Do numbers exist in nature or are they human contructs?

[FBM]

Before I say anything else on the topic, I just want to ask if I'm being annoying. I think sometimes I unintentionally and unknowingly annoy people with my questions, and I don't like it when that happens.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

* Reaches for bottle of aspirin.

[FBM]

Yeah. At least.

[Audley Strange]

Before I say anything else on the topic, I just want to ask if I'm being annoying. I think sometimes I unintentionally and unknowingly annoy people with my questions, and I don't like it when that happens.

Nope, I'm digging it.

Also I'd like to once again address the anthropocentric idea that aliens will somehow share the same perceptual apparatus and inherent neurological constructs as ourselves. Given the elaborate natures of life on Earth, I see no reason why we could possibly assume that a technologically advanced species could not have a completely different way of perceiving, judging and then calculating an efficient and usable cosmology that is entirely different from ours.

We can only map what we apprehend and what we do not apprehend we may not even consider existing, a lot of what we do actually apprehend is discarded in order that reality can fit a mathematical average. However what if the random outliers outweigh the map? Are we not then just digging a little reality tunnel through and unimaginable chaos. What if all those random factors we dismiss themselves are able to be patterned calculated and manipulated by a species with different brains and sense organs?

Problem is that all we can do is compare local species and until some extra-terrestrials turn up, it can't even begin to be solved.

[FBM]

Just checking, Audley. I was going to come from a different angle, but I should also probably reiterate that I'm not actually making a claim one way or the other; I'm just testing out the various claims made.

Sure - objects are compound, complex, and when we apply reductionist techniques, aspects of their nature change according to the scale at which we wish to observe. Fascinating, interesting, scientifically important and sometimes confusing in terms of language used to describe the phenomena...

True that. I'm also very suspicious of language. It seems to me that we have to use nouns in order to communicate and when we start giving names to abstractions, we start to consider them to be as real as concrete things. That's why I mentioned the reification fallacy above. (I think I did, anyway.)

None of which changes the fact that I, a computer, or an alien can simply and easily count how many discrete fishes exist at any one time in a given aquarium...

Even aside from divisibility into components which eventually become wave functions and fields, in what way is an apparently singular fish discrete, other than just as a convenient fiction? It seems to me that it could be just as accurately described as a local, ongoing set of phenomena within a larger continuum. There's a constant flow of stuff going in and out, and the external boundaries are far less clear-cut than a casual look would suggest, I think.

Again, if I'm being annoying, please say so. I'd much rather STFU than annoy.

[Audley Strange]

Just checking, Audley. I was going to come from a different angle, but I should also probably reiterate that I'm not actually making a claim one way or the other; I'm just testing out the various claims made.

Well I find the topic fascinating since I learned about etic and emic realities from a colleague who was a behavioural scientist and then learning more about perceptual psychology from another. I have no answers, but the questions are exciting and it seems to me like a fine riddle of existence.

[rainbow]

Before I say anything else on the topic, I just want to ask if I'm being annoying. I think sometimes I unintentionally and unknowingly annoy people with my questions, and I don't like it when that happens.

Don't worry.
You being annoying is what we have grown to love.

[FBM]

@ Audley: Thanks. Googling 'etic' and 'emic' was informative. And I am in a similar boat wrt having more questions than answers and in finding it a very interesting riddle.

@ rainbow:

[pErvinalia]

None of which changes the fact that I, a computer, or an alien can simply and easily count how many discrete fishes exist at any one time in a given aquarium...

Even aside from divisibility into components which eventually become wave functions and fields, in what way is an apparently singular fish discrete, other than just as a convenient fiction? It seems to me that it could be just as accurately described as a local, ongoing set of phenomena within a larger continuum. There's a constant flow of stuff going in and out, and the external boundaries are far less clear-cut than a casual look would suggest, I think.

Yep. How is a school of fish different from a collection of cells, other than scale?

[FBM]

ISWYDT.

[mistermack]

Of course, any good Catholic will tell you that numbers are not human constructs, they are divine.

Not only that, they are not even fixed, in the way that we think they are.

When it comes to god, one = three = infinite

I'd be a bit embarrassed, if that was a human construct.

[FBM]

Here we have big science brains that land on opposite sides of the debate: http://www.kavlifoundation.org/science- ... ns-of-math

[colubridae]

Wrong post

[Azathoth]

Is a worker ant discrete? It is useless unless it is part of a colony

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[mistermack]

Is a worker ant discrete? It is useless unless it is part of a colony

Very discrete. You can tell them anything, they never repeat gossip.