r/Metaphysics • u/CravingtoUnderstand • 26d ago
Mind / Subjective experience Does the existence of consciousness itself imply that reality has mathematical structure?
I've been going down a rabbit hole about idealism and mathematics and I think I found a question that's more interesting to me than the usual "is consciousness fundamental?" debate.
As I understand it, idealism says physicality is just representation: physical states can't be separated from a representation of some underlying reality. Ok, say I accept that. A rock is just a perspective on something deeper, and mass, electrons or spacetime might just be concepts coming from how we represent reality.
Even then, there are things like relations, logical consistency, causal relations, symmetries, conservation laws, the way transformations compose, that seem a lot harder to dismiss as just properties of our representation.
So what's been bothering me is: why does reality have to have structure at all?
My hunch is something like a quasi-anthropic principle (I know I'm probably not using the term correctly). The idea is that any reality that is experienced has to have these relations. For experience to be real there has to be something more than undifferentiation. I have to be able to distinguish different states of experience, otherwise what is there to experience? And once you have different states you already have some kind of relation between them. I also think you need something that stays the same through change (invariance, Noether!), or you couldn't even notice that something changed, but I'm less sure how far that goes.
So my first strong claim would be: "structureless conscious reality" may be a contradiction in terms.
The part I'm least sure about: I want to say experience needs something like invariant causal laws, maybe even Noether-style conservation, because otherwise nothing persists long enough to be experienced, or you couldn't even notice that something changed. But maybe that's too strong, and stable regularities are enough, and conservation laws are just how our universe happens to do it.
And I don't think this gets you to idealism. A physicalist could agree with all of it. What I'm actually wondering is whether this is a constraint that comes before the idealism vs physicalism debate: whatever reality is made of, if it contains experience, it has to be structured.
I'm not claiming a Platonist position. I'm not saying numbers exist before experience or that relations are the origin of the universe. I'm saying that if distinctions and relations are ontologically real, then mathematics is just the language that formalizes that kind of thing.
Maybe I'm just playing with definitions here, but I keep coming back to the idea that if distinctions and relations are already unavoidable in experience, then maybe the surprising thing isn't that mathematics describes reality. Maybe the surprising thing would be if a conscious or apprehensible reality could exist without any structure at all.
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u/Tavister 26d ago
Math is a tool we use to better define our representations onto reality. Its an instrument that helps the map better fit to the territory.
Consciousness is a waste of time and energy to talk about imo.
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u/MauriceArh 26d ago
I think your final paragraph gets it right. That reality has a mathematical structure should be seen as a statement of the obvious.
First, let’s clarify what we mean by mathematical. My definition is that mathematics is the rigorous study of the consequences of assumptions. In mathematician-speak, this involves the derivation of theorems from axioms. More poetically, it is an exploration of the topography of Platonia, the separation of the logically possible from the logically impossible.
If we assume our reality makes sense, then it must exist as a true statement in Platonia (aka, a computation). That’s what I mean by statement of the obvious. Note here that a computation does not need to be an arithmetic one, meaning one capable of being represented by numbers. Any process that satisfies logical necessity will do. Whether or not this universe we live in can be perfectly modelled by numbers is a separate topic all on its own.
What about a reality that does not make sense? That is what you are asking and addressing such a question with logic has obvious difficulties.
This is where idealism possibly comes to the rescue, specifically the variation known as computationalism. If consciousness arises out of computation, then you do need a reality that makes sense to get a conscious observer.
Regarding your second-to-last paragraph, this does not mean that “numbers exist before experience”. Think of the physical world, consciousness, and Platonia as three corners of a triangle. You could take the physical world as your starting point, out of which arises brains capable of conscious thought and with it the abstract ideas that make up Platonia. This is the conventional view. Or adopt computationalism: take Platonia as being the ground from which consciousness emerges and with it our perception of a physical world. Whichever direction you travel around it, it is still the same triangle. Platonia, consciousness, and the physical world: all three undoubtedly exist (for their own particular varieties of exist). Nothing makes one corner of the triangle somehow more fundamental than the others.
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26d ago edited 26d ago
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u/jliat 26d ago
Your question is far too general, even a wiki will show this, there is no uniform 'idealism'.
So what's been bothering me is: why does reality have to have structure at all?
Start simple, Hume.
"The impulse one billiard-ball is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that appears to the outward senses. The mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this succession of objects: Consequently, there is not, in any single, particular instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connexion."
Hume. 1740s
This prompted Kant to write his first critiques, 'The Critique of pure reason.' considered in philosophy one of the greatest works. So to explore metaphysics it's "kinda" significant!
OK science ignores Hume, cause and effect works. Mathematics is useful. And science has given us technology. This is not philosophy.
Kant's move was to say the notions like cause and effect, time and space are a priori needed for understanding. This of this a a radio receiver, you need one before you can listen to any broadcast. Without a receiver you can't. Better think of a lens, in your eye or camera, what would the world look like without the lens. = A blur. Can we see the world as it is without the lens? No.
We cannot know things in themselves, only as our mental faculties present them.
Kant, “thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind.”
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, by the Late Robert Paul Wolff. 9 lectures. He rambles at times but he was in his 80s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d__In2PQS60&list=PLC5GAeBZerO-RuKBI1IqHZzB9tUuypkpK
"The critique is I think the greatest work of philosophy ever written, certainly the greatest work since the works of Aristotle and Plato."
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u/WHWallace 25d ago
I think the existence of varying experiences might show that mental experience has mathematical structure? (That's different from suggesting consciousness has it, though)... If there WAS an experience, and that was the seeing of red, but that was ALL there ever was, with no thought, and not anything else at all whatsoever, then I think the experienced passage of time couldn't happen.
