178 | Jody Azzouni on What Is and Isn't Real

<p>Are numbers real? What does that even mean? You can’t kick a number. But you can talk about numbers in useful ways, and we use numbers to talk about the real world. There’s surely a kind of reality there. On the other hand, Luke Skywalker isn’t a real person, but we talk about him all the time. Maybe we can talk about unreal things in useful ways. Jody Azzouni is one of the leading contemporary advocates of&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">nominalism</a>, the view that abstract objects are not “things,” they are merely labels we use in talking about things. A deeply philosophical issue, but one that has implications for how we think about physics and the laws of nature.</p><p><em>Support Mindscape on&nbsp;</em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Patreon</em></a><em>.</em></p><p>Jody Azzouni received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the City University of New York. He is currently a professor of philosophy at Tufts University. In addition to his philosophical work, he is an active writer of fiction and poetry.</p><ul><li><a href="https://jodyazzouni.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Web site</a></li><li><a href="https://as.tufts.edu/philosophy/people/faculty/azzouni" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tufts web page</a></li><li><a href="https://philpeople.org/profiles/jody-azzouni" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">PhilPeople profile</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jody-Azzouni/e/B001HQ2KUO" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Amazon author page</a></li><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jody_Azzouni" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a></li><li><a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/jody-azzouni/biography/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">PoemHunter page</a></li></ul><p><br></p><p>See Privacy Policy at <a href="https://art19.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://art19.com/privacy</