How are “essential” and “fundamental” distinct? Webster’s Thesaurus .... — ucarr

Maybe you should consult a 'dictionary of philosophical terms'. :roll:

Hear ye, hear, ye! All y’all students come to order! Professor universeness is in the house! So listen up. Some foundations ‘bout to get laid.
— ucarr

:lol: Not sure if I've just been complimented or insulted. I kinda like it that way. — universeness

I got a little carried away with my vernacular. With the above salutation I’m praising what you posted.

So at the most fundamental level, surely its the ability to differentiate between different objects, attributes, properties, patterns that is the essential ability for a sentient to be able to experience the universe. The quantity of a particular object within a particular volume in spacetime, seems to me secondary to the more fundamental need to be able to differentiate. — universeness

Your supposition about differentiation points our attention to something essential: we gain knowledge of the world through our differentiations separating our experiences of things into their distinctions and, might it be, as I’m thinking right now, that number is a general distinction amongst a welter of more local and specific distinctions, and thus the essential importance of math. I think we can claim generally that all humans of sound mind use math every day as an essential part of their navigation of the world. Distinctions of the senses: color, sound, taste, smell and touch have in common the theme of number running through all of them: how many colors, sounds, tastes, smells and touches is absolutely essential to everyone’s personal history, albeit not necessarily fully cognitively.

Without the contrast of changing stimuli, humans, no matter how rested, fall asleep. Number is essential to those contrast-producing changes.

I’m not ready to claim number is the minimum distinction required for the intelligibility of sensible experience, but you’ve done much to help me advance in that direction.

I got a little carried away with my vernacular. With the above salutation I’m praising what you posted. — ucarr

No problem and thank you.

I’m not ready to claim number is the minimum distinction required for the intelligibility of sensible experience, but you’ve done much to help me advance in that direction. — ucarr

I would like to pursue this a little more and press you on your thoughts on trying to take human thought down to some notion of a very 'fundamental' or 'essential' minimum. We don't even have to be restricted by the notion of human thought. Let's consider what we think would be required for any existent in the universe to be aware of, or be able to distinguish any other existent. Must all such exercises always land at the problem of hard solipsism? I have always considered solipsism to be nonsense but I still can't prove hard solipsism is incorrect, no-one currently can.
What is needed for such a notion as a quantum fluctuation or a singularity or a god origin? are the two fundamentals required, simply duration and space? and then something must be aware that such has happened so that the notion 'event' can become the next most essential happening.

My original question was, if number is material and physical (as claimed by the OP), then what measurements in size and weights does it have? And what shape and colour does number have for its physical and material existence? — Corvus

Your best friend sings tenor in the church choir. His buddies call him “Golden Pipes.” The women call him “Boy Wonder.” He serenades the sighing of lungs on starry nights.

What size and weight, what shape and color, his tenor voice? The width of his nostrils, the length of his lungs, the breath of his chords, is it? These numbers are sizes of music and song, but one man is he. Oh, glee of sweet nighters.

Number one, our silent partner, never leaves us from cradle to grave.

These terms don't make sense to me. I am not a (logical) positivist or (Humean) empiricist. My methodological physicalism is a function, or corollary, of my philosophical naturalism which is a metaphysics (or speculative supposition). — 180 Proof

As I typed to @ucarr, I like this thread as it obtains deeper clarification from folks, as to their position on the notion of fundamentals. My question here will not assist the OP discussion but it will help me understand your position a little better. It's based on a recent episode of Matt Dillahunty on the call-in YouTube show, 'The Line.' A theist called in to talk to Matt about his materialist/naturalist stance. Matt interrupted him to say that he was not a philosophical materialist/naturalist (he considered the two terms synonymous) but he was a methodological materialist/naturalist. He then went on to clearly explain the difference. So, are you declaring the same as him, in the quote above? You are a methodological naturalist and not a philosophical one as you refuse the burden of proof that is assigned if you state that there IS no existent outside of the natural universe.

What size and weight, what shape and color, his tenor voice? The width of his nostrils, the length of his lungs, the breath of his chords, is it? — ucarr

Isn't the measurement of his body just a form of data? Data is not material or physical. Is it?

