Welcome Tony! Great to hear we have another philosophy major on the forum. On your pet turtle, if anyone around it yells "thus I refute thee," make sure the turtle is off the floor.

But welcome anyway and have a blast!

i lol'd

but actually I have a small questions, what's this "rep power"?

From what I understand about it, rep power is determined by a small number of things. First, you can achieve a higher rep status when other members click the little legal/measuring scales in the top right corner of every post you make. This can be positive or negative depending on the member leaving the rep and comment for you. Your rep power can also be affected (in a positive way) by how many posts you make, etc. Think of it as the total composite of positive peer reviews, positive factors, etc. that manifest into a nice and tidy number and green bar thingy.

But in my own opinion, the rep power is not really an accurate representation of a member's actual "reputation" on the forum. If anything, the "thank you" ratio is the more important measurement to consider. You can, if you wish, thank other member's posts. You can "thank" for any number of reasons, since everyone has their own motivations for doing it, from a post agreeing with you or your own thoughts, or (in my own preference), thanking a post for it being a good conversation, regardless of whether or not the post was in your favor or not. In my own case, I always pay close attention to the ratio and difference between the thank's/thanked because (usually) there are a few things that can be inferred from it (reflecting both good or bad on a given member).

when does the new, junior, member, and senior member change and how? like is it through posting, or time?

I think it is done through post count (which if I'm not mistaken is 50 to reach senior level).

ahhhh, next question lol.

Why isn't there a Philosophy of Mathematics forum?! I'm wanting to learn more about this field, and even ordered Principia Mathematica recently, and everywhere I look there's no such thread! :[

I think the logic forum counts as a mathematics, but I could be wrong.
Mathematical Puzzlements - Play and Invention With Mathematics by Herbert Kohl is a wonderful math book (it's not very philosophical though).

Welcome to the forum Tony!!!!! Don't shoot me please.

BANG, no jk lol. But yea, I searched some things like Mathematics and the like, but mostly came up empty handed. My professor said that the philosophy of mathematics is an incredibly interesting topic/field though, I suppose I should learn more than nothing about it before looking for a forum to get confused on and lost in the plethora of references.

Beware of summaries. If you really want to know what a philosopher has to say, there is no substitute for reading the philosopher directly. If, however, you only have a passing interest, then a quick summary might be okay, though not everyone gets everything quite right, which should be remembered when trying to form an opinion about the philosopher in question. With some of the more difficult philosophers, reading summaries might be unavoidable, particularly early on in your studies.

I'm usually more in depth when I speak or write, but as for the about me and introductions there's not too much to go on about without me feeling full of myself in a certain sense. I do see what you're saying though kind sir, and first impressions are the most important.

^editing, haha. I completely missed what you were referring to, what I meant by "sum-ups" are more that of what Heidegger interprets Nietzsche, not so much an actual summary, but a biased interpretation of another's work. I guess I shouldn't have used "sum-ups" then now that I think about it.

Like Mister Kitten said, the philosophy of mathematics is usually filed in the logic section. Principa Mathematica is definitely an interesting read, although I would recommend basic propositional and predicate logic books first (unless you are already familiar with those formal systems of logic). There is both a propositional logic thread series (well, a good portion of one at any rate) and a few members with intimate knowledge of the skill still active on the forum. If you are just getting into the logic, you may like two books. The first is Logic: Key Concepts in Philosophy by Goldstein et al. It is a book in the Continuum series which is very good for a brief and concise read. It goes over basic concepts with application to everyday philosophy without getting too technical. And on the technical front, if you want to start learning the systems themselves, I have actually found the Schaum's outline's on logic good. I learned propositional and predicate from Many worlds of Logic by Herrick at school. Equally good and well structured, but if it is a passing interest, definitely pick up the continuum book.

There is a more technical mathematical part of logic, like number theory, probability calculus, etc. Probability calculus has been especially valuable in everyday applications applying predicate/categorical/inductive systems with a mathematics going into level II mathematical calculus. If this is what you are interested in, you would definitely appreciate the Schaum outline logic book (not the recent edition, but the older, larger edition). They cut down the newest edition and got rid of a lot of the sample problems essential to learning the skill.

But usually, most philosophy majors have to take at least the first part of propositional logic, so you may be familiar with this already, so what has been said is just a suggestion.

Also, if you are looking for a brain buster to start out with as far as logic is concerned, go for Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Hofstadter. This book will make you question the health of your brain cells. I am almost at the close of year one and I haven't even gotten past the third chapter. There is this neat online course from MIT that said in the introduction that it should take around seven years to really go through it and understand the material (and I know absolutely nothing about music and little about art, yet a little more about literature (uses Lewis Carrol a lot as a outside reference for material)). It would be neat though to start a thread on the MU game.

Hello and welcome to the forum. Great to see another new member join in on the conversation, and a turtle that seems to have some philosophical experience as well. I look forward to seeing you and discussing with you around the forums.

If you enjoy math, Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension by Rudolf v. B. Rucker is definitely an interesting read. There's quite a bit of math in it as well as A. Square from Flatland and a few philosophical ideas regarding Flatland.

Good luck with that! A well-known professor of mathematics, himself an author of several advanced textbooks on mathematical logic, topos theory, and so on, described Principia Mathematica to me, with some feeling, as the most incomprehensible book ever written.

It's also important to know that the logicist programme as envisaged by Whitehead and Russell cannot be completed; and the theory of types has never caught on (not in their form, anyway - there is a field of 'type theory', but I know nothing about it). I hope you went for the abridged edition. (I've never had the nerve to tackle even that.)

I'm afraid I don't have any positive advice to give on how to study the philosophy of mathematics, being somewhat baffled by the entire field myself (although I do know some mathematics). You might perhaps do worse than read Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, and Dedekind, Essays on the Theory of Numbers (the latter republished by Dover as a cheap paperback). You may not end up knowing what mathematics is (I didn't), but they are both good reads, with only a modest amount of symbolism and no prerequisites, they're both short, and they're both written by geniuses.