Yep, and if we want to say that this is not a tiger then we are already appealing to the idea of an essence.

Folks like to say, "Well, unless you can give me the perfectly correct (real) definition of a tiger, I won't accept that essences exist," which looks like sophistry to me. It's like saying:

Do you have a car?
Yes.
Prove it. List every part that constitutes your car.
*Gives a list of tens of thousands of parts.*
This list omits a rear-left brake pad. Therefore you don't have a car. — Leontiskos

Things have characteristics, not essences. So, what's the problem if one or a few characteristics are neglected? It would only be a problem if some other object possessed all the same characteristics, and the few that have been omitted by the list were the very ones the other object did not possess.

It's not a matter of listing every part that constitutes a car (or tiger), but of listing that set of attributes which only cars (or tigers) possess.

Rödl treats Nagel as the last exit from the highway of absolute idealism:

The aim of this essay, as an introduction to absolute idealism, is to make plain that it is impossible to think judgment through this opposition: mind here, world there, two things in relation or not. To dismantle this opposition is not to propose that the world is mind-dependent. Nor is it to propose that the mind is world-dependent. These ways of speaking solidify the opposition; they are an impediment to comprehension.
— SC&O, Rödl, page 16 — Paine

Once we step beyond non-dualism, as all our thought does, and have identified such things as mind and world, then logical dependence relations may become apparent. For example, we transgress non-duality when we identify fish and water, and if we inquire as to whether there is a dependence relation between them it immediately becomes obvious that fish depend on water whereas water does not depend on fish.

I think the same can be said for the relation between mind and world (although this may depend on what we mean by 'world)—the mind depends on the world whereas the world does not depend on the mind. Of course, we could stipulate that 'world' means 'world as experienced by humans' which would of course make the world dependent on (the human) mind, but I don't think that is the common usage or intended meaning of the term 'world'.

According to absolute idealism the world just is the world as experienced by humans—"the rational is the real", so it doesn't seem clear that Rödl is moving beyond absolute idealism. I haven't read his work so maybe that is not his intention—do you read him as claiming that it was Nagel's intention? It's a very long time since I read The View From Nowhere.

Perhaps the problem is I'm not sure what you mean "last exit from the highway of absolute idealism".

Yep, that's the one...

Uncontaminated by human reason. In that sense, they are matters of pure, unadulterated blind faith. It's uncompromising fideism, it is the complete sacrifice of reason. And as stupid as that may sound, that is exactly the sort of blind faith that I have in my own two feet. I don't need to think how to walk, I just walk. I trust my feet and my brain enough to do that on auto-pilot, it is strictly a-rational, as you call it. — Arcane Sandwich

That's an interesting analogy. On what basis do I trust my own feet? Is it because they are yet to let me down, because they have proved to be, barring the rarest exceptions, competent? If so, would that be rational, but in the inductive, not the deductive, sense?

Hume says we have no reason to believe the Sun will rise tomorrow. I take that to mean that just because it has always, during the whole of human experience, risen and just because our science tells us it should continue to work for billions of years, that does not entail that there is any logical necessity in its rising. There seems to be a distinction in human affairs between practical and "pure" rationality.

Cheers, it seems we certainly agree about what is the core of philosophy. I've also come around to thinking that analytic philosophy (which I used to dismiss as "logic-chopping") has an important role to play in clarifying concepts and (hopefully) dispelling linguistically generated confusions.

Do you really ask this kind of quesion, or does it come up indirectly through interactions with ideas and day to day living? — Tom Storm

I do ask that kind of question of myself—'how well can I face my own death?'. I don't dwell on it or become morbid about it, but I try to see what I am attached to in my life and think how to minimize the hold things have on me. I've always liked the Stoic idea and Spinoza's expression of it, that acceptance of those things over which we have no control is the key to living a good life. The more total the acceptance the better the life.

But at it's core, philosophy is the acceptance of the reality of death. It has nothing to do with the love of wisdom. — Arcane Sandwich

I'd say that acceptance of the reality of death is wisdom, and cultivating that acceptance is the love of wisdom.

I guess it can only mean something based on language and zoological classification. Which is fine for me. If there is a realm where cowness is found.. who cares? — Tom Storm

The salient thing about that is that even if there were a realm where cowness exists we could never find it or at least know that we had found it.

