Do numbers exist in nature or are they human contructs?

[pErvinalia]

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

So, what does 5 taste like? Seriously.

[MiM]

So, what does 5 taste like? Seriously.

Depends on your level of synsthesia

[Jason]

So, what does 5 taste like? Seriously.

Mine? Pure epic #winning.

[Blind groper]

I think your logic is silly. If even 'high powered' scientists are baffled I would have thought it was a deeply profound question.

The point is that a bunch of rats are not going to solve the question or come to any sensible conclusion. This means that even discussing it is an exercise in intellectual wanking.

I got briefly involved in a discussion on another forum in which one idiot asked if we could be sure other people existed or were just a figment of the individual's imagination. It is, of course, another unanswerable question, and extensive discussion thereof is another case of intellectual wanking. Yet that thread went on, and on, and on. I told them they were all idiots, and unsubscribed from that thread. As far as I know, they are still happily engaged in auto eroticism.

[Sean Hayden]

I think both questions are interesting.

I have a hard time seeing past the math as a map explanation. However it's easy to appreciate why math people may see it as more than that. Even from my lowly perspective it often really does seem like they are discovering something out there.

[Rum]

Quite so. Even ultimately unanswerable questions can provoke interesting discussion if one isn't simply dismissive.

[JimC]

Edit: @ Jim:

OK, but there are more than one common element there. One being that all of those people agreeing are humans. Therefore, the "sevenness" has not been shown to be other than a shared subjective, abstract constructed in the human mind. I do agree, however, that whatever numbers are, they do exist in nature simply because human consciousness is also included as a natural process. I'm very ambivalent about the whole concept of qualia.

Anyway, this business about the reality of abstract entities has been done to death with no clear conclusion on the horizon: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/

Would it make a difference to your concern if an intelligent alien race also agreed that two sets of objects, different in all respects other than having 7 members, shared an important, common property with each other, and all other sets that can be counted up to, but not past, seven?

[Rum]

Seems to me, but what do I know, that there is no place for numbers/maths to reside without some sort of consciousness involved. The notion of Plato's 'forms' come to mind, the idea being that the perfect form or aesthetic existed somewhere 'out there'. A misguided theory as it turned out.

[JimC]

Seems to me, but what do I know, that there is no place for numbers/maths to reside without some sort of consciousness involved. The notion of Plato's 'forms' come to mind, the idea being that the perfect form or aesthetic existed somewhere 'out there'. A misguided theory as it turned out.

Your use of the term "place" suggests a property of a material object, such as a rock. At any given time, it has a place, a 3 dimensional set of co-ordinates on, lets say, the Earth's surface. That "place" is one important piece of data about the rock; in fact, it is impossible to conceive of the existence of the rock without it being in one place or another.

However, number is not a property of an individual object. It is a piece of information about a set of objects, and one of its properties is that it has no spatial co-ordinate. It's existence can be an objective fact, independent of being observed by a conscious entity, without that existence requiring the same set of properties as a physical object, such as "place".

[pErvinalia]

I think your logic is silly. If even 'high powered' scientists are baffled I would have thought it was a deeply profound question.

The point is that a bunch of rats are not going to solve the question or come to any sensible conclusion. This means that even discussing it is an exercise in intellectual wanking.

I got briefly involved in a discussion on another forum in which one idiot asked if we could be sure other people existed or were just a figment of the individual's imagination. It is, of course, another unanswerable question, and extensive discussion thereof is another case of intellectual wanking. Yet that thread went on, and on, and on. I told them they were all idiots, and unsubscribed from that thread. As far as I know, they are still happily engaged in auto eroticism.

You don't have to post in the thread if you don't like the subject. Others do, so they do. These are all interesting questions that naturally arise when you take God out of the equation. It's not at all surprising that they get discussed a lot on atheist/rationalist forums. And science can't provide an answer for these questions, so your reference to "high powered scientists" ( ) is a terrible call to authority fallacy.

[FBM]

Edit: @ Jim:

OK, but there are more than one common element there. One being that all of those people agreeing are humans. Therefore, the "sevenness" has not been shown to be other than a shared subjective, abstract constructed in the human mind. I do agree, however, that whatever numbers are, they do exist in nature simply because human consciousness is also included as a natural process. I'm very ambivalent about the whole concept of qualia.

Anyway, this business about the reality of abstract entities has been done to death with no clear conclusion on the horizon: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/

Would it make a difference to your concern if an intelligent alien race also agreed that two sets of objects, different in all respects other than having 7 members, shared an important, common property with each other, and all other sets that can be counted up to, but not past, seven?

I'm pretty sure I'd be too busy yelling, "Holy shit! Aliens!" to remember the question.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

There are clearly some aspects of Mathematics that are homocentric and arbitrarily decided - the obvious example is our choice of base-10, others are the arbitrary choices of standards for units of length, time, mass, etc.

However, there are certain relationships that are absolutely fixed and would occur in some form in ANY system of Maths, devised by any species with the necessary intellectual grasp:

π is the ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle.
There are a fixed number of electrons orbiting any atom of a given element.
There are fixed numbers of electron shells and of electrons per shell.
There is a fixed ratio between the mass of an electron and a proton (or any other particle).
The electromagnetic force is a fixed times stronger than the gravitational force (approximately 1025) and similarly between the other forces.
Cheese is more than bacon.

FACT!

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, I answered these before. Those are statements on the physical laws of the universe. Not maths.

[Jason]

Pi pi pi

That's 3 dimensional math - cartesian crap.. Usefull, but crap.