Math is just a language. I say "just" not to discount its power, but because it really doesn't exist outside of our conception of it, just as English doesn't exist outside of our conception of it. It's a convention.
The key difference between math and spoken language is that it's unambiguous enough to extrapolate on fairly consistently. If English were that precise we might be able to find truth in the far reaches of the language, just like greek philosophers tried to do. With math, such a thing is actually possible.
So, 2+3=5 corresponds to your d...
Why do you have to say the math is "outside" the brain? I do understand that the model of the natural numbers is particularly useful in making elegant predictions about our physical universe, but why does that say something about the numbers or the math? The integers are an example of a formal system, but we can construct other formal systems where the formula 2+3=6 holds (I don't know of any interesting such formal systems, though). I can easily see that we have these formal systems, and we also have inductive arguments that they describe the...
This might be stupid, but it's probably more intelligent than the 'subjunctive mood' grammar-joke I was going to tell.
Suppose I say, "Even if my mother were kidnapped by terrorists, I would still consider all terrorists freedom-fighters."
Suppose I believe that with such conviction that I'm unable to imagine a reality in which, regardless of whether the physical state of my brain changes, it would not still be true that terrorists+mom=freedom fighters. (The "terms" of this "equation" don't necessarily correspond with anything i...
Math isn't a language, mathematical notation is a language. Math is a subject matter that you can talk about in mathematical notation, or in English, etc.
2+3=5 is an outcome of a set of artificial laws we can imagine. In that sense, it does exist "purely in your imagination", just as any number of hypothetical systems could exist. "2+3=5" doesn't stand alone without defining what it means - ie. the concept of a number, addition etc. It corresponds to the statement that IF addition is defined like so, numbers like this, and such-and-such rules of inference, then 2+2=5 is a true property of the system.
In a counterfactual world where people believe 2+3=6, in asking about addition you're still talking about the same system with the same rules, not the rules that describe whatever goes on in the minds of the people. (Otherwise you would be making a different claim about a different system.)
So yes, 2+3=5 is clearly true and has always been true even before humans because its a statement about a system defined in terms of its own rules. Any claims about it already include the system's presumptions because those are part of the question, and part of what it means to be "true".
2 rocks + 3 rocks is a different matter - you're talking about the observable world rather than a system where you get to define all...
"But my dear sir, if the fact of 2 + 3 = 5 exists somewhere outside your brain... then where is it?"
A mathematical truth can be formalized as output of a proof checking algorithm, and output of an algorithm can be verified to an arbitrary level of certainty (by running it again and again, on redundant substrate). When you say that something is mathematically true, it can be considered an estimation of counterfactual that includes building of such a machine.
I am quite confident that the statement 2 + 3 = 5 is true; I am far less confident of what it means for a mathematical statement to be true.
There are two complementary answers to this question that seem right to me: Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism and Lakoff and Núñez's Where Mathematics Comes From. As Quine says, first you have to get rid of the false distinction between analytic and synthetic truth. What you have instead is a web or network of mutually reinforcing beliefs. Parts of this web touch the world relatively closely (beliefs about counting shee...
Math isn't a language, mathematical notation is a language. Math is a subject matter that you can talk about in mathematical notation, or in English, etc.
What is the useful distinction here? Are you claiming that Math has a reality outside the notation? If Math isn't defined by the notation we use, then what is it?
I think it doesn't make sense to suggest that 2 + 3 = 5 is a belief. It is the result of a set of definitions. As long as we agree on what 2, +, 3, =, and 5 mean, we have to agree on what 2 + 3 = 5 means. I think that if your brain were subject to a neutrino storm and you somehow felt that 2 + 3 = 6, you would still be able to verify that 2 + 3 = 6 by other means, such as counting on your fingers.
I think once you start asking why these things are the way they are, don't you have to start asking why anything exists at all, and what it means for anything to ...
It seems to me that when I say "every Hilbert space is convex", I'm not saying something in math; I'm saying something about math, in English. Yes, I might talk about the world by saying "the world has the structure of a Hilbert space". But then I might talk about blog commenters (not the ones here at OB) by saying they are like a horde of poo-throwing chimpanzees, and yet that doesn't make primatology a language.
I would encourage Peter's route related to Quine. A formalist in Phil of Math would say that a mathematical statement is true if it can be derived from axiomatic set theory. That is, the truth of the statement is then grounded in formal logic. This does, of course, beg the question of what grounds our formal logic, but at least it puts basic arithmetic on more firm footing ... in Peter's words, even more deeply imbedded in our belief system.
