Nice, but the difference with this “belief” is that you’re talking about sensory “counting” (visual grouping), and I was talking about the numbers themselves, as models for games, other phenomena, etc., and not just as a “counting” tool.
In the 1+1=3 example (byrnema answer, just below), to define the cardinality, he/she used the Peano’s axioms, didn’t he/she?
I don’t see the “visual sensory counting” as the only use for “2+2=4″, that’s why I don’t think this experiment would refute such a priori content.
Another idea: let Ann be a girl with hemispatial neglect in a extinction condition. Ann has problems detecting anything on the left, and she can possibly see 2+2=3 as idealized above, due her brain damage. Will she think that 2+2=3?
I don’t think so...but if she does...will that be a model for all “integer numbers” aplications? I think in “integer” as a framework for several phenomena, other models, other knowledge, not only the counting one.
For the minds that see 2+2=4 as something patently absurd, because 2+2=3 is part of their intuitive arithmetic, these minds probably won’t see the 2+2=4 even when brought to a world like ours. After a time in the 2+2=4 world, they probably won’t forget that 2+2=3, unless the 2+2=3 wasn’t modeling anything else. But the 2+2=3 was modeling something in their past history, at least the counting principle of their world. So they still have the 2+2=3 belief in their lives while they remember their past. If they forget their past, the 2+2=3 belief might became unuseful, but that still don’t make the 2+2=3 an absurd or replaced by the 2+2=4: there are 2 number systems here. The “2” in the “2+2=3“ is different from the “2” in the “2+2=4”.
For me, 2+2=3 isn’t an absurd. That might be seem as a “common sum with a 3⁄4 multiplier” or a “X + Y = X p Y/X” where “p” is our common sum and ”/” is our division, etc.. This way, like the 1+1=3 example, only overloads the “+” operator. But, again, this “+” isn’t the same from the “2+2=4”
Nice, but the difference with this “belief” is that you’re talking about sensory “counting” (visual grouping), and I was talking about the numbers themselves, as models for games, other phenomena, etc., and not just as a “counting” tool.
In the 1+1=3 example (byrnema answer, just below), to define the cardinality, he/she used the Peano’s axioms, didn’t he/she?
I don’t see the “visual sensory counting” as the only use for “2+2=4″, that’s why I don’t think this experiment would refute such a priori content.
Another idea: let Ann be a girl with hemispatial neglect in a extinction condition. Ann has problems detecting anything on the left, and she can possibly see 2+2=3 as idealized above, due her brain damage. Will she think that 2+2=3? I don’t think so...but if she does...will that be a model for all “integer numbers” aplications? I think in “integer” as a framework for several phenomena, other models, other knowledge, not only the counting one.
For the minds that see 2+2=4 as something patently absurd, because 2+2=3 is part of their intuitive arithmetic, these minds probably won’t see the 2+2=4 even when brought to a world like ours. After a time in the 2+2=4 world, they probably won’t forget that 2+2=3, unless the 2+2=3 wasn’t modeling anything else. But the 2+2=3 was modeling something in their past history, at least the counting principle of their world. So they still have the 2+2=3 belief in their lives while they remember their past. If they forget their past, the 2+2=3 belief might became unuseful, but that still don’t make the 2+2=3 an absurd or replaced by the 2+2=4: there are 2 number systems here. The “2” in the “2+2=3“ is different from the “2” in the “2+2=4”.
For me, 2+2=3 isn’t an absurd. That might be seem as a “common sum with a 3⁄4 multiplier” or a “X + Y = X p Y/X” where “p” is our common sum and ”/” is our division, etc.. This way, like the 1+1=3 example, only overloads the “+” operator. But, again, this “+” isn’t the same from the “2+2=4”