Personally, I think math is invented by people to merely describe physical states of affairs of which some show exact correspondence with physical reality. I think Max Tegmark was on dope. — Prishon
As of today, I doubt that there is any maths left that has not been incorporated in some physics. — magritte
“I believe that the only way to make sense of mathematics is to believe that there are objective mathematical facts, and that they are discovered by mathematicians,” says James Robert Brown, a philosopher of science recently retired from the University of Toronto. “Working mathematicians overwhelmingly are Platonists. They don't always call themselves Platonists, but if you ask them relevant questions, it’s always the Platonistic answer that they give you.” — Smithsonian Magazine, What is Math?
If something is beyond space and time, then where could it be? — Corvus
I need your opinion on something. Let's say Platonism is true. That would mean math exists, because they're mental objects, in a mind, God's mind. Grant the materialist that minds are brains, physical. That would mean God too has a brain in which math exists i.e. God could be physical. Does God being physical/material affect theism in any significant sense? Speaking for myself, I'm totally ok with God being physical. — TheMadFool
We shall find it convenient only to speak of things 'existing' when they are in time, that is to say, when we can point to some time at which they exist (not excluding the possibility of their existing at all times). Thus thoughts and feelings, minds and physical objects exist. But universals do not exist in this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where 'being' is opposed to 'existence' as being timeless. The world of universals, therefore, may also be described as the world of being. — Russell, The World of Universals
Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects which aren’t part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences. Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate. — SEP, Platonism in Mathematics
No. Numbers are not patterns. Bad idea. — Wayfarer
Read that post I linked to on Aquinas, it says something extremely important and completely forgotten. — Wayfarer
Not to contradict you but the number 1 is defined as the pattern (abstraction) in the following sets: {ghost}, {&}, {R}, {9}, {John}, you get the idea. What's common (the repeating pattern) is the one-ness. — TheMadFool
I'm objecting to the idea of reducing the faculty of reason to pattern recognition. I've seen people hawking that idea on philosophy forums and I think it is simplistic nonsense. For instance, the sequence of prime numbers is not a pattern. (There is a news story out there that some mathematicians have apparently found a kind of pattern in the sequence of primes, but it's disputed, and the fact that it's a story says something, because until now, it's always been understood to NOT be a pattern.) — Wayfarer
So, the form (universals) individuates in objects (particulars). The senses, it seems, can't see past the particulars but the mind grasps the essences, another name for universals. :up: — TheMadFool
The senses, it seems, can't see past the particulars but the mind grasps the essences, another name for universals. — TheMadFool
The senses, it seems, can't see past the particulars but the mind grasps the essences, another name for universals. — TheMadFool
You need to have some cognitive elements, visual or auditory, etc. in order to perceive space and time. Prior to this, there is no time and space. The Forms being unchanging, eternal, etc., cannot be anywhere else. — Apollodorus
Not quite. The modern translation is ‘intellect’ but it’s a bit starchy to convey the gist. The Wiki entry is a good intro. ‘nous’ is preserved in vernacular English as being cluey or having a kind of insight (‘got nous, that bloke’) — Wayfarer
n the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the basic understanding or awareness that allows human beings to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. This therefore connects discussion of nous to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way [this is where 'universals' come in to the picture] and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories in the same logical ways [as Noam Chomsky argues].
Deriving from this it was also sometimes argued, especially in classical and medieval philosophy, that the individual nous must require help of a spiritual and divine type [which is the 'doctrine of illumination;]. . By this type of account, it came to be argued that the human understanding (nous) somehow stems from this cosmic nous, which is however not just a recipient of order, but a creator of it.
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