the answer to the question as posed is probably Kant. — Isaac

Cool.

So likewise, if I may — Isaac

While accommodating the fairness of the request, I deny the expense.

Got something this virgoyankeebabyboomer don’t gotta pay for?

As for QED generally, it wouldn't surprise me if it proved crucial — Kenosha Kid

Absolutely, but it remains.....crucial for what? It’s quite irrelevant what the math entails, just as it is equally irrelevant what a moldy tome on metaphysics entails, the point being, the average smuck on the street will most likely throw down the math, yet give the book at least a cursory read before throwing it.

Then it merely becomes a matter of....why? For which there is a rather obvious answer.

But you've made an unwarranted jump from something which is useless to me (on account of my ignorance) to something's being useless sensu lato. — Isaac

Oh no, you don’t!!! I know you. No need to over-analyze such a simple mental exercise.

Peruse this, peruse that, judge degree of explanatory content relative to a given condition.

Well...there ya go. Wasn’t that complicated after all, was it. As a legitimate survey participant, you’ve concluded the first is a model for the absolutely useless, the second is a model for guesswork. And by admitting to the possible commission of your own guesswork, you’d tacitly acceded to the second-order usefulness of the one in form if not in content, over the absolute uselessness of the other.

Well done.

Welcome back, by the way. Where ya been the last few weeks?

What measure of utility would you want to use? — Isaac

It’s not complicated; each participant answers as he sees fit.

Configuration of neurons are brain states, but changes in neuron configurations are mental states?
— Mww

Mental process, not mental state. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, sorry, my bad. C & P, write, edit, (Invisible Fence guy), edit, (Non-Stop Talker neighbor), edit (dinner time), edit, post......I lost track of the original.
—————

It's convenient to think of them as physical processes, but in fact they're just terms in an infinite sum that describes a physical process. — Kenosha Kid

Ya know what? I’d like to take a survey, of people in general, after a quick perusal of this:

https://web2.ph.utexas.edu/~vadim/Classes/2012f/vertex.pdf

.....followed by a quick perusal of this:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4280

.....with the survey question being, which one of these is the least useless, with respect to a theoretical description of goings-on between the ears of the human rational animal.

I'm not of the 'mind is an illusion'/'consciousness is an illusion'/'qualia are illusions' camp of physicalists. — Kenosha Kid

Cool.

Mind comes under that: configuration of the neurons in the brain (brain states) and changes in those configurations (mental processes). — Kenosha Kid

Configuration of neurons are brain states, but changes in neuron configurations are mental states? Why isn’t the configuration a mental state? And why isn’t a change of configuration a brain process? I don’t see how it’s valid to call one this and the other than, merely because of a change. Seems like a few steps missing, to me.
—————

The Principle of Complementarity?
— Mww

I'm guessing this is an example rather than a definition. — Kenosha Kid

Yeah, pretty much. Up/down, right/left, right/wrong, ad infinitum. Physical/non-physical. In the human cognitive system, for any possible conception, the negation of it is given immediately. Whatever a thing is, its negation is not that. Whatever physicalism is, non-physicalism is not that.

Non-physical means non-real, basically. — Kenosha Kid

Yep, sufficient to explain why non-physicalism makes little sense as a concept. How would non-physicalism be studied that isn’t already studied under metaphysics? Leave the real out there, bring the valid in here, let it go at that, I say. That it seems real in here is still just that....a seeming. Talk of the real is empirical, talk of the valid is only logical.
————-

Isn’t a single Feynman diagram depicting the interaction of one electron with one positron, or the interaction of two electrons, exact? In what way is it not?

Ok. Thanks.

Are ATP molecules considered major neurotransmitters?

I only know enough about this stuff to get myself in trouble if I talk too much.

I believe this thing is on my right side.
I then have a reason to believe that same thing is on my left side.
It is not true that I must now doubt the thing is on my right side, although I might.
It is true I cannot say I know the thing is on my right or on my left.

Descartes 101: that which can NOT be doubted, must be true. You are saying for that which can be doubted, its negation must be true, which does not hold.

Kant 101: no belief is ever sufficient for knowledge. You have no logical authority to claim affirmative or negative knowledge when given only reasons or no reasons to believe. So in effect, under the given conditions, you are correct in saying you cannot claim to know you are not a fool, but you would be equally correct in claiming you cannot know you are.