I guess it's all just another way to chase after a god surrogate. Ultimate truth being a conduit towards the Ultimate Concern, Tillich and other theist's term for god. — Tom Storm

For me the only questions that approach "the ultimate concern" are 'how should I live?" and "how should I die", and I can't see how any purported transcendent or ultimate reality could have any bearing on those question just because they cannot be real to me.

On the other hand, I might enjoy thinking or reading about such questions just to see what the creative human imagination can come up with.

As North Americans like to say: what you just said there is an opinion, not a fact. Can you prove that what you're saying is true? If so, then it is self-refuting — Arcane Sandwich

The idea of an absolute truth for us is self-refuting.

Because these are questions about what we ultimately are. These are questions about our own ultimacy. What are we? — Arcane Sandwich

Whatever we say about what we are will not be an ultimate truth but will be merely an interpretation of the human condition based on human experience and will thus be a relative statement, true or false only in some context or other.

An ultimate truth would be context-independent. How could there be any such thing (at least for us)? So, you say we are merely "pattern-following objects" and that may indeed be true from some perspective. just as we being subjects is true from a certain perspective.

It's a definition not an argument. How would one demonstrate that cows are "cows" either? For something to be transcendent, it cannot fail to transcend. If "absolute" is to mean "all-encompassing" and we posit both reality and appearances, than by definition the absolute cannot exclude one of the things we've posited.

Perhaps the definition is defective. One can have bad definitions. I don't think it is though
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Not entirely sure I'm following this one. That might be on me.

A cow can be demonstrated via a clear zoological example, can't it? A simple correspondence. Transcendence is a qualitative adjectival abstraction that seems closer to poetry. — Tom Storm

I think this is an interesting issue only in that it highlights our epistemic limitations. How can one demonstrate that cows are cows? We perceive things we call cows, so I think there is no right and wrong in that. We could have called them by any other name, and they would be the same.

Does the question not really devolve to whether or not cows exist as cows in themselves? I mean they obviously would not think of themselves as cows. So what could that question even mean, other than whether there is some independently real thing which appears to us as a cow?

About that question we can only infer what seems most plausible. since the question is outside both the empirical and logical ambit. It is surprising how much interest these kinds of strictly ambiguous and undecidable questions generate.

Saying that knowledge represents the world makes no more sense than saying that the evolution of more and more complex forms of life is a representing of the world. — Joshs

I agree, knowledge does not represent the world it presents the world, makes it present. More knowledge makes the world more present.

But st the same time , the laws and properties that we ‘discover’ in nature are not external to the ways we arrange and rearrange our relations with that world as knowledge — Joshs

Of course not, since we are not separate from nature. Do we have good reason to think that everything that goes on in the Universe is accessible to our cognition even in prinicple? I don't think so. So, our knowledge presents us with what is, at any given historical moment, accessible to us, and that is ever-expanding (or at least it has been up until now).

I think the independent existence of things is so important to you because you confuse intrinsic content with integrative processes of knowing. — Joshs

The independent existence of things seems to be the most plausible conclusion—the inference to the best explanation for what we experience. From a practical, everyday life perspective whether things exist independently of our cognitions or not really doesn't matter unless we have some existential agenda that relies on thinking about it one way or the other.

It is not rational for a father to sacrifice his son to a deity, even if that deity is the Christian God. It just isn't, it's not a rational thing to do. — Arcane Sandwich

'Rational' doesn't seem the right adjective here. It's not a virtuous thing to do, even if one may have reasons to do it. Rationality is simply having reasons—following some axiom and then reasoning consistently on that basis. A failure of rationality is a failure to be consistent. Most of our starting presuppositions are not irrational, but a-rational—meaning they are matters of faith.

Have we got to the Ultimate Truth About Reality yet? It seems there are questions around the question about the ultimate truth of reality that are more amenable to an answer than the question itself, such as :

Would that truth (if we could get to it) be over and above reality itself?

Does our capacity to formulate a question in words guarantee that there must be an answer to it?

If we did find the answer, how would we know it is the right one?

And even assuming that we had the right one, what difference would it make to how we live?

That's been my experience with Buddhism. Doesn't help they tell you their truth has to be experienced, which makes me doubt that it is truth. — Darkneos

I know what you mean. I think the idea that absolute truth can be experienced is completely incoherent. People (very unBuddhistically) cling to that idea and yet no one can explain how it would be possible. Challenge them to explain and they'll just tell you that it's a deep and difficult thing you don't understand. Nietzsche called it "muddying the waters to make them appear deep".

