GBM comments on Does Your Morality Care What You Think? - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 July 2008 12:25AM

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Comment author: GBM 26 July 2008 07:49:00AM 0 points [-]

Another thing way to look at this idea of math being a tool that exists only in the mind has occurred to me:

Does addition happen outside the mind? What is something "plus" something else? If we've got a quantity of two sheep, and a quantity of three sheep, and they're standing next to each other, then we can consider the two quantities together, and count five sheep. But let's say a quantity of two sheep wander through a meadow until they come across a quantity of three sheep, and then stop. Where did the actual addition happen? Outside the mind, there are only quantities.