Are numbers abstract? What about letters and words?

[lemondiesel]

Does language exist, is it an absolute truth? Are the words we speak simply just a universal agreement on the effects? Are numbers as real as the words you speak. Mathematics is simply a just another section of language used for description, is it not?

I know mathematics has shaped our world, and anyone who disagrees should chuck their computers out the window. Does the mean numbers have significance? Does it make them real?

I am sure there has been threads, I’m just asking for some fuel for thought. I am stuck on whether or not language exists. I know it represents things that exist, but does that mean it exist?

 

[ProVobis]

Have you seen the movie “A Beautiful Mind”? It is a story of John Nash, who had the habit of deriving equations and applying mathematics to just about every aspect of life, including picking up girls at a bar and how birds gather around food.

I’m convinced mathematics rules and many qualities and abstractions can be measured.

But watch out for that heisenberg guy, which says one can affect the measurement by measuring.

 

[antroji]

Does language exist, is it an absolute truth? Are the words we speak simply just a universal agreement on the effects? Are numbers as real as the words you speak. Mathematics is simply a just another section of language used for description, is it not?

I know mathematics has shaped our world, and anyone who disagrees should chuck their computers out the window. Does the mean numbers have significance? Does it make them real?

I am sure there has been threads, I’m just asking for some fuel for thought. I am stuck on whether or not language exists. I know it represents things that exist, but does that mean it exist?

All these things exist as thought objects in the siubject/object mode of awarenes, one of the three major states available to us. The mind works in symbols, going through several stages of identification, transcendence, and incorporation. Various sets of symbols work at the different levels of which there are at least nine. And the same symbols grow in meaning as the awareness deepens. Most folks are operating at about level four. About 10% operate at 5 or higher, extremely few at 9. That is why there is little hope of actual communication between some levels. That holds even though some people are very advanced in one area and not so much in others. So we can say that language has correspondencies in meaning relative to identity, feeling, perception, beauty, logic, etc, etc, at different levels of comprehension. Maths have more to do with describing functional relationships of measurable data. That has its levels of comprehension as well. Same for Music.

Language exists as a capacity for associating sounds with meaning according to a consensus grammar. Navajo, eg, doesn’t have nouns. Hungarian doesn’t have gender. English is dualistic in that the only true to fact form of the verb “to be” is the first person singular present tense. Sanskrit, I think, is the most accurate in terms of 1/1 association with actuality. Chinese has the most words. Hebrew is written without vowls or punctuation. Many say that Italian or French is the most beautiful. And on it goes. But grammar is a lens on actuality, and this is clear to anyone who speaks two langeses, especially from different root groups. My language derives from Alt-Uralic and is related to Turkish and Finnish. And I speak English most comfortably. But the world “looks” and “feels” different depending on which language I use.

There is a book by Gina Cerminara which deals with many of these ideas as related to religious thought. I highly recommend it.

 

[colmcille1]

Does language exist, is it an absolute truth? Are the words we speak simply just a universal agreement on the effects? Are numbers as real as the words you speak. Mathematics is simply a just another section of language used for description, is it not?

I know mathematics has shaped our world, and anyone who disagrees should chuck their computers out the window. Does the mean numbers have significance? Does it make them real?

I am sure there has been threads, I’m just asking for some fuel for thought. I am stuck on whether or not language exists. I know it represents things that exist, but does that mean it exist?

Hi lemondiesel,
Language exists in imaginative tension.
For example, if I say this: ‘What is the difference between a Chilean miner and an atheist?
Eventually the Chilean miner will see the Light.’
Now, what has been created is an imaginative tension that refuses to cede all connection to reality. The logic of the absurd dictates that our knowledge of a real-life scenario allows the mind to play only because language operates as a referencing of that reality. And so we laugh as tension eases.
God Bless,
Colmcille.

 

[bkayw]

I’m so glad I gave drugs up for reality.