h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What *is*?

To start with, I think therefore I am. Outside my mind, nothing is certain; nothing *is*. ... But the Real World (RW) *probably* is. Very probably. We can work with that.

So let's assume the RW, as we perceive and understand it, *is*, acknowledging but setting aside the debates about our non-objective perceptions and so on. But perceiving the RW as one big lump isn't very useful to us. It's easier to understand if we can sub-divide it a bit.

So, pretty early on in our history, maybe quite soon after we developed the ability to communicate with one another, we must have created the concept of length, to describe the separation of objects we perceive in the RW. Then, via the creation of numbers and counting, we created units of length, and became able to measure - and even compare - distances.

Around the same time , we must also have created the concept of time, to describe the separation of events we perceive in the RW. And our numbers and counting enabled the creation of units of time, and we became able to measure - and even compare - durations.

None of these eminently useful things - length, time, numbers and counting - exist in the RW. They're all mapping tools that help us to understand it. Yes, there are identifiable objects, and they are separated in the RW, but there is no length out there, just separated objects. Similarly, there is no time out there, just separated events. No numbers or counting either.

It's fascinating, when you think carefully about it, how much of the RW we perceive exists only in our minds. So much of our understanding is based upon the tools we've created to help us live in the RW.

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It is also fascinating to consider how much of the RW we percieve does not exist in our minds.

The very functioning of our minds seems to depend on our ability to fragment reality into useable 'bits', which we then treat as 'things' or 'objects', which of course have no actual basis in the RW, only in the mental 'map' we use as a convenient tool to process and manipulate the RW.

To say, 'I think, therefore I am', is to make the same assumption as Descartes, and among other things leads to the dualistic notion in which the process of thought requires a priori an entity -- a thinker, and that thinking, and awareness of thinking, are the substrates of being.

Consider instead the possibility that the process of thinking creates the illusion of such an entity....

Interesting. Food for thought. Thanks for that, Tal.

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"Food for thought"

Actually, none of those concepts have been in existence that long- time and counting, let alone measuring are maybe ten thousand years old. Communication of sorts is probably more like 500,000 (if not more- probably a lot more). You're right to an extent about "mapping", and you also refer to qualia in a 'round about way. I would suggest that is merely phenomenology though, and not that important.

As far as numbers not being real.....

I would suggest numbers are ALL that are real.

2SP:

Maybe I should clarify what *I* mean: numbers do not exist in the real, physical universe. They *do* exist in what I like to call the mindworld, and in that sense they are real.

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