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The qualium is the underlying experience of numberness and the very basic experience of abstraction of numberness from individual subitized items. Counting seems secondary here, but it's a way to recreate the experience using a primitive inductive method.

I'd be surprised if basic arithmetic - certainly addition, possibly subtraction, probably not anything more advanced - wasn't similarly rooted in experience.

But the basic point was that arithmetic is rooted in experience, and doesn't exist independently of it. Trying to prove it using formal logic makes for an interesting scenic trip, but eventually you end up standing over a hole which logic can't fill for you.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat Oct 18th, 2008 at 08:21:06 PM EST
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I think that's basically what Lakoff and Núñez argue in Where Mathematics Comes From (which I highly recommend), which builds on the earlier Philosophy in the Flesh.

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sat Oct 18th, 2008 at 08:25:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]
And what about idiot savants that have an intuitive grasp of arithmetic relationships and even calendric/numerical and numerical/calendic?
by ATinNM on Sat Oct 18th, 2008 at 08:40:57 PM EST
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