What do you mean; an anti-realist in what sense? I don't believe numbers are 'out there' floating about in some 'realm' if that is what you mean. But I do believe natural complexes are real, and that they instantiate number (multiplicity and difference). — Janus
This is obviously a very complex issue, but one response is to equate numbers with brain processes is a form of category mistake. — Wayfarer
But the same operations can be outsourced to a variety of different devices, other than brains. — Wayfarer
And in studying brains themselves, there are major obstacles in understanding the relationship of neural events and such elements of rational thought as number, logic, language, syntax, and so on. — Wayfarer
So saying that 'numbers are dependent on the brain' (which is actually what you have said, not 'mind') doesn't really say anything. — Wayfarer
It just safely puts the whole issue into the category of 'things we'll figure out when we understand better how the brain works'. — Wayfarer
Just to clarify, — numberjohnny5
The mind is identical with the brain, in my view. — numberjohnny5
I think it’s a mistake to believe that you can explain numbers and the like. Mathematics is one of the main ways in which explanations can be found for all manner of things - almost anything that can be quantified, really. But explaining number is a notoriously difficult thing to do. — Wayfarer
What I don’t think your account allows for, is the ability of mathematical reasoning to predict otherwise unknowable things. I mean, you can’t do that just using language. It’s the fact that mathematical concepts and operations seem to have an uncanny correspondence with nature that gives mathematics what Eugene Wigner called it’s ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ and predictive ability. There are quite a few examples of discoveries falling out of mathematical physics that were predicted just by the maths - Dirac’s discovery of anti-matter is a classic example, not to mention the many predictions that came out of relativity — Wayfarer
Maybe at this point we should ask what we want the term 'real' to do for us. And I suppose also the concept 'physical'. Do either of these notions become become disturbed if I bring into the discussion the idea that memory is itself a reconstruction, that there is no such thing as veridical memory, and therefore we do t have access to a trailing order of pasts that we can line up and study?
By this way of thinking our past is actually in front of us in a way not unlike the present. Each past that we recollect is in a sense a fresh past, and points ahead of us. Recall is always for some future-oriented purpose of ours, so it is anticipatory. — Joshs
But
if memory itself isn't just a veridical
internal carrying of external objects via symbolization, but an inseparable component of a relational complex of the experience of the present, an experience that is at every moment disturbing our sense of past as well as present, then we may want to reimagine physical as more radically relational than traditionally assumed. — Joshs
To me it's not a question of logical consistency in the formal sense, but of self-consistency, of the relative inferential compatibility of new experience with our system of understanding.
A new event that appears inconsistent with our way of making sense of things will be handled in a number of ways. We can find a way to modify our previous understanding such as to make the challenging event consistent with our values. Or we can try and force the abberant meaning to comply with what we think it should mean. This usually doesn't end well. Or we can be left in a situation of crisis.
When we encounter experience that is wholy outside our ability to make sense of it, to accomdate our system of understanding to make room for it, we simply are unable to assimilate it. Our negative emotions respresent these sorts of transitional phases in our experience, when our world threatens to become chaotic and incoherent. Some psychologies argue that we do incorporate conflicting ideas and then cope with this by hiding from ourselves the internal conflict(cognitive dissonance, Freudian repression).
That doesn't mean that our math is t useful to us, just that there's nothing platonic about it. It's a device like any other we invent.
Well "explanation" is subjective, and individuals have different criteria as to what counts as an explanation. — numberjohnny5
That's sure a get-out-of-jail-free card, for anything whatever. 'Works for me!' — Wayfarer
First off, it's a fact that "explanations" are subjective. There are no objective criteria for what counts as a correct/incorrect or right/wrong "explanation". — numberjohnny5
I'm sorry, but there are objective criteria regarding what makes a good explanation, and what makes one explanation better than the other. In fact, we have a rather well-developed method for deciding between explanations. It's called science.
Here's the objective criterion as to whether an explanation is good/bad: An explanation is good/bad if it is hard/easy to vary while still accounting for what it purports to account for. — tom
And again, what makes something "good" or "bad" re evaluative claims is subjective. — numberjohnny5
everything is true as we experience it, — Michael Ossipoff
I sometimes wonder whether that is because it is (perhaps even unconsciously?) felt that their ontological status has some implications for religious belief, and most especially belief in an afterlife. — Janus
Science isn't a method, it's a name for a tradition with a history of changing methods and evolving views of what an object is, how it relates to the scientist attempting to apprehend it , and thus how to achieve objectivity. — Joshs
Physics doesn’t believe in the reality of these things anymore. It believes that Reality, physical reality, is waves and forces and energy in timespace (or something like that). — Dominic Osborn
If the immaterial, or non-physical things aren't accessible by the senses, then how is it that we even know about anything non-physical? Our knowledge itself is composed of sensory impressions. Anything we know is something we can see, touch, smell, hear or taste. Even words and numbers are colored shapes, or sounds. We then go about attributing abstract concepts to these visual and auditory symbols, which are also in the form of other visuals, sounds, etc. So it seems that if the non-physical is inaccessible by the senses, then it is similar to saying that the non-physical doesn't exist.Perhaps we say that things are immaterial or intangible simply because we cannot see, hear, touch, smell or taste them. The idea that something is non-physical might mean something quite different; for example that it cannot be understood in terms of physics, even in principle. Is the notion that something is not materials the same as the idea that it is not physical? — Janus
Sore, you decree this from above, with no explanation. Why not, explanations are totally subjective. — tom
Meanwhile in reality, explanations of a certain broad category may be tested and compared objectively, by experiment. The other class of explanations may be criticised and compared using objective criteria like the one I gave earlier. — tom
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