Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!news.ultranet.com!news.sprintlink.net!cs.utexas.edu!utnut!utgpu!pindor
From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Maths and the Universe
Message-ID: <D6MHI4.rs@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <607590186wnr@lurcher.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 1995 16:51:40 GMT
Lines: 48

In article <607590186wnr@lurcher.demon.co.uk>,
Justin Alexander <Justin@lurcher.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>I have been thinking about the nature of maths and how it relates to 
>us. I have decided that I am some kind of Platonist, which means I 
>think that mathmatical concepts have existance outside the minds of 
>mathmaticians - for how else can one explain independant disoveries of 

Like where?

>the same thing by people seperated by land, culture and religion, and 

How about by the similar structure of their brains (and hence minds)?
If we had found that octopuses used the same mathematical concepts, you might
have a point. So far what you have said indicates only that these concepts
are more basic than culture, religion etc.
If you are an atheist you might ponder the fact that a belief in God also
seems to be universal and still it does not convince you to the reality of
this concept.
Of course, if you do believe in God than some kind of platonism is quite
natural. 

>how else could one explain the acuracy to which maths can model the 
>physical universe (to such extent that much of the standard model seems 
>highly likely to be a true (though perhaps in need of simplification) 
>representation of the principles on which the universe actually runs 
>(rather than being a good approximation or them)), and how else can one 
>explain the extent to which maths can surprise mathmaticians - deep 
>links pop up between distant field and bewilder us.

Since we all interact with the reality, structures of our brains favored
by natural selection would be such that they would give rise to concepts
useful in dealing with this reality. And since this reality is pretty much
the same for all of us, these concepts would very much the same. Again, if
octopuses had the same concepts...
Aliens would of course be even a better test, but there is a dearth of them
so far :-(.
The above again applies only in case if you are an atheist or at least an
agnostic.

>If anyone has any views/ideas on this subject please follow up this 
>post.

Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