Math isn't supposed to be some sort of universal truth, but I also don't think it's quite accurate so say it's just a language. It just happens to be a useful abstraction. Granted, an apparently universally useful abstraction, but it's still an invention of humans, the same as boolean logic or physical models.
I'm not convinced that it makes sense to talk about visualizing two dots and three dots that are six dots. I would say that the physical event of visualizing two dots and of visualizing three more dots IS the event "visualizing five dots". There is then a separate event, lets call it "describing what you have visualized", that can be mistaken. You can visualize five dots and as a result of interference in the information flow to your mouth end up saying "I see six dots". For that matter, you can visualize five dots, and as...
It seems to me that math is a set of symbolic tools for clarifying the tautological nature of non-transparently tautological assertions.
Can we taboo the words "math", "maths", and "mathematics"? I think there are mathematical facts and then there is the study of mathematical facts, and these two things are as different in the same sense that the universe isn't cosmology, crops aren't agronomy, minds aren't psychology, and so on.
3 + 2 = 6 for me if I choose to define 6 to signify five. 3 + 2 = 5 only for common mathematical definitions of 2, 3, 5, + and =. Otherwise everything is fine, your opponent agreed somewhere at the beginning, that a group of three objects (such as sheep) and two objects will make five objects for our definitions of two, three and five weather we exist or not.
Is it useful to say that "2+3=5" is our shorthand for referring to the infinite number of statements of this form:
2 sheep and 3 sheep make 5 sheep 2 rocks and 3 rocks make 5 rocks 2 dinis and 3 dinis make 5 dinis
and so forth? And that the external truth of the statement depends in principle on all these various testable sub-statements?
"But my dear sir, if the fact of 2 + 3 = 5 exists somewhere outside your brain... then where is it?"
The truth-condition for "There are five sheep in the meadow" concerns the state of the meadow.
My guess is that the truth condition for "2 + 3 = 5" concerns the (more complex, but unproblematically material) set of facts you present: the facts that e.g.: It's easy to find sheep for which two sheep and three sheep make five sheep It's fairly easy to build calculators that model what happens with the sheep It's fairly easy to evolv...
I've been wondering. The conventional wisdom says that it's a problem for mathematical realism to explain how we can come to understand mathematical facts without causally interacting with them. But surely you could build causal diagrams with logical uncertainty in them and they would show that mathematical facts do indeed causally influence your brain?
Also, I would say the problem (if any) is the location of 2, 3, and 5, not the location of 2+3=5, unless the location of "Napoleon is dead" is also a problem.
Isn't this George Berkeley's issue? Isn't math just the structural part of another sort of language? Isn't 2 + 3 = 5 the same as red and blue make purple in the sense that each observer has a sense of red, blue, purple, 2, 3 and 5 all his/her/its own?
If space aliens find Voyager and read 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 *, etc do they see those *s in any context other than the three tentacles on their second heads?
How then is "2" in any sense different than "red"? How then is "2" any more independently real than "red"?
"But my dear sir, if the fact of 2 + 3 = 5 exists somewhere outside your brain... then where is it?"
For some reason most mathematicians don't seem to feel this sort of ontological angst about what math really means or what it means for a mathematical statement to be true. I can't seem to articulate a single reason why this is, but let me say a few things that tend to wash away the angst.
it doesn't matter "where it is", it is a proven consequence of our axioms.
it is in every structure in the universe capable of representing integers
If you had a Turing machine that perfectly simulated the physical laws of our universe, could an external person use that machine's source code to derive the laws of arithmetic as they are within our universe, even if the laws of arithmetic for the external person's universe were different?
Suppose we think about it the opposite way: what if we built a machine that simulated the physical laws of a universe where 2+3 = 6, where if you stick 2 whatsits by 3 whatsits you get 6 whatsits total. What would that universe be like? Could it even be built?
It helps to differentiate between "real" and "existant". Mathematics is as real as the laws of logic -- neither, however, exists.
What is "real" is that which proscriptively constraints that which exists. That which exists is that which interacts directly with other phenomena which also exist (that also interact).
When we say "2+3=5" what we are doing is engaging in the definition of real patterns of that which exists. So while, yes, the patterns themselves are external to us; the terms we assign them are subjective....
I'm quite unconfident about this whole line of argument, and concerned that we're heading for some moral conclusions based on appeals to this argument. If you have to get into odd discussions about the truth and meaning of mathematical entities to make a metaethical l argument, I doubt you have a good metaethical argument.
The funny thing is I consider morality subjective objective, just like yummyness. What is subjectively yummy to you is an objective fact about you, just as what is moral to you is an objective fact about you. If we run the You algorithm t...
It doesn't really work this way. And to demonstrate, I bring up the prime numbers.
