[FOM] Convincing math-blind people that math is different

[Monroe Eskew]

> On Dec 24, 2014, at 10:59 PM, Timothy Y. Chow <tchow at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> If, as I would like to propose, a math-blind person lacks the ability to *extrapolate* or *abstract*, then it seems to me that we are stymied at this point.

I'm not sure your idea of math blindness makes sense, unless it is a general cognitive impairment.  And in that case, where a person lacks a general ability to abstract, then it may be inherently hopeless to convince them of general propositions like "mathematical knowledge is qualitatively different from other knowledge."

Monroe