Can Mathematics Describe Our Innermost Life When Words Fail?
At Vox, Oshan Jarow, a staff writer who focuses on consciousness, is skeptical about the title question. But, in a recent article, he profiles theorists and researchers who are giving the idea a shot at using math to describe experiences words cannot describe. One of them is mathematician and physicist Johannes Kleiner based at the LMU Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. In outline, his approach would work like this: For example, words could offer you a poem about the feeling of standing on a sidewalk when a car driving by splashes a puddle from last night’s rain directly into your face. A mathematical structure, on the other hand, could create an interactive 3D model of that experience, showing how all the different sensations — the smell of wet concrete, the maddening sound of the car fleeing the scene of its crime, the viscous drip of dirty water down your face — relate to one another. Oshan Jarow, “Why is it so hard to describe consciousness with words? How math might help us capture our experiences,” …
