When you are just born, you had no knowledge of numbers, hence you couldn’t count. You went to school, learnt how to count.
You don’t need relation between the apples when you saw them. You just know how to count when you saw them.
You can count with no need of relation. You can count the apples. But you can also count oranges and pears as how many fruits you have in the bowl. Why do you need relation for counting? You just match the numbers to the objects you are counting as you see them, and keep adding until counting is finished, and you get the total number of fruits or apples you have.
You look at the world and see 6 stones. Is it really true that you know a fact about the world, or is it the case that you know a fact about how your mind makes sense of the world?
Suppose numbers only exist in the mind and not in the world. The mind would still perceive 6 stones, because it is the mind that can discover a relation in the mind between separate things.
Suppose numbers exist in both the mind and the world. The mind would still perceive 6 stones, because it is the mind that can discover a relation in the world between separate things.
So regardless of whether numbers do or do not exist in the world, the mind will still perceive 6 stones.
The question is, given that the mind will perceive 6 stones regardless of whether numbers do or do not exist in the world, how can the human ever know whether numbers do or do not exist in the world?
How can you ever know that numbers are a fact in the world?
If we could not perceive relations between things, we could not perceive the numbers of things.
Suppose the human mind was not able to perceive temporal or spatial relations?
The human would not have the concept of past and future, left and right, up and down.
Without the concept of left and right, the human would have no concept of numbers, as the concept of number depends on an awareness of spatial relations.
We can only know that there are two things if we are aware of a spatial relation between them.
I didn’t say you cannot perceive relations. Of course you can. But you don’t need relations to count apples. You learn how to count, and you can count anything without thinking about relations.
Perhaps this illustrates the point that if we had no language, not only would there be no “apples”, there would be no “2” and there would be no “2 apples”
If there will be apples they will be known to us as the something they will be called by us, making the statement self-contradictory, violating the original language-less condition.
“If we had no language” was a hypothesis which was blatantly untrue, hence it had to be pointed out, and reminded for the openly unrealistic case. We have language, and apples do exist.
We are human. In our universe it exists. In the orignial form of universe probably it does not. or it does. Or both. Original form of universe is far away from our cognition such as rationality and logic. So my opinion is there are two filters in our cognition. First one is the sense, Second one is the logic. First one’s limit is strictly boundering existence and non-existence, and Second one’s limit is quantom superposition or something, which both exists and not exists. Still it is a state in a logical form. I suppose original universe is not in a logical form, and it is in a thing that we cannot even describe with our languages which requires basic logics
I imagine that we both agree that numbers are real in the mind, in that we say “numbers are real”.
I agree that real numbers in the mind serve many useful purposes.
Numbers can be instantiated in the physical world. For example, the number 2 can be instantiated as 2 stones.
My question is, if numbers were real in the world independent of any mind, what purpose would they serve?
If numbers were real in the world independent of any mind, their only purpose would be to be instantiated, and if their only purpose was to be instantiated, then real numbers would serve no useful purpose.
By Occam’s Razor, if real numbers serve no useful purpose in the world, then why hypothesise their existence?
It sounds like for Pinter there are two ontological realms, that of nature and that of consciousness. For Husserl, there is no natural world already assumed (matter, sunlight, stars and galaxies) to then appear or not appear in consciousness . Since all these are constituted in consciousness as ‘nature’, it makes no sense to say, as Pinter does, that this nature remains undisturbed other than losing their shape and color.
What exists is a quantum system that evolves deterministically in a manner that is describable as a Schroedinger equation (assuming the theory is correct).
A Platonist would say the wave function exists, just as they’d say 45 degree angles exist, or E=MC^2 exists. But the fact that we use Platonic terminology when discussing abstractions does not entail these abstractions existing independently of the states of affairs that exhibit them. It’s unclear what you’re arguing. Are you just arguing that Platonism is coherent? If your position is that there are compelling reasons to accept it, you need more support than reference to common parlance.
Non-sequitur. Abstractions are not illusions. They represent properties that existing objects have.
I have brown hair. Brownness is not an illusion; it’s a property my hair has, and it’s a property of many other things. You may choose to believe that brownness has independent existence, but you can’t claim it’s necessarily so, and your arguments (so far) don’t make a compelling case. That’s because you haven’t considered the alternative: that properties exist within the objects that exhibit them and not independently. I can’t prove this; it’s logically possible brownness exists independently. But it seems a simpler ontology to have brownness existing (exclusively) as a property. Similarly with equations, as properties of the systems whose evolution is describable with an equation.
Please state this expanded definition of “real”. It’s not actually clear that you’re arguing for platonism, because you seem to be suggesting some sort of distinction between “real” and “exists”. So explain exactly what position you’re defending.
There is a big difference between a non-reductive physicalist framework and a reductive one. The latter shares with Platonism the problem of what to say about those things that it denies the existence of. So Plato excludes (rather cautiously) that the world of change that we live in, (because change is impossible), but has to explain that the things we appear to perceive are shadows, illusions. Which concedes that they exist.
It seems to me that any ontology that denies the existence of some kind or class or type of object will have to explain the illusion that such things exist. Which will concede that they do exist. The only hope is to admit that they exist, but that they are not what they seem. But that’s an entirely different kind of issue.
I’m suggesting that a hospitable ontology that allows the existence of various kinds of objects is the only coherent possibility.
Does that address your question at all?
