zero is a reference point, without it numbers would be meaningless

question:
is it possible to describe/ quantify anything in the real world with zero without establishing another reference?

zero would inherently describe a lack of a characteristic, so would it be an actual description? i.e., describing something by what it's not doesn't actually tell us what it is.


for example saying, "I have 0 pencils in my hand" is establishing yourself as a point of reference


this is just a random thought,

This post was edited by Abstraction on Dec 12 2008 11:57pm

Numbers are used to describe the world around us, and it is (theoretically) impossible to state a universal truth without the use of numbers.

e.g., "I have two feet"

So I would assume that the point of reference is co-dependent with the integer.

Saying "Have two feet" is nonsensical.

This post was edited by 2Cb on Dec 12 2008 11:52pm

I divided by zero once. Greatest moment of my life

Sweet, let's hope you don't get divided by 30%

Numerical reference requires a physical referent in the real world, otherwise it's not about the real world

Aside: I don't think there are any universal truths. Truth depends on us because 'truth' is conceptual. There's no concept of truth if we're not around to make it so. Let's say theres a tree outside. You ask me "is there a tree outside?". I say "yep". You ask, " then is it still true there's a tree outside if no intelligent beings with language exist?". I say "no, because what would make it true? there wouldn't even be a tree, because that requires that there would be objects". You see, thngs aren't really things until we impose it upon them. The world depends on how we cut it up. That's not the same thing as making the commonplace remark that a tree doesn't exist if I'm not there; otherwise, I couldn't have been born because my great-grandfather was deceased before my birth.

This post was edited by RewtheBrave on Dec 13 2008 12:00am

in a way, yes, existence is dependant of our acknowledgement of it

but, for example, there were a countless number of things we didn't completely acknowledge(let's say 1000 years ago) that still existed.

This post was edited by Abstraction on Dec 13 2008 12:05am

Sure, but they're irrelevant to us except as lost historical data, and notice that you still needed to name a reference to bring those unknown things up. I didn't mean that truth depends on us as in you and me, and anyone else in particular, but I did mean that if nobody acknowledges things--if they have no particular reference--then they can only be refered to collectively as "that stuff". One way to looks at it is to think about the nouns we use in our descriptions:

noun type vs object type

individual/particular = rock
group/collective = that pile of (individual) rocks
mass = the total quantity of gold on the planet

Once we get into using mass nouns, we're making rather "stuff-like" references, and while there was stuff a thousand years ago and there's stuff now (acknowledged or not), unless we can fathom what it is, there's no sense in which it exists, for reasons given in my previous post

Zero is only a concept. It's on the same level as any other conceptual "number" or variable. The only reason it appears to have more meaning than that is because we use a number system that uses it as a placeholder on top of a null concept. The two sort of combine in our heads/how we are taught the language, but in reality 0 and the 0 in 10 are serving different purposes. If you substitute 10 with A and then go straight to 11, for example or 10 with 1A (a little easier to comprehend on a base 10 scale, confusing if you've ever used higher bases).

This post was edited by Dishonru on Dec 13 2008 01:56am

Whether we acknowledge their existence are not the fact of the matter is they still exist. Because they are there.

Not to flog a dead horse, but "they" are not there, because you've got no way to refer to any "they" if nobody is around to know. The point is that things only become things because of language. There's no such thing as 'exist' until we start cognizing. It's an epistemological point: what's the sense in which a stone exists if no sentient beings exist? You can't ask questions about it. "How much does it weigh?" It has neither weight nor mass; we can't make any descriptions of it. Existence is a description of something we know. Or put it this way: say that you're an alien that doesn't have concepts of 'table' and 'chair', or many other things we know about. You walk into a room full of things, and you're asked via translation what the objects are in front of you are. You will see a 'table-chair', among other things, but because of the way you cut up the world, but you're not necesasarily going to see the table or the chair as discrete objects. The point isn't that the chair and table don't exist, because this is really only a point about knowing and naming, but the idea is that object formation has everything to do with us, just as truth does. So without us, we have no objects, no things, and no truth, because there's no world that's neatly cut up. Even saying we'd have "things" is an act of naming or thing-ing. Whatever mass/lump/stuff there would be without us, our attempts at naming and making sense of "it" utterly fail.

'Zero' is an interesting case. There's a discussion of non-being that's popular in undergraduate philosophy classes. That is to say, that discussion is about things like unicorns that don't exist. But we can refer to them, so what's the deal. The simple answer is that there is no special class of non-beings (like the one you'd need to make the point against the argument I suggest above), but rather when we refer to a unicorn, we're refering to states of imagination. With the concept of zero, we actually have a referent, and the referent is easy to pick out. We're refering to an imaginary figure, but we're taking a special step in the case of zero, because it's not just any object of our imagination, but one imbued with mathematical and even spatial meaning. Nonetheless, I can't pick up zero eggs and give them to you unless we're playing a game of the imagination, because otherwise what I'm not carrying is non-specific: I'm not carrying 500 elastics, I'm not holding three erasers, etc. too. That's an aweful lot to not carry

Well in theory everything in the universe equals 0 due to the fact everything was created from nothing.