Well I have many suspicions about it not being relative but that's neither here nor there. — Darkneos

I'm not clear as to what you are saying is not, or might not be, relative.

Well I sorta have a problem just letting things go and I crave validation. — Darkneos

What could validate your thoughts apart from logical consistency and/ or empirical confirmation?

I think that might be thinking way too hard about it. The way I see it science gives us a close picture of that "ultimate nature" otherwise none of this stuff would work like it does. "What is really real" used to give me anxiety until I gave it some thought and found it to be a dull question. — Darkneos

Right, I was merely mentioning those questions to try to highlight what seems to be the driving force behind many people's preoccupation with philosophy, not to suggest that those kinds of questions represent my own concerns.

I saw that in myself when for a while I chased "being right" above all else. I needed to know what was the truth of reality so that then I could be right and live according to what is right and...well be right. But the problem with that is I had no personal take on anything. — Darkneos

For me the point is that there is no absolute right way to think. Those who think there is an absolute right and wrong are mired in a need for authority. For me it has been important to establish a "personal take", and I don't see that as an easy or fast thing to do. It has taken me many. many years to get clear on how I personally see things, and I don't claim that my way is the only way.

Many folk (and I believe I see this all the time on these forums) are desperately afraid, it seems, of relativism; it is the great bogeyman. When it comes to understanding what it means to be human, I think there are many possible ways to understand that. Relativism can be ruled out only in matter of direct empirical observation, science, mathematics and logic. That's my take, anyway.

Problem is, everyone thinks they got it and I don't know enough to call them all it. So all I got is a bunch of "rules" in my head from every person who thinks they know and no matter what I do I'm always wrong according to one of them. — Darkneos

Others may think you are wrong, but so what? They are just fallible humans like the rest of us. Getting it right, in my opinion, is not a matter of proving others wrong (although when others put their ideas out there, they are fair game for critique that points out the internal inconsistencies, incoherences or vagaries of their assertions). If someone's ideas are free from such problems, any disagreement will be about first principles, and I don't believe they can be rationally or empirically or any other way confirmed or disconfirmed.

Very relatable. It's not bush or outback or city, it's how you situate yourself and your life. — kazan

:up: I just noticed I failed to specify that I was in the bush on weekends, not during the week so much.

I don’t know the difference between the bush and the outback. I use them interchangeably if I have to use them. But generally I talk about going to ‘the country.’ — Tom Storm

When I was a kid living in Epping (a suburb of Sydney) there were corridors of bush (which I believe still mostly exist). I used to spend all day from breakfast to dinner from the age of about seven playing in the bush.

My family used to go on very primitive road trips to the outback (Nyngan, Bourke, Tilpa, Wilcannia, Broken Hill, Coonabarabran, Lightning Ridge, White Cliffs, etc, etc.).

So, I think it is understandable that I don't see them as being the same at all.

The way I see it we trust science to the extent it works. Nothing can answer the question we don't seem to be able to help asking in various forms: 'What is the ultimate nature of reality?', 'What is really real?', 'What is the existence of things in themselves compared to the way they appear to us?' and so on.

I think we need to accept that that question is unanswerable and move on to more important questions like 'How should we live?'.

The senses are all we have to reveal the world to us. The rational mind in its "pure' deployment confabulates much more than it enlightens—you realize this when you contemplate the idiocy of much is what is presented as philosophy on these forums, and in fact much of what constitutes the so-called philosophical canon.

One would think that the people on here are well above average intelligence, but that is not necessarily a positive given that there seems to be a great capacity for cleverness to lead to idiocy, and to denigrate common sense. No wonder probably most people think philosophy is wankery, when for the most part it is.

I see a great gulf on these forums between those who are basically empirically and logically oriented in their thinking and those who are off with the fairies imagining all sorts of ludicrous crap.

I don't know. Say veganism is not the answer. it doesn't necessarily follow that there is an answer. The probability is that we will just keep muddling along, pretending that something is actually being done, until something out of our control happens to drastically reduce the human population.

It would help if you noted which text the quoted passage is taken from.

One of the points Aristotle makes is that belief and knowledge cannot be reduced to mechanistic (efficient) cause and effect. If belief is just the rearrangement of atoms, then it is hard to see how it can be "false." — Count Timothy von Icarus

If one is mistaken about what one perceives and this mistake leads to establishing a neural network which we would experience as a belief, then the said neural network would be false in the sense of "missing the mark" like the arrow that misses the target.