These numbers are sizes of music and song, but one man is he. Oh, glee of sweet nighters. — ucarr

Do music and song have size? Is it a metaphor or what?

Isn't the measurement of his body just a form of data? Data is not material or physical. Is it? — Corvus

Do music and song have size? Is it a metaphor or what? — Corvus

Your questions are good. They point to my main point in all of my jabbering: number-signs (which are not number, the physical property) attach themselves to physical things. Together, number-signs and their substrates, physical things and physical properties, form something that can be called complex materialism. It has two parts: physical things and number-signs. The latter denote their material substrates in the language games humans must play.

You ask about the singer’s body in my little story. The measurement of his body is data, but that data has no meaning without his body to which it refers.

You ask about the measurement of music. The measurement of music in signs, whether math or verbal, takes its meaning by its attachment to the existential reality of its substrate, the singing man.

What’s the meaning, which is to ask, “What’s the reality,” of musical notation on paper if it doesn’t refer to the singing man, or even to the leaves rustling in the breeze?

Abstractions of the human mind are emergent from the physics of the natural world, but not wholly independent from same.

You ask about the singer’s body in my little story. The measurement of his body is data, but that data has no meaning without his body to which it refers. — ucarr

But isn't the measurement data of the body, the property of the body, or a part of description of the body, rather than the body itself? For example, a person has a certain data associated with him such as DOB, name, sex, place of birth, height, weight etc etc. DOB is just one of the properties of the person, but it is not the person. There will be millions of other people with the same DOB, so DOB itself doesn't say anything about a person until it had been attached to a person.

It is not meaningful itself until it is attached to a person, but that is what the relation is about. You have measured and attached the measurement, hence related the numbers to the body and gave meaning to the numbers as the measurement of the body. Hence numbers are concepts, not physical or material?

What’s the meaning, which is to ask, “What’s the reality,” of musical notation on paper if it doesn’t refer to the singing man, or even to the leaves rustling in the breeze? — ucarr

Again the musical notation on the paper has no meaning until it had been performed by the singer. The notation itself is not the music, but an instruction how the singer must perform the music? Therefore, should we not class it as a concept too? Once the singer masters how to sing the song according to the instruction, the singer no longer needs the instruction. He throws it away in the bin, and just sings away as he pleases and wants on his own style and moods. He would still follow the instruction for the singing, from his memory, not from the notation on the paper.

But isn't the measurement data of the body, the property of the body…? — Corvus

Apparently without intending to, you state my premise exactly.

Again the musical notation on the paper has no meaning until it had been performed by the singer. — Corvus

Here you are expressing my premise again with a more complex model. Music, a complex interweave of numerical values of vibrating strings, exemplifies, more nobly, the physicality of number. The signs on the scoring sheet have physical, vibrating strings as their substrate, giving them meaning and usefulness as data.

Your height, weight, age etc. are not abstractions; they’re represented by abstract signifiers, but the number of your height, for example, remains consistent throughout your adult life. Your and everyone else’s senses will register this consistency, regardless of what the signifiers say on paper. Probably you’re thinking this is an argument for your premise that numbers are a separate reality from the physics of the natural world. If someone changes your height measurement significantly on paper, everyone’s senses will continue to see your same, established height. This is because the ontic meaningfulness of the height measurement signifier is tied directly to the physical number of your height as registered by the senses. Signifiers divorced from their referents are just line drawings on paper faithful to established patterns without meaning or usefulness. When you say data is separate from the physical body, being able to call the patterned line drawings data contradicts your claim the patterned line drawings are a separate reality without physicality. Without their direct connection to physical reality by reference, as mediated by the brain’s memory, the line drawings are NOT data, but rather just patterned line drawings. This difference between meaningless line drawings and data is crucial. The latter can’t exist as we understand and use it without being referenced to the physics of the natural world. Clearly, this means number, as represented by number signs, really is out there. Number, as distinguished from number-sign, is complex (meaning two-part) materialism: pattern recognition of similar things into sets composited into abstract signs as mediated via the memory.

