Recognize the two things versus one can be a pattern.

In the beginning was the INTERACTION.
'Agents' doing 'deeds' are concepts privileging one side of the interaction.
(Note the biblical backcloth which sets up an absolutist axiom)

Our "active perceptual needs" do not create the world ex nihilo. We are each of us born into a world that is not of our own making. It was here before any of us were and will be here after all of us. — Fooloso4

Actually I'm inclined to agree with Fresco, but I do understand how weird it seems. But when we imagine the Earth before h. sapiens evolved, say, we're picturing 'a world in which there are no minds' - the early earth, drifting silently through the empty void. But that is still an idea which is ordered according to the intuitions of space and time. The point about realism is that it is built around that human perspective and situates the concept in a temporal and spatial matrix - but then it doesn't realise it has done so.

Here's a passage from Bryan Magee's book which discusses this point in relation to Schopenhauer's philosophy:

'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to Kant ... that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was [that] the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.

Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107

But also bear in mind Kant's claim that he was at once 'an empirical realist and transcendental idealist'. That is, he would not deny the common-sense or empirical perspective of the actual age of the Cosmos etc - after all, his nebular hypothesis forms part of current science - but he's pointing out the usually un-acknowledged role that the mind plays in "constructing" the realist narrative which is generally assumed or taken for granted.

But what is the thing signified? Why, that's a number! — Wayfarer

A number is an abstraction that always emerges in a Turing-complete axiomatic system. For example, in the core axiomatization of functions, i.e. the lambda calculus, numbers are functions:

There are several possible ways to define the natural numbers in lambda calculus, but by far the most common are the Church numerals, which can be defined as follows:

0 := λf.λx.x
1 := λf.λx.f x
2 := λf.λx.f (f x)
3 := λf.λx.f (f (f x))
...
Because the m-th composition of f composed with the n-th composition of f gives the m+n-th composition of f, addition can be defined as follows:

PLUS := λm.λn.λf.λx.m f (n f x)

Numbers are also set expressions in set theory, types in type theory, and combinator expressions in combinator calculus.

Whatever you pick as basic building brick for your Turing-complete axiomatization, you will always be able to express numbers as expressions in this brick.

Surprisingly, if you pick numbers themselves as the building brick, your axiomatization will not be Turing-complete. It will be much weaker.

Therefore, numbers are considered an uninteresting type of building brick and rather a byproduct of a better and more interesting building brick.

For example, set theory is much more powerful than number theory. In fact, you can rewrite number theory as some kind of byproduct inside set theory.

In other words, the idea that mathematics would be about quantities, i.e. numbers, is really wrong.

In other words, the idea that mathematics would be about quantities, i.e. numbers, is really wrong. — alcontali

Interesting. What discipline is this from? Computer science?

Your query about 'numbers' is perhaps handled by the Lakoff & Nunez idea that all 'mathematics' can be be related to 'bodily metaphors'. This is a side issue of the 'embodied cognition' movement at Berkeley, which was one reaction to the failure of computer modelling of cognition.

Recognize the two things versus one can be a pattern. — schopenhauer1

What about the sequence of prime numbers? Is that a pattern?

There is a theory of maths as pattern recognition. What I'm wary of, is the sense we have nowadays that if we can understand the kind of simple antecedents of something like counting as pattern recognition, then we have an in-principle account in evolutionary terms, so it becomes, like everything else, an evolved ability. Simple, eh? Whereas, my take on it is that, when humans evolve to the point of being able to count, reason, and explore mathematical ideas, it is at that point that they transcend the biological. But modern philosophy interprets almost everything about us in biological terms, although there are dissidents. (Even Alfred Russel Wallace was a dissident in respect of this particular issue.)

Your query about 'numbers' is perhaps handled by the Lakoff & Nunez idea that all 'mathematics' can be be related to 'bodily metaphors'. — fresco

I'm aware of Lakoff and Johnson's book, 'where maths comes from'. Part of the book is about dismissing the 'romance of mathematics', which is not what I want to do. I see their kind of work as part of the naturalised epistemology movement.

What about the sequence of prime numbers? Is that a pattern? — Wayfarer

'Divisible only by itself and one' is a pattern. Pattern is just recurrence.

I don’t think so. If primes formed a pattern then there would be a way of predicting the next prime, and I don’t believe there is - it has to be calculated. That is how RSA cryptography works (I think), See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_for_primes

Just need the basic inferencing capacity in place and the more advanced calculating becomes cultural learning. Caveman didn't need primes but he did need inferencing.

