>patterns that are useful and guide events in the physical world but are not themselves explained, set, or modifiable by the laws of physics. This includes things like facts about prime numbers...
which if fair enough. Prime numbers exist and you find them by doing calculations but he goes on to:
>...this position is unpopular with philosophers of mind because it is fundamentally a dualist theory (by emphasizing causes that are not to be found in physical events)
which seems iffy. As mentioned we find primes by calculation which can be done by physical events.
I think human reasoning tends to get in a bit of a muddle with this because the idea of "non-physical space of truths which we discover" is not an especially good mental model for stuff we could in principle calculate.
That said I figure stuff we could calculates exists even if we haven't done the calculations yet because someone else could have done so, and stuff that could be calculated includes simulations of other worlds.
He goes from:
>patterns that are useful and guide events in the physical world but are not themselves explained, set, or modifiable by the laws of physics. This includes things like facts about prime numbers...
which if fair enough. Prime numbers exist and you find them by doing calculations but he goes on to:
>...this position is unpopular with philosophers of mind because it is fundamentally a dualist theory (by emphasizing causes that are not to be found in physical events)
which seems iffy. As mentioned we find primes by calculation which can be done by physical events.
I think human reasoning tends to get in a bit of a muddle with this because the idea of "non-physical space of truths which we discover" is not an especially good mental model for stuff we could in principle calculate.
That said I figure stuff we could calculates exists even if we haven't done the calculations yet because someone else could have done so, and stuff that could be calculated includes simulations of other worlds.