Apparently without intending to, you state my premise exactly. — ucarr

Your points were that numbers are material and physical. My point is that numbers are mental and conceptual.

Here you are expressing my premise again with a more complex model. Music, a complex interweave of numerical values of vibrating strings, exemplifies, more nobly, the physicality of number. — ucarr

Again as above, your points were that numbers are physical. My point is that numbers and data are conceptual. Until you link the numbers to the physical objects, they have no meanings. But once you have attached the numbers to the objects, they have meanings. Still my point is that numbers are concepts even after they are linked to the objects.

Let's consider what we think would be required for any existent in the universe to be aware of, or be able to distinguish any other existent. — universeness

Terrence W. Deacon, in his book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, does important work towards a physicalist explanation of the mind as emergent property of matter. From the small, limited understanding of his book I’ve been able to glean, the core of his thesis puts the burden of the emergence of physicalism-based consciousness onto a multi-tiered paradigm of dynamical processes, with thermodynamics as the base. From the start, then, Deacon highlights the seminal (pun intended) importance of thermodynamics WRT life. The three-part paradigm links thermodynamic processes to morphodynamic processes and, in turn, these two are linked to teleodynamic processes. This paradigm has for its theme: the appearance of the ententional within nature. The ententional domain includes dynamical processes that are, ultimately, end-directed processes rooted in strategic absences, thus Incomplete Nature. These critical absences are effected by constraints as imposed by each level of dynamical processing. I think, if I’m not mistaken, and I might be, that the critical absences due to critical constraints are part of an encompassing phenomenon Deacon implies with his frequent references to far-from-equilibrium states. The far-from-equilibrium state of being might well be labeled one of the fundamentals of living organisms. One can say maintaining this state of being is what is commonly know as the struggle to survive.

The peculiar feature of mind is its particular method of striving toward the goal of maintaining the contra-grade processes of the major organ systems of living organisms. The end-directedness of mind is rooted in what is not yet but, by design, eventually will be. It is chiefly this feature of mind, I think, that gives the impression mind is not physical. My adjustment, accordingly, features now the notion of complex materialism, an absential phenomenon rooted in the critical constraints of the three-tiered process towards sentience and cognition.

Must all such exercises always land at the problem of hard solipsism? — universeness

Fanfare from the band as complex materialism comes onstage and, in doing so, kicks hard solipsism up into the rafters. Mind is not divorced from the physics of the natural world.

What is needed for such a notion as a quantum fluctuation or a singularity or a god origin? are the two fundamentals required, simply duration and space? and then something must be aware that such has happened so that the notion 'event' can become the next most essential happening. — universeness

You’re in the hunt for naturally occurring abiogenesis. Might the biggest question in science be: by what means the quantum leap from non-life into life?

…my point is that numbers are concepts even after they are linked to the objects. — Corvus

My point is that number-signs, fundamentally distinct from physical number, are concepts only after they’re been cognitively_mnemonically linked to the physics of number. I think you’re fundamentally wrong in your thinking number-signs hold the status of data before such linkage.

Without the necessary cognitve_mnemonic linkage to the physics of number, a natural occurrence, there are, in effect, no such things as meaningful number-signs (what your refer to as numbers), only patterned line drawings, which you can label “numbers,” or whatever you wish to call them.

I think you’re fundamentally wrong in your thinking number-signs hold the status of data before such linkage. — ucarr

No. I never said that. You are either misquoting me, or not reading my posts properly.
Before the linkage numbers are concepts. After the linkage, they become data.

Without the necessary cognitve_mnemonic linkage to the physics of number, — ucarr

What is the physics of number? I am trying to clarify the concepts, so that we can understand the points of the agenda better.

My point is that numbers and data are conceptual. — Corvus

Concept - an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular instances.

With our definition of concept (Webster’s), we have the same relationship as the one obtaining between number-signs and the physical property of number: the physical thing, in this case “particular instances,” is the substrate conferring meaning onto concepts. Example: you have a concept of muscle cars as a potent instrument of seduction by men trying to make time with women. Herein “concept” like “number,” takes it’s meaning from observation of physically real muscle cars seen over the years. Neither “concepts” nor “data,” divorced from physical reality, have any meaning or use.

