Halc wrote: ↑November 29th, 2019, 1:25 am Bluemist wrote: ↑November 27th, 2019, 10:31 am I should have said that a rock and bug are of less concern to me because they are further away in my consciousness therefore they are less real to me than my family and friends are.
While I'd definitely agree about the sliding scale of concern about these objects, relative existence is pretty much a binary relation, so I'd not have said that thing A is more real (to something) than is thing B. Each is or is not.
Subjective reality is a personal affair for me, or for my family, or for my company, or for my municipality, or for my country, or even for humanity as a whole. The outlook on reality is always centered on me, here, and now. My reality spreads in ever more fading and more distant concentric circles to more remote concerns.
My reality is not binary, nor even discrete, but continuous and ever changing. Because it is not fixed, I can act to change myself, my environment, and my world, hopefully for the better. This proactive attitude is essential to this sort of philosophy.
On the other hand,
absolute existents either are or are not, a thing or property either exists or it does not. Existence is apparently binary, which means existence has to be unchanging and fixed in a timeless or eternal world.
Relative existence needs to be more complicated because there are many varieties of relativism. But, as you say, in each instance existence should be a binary state.
Whether numbers and mathematics are objects will
depend on either metaphysical (in a fundamental Aristotelian sense) or ontological (what sort of things exist?) considerations.
Metaphysical relativism means that there are many potential logically different philosophical systems, and to decide which of these philosophies we choose to apply will depend either on the differing logic of each system, or on the different intended domains of applicability.
In an absolute sense, Harry Potter does not exist. In a relative sense, in the books and only in the books, Harry Potter existed at the fictional time of the fictional events. For mathematicians, numbers are existing objects of mathematics, because they are defined to exist or are derived from existents in math.