Fdesilva wrote: ↑January 13th, 2019, 11:26 pm
What do you mean by "do have an independent existence"?
I mean they're real and stay real whether a human has any contact with them or not.
does a circle have an independent existence?
If it's a circle of mushrooms in a field of grass or seagull footprints in sand, yes. Even if it's a circle of stones erected by people who'd never heard of geometry, had no concept of it, but practiced it anyway - the stones remain, independent of their long-dead owners.
Are you saying a set of thoughts is not a mathematical object?
Obviously! I'm saying thoughts don't even necessarily come in sets. There are random thoughts and idle thoughts, fugitive thoughts, elusive thoughts and thoughts that go bump in the night which have not even a nodding acquaintance with mathematics or Plato. A mouse suddenly, for no reason, thinks of the time she escaped from an owl, about half past six this evening. The owl keeps recalling the mouse he missed, up until he catches a vole, when he forgets all about the one that got away. A young girl thinks peach might have been a better choice for bridesmaid's dresses. An engineer thinks of a good excuse for being late to dinner. The pizza delivery guy thinks he can stop for a piss and still get there under 30 minutes. A moose thinks the water tastes funny. A wolf thinks the moon is just about high enough to start singing.
A thought isn't an "object" at all. It has no existence outside the mind that produces it.
If so that would be incorrect as all sets are mathematical objects and is fundamental to mathematics in the same way as numbers.
So you keep saying.
Sure, everything has component ratios and percent relationships - but everything doesn't know that. It's not mathematics until some big brain comes along to name and classify it. Sure, everything can be counted and calculated - in theory. Every
thing.
But nobody else can see, hear or know your thoughts, and you don't even notice 90% of your own thoughts, so how could they get mathematicized?