Quote:
Originally posted by Rusty Rockets:
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
What I mean is that there exists a mathematical description of our universe. This description implicitely also contains a description of you. Perhaps that is all that really exists of you and the universe.
I may be missing what it is that you are trying to convey, but mathematics is actually there to explain or model a thing (you and the universe, in this case), so maths in itself can't be all that exists.
Why not? it could be that the ''real thing'' we are modeling is precisely that mathematical model itself. This has been postulated by Tegmark.

The reason I like this idea is because if there is more to the physical world than just mathematics, then you can't ever have a complete description of the physical world. If, say, superstring theory is correct, then you will have strings that are the fundamental objects. But you can never ask what the strings really are. They just exist.

Also, our universe exists physically, but most other possible universe don't. You can never know what blows life into our universe.

If we just forget about the idea that there is such a thing as physical existence apart from mathematical existence (or alternatively, postulate that physical existence = mathematical existence), then these problems go away.