>>10901962>What, if all things consist of substance, is the essence of a number built of?Our a priori intuition of time, maybe. Kant fucked up when he assumed that physical space had to be Euclidean, but even Gauss agreed that, while geometry clearly has an empirical component, arithmetic may very well be "a priori" in some sense. If you don't like that explanation, you can just say numbers are an abstraction from collection of objects (e.g., three apples) or sequences (e.g., first son, second son, etc.)
>How do materialist rationalize substance in and of itself if all things are made of it, even the smallest particles in existence?I don't think the smallest particles in existence count as matter in a strict sense. Atoms are mainly made up of void, with a small nucleus in the center and even smaller electrons all around. The nucleus itself is mainly made up of void, with some quarks in the mix. "Matter" itself is made up by the physical forces exterted by those small particles, which give rise to various kinds of attraction and repulsion. We're made, like, more than 99% out of nothingness with less than 1% of actual "matter" in the form of particles. What determines the boundary of things is just Coulomb's force.
>Does that not create an unending paradox?How?
>Has matter always existed? If so, how do you rationalize a thing birthing itself into being?Cosmology is unfalsifiable. I have no idea how the world came into being, and any attempt at findind out is an educated guess at best.
