- #1
FallenApple
- 564
- 61
Say you have an orange and a banana. You can say that they are two fruits. But this pertains to the categorization of fruit, which could be considered a mental construct of a category. You cannot say that you have two yellow objects, because you really don't. Relative to the category of color, the fruits do not form a set.
Say that during a time when no humans were around, there were 10 rocks lying around at some location. It seems that this must be true. But this presupposes the concept of rock, which is a classification. The "rocks" have many other characteristics that do not overlap. You can have 5 spherical rocks and 5 block like rocks. Or 3 blue items and 7 red items, or an infinite number of other possible combinations depending on the category since there are maybe conceivably infinite many categories.
So it seems that numbers are just abstractions of things that fall into the same category. Yet they are extremely good at predicting the world, interestingly. Perhaps due to our high ability to categorize things correctly, which we defined in the first place.
Say that during a time when no humans were around, there were 10 rocks lying around at some location. It seems that this must be true. But this presupposes the concept of rock, which is a classification. The "rocks" have many other characteristics that do not overlap. You can have 5 spherical rocks and 5 block like rocks. Or 3 blue items and 7 red items, or an infinite number of other possible combinations depending on the category since there are maybe conceivably infinite many categories.
So it seems that numbers are just abstractions of things that fall into the same category. Yet they are extremely good at predicting the world, interestingly. Perhaps due to our high ability to categorize things correctly, which we defined in the first place.