In fewer words than the article, there's a concept called a substrate, kind of like what water in an oocean is to a fish, and while we experience the patterns o

In fewer words than the article, there's a concept called a substrate, kind of like what water in an oocean is to a fish, and while we experience the patterns of it all the time as part of our normal existence, expressing it in language that lets us share our experiences of it with each other is very fiddly. But when we manage to describe things that consistently reflect other peoples experiences, it is like drawing a map. You can experience the territory without it, but it's a totally different game when you have one. So between the critical theory poles of empiricism and Platonism is our ability to perceive and express our experience of our substrate. (What is our substrate? Turtles, all the way down.) Institutions these days never seem to pass up a teachable moment when it comes to reinforcing the precepts of dialectical materialism. e.g. "If something doesn’t have a physical existence, he asks, then what kind of existence could it possibly have? “If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math,” writes Pigliucci, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pythagorean theorem exists outside of space and time, why not the “golden rule,” or even the divinity of Jesus Christ?)" It's so tedious as to make me doubt their humanity, but I'm glad this girl sparked a popular discussion.