The subject of mathematical objects comes up here often and they fit well into Universal Form.

So Brain; (what the brain supports)

Becomes,

Brain; (mathematical objects)

The subject of infinities has been covered and can be used as an example.

A little better example is numbers that need to be discovered through mental process like pi or trigonometric ratios. They exist in no form prior the being 'extracted' using mental manipulation.
Since the numbers are ultimately fixed in their form it becomes a process of a brain conforming to a number and not a brain creating a number.

This is an easy application of Universal Form and should be the basis for a philosophy of mathematics.

Since there is some math interest here I thought I'd cover that.

I sometimes see the misperception that these objects have always existed. Without this basic form they actually do not exist.

A lot depends on how close our best models of physics are to the actual real physics.

I asked GPTchat if an unsupported end of a catiliver can support weight. It answered correctly so....
Kind of looking for the line of success and fail.
It did give a textbook page kind of answer.

Most of you have done this but I'm learning.

ChatGPT ....

Okay, not sure what I did.
First time I used it so was following the menu best i could.

No problems though now.
Okay I see send a message so both were listed.
Problem solved.

Okay, I get it.
I tried an email to you for guidance.
Maybe it didn't send.

In the context of Neuroscience this seems very poor curriculum. A historical perspective maybe?

A second try:

The nature of our existence,

[ Brain state]

Expanded,

[ Brain; (mental content)]

Expanded again with specifics,

[Brain; (perception)]

Also,

[Brain; (inference)]

And combined in sequence and relation,

[Brain; (perception, inference)]... I based on P.

And a category in question,

Unperceived existence.....ask about this.... clear as mud??

Edit: Unperceived existence is defined as not perceived so it exists only outside of brain state.

Comment on cup in the cupboard:

The cup exists physically as a physical cup.

The cup exists as brain state,
Brain; (mental representation of cup in cupboard)

Hume fails on this.

This is as far as I have gotten on parsing the question in sentence form:

The nature of our existence leads to what we perceive that leads to what we infer.

The (status of) unperceived existence is in fact a non-existent entity. As we do not perceive it... It does not exist from our personal frame of reference.

This is more for the forum than the homework problem as it may contradict the curriculum.

And it could be parsed in different ways by different people.

Okay, that is relevant.

Take my advice... NOT Jamal's

Try nesting it as a start.

A horribly worded question....
An embarrassment to the university.

You need to parse each word or phrase in a nested set if that is any help.

Looks like four elements.

You probably need to start with your best theory of mind to make any progress.

Just for background on this topic:

Mathematical theories are supported by mathematical proofs.

Physical theories are support by the preponderance of the physical evidence and are subject to revision.

I'm just pointing out a tricky situation you need to think about. The known end point is that physical matter does exist (now). So does some start point of nothing existing have any basis in physical evidence?

As I said, as mathematical objects something does not equal nothing.

I have had some luck in correcting (or guiding) answers. Maybe use the same method you would talking to a person. It doesn't have a bad attitude about trying again.

Nope, tried again and sometimes it gets worse.

If anyone needs a primer on this you can check out my post on Universal Form for trouble shooting philosophy problems.

Less than a week old but it works.

Okay, but I think it's an open question if physical nothing is possible and your own conclusion argues against it.

I'm thinking of starting a DIPSHIT PRIZE that we can nominate for and pass around here.

TDF really isn't that bad. He tries hard. You can be in charge.

Edit: To management...Not serious.

In 13.8 billion years of the universe there has never been a time when a physical nothing has ever existed. Is that right? Are there special cases?

Mentally we can conceive of nothing but that is the only place it ever comes up.

So in the logic of nothing to something you are dealing with two mental abstractions only. Isn't that the only scenario? Is logic expected to work the the same way on mental abstractions as it does on theories of physical matter?

Is there a way to resolve this?

Edit: I'm thinking as a mathematical object only
So this is trivial....nothing does not equal something.

You can have,

Physical nothing

Or

Physical object

And mentally we have,

Brain; (the idea of nothing)

Or

Brain; (the idea of a physical object)

So just what you were saying. But it's different physically and mentally. The physical follows laws of physics and the mental is at will.

Edit: Note the reality of physical nothing may not exist....maybe an open question.

On your post directly above you question if meaning can be reduced to physics. Probably not in the sense we could find out the exact mechanism but it's still a likely guess that holding meaning actually is possible because the physics supports it.

Another question in the same area and I think a little more focused is can our physical brains conform to specific subject matter? I really enjoy the infinity discussions going on here now (other threads) and by that evidence I say yes and we do it very well. The opinions we form don't always agree and often disagree but for individuals it is a problem of matching mental capabilities with an inflexible subject matter. Some do it better than others. In areas of specialty... capabilities are built up over years and years. In other cases insights come quickly.

So meaning doesn't reduce to physics but brains can conform to specific subject matter. More of a reaching out and capturing than a reducing down it appears.

You are too pessimistic. You can have your view and they can have theirs.

You can always declare victory, plant your flag and call it a day. Really, say what you like. I agree there are contradictions and what I brought up about parameters that can be anything your brain can dream up.

Maybe there are real world applications to some of this as has been discussed by those who have actually done it. I assume they use what has proven to work. Math in practice has a precision component, not just theorizing.