Yes. I don’t think there is much to get excited about in those cases. But dragons, winged horses and so on are more tricky. To call something a mythical being is to reduce it to somethings else. Dragons are an illusion created by the stories about dragons.
I wouldn’t want to convey that impression, but then, it is hard to convey the meaning of his book in snippets. His book is subject of a previous Philosophy Today essay of mine. But it’s not a philosophy book. Pinter was a retired maths emeritus, his other publications were in geometry and algebra (@jgill knew the name when I first mentioned him on the previous forum.) This book was his swansong, published in his eighties as a kind of personal project, drawing together ideas and research from cognitive science, physics, philosophy and psychology. It barely got noticed, I guess because he’s not considered part of the philosophy profession. The book is not billed as a book about philosophical idealism, but many of his findings can be interpreted that way. In my view Mind and Cosmic Order is thoroughly compatible with enactivism and phenomenology generally.
Going back to your previous post:
Agree! Note that I quoted the Husserl passage in the context of @Scorpion’s question as to whether ‘consciousness is something that exists’. That passage I quoted makes the point that ‘treating consciousness as part of the world’ is a mistake, or a reification. So my argument is that consciousness something that exists in the objective sense. But neither the excerpt I quoted, nor the OP, is defending the idea of consciousness as a self-existent entity ‘standing behind’ or apart from. (That said, there is a way to differentiate consciousness from experience, but discussion of that is not relevant here).
The entire essay hinges on the distinction between what is real and what exists! That is the whole point. It can be read at this link. If you have any questions about the way I draw the distinction, I’ll be happy to respond.
The major point is that in Plato there are degrees of realness. In Republic Book VI, we find the Analogy of the Divided Line (towards the end of the book), in which Socrates explains to Glaucon four modes of cognition, each corresponding to objects possessing different degrees of realness. Ordered from lowest to highest, these are imagination, belief, understanding, and intelligence.
Imagination or conjecture is the perception of shadows, reflections and illusions e.g. mistaking a rope for a snake (eikasia, illusion). Then there is knowledge of physical things ‘which cast shadows’ — this is belief (pistis), corresponding to our everyday dealings with the sensible world—the level occupied by what Plato calls hoi polloi (“the many”).
The knowledge possessed by mathematicians (dianoia) is of a higher order:
“They construct their arguments with an eye to the square itself, and the diameter itself, and not the one in the diagram. The same applies to the other instances. They take the objects which are fabricated or drawn, objects which have shadows, and images in water, and use them in turn as images, seeking to discern the entities themselves, which may only be discerned through thought.” ~ 510e - 511e
The ‘entities themselves which may only be discerned with thought’ are what we call ‘forms’ or ‘ideas’ for instance ‘the idea of the circle’ or ‘the idea of the triangle’. These are what I am saying are ‘real but not existent’ - because they’re independent of any specific representation of them.
But the’ highest form of knowledge is ‘noesis’, intellectual insight (compare “noumenal”) which is insight into ‘what is’:
it also goes on from hypothesis to an un-hypothesised first principle, and based upon forms themselves, it conducts its approach through them, without the images used before.
The argument in the OP is based on recognising a simplified form of these distinctions, in that it posits the knowledge of phenomena (=existents) as corresponding to what Plato categorises as the lower half of the Divided Line and knowledge of mathematical truths as ‘higher’ (although still short of ‘the highest’). But then, the whole idea of ‘higher knowledge’ is rejected by the dominant empiricist outlook, which has to anchor everything it considers ‘valid knowledge’ against sense-impressions. Hence the quote from Smithsonian Magazine referring to math as ‘something existing outside time and space’ making empiricists nervous!
I missed this point the last time around. After your mention I went back and read it. Husserl’s position is one that I can relate to. It might have something to do with the aboutness of consciousness.
Where do simulations fall into this discussion? A simulated nuclear war presents simulated danger within its simulation. It exists, but it can’t be real, can it?
I say it exists because we can truthfully say, “There exists a simulated danger.”
But it cannot be real because it’s contradictory to say, “This simulated danger is real.” Unless, of course, we say, “This simulated danger is really simulated.”
It does! It’s very much a matter of perspective. Modern culture instinctively seeks to objectify anything that it wishes to understand. What is that? How does it work? Where is it? But there’s a sense in which this can’t be applied to “consciousness” per se, because “consciousness” is what is asking the questions.
This is very much in line with the approach of phenomenology. Husserl singles out René Descartes ‘cogito ergo sum’ (‘I think therefore I am’) as a milestone in modern philosophy, because Descartes realises the indubitable nature of first–person consciousness.
But he also criticizes Descartes for objectifying consciousness:
Descartes had correctly identified the ego as ‘the greatest of all enigmas’ (C 80; K 82) but unfortunately went on to misconstrue it in naturalistic fashion as an objective substance in the world. Descartes, as Husserl puts it in his Cartesian Meditations, treated this ego as a ‘little tag-end of the world’ (ein kleines Endchen der Welt, as he says in CM § 10, p. 24; Hua I 63)—a real entity rather than as the condition for the possibility of unified experience and as a domain of meaning-constitution. Or, as Husserl puts it in the Crisis, Descartes treated the pure subject or ego as a ‘residuum’ (Residuum, C 79; K 81) left in the objective world ~ Dermot Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, An Introduction
Of course, consciousness can be studied objectively, via the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. But that is a different undertaking to the discipline of phenomenology and philosophical understanding generally. (This is a facet of Chalmer’s ‘facing up to the problem of consciousness’.)
