Tentatively Christian; looking for a reasonable discussion

[Mudhammam]

I don't get it! It's hard to be a human being, existing in a reality comprised of distinct objects,

It's fucked up, man. Life is one cruel joke. You wake up, catch the bug of philosophy, try to read as much as you can and understand the nature of your existence, then the inevitable occurs: you fail, and die.

Saying "a shell is a shell" is a truth statement about the nature of a shell. It's akin to saying 1=1 which corresponds with the nature of existence.

What troubles me---yes troubles---is that the idea of a "shell" IS a one-to-one correlation with that physical object that we can study with the senses; the word is arbitrarily assigned to some discrete thing. The idea of "1" and the principles of mathematics do not entail that sort of relationship with anything we perceive: we don't find prime numbers in the world, but we find them in thought, as properties that belong to the objects, yet they exist only in the abstract. How is this so? Then we come to infinity, a property of sets. And we learn that the infinity of sets are larger than the infinity of integers. Well. Fuck. And there is NOT an infinite amount of matter, as we know by the First Law of Thermodynamics. Something strange is going on.

There is no reason to ascribe any independent existence to them apart from their use to the life of a mind.

But imagine a Universe prior to minds. Doesn't math still run the show?

numbers reveal a world of necessary relationships that are there to be discovered.

Necessary only when minds conceive numerical value or necessary as unchanging abstract principles with an existence independent of minds, being intrinsic properties of the whole shebang?

And doesn't that explain why:

Unlike with colors, no one wonders "do numbers seem the same to others as they do to me?" We understand that numbers, though they exist as such only in the life of the mind are nonetheless neither arbitrary nor subject to personal opinion. To perceive the world as we do is to take note of number and to recognize many true and false applications of numbers.

(Bold mine)
That's... nuts. Because moreover, true applications actually reveal the whole "blueprint" for the poetry of motion...

Like everyone else here, the best I can do is to vomit up a number of impressions lacking any useful structure. I'm sure there are well articulated theories on the subject but I can't say that I've been drawn to work out any personal point of view about this. Sorry.

It's okay, man. I have no idea what to make of numbers right now either. But maybe I'll become a Pythagorean.