i.e., if it turns out ideas and "green" operate in the same locations in the brain, and if you exhibit anger + sleep patterns of thought while brainstorming.
eg later he says:
>"Is it not remarkable that 6 sheep plus 7 sheep make 13 sheep; that 6 stones plus 7 stones make 13 stones? Is it not a miracle that the universe is so constructed that such a simple abstraction as a number is possible? To me this is one of the strongest examples of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Indeed, l find it both strange and unexplainable. "
That makes absolutely no sense. You might as well wonder why the word "wheel" describes wheels. Or wonder why wheels exist. These are empirical facts.
Well neither of those two deal with counting... We already know (historically, empirically) that counting & manipulating 'stuff' is what works for making applicable theories. Mathematical abstraction preserves those "traits", & makes the object more general - ie more flexible. Chess for example is about counting, but it's not explicitly written in a form that allows you to drop it in a theory.
I think the important thing is the traits aren't arbitrary. They were forced on people, eg you need to learn counting if you want to keep track of your goats.
Personally, I find it rather remarkable that a pattern observed from pebbles, sheep or apples (i.e., 6 + 7 = 13) should hold for any set of discrete objects anywhere in the universe. It could well have been that, say, 1 apple + 1 apple = 2.5 apples, but 1 kitten + 1 kitten = 1.5 kittens.
Cool article, though.
But if you are interested in philosophy, then you should know that the philosopher often starts by wondering about something that most sane people take for granted. Case in point, some people do wonder why the word "wheel" describes wheels. There are tons of papers and books about philosophy of language.
Others ask why wheels exist, what is a wheel, or whether do they really exist at all. You can only be sure that the existence of wheels is an "empirical fact" after you have examined these questions. After all, "empirical fact" is a philosophical term.
Incidentally, "6 sheep + 7 sheep = 13 sheep" is not an empirical fact.
Counting is defined by objects, and 13 is the sum of 6 and 7. Indeed it is an empirical fact in as much as it has a physical interpretation.