Symbols are deities

[Hans Sepp]

Of course yourself cannot hear but the point is that planets follow some musical orders. Kepler was able to find some astronomical laws when he studied it.

Yeah, and Kepler found the complete opposite of a musical order and was forced to abandon it for his astronomical laws.

If this is not enough, I don't have more things to say and the conversation is over.

Fair enough. Let's leave it at that, it's been a genuinely interesting conversation for me.

[λiber]

I don't mean to get all Xavier Renegade Angel on you, forgive this but this is an honest question: what is a deity, as you might explain it? Is it something worthy of reverence in some manner (normative description)? Is it something powerful and transcendent? I'm finding it difficult to understand on what is meant when symbols are deities. If I might piece this together, it sounds a lot more like humans creating archetypal deities out of existent forces in nature, but I might be wrong. I'm sorry if I come across as pretentious or anything of the sort, I'm legitimately curious.

But on the Neoplatonist note, though it might be that we haven't found the right symbolic structure for it, the idea of symbolic structures such as mathematics corresponding one-to-one with reality is one I'm a little doubtful of. Mathematics has been of great importance in physics, and I don't contradict that, but it hasn't had much of the same success in many other sciences for example (hence statistics, because rather than assume that there is some causal mechanism that can be found, it's far easier for us to treat it like a black box and find correlations in what we can see; parts of physics, too, are like this, see quantum and statistical mechanics).

It seems, at least to me, a more parsimonious and intuitive description for why we find common symbols is not a one-to-one correspondence but rather constraint. Rather than considering what "chairness" means, we should rather consider what constraints on it make it a chair, and what statements need to be true to make something a "chair" and exclude the chairs from the set of all things, such that they could be distinguished. You could make a chair look funky, maybe even make it not look like a chair, but have the functionality of a chair, and all other things it might share commonalities with become irrelevant (kind of sounds like CSPs and unification now, right?).

Another plus of this constraint-based system of symbolism is that it can handle probability and edge cases; it is possible for an object to satisfy some axiom of being a chair, all axioms, few, many, thereby making "almost chairs" an explainable thing rather than an unfortunate blemish as the symbol for "chair" is transferred from the Realm of Forms into reality, and it is also possible to have a bounded space of objects that follow some constraint.

[Thricegreat]

I don't mean to get all Xavier Renegade Angel on you, forgive this but this is an honest question: what is a deity, as you might explain it? Is it something worthy of reverence in some manner (normative description)? Is it something powerful and transcendent? I'm finding it difficult to understand on what is meant when symbols are deities. If I might piece this together, it sounds a lot more like humans creating archetypal deities out of existent forces in nature, but I might be wrong. I'm sorry if I come across as pretentious or anything of the sort, I'm legitimately curious.

A polytheistic god. It doesn't need to be morally good or even transcendental. For example Zeus did lots of adultery. But it has some powers over the cosmos. So people often worship them for personal interests. Or because of scariness or whatever.

Existent forces in nature can be deities. In fact those might be typical ones. The thinking that deities should be transcendental to be worth worshipping would be a monotheistic thinking.

Though I'm neither a polytheist nor a monotheist. I'm in between them. Religiously I believe in constitutional monarchy. For me The One is the constitutional monarch and those deities form the cabinet.

But on the Neoplatonist note, though it might be that we haven't found the right symbolic structure for it, the idea of symbolic structures such as mathematics corresponding one-to-one with reality is one I'm a little doubtful of. Mathematics has been of great importance in physics, and I don't contradict that, but it hasn't had much of the same success in many other sciences for example (hence statistics, because rather than assume that there is some causal mechanism that can be found, it's far easier for us to treat it like a black box and find correlations in what we can see; parts of physics, too, are like this, see quantum and statistical mechanics).

I think the physical world is just a part of the reality restricted by the laws of nature. So it is a subset of the reality. Mathematics is also a subset of the reality too. It is not the whole reality because obviously The One transcends it. What I wrote is that the specific "3"s are just seeing "3" in the mathematical world from different perspectives and with different lighting.

It seems, at least to me, a more parsimonious and intuitive description for why we find common symbols is not a one-to-one correspondence but rather constraint. Rather than considering what "chairness" means, we should rather consider what constraints on it make it a chair, and what statements need to be true to make something a "chair" and exclude the chairs from the set of all things, such that they could be distinguished. You could make a chair look funky, maybe even make it not look like a chair, but have the functionality of a chair, and all other things it might share commonalities with become irrelevant (kind of sounds like CSPs and unification now, right?).

I guess you are a pragmaticist. That is totally fine and I think it is an attractive position.