What many people don't quite understand is that mathematics, like the sciences does not invent things, it discovers them. The structures are already there. We did not invent cells, electricity, or gravity. They were already there. All Mathematics does is name them, categorize them, and show properties that they have. There is nothing human about the prime numbers, for instance. There really is nothing human about mathematics.
Counting is essentially the building block of all o...
I suggest this may be a map/territory problem. Math is part of the map, but it has no physical analog with the territory. Rather, it tells us (some of) what to expect about the way the territory behaves under certain specific conditions (like when two sheep and then three sheep leave the pen).
Another way to look at it is that quantity (on which math operates) is a quality, akin to redness or sourness, but operating only on groups. That is to say, there is something there that causes fiveness to appear in my brain, but that thing is not an inherent part of the sheep any more than fluffiness or whiteness. Thus '2+3=5' has the same truth value as 'black + white = gray'.
It seems that Mathematics as we know it (Russel's axioms) is both an emergent phenomenon as well as the most basic law of them all. In macroscopic physics we observe that two rocks next to three rocks is five rocks, two hydrogen atoms next to three hydrogen atoms is five hydrogen atoms, two oscilliations of a cyclic system followed by three more is five such, and so on and so forth... But the Schrodinger equation contains addition of complex numbers, which we know to be a superset of the naturals.
Man, I really need to write a top level article on the Tegmark IV Hypothesis.
I still stand by my belief that 2 + 3 = 5 does not in fact exist, and yet it is still true that adding two things with three things will always result in five things.
Why not call the set of all sets of actual objects with cardinality 3, "three", the set of all sets of physical objects with cardinality 2, "two", and the set of all sets of physical objects with cardinality 5, "five"? Then when I said that 2+3=5, all I would mean is that for any x in two and any y in three, the union of x and y is in five. If you allow sets of physical objects, and sets of sets of physical objects, into your ontology, then you got this; 2+3=5 no matter what anyone thinks, and two and three are real objects existing out there.
In college, I made the observation that math majors tended to think that math itself was something real, while physcis majors, studying the exact same math in the same classes at the same time, tended to think that math was just a conceptual tool that was sometimes useful when trying to discover things about reality, but that math wasn't itself real. I'm not sure which view is more valid then the other, or how you even distinguish the two views.
You can set up a question, like 'How many sheep are in the field?', that isn't about any particular person's brain, and whose actual answer doesn't depend on any particular person's brain.
Then again, which field the phrase “the field” refers to does depend on who is asking the question where and when.
Judgments that depend on our representations of anyone's state of mind, like "It's okay to kiss someone only if they want to be kissed", are the exception rather than the rule.
Among all possible judgements, sure; but among all those judgements that a real person will have to make in the real world...
It makes no sense to call something “true” without specifying prior information. That would imply that we could never update on evidence, which we know not to be the case for statements like “2 + 3 = 5.” Much of the confusion comes from different people meaning different things by the proposition “2 + 3 = 5,” which we can resolve as usual by tabooing the symbols.
Consider the propositions "
A =“The next time I put two sheep and three sheep in a pen, I will end up with five sheep in the pen.”
B = “The universe works as if in all cases, combining two of s...
The map is not the territory. There's no little XML tag attached to helium atoms with the wave equation written on it. Math was created by humans to describe our observations - we didn't arrive at it by pure thought. The reason 2 + 3 = 5 is a theorem of Peano arithmetic and moving three large, distinct objects next to two large, distinct objects makes a group of five large, distinct objects is the correspondence of the Peano axioms and inference rules to reality.
So I think Eliezer's error here was a fallacy of compression. "2 + 3 = 5" refers to t...
That's interesting... Did you actually count sheep and rocks when writing this article? Did the character you give voice to count sheep and rocks?
Usually, when I make this kind of arguments, what I really say is "If I counted 2 sheep and 3 sheep, I would find 5 sheep" which means that it actually is what I expect, but that's not evidence if my cognition process is put into question.
Yet, I don't think it is necessary to actually count sheep and rocks when making this argument... But if I was discussing with someone who thought that 2 + 3 = 6 (or someone who thinks that either answer is meaningless), then it would be necessary to make the experiment, because we would expect different results.
Followup to: Probability is Subjectively Objective, Can Counterfactuals Be True?
I am quite confident that the statement 2 + 3 = 5 is true; I am far less confident of what it means for a mathematical statement to be true.
In "The Simple Truth" I defined a pebble-and-bucket system for tracking sheep, and defined a condition for whether a bucket's pebble level is "true" in terms of the sheep. The bucket is the belief, the sheep are the reality. I believe 2 + 3 = 5. Not just that two sheep plus three sheep equal five sheep, but that 2 + 3 = 5. That is my belief, but where is the reality?
