Soul

[Tex]

Quantity is only what humans have invented in order to easily organize and recognize patterns in a certain way. Quantity is just one of a million methods by which human brains perceive and process patterns in nature. It doesn't exist as an ethereal concept in nature that humans magically tap into.

You keep saying this, and you keep ignoring the argument. Please tell me the material means by which we know quantity.

Perhaps pattern recognition is a better model for that part of consciousness that Tex is referring to as the soul, than numbers are. The eyes and brain see two dots and a line. The soul sees a face.

A voice of reason! Thank you for not just insulting or making some other intentionally annoying remark. However, that's not what I think =)

Pattern recognition actually comes after recognition of quantity (and quantity comes after recognition of individual). In order to know there are 4 black triangles and 3 white squares, you have to know "3" and "4". The recognition of the pattern doesn't use the soul except with numbers. White, black, and shape are fully known by the body. The case of "dot+dot+line=face" does need the soul, but only for the recognition of "2" about the eyes. The rest is approximation done by the brain.

The first step need done is the recognition of "1". For the ability to understand the "1", the brain has to comprehend the individual and isolate it. Lets take a picture of the Bohr model of an atom. To isolate electrons is the brain. To know they are electrons is the brain. To know there are "6" is not. The brain can isolate and make the group based on similar qualities, but if there are 8 electrons in the brain, there are 8 in the picture. The brain can't make up the quantity, else it isn't in reality and science goes poopoo. The brain must be using quantity, but the quantity didn't come through any of the senses.

I don't know that term. You must educate me as we go along.

Hylomorphic is Aristotle's metaphysics. You have substance, which is both form and matter together. Form here is best defined as "organized". Your form is "human". All substances have form and matter: plants, animals, humans, angels. To Aristotle, God is not a substance because God is all matter and no form (and the only thing that does that). Some Christians say God does have a form, "Trinity", but others will say "Trinity" is still part of matter. I have not done enough research to choose.

I don’t think ‘6’ is a good example. I’m just thinking out loud now because I do not have all my thoughts together on this one. Just as we recognize rough composite substances, like wood, and more pure ones, like water, they are still derived from more basic and more pure substance. Hence we have an atomic theory for substances. Science is still working on finding the Primal Matter out of which all substances are formed, i.e. “Formed”.

Form doesn't always mean Plato's version. And none of the proposed examples I use the word "substance" for. Even "6" is not a substance.

Yet, form, itself seems to be taken for granted, as if it were nothing at all, just a convenient fiction. That is a grand oversight. We do not yet have an ‘atomic’ theory for forms. It seems to me that 6 is a composite form, just like Euclidean triangles and perfect spheres. Whereas, “one” is much more pure, since it contains within itself the principle of unity required to unite six 1s as a single quantity.

Actually, its the ability to unite the six 1s I'm calling into question. We have to be able to know what "1" is, and then we can grow that. However, knowing "1" is even immaterial.