For it remains a deep puzzle why mathematical laws should apply to the world with such phenomenal precision. … Moreover, it is not just the precision but also the subtle sophistication and mathematical beauty of these successful theories that is profoundly mysterious.
There is also an undoubted deep mystery in how it can come to pass that appropriately organised physical material — and here I refer specifically to living human (or animal) brains—can somehow conjure up the mental quality of conscious awareness.
Finally, there is also a mystery about how it is that we perceive mathematical truth. It is not just that our brains are programmed to ‘calculate’ in reliable ways. There is something much more profound than that in the insights that even the humblest among us possess when we appreciate, for example, the actual meanings of the terms ‘zero’, ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’, ‘four’, etc.
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To be clear, the reason why mathematical laws apply to the world 'with phenomenal precision' is that the former are quantifications of the latter. From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, mathematical laws are metaphenomenal meanings that quantitatively model phenomenal meanings construed of experience.
From the same perspective, 'the mental quality of conscious awareness' is understood as mental processes ranging over phenomena that are meanings construed of experience. The material basis of conscious processes is modelled, in a biologically plausible and epistemologically enlightened way, by Edelman's (1992) Theory of Neuronal Group Selection.
From the same perspective, 'perceiving mathematical truth' is determining the validity of mathematical propositions on the basis of the consistency of their logical relations.
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