[X] My Assistant

[hendric]

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_8.html#porco

Where do I sign up?

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

hmmmm...

dvandorn,

I think we should first settle the statute of mathematics, as the problems involved are simpler than with spirituality or abstract souls.

You say that mathematics don't exist by themselves like sort of gods, they are a language for our minds. But even if so, they exist, as a language. For instance if I say that I have five fingers, the relation that we call "five" exists. Some natural numbers exist, and other not. For instance the number five exist, the number six exist, and not any other between (if we keep with natural numbers, not fractional of course). It is this which is expressed by the word "abstract" (etymologicaly: extracted of, as historically abstract concepts were generalized from concrete examples).

If mathematics were subjective, we should observe things such as 2+2=4 in french, and 2+2=5 in english, of 2 sheeps + 2 sheeps equal three for the tax payer, and five for the land owner. It is not like that. Right on the countrary, despite the fact that different parts of the mathematic science were developped by different civilizations, they form today a coherent, unanimously accepted and non-self-contradicting structure.
This is a remarkable property of mathematics, that every people did not came with its own maths, as they regularly did in other domains: so many different morals, law systems, grammar, language, philosophies... but only one mathematics. if mathematics were created (by humans) peoples would have created each their own mathematics. Right on the countrary they were DISCOVERED.

To say that 2+2 give the same result for everybody is what I mean to say mathematics are OBJECTIVE. They DON'T NEED to exist as material facts for this.

Objective means: what appears in the same way for everybody. Subjective means: what appears for only one person (or set of persons). This has nothing to do with being material or immaterial.

(edited later, but before other replies:) Even the statement that mathematics would be only a construction of our minds is not shared by all the mathematicians, right on the countrary most mathematicians think that logics and maths exist by themselves, and when they tell us about a new theorem, they say that they "discovered" it, not "created" it. Only politicians can say that they "create" a law. (This remark is not pejorative or hinting for anything in any way, it is just a basic fact).



I think you could accept that, if there exist other physical spaces like ours, and that there is some complex evolution taking place in them, this evolution can also lead to the formation of brains, and the folks bearing these brains will sense their own universe as existing physically and ours being untestable (damn I hope they will not use the Occam razor or Popper refutability principle, otherwise they will make us disappear!!)

But what happens if such a brain structure appears in a mathematical simulation? I clearly tell: not a simulation running on a computer, but an EQUATION or something which solution behaves like a complex physical space. I let you think about it by yourself.

Perhaps I shall not reply this evening (here on my part of the planet it is time to go to bed) but if so I let you time to think.

[dvandorn]

...To say that 2+2 give the same result for everybody is what I mean to say mathematics are OBJECTIVE. They DON'T NEED to exist as material facts for this. ..

Ah, but it's NOT objective. It depends on your assumptions.

Let's simplify it even further -- 1+1. 1+1=2, right? But your computer thinks 1+1=11. Other parts of your computer think that 9+9=12.

Mathematics is like *any* language -- the words and sentence forms themselves *represent* both real and abstract things. But they have no actual reality in and of themselves. And just because you have a word for something, doesn't mean that that something actually exists. It just means you have a word for it.

And -- here is the important distinction -- just because you do *not* have a word for something doesn't mean that it does *not* exist. (Let's all take a moment to sort out all of those double-negatives, shall we?)

Here's a little something for *you* to think about -- let's take one of the most universally recognized things in this world. Dirt. Soil. The ground.

You can call it dirt. Or soil. Or terre. Or terra. Or any number of other names. But, even if there was *never* a name for it, the stuff exists. It has the same range of characteristics, whether or not they have ever been named, categorized or studied.

A word does not have any existence beyond what it describes, and making a word for something that does not exist does not lend that thing any actual existence it does not already possess intrinsically. That goes for descriptive, conversational languages, and it goes for mathematics.

That, IMNSHO, is a universal truth.

-the other Doug

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Let's simplify it even further -- 1+1.  1+1=2, right?  But your computer thinks 1+1=11.  Other parts of your computer think that 9+9=12.

2+2=4 in decimal, 10+10=100 in binary, two plus two makes four in english, deux plus deux font quatre in french, etc. different languages, one concept. I was speaking of concepts.

making a word for something that does not exist does not lend that thing any actual existence it does not already posess intrinsically.

obvious.



dvandorn, You just dodged the question and replied the same thing in a different way.

Good night.




edited later:
anybody wanting to know what I have to say on the topic of mind and reality is invited to look at my page on epistemology, read my book (sorry I wrote everything except the price tag) and discuss seriously of this here on Unmanned Space Flight, or on my own forum (where I am -still- more selective than Doug Ellison).

[dvandorn]

dvandorn, You just dodged the question and replied the same thing in a different way.

Good night.

No -- I didn't dodge the question so much as I tried to indicate that the *concept* of the existence of an elegant Mathematical equation that could, in some way we cannot comprehend, cause an intelligence to come into being and become aware of itself -- is a lot of words given to an abstract concept that has no basis in actuality.

And describing such an absurdity by giving words to it does not make it any more real, or any less absurd.

However, if you can't tell how much I enjoy these discussions with you, Richard, let me assure you that this is the most fun I've had all week...

Good night to you, and sweet (debatably real and definitely subjective) dreams to you!



-the other Doug