Given this similarity of “concepts” and “data,” (one is general is focus while the other is more specific in focus) arguing numbers are concepts before their linkage to physical things and data afterwards is both wrong and irrelevant to the crux of my argument: the linkage of physical substrate and numbers (which are concepts) is necessary for the latter to have meaning and use. You argue for the separate reality of numbers. Point to line drawings labeled number-signs to make that claim if you wish; it’s a claim for a reality without meaning or use.

I think you’re fundamentally wrong in your thinking number-signs hold the status of data before such linkage. — ucarr

No. I never said that. You are either misquoting me, or not reading my posts properly. — Corvus

In my statement you don’t see any quotation marks, so that’s evidence I’m not quoting you.

Suppose I change my statement:

I think you’re fundamentally wrong in your thinking number-signs hold the status of concepts before such linkage. — ucarr

If my argument for the similarity of the terms is correct, I don’t need to make any further changes to my above claim.

Before the linkage numbers are concepts. After the linkage, they become data. — Corvus

Neither “concepts” nor “data,” divorced from physical reality, have any meaning or use. — ucarr

Concepts and data can exist without the physical objects purely in the minds. Do you need the physical reality and objects when you imagine, remember or think about something?

In my statement you don’t see any quotation marks, so that’s evidence I’m not quoting you. — ucarr

In that case, you have been reading my posts not properly. :D

If my argument for the similarity of the terms is correct, I don’t need to make any further changes to my above claim. — ucarr

The description of "number" in the OP sounded muddled, and seemed to be vague and incorrect, hence I was trying to clarify the concept with you.

Concepts and data can exist without the physical objects purely in the minds. — Corvus

Yes, they can, and they do. However, they do not exist there purely. It is the interweave of world and perceiving mind that fuels experience-based memory, thoughts, understanding, imaginings and ideas.

Do you need the physical reality and objects when you imagine, remember or think about something? — Corvus

Memory and imagination, via the interweave of world and mind, play a game of give-and-take with environment. Ask any courtroom lawyer, or prosecutor, and he/she will tell you about the unrealiability of memory on the part of witnesses. Ask any senior citizen who’s just visited their childhood home after decades absent from it and they’ll tell you about seeing a world smaller than the one they remember.

Not even the young, of sound mind and fit body, are wholly exempt from forgetfulness.

The discipline of psychology can go on and on about the vagaries of human memory under various circumstances.

Mind has a partial, complicated independence vis-a-vis the experiential environment, the bank that funds the cognitive capital that is our consciousness.

Now, for the hard part.

Why do I think mind is never wholly independent from our physical world?

Have I ever been counted as zero, or as two? No. I’ve only been counted as one. I am a one, an individual. My holistic oneness is my state of being. I, along with 7 billion others, am a human one. I count myself, and I am counted by others, as one.

I fight to be counted as one. That’s why, periodically, I go into the ballot box and make my marks on paper in order to be counted as one.

I have a physical life that’s always been counted as one; physical number, counting my wholeness as one, has always been with me.

At the time of my birth, I stretched my lungs and vibrated my chords and cried out as a new one, just ejected into the spectacle of life. A stillborn has no life, and has no number, not even zero.

If we are not born with number, we are not whole and, probably have no life. I say probably because some human individuals are born and do live without essential parts of themselves. However, even the most bereft of the permanently disabled count as a one. There are no partial humans. All humans are whole and complete in their oneness.

Interesting take urcarr! I posted a theory of knowledge a while back here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1
You can check the summary from Cerulean-Lawrence below my inital post, its spot on.

To quickly note the relevance here, I basically determine that the core foundation of knowledge is our ability to 'discretely experience'. Discrete is to take many and make it one. I believe it is the origin of math. Of course, though we can create a discrete identity, it must be applied to reality for confirmation. Thus while we can construct discrete abstracts or 'ones' in our head, to test the accuracy of this measure it must be applied outside of ourselves.