I was not saying there is a pattern to the appearance of primes in the number series (although there might be) I was saying that the recurrence of numbers that are divisible by only themselves and 1 is a pattern. Not all patterns are symmetrical.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

That is an important point. We produce the idea of a world, a universe, the world existing for a year, ten years, a thousand years, a billion years, etc.. We produce all these ideas from our own experience of time passing. The passing of time is a fundamental aspect of our experience which allows us to produce these ideas. But we haven't even the foggiest notion of what the passing of time actually is. So the situation is that we experience the passing of time, and we create a world, a universe, from this experience, but since we have absolutely no idea of what the passing of time really is, we absolutely cannot establish any real relationship between the proposed existence of the world, the universe, and the passing of time. Until we conceive the true essence of the passing of time, speculations about the world or the universe, billions of years ago, are just projections of one's own experience (if I would have been there at that time, I think I would have experienced things like this), but we do not have the foggiest idea of what it means to be present at a time, so such speculations are not philosophically useful. Before we can make any useful propositions about the world existing at a particular time, we need a determination of what existing at a particular time really means, of which we seem to have absolutely no idea.

Interesting. What discipline is this from? Computer science? — Wayfarer

The lambda calculus was first described by Alonzo Church:

Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American mathematician and logician who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, Church–Turing thesis, proving the undecidability of the Entscheidungsproblem, Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser theorem. He also worked on philosophy of language (see e.g. Church 1970).

Alonzo Church did not have access to computers when he described the lambda calculus:

The lambda calculus was introduced by mathematician Alonzo Church in the 1930s as part of an investigation into the foundations of mathematics.

There were no computers in the 1930s. Alonzo Church was known mostly as a mathematician and for his work in mathematics. There is a connection, however with what would later be termed "computer science":

The lambda calculus influenced the design of the LISP programming language and functional programming languages in general. The Church encoding is named in his honor.

Type theory was first described by Bertrand Russell.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM FRS[64] (/ˈrʌsəl/; 18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate.

His work has had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science (see type theory and type system) and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics.

Russell certainly did not have access to computers when he described his type theory:

Between 1902 and 1908 Bertrand Russell proposed various "theories of type" in response to his discovery that Gottlob Frege's version of naive set theory was afflicted with Russell's paradox. By 1908 Russell arrived at a "ramified" theory of types together with an "axiom of reducibility" both of which featured prominently in Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica published between 1910 and 1913.

So, I disagree with the mention in his Wikipedia page that Bertrand Russell would have contributed type theory to computer science between 1902 and 1908. At that point in time, computers did not exist, not even on paper as a concept.

'Agents' doing 'deeds' are concepts privileging one side of the interaction. — fresco

Your description is conceptual, but the description is not the doing.

But when we imagine ... we're picturing ... that is still an idea ... — Wayfarer

The existence of the earth prior to man and what we imagine or picture or form ideas of what that was like is not the same.

I'm taking a Pragmatist (Nietzschean) perspective that there is no way of seperating 'description' from 'actuality'. All we can ever have are 'descriptions' which vary in functionality according to context.

Naive realists think that what we humans call 'the physical world' has nothing to do with the active perceptual needs of us as a species. — fresco

Aside from a quibble about the word "needs" there (which I'll avoid for now as that would be a major tangent), the claim above isn't actually the case. Insofar as we go, insofar as our perceptions go, etc., then of course the physical world has something to do with that, because us, our perceptions, etc. are part of the physical world. We appeared because of what's possible in the physical world, including that life was possible, that life evolves, etc.

They don't understand that a picture of 'a world devoid of humans' is a current human construction useful for current purposes. — fresco

"A world devoid of humans," in quotation marks, since conventionally the usage of quotation marks is used to denote the phrase, or we could say the idea, certainly would be a human construction. What that phrase refers to without the quotation marks, however, is not a human construction. To think that it is is to commit the most rudimentary of conceptual errors that would suggest no understanding of the use/mention distinction.

Are you prepared to stick your neck out and say that potential solutions to current enigmas, like 'dark matter', will not not radically change are current concept of 'physicality' ? — fresco

First, I'm not pledging allegiance to anyone else's concepts. So whether some agreed-upon concept changes, that doesn't affect my views.

At that, it's not at all like I'm simply hanging on to the coattails of science, no matter what the consensus or popular views in the sciences are. I think that the sciences forward a lot of ideas that are nonsense.

I'm taking a Pragmatist (Nietzschean) perspective that there is no way of seperating 'description' from 'actuality'. All we can ever have are 'descriptions' which vary in functionality according to context. — fresco

Describing is a kind of doing, but it is not the doing of what is described.

Our ability to conceptualize has led some to believe that everything we do must be conceptual or the result of conceptualizing. It is in order to correct this, to start from the other direction, from where concepts originate, that Wittgenstein quotes Goethe.

I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but
not ratiocination. (On Certainty 475)

Our language-game is an extension of primitive behavior. (For our language-game is behavior.) (Instinct). (Zettel 545)

Instinct first reason second (Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology 689)

The squirrel does not infer by induction that it is going to need stores next winter as well. And no more do we need a law of induction to justify our actions or our predictions. (On Certainty 287)

As far as I am concerned, ' where concepts originate from' is just another vacuous endeavor played by ' aspiring 'realists' desperate for 'axioms'. Biological understanding of languaging as 'behaviour' needs no such 'axioms' (Maturana).
But with our 'philosophy hats on' we can play such word games ad infinitum. I have called it 'seminaritis' .For me, this one amounts to 'naive realists' squirming on the uncomfortable hook arising from Kant's point about the inaccessibility of noumena and the subsequent ditching of 'noumena' by later phenomenologists.
Obviously, an 'objective world' is useful picture for everyday transactions involving contextual attempts to 'predict and control', (maybe like a 'geocentric world' is useful for farmers). But it perhaps requires a bit of intellectual courage to realize that such 'pictures' are always human constructs, expressed in socially acquired language, and subject to delimitation or revision.

