Tentatively Christian; looking for a reasonable discussion

[Esquilax]

Do you think it's at all effective to argue that Kalam, which posits that reality was created, is justified in this assertion because the category of uncreated things contains reality?

And who said that reality is limited to the physical universe. Oh! I guess that seems to be your assumption. Despite the contemplating smilies, you didn't really put much thought into it or you wouldn't have posit such an obvious conflation.

Hey, if you want to posit things beyond the physical universe then please, go right ahead and justify that statement with some evidence. But don't blame me for only believing in things that we have reason to believe in, that's not a weakness in thinking, it's literally the only rational thing that can be done.

And please don't just posit some nonsense argument from ignorance about how materialism can't explain X, therefore non-material reality. Or just assert a bunch of things. Please?

[Minimalist]

Careful, Esq. You're going to empty his whole bag of tricks before he even takes them out.

[The Reality Salesman01]

@Nester

Are you suggesting that abstract things, like the number 6, have their own transcendental properties beyond the conceptual application to the physical universe? As if the number 6 would still mean something within an alternate reality that did not contain discrete objects capable of being counted? Do I smell a tag argument coming along here?!

[Neo-Scholastic]

I say that numberability (sp) is possible when several sensible bodies partake of a single form. So in the example, the number 6 does not exist in some separate realm, but manifests only in the composite of three forms: the form of a collection, the form of which each individual in the collection partakes, and sixness.

[Mudhammam]

@Nester

Are you suggesting that abstract things, like the number 6, have their own transcendental properties beyond the conceptual application to the physical universe? As if the number 6 would still mean something within an alternate reality that did not contain discrete objects capable of being counted? Do I smell a tag argument coming along here?!

Ha! You'll get no TAG argument from me, but don't numbers mean something in an 'alternate' reality of sorts that does not contain discrete objects? Otherwise, how else could we do pure mathematics? I've been having an email exchange with my philosophy professor the last few days on the subject, and though he's told me that in full disclosure he's an anti-realist with respect to numbers, he's filled my head with all kinds of reasons to suspect that any debate about their nature is far from concluded!

[robvalue]

I'm slightly below Karl Pilkington in the philosophy hierarchy, so I'm utterly unqualified to be giving the following opinion:

Another reality could work so mind-bendingly different to how ours is set up that the concept of a number could mean nothing there.

What other realities are possible is not limited by our ability to imagine them.

So I'd say no, 6 doesn't exist as anything other than an abstract notion and the corresponding brain configurations and such. To say it does would be to imply the universe is doing a bunch of actual calculations and stuff behind the scenes.

But then, since reality is only experienced through my weird viewpoint as far as I know, that may make 6 as "real" as anything else.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Hey, if you want to posit things beyond the physical universe then please, go right ahead and justify that statement with some evidence.

Having already shown that the whole of reality, the All, does not change because it is in full actuality, we must account for why the sensible bodies within reality do. The physical universe, taken as a whole, is one such sensible body that changes. Everyone agrees that something that exists only in potential cannot affect change since only things that actually exist can do anything. Thus no sensible body can come into being on its own. Nor can anything move from potentially being to its actuality except by something that already exists. Therefore since the physical universe continually comes into being, i.e. goes from potential to actuality, it must be subject to something other than itself and which already exists in full actuality.

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...but don't numbers mean something in an 'alternate' reality of sorts that does not contain discrete objects? Otherwise, how else could we do pure mathematics?

Thoughts about forms are not the forms themselves. Pure mathematics is possible (and effective with respect to sensible bodies) because what is conceived in the intellect partakes of the same form that is manifest in sensible bodies.

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So I'd say no, 6 doesn't exist as anything other than an abstract notion.

In order to abstract something that something must in some sense already, in some form (!), be present in the thing from which it is abstracted.

[Mudhammam]

Thoughts about forms are not the forms themselves. Pure mathematics is possible (and effective with respect to sensible bodies) because what is conceived in the intellect partakes of the same form that is manifest in sensible bodies.

What form(s) would that be? The forms of "[insert random number]-ness"?

[Tonus]

I say that numberability (sp) is possible when several sensible bodies partake of a single form. So in the example, the number 6 does not exist in some separate realm, but manifests only in the composite of three forms:

The number six manifests as the composite of three forms? So we could represent the number six as... as... 666!!!

[Neo-Scholastic]

Thoughts about forms are not the forms themselves. Pure mathematics is possible (and effective with respect to sensible bodies) because what is conceived in the intellect partakes of the same form that is manifest in sensible bodies.

What form(s) would that be? The forms of "[insert random number]-ness"?

Why is that a problem?