Philosophy of Mathematics

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It was me who said that, at least as far as this thread goes. I’m sure I’m not the first ever to say it, lol.
 
I would counter that it’s more comfortable to say God created math than to say, as your arguement implies that math just kind of sprang up randomly as a result of God’s creation. That seems hard to justify. Why does math seem to unify and explain so much if not by design.
 
It describes the design, we don’t say that the design describes math.

As I see it a lot of what is in the universe can be quantified in some way and described but the weather systems contain chaos too don’t they? How is it then that these can’t be described fully by math?

Even the future shape of a cloud can’t be fully predicted by math.
 
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Division by zero is allowed in sets of numbers call “communative wheels”
 
Hey, that’s Brady Haran from Hello Internet !

Great vid, I liked it.

Thank you for sharing 🙂
 
chessnerd321 said:
Do math and it’s related abstract objects (numbers geometric shapes) exist?
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Maths numbers are just adjectives that describe experienced reality from a point of reference of zero, or that reference point not being there. Such as experiencing two apples. It’s (2) two apples in comparison to the reference point of zero or no apples. You are two apples away from the reference point of zero apples. Maths equations are just logical symbols describing a process that is referenced to reality. Now, since we can imagine absurdly large numbers, we can use maths to imagine how reality would work on say a moon that is actually made of cheese. But because we use logical processes, like mathematics to see what a moon made of cheese would be like, that does not make a moon made of cheese actually exist in reality, even though we have used maths to see what that reality would be like. This is where you have to actually test your maths prediction against reality. Remember, reality is the reference point of what is true, not our math or our logic or our imagination. Such as: Einstein mathematically concluded that gravity waves should exist. But we did not teach anyone that they were actually a true part of reality until we detected them in 2015. The logic just helped us figure out the best way to look for something and where to look for something, but until that something is actually detected in reality, it’s still not actually part of reality yet.
chessnerd321 said:
If it does does it exist only in the mind?
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Math is just logic in its purest form to communicate the experienced reality and to make predictions about the experienced reality. So yes, communication is only found so far in biological minds. This is why mathematical models of reality are not justified to be a correct representation of reality until it is tested against reality, if your goal is to have an equation to describe a predictive quality of reality. If reality gives you back data that your mathematical model was wrong, your logic is wrong, not reality. You fix your logic to fit reality since you can’t logic something into existence. Reality doesn’t owe you what you would logically prefer, it only owes you the truth of what it actually is. However, if your reference point of your mathematical equation does not reference reality, now you can be logically correct all you want since your reference point of your equation has nothing to do with the truth of reality but what ever reference point you want. That’s how comic book superheros and syfy sitcoms work with teleportation, the force, flying, spiderman, etc.
 
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To one who uses math constantly in my profession (Electrical Engineer, much of the time analog, much of the time antenna design requiring lots of field theory), math is very real as a tool. It’s as real as a hammer is to a carpenter. And as easy to hit your thumb with, on occasion.
 
chessnerd321 said:
To make my arguement brief, I’d say math is objectlively true. Math is true even if nobody knows it, thus it exists outside the mind and so it is discovered by us rather than invented as a tool to use.
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Yes if your goal about math is to model the experience reality. Now if you use maths to see what a cheese moon would be like, you can do that to, but that still doesn’t make a cheese moon actually exist in reality though. This is where you cross over into the comic book realm.
chessnerd321 said:
If humans discovered math, did God create math, is math part of God? Or something else?
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Since the supernatural has not be demonstrated to be part of reality, it’s not allowed to be part of the solution to anything yet. Imaging something that has the power to do literally anything will be the answer to literally any question. So it is an internally logically correct position to be at from that reference point of presupposing the entity can do anything so therefore all problems are solved by referring to it. However, if you want to have a reference point of reality, you have to first demonstrate what is in reality and what is possible with that known reality, then you can have mathematical models that match the actual experienced reality. See you can be logically correct and the factually wrong since you test your logical conclusion against what reality indicates. When you find out that reality doesn’t line up with your logic, you realize that your logical assumptions were lacking in additional data. So you learned that you actually didn’t know enough about reality to have an accurate model of reality even though you were temporarily logically correct based on your limited information about reality.
 