“...quantum coherence lives as long as 300 femtoseconds at biologically relevant temperatures...”

Support for Penrose/Hameroff, “Orch-OR”, 1998, rejection of refutation by Tegmark, 2007?

I thought Tegmark nailed it, but apparently he didn’t. Our mental imaging is pretty damn quick, but still........femtoseconds??? YIKES!!!

I see both the white and black triangles on the screen. Both triangles have portions of their boundaries missing. — Janus

Technically, we can’t, because they aren’t there. Reason constructs them for us, probably just so we don’t waste time trying to figure out what the picture might represent if the oddball stuff wasn’t consolidated into something residing in intuition already.

Classic transcendental illusion: reason informs us a priori that a triangle is and can only be a very particular enclosed space, then turns right around and informs us a posteriori of an unenclosed space which we immediately intuit as a triangle. I mean, even the three little black pointy configurations aren’t enclosed sufficiently to form a triangle.

Not only that, but notice that we don’t intuit those things that look like cheese wheels with a wedge taken out, as fully formed circles. Yet we intuit an undefined empty space as a fully formed triangle.

AARRRRGGGGGG!!!!!!

If there is no reason to believe that I am a fool, it means I know I am not a fool. — Alkis Piskas

Since when has a mere contingent cognition (belief) justified a certain cognition (knowledge)?

(Sigh)

At last. Someone realized M was there.

non-physical doesn't make sense as a concept — Kenosha Kid

Non-physicalism is contended. — Kenosha Kid

Cool. If you’d said “non-physicalism doesn’t make sense as a concept” to begin with, I would’ve agreed and had nothing else to talk about. So....thanks. I guess.
————-

Supervenience is a post-modern analytic construct...
— Mww

Intrigued, but pretty sure this is entirely untrue. — Kenosha Kid

I should have stipulated “(...) construct...” in philosophical discourse, re: Morgan, 1923, in conjunction with the early 20th century emergence debates with respect to consciousness, behaviorism and mental activities generally. I always thought of it as a way out of the effect/affect dualism. Another dumb-ass joke played by the OLP of the day, and considering the word isn’t used these days as Morgan implied in his.
————-

But precisely because the mind is physical...... — Kenosha Kid

Errr.....what?????

Am I going to be embarrassed in the morning? — “Kenosha Kid

I should hope so.
—————-

Which is impossible, because it is the case that he must necessarily employ the very things he is attempting to revoke.
— Mww

This assumes what it seeks to prove. — Kenosha Kid

It would, except for the contextual qualifier, i.e., “....given a pursuant methodology...”, in which the necessary employment (of the categories) is established.

You should have no issues with the fact all theories are only logically proved when empirical validation is impossible.
————-

How would one define or identify the non-physical?
— Tom Storm

I've been trying to get an answer to this for years. — Kenosha Kid

The Principle of Complementarity?

Ok. Thanks.

non-physical doesn't make sense as a concept — Kenosha Kid

......but rather, makes sense as that which.....

either interacts with the physical, in which case it's physical, or it does not, in which case it cannot make itself known. — Kenosha Kid

....exemplified by....

it is simply that which does not supervene on or is not supervened on by physical reality. — Kenosha Kid

How can it be said something doesn’t interact with the physical, if that something hasn’t made sense as a concept? That the mind is a valid concept is given merely from the thought of it, and all valid concepts make sense in relation to something, which we can see in the construction of syllogisms including it in a premise. Which is, of course, the only possible way to even talk about it in the first place. But this still leaves the question of whether or not the mind and other non-physical conceptions make themselves known, an admirable subtlety on your part, I must say.

Supervenience is a post-modern analytic construct, which is irrelevant in epistemic methodologies in which “mind” doesn’t hold any power. In such methodologies, there are pure conceptions that make themselves known, represented as “the categories”, not of mind, but of reason alone. And to substitute reason for mind, as equally non-physical entities is absurd, in that pure practical reason can indeed supervene on physical reality, re: morality.

I submit to you, Good Sir, that you have already imbued your comments with a conception that has made itself known to your thinking, if not to your words. You have attributed “quality” to the concept of mind, as the only possible means for you to state what it is or is not, and what it can or cannot do. How would you suppose, guess, want, need or just think any of that, without some ground by which to make those judgements, when experience offers no help?

