/lit/ - Literature

>>11867588
I'm saying that once mathematics is abstracted from concrete relations, it then becomes a self-referentially logical system (which doesn't necessarily have to describe the world). It isn't truly self contained though, as it is traceable back to those relations in the world, and experience of those relations is necessary to be able to ascertain logicality or truth in the first place.

In a universe where no spatial dimensions were apparent (disembodied consciousnesses with no indications of proximity to eachother), would math be constructed in the same way and to the same extent? Perhaps they could work out something from intervals in language, but how far could they extrapolate from that to construct geometry like ours? Now say we stumble into an area of the universe where upon entering, all objects fuse into one homogenous being, with a homogenized and continuous stream of sensation (no intervals) of only itself. What would 2+2 describe in such a state? It would still be true self-referentially and would still describe relations in the rest of the universe, but how would our blob-being define 2+2 to equal 4 without apparent distinction?

I am not contending that a universe could exist where non-contradiction wouldn't apply (I can't imagine it), but rather that such laws are not just axioms but observations of how things actually are. Our abstractions (math) are then constructed upon these observations of how things actually are, and if these relations could be different, so would our abstractions of them.

>>11867621
I do not argue against the indispensability and inescapability of those mental functions, but I do question whether that is sufficient grounds to consider them 'pure' (we can't know to what extent they are limited) or necessarily containing of everything else as opposed to being contained themselves. If we are able to theorize correctly about spatiotemporal relations we can't experience (even if we must represent the information in recognizeable forms), then what is the actual significance of the a prioricity of the form of our experience? Obviously it is significant, but where is the hard boundary and what certainties are established only by the form of experience itself? The potential to detect shape does not grant me the capacity to imagine/recognize a triangle without having prerequisite experiences; nor does the potential dictate what I'll perceive (only how) or the entire nature of 'what is' (only the natural limits of my perception).