chessnerd321 said:
To make my arguement brief, I’d say math is objectlively true. Math is true even if nobody knows it, thus it exists outside the mind and so it is discovered by us rather than invented as a tool to use.
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Agreed. Mathematical truth is eternally true, that’s why i think there has to be an absolute unchanging necessary act of reality which gave existence to all unnecessary beings, and this is what we call God. The reason i have come to this conclusion is because i don’t think that something can be actually true in the absence of all reality. Without an act of reality there is absolutely nothing and nothing to be true about. If nothing existed and there was also truth, this would mean that truth is something distinct from absolutely nothing and is therefore a being. But it can’t be true that there is absolutely nothing and also the being that represents the fact that there is absolutely nothing since this would lead to a contradiction. And since 2 + 2 = 4 is not a being but only a symbolic representation of something we have abstracted from reality, and since eternal truth never changes, there must be an eternal being whose nature is the reason why these things are true; because absolutely nothing cannot be a reason for anything. There is no truth in absolutely nothing and so it is impossible for there to be absolutely nothing. Therefore something necessarily exists.

Proof of God using math! lool
 
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Brady Haran is all over the internet. He’s got like 17 YouTube channels.
 
Yeah, but him and his wife don’t have any kiddos yet, so he’s got time for all that LOL
 
Really? Wow.
I don’t usually say this, but I am out of this thread.
 
He’s married? I didnt know. I haven’t been watching his stuff in a while.
 
Mathematics was instituted by God, inasmuch as the periods of creative activity are enumerated - not for God’s benefit, but for the sake of our understanding. The week has seven days, for example, and 365 days for earth to revolve around sun, plus or minus. The theological sign, the number which represents completion, is seven. Consider how many times 3, 7, 12, 40 and a few other numbers are repeated in God’s plan. The number 6 indicating incompletion, or lack. Can this be why the mark of the beast is 666? Repetition of something three times (“Holy, Holy Holy is the Lord…”) was the superlative form in the ancient Hebrew language, therefore the one who rebelled against God is triply incomplete - the epitome of incompleteness.
 
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Electrical engineering would be lost without complex numbers.

I especially like how poles and zeroes on a complex plane and their location can determine a system’s stability.
 
chessnerd321 said:
Do math and it’s related abstract objects (numbers geometric shapes) exist? If it does does it exist only in the mind? Did humans invent it or discover it? If humans discovered math, did God create math, is math part of God? Or something else?

I’m a math major so this topic is pretty interesting to me.

To make my arguement brief, I’d say math is objectlively true. Math is true even if nobody knows it, thus it exists outside the mind and so it is discovered by us rather than invented as a tool to use.
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By the way, that can be made into an argument demonstrating God’s existence, the one Feser calls “Augustinian argument” (see Edward Feser: Five Proofs preview, https://churchlife.nd.edu/2018/03/0...y-of-the-five-proofs-of-the-existence-of-god/).

By the way, such an argument has an important advantage: it can be presented as a puzzle. For example, “When we say that 2+2=4 (and the like), what exactly are we talking about?”. Possibility that they refer to something material can be shot down by mentioning, let’s say, quaternions. Possibility that they refer to something in our minds can be shot down with mention that in such case Little Johnny from a joke would be right in saying that 2+2=5. At this point the solution of putting mathematical objects in some special mind will start to look much more appealing.
Damian said:
Math is just logic in its purest form to communicate the experienced reality and to make predictions about the experienced reality.
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You have never actually seen what mathematicians really do, have you? 🙂

There was a time when number theorists were very proud of the fact that things they were discovering had no application at all (yes, eventually application in cryptography was discovered).
 
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