So....it is at least logically consistent, that “quality” is a concept that makes sense (the absence of which is impossible), is not itself physical (the objects to which it relates, are), does not interact with the physical (only attributes relative degree), and most certainly makes itself known (as a necessary condition pursuant to a given methodology).

But ya know what? The physicalist doesn’t have to show such non-physical conceptions make no sense, or don’t exist, or anything else. All he has to do, is show how the human cognitive system can operate in its historically recorded functionality, without them. Which is impossible, because it is the case that he must necessarily employ the very things he is attempting to revoke. He must, then, rely on knowledge he doesn’t have, with respect to a kind of technology he wouldn’t know how to use, for experiments he doesn’t know how to formulate, culminating in results he wouldn’t understand.

In other words, he can explain nothing the metaphysician hasn’t already.

(Mic drop....exit stage right)

You’ve used “different aspects of the same thing” several times, but without exposition of what the same thing would be. Is it spatial/temporal relations? But then, of what are they aspects?

By definition in physics, and general logical inference in metaphysics, it seems unlikely for physical and non-physical conditions to have a condition in common, which would tend to solve the paradox if such should be the case, but perhaps at the expense of necessarily creating another.

Just wondering if you had something in mind......

I count perception as the act or process of something being perceived. So, for me it is a cognitive act. — Janus

Maybe. But even science acknowledges that the energy input to the sense organs is not the same kind of energy output. From that it follows that upstream is a physical act or process, but on the downstream it is a cognitive act or process. But then, of course, the physicalist says even if the output energy is of a different kind, it is still energy. To which the metaphysician rejoins, output energy must then be merely representational of input energy.....and the war continues unabated.
—————

once we have perceived something it has become an object; something more than a mere phenomenon. — Janus

I would agree, in that what we perceive is an object, but further stipulate that which we do not perceive as still a possible object. Otherwise we are left with the absurdity that anything we don’t perceive isn’t an object, and that inevitably reduces to the mandate for our creation of reality, necessarily. Might be better to say that while it is true what we perceive is an object, but it doesn’t become an object merely upon once being perceived.

Following you by the letters, yes, what we perceive becomes an object.....but only FOR US. This permits what we perceive to have always been an object, even antecedent to its perception. Also by the letters, yes, objects are more than mere phenomena, insofar as objects are naturally complete in themselves, whereas phenomena are incomplete by our own logical inference.

I do understand that phenomena are generally taken to mean all that is external to us, of which we as yet have no knowledge, which is, as you say, that which impinges on the senses. The contradiction only arises when one thinks the impingement is the sensation, but also says sensation is not phenomenon. So the one contradicts the other, or the one or the other contradicts itself.
—————

Matter of taste, indeed. The object though, is to find common taste. People been trying for thousands of years....ain’t quite there yet.

Forest/trees.

“...We find, too, that those who are engaged in metaphysical pursuits are far from being able to agree among themselves, but that, on the contrary, this science appears to furnish an arena specially adapted for the display of skill or the exercise of strength in mock-contests—a field in which no combatant ever yet succeeded in gaining an inch of ground, in which, at least, no victory was ever yet crowned with permanent possession....”

Makes no difference.

Hard-core physicalist/scientist = S
Regular dude = R
Metaphysician = M

R: I think.
S: No you don’t. That’s the brain at work.
R: How does the brain work so it makes me think I think?
S: Damned if I know, but it couldn’t be any other way.
R: Oh, so...when you figure it all out, does that mean I won’t be able to claim I think?
S: Hell, you can claim anything you want, but you’d be wrong. All physical stuff.
R: Hmmmm.....I think I’ll just go ahead and disregard all that and just be me.
S: Fine. Guy can think whatever he likes, far as I’m concerned.
R: Wait. What? You just said I don’t think, it’s all brain work.
S: What I meant was, if push comes to shove, it all boils down to brain work.
R: So what you’re really saying is, before it all boils down, I actually am right in claiming I think.
S: Well...you’re right enough in claiming you think you’re thinking, because you don’t know any better, you don’t know the facts of the matter.
R: So if I go my entire life without knowing the facts of the matter, I can say I spent my whole life thinking.
S: I suppose. Like I said....we really don’t know how the brain works.
R: Then you’re no use to me at all, then, are you? Except for toaster ovens and penicillin. Credit where credit is due, I always say. Let’s get a coffee, bug the barista for a minute.
S: Fine. You’re buyin’.