Is the toothy maw going to eat the arcane sandwich? :wink:

To answer a serious question—I'm not convinced that veganism is the answer. In order to feed our huge populations vast tracts of land have been converted to monoculture farming. This destroys habitat, and many plants and animals, and the chemical fertilizers needed to sustain such a scale of farming destroys the soil biome.

:up: That's the way forward!

Coopers comes up a bit too.
— Tom Storm
Especially if you drink too much. — Banno

I'll meet you in the vomitorium.

Yes, I'm a black-clad wanker, like the rest — Tom Storm

A wank-led lad?

:up:

:rofl: You're so full-o-shit, Wayfarer. Dream on—you've never dealt adequately with any of my objections.

Most Australians I know drink imported beers like Asahi or Corona. — Tom Storm

Sometimes, but mostly I drink Coopers Pale Ale. I guess I'm not most Australians.

Of course not. When I cite a source for support, it is to orient my arguments with respect to others, standard practice in debates. — Wayfarer

Your argument should be support enough for your position. But you don't present arguments, you just cite authorities.

And you're what Kant describes as a transcendental realist. That is a term he uses to describe the philosophical position that treats objects of experience (phenomena) as if they exist independently of the mind and are exactly as they appear to us. — Wayfarer

Typical! Instead of engaging with my point, that we all see the same things in the same places at the same times you seek to dismiss me by labelling. The question as to whether or not things exist in themselves exactly as we perceive them to be (which I think is probably an incoherent question anyway) is irrelevant to the point. What has to explained is the incontrovertible fact that we (and even animals) all do see the same things.

And you don't answer anything that would commit you to a definite position:

It's much nearer to what I believe to be the case, than the direct realism which holds that the world comprises individual subjects and particular objects that are all independently real.
— Wayfarer

So, you don't actually believe it, but it's nearer to what you do believe. Then what is it that you do believe? — Janus

I've reached the point where I cannot even take you seriously. My honest opinion is that you do not argue in good faith. I guess it's time to stop trying.

That's convenient for you. It happens to be central to his entire project of Incomplete Nature. — Wayfarer

Yes, and I've read it; although more than ten years ago now. Is he an authority? Must I agree with him?

That's because we don't. — Wayfarer

Of course we do. The dog sees the ball I throw. If you and I stand in front of a complex painting and I point to a particular spot on it and ask you what colour you see there, we will almost certainly agree. I see a tree three feet to left of the post of my carport—do you imagine you might see something different there—a mouse, a car, a tractor. If you were here with me now, I could point to hundreds of objects in the house and environment and ask you what you see there, and we would agree every time about just what it was I was pointing at. You are simply wrong about this—you just don't want to admit it because it doesn't suit your narrative.

It's much nearer to what I believe to be the case, than the direct realism which holds that the world comprises individual subjects and particular objects that are all independently real. — Wayfarer

So, you don't actually believe it, but it's nearer to what you do believe. Then what is it that you do believe?

Agreed, hence its relative unpopularity. But upon closer examination, all he’s saying is, it is by this means alone, that a human can call himself a true moral agent, even, at the same time, admitting it’s virtually impossible to actually be one, and even moreso, that we can all be one at the same time. — Mww

That's a good point. If to be a true moral agent is to act entirely free from self-interest and entirely in accordance with the moral law derived from reason alone, then that is indeed the only way to be a true moral agent.

Virtue ethics may have something different to say about what being a true moral agent consists in, though. For example, if someone had to choose between saving their child and a stranger, the person who chose to save the stranger on the grounds that it would be the more truly moral thing to do, being free from personal desire as saving one's child would not, that person would not be lauded, but would rather be considered to be a psychopath.

For example, if a person is drowning, and you have a rope, the morally correct thing to do is to throw them one end of the rope and save them. Why? Because that is what duty says that you have to do. Why? Because it's the rational thing to do. Why? Because if the situation were reversed, and you were the one drowning, you would expect someone else to throw you a rope. — Arcane Sandwich

Or perhaps you feel for them in their plight.

Because as a rational sentient being, you can number them. — Wayfarer

Animals also apprehend great numbers of things. but they don't have the language to name them and declare their quantities.

