Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Thu Feb 25, 2021 3:26 pm
VVilliam wrote: ↑Thu Feb 25, 2021 3:17 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Thu Feb 25, 2021 2:08 pm
Sure. Given your view, I was first wondering if maybe you thought that brains couldn't do any unique things, couldn't have any unique properties. So we have to figure out now why you think that mathematics and logic aren't among the unique things they can do.
No - I am not saying that either. From what I can gather, brains are able to be used to build upon what is already there...So I can see the sense in the argument that there is a math which has indeed been invented by humans.
What I do not think, is that this means that ALL math is the invention of humans.
We need to figure out why you're thinking that they must exist independently of us and basically be something that we're either perceiving or at least "deducing in parallel (with the world)." What would you say you take as evidence or as a good reason to believe that mathematics exists as mathematics in the world external to us?
Well I am not a mathematician so my view on this has to do with the idea that everything we experience as physical [the universe] is the product of algorithms - coding.
On this planet [Earth] a great amount of coding is involved with biological life forms.
This is the 'math' I am referring to.
I just did a search [is the universe build on a fundamental math ] and found a few things, including this;
Mathematical universe hypothesis
I haven't read it yet, but obviously I am not the only one thinking about is as a possible truth...but the idea that we exist within a creation means that one has to examine said creation and find any evidence which may support said idea...
Right, you'd not at all be the only person thinking that mathematics obtains objectively, you'd not be the only mathematical platonist, etc. It's just that some of us think those folks are wrong and we think that those views aren't really supportable.
Understand. Only I am not convinced that they are unable to be supported...
First, why would you see the "phyiscal [the universe]" as a "product of algorithms - coding"? As a very loosey-goosey sort of metaphor maybe that would have some utility for some things, but the problem with metaphors like that is that there's a tendency to start taking them literally.
Aware of that I am. I think though that sometimes an unacquainted perspective [non mathematical] has its own qualities of examination and may reveal something which otherwise gets missed by the acquainted.
I tend to see the description of DNA as a biological process which is encoded to become what it is [in form] [in form ation]
A fundamental building block which Genetic Code is based in.
Am I a biologist? No. I am not acquainted.
But the brain recognises the 'code' which is why it is called 'code'.
And coincidently In 1961, Francis Crick Sydney Brenner, Leslie Barnett, and Richard Watts-Tobin 'cracked the code' so did they simply refer to it as a 'code' because they were in a time where computers and coding were "the current state of technology, what was trendy etc."?
Or was the code discovered...
It's also worth noting that those sorts of metaphors tend to be in line with whatever the current state of technology is, whatever's trendy etc. For example, people used to think about the universe working like a giant clock, which is part of what led to a lot of strong determinist views.
The correlations yes. The idea is to be like water rather than like rock...flow with the current currents...don't stop and make a culture or religion out of them.. [the metaphors]
This is simply a factor of people tending to interpret things in terms of what they're familiar with, what they're focused on.
Understand. From the perspective of my [altogether] subjective life [to this point] I have been through the process of having the familiar peeled away to reveal the unfamiliar beneath its layers...I once was a theist and now am an agnostic theist...Atheism has never been something I find particularly productive in relation to the 'why' of existence as - using analogy - atheism is like being in a maze [life on Earth] and [in relation to the question of 'afterlife'] after coming up against an umpteenth wall, one sits down and cries out "Enough"...not for me, is that.
"Enough" is never enough.