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this is a 'third realm' strawman, the parent simply said mathematics.. you incited platonism still, i hold it would be more 'hard to defend' abstract concepts

this is a 'third realm' strawman, the parent simply said mathematics.. you incited platonism still, i hold it would be more 'hard to defend' abstract concepts fail to exist.. regardless of 'where' beyond the scope of humanity or human curiosity, look at chemistry the universe is rather predicated on relations to the abstract concept of quantity and those distinguishing identities exist within a hadron and in far flung galaxies

danbruc 10y ago
I said Platonism because that is the point of view that mathematical objects are real. As far as I can tell no other point of view asserts the fundamental reality of mathematical objects. And just because I am not absolutely sure I said »a form of Platonism« which I would admittedly better have worded as »something like Platonism«. To you point about quantity. There are grains of sand. Does that mean that there are also numbers? I obviously argue no. You have to take some of the grains and set them aside to count them. You have to split your pile into two and recombine the two piles to add them. You have to line the grains up in order to number them. By itself there are only grains of sand, mathematics only emerges when you impose additional structure on them and perform operations with them. There is no addition in a thousand grains of sand, it is the act of separating and combining them. Or at least imagining to do so. You can build a huge part of mathematics on top of set theory but that does not mean that all of mathematics is already contained in every large enough set of things, at least not in any meaningful way. Only when you decide what to with the things in the set, what kind of manipulations you are willing to consider, that the structures mathematics describes emerge. And while physics looks very mathematically, I see no problem with this. The most simple rules can give rise to staggering complex math. I find it much more reasonable to think - gross oversimplification ahead - that photons travel in straight lines in a three-dimensional space and therefore the electric field follows an inverse-square law instead of assuming that the universe already contained the mathematics needed to deal with electric fields. There are just photons moving around, only after deciding how to measure distances and to look at spherical shells around charges we find a particularly simple way to describe electrical fields. But we could have made a lot of different choices leading to wildly different descriptions.
- justifier 10y ago
  > To you point about quantity. There are grains of sand. Does that mean that there are also numbers? I obviously argue no. You have to take some of the grains and set them aside to count them. You have to split your pile into two and recombine the two piles to add them. You have to line the grains up in order to number them. numbers exist without sand, sand needs numbers to exist you can count apples instead of sand yet physical phenomena, such as the formation of sand or apples, depends on quantity chemistry shows that how many particles in what structure determine how it interacts physically with its environment a hadron with three quarks is a baryon, a hadron with a different number is fundamentally different
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Numbers need a reduction of reality to exist. There is an infinite number between 0.1 and 0.00000000000000000000000001 The only reason we can grable with these things in mathematics is because we are conscious minds who create symbolic meaning. There aren't any numbers "out there". "Out there" there are no perspectives only everything at once.
    - justifier 10y ago
      but my argument is that mathematics is the infinite values 'between 0.1 and 0.00000000000000000000000001' stead some symbolic subset i am using to describe some physical phenomena ..edit.. I'm unable to reply again so I'll clarify what I mean here: for me physics is behavior, mathematics is existence
      - ThomPete 10y ago
        the infinite values between 0.1 and 0.00000000000000000000000000001 is infinite and thus nothing. It's in reality a gradient with no distinct steps. Only when you reduce reality (like humans do) and you start manipulating with symbols do you get mathematics. This manipulation with symbols (and it's foundation of a quantifiable universe on top of a quantum universe) is the foundation of math, not the other way around. Math is simply a way this underlying reality gets expressed, it is not what the reality is.

danbruc 10y ago

I said Platonism because that is the point of view that mathematical objects are real. As far as I can tell no other point of view asserts the fundamental reality of mathematical objects. And just because I am not absolutely sure I said »a form of Platonism« which I would admittedly better have worded as »something like Platonism«. To you point about quantity. There are grains of sand. Does that mean that there are also numbers? I obviously argue no. You have to take some of the grains and set them aside to count them. You have to split your pile into two and recombine the two piles to add them. You have to line the grains up in order to number them. By itself there are only grains of sand, mathematics only emerges when you impose additional structure on them and perform operations with them. There is no addition in a thousand grains of sand, it is the act of separating and combining them. Or at least imagining to do so. You can build a huge part of mathematics on top of set theory but that does not mean that all of mathematics is already contained in every large enough set of things, at least not in any meaningful way. Only when you decide what to with the things in the set, what kind of manipulations you are willing to consider, that the structures mathematics describes emerge. And while physics looks very mathematically, I see no problem with this. The most simple rules can give rise to staggering complex math. I find it much more reasonable to think - gross oversimplification ahead - that photons travel in straight lines in a three-dimensional space and therefore the electric field follows an inverse-square law instead of assuming that the universe already contained the mathematics needed to deal with electric fields. There are just photons moving around, only after deciding how to measure distances and to look at spherical shells around charges we find a particularly simple way to describe electrical fields. But we could have made a lot of different choices leading to wildly different descriptions.

justifier 10y ago
> To you point about quantity. There are grains of sand. Does that mean that there are also numbers? I obviously argue no. You have to take some of the grains and set them aside to count them. You have to split your pile into two and recombine the two piles to add them. You have to line the grains up in order to number them. numbers exist without sand, sand needs numbers to exist you can count apples instead of sand yet physical phenomena, such as the formation of sand or apples, depends on quantity chemistry shows that how many particles in what structure determine how it interacts physically with its environment a hadron with three quarks is a baryon, a hadron with a different number is fundamentally different
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Numbers need a reduction of reality to exist. There is an infinite number between 0.1 and 0.00000000000000000000000001 The only reason we can grable with these things in mathematics is because we are conscious minds who create symbolic meaning. There aren't any numbers "out there". "Out there" there are no perspectives only everything at once.
  - justifier 10y ago
    but my argument is that mathematics is the infinite values 'between 0.1 and 0.00000000000000000000000001' stead some symbolic subset i am using to describe some physical phenomena ..edit.. I'm unable to reply again so I'll clarify what I mean here: for me physics is behavior, mathematics is existence
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      the infinite values between 0.1 and 0.00000000000000000000000000001 is infinite and thus nothing. It's in reality a gradient with no distinct steps. Only when you reduce reality (like humans do) and you start manipulating with symbols do you get mathematics. This manipulation with symbols (and it's foundation of a quantifiable universe on top of a quantum universe) is the foundation of math, not the other way around. Math is simply a way this underlying reality gets expressed, it is not what the reality is.