn't know it).<<
“Dogmatic” is usually used pejoratively, and concerning what I “would know”, let me repeat what I wrote to you not so long ago:

“One things is to believe there is an objective (physical) reality as the source of our sensual perceptions, an objective reality reflected in scientific theories trying to explain it, and another thing is to believe that one can COMPLETELY know … this reality (c.f. Hawkins’ aim at a “theory of everything” that will “know the mind of God”, which he later retracted). My belief is of the first kind, hence scientific truth has both a subjective and objective dimension. Those who believe to KNOW this reality neglect (or reject) the subjective dimension of truth - you might call them “objectivists” if you like - whereas post-modernists sound to me as neglecting (or rejecting) the objective dimension of truth.“ (c.f. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3445&page=0#82573).

I am not a philosopher, but I think Kant did not “repair the damage” but brought back the subjective-objective balance. Of course, the scientist’s belief in an objective - independent of the observer (e.g. in physics) - source of the phenomena he/she tries to explain and against which he/she checks the adequacy of his/her theories is blind in the sense that the existence or not of such objective reality is not a scientific but a metaphysical question. (ctd)

(ctd) Let me repeat, to assume that there is that objective reality does not contradict the belief that what we can know about it is subjective, i.e. determined and limited by our human perspective (or perspectives). The epistemic polarity of construction/discovery that I referred to in connection with mathematics can be applied also to scientific theories (and perhaps also in the context of religion), although the “discovery” part refers to two (three) completely different “objective realities”.

>>Do numbers hold sway above the flux for you, George?<<
I don’t understand. Do you mean to ask whether the concept of natural numbers is independent of history or what?

As for Lacan, he explicitly claims he uses mathematics (in the way physicists do), not just “symbols”. Like creationists when they claim they are doing science, not “just theology”.

I do not necessarily disagree with your last post. I just want to repeat, that I/we were talking about the philosophical (epistemological) interpretation of science’s findings about the nature of physical reality, not about the practical implications of the technological innovations that follow from them, nor about about the conditions provided by capital/politics in support of this rather than that research.

If it is true that “science, working with capital, has facilitated unsustainable population growth and infrastructure” etc, then the only remedy I can see is again only through APPLIED “science working with capital” and politics. Pure science, even more pure mathematics - concerned with our understanding of physical reality - is only indirectly involved through practical applications that might follow. You can waste money by financing useless pure research, however often it takes decades even centuries for applications to show up.: Your GPS would not be working properly without non-euclidean geometry (1830s) utilised by Einstein in his General Relativity (1915).

Bushbasher,
Yes, I myself prefer the prefix ersatz- instead of pseudo- (c.f. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9564#154979).

All-
Thanks for the link leading to G. A. Morrison’s ideas - some original some controversial, some both - that I could understand better than your words introducing that link.

George:
"Squeers,
Did I understrand you properly that you see yourself as a “poststructuralist firmly in the sceptical Humean tradition”?"
No, I never said I was part of any tradition and I'm not (which I've said repeatedly.
I was paraphrasing that material from a work on Husserl, including the phrase "dogmatic objectivism", which I don't think was used pejoratively since Husserl rejected psychologism as an explanation of phenomena. For myself, I do think that modern objectivism is dogmatic, yet I'm not an idealist but a (qualified) materialist, as I've also said repeatedly.
Kant would agree with your "belief" that "scientific truth has both a subjective and objective dimension", yet this illustrates the point that the starting premise is metaphysics since you can't substantiate the subjective or the objective nature of phenomena, let alone its scientific "truth". That whole paragraph you cut and pasted shows that you are a philosopher, indeed a metaphysician.
<I think Kant did not “repair the damage” but brought back the subjective-objective balance.>
I specifically said that Kant "tried" to repair the damage but that his system has never been substantiated. Moreover that what you're calling "balance" (the coin thing again) is pure metaphysics. But I see that we more or less agree on that, though you think the problem a minor one that can be remedied (practically) in the tension between the subject-object split. The implications of these issues are in fact enormous, and predicates of the whole modern philosophical tradition.
<>>Do numbers hold sway above the flux for you, George?<<
I don’t understand. Do you mean to ask whether the concept of natural numbers is independent of history or what?>
The Russell quote, that I've used before, was merely asking if you thought mathematics had real purchase in the universe. In other words I was inviting you to comment on my post. In the context, then, the "flux" is human activity/scientific reason--do numbers transcend psychologism--which you responded to.

qtd. <As for Lacan, he explicitly claims he uses mathematics (in the way physicists do), not just “symbols”. Like creationists when they claim they are doing science, not “just theology”.>
Yes, one of the links you provided said that Lacan was trying to translate his theory into math, but I can't comment except to say that I'm not a disciple of Lacan's, and to repeat that I disagree with much of what he says. Lacan was also a well-known eccentric (as was Nietzsche) and pariah, but none of this means we may dismiss his ideas entirely, nor indeed the other names the author cites in the article--which in fact offered nothing more than innuendo against them, which I'm highly sceptical of.
<I do not necessarily disagree with your last post. I just want to repeat, that I/we were talking about the philosophical (epistemological) interpretation of science’s findings about the nature of physical reality, not about the practical implications of the technological innovations that follow from them, nor about about the conditions provided by capital/politics in support of this rather than that research.>
This chastisement is a little irritating since I was responding directly to your implied question:
<Also, I do not understand what you understand by being “disgusted with its irresponsible, chameleon-like apoliticism”: how can a philosophy of (natural) science be responsible or political? Of course, a scientist can/should have these adjectives when putting his/her findings in practice but perhaps not when pondering the epistemological implications of his/her findings.>
No point responding to your last paragraph, except to say that what I said "is true", since you don't do justice the points I was making.
And this is the trouble with this pithy medium, as I say above--impossible to represent oneself accurately.

All; I'm happy to debate these issues with you if you can strive to be unprejudiced. But your posts were deliberately mocking and one can't help but respond in kind.