The point about objects of intellectual cognition such as numbers, geometric and scientific principles and the like is that while they are ideas, they are the same for all who think. They're not the property of individual minds. — Wayfarer

They were probably first articulated by an individual mind. The fact that they make sense to most all human minds can be explained by the idea that human brains have evolved to be generally structurally the same as each other.

First, I don't believe, on the same grounds that I don't believe numbers exist, that the 'One Mind' exists. — Wayfarer

But you believe numbers are real and you believe the One Mind is real.

It is an expression, like a figure of speech, to convey the irreducibly mental side of whatever can be considered real. Put another way, whatever is real, is real for a mind. But that mind is never an object of experience, it is only ever the subject to whom experience occurs. — Wayfarer

Of course considering something real is irreducibly mental. and whatever is judged to be real is judged to be real by a mind. Do you think experience occurs to anything other than individual subjects? Does the One Mind experience everything like God is said to? Do you think the minds of individual subjects are somehow connected, connected in some way hidden from us and that that explains why we all experience the same world?

Because it's a reification. To declare that such a mind exists is to make of it an object, one among others. — Wayfarer

I would agree with you that it is a reification. But those who believe God is real (as opposed to imaginary) would deny that their belief is a reification and would also deny that God is an empirical or abstract object. So, it is not necessarily either/or.

Absentials, — Wayfarer

For me Deacon makes too much of absentials. It's not controversial at all that sentient creatures can be motivated by the absence of things, by lack. So, in that sense the absent has causal efficacy. But the feeling or apprehension of absence is not itself an absence.

As for how we experience the same world, I invariably reply that as we are members of the same species, language-group, culture and society, then there is a considerable stock of common experiences which we will draw on in interpreting what we see. But it's nevertheless true that different individuals all experience a unique instantiation of reality albeit converging around certain commonalities. — Wayfarer

I've addressed this idea of yours before. It just doesn't pass muster. That we are all similarly constituted as perceivers explains that we see things like colour in the ways we commonly do. But it cannot explain the fact that we see precisely the same things in the same places at the same times. Either there are real existents there that we are seeing, or existents are ideas in a universal mind in which we all participate or our minds are connected in some way we have no idea about.

Any other explanatory ideas come to mind for you?

Right, but they could have been born in the past. Right? — Arcane Sandwich

No because their parents were not born then. It's an infinite regress of impossibility.

There you are!!! I thought I’d let my mouth get away from me, there, I didn’t hear back. Done went and pissed you off somehow. — Mww

No, it was simply my forgetfulness—

If something could be conditioned by the good alone, would that not entail that the good could not be conditioned by any further thing?
— Janus

No, that statement only says the something cannot be conditioned by any further thing, which makes that something good in itself, not good for the attainment of something else. — Mww

My statement and yours here seem to be saying the same thing. Perhaps I am misreading you.

Thing is, it is said there is only one thing that can be good in itself, for the attainment of no other end, except to duty according to law. Hence the limit of this good to a moral disposition alone. Got nothing to do with good things, of good feelings or good anything. Except a good will. — Mww

Kant's deontological ethics seems to me to be a kind of consequentialism—pertaining to the whole human condition, not to particular circumstances. He seems to be saying that if lying, for example, was acceptable then human society could not function because there would be no trust to act as a social binder. That makes the acceptance of lying (and theft, murder, rape, assault and so on) a kind of self-contradiction for a society, because acceptance of such things contradicts the very idea of social harmony.

I think that Kant is right in the universal context—for me the mistake he makes is transferring that truth to all particular situations as a rigid notion of duty.

My heuristic, and it is only that, is that numbers, laws, etc, are real but not existent as phenomena. They do not appear amongst phenomena, but can only be discerned by the intellect (nous). So they are, in the Platonic sense, but not the Kantian, noumenal objects, object of nous. — Wayfarer

The problem I find here is that number does appear in the phenomenal world—we encounter great numbers of phenomena, and you seem to be ignoring that fact. Also what does it mean to say that number, laws etc are objects of nous? Does it simply mean that they are ideas?

Whereas the archetypal forms exist in the One Mind and are apprehended by Nous: while they do not exist they provide the basis for all existing things by creating the pattern, the ratio, whereby things are formed. They are real, above and beyond the existence of wordly things; but they don't actually exist. They don't need to exist; things do the hard work of existence.

If numbers, laws etc., and all other objects are ideas in the "One Mind" then surely, they exist as such. Do you believe they stand out for the "One Mind" ? If so then they must exist for that mind, no?

