[lit-ideas] Re: Numbers
- From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:56:53 -0500
AT writes:
: Thanks Robert; I for one need to let all this sink in for a while, reread,
: think some more, come at it in a different way, find a new angle, a new
: correlative, who knows. I'm not sure what to say really...but let me suggest
: this.
:
: Take the number 4, for example. A child who learns about numbers learns that
: seeing 4 marbles, 4 gummi bears, 4 sticks (put close together), signifies
: something similar. It is the idea of "4"--something present neither in sticks
: ,
: gummi bears or marbles, yet something exemplified and made present by the
: instantiantion, in front of the child's eyes, of 4 things arranged close
: together. Initially the idea of number is the idea of 4 objects, recalled at
: will. The objects themselves recede from importance and later only the idea
: remains. But what actually remains? Whatever remains is perhaps what a number
:
: is.
Could it be that what the child perceives is a pattern? A pattern that
the child comes to associate with the glyph 4, which is also a
pattern? This does not, of course, simplify the problem, but it might
lead to the conclusion that numbers are not that different from other
patterns that we recognize---like circles and faces and the tune of "Pop
Goes the Weasel"?
My suspicion is that when we deal with patterns we are dealing with
information and that information is neither matter nor a mental
state. (At this point I should make some sort of reference to
Shannon's communication theory.) Patterns exist without a
perceiver---_pace_ Berkeley---but perceptions of patterns, of
course, don't.
And that brings me back to computer programs, which can be perceived
as patterns (since they can be perceived as numbers) and which when
put into a computer (along with data which are also a pattern) cause
the computer to produce still another pattern, that is, another number?
On this view I guess we have matter and minds and information as the
tertium quid.
I remain puzzled,
Peter
--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
EMAIL: junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx URL: http://samsara.law.cwru.edu
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