(March 24, 2015 at 8:38 am)Nestor Wrote:(March 24, 2015 at 7:54 am)The Reality Salesman Wrote: @NesterHa! 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!
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?!
(Bolded by me) First...I don't know. Now for the fun part-what I think:
It's seems to me that for numbers to have any meaning at all, the numbers must represent something. And if there were no thing that was distinct from another thing, then there would be no number that could be distinguishable from any other number. If any alternate reality existed, it would be distinct from the one we live in now, wouldn't it? So could any reality be said to exist in which no thing is distinct from any other thing? For the value of numbers to even vary, it seems to require a reality that supports the assumption that things are distinct from other things, and within that reality, each thing that may exist has the properties it has and not the properties of that which it is not. Otherwise, how could math have any utility as a descriptive tool? My head is starting to hurt...
