Great article! You nailed the two major areas where a purely materialist view breaks down: math and consciousness.
Penrose has a really sophisticated understanding of how these things interweave. I highly recommend the first few chapters of Road to Reality (but the book as a whole is really dense, I had to fight my way through it). Here’s a good summary: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2019/11/12/an-eternal-triangle/
Excellent post! I broadly agree, but have a suspicion that mathematical ‘truths’ are really just tautologies that are true by definition, they just seem profound because our minds are so limited.
I also think materialism is just a shared conscious inference — I think you made this point really well.
In the end, the only thing that we’re really sure of is that consciousness exists, though. This makes me lean towards idealism
This post made my day, Mark! I have suggested it as reading for my local ACX discussion group. Will have to reread and follow all the links, but so far it warms the heart of this middle-aged Catholic convert with a BS in physics at a dark time of year.
Sorry, but everytime I see these attempts, I just think that no non-materialism adds an iota of understanding. Worse, in fact. Whatever explains consciousness will be deeply counterintuitive. That's no strike against a theory
You have considered the hypothesis that numbers are real material entities, and the hypothesis that they are real but immaterial entities. These do not exhaust the hypothesis space, because there is also the hypothesis that numbers are not real , that they are fictional. Clearly, we can reason about fictional entities, holding that orcs exist in Middle Earth. not Narnia and so on. If we can reason about propositions concerning fictional entities, then they are meaningful enough -- there is no reason
to suppose that extension or reference is the only kind of meaning. Fictionalism is related to formalism: formalism is the idea that maths is an invented game. So long as everyone follows the same rules, everyone can agree on mathematical "truth".
This was a pretty interesting article, though I think I disagree with you on basically every point. I'd argue that there is a highest number, sort of like how there is a fattest man. There could always conceivably be a person which is fatter, but definitively there exists a number which is the highest. This probably arises naturally from how I view math, as a tool to aid viewing the universe rather than a base tenet of the universe itself, so maybe I'm off on that, who knows.
I'm not sure that the consciousness argument is really a disproof of materialism, so much as it is a weak point. Surely we can agree that, if consciousness exists in the material realm, it must be quite complex, correct? Is it really that surprising that we struggle to understand a really complicated thing? A more concrete definition of material consciousness could arise within the next century, for all we know, as knowledge of the inner workings of the human body continues to grow. That said, I don't want to be infinitely gratuitous on this point. If materialism fails to adequately explain consciousness even with a sustained knowledge of mental processes, then you're probably on point here. I just don't think it's fair to call this a failure yet, only a work in progress.
Finally, I don't know why materialism needs an ultimate claim to truth. Its intention, best I can gauge, is to limit the scope of investigation to areas where palpable feedback can be gained. The issue with most non-materialist thought is that it lacks meaningful contradiction. There isn't a reliable way to tell if you are right or wrong about something. By tying investigations to the physical realm, materialism loses distant quantities, which rarely contradict the thinker, and replaces them with a focus on near ones, which often do. Add to this the fact that non-materialist thought also has a tendency to "lead us to a place where social consensus is mistaken for truth", but further invalidates objections to that social order, because it isn't reliant on palpable proofs. I agree that materialism is limiting, and it's certainly worth considering where those limitations might bias us away from finding Truth, but I largely see it as a constructive force.
If we consider that material objects exist in four dimensions, three of space and one of time, then I would say "there is no highest number" maps onto the infinite progession of time.
What if math (and compsci, and consciousness) don't exist as such? What if they are merely ("merely") representations in neutral nets? Intermediate products on the road from sensory input to intelligent decision-making, that only exist in the model that the intelligence works with?
Saying 2+2=4 is definitionally true, but it doesn’t cause 2 things, and 2 more things, to exist, in order to be 4. As far as can tell, your post is arguing that it does.
Great article! You nailed the two major areas where a purely materialist view breaks down: math and consciousness.
Penrose has a really sophisticated understanding of how these things interweave. I highly recommend the first few chapters of Road to Reality (but the book as a whole is really dense, I had to fight my way through it). Here’s a good summary: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2019/11/12/an-eternal-triangle/
Excellent post! I broadly agree, but have a suspicion that mathematical ‘truths’ are really just tautologies that are true by definition, they just seem profound because our minds are so limited.
I also think materialism is just a shared conscious inference — I think you made this point really well.
In the end, the only thing that we’re really sure of is that consciousness exists, though. This makes me lean towards idealism
This post made my day, Mark! I have suggested it as reading for my local ACX discussion group. Will have to reread and follow all the links, but so far it warms the heart of this middle-aged Catholic convert with a BS in physics at a dark time of year.
Sorry, but everytime I see these attempts, I just think that no non-materialism adds an iota of understanding. Worse, in fact. Whatever explains consciousness will be deeply counterintuitive. That's no strike against a theory
You have considered the hypothesis that numbers are real material entities, and the hypothesis that they are real but immaterial entities. These do not exhaust the hypothesis space, because there is also the hypothesis that numbers are not real , that they are fictional. Clearly, we can reason about fictional entities, holding that orcs exist in Middle Earth. not Narnia and so on. If we can reason about propositions concerning fictional entities, then they are meaningful enough -- there is no reason
to suppose that extension or reference is the only kind of meaning. Fictionalism is related to formalism: formalism is the idea that maths is an invented game. So long as everyone follows the same rules, everyone can agree on mathematical "truth".
This was a pretty interesting article, though I think I disagree with you on basically every point. I'd argue that there is a highest number, sort of like how there is a fattest man. There could always conceivably be a person which is fatter, but definitively there exists a number which is the highest. This probably arises naturally from how I view math, as a tool to aid viewing the universe rather than a base tenet of the universe itself, so maybe I'm off on that, who knows.
I'm not sure that the consciousness argument is really a disproof of materialism, so much as it is a weak point. Surely we can agree that, if consciousness exists in the material realm, it must be quite complex, correct? Is it really that surprising that we struggle to understand a really complicated thing? A more concrete definition of material consciousness could arise within the next century, for all we know, as knowledge of the inner workings of the human body continues to grow. That said, I don't want to be infinitely gratuitous on this point. If materialism fails to adequately explain consciousness even with a sustained knowledge of mental processes, then you're probably on point here. I just don't think it's fair to call this a failure yet, only a work in progress.
Finally, I don't know why materialism needs an ultimate claim to truth. Its intention, best I can gauge, is to limit the scope of investigation to areas where palpable feedback can be gained. The issue with most non-materialist thought is that it lacks meaningful contradiction. There isn't a reliable way to tell if you are right or wrong about something. By tying investigations to the physical realm, materialism loses distant quantities, which rarely contradict the thinker, and replaces them with a focus on near ones, which often do. Add to this the fact that non-materialist thought also has a tendency to "lead us to a place where social consensus is mistaken for truth", but further invalidates objections to that social order, because it isn't reliant on palpable proofs. I agree that materialism is limiting, and it's certainly worth considering where those limitations might bias us away from finding Truth, but I largely see it as a constructive force.
I enjoyed reading this piece.
If we consider that material objects exist in four dimensions, three of space and one of time, then I would say "there is no highest number" maps onto the infinite progession of time.
What if math (and compsci, and consciousness) don't exist as such? What if they are merely ("merely") representations in neutral nets? Intermediate products on the road from sensory input to intelligent decision-making, that only exist in the model that the intelligence works with?
Your notion seems either circular or nonsensical.
Saying 2+2=4 is definitionally true, but it doesn’t cause 2 things, and 2 more things, to exist, in order to be 4. As far as can tell, your post is arguing that it does.