As far as I am concerned, ' where concepts originate from' is just another vacuous endeavor played by ' aspiring 'realists' desperate for 'axioms'. Biological understanding of languaging as 'behaviour' needs no such 'axioms' (Maturana) — fresco

It is not a question of where concepts originate. You are right that biological understanding of languaging as 'behaviour' needs no such 'axioms', that is the point!

For me, this one amounts to 'naive realists' squirming on the uncomfortable hook arising from Kant's point about the inaccessibility of noumena and the subsequent ditching of 'noumena' by later phenomenologists. — fresco

That there were dinosaurs that roamed the earth long before man has nothing to do with the Kantian distinction between noumena and phenomena or with phenomenology. Mediated understanding does not mean we must reject the existence of what is not mediated by human understanding.

Obviously, an 'objective world' is useful picture ... — fresco

Here again you introduce concepts that are not at issue. The universe prior to or in the absence of man or consciousness is not an objective world. The concept of an objective world stands in relation to the concept of a subjective world.

... such 'pictures' are always human constructs... — fresco

Of course the pictures humans construct are human constructs! That there are only human constructs is a human construct, a picture that some have difficulty seeing passed.

On the contrary, I have asserted we SHOULD reject 'existence' not mediated by human understanding because 'existence' is a human concept like any other. That is the perhaps the point where courage is needed to shed the bouyancy aid !

On the contrary, I have asserted we SHOULD reject 'existence' not mediated by human understanding because 'existence' is a human concept like any other. — fresco

Is there anything other than human constructs?

There would appear to us to be 'transient systems' of interactive 'entities', some of which we call 'living', which operate either individually or as parts of nested wholes. But I would not wish ascribe the word 'existence' to such systems or entities 'except for 'human purposes'. For example, 'the heart' may count as either an individual system, or part of 'the body'. (Individuality of 'an entity' implies the possibility of functional replacement).

There would appear to us to be 'transient systems' of interactive 'entities' ... — fresco

Could there be any interaction within these systems if these entities were human constructs?

Humans are the judge of 'interaction'.

Humans are the judge of 'interaction'. — fresco

The interaction of what?

The entities and systems which they conceptualize.

The entities and systems which they conceptualize. — fresco

Are there entities that are not part of a system of human interaction? Are entities mind dependent? Is the mind interacting with itself or with entities that are not products of the mind? Is there nothing but the mind generating a world ex nihilo?

The lambda calculus was first described by Alonzo Church — alcontali

:up:

That is an important point. — Metaphysician Undercover

:up:

The existence of the earth prior to man and what we imagine or picture or form ideas of what that was like is not the same. — Fooloso4

The point I'm trying to make, is that there is an inextricably subjective pole or aspect of all experience. This applies even to //when we are considering// the objects of scientific analysis. This realisation has been more or less forced on science by the conundrums associated with quantum mechanics. But once you understand the change in perspective that it suggests, it's not nearly so outlandish as it first appears.

Even the scientific picture of the world, which I am not suggesting is fallacious, is still a construct or representation ('vorstellung') in Schopenhauer's sense. But we attribute it a reality which we feel we ourselves don't have. But that is treating ourselves as objects of scientific analysis, as phenomena - which we're not. This was the subject of the 'blind spot' article that we were debating in June.

Are there entities that are not part of a system of human interaction? Are entities mind dependent? Is the mind interacting with itself or with entities that are not products of the mind? Is there nothing but the mind generating a world ex nihilo? — Fooloso4

Could I suggest that in saying that, you're positing 'mind' as 'something within the individual' - my mind, or your mind, the conscious cognition of an individual human. Of course, within that picture, the individual is indeed only a phantasm. But that picture itself is but an aspect of the 'lifeworld' of us as modern humans with our scientifically-informed point of view.

In whatever way we may be conscious of the world as universal horizon, as coherent universe of existing objects, we, each "I-the-man" and all of us together, belong to the world as living with one another in the world; and the world is our world, valid for our consciousness as existing precisely through this 'living together'. — Edmund Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences p108

It doesn't mean that 'the world is in the mind'. It's more like, world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles, we have a shared world of meanings and common facts within which we all dwell. Within that, empirical science is the optimal method for discovering the common facts of phenomena; scientific laws and mathematical regularities hold true. Both 'mind' and 'world' are encompassed by that. But we need to recognise that in this sense, it's not 'mind-independent'; but that's a philosophical, not a scientific, judgement.

It doesn't mean that 'the world is in the mind'. It's more like, world and mind arise together as objective and subjective poles, we have a shared world of meanings and common facts within which we all dwell. — Wayfarer

This reminds me of De Anima where Aristotle says: "In a way, the soul is all things."