:up:

Thanks for the link. I’ll read them and then respond.

not a philosophical materialist/naturalist (he considered the two terms synonymous) but he was a methodological materialist/naturalist. He then went on to clearly explain the difference. So, are you declaring the same as him, in the quote above? — universeness

Yes, there's a difference ... (Btw, I adopt both positions as the latter, I think, is a function of, or entailed by, the former.)

You are a methodological naturalist and not a philosophical one as you refuse the burden of proof that is assigned if you state that there IS no existent outside of the natural universe. — universeness

As a philosophical naturalist, I speculate that

whatever else the whole of reality is, the aspect of reality that beings like ourselves are ontologically inseparable from, cognitively enabled-constrained by and that asymptotically encompasses us as the fundamental horizon of our possibie prospects I think of as nature (i.e. the universe).

Whatever is "outside of the natural universe" – supernaturalia – I further surmise natural beings like us are naturally incapable of both perceiving and cognizing (i.e. more than merely fantasizing about) and that, therefore, does not contribute anything explicable to our understanding of either nature itself or the flourishing of natural beings.

This is only a 'metaphysical supposition' – not an axiom, theorem or statement of fact – so no "burden of proof" required. :smirk:

Furthermore, consistent with this supposition, I'm also a methodological naturalist, by which I mean that

aspects of nature are assumed to be sufficient for various uses which facilitate in explaining other aspects of nature (and their dynamic relationships) to the exclusion of supernatural ideas, entities or considerations "outside of the natural universe".

Does that clarify my position?

Memory and imagination, via the interweave of world and mind, play a game of give-and-take with environment. Ask any courtroom lawyer, or prosecutor, and he/she will tell you about the unrealiability of memory on the part of witnesses. Ask any senior citizen who’s just visited their childhood home after decades absent from it and they’ll tell you about seeing a world smaller than the one they remember. — ucarr

Saying memory can be unreliable therefore numbers are physical is a poor logic. Memory is an ability of the brain which is a biological organ. Of course its capacity can degrade with ageing, and other factors. It is like saying your eyesight got bad, and cannot see the road, therefore the road doesn't exist.

Imagine the ancient primeval times when the folks had lived in the caves, and hunting for survival. They had no numbers or languages, but they must have been fine with the living just going out roaming the forest looking for the food source. I am sure they had lived like that with no major problems for thousands of years. Numbers were discovered much later in human history, and it is just a mental concept.

It is strange why on earth you keep claiming that numbers are material and physical in the OP, and I was just trying to figure out your logic for the claim.

Numbers are concept and purely mental in its nature, and that is why they are universal. If you read Kant, you might have noticed that is what A priori concepts are about. Number works with material and physical objects, but it is not the same existence in nature.

If numbers were material and physical, then your numbers and mine would be different and contingent, which would make the universally necessary concepts and knowledge (Mathematics, Geometry etc) impossible.

Saying memory can be unreliable therefore numbers are physical is a poor logic. — Corvus

I understand logic as an exacting type of continuity; it is continuity that adheres to strict rules of inference as they pertain to conjunction; disjunction; implication, mutual implication and the negation of these logical operations.

Memory is an ability of the brain which is a biological organ. — Corvus

Memory, by definition, is referential to antecedent, empirical experience internalized cognitively. Therefore, the relationship between experience of the environment and its subsequent, memory, directly entails the five logical operations listed above. Degrading memory exemplifies a breakdown in the conjunctive logical operation connecting experience of the environment to mind. This relationship lies at the center of my claim abstract math calculations of the mind are tied to experience of the environment. Were they not, the fitness of memory would not affect abstract thought. This applies no less to higher orders of abstract thought because all its levels, ultimately, reduce to experience of the environment. Mind is emergent from environment, but the two remain coupled.

