The Universe Is Made Of Mathematics

[Philosophy Now]

Sam Woolfe recounts the mathematical metaphysics of physicist Max Tegmark.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/Th ... athematics

[Dalek Prime]

Really? If that's true, mathematically describe consciousness, aside from it's biology. I can wait....

[Dubious]

If math is the means to model it or most of it, I would think this not unlikely. Besides, it's not exactly a new idea.

[Obvious Leo]

Mathematics can only be used to model observations and an observation is an act of cognition. Therefore mathematical physics cannot model the universe but only a universe. Since the models currently in use are mutually exclusive and collectively define a universe which makes no sense then we may safely conclude that its is the cognitive activity of the theorists which is flawed and not the mathematical tools which they're using, because mathematics itself is self-validating.

[Obvious Leo]

Really? If that's true, mathematically describe consciousness, aside from it's biology. I can wait....

As a computer geek you would probably make a far better fist of this task than would a physicist, Dalek. Cognitive neuroscientists nowadays model consciousness in the mathematical language of non-linear dynamics systems theory, which is the same mathematical language which is also being widely used in the new generation of computers predicated on notions such as evolutionary, genetic, or learning algorithms. It's no coincidence that such new ways of programming are called neurally networked.

[1123]

At first it answered a precise need, that is to say to measure the extent of fields for tax and claim purposes. It evolved in abstract ways, but I still see it as describing relations, using established conventions.
I think we can agree to the fact that Math itself doesn't exists in reality, but it was created by our established conventions, before we "made" it, it didn't exists and cannot definitely exists outside of our minds. What does exists is the relation between objects which math describes.
Simple example. In this moment I have in front of me a desk. This desk definitely exists(I just hit my leg to it and it hurts like hell. Let's leave aside the existence talking for now). I can describe mathematically this desk, using established conventions. I can describe his measurements and the relations between his part, saying that the side is about the half of the top, I can scale it up or down, but the relationship between it's parts as I see them, remains the same.
At least, that's what my intuitions tell me.

[Obvious Leo]

At first it answered a precise need, that is to say to measure the extent of fields for tax and claim purposes. It evolved in abstract ways, but I still see it as describing relations, using established conventions.
I think we can agree to the fact that Math itself doesn't exists in reality, but it was created by our established conventions, before we "made" it, it didn't exists and cannot definitely exists outside of our minds. What does exists is the relation between objects which math describes.
Simple example. In this moment I have in front of me a desk. This desk definitely exists(I just hit my leg to it and it hurts like hell. Let's leave aside the existence talking for now). I can describe mathematically this desk, using established conventions. I can describe his measurements and the relations between his part, saying that the side is about the half of the top, I can scale it up or down, but the relationship between it's parts as I see them, remains the same.
At least, that's what my intuitions tell me.

Always trust your intuitions. Your desk is only a desk because that's the way we've mutually agreed to codify the behaviour of the matter and energy which are maintaining your desk in a stable state of existence. Its "desk-ness" is an emergent property assigned to it by the observer of it and can vanish into "firewood-ness" at your personal whim. The same principle applies to any physical entity which we elect to define as an object, including the objects of physics, the behaviour of which are exclusively modelled mathematically. They "exist" only as a matter of agreed convention.

[HexHammer]

The Universe Is Made Of Mathematics

Pure nonsense and babble!!! ..the universe CAN be rationalized into math!!!!

[Hobbes' Choice]

Maths is so obviously a human conceit, designed to describe, quantify and commodify the universe.
Maths guys tend to see only maths type things, and end up thinking about the world from a maths perspective. You can't blame them for thinking that way.
You have to pity them, and pat them on the head because suicide rates are high with these guys.

When you apply maths you immediately demonstrate the problem with it. An orange is not equal to another orange.
It's evident that there are no circles, straight lines, nor integers in nature. This alone ought to be enough to start to unpack the thread title.

[Obvious Leo]

Maths is so obviously a human conceit, designed to describe, quantify and commodify the universe.

That which is so blindly obvious to you and I is far from obvious to the physicists who presume to explain the nature of physical reality to us, which is why they make no fucking sense. Even some of the most illustrious theorists in the field continue to regard it as little short of miraculous that their observations of the universe should conform so precisely to their mathematical models of it. A half pissed philosophy undergraduate should be able to drive a truck through such logic sideways.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Maths is so obviously a human conceit, designed to describe, quantify and commodify the universe.

