Tentatively Christian; looking for a reasonable discussion

[The Reality Salesman01]

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Try to imagine what the word "average" would mean in a universe in which there exists only a single entity. Average what? All that exists would be, al that exists. Now imagine what meaning could be found in uttering the word "2". Isn't 2 only a coherent concept in relation to an understanding of something represented by 1 and the comparative observation that 1 can and has been doubled?

I think I get why you're saying. I wrote to my professor:

...we still only understand the meaning of 2 in the context of some reasoning process such as the following: it is greater than 1 and less than 3, it is 1 doubled, a half of 4, a quarter of 8, etc.

His reply was:

Here, you're referring only to numbers and their relations. Physical things aren't anywhere, yet you still understand these relations. It is almost certainly the case that humans first came to understand number by thinking about numbers OF THINGS, but that's just a stepping stone to being able to understand number in the abstract. We learn about all kinds of things indirectly like that. Just because we have our first encounters with numbers in relation to numbers of things doesn't mean that's all numbers are.

I don't really know what to make of them. That was about the tenth email between the two of us in three days, so I didn't want to bother him to give a demonstration, as he had already hinted that some background in "first order modal logic and metalogic" were necessary to really delve into the subject.

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