> numbers (and other sorts of mathematics) do not pre-exist reality. Numbers are abstractions of regularities we see in nature.

This is an open and ancient question. I don't suppose to have the answer. I will say, the case for mathematics pre-existing is stronger than what you refute here.

You're right, of course, that this is an open question. But the posted article saunters about the fields of an incredibly deep question by glibly asserting idealism about mathematical structures. It is an awfully weak foundation upon which to build an answer to such a fundamental question.

It is _at least_ plausible that numbers supervene upon existence and not the other way around, which makes the entire exercise in the article seem suspect in its presentation, at the very least.

Would you _really_ say that the case for mathematical idealism is that strong? The Philpapers survey seems to suggest philosophers are approximately evenly split on this question (idealists at 39%, nominalists at 38%).

Yeah I had to skim through it as well. I think the author probably has written something that has passed peer review, but has either written so many such things that he has gotten sick of terseness and getting to the point, or so few things that he has not learned to value it in the first place? Like the writing is not god-awful like a lot of the crackpot takes, but it's definitely tortuous.

As a theory goes, I don't think this one is successful. It probably either implies that time is an illusion or that we are all Boltzmann brains, and I would take it as a baseline desideratum that our fundamental understanding of the universe does not come in either of these shapes. (Both essentially state “actions don't exist” in different ways, and if the universe is the place where activities occur, the place where things happen, then the idea that nothing is really happening in there appears to fail hard.)

Of course is a Christian and a mystic, my understanding of my own answer is that it is also carefully calculated nonsense, nonsense in service of some sort of artistic goal, so I'm not in a great place to really criticize. He can struggle with his mythos and I can struggle with mine, haha.

Nice that you can step out of the frame and see your motivations. I write this because I think that your self knowledge is virtuous and like a moth to a flame I am drawn to the good. By identifying with the good or ingesting it like knowledge candy - I can come closer to this platonic concept that my nervous system so craves.

I can no more step outside of my own seeking than a wave can stand up from the ocean and make its way in land.

Pointless. All of it.

Why believe anything about this question at all? I feel quite strongly that the proper mental posture towards many questions is "I don't have a very compelling reason to hold a strong opinion on that." This feeling it buttressed by the fact that there are a great many tractable scientific and philosophical mysteries which are as yet unresolved. It seems premature to tackle this particular one, perhaps because I fundamentally disagree with the author that we are at a stage in history where it can be tackled "scientifically."

Sorry that I'm not seeing this until 8 days later, haha.

What I will say is that this particular question is a sort of meta-question. So the underlying question is "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and the basic standpoints are:

- Theistic: This question is meaningful/answerable, but the answer strains our comprehension ability. Creatio ex nihilo, somehow the somethingness comes out of the nothingness, and our ability to understand is not altogether there.

- Scientistic: This question is meaningful and has an ordinarily-intelligible answer, "because of Something with a Capital S."

- Atheistic: This question is not meaningful and therefore cannot have an answer.

- Agnostic: I don't have enough data yet to judge whether this question would be meaningful, or whether it at least in principle has an answer.

Because we're not asking "what is the answer to 'why is there something rather than nothing?'" but rather asking "is that a meaningful/answerable question in the first place?" the agnostic is in an unusually difficult position that does not obtain in other sorts of agnosticism. The problem is that it does not seem prima facie like this is a more unusual question than any of the other ones we ask on a normal basis. It doesn't have any complicated words, it does not appear to be self-referential, no word is being used twice (and therefore not in a way that might set it into two different contexts so that it has two different meanings)... the only thing that is different is that this question has somewhat of a larger scope than we are conventionally used to.

So normally the agnostic is free of the "burden of proof" and can "cop out" but in this case the agnostic finds themselves needing to justify a bit why this particular usage of those words might be problematic for deciding whether the question is likely to be answerable.