That which is so blindly obvious to you and I is far from obvious to the physicists who presume to explain the nature of physical reality to us, which is why they make no fucking sense. Even some of the most illustrious theorists in the field continue to regard it as little short of miraculous that their observations of the universe should conform so precisely to their mathematical models of it. A half pissed philosophy undergraduate should be able to drive a truck through such logic sideways.

Sad but true. I sometimes think that humans are doomed to think religiously about the world and Maths gets adopted to replace more primitive ways of thinking about things.
I suppose you can't blame them for clutching onto and engineering a veneer of certainty.

[Obvious Leo]

Sad but true. I sometimes think that humans are doomed to think religiously about the world

I've made the point earlier plenty of times but for some reason most can't see the connection. Mathematical physics is intrinsically a creationist way of thinking the world because it proceeds from the a priori assumption that the events in the universe are mandated by a suite of physical laws of transcendent origin. This is a completely flawed and logically incoherent crock of Platonist horseshit but it accorded perfectly with the intellectual zeitgeist which was bequeathed to Newton by such religious zealots as Aquinas, Bacon and Descartes. However it's an unworthy a priori proposition for a 21st philosopher of science and in my view it's about fucking time we grew out of it. The universe is non-Newtonian and that's all there is to it.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Sad but true. I sometimes think that humans are doomed to think religiously about the world

I've made the point earlier plenty of times but for some reason most can't see the connection. Mathematical physics is intrinsically a creationist way of thinking the world because it proceeds from the a priori assumption that the events in the universe are mandated by a suite of physical laws of transcendent origin. This is a completely flawed and logically incoherent crock of Platonist horseshit but it accorded perfectly with the intellectual zeitgeist which was bequeathed to Newton by such religious zealots as Aquinas, Bacon and Descartes. However it's an unworthy a priori proposition for a 21st philosopher of science and in my view it's about fucking time we grew out of it. The universe is non-Newtonian and that's all there is to it.

And I've made the same observation about evolutionary theory which seems to assert evolution as a causal agent. Whilst naturalists tend to agree that evolution is not goal seeking, but goal finding, their language betrays the deep history of their discipline and is littered with teleological observations; you can find this in Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker and others.

Jerry Fodor and cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, nailed in in their first chapter of "What Darwin Got Wrong" with the following;
: there is at the heart of adaptationist theories of evolution, a confusion between
(1) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures with adaptive traits are selected and
(2) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures are selected for their adaptive traits.
We will argue that: Darwinism is committed
to inferring (2) from (1); that this inference is invalid (in fact it's what
philosophers call an 'intensional fallacy'; and that there is no way to
repair the damage consonant with commitment to naturalism, which
we take to be common ground.
I'm not sure that Darwin can be proven to be making that inference, but those that understand claim 1, tend to falsely and sloppily make claim 2. For my money Darwin understood 2, but was tied by the Victorian language of his time to assert 2, and that was the big question of the moment.
Obviously claim 2 is an appeal to a kind of directed nature. What these guys might have missed (as so many do), is that Darwin, at least until 1871 also asserted a Lamarckian evolution as can be seen in his greatest works; natural selection simply being the new idea which built upon the theory of acquired characteristics.. Thus upon reading Darwin his remarks and general outlook support a kind of Lamarckism with NS in the way he describes evolution.
On reading Darwin over the last 150 years the descriptive assumptions have infected the way evolution has become described. And despite Lamarck being dropped for lack of empirical evidence for a mechanism, the language of teleology has remained.

[Obvious Leo]

I agree completely. Evolutionary theory is very poorly understood because in its essence the truth of evolution is a metaphysical statement about the nature of determinism. Both Darwinism and neo-Darwinism attempt to place evolutionary theory within the Newtonian reductionist framework, which is intrinsically and irreducibly creationist and thus teleological. Personally I lay all the blame at the feet of the fat pig, Plato, who played perfectly into the hands of the monotheist tyrannies that succeeded him.

[Hobbes' Choice]

I agree completely. Evolutionary theory is very poorly understood because in its essence the truth of evolution is a metaphysical statement about the nature of determinism. Both Darwinism and neo-Darwinism attempt to place evolutionary theory within the Newtonian reductionist framework, which is intrinsically and irreducibly creationist and thus teleological. Personally I lay all the blame at the feet of the fat pig, Plato, who played perfectly into the hands of the monotheist tyrannies that succeeded him.

You can't really blame Plato for reflecting the endemic assumptions of his day, nor for laying the ground for a religion about which he could have had no knowledge.
You might as well blame Moses for the Crusades, or for the woeful lack of Palestinian human rights.
But I take your point.