Mediacology

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Is Mathematics Discovered or Invented?:

“The abstract realm in which a mathematician works is by dint of prolonged intimacy more concrete to him than the chair he happens to sit on,” says Ulf Persson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, a self-described Platonist.

The philosophical debate concerning whether or not mathematics is discovered or invented is bit like wanking, but for most people wanking is fun, so why not? The Daily Galaxy highlights some recent thoughts on the discussion, and I suppose what interests me is that it bleeds into media, the Platonic debate in particular. It is my view that Platonism set into motion a strain of Western thought that has kept debates about media inside a feedback loop, which is to be stuck in this idea that imitation, and the arts in particular, are false versions of reality (Baudrillard’s Simulations of the Simulacra and The Matrix current examples). Anything reflected in the mirror is a result of wizardry. In my view Arts, and media in particular, intensify reality.

I think Plato’s intentions were well placed, he simply reminded us to distrust the senses. Where he goes wrong is in assuming that everything around you is hiding a more perfect reality. A mindful approach would engage the perceptual reality as alive but subject to delusion as a result of how we filter and process it with our judgments (i.e. ignorance). The key difference is to discern, but not to judge. Part of the reason is the phenomena of “dependent arising,” which means that as soon as I decide something is “this,” than it sets into motion a whole set of “thats.” For example, if I say something is good, it automatically creates a class of bad. So when Plato denounces poets as ruinous imitators it’s because they deceive the sense from the One True Reality which no human could ever touch. I think an open source reality is more preferable.

Ah, what suffering!