On why math appears to be non-cosmic (a post of mine from lesswrong)

[Kyriakos]

Maths seems profound and powerful, but really, there's not much profundity in the notion that one thing and one other thing makes two things.

Breathing is sensed as something simple too, but without it there wouldn't be anything more refined.
Regarding the fundamental human mental ability to distinguish between things, one has to suppose that a sentient and intelligent being can actually not have it, and not grasp things(including any notion pertaining to anything) as actually distinct at all yet still - in some way - develop a science and math. Naturally a human won't be able to come up with the same.

 

[brennan]

How would a being be in such a circumstance as to be unable to distinguish between things.Thinking itself is a succession of thoughts, these are necessarily distinct, and any experience of an objective reality involves contact with things. What sensory apparatus would be unable to distinguish between them? Lacking the ability to perform such an elementary function, what would the purpose of such sensory apparatus be?

 

[Kyriakos]

How would a being be in such a circumstance as to be unable to distinguish between things.Thinking itself is a succession of thoughts, these are necessarily distinct, and any experience of an objective reality involves contact with things. What sensory apparatus would be unable to distinguish between them? Lacking the ability to perform such an elementary function, what would the purpose of such sensory apparatus be?

I don't know. That is why the philosophical idea of the "thing-by-itself" is not including any analysis: it is inherently non-analytical given it is an idea which only takes up a single point on an axis so to speak. By definition we are bound to only human anthropic ways of thinking.
Maybe no sentient and intelligent being like that exists, but it won't be verified by our own hypotheses, because it is outside of the type of knowledge we as specific observer-beings have access to.

I think you would like a quote by non-philosopher Descartes: "Philosophers want to invite you to argue in a dark place, so that you will be forced to be as blind as them". But some places are just dark due to having that quality inherently.

Let me be precise, though: I certainly do not think that the mental ability to distinguish between things (of whatever type) is by itself something tied to the cosmos, nor do I think it has to be actually a better way (assuming some other way exists for other beings) to make sense of the cosmos. The only thing certain is that we, as humans, are bound to this.
Lastly, as a trivia, this philosophical view is usually connected to Parmenides (the Oneness, etc, and the cosmos as an illusion/translation with no tie to an "higher reality"). Not that I have reason to suspect a "higher reality" actually exists. It possibly does not. Most thinkers who liked such a view used some kind of theology too, eg a god as an objective observer (Descartes did that too, albeit in the crudest way possible).

 

[brennan]

I think that the functioning of our universe operates in line with this rule-set we call 'mathematics' - but mathematics is not actually the rules. Mathematics is more like a 'feature' of the existence of things that have a definite existence, and is more or less inescapable. Imagine a conceptual universe that only contains one thing, there is not even any space for the thing to exist in, since this creates a dichotomy - we have two things, the thing itself and the space it is present within. Now assign it an attribute - oh look we have two things again, the thing we started with and the attribute it has.

It is often said that physics is applied maths, but I think this is incorrect. It is easy to point at chemistry for example and say 'that's just advanced electrostatics', but what is there in physics that is actually derived from maths in a similar way? (possibly stochastic i.e. quantum phenomena, but i'm not sure how the argument would go).

Is the maths we know fundamental, or are other systems of 'keeping account' possible? Non-diophantine mathematics is a thing, with real-world applications. Maybe other universes are possible: imagine a sort of positive energy universe in which one plus one makes 2.5 - the action of adding things makes more than you started with.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think that the functioning of our universe operates in line with this rule-set we call 'mathematics' - but mathematics is not actually the rules. Mathematics is more like a 'feature' of the existence of things that have a definite existence, and is more or less inescapable. Imagine a conceptual universe that only contains one thing, there is not even any space for the thing to exist in, since this creates a dichotomy - we have two things, the thing itself and the space it is present within. Now assign it an attribute - oh look we have two things again, the thing we started with and the attribute it has.

It is often said that physics is applied maths, but I think this is incorrect. It is easy to point at chemistry for example and say 'that's just advanced electrostatics', but what is there in physics that is actually derived from maths in a similar way? (possibly stochastic i.e. quantum phenomena, but i'm not sure how the argument would go).

Is the maths we know fundamental, or are other systems of 'keeping account' possible? Non-diophantine mathematics is a thing, with real-world applications. Maybe other universes are possible: imagine a sort of positive energy universe in which one plus one makes 2.5 - the action of adding things makes more than you started with.

Some years ago I toyed with the idea for a story where one day - for no discernible reason; nothing seemed to have preceded the obvious change - a new physical phenomenon appeared and then continued: under specific circumstances, matter of up to some weight would shoot up when near high rises (despite nothing like that being true before). Generally the view was that so alien a phenomenon must have been caused by an actual change in the cosmos. That said, maybe there was no change that caused it in the cosmos - only some different type of change having to do with human perception. At any rate, the new phenomenon quickly was studied and in the future it didn't seem very different than having to inform infants not to stand near the edge of the balcony.

Re your example about the universe that "only contains one thing" and issues arising from that (where is that thing? or how can it have any attribute?) : Yes, that would only be paradoxical if the observer actually identifies that one thing as one, cause in such a case there is no space for an observer either. It is also one reason why Parmenides had theorized of the cosmos as a sphere with infinite periphery, where nothing was distinct from anything else. If you can make a distinction, clearly you are bound to make distinctions. Now you meant to say - of course - that if the universe was just One thing, how would that One thing really be anything at all? But why not, assuming something doesn't have to make sense in order to exist in the first place.

 

[brennan]

It is certainly possible to conceptualise of an existence where nothing makes sense. But this prevents there being anything to make sense of. An existence where the relations between the things present within it or the attributes of these things changes spontaneously cannot result in any long-term order that would comprise anything of actual interest. no stars, no flowers, no intelligent observers.

 

[Kyriakos]

It is certainly possible to conceptualise of an existence where nothing makes sense. But this prevents there being anything to make sense of. An existence where the relations between the things present within it or the attributes of these things changes spontaneously cannot result in any long-term order that would comprise anything of actual interest. no stars, no flowers, no intelligent observers.

I do suspect that when things make sense it is because of a drive of the sense-making agent to further his/her understanding, but I think that unwittingly it is actually a self-understanding and not one of the cosmos. If the cosmos does make sense, it isn't making sense to some chance observer like a human who is at any rate a walking thinking mechanism and has very little consciousness of either his own mental cogs or the dynamics between his own thinking and anything external and non-human. That this allows for distinct and verifiable progress (eg, as noted in my OP, anything up to space-traveling vehicles) is not due to some supposed real tie between observer agent and cosmos, but due to inherent tie between observer and translation natural (and inescapable past some degree) to said observer of the cosmos.

 

[brennan]

The way we think is an evolved attribute. Thus the universe makes sense to us because our brains are adapted to think in accordance with the way the universe works.

Edit: I think we are agreeing btw.

 

[Kyriakos]

The way we think is an evolved attribute. Thus the universe makes sense to us because our brains are adapted to think in accordance with the way the universe works.

Edit: I think we are agreeing btw.

I would just say "are adapted to think in accordance with the way the universe fundamentally (almost innately) was to seem to us"

 

[brennan]

Catching a ball for example. This is calculus, and a three - four year old can do it.