Of course its capacity can degrade with ageing, and other factors. It is like saying your eyesight got bad, and cannot see the road, therefore the road doesn't exist. — Corvus

You’re uncoupling seeing the road from the road’s existence as a thing-in-itself. Your implicit assumption in lobbing this uncoupling action as a missile attacking my position is that memory of seeing the road internalized is NOT sufficient to establish the REALITY of the road as a thing-in-itself. Believing this, you attack the uncoupling of mental impression from thing-in-itself, with the former being insufficient evidence of the true state of the road as thing-in-itself. Your attack assumes as true what it tries to deny: mental impressions are not categorically separate from their antecedent material objects making up the environment of the natural world. That mental impressions of number as cognitive math in abstraction are not categorically separate from their antecedent material objects making up the environment of the natural world is specifically what I mean when I say number is physical.

Numbers are…purely mental…they are universal. — Corvus

Numbers are universal? There’s a reason why teaching math to elementary students usually involves the use of material things that can be counted like, for example, wooden blocks. Without use of countable things named in the counting process, many elementary students, when shown equations on a blackboard, would see nothing but meaningless chalk scribbles.

If numbers were material and physical, then your numbers and mine would be different and contingent, which would make the universally necessary concepts and knowledge (Mathematics, Geometry etc) impossible. — Corvus

You imply there are no logical relations between material things. The sum of my car parked on the street next to yours is no less calculable than one equation solved in our heads, respectively.

Now, to this you will say, but counting the cars is a mental operation that is separate from the cars themselves. To this I will say, see my above argument about material-things-in-themselves being sufficient to establish the reality of relationships whereas mental impressions alone are not. The upshot of this has me saying, again, mental activity is emergent from but not ultimately uncoupled from its physical substrate, material things.

To quickly note the relevance here, I basically determine that the core foundation of knowledge is our ability to 'discretely experience'. Discrete is to take many and make it one. I believe it is the origin of math. Of course, though we can create a discrete identity, it must be applied to reality for confirmation. Thus while we can construct discrete abstracts or 'ones' in our head, to test the accuracy of this measure it must be applied outside of ourselves. — Philosophim

Yes. I agree with the points you make here.

After reading your Knowledge and induction within your self-context and some of your interactions with Bob Ross, I’m willing to venture a tentative overview of a key part of your thesis. Your hierarchy of induction, which has four levels: probability, possibility, plausibility, and irrational induction, serves as a guide for passage from Distinctive Knowledge to Applicable Knowledge. Let me begin by saying these four levels, that progressively move further away from knowledge, respectively, are a quartet of inductions already known to the general public superficially. Therefore, your work details these four general precepts with a schematic overview and a collection of algorithms for rigorous calculations. Through use of your guide, members of the public can do more precise assessments of truth content at each level.

On a speculative basis, I’m wondering if your scheme can be used with logical truth tables towards rigorous assessments at each of the four levels.

Note - This note is, admittedly, a somewhat fanciful suggestion: in order to keep your quartet alliterative, consider replacing your last level, “irrational induction,” with “pretension.”

Therefore, your work details these four general precepts with a schematic overview and a collection of algorithms for rigorous calculations. Through use of your guide, members of the public can do more precise assessments of truth content at each level. — ucarr

It makes me incredibly happy to hear you understood the paper and what the goal was.

On a speculative basis, I’m wondering if your scheme can be used with logical truth tables towards rigorous assessments at each of the four levels. — ucarr

Possibly. If there is a need for it, I will.

Note - This note is, admittedly, a somewhat fanciful suggestion: in order to keep your quartet alliterative, consider replacing your last level, “irrational induction,” with “pretension.” — ucarr

Honestly I've never been satisfied with the last phrase. Originally I was going to call it faith, but I thought that word had too much baggage attached to it. I love the alliterative suggestion, but pretention has a lot of negative connotation to it. I'll think about it. :)

I understand logic as an exacting type of continuity; it is continuity that adheres to strict rules of inference as they pertain to conjunction; disjunction; implication, mutual implication and the negation of these logical operations. — ucarr

What branch of Logic is this?

We’re they not, the fitness of memory would not affect abstract thought. This applies no less to higher orders of abstract thought because all its levels, ultimately, reduce to experience of the environment. — ucarr

What do you mean by this? Could you please rephrase it?

