[coffeecantcode]

I’m not sure what you would like in the way of citations. Abstracting on its own operates outside of the physical world, the world of ideas is different than the physical world of events. You can choose to believe these are just electrical signals in the brain, nothing more, and that is the physical world, but my entire tangent here has been that I don’t believe that, and why.

Abstractions, at least ones that survive over long periods of time, like the use of numbers, or like human spirituality, tend to contain within them a large collection of truths. Large collections of truths are what I mean by a greater reality, because they are not reality, they are abstracted ideas that are based on reality, but serve a greater purpose.

Something being more real than the reality in front of us is not a new idea, idealism was introduced by Plato 2,400 years ago suggesting that true reality lies in the world of perfect ideas, otherwise put, a reality more real than the physical world.

Like I said though, all of this is my interpretations of readings and based on my own years of thought and experience.

[angoragoats]

I'd caution against comparing an actual, useful-in-everyday-life abstraction like numbers, with a vague wishy-washy idea like "human spirituality."

I'm familiar with idealism and I definitely got the sense that you were coming from that perspective. As you might have guessed, I'm a naturalist, and probably also a materialist, because I think naturalism most closely comports with what we understand about how the universe works. While idealism is interesting to read about, I have yet to meet anyone that could provide evidence for the fact that it is actually correct and naturalism is wrong, so that's why I was asking. I'm personally not that interested in philosophical concepts that have no evidence or application in the real world.

I'm also not aware of evidence for any "truths" that are themselves inherent to any abstractions we use as a species. For example, I can write an equation like so:

x + 7 = 10

I can solve for X and find that it is 3, and verify that my answer is correct by checking it against the original equation. I can do all of that using the abstractions we've developed and nothing more. But none of these truths are actually inherent to the abstraction of numbers; I could just have easily put seven apples in front of me, and added apples to another pile until I arrived at a total of 10 to find my answer.

Could you give me an example of an abstraction which contains a truth that does not ultimately derive from the material, as in the example above?

[coffeecantcode]

The comparison was risky, I’ll give you that. I think we’ve both already come to the conclusion that neither of us is going to prove much to the other, as you’ve stated our belief systems clash in multiple important ways. I would argue that my idealistic and (more importantly but not yet mentioned) my humanistic views of the world are not wholly incompatible with naturalism, given you are willing to give wide berth to aspects of natural forces like consciousness and what we do with it, which you may not be. On materialism, I don’t think we’ll get anywhere.

And to your apple example, I never implied that numbers do not originate in the material world or are not derived from there, only that their true utility is realized when they have been abstracted over all the other types of fruit, and animals, and crops, etc. What started as piles of apples becomes something like one level of abstraction higher than a pile of apples, it becomes 10. But you have specifically said you have no interest in discussing things of this nature so I’ll stop. But I’m leaving this paragraph because I took the time to write it.

Your request for an abstraction that does not derive from the material is a bit of an impossible task isn’t it? And like I said I never claimed that these abstractions did not originate in the material, just that over time they accumulated related truths to become greater than the material itself.

[angoragoats]

I know our discussion is most likely over but wanted to apologize for being unclear. I wasn't asking for an abstraction that was divorced from something material; I was asking for an example of an abstraction which has shown something true, where that true thing could not then be verified in the material world, as in my apple example. Basically I'm asking for an example of "they accumulated related truths to become greater than the material itself."

[coffeecantcode]

No worries! I’ve only done a bit of thinking on this specifically but I struggle to understand why you are asking for an abstraction that could not be verified in the material world. From my understanding the only value that abstractions have is if they can be effectively verified and acted out in the material world. Otherwise why bother abstracting on them!

The abstraction itself exists outside of the material world, we’ve already beaten that horse, but for an example of ‘accumulating related truths to become greater than the material itself’ I would point to food.

Materially, food serves to nurture and satiate, to be found and eaten. But one level up, when abstracted upon, food becomes information. It becomes where to find the food, when the food appears, how much of the food is around. It provides an advantage to those that think in those terms instead of those that react to the appearance of food and eat it and move on to find some more. Animals over time evolve around food and food availability, they move seasonally to find it, they give birth near it, etc. That is not the same as abstracting information from food—this has spearheaded our evolutionary course from hunting and gathering, to agriculture, to squeezing the life out of our planet in pursuit of absolute control of our surroundings (food).

[angoragoats]

Yeah, this doesn’t work for me at all. I don’t agree that food has been abstracted away at any level, much less that it somehow turned into where to find food, etc. All of that is just information. Thanks for the discussion though.