Plato imagined that there were ideals. That philosophical objects - blueness, say, or the quality of being an apple - had a real existence, somewhere. In fact they were the only things that had a real existence.
Maybe you could assign a number to each of these philosophical objects.
What would the first one be? It would have to be Existence. Because either things are or they aren't. It's the very first thing. So existence = 1.
And then 2 should be - love. Because that's what 0 felt for 1.
And 3 - joy. Because that's what love leads to.
And 4 is 2 squared. Because 1 felt love for 0 as well.
5 is fear. Because they feared that it might end.
But they needn't worry. It won't ever end.
6 is joy times love. Let's say 7 can be - order, or morality, right as opposed to wrong. Because there are quite a few numbers now and sometimes they get out of line.
8 is love cubed, because now there's a family. And 9 is joy squared. And 10 is love times fear, which is what feels best of all.
A human might have a vocabulary of perhaps 50,000 words. But there are vastly more philosophical objects than that. Presumably, as the successor function proceeds, the philosophical objects defined by these numbers grow subtler and more finely distinguished. There's a number for appleness, sure, but then there's a number too for each variety of apple. Presumably it's a multiple of the number for apple. A number for blueness, but further numbers for every possible shade of blue. Every bodily feeling, every mathematical technique, every physical object - they all get a number.
How many distinct sensations do you think you feel in your life? Seriously. There's only so many things you can perceive in a lifetime. Right now, my desk is a mess and it has many different things on it. But I'm not aware of most of them as I type this. If I'm actively looking, then I perceive more, and when I'm focusing on music, my visual field recedes from awareness. We experience only so many different things at once, and our lives are short. I think we can only ever make contact with a finite number of different philosophical objects.
Think about it. Over your life - your every twitch, your every fleeting thought; every time you've ever experienced the blueness of a clear morning, the appleness of an apple - every distinct thing that comes across your consciousness has a number.
And if you take all those numbers and multiply them...
Plato imagined that there were ideals. That philosophical objects - blueness, say, or the quality of being an apple - had a real existence, somewhere. In fact they were the only things that had a real existence.
Maybe you could assign a number to each of these philosophical objects.
What would the first one be? It would have to be Existence. Because either things are or they aren't. It's the very first thing. So existence = 1.
And then 2 should be - love. Because that's what 0 felt for 1.
And 3 - joy. Because that's what love leads to.
And 4 is 2 squared. Because 1 felt love for 0 as well.
5 is fear. Because they feared that it might end.
But they needn't worry. It won't ever end.
6 is joy times love. Let's say 7 can be - order, or morality, right as opposed to wrong. Because there are quite a few numbers now and sometimes they get out of line.
8 is love cubed, because now there's a family. And 9 is joy squared. And 10 is love times fear, which is what feels best of all.
A human might have a vocabulary of perhaps 50,000 words. But there are vastly more philosophical objects than that. Presumably, as the successor function proceeds, the philosophical objects defined by these numbers grow subtler and more finely distinguished. There's a number for appleness, sure, but then there's a number too for each variety of apple. Presumably it's a multiple of the number for apple. A number for blueness, but further numbers for every possible shade of blue. Every bodily feeling, every mathematical technique, every physical object - they all get a number.
How many distinct sensations do you think you feel in your life? Seriously. There's only so many things you can perceive in a lifetime. Right now, my desk is a mess and it has many different things on it. But I'm not aware of most of them as I type this. If I'm actively looking, then I perceive more, and when I'm focusing on music, my visual field recedes from awareness. We experience only so many different things at once, and our lives are short. I think we can only ever make contact with a finite number of different philosophical objects.
Think about it. Over your life - your every twitch, your every fleeting thought; every time you've ever experienced the blueness of a clear morning, the appleness of an apple - every distinct thing that comes across your consciousness has a number.
And if you take all those numbers and multiply them...
That's the number of your life.