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by mannykannot
3497 days ago
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Does this get us into the question of whether anything mathematical exists before anyone (or anysomething) first thought of it, and exists even when no-one is currently thinking of it? If you answer yes, then mathematics has an existence independent of thought. If you answer no, then that conditional existence presumably extends to physics as well, especially if Max Tegmark is right about math being the reality of physics. In that case, then it seems to follow that the universe only exists when it is being thought about, a conclusion that appears to have a bootstrap problem... I think I can avoid the whole issue by observing that I can imagine things that do not physically exist, and they are not made to physically exist by dint of a conceptual representation of them physically existing in my brain. |
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No, because you can't ask for it's existence, before you thought of it.
>exists even when no-one is currently thinking of it
Again, who cares, it's by definition undefined, null, niente, the inbetween state of a ternary logic.
>I can imagine things
You can't will a pot of gold into existence by mere imagination, but you can't imagine an idea without it's inherint structure being real.
I'll admit, that's a simplistic outlook, but I wasn't encouraging a complicated discusion.