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Full Idea
Our minds mainly reason about objects. Most cognitive problems we are faced with deal with particular objects, whether they are people or material things. Reasoning about them is what our minds are good at.
Gist of Idea
Our minds are at their best when reasoning about objects
Source
Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §4.3)
Book Ref
-: 'Philosophical Review 114' [Phil Review 2005], p.199
A Reaction
Hofweber is suggesting this as an explanation of why we continually reify various concepts, especially numbers. Very plausible. It works for qualities of character, and explains our tendency to talk about universals as objects ('redness').
Related Idea
Idea 19490 Make-believe can help us to reason about facts and scientific procedures [Yablo]
| 12476 | Every external object or internal idea suggests to us the idea of unity [Locke] |
| 12501 | The mind can make a unity out of anything, no matter how diverse [Locke] |
| 20338 | We often treat a type as if it were a sort of token [Wollheim] |
| 12065 | Seeing a group of soldiers as an army is irresistible, in ontology and explanation [Wiggins] |
| 10004 | Our minds are at their best when reasoning about objects [Hofweber] |
| 14930 | Maybe the only way we can think about a domain is by dividing it up into objects [Ladyman/Ross] |