Is mathematics invented or discovered?

[Wanderfound]

@anon50609448

This reminds me of the “I think therefore I am” argument. It makes sense intuitively to a lot of people, but even if you don’t think it is essentially flawed you have to be really careful not to import a lot into the “I” part of the argument. The real conclusion of the argument is more that something exists than that anything like what you think of as yourself exists.

Tangent: I’ve seen it seriously argued by professional philosophers and historians that a decent chunk of Descarte’s philosophy was deliberately bad, on the basis that he was trying to discredit popular positions that he disagreed with. They couldn’t believe that such a talented thinker would push things they viewed as obviously daft (e.g. Cartesian dualism).