John is justified in believing that the cat is on the mat.
John's belief that the cat is on the mat, is justified.

What's the difference? — Wheatley

There are two differences. One is the error of equivocation. John is the subject of the statement in the first, belief is the subject in the second, but the implication is that justification is the same for both. The informal fallacy lays in the implication that John is constructing a judgement which may or may not be true, insofar as the cat may or may not be on the mat, in the first statement. The implication carried by the second statement, on the other hand, is that John’s constructed judgement is in fact true.

The second difference is the conditioning of each statement by time. The one is a current judgement process of John’s believing, the other the judgement process for John’s belief is presupposed.

Easy-peasy.

When is a belief not justified? — Wheatley

When it contradicts experience.

When are you not justified then? — Wheatley

You being justified or not, is very different than a belief being justified or not. The thread concerns beliefs, not the holder of them.

To me it sounds a bit authoritarian, I have to justify whatever I believe — Wheatley

If you believe, you’ve already justified. Of course it’s authoritarian; you’re it.

Good refresher article. Thanks.
(Sidebar, of little or no import: right across the inlet from Harris Island, is the 1718 Sayward-Wheeler House, a colonial mansion/museum. Ancestry, perhaps? Dunno.)

What do we as Everydayman gain, by knowing of the extremely large or the extremely small? Nothing whatsoever, I say, which reduces those sciences to mere interest. That we are part of the large and the small is a part of us, is given, but quite irrelevant to the general public.

Case in point....I read somewhere, given the double slit and the extension of it to massive objects like toaster ovens and such, the dynamics of the experiment would have to be of the scale which makes them impossible to enact. The dimensions of the slit, in relation to the dimensions of the electron that passes through it, scaled up to the dimensions of dump trucks as passing objects, just to prove the invariant validity of a scientific principle......ain’t happenin’.

That, and spooky action at a distance is up to, what......34 miles now? Fascinating, indeed, but still.......

Sum over histories, while rationally sustainable, presupposes a possibility all objects of experience are prohibited from manifesting. Which reduces to....for that which is impossible to experience, to that is permitted its own laws.

There’s always gonna be a “but”, no matter what, isn’t there. Seems like that’s what we do best.

Ontological democracy — Janus

Oh, I like that. Yours?

To be sure becoming aware of them does entail something of construction, but that process of conceptual construction is not, and cannot be, conscious. — Janus

Perception informs of a general affect on sense, sensation informs which sense is affected. Both of which are sufficient for being aware of the presence of objects. But neither tells us what is affecting, nothing is yet being constructed, conceptually nor intuitively. The cognitive system that does the constructing, is not yet in play.

From the physical point of view, all that is between the external world out there, and the brain in here. The eyes, ears, skin, etc., don’t tell us anything at all about what is affecting them, only that there is something.
—————

what we sense are phenomena; light, texture, sound, taste, smell, mass, etc., and from that "buzzing, blooming confusion" we pick out objects by becoming aware of them. — Janus

If I get stung on the back of my neck, where’s the buzzing blooming confusion of phenomena in that? There is only one, the sting. I never taste the sting, I never smell it, it is not lit. The confusion resides solely in the object that stung me in accordance with a particular kind of sensation, which relates my confusion to some unknown object, and it is a phenomenon to me for that reason. I know I’ve been stung, but I may not know what stung me.

I can see the legitimacy of saying we sense phenomena, in effect, that’s exactly what we do. But I do not grant legitimacy to the notion that phenomena are sensations. Phenomena are that to which the sensations belong, not that that’s what they are. It may at first appear non-contradictory to say we experience smells, but if that were the case, we should be able to experience smell without ever having perceived anything with the nose. I can’t do that, myself, and I suspect no human has that capacity. I can easily think occasions where I smell bacon, say, but I cannot actually smell bacon unless there actually is bacon readily available, affecting my nose.
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"Conceptions, fully abstracted notions, ideas" are not "things we think but never perceive", but simply another kind of phenomena we do perceive or more accurately enact in the act of thinking ( if it is a conscious act, at least). So, that enaction may be either conscious or unconscious (subconscious). — Janus

Are you saying justice is not a fully abstracted notion, and that justice is a kind of phenomenon we perceive? That we perceive justice in that which is just? While that may be true, it is so iff we already know what justice is, in order for that which we perceive as just, conforms to it necessarily. Justice must be antecedent to all its instances, and that which is antecedent to all instances of anything at all, is thought. So yes, conception is an enactment of thinking, but it is not a different kind of phenomenon.

