On Logic and Alternate Universes

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm perfectly willing to imagine a possible universe which operates on rules different than ours.  I mean, even in our own universe, we have light relativity, photon duality, quantum erasers and so on, which do not work by the logical rules we've grown up taking as rock solid.

But 2+2=5 fails to identity.

It doesn't.  Two plus two simply -isn't- 5 here, as it is there. It only runs afoul of identity in that in this universe, the sum of 2 and 2 is 4. We're not talking about -this- universe in the hypothetical.

If something is really 2, and something is really 5, and "+" means what plus means, then it must work the same across all dimensions.

That's rejecting the hypothetical, rejecting difference, not accepting or considering it.  In the other universe, 2+2 -is- 5.  5 is the identity of the sum of that operation, and it cannot be "not 5" - if identity holds in that universe, as it applies to the relationships between quantities as expressed....in that universe, according to those different laws. Not our universe, not our laws. Their universe, their laws.

Otherwise, it's glooble and glorp.

Some other thing might be gloople and glorp.  2, 5, identity, these can all be the same things in that different universe and yield the sum of 5 -because- those other things are differnt, because of gloople and glorp (whatever they are). I would certainly call the ruleset, even if it included identity alongside gloople and glorp "something other than logical" - but this business about the hypothetical failing to identity, it just doesn't. In a different universe, things would be different. It's a different universe, where, again, 5 just is what you get when you add those quantities together, for whatever reason, as weird as that sounds to us because it doesn't happen here (there's our glorp). Their math would reflect that reality, and the law of identity... if it applied in that universe... would apply to the same.