So now the one comes to me and says: "Yes, two sheep plus three sheep equals five sheep, and two stars plus three stars equals five stars. I won't deny that. But this notion that 2 + 3 = 5, exists only in your imagination, and is purely subjective."
So I say: Excuse me, what?
And the one says: "Well, I know what it means to observe two sheep and three sheep leave the fold, and five sheep come back. I know what it means to press '2' and '+' and '3' on a calculator, and see the screen flash '5'. I even know what it means to ask someone 'What is two plus three?' and hear them say 'Five.' But you insist that there is some fact beyond this. You insist that 2 + 3 = 5."
Well, it kinda is.
"Perhaps you just mean that when you mentally visualize adding two dots and three dots, you end up visualizing five dots. Perhaps this is the content of what you mean by saying, 2 + 3 = 5. I have no trouble with that, for brains are as real as sheep."
No, for it seems to me that 2 + 3 equaled 5 before there were any humans around to do addition. When humans showed up on the scene, they did not make 2 + 3 equal 5 by virtue of thinking it. Rather, they thought that '2 + 3 = 5' because 2 + 3 did in fact equal 5.
"Prove it."
I'd love to, but I'm busy; I've got to, um, eat a salad.
"The reason you believe that 2 + 3 = 5, is your mental visualization of two dots plus three dots yielding five dots. Does this not imply that this physical event in your physical brain is the meaning of the statement '2 + 3 = 5'?"
But I honestly don't think that is what I mean. Suppose that by an amazing cosmic coincidence, a flurry of neutrinos struck my neurons, causing me to imagine two dots colliding with three dots and visualize six dots. I would then say, '2 + 3 = 6'. But this wouldn't mean that 2 + 3 actually had become equal to 6. Now, if what I mean by '2 + 3' consists entirely of what my mere physical brain merely happens to output, then a neutrino could make 2 + 3 = 6. But you can't change arithmetic by tampering with a calculator.
"Aha! I have you now!"
Is that so?
"Yes, you've given your whole game away!"
Do tell.
"You visualize a subjunctive world, a counterfactual, where your brain is struck by neutrinos, and says, '2 + 3 = 6'. So you know that in this case, your future self will say that '2 + 3 = 6'. But then you add up dots in your own, current brain, and your current self gets five dots. So you say: 'Even if I believed "2 + 3 = 6", then 2 + 3 would still equal 5.' You say: '2 + 3 = 5 regardless of what anyone thinks of it.' So your current brain, computing the same question while it imagines being different but is not actually different, finds that the answer seems to be the same. Thus your brain creates the illusion of an additional reality that exists outside it, independent of any brain."
Now hold on! You've explained my belief that 2 + 3 = 5 regardless of what anyone thinks, but that's not the same as explaining away my belief. Since 2 + 3 = 5 does not, in fact, depend on what any human being thinks of it, therefore it is right and proper that when I imagine counterfactual worlds in which people (including myself) think '2 + 3 = 6', and I ask what 2 + 3 actually equals in this counterfactual world, it still comes out as 5.
"Don't you see, that's just like trying to visualize motion stopping everywhere in the universe, by imagining yourself as an observer outside the universe who experiences time passing while nothing moves. But really there is no time without motion."
I see the analogy, but I'm not sure it's a deep analogy. Not everything you can imagine seeing, doesn't exist. It seems to me that a brain can easily compute quantities that don't depend on the brain.
"What? Of course everything that the brain computes depends on the brain! Everything that the brain computes, is computed inside the brain!"
That's not what I mean! I just mean that the brain can perform computations that refer to quantities outside the brain. You can set up a question, like 'How many sheep are in the field?', that isn't about any particular person's brain, and whose actual answer doesn't depend on any particular person's brain. And then a brain can faithfully compute that answer.
If I count two sheep and three sheep returning from the field, and Autrey's brain gets hit by neutrinos so that Autrey thinks there are six sheep in the fold, then that's not going to cause there to be six sheep in the fold—right? The whole question here is just not about what Autrey thinks, it's about how many sheep are in the fold.
Why should I care what my subjunctive future self thinks is the sum of 2 + 3, any more than I care what Autrey thinks is the sum of 2 + 3, when it comes to asking what is really the sum of 2 + 3?
