Referencing, things and reality

Having looked at it there is nothing wrong with T={T}. But try and do this in reality and there is a problem.

Take 2 boxes. Now make a box of all boxes called C. In common sense we'd just put them in a third box, but strickly it is true that third box should be in itself. This cannot be done in "reality" so we would put a third box in and call it C. That is we would "reference" C with something else. Pretty obvious.

Take T = {T}

Actually there are 5 symbols (existing things). There is not one T symbol but two. When we say they are the same thing they cannot be the same thing else there would be only one symbol. In the example they are different things but they reference the same thing, belong to a finite symbol set so we can quantise them the same, and they are constructed in a way that our visual cortex picks out well (especially being made of lines). Nevertheless in "reality" they are different things and all the similarity occurs off the page in what I have been calling "mind". If similarity occurs in the mind then so does difference.

Another example to illustrate would be an orchestra. If the conductor asks the strings to form one group, and everyone else to form another. He might then ask I want a "group of all groups over here" i'll call the "orchestra". In common sense reality this simply means a group with the strings and everyone else. In the context no one thinks the groups are "real" they are in the "mind".

Now it's a trivial point. No one thinks that what I am writing is itself "real". The writing is just marks on a page, we assume I am talking "about" something "real" and the connection, the understanding and thinking, is "the mind".

What is "in the mind" is not real. So I was wrong "sets" are neither things nor real. They require "action" to become real. Action like things can be referenced but it has its own unique existence. Two actions are not the same thing, even when they look the same. This enters the vast realm of ethics.

Now apply that to materialism, and especially theories of mind. Materialism holds the belief that everything is founded upon a physical reality which is knowable. Clearly referencing cannot be founded upon the things it references that in other words is "mind" cannot be ignored in our account of "reality". Problems then for brain sciences because "the mind" cannot then be the same as "the brain".