Food for thought: subconscious enactment is imagination, and, no thought can be subconscious.

I see where you’re coming from, but if we look closer at how we might do what you say is being done, we might find it doesn’t hold as well as it first appears. Of course, you might have a better methodology than I, so, there is that......

1610......Whoa!! Something really weird about Saturn.
1612......HOLY _____!!!! (Sorry, Lord) There’s something REALLY weird about Saturn.
1613......Man, I ain’t diggin’ this chit. That 1610 thing about Saturn, that disappeared two years later? Well, guess what. It’s back.
1655......Hey, dudes!!! That thing with Saturn? We’re looking at rings!! Yea, that’s right, detached....er....stuff!!!
1659........Rings is right, but that mystery of 1612 is solved, cuz we’re just looking at them edge-on every so often. Phases of the moon kinda thing, doncha know.
1787.....Yeah, well, guess what. Rings? Yeah, but there’s a whole bunch of ‘em. All just....like....there. Not stuck to anything, not flyin’ off, not doing much of anything but throw shadows.
—————

Prussian guy comes along, says some Irish guy says God did everything, and accedes that maybe he did. So God put that stuff around Saturn just to give some Italian guy something to look at. But then he thinks maybe it doesn’t matter who or what did what was seen about Saturn, it is reasonable that Saturn always did what we see it doing, long before we ever noticed it. Otherwise, he continues (yaddayaddayadda), Saturn had no handles at all until Italian guy invented his looking device, which means God put the handles there simultaneously with being looked at, per Irish guy’s esse est percipi, which means God knew all about Italian guy thinking about, then creating his telescope, per the Biblical account. Possible, sure. It is God after all.

But still, he thinks, that’s hardly a thoroughly natural way to do things, disregarding he’s never seen a platypus, seeing as how Nature shouldn’t be inclined to cater to those guys, plus an English guy, plus a Dutch guy, plus a quasi-French guy, plus a really French guy, just because they-all questioned Her inner workings, all with respect to the exact same thing. If that were true, and She did so cater to all those questioners, each would see a completely different Saturn according to a corresponding idea in the mind of God to which Nature must adhere, and all different from the farmer out in the fields who doesn’t question anything, but sees merely a spot of light in the night sky. Now we got maybe a whole basketfull of Saturns, and that just seems awful stupid. Much better to say there’s rather many ways for us to see the one thing, whatever the mind of God or Nature is doing.

To follow up on that gem of rationality, and which makes more sense actually, he then suggests, Prussian guy does, even if God did it a long time ago, let’s suppose the rings had been in existence as long as Saturn itself, which makes them, as far as he’s concerned anyway, even if at one time mere ideas in the mind of God, per Irish guy, existing long before they happened to be perceived after the perception and hence the existence of Saturn itself. And if that is the case, we can safely say Saturn, rings and all, once perceived as merely different from stars but subsequently perceived as different than stars and at the same time also different from other planets, is a thing all its own, or, a thing-in-itself. A thing that is as it is, whether we know of it, its differences, or its parts, or not. Then he goes ahead and spends ten years and fully 1700 total pages justifying it, consequently destroying the esse est percipi establishment.

True story. Saturn’s rings were just another discovery in the 1610 natural philosophy domain, but blew up the 1781 metaphysical philosophy domain and from which it thankfully never recovered. Big whoop, things exist. Yea. Real things out there, and even some real things waaaaayyyyy out there. Matters not a whit that some real things can’t be touched as can a banana or a cannon ball, all it needs be is not a measly idea in the mind. We don’t care that things exist near or far; we want to know what things exist as, and the things out there can never give that to us.

And the beat goes on...........

nowadays what is understood to be matter-energy, is the only real subject — Wayfarer

Subject?