Another plus of this constraint-based system of symbolism is that it can handle probability and edge cases; it is possible for an object to satisfy some axiom of being a chair, all axioms, few, many, thereby making "almost chairs" an explainable thing rather than an unfortunate blemish as the symbol for "chair" is transferred from the Realm of Forms into reality, and it is also possible to have a bounded space of objects that follow some constraint.

Well I'm quite heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, but I'm not exactly a Neoplatonist. I believe in Hermeticism and what I meant is basically "As above, so below". I don't think it is transferred.

[λiber]

I think the physical world is just a part of the reality restricted by the laws of nature. So it is a subset of the reality. Mathematics is also a subset of the reality too. It is not the whole reality because obviously The One transcends it. What I wrote is that the specific "3"s are just seeing "3" in the mathematical world from different perspectives and with different lighting.

There I think I disagree; "three-ness" to me requires the satisfaction of the constraints that make the number 3 (i.e. we could think of them in terms of sets, such that if there's n apples, {a_1, a_2, a_3...a_n} relies on the set of natural numbers {1, 2, 3,...n}, which in turn are formalized in different ways like Peano arithmetic; rather than the number 3 being existent in a "world" other than ours, the set of natural numbers only needs to satisfy axioms in order to exist, if that makes sense...

I guess you are a pragmaticist. That is totally fine and I think it is an attractive position.

The words came out wrong and the example I used doesn't work as well, my apologies. I'm not a pragmatist/empiricist, I suppose I could be called a rationalist. I think of structures as prior to their instantiations but I don't think of these structures as existent beyond their instantiations, their instantiations are the result of the constraints that create them. For example, you could say a chair needs to:
1. Have the functionality of sitting
2. Flat/slightly angled seat
3. A back-rest (such that it is not a stool)
4. For one person to sit on
And as things come to exist, there is an inevitability of the instantiation of something that satisfies these constraints. With that, a stool or a sofa can be an "almost-chair", because "chairness" is a list of constraints and the argument over whether "chairness" is instantiated in stools and sofas becomes moot.

[Thricegreat]

I think the physical world is just a part of the reality restricted by the laws of nature. So it is a subset of the reality. Mathematics is also a subset of the reality too. It is not the whole reality because obviously The One transcends it. What I wrote is that the specific "3"s are just seeing "3" in the mathematical world from different perspectives and with different lighting.

There I think I disagree; "three-ness" to me requires the satisfaction of the constraints that make the number 3 (i.e. we could think of them in terms of sets, such that if there's n apples, {a_1, a_2, a_3...a_n} relies on the set of natural numbers {1, 2, 3,...n}, which in turn are formalized in different ways like Peano arithmetic; rather than the number 3 being existent in a "world" other than ours, the set of natural numbers only needs to satisfy axioms in order to exist, if that makes sense...

There are some axioms of Peano axioms, but I think the essence is quite simple. Natural numbers mean a structure in which the minimum element exists and for every element its successor exists. Though there are some more rules to forbid things like loops. And if a structure satisfies them, it is unique up to isomorphism.

I think n apples satisfy the relations of {1, ..., n} and therefore it is {1, ..., n}. The set does not need to be exactly the same because what Peano axioms say is that the set of natural numbers is unique up to isomorphism. For example the set defined by 0 = {}, n+1 = {n} is also the set of natural numbers.

About "Other world", I think there is only one world. The usage of mathematical "world", physical "world", &c. is just for convenience. I don't agree with mathematical Platonism in that matter. Also I think the mathematical world and the physical world have a lot of intersections. But I think those are all still subsets of the world.

I guess you are a pragmaticist. That is totally fine and I think it is an attractive position.

The words came out wrong and the example I used doesn't work as well, my apologies. I'm not a pragmatist/empiricist, I suppose I could be called a rationalist. I think of structures as prior to their instantiations but I don't think of these structures as existent beyond their instantiations, their instantiations are the result of the constraints that create them. For example, you could say a chair needs to:
1. Have the functionality of sitting
2. Flat/slightly angled seat
3. A back-rest (such that it is not a stool)
4. For one person to sit on
And as things come to exist, there is an inevitability of the instantiation of something that satisfies these constraints. With that, a stool or a sofa can be an "almost-chair", because "chairness" is a list of constraints and the argument over whether "chairness" is instantiated in stools and sofas becomes moot.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. But also to add something, I used the word pragmaticist as a person who follows Charles Sanders Peirce's philosophy. Rather than empiricist.

So you are doing a genus-differentia definition of Aristotle here right? Also the position about universals.

If I have to say something, I could say. Like the circle argument. But I guess it will just repeat previous historical arguments on this matter.

By the way do you study linguistics? If you signed up, it would be good to introduce yourself on the introduction thread. At least that is what Amlux said.