[zoogeny]

I think your description of Penrose's belief does not match a podcast I recently watched where he discusses these topics with the Christian apologist William Lane Craig [1]. In fact, he explicitly states early on in that video that he sees the world of ideas as primary as opposed to Craig's view that consciousness is primary.

At any rate, this video might serve as a quick introduction to Penrose's three world idea for those interested.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wLtCqm72-Y

[dr_dshiv]

Oh, cool! I don’t recall a “primary” in the book — he suggests a range of different possible configurations that he was open to. What struck you as not matching?

Personally, I do think that the immaterial world of ideas must be primary—at least certain aspects of mathematics seem so necessary that they’d be discovered by intelligent life, no matter the galaxy… or simulation…

[throwanem]

All life also defecates, intelligent or otherwise. Curious how no one hastens to canonize that for its ubiquity.

[zoogeny]

I was considering your explicit "material -> conscious -> ideas -> material" description. It feels more correct when you say he considers a range of possibilities that connect these, not explicit causality.

My take away was that he sees a mystery in the connections between these things (physical world, consciousness, ideas) that hints at some missing ideas in our conceptions of these things. But he clearly wants to avoid that mystery allowing what he calls out as "vague" answers to the question (mostly religious dogmatic certainties).

[ryandv]

> Personally, I do think that the immaterial world of ideas must be primary—at least certain aspects of mathematics seem so necessary that they’d be discovered by intelligent life, no matter the galaxy… or simulation…

For some speculative philosophical fiction that explores related ideas I highly recommend Neal Stephenson's Anathem.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The idea that ideas are primary is exactly what you'd expect from an Oxford academic.

Unfortunately it needs a definition of "idea" which isn't recursive, so...

As for math - it's a conceit to believe that the mechanisms we call math aren't just a patchwork of metaphors that build up from experience.

There's some self-insight in the sense that after a while you start making meta metaphors like category theory.

But it's a very bold claim to suggest that any of this has to be universal, especially when the structures math uses can't be proved from the ground up.

Or that completely different classes of metaphors we can't imagine - because we evolved in a certain way with certain limitations - might not play an equivalent role.

Does the universe know what pi is? Or an integer? Or a manifold?

Does it need to?