My best friend, a retired math teacher, once asked: If there were no one around, would the theorems of mathematics still exist?

It is the sort of metaphysical question that he and I like to kick around: nothing simple, no topic too big. I jump in each time, claiming the advantage over academic philosophers of not choking my thoughts with air-tight categories and definitions — which makes me wonder at times if it’s a game that is being played. 

So, tackling the question raised, free of the customary academic nit-picking, I begin by phrasing it closer to its purpose: Is there an objective reality beyond the mind — objective meaning in this context, what is completely independent of the mind?

It’s a question that precipitates a more fundamental one: Would anything exist if there were no human mind to perceive it and interact with it? The scenario of a nuclear holocaust that wipes out every human being hands us the conundrum on a familiar platter, well served by sci-fi writers smart enough to keep at least one survivor to tell the story. For without any witness, there would be no one to know what happened or communicate the event. Would there even be a story?

Knowing, in any humanly useful sense of the word, is a function of the mind. That there is actually “something out there beyond us” is in essence a thought. But does the “intelligence” we get regarding reality originate in the mind or outside the mind?

I pause to wonder, how can there be an answer to a question about the mind, using the mind? Is that not the ultimate conundrum? It would seem that ultimate questions of mind-reality lock themselves out of any attempt to answer them inside the cranium, where they are constantly restricted. In math, for instance, the fence is intra-consistent symbol structures and rules — in science, intra-consistent assumptions and methods — whose consistency with structured thought outside of the designated frameworks is imperfect and whose connection to reality terminates in at least one X outside of its operational field?

Because these mental structures enjoy a life of their own within their respective realms and disciplines, the answers they may provide for ultimate questions are of necessity “empty boxes,” however well-constructed. To think that the mind can transcend itself and see the world “as it really is” requires one to believe that the mind itself is not part of that world, a belief inconsistent with scientific doctrine, compounding the difficulty with “ultimate questions.”

Some of the best minds have ignored the simple fact that employing the mind to get beyond the mind is not consistent with reasoning.

So, must ultimate mysteries, for which no amount of dot-connecting can solve, remain forever elusive and opaque to the mind? If the probing method is strictly rational, the answer must be yes. But if the metaphysical realm is tapped for clues, the answer may be no, as I’ll get to shortly.

Metaphysics is I think repudiated by materialists and positivists because it pushes them into territory completely alien to them. How odd that most human beings have no such problem. Why should this be?

Consider for a moment the following. We know, or should know, that the electronic simulation of human mental activity in a computer does not lead the computer to know itself or know its creator(s). Whatever the systematic extension of humans in the hardware and software may be or thought to be is just that: an extension, not a replacement of humans.

Could the mind in like manner be an extension of something beyond it that, despite its non-rational value, animates thought, including that of mental heavyweights like Albert Einstein who has publicly acknowledged the presence of a superior Spirit in his life?

There are insights and inklings enough from math and science to aid the mind in dealing with “what is out there,” such as with the application of physics to computer technology and to industry, space exploration, etc., etc. Successful research and development in useful applications tend to make many forget, however, that probing the world for practical ends is not equivalent to knowing the world in the direct way we know that we are breathing.

To repeat, theoretical knowledge is confined to the frameworks and constructs adopted to deal with given problems. But no such fences surround ultimate questions, which allows an exit from every “box” of acquired knowledge. With regard to ultimate reality, there is never a valid reason to cry out “Eureka! This is it! We finally know what it’s all about!”

My friend’s question regarding the existence of mathematical theorems when there is no mind to perceive them slips into the metaphysical realm, there to remain permanently in limbo. For any assumption about reality that charges through all mental fences for acquiring knowledge eventually returns the seeker to Square One, in an endless loop. The back door to this rational quandary, aka metaphysics, is always open, however, for exploration. Its value is undeniable. A prominent example is that of Srinivasa Ramanujan who drew the inspirations for his complex mathematical theorems from Indian gods. He was not one to lock his mind into its own box. What mathematics owes to Ramanujan, what humanity owes to “lucky” hunches, insights, intuitions and all other “irrational methods” of exploration is beyond calculation.

What I have been saying in effect is that it is vital for humans as humans to understand that the scientific solution to everything is not, as Carl Sagan claimed, “a matter of time.” At best such boundless faith in science sustains the spirit to outdo what reality allows. At worst it spawns a blinding and devastating arrogance, as demonstrated by people like Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab.

Reality is beyond the mind’s ability to know it in the way we know we’re alive or grasp it in the way we can manipulate the elements of nature. Reality isn’t discovered, the way we find what’s hidden under a rock. It’s not invented, something leftists have not learned. It is acknowledged, as the smartest in all ages have been doing, to their credit, to their successes, and to the benefit of everyone.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.