This isn't really the place to come to get people to agree with you. I think the math boys really did give you a good amount of feedback that would be hard to get anywhere else. So if you want to run something past us we'll tell you what we think and you can react accordingly. Most of what you say really irks a formally trained mathematician.

To me it seems like arguing about mental fantasies but for someone who has studied it there would be something to defend.

It's been one of the more lively threads here...seems to go on all day.

As far as the math profession I do think you should show some respect because the world runs on the math they do and for some things only a few people per million or billion may be able to do it.

Did you give Philosopher19 the finger or is there real math behind the north pole of the riemann sphere? It would be cool if you meant it both ways.

I can diagram it generally:

My Brain; (the idea of Universal Form)--->My Brain, Muscles physically encoded to matter--->electronically transmitted physical signal (not information as commonly defined)--->Your Eyes, Brain; (decoded and received idea of Universal Form)

My brain holds information in Universal Form and your brain holds information in Universal Form and we both know how to encode and decode by the English language so information is brain internal only. My version of things.

I can expand non-physical for you.

Brain; (non-physical)

Such things as,

Brain; (the future)

Because the future is a known non-physical.

Doing math is manipulating non-physicals.

It took me a while parsing all the words but I think you got my meaning...

Just to make sure ...by universal form I mean such things as the long list I gave at the beginning. Each item conforms to universal form.

The notation is an attempt to show how these items exist in physical reality.

A birdseye view would give,

Physical matter ........................As it exists

AND

Brain; (Physical matter)..........As brain state only

So in troubleshooting you understand there are two options. Of course we really don't have a true birdseye view because we must do this with our brains.

In the list I gave all the items are mental only, not physical objects so it takes some examination.

If I messed that up ask again.

Still.... especially good (or bad) recently.

I like your comment on comic relief.
I think I ended yesterday laughing at all this.
It's not always as good. Maybe a winter pastime for some of us.

In the context of the discussion and the differing opinions I might have been suggesting a while back that the mathematicians here should (occasionally)take their metaphorical pen from the mathematics page to a brain theory of mathematics page.

If you understand that our brains are churning out stand alone theories that work fine in a certain context but don't all work together in every context you will better understand why we disagree.

Is that reasonable? Keep doing what you are doing.

That's kind of funny...just like it is

The 'showboating' is actually impressive to me so don't take it the worst way.

Quite.a lot of theories of infinity,

Infinity by size, set, numbers, zero to infinity, infinity with no beginning and no end, infinity applied as mental constructs, infinity applied to physical matter, pairing of infinities, pairing infinite sets to finite sets, infinity as a simple concept of continuing without limit. Advanced math concepts of infinity......

Some of the advanced math theories are maybe just some mental showboating of things the math people can do with their brains.

Actually the original attempts are the most interesting from a philosophy perspective.

I try to follow things like GPTChat.
I tried chatbots a few years ago and GPTChat a month ago and there seems to be improvement.

Pretty good actually. You can have a conversation close to normal. Maybe better at answering math questions than most people.

I asked GPTChat if it had time perseption and it answered....No I do not perspective time...
That seems interesting as I thought it might.
Maybe more advanced versions will.

That's as close as I get to AI. Maybe something lacking (in a good way??) in AI is the all the nonsense we deal with in people.

The time perseption thing is something people must have to function but computers wouldn't have any of the same needs as we do so...not sure... And being aware for people is unique to us, biology, physical environment, discomfort...

Seems like AI will be more of an information machine that does that faster and better than we can.

You did a very good job covering the details of the formal math. About 8 hours ago. Again, helpfully.

I'll give my perspective. I think the way this math physically exists is only by physical brain state that is able to support it. So not everyone is going to be at the level of the math people.

Given there is a lot to know, my approach is to model it as mental algorithms to get a bird's eye view:

Brain; (Algorithm 1)
Brain; (Algorithm 2)
Brain;.(Algorithm 3)

And so on.

Obviously the math people pick up on a lot of these that the rest of us don't have, but for all of us, picking up on as many of these little recipes as we can can be a good strategy.

If this is so, then none of these concepts have any existence outside our brains. What we see and should expect is a lot of variation in approaches to problems unless they are standardized such as in formal math.

Ok, never mind.

I'd say pot calling the kettle black.

Could it be your model of infinities is based on a mathematical concept and Philosopher19's model is based on a different mathematical concept and both are correct within their own frameworks. In a general sense I think that is very much in the realm of possibility and as a matter of good practice you shouldn't discount a different concept because it differs from your own standard methods.

An example:

Banno takes infinity minus one million and gets infinity.

You say you can't subtract from infinity.

I say an infinite set of integers minus the first million integers is a set with the first million integers removed and I could list them.

1, 2, 3, 4......

Banno humor...

The words in parentheses = these are all things.

The pattern... Brain; (mental content as listed)

I think I'm stating the obvious but it has its uses.
Do you disagree?

It looks like that to me too. Normally these are all things done with our brains but we don't formalize it. If we recognize the pattern we have a tool to troubleshoot new problems that have the same form.

To make it useful try to think of how the words are intertwined as you use your brain and you start to see that 'what the brain supports' is common to all these words. More of a single function as it exists than the commonly defined words.

I'm still working on a good ways to explain it.
The examples given were things that came up in discussion like time perseption.