Aspies For Freedom

Does any language exist outside of the mind? What does it mean to "exist?" I believe that numbers are a created language that describes the universe as it is perceived by humans. It is the best language we have for this task, but let's not conflate description and actuality. I personally don't think humans have much of a clue regarding the universe's actuality.

It's probably important to clarify what the word "exist" means in this context. For example, do the "inventions of our minds" exist? After all, they have a physical presence (comprised of chemical states and electrical neuron impulses).

For myself, my definition of existence is anything that where the evidence of the thing is not based on a false representation - regardless of it's physical presence. In this case, numbers exist, because numbers are a concept, and this concept does exist.

For example, if someone told me a story about a dancing chicken, this story would exist, because the story is the words I heard or read - regardless of whether or not the words were in physical, verbal, or electronic form.

If someone told me that they had a story of a dancing chicken in their mind, and they were not lying, the story would still exist - in the form of a series of words coded mentally.

If someone told me that they had a story of a dancing chicken in their mind, and they were lying, then the story would not exist. My belief in the existence of the story was based on a false premise.

All spiritual qualities are mental - spirituality is a mental concept. For example, if a god or gods existed, then they would be literal entities, and wouldn't have any inherent spirituality. Any spirituality directed towards these creatures would be entirely mentally based.

Point taken.

Again, this comes down to the definition of existence. I can tentatively derive that from the above, your definition of existence involves "major" physical manifestation (major meaning, in this case, at a higher level than inforamtion-carrying physicality, such as chemical or electrical states).

Do the abstract objects exist outside of a particular persons mind?
Yes, the concepts have been written down many times, and are often coded into computer systems. It could be debatable whether the "understanding" of the concept creates the concept, but this term is debatable as well - for example, the computer "understands" the concept to the extent that it can use the concept meaningfully within limited parameters - most people are about the same.

Are these concepts physically manifest above the level of informational physicality? No.

So it all depends.

This assumes that the nature of numbers is not an idea or a representation - I believe that this is exactly what a number is. The number 5 may be used a representation of, for example, 5 cows - but this doesn't mean that the number 5 becomes something other than the number 5 as a result. In the same way, the letter c may be used as a representation of the speed of light, but this doesn't stop it from also being the letter c.

In the example of the gunman above, the gunman doesn't exist, as the idea of the gunman is based on false data.

If you were to ask "Does the idea of the gunman exist?", the answer would have to be yes.

I don't see that as so bizarre - for example, if an airtight room exists, you could say that it "flickers in and out of existence" every time someone opens or closes a door.

In reality it doesn't - it just becomes something you'd have to use different words to describe.

With numbers, the concept of numbering exists, and it briefly becomes something you might describe as "the number 345678729435" when this number is used, then becomes something else.

Point taken again - there's a few different meanings of the word.

I usually take the word as meaning "Thing to which great significance or symbolism is ascribed", but it can also mean such things as "non-physical existance", or even "form of religious 'energy'" in some cases.



Thought I'd throw a few more questions out there, just to clarify the definition of existence.

Does thought exist?
Does conflict exist?
Does happiness, sadness, or any other emotional state exist?
Do groups exist?
Does propoganda or rhetoric exist?
Does prejudice exist?

Yep, I got that - that's why I said "point taken" when you clarified what he ATM was talking about. To be honest, I'd jumped into the debate halfway through, and hadn't carefully studied the original post. I don't think either of us believe in abstract objects existing outside of space-time.

After this, you continued giving some "what if" arguments based on whether the word "exist" could be applied to numbers, so I continued the debate on that level.

I had a look through some info on mathematical platonism, and I thought it might be fun to argue the mathematical platonist point of view

(Note: my real opinion is that when talking of "objects" outside of spacetime, without physicality, it all just becomes word-games. Independant existence is such a broad concept that you could argue that all possible concepts have individual existence, or none of them - and you'd be right on both counts. Some word-games are enjoyable, though - and that's the spirit I'm entering into the debate from).