“....We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own....”
(Arthur Eddington, in Quantum Physics and Ultimate Reality—Mystical Writings of Great Physicists, Michael Green, 2013)

the formulation 'objects presented to consciousness' is not any more conventional than any other — Janus

No, it isn’t any more conventional; it is nonetheless conventional. Unqualified, stand-alone objects, as such, are conventionally that which is in space and time.

Of course we call the objects presented to consciousness 'phenomena'. — Janus

I don’t. Objects aren’t presented to consciousness; phenomena are but phenomena aren’t objects. Objects are presented to sensibility....the faculties for physical impressions, the senses.

What I haven’t said anything about, the other half of it, is the a priori presentation to consciousness of mere conceptions, fully abstracted notions, ideas....the things we think but never perceive.

If you’d said representations of objects, as phenomena, I would have agreed, but that’s still only half of it.

As far as being parsimonious.....ehhhh, sometimes we need to be down and dirty, not merely conventional.

That just has to be the absolute best one-liner in TPF history.

Wouldn't it be more parsimonious (....) to simply say that cognition is presentation? — Janus

Depends. Presentation of what, to what?

Don’t know, don’t care. I have this life or I apparently have this life. Either way, this life is mine.

The world isn’t mathematical; we are.
— Mww

I think that's an artificial distinction. The point is that we can predict, ascertain, control, discover, all through the application of mathematics. — Wayfarer

Ok, fine. Artificial distinction because I was speaking euphemistically. We aren’t mathematical, exactly. Instead, because we do all those things you listed, and we do them through application of a logical system, then it follows we must be imbued with that very logical system. How can we apply that which we haven’t already authorized, and how can we authorize that which we haven’t already determined as sufficient?

I’m going to maintain......via cognitive prejudice, I readily admit......that the mathematical nature of the domain of phenomena is not given to us in the observations of it. Relations between members of the domain, or between its members and its investigators, are given, and that by which relations are comprehensible to the investigators, cannot be in the relations themselves, but derived solely from the method for understanding them.
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Put another way, it's not just how 'the mind' works, but that there's a corresponding order in nature. — Wayfarer

Yeah....that’s the ubiquitous on-the-other-hand, and the bane of metaphysics in general. Is it right because we think it, or is it and we think it rightly. The only possible solution to the epistemological dichotomy must arise from a critique of the commonality, which is “we think”, but when the prime of metaphysical reductionism is found regarding it alone, it turns out not to apodeitically solve anything at all.

As Michael Schenker, UFO, “Rock Bottom”, 1974, so fondly laments.....where do we go from here?

Existence seems a more primordial concept, then, and something out of which all other human activities emerge — Xtrix

Agreed, and is an extension of Kant's argument by which Descartes’ thesis is deemed “problematic idealism”, in which “existence” as a predicate is at least redundant, hence gives no support to the subject. From this, and if “I think” is given, then “I am” is also given immediately from it. The only reason “I” am is because “I” think, so there is no need for “I am” iff “I think”.

But in Descartes’ time, the “I” that thinks was not given, and had to be proved as a valid conceptual presence, yet separate and distinct from the material realm of things of sense. So, yes, existence is a much more primordial concept.....in fact, it is its own category, given necessarily a priori in human cognition....but Descartes, even if he knew of Aristotelian categories, still needed to prove the existence of a certain thing. In hindsight, we tend to attribute to Descartes a mistake, but in his time, he didn’t commit one.

Whatever possessed you to revive this, a year after its demise? Always an interesting topic, but still....

Addendum:
Scrolling back to gather groundwork, I see it is your thread. Which serves as the best reason there is for reviving it. My bad....sorry.

I mean, we can't see UV waves for one but we're still affected by them. — khaled

Ahhhh, yes, I see what you mean. Can’t argue with that.

Interesting article.

You are more well-versed than I, so I’m not about to bore you to tears with stuff you already know, or infuse you with metaphysical precepts you already hold. You’ve said it yourself, and I agree without equivocation....science has ostracized the subject, and doesn’t even realize the fault in doing so.

So briefly.....

For us, the only certainty is logical, and because mathematics is a form of logic, we are assured mathematics itself is certain, which in turn assures us that which is grounded in mathematics is certain.

I don’t find the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural world remarkable at all, because it is a logical system investigating it mathematically. The world isn’t mathematical; we are. If experience isn’t contradicted by observation, and observation is explained mathematically, then the system is justified.