You’re uncoupling seeing the road from the road’s existence as a thing-in-itself. — ucarr

How do you uncouple seeing the road from the road's existence as a thing-in-itself? Does the road have a thing-in-itself? Or the thing-in-itself has the road? How were they coupled in what way?

Numbers are universal? There’s a reason why teaching math to elementary students usually involves the use of material things that can be counted like, for example, wooden blocks. Without use of countable things named in the counting process, many elementary students, when shown equations on a blackboard, would see nothing but meaningless chalk scribbles. — ucarr

Is using the countable things only way teaching and learning the elementary maths?

If numbers were material and physical, then your numbers and mine would be different and contingent, which would make the universally necessary concepts and knowledge (Mathematics, Geometry etc) impossible.
— Corvus

You imply there are no logical relations between material things. The sum of my car parked on the street next to yours is no less calculable than one equation solved in our heads, respectively. — ucarr

This was not about material things. It just meant to say that you can perform math calculations and geometrical proof works without having to perceive the actual objects in front of you, which proves that numbers and geometrical axioms are A priori concepts, which are universally necessary truths.
They are universal in the way that if you calculate 5+7=12, and whoever in the world sees it will accept as a truth. You didn't need any objects to calculate the math with the numbers.

For example, if you had 5 cars parked in the front yard, and 7 cars at the back yard, then you don't need to personally visit the yard to count the cars whenever you want to know how many cars in total you own. You can do 5+7=12 in your head without seeing the cars or counting them, you get the answer. The reason you can do this is that because numbers are A priori concepts. Numbers are not material or physical.

That mental impressions of number as cognitive math in abstraction are not categorically separate from their antecedent material objects making up the environment of the natural world is specifically what I mean when I say number is physical. — ucarr

But if something is physical, what properties does it have?

What branch of Logic is this? — Corvus

If you don’t know the five logical operators, then you need to open a book of logic for beginners. That’s the book I’m studying.

Degrading memory exemplifies a breakdown in the conjunctive logical operation connecting experience of the environment to mind. This relationship lies at the center of my claim abstract math calculations of the mind are tied to experience of the environment. Were they not, the fitness of memory would not affect abstract thought. This applies no less to higher orders of abstract thought because all its levels, ultimately, reduce to experience of the environment. Mind is emergent from environment, but the two remain coupled. — ucarr

What do you mean by this? Could you please rephrase it? — Corvus

At the bank, when the teller pays out thirty dollars cash to you from your account, you get pieces of paper with numbers on them. The pieces of paper, by themselves, have no value. In the bank at Fort Knox, the U.S. gold reserve holds thirty dollars that back the value of your paper money in the form of pieces of gold, which, by definition, hold monetary value intrinsically. This is a conjunctive relationship between paper money and gold with respect to monetary value.

In a parallel relationship, when your math teacher solves an equation on the blackboard, s/he’s paying out math information to you just as the bank teller pays out paper money to you. Just as the gold in Fort Knox, by conjunction with the paper money, gives it value, the natural world of material things, by conjunction with the number signs on the blackboard, gives them value. The mind perceives countable material things in the natural world and, through the process of abstraction, a process that composites multiple experiences linked by a theme into one representative abstraction, links number signs with the property of being countable, an intrinsic property of material things.

Break this connection and number signs, like paper monies, lose their value. Just as gold funds the value of paper money, material things fund the value of number signs. For this reason, I claim number is a physical property of the natural world. Numbers, then, are, ultimately, physical.

What branch of Logic is this?
— Corvus

If you don’t know the five logical operators, then you need to open a book of logic for beginners. That’s the book I’m studying. — ucarr

I didn't ask about the five operators. There are around 50 - 60 different type of Logic schools all dealing with different type of events and contents with different forms. I asked which school of Logic was it? Anyhow, I thought it was quite odd for you to have written the operators in words rather than the symbols.

For this reason, I claim number is a physical property of the natural world. Numbers, then, are, ultimately, physical. — ucarr

Money can lose its value from many different factors. It has nothing to do with breaking the connection between the paper money and numbers. Your arguments seem to have deep flaws and don't add up at all.