My thinking is that numbers do have an existence independant of mind, because once the concept has been described (i.e. once the concept has been "connected to"), the number has properties that are not controlled by the mind that contains it. For example, the number 8 has the property of being 2³ after the concepts of "2", "3", "8", and "power of" have been described - regardless of whether the person thinking of these concepts has ever thought "2³=8". If the person says "2³=9", for example, they can be shown that they are "wrong" - which shows that the number objects have properties not controlled by the mind creating them.

Of course it would be possible to assign properties to numbers such that 2³ does equal 9, but in this case you would be "connecting to" a different set of "objects", and everyone involved would quickly realise that a different set of objects was being talked about.

So there you have it - numbers have independant existence outside the minds of the people using them.

We seem to be getting back to our first debate. Are we debating whether numbers are mind independant, whether numbers exist, or the combo that "numbers have a mind-independent existence"?

The above arguments were to prove mind-independence, not to prove existence. To summarise the argument statements, numbers are mind-independent because they have mind-independent properties. You are correct that this cannot be used to show existence - I was not attempting to.

My earlier arguments were regarding existence (i.e. conclusion: depends on the definition).

I just went to the dictionary (http://www.dictionary.com) to see if there was an absolute definition, and it seems there's not:

Exists: 1. to have actual being; be: The world exists, whether you like it or not.  

Being: 1. the fact of existing; existence (as opposed to nonexistence).

Not very helpful. Without a working definition, we can't really debate existence at all - so before we get too far into that debate, what does the word "exist" mean to you?

I just wanted to reiterate this as a general rule for debates, as it's one that saves a lot of time, and is usually forgotten:

If you assert that x is y, and another person asserts that x is not y, or vice versa -  always go to the dictionary and look up x and y before continuing.

As often as not, the other person either agrees and is using an incorrect word, or is talking about an alternate usage of the word.

This case is a classic example - every single possible explanation of the word "exist" is possible, as the dictionary definition is circular. We will therefore either work out that we're using different definitions of the word, and then agree with each others statements, or we will find out that we are using the same definition of the word, and debate to a conclusion.

I'll re-iterate my earlier point - we still don't have a working definition of "exists", so we can't yet debate whether anything "exists".

What I found fascinating in the research is that we make up most of what we think we see! Just sort of fill in the blanks so that the whole picture makes sense to us. Really pretty extraordinary.

No, it follows that we have no reason to believe B.

And if B is analogous to, say, fairies, then we can say that we have as much reason to believe in fairies as we have to believe B, and since we positively believe there are no fairies, we should, to stay consistent, also positively believe that not B.

Or, to be precise, it would follow that C is no reason to believe B, and so, if there are no other reasons to believe B, then there is no reason to believe B.

I never said there was any logical contradictions in those ideas, only that we had reason to disbelive them. A coherent view is not always a rational view. The view that Mount Everest is seventy-five meters high is coherent (as opposed to the view that it is 2i-4 meters high), but it's not a rational view.

Do you not disbelieve the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

I repeat: I never claimed that it was a law of deductive reasoning, I claimed it was a principle of inductive reasoning.

Sigh. Dictionaries don't necessarily define domain-specific uses of a term. They're often incorrect when talking about the meaning of a term in a specific domain, and often, a term is thought up in some domain with a precise meaning, and then the term gradually becomes used outside the domain with a broader or different meaning that was once upon a time roughly analogous but isn't any more. In short, when talking about (say) mathematics, philosophy or scinece, we can't simply go to a dictionary and find a definition and then be sure that in mathematics, philosophy and science, this term is used exactly like it is used in general.

Let me quote Wikipedia, which has a more accurate description:

In the same way that a scientific theory is never 100% certain. One can establish a very high likelihood of something's being true, so much so that it would be silly not to claim that we know it.

Therefore, you cannot claim that Occam's razor cannot give us any knowledge about whether or not there are numbers just because it's a principle of inductive reasoning.