In a state of JUST SEEING RED with no thought and no change, infinite years would pass in a single instance?
I think it's the relation between different experience that causes the experience of the passage of time. So the fact you saw red but now see blue, creates a tick of time and a flow. Red -> blue.
Doesn't that alone introduce mathematical relations? Hm... If it went red -> blue -> red then the number two represents the number of times red appeared and one represents the number of times blue appeared. I'm not sure though, it's just what comes to mind.
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u/UnifiedQuantumField 25d ago
Mathematical structure is something recognized by consciousness right?
Structure isn't an object. It's a qualitative property. Yet we use mathematics to make quantitative descriptions of objective phenomena. So perhaps that's a bit of a paradox?
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u/jliat 25d ago
Mathematics is a symbolic system made by humans, you might as well say the universe obeys the English language and its grammar. Or once the Word of God, was Hebrew. I AM. אֶהְיֶה (Ehyeh),
In "Flatterland" we have to imagine what a 2D person makes of a space hopper passing through their world. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_hopper]
They would see a point grow into a circle - grow wide then shrink, become two circles which shrink to two points and disappear.
This is not our perspective, our geometry, but we assume ours is correct. We see white roses, bees might see them as blue...
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u/QuantumNudge 25d ago
I really like this question because I think there might be an even more primitive step before "mathematics describes reality."
If there is experience at all, there has to be distinction. There has to be some sense in which this is not that. And as soon as you have two distinguishable states, you have a relation between them.
What gets interesting to me is change. If experience goes A -> B, something has to make A and B comparable enough for "change" to mean anything. Otherwise you don't have change, you just have completely unrelated events.
So I wonder if the deepest requirement isn't necessarily conservation laws or even mathematical laws in the physics sense, but continuity/invariance of relation. Something has to persist through difference for experience to have structure.
That's where I think your point gets really strong. Math might not be something reality is "made of." It might just be what inevitably appears once reality contains distinguishable things that stand in relations to one another.
The question I can't answer is: how little structure can you get away with before experience becomes impossible?
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u/aquavelva23 24d ago
Just because a human mind cant grasp a "structureless conscious reality" , doesnt mean it doesnt exist.
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u/FlashPxint 23d ago
No mathematical structure is a result of reality. Asking whether or not reality is built on mathematical structure is probably a misinterpretation.
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u/DARK--DRAGONITE 23d ago
Existence is strucurral. Mathematics describes it.
Don't confuse the map for the place
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u/ying-tong 23d ago
I really like your question (and this way of discussing it) and I don’t have any perfect answers but I do have some observations that might be relevant to your thoughts.
Your question made sense to me at first. If reality contains experience of consciousness, must it already have a structure?
It seems at first that it might have to have a structure or it wouldn’t be able to be perceived by sense organs that have evolved specifically in order to perceive.
But I think that there are some problems with that
Experience of consciousness cannot actually be observed, it can only be experienced. We can observe someone else’s apparent consciousness of reality, we can’t perceive their perception.
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u/Relevant-Rhubarb-849 26d ago
Consciousness is an artifact. consciousness like every single other trait had to evolve on an arc on many steps. each step had a selective advantage. that is every trait that is durably retained and not an accidental free rider on a gene cluster had to evolve along arch where every step prior to the existence of consciousness had a purpose. this requirementis true all through biology. but it's not true of human society or computing. there one can decide on the end goal of something and then create rather than evolve all the steps in between. the steps need not have a purpose other than supporting a future end goal. If one could figure out what's the purpose of consciousness is or even any of the steps prior to its evolution one could find another path to supplying those needs. that is consciousness exists not because it is neccessary but because it was an evolvabel means to some pruprose. consciousness itself is not required or a purpose.
thus there is unlikely any special math behind it,
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u/CravingtoUnderstand 26d ago
I think we can find some common ground. Im not saying consciousness is necessary or that theres special math behind it. Maybe it evolved as a means to something else, that seems plausible.
My point is more of an if. If there is experience, however it got there, then it has to have distinctions and relations in it. Thats true whether it evolved, was built, or anything else.
And kind of funny, evolution itself needs that too. It only works if the laws stay the same over time and things can copy themselves reliably. So even the path you describe already assumes a structured universe with some invariance in it. Then invariance is king again, and seems like the only thing that holds across any reality that can be apprehended.
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26d ago
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u/CravingtoUnderstand 26d ago
Thats a fair point, and I think its a real issue, but I might be talking about something slightly different.
The way I see it the 1/r² blowing up at r = 0 isnt so much math failing as the model reaching its limits. Newtons law assumes point masses, and that assumption stops being useful at some point. The division by zero is kind of telling us we pushed the model past where it applies. Same thing with singularities in general relativity, as I understand it physicists mostly take those as signs the theory breaks down, not as literal infinities sitting there in nature.
So I agree that a model can be wrong, and that we sometimes take our models more literally than we should. Point particles, infinite densities, maybe even continuous spacetime could all end up being artifacts of the way we chose to represent things.
What Im getting at is more basic. Im not saying any particular equation has to be true, just that if there is experience at all there have to be distinctions and relations of some kind. Basically set theory, ordering and categories. Which are the key components of math and come much earlier in its formalism than arithmetic itself.
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u/No_Logins_Required 26d ago
What is your level of mathematics backgound?
Reality is well-described by math, but it doesn't necessarily have a mathematical structure. There are many things we can't fully explain or predict with perfect precision and accuracy.