"Okay... I'll take another tack. Suppose you're a psychiatrist, right? And you're an expert witness in court cases—basically a hired gun, but you try to deceive yourself about it. Now wouldn't it be a bit suspicious, to find yourself saying: 'Well, the only reason that I in fact believe that the defendant is insane, is because I was paid to be an expert psychiatric witness for the defense. And if I had been paid to witness for the prosecution, I undoubtedly would have come to the conclusion that the defendant is sane. But my belief that the defendant is insane, is perfectly justified; it is justified by my observation that the defendant used his own blood to paint an Elder Sign on the wall of his jail cell.'"
Yes, that does sound suspicious, but I don't see the point.
"My point is that the physical cause of your belief that 2 + 3 = 5, is the physical event of your brain visualizing two dots and three dots and coming up with five dots. If your brain came up six dots, due to a neutrino storm or whatever, you'd think '2 + 3 = 6'. How can you possibly say that your belief means anything other than the number of dots your brain came up with?"
Now hold on just a second. Let's say that the psychiatrist is paid by the judge, and when he's paid by the judge, he renders an honest and neutral evaluation, and his evaluation is that the defendant is sane, just played a bit too much Mythos. So it is true to say that if the psychiatrist had been paid by the defense, then the psychiatrist would have found the defendant to be insane. But that doesn't mean that when the psychiatrist is paid by the judge, you should dismiss his evaluation as telling you nothing more than 'the psychiatrist was paid by the judge'. On those occasions where the psychiatrist is paid by the judge, his opinion varies with the defendant, and conveys real evidence about the defendant.
"Okay, so now what's your point?"
That when my brain is not being hit by a neutrino storm, it yields honest and informative evidence that 2 + 3 = 5.
"And if your brain was hit by a neutrino storm, you'd be saying, '2 + 3 = 6 regardless of what anyone thinks of it'. Which shows how reliable that line of reasoning is."
I'm not claiming that my saying '2 + 3 = 5 no matter what anyone thinks' represents stronger numerical evidence than my saying '2 + 3 = 5'. My saying the former just tells you something extra about my epistemology, not numbers.
"And you don't think your epistemology is, oh, a little... incoherent?"
No! I think it is perfectly coherent to simultaneously hold all of the following:
"Now that's just crazy talk!"
No, you're the crazy one! You're collapsing your levels; you think that just because my brain asks a question, it should start mixing up queries about the state of my brain into the question. Not every question my brain asks is about my brain!
Just because something is computed in my brain, doesn't mean that my computation has to depend on my brain's representation of my brain. It certainly doesn't mean that the actual quantity depends on my brain! It's my brain that computes my beliefs about gravity, and if neutrinos hit me I will come to a different conclusion; but that doesn't mean that I can think different and fly. And I don't think I can think different and fly, either!
I am not a calculator who, when someone presses my "2" and "+" and "3" buttons, computes, "What do I output when someone presses 2 + 3?" I am a calculator who computes "What is 2 + 3?" The former is a circular question that can consistently return any answer—which makes it not very helpful.
Shouldn't we expect non-circular questions to be the normal case? The brain evolved to guess at the state of the environment, not guess at 'what the brain will think is the state of the environment'. Even when the brain models itself, it is trying to know itself, not trying to know what it will think about itself.
Judgments that depend on our representations of anyone's state of mind, like "It's okay to kiss someone only if they want to be kissed", are the exception rather than the rule.
Most quantities we bother to think about at all, will appear to be 'the same regardless of what anyone thinks of them'. When we imagine thinking differently about the quantity, we will imagine the quantity coming out the same; it will feel "subjunctively objective".
And there's nothing wrong with that! If something appears to be the same regardless of what anyone thinks, then maybe that's because it actually is the same regardless of what anyone thinks.
Even if you explain that the quantity appears to stay the same in my imagination, merely because my current brain computes it the same way—well, how else would I imagine something, except with my current brain? Should I imagine it using a rock?
"Okay, so it's possible for something that appears thought-independent, to actually be thought-independent. But why do you think that 2 + 3 = 5, in particular, has some kind of existence independently of the dots you imagine?"
Because two sheep plus three sheep equals five sheep, and this appears to be true in every mountain and every island, every swamp and every plain and every forest.
And moreover, it is also true of two rocks plus three rocks.
And further, when I press buttons upon a calculator and activate a network of transistors, it successfully predicts how many sheep or rocks I will find.
Since all these quantities, correlate with each other and successfully predict each other, surely they must have something like a common cause, a similarity that factors out? Something that is true beyond and before the concrete observations? Something that the concrete observations hold in common? And this commonality is then also the sponsor of my answer, 'five', that I find in my own brain.
"But my dear sir, if the fact of 2 + 3 = 5 exists somewhere outside your brain... then where is it?"
Damned if I know.
Part of The Metaethics Sequence
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