You only can think…

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what you are: The human mind is a physical structure

Reading the article Does mathematics really exist in the universe or is it just a human assumption? by Josh Anderson I want to drop a quick comment.

It is a general idea and long-standing tradition inherent to such thinking and tinkering with similar questions which rarely underline the fact that the human being is not an entity coming from “outside” the universe with its physical laws. Or, to be more precise, the structure of a human being is the same or similar to other structures in the universe. The human intelligent mind fools us to draw an existential line between “us” (human beings) and “it” (the universe, the world, – i.e. everything non-human).

In the case of mathematics, just as one example of many structures inherent to the universe, we might have to bridge the gap between “invention” and “discovery”. In other words, this is a gap between “abstract thinking” (abstraction) and “thinking in concrete terms”, experimental on facts. One would say this repeats the difference between Platoneian and Aristotelian schools, but I would say it is not. Maybe it is deriving from that or those ancient greek philosophers felt this “gap” and had to either stress on or the other side to explain the world.

Just imagine if there was no difference between concept and fact, between “invention” and “discovery”, that we ourselves are of the same structure of how we are thinking and thus what we are thinking, but not yet having arrived at the proper thinking of what is.

(Maybe this “not having yet arrived at the proper thinking” is an idea derived from Heidegger’s lecture, yes, but he didn’t push the idea far enough to get to this meeting point between physicality and the mind. He still ended up in some quirky ideological historical and pseudo-historical conundrum, discussing the past and traditions. He did not break through to say that we only can think what we are.)

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