I have often said to you that your position needs a universal mind or God in order to explain how we all experience the same world. But you always seem to pass this over and to be reluctant to posit such a mind. That is why your position seems confused and inadequate to me—you seem to want to make a claim, but then when asked just what your substantive claim is, you seem to have no answer.

Sure. I guess this is a common sense account. By the way, I have no commitments either way, I am just interested to hear more. — Tom Storm

Do you think it is more plausible that our formulations are completely arbitrary or that they are constrained by what we actually experience—that the whole logic (grammar) of our language evolves in keeping with the primordial, given nature of that experience.

Note I am referring to the logical structure of language, not to the particular sounds and marks that conventionally represent this and that—they are, onomatopoeia aside, seemingly mostly arbitrary.

Well, sometimes it should be a conversation terminator, I suppose. If you've already solved the problem of the OP, what more is there to talk about, in this Thread? I'd continue the conversation in some other Thread. — Arcane Sandwich

:up:

You never answer the question so often posed to you. How could something that does not exist in space and time be real? Real in what sense?

Is the "domain of natural numbers" more than merely an idea? The set of all sets, is it real?

We try to imagine it as a literal domain or place, which doesn't make sense, but then, only things that exist in space and time are considered real. So the 'platonic realm' then becomes imagined as a kind of ghostly palace with ethereal models of ideal objects, when it is not that at all. — Wayfarer

That may be how you try to imagine it. I have no doubt your imagination is not representative, given human diversity, so I think there is an element of narcissism in your thinking we all imagine in this kind of way.

OK, that's cool. But agreement often seems to be a conversation terminator. Where do we go from here?

I find this some of the most interesting ideas on the forum. The notion that scientific laws and maths are contingent human artifacts rather than the product of some Platonic realm seems more intuitively correct to me. But as an untheorized amateur, I would say that. — Tom Storm

I don't think it's so black and white—either this or that. We formulate the laws of nature, but we are constrained in those formulations by what we actually observe to be so. We see regularities and invariances everywhere we look. We encounter number in our environments simply on account of the fact that there are many things.

So mathematics has its roots in experience—the world really is mathematical, but not (obviously) explicitly so—it is we who make it explicit, and it is not a contingent enterprise, but must be in accordance with what we actually experience. What we actually experience is not up to us. It's like we speak the language that the world teaches us, a language it does not know or articulate by itself.

Because I said "sweet chicken" at the end? Who says that seriously? — Arcane Sandwich

I don't know you and thus I have no idea what you might be serious about.

Then why are you hassling me, matey-mate? — Arcane Sandwich

I have and have had no intention of hassling you. You have been responding to my posts and I to yours. It's called a conversation, or at least an attempt at one.

It was a joke. You know that, right? — Arcane Sandwich

How would I know?

Have you solved the problem of the OP? If yes, cool. If not, what are we arguing about, you and me? Clue me in, as I've no idea. — Arcane Sandwich

I've solved the OP to my own satisfaction, which no doubt will count for little for others. It's not clear to me that we are arguing about anything.

I have jumped to no assumptions about you. Ironically it seems to be you who is projecting some concerns onto me such as that you seem to think I think my solution is the correct one, or that I'm concerned about having it "certified" somehow.

What I present is nothing more than how I look at it—for me the purported problem regarding whether mathematical entities exist in any platonic sense is a non-issue, a collateral result of reificational thinking.

So what are you asking me, Janus? If your solution is the right answer to the question in the OP? Because there's also @Banno's proposed solution, as well as the one that I proposed myself (mathematical fictionalism). How do you propose to solve this, in practical terms? — Arcane Sandwich

The only question in the post you are respionding to is this:

How much lerss would we need to think of infinitesimals as actual existents, and how incoherent is the idea of an actual existent being "outside of spacetime itself in some mysterious way that is incomprehensible to modern science" ? — Janus

and it is a rhertorical question. So I wasn't asking you anything.

You ask me how I proposed to solve this in practical terms—the only solution (more a dissolution) I am offering was the one at the top of the post you were responding to:

As I said earlier: "If the infinitely many integers are understood to be merely potential as a logical consequence of a conceptual operation—in this case iteration—and are not considered to be actually existent, then the need for a Platonic 'realm' disappears." — Janus

Does that count for you as a practical solution? If you are seeking an empirical solution to such questions, I'd say you are wasting your time. Seems it would be impossible to establish a fact of the matter.