And even then, there is a world outside my mind. — fishfry

There is very definitely a world outside your mind. The issues is how we understand the relation between the subjective and the objective aspect of experience. There aren’t simply in themselves subjects and in themselves objects colliding with each other. Even Kant knew better than that. We have to understand that what it means to be an object is to play a role in a constructive process that a subject generates in an intersubjective space. And for its part , to be a subject is to be changed in its organization and understanding by the objects it construes. So each side of the equation is changed and shaped by the other.

“Knowledge is taken to consist in a faithful mirroring of a mind-independent reality. It is taken to be of a reality which exists independently of that knowledge, and indeed independently of any thought and experience (Williams 2005, 48). If we want to know true reality, we should aim at describing the way the world is, not just independently of its being believed to be that way, but independently of all the ways in which it happens to present itself to us human beings. An absolute conception would be a dehumanized conception, a conception from which all traces of ourselves had been removed. Nothing would remain that would indicate whose conception it is, how those who form or possess that conception experience the world, and when or where they find themselves in it.

It would be as impersonal, impartial, and objective a picture of the world as we could possibly achieve (Stroud 2000, 30). How are we supposed to reach this conception? Metaphysical realism assumes that everyday experience combines subjective and objective features and that we can reach an objective picture of what the world is really like by stripping away the subjective. It consequently argues that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between the properties things have “in themselves” and the properties which are “projected by us”. Whereas the world of appearance, the world as it is for us in daily life, combines subjective and objective features, science captures the objective world, the world as it is in itself. But to think that science can provide us with an absolute description of reality, that is, a description from a view from nowhere; to think that science is the only road to metaphysical truth, and that science simply mirrors the way in which Nature classifies itself, is – according to Putnam – illusory.

It is an illusion to think that the notions of “object” or “reality” or “world” have any sense outside of and independently of our conceptual schemes (Putnam 1992, 120). Putnam is not denying that there are “external facts”; he even thinks that we can say what they are; but as he writes, “what e cannot say – because it makes no sense – is what the facts are independent of all conceptual choices” (Putnam 1987, 33). We cannot hold all our current beliefs about the world up against the world and somehow measure the degree of correspondence between the two. It is, in other words, nonsensical to suggest that we should try to peel our perceptions and beliefs off the world, as it were, in order to compare them in some direct way with what they are about (Stroud 2000, 27). This is not to say that our conceptual schemes create the world, but as Putnam writes, they don't just mirror it either (Putnam 1978, 1). Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned (Putnam 1990, 28, 1981, 54, 1987, 77)

I have searched on and off for years on what philosophical movements promote, or are in agreement with, the idea that everything in our experience can be interpreted/translated as mathematics. — Paul Fishwick

I tend to equate the human science of Mathematics with knowledge of the Logical structure of the universe. In mathematical analysis, we are describing certain logical relationships between things. And one result of those "equations" is a unified & holistic view of otherwise independent parts of reality. The physical parts of reality are visible and tangible. But the web of interrelationships is invisible, except to rational minds. So, Mathematics is essentially a form of Mind-reading, in the sense of Hawking's quote about knowing the mind of God.

With that broader notion in mind, I would call the mathematical aspect of reality : Meta-Physical. That's because it applies, not just to material relationships, but to meaningful & moral human (mental, emotional) relationships. Logical relationships have both numerical values (ratios) and moral values (true/false; good/bad). But those who focus their mathematical investigations on the parts, may not "see" the whole picture, that Hawking referred to as "God". Of course, he was not referring to the god-model of any particular religion, but to the Nature-god (or Logos) of the philosophers, specifically Spinoza. And, in that all-encompassing sense, Mathematics (Logic) is part & parcel of "everything". :smile:


"If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would know the mind of God" ___Stephen Hawking

everything in our experience can be interpreted/translated as mathematics — Paul Fishwick

same thing could be said about poetry

which is the opposite of math

same thing could be said about poetry

which is the opposite of math — MikeListeral

Curious. How is poetry the opposite of math? I'm not saying it isn't. But there is poetry in math, usually comprehensible only to those who study the subject.

Curious. How is poetry the opposite of math? — jgill

poetry is like dreams

information without logic

This is not to say that our conceptual schemes create the world, but as Putnam writes, they don't just mirror it either (Putnam 1978, — Joshs

I can accept that.