On Tue, 27 May 2003, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
[snip]
> It is news to me that we are able to *perceive* any non-physical objects.
> Yes, I know about the Platonic view that some people can apprehend the
> Ideas directly.  In one of his books, Penrose seems to agree.  I think
> they are wrong.  To quote a dictionary, "perception is the awareness
> of things that you have by means of your senses", and even Plato and
> Penrose would not claim that you apprehend the Ideas by means of your
> senses.
[snip]

Interestingly, Goedel thought we had a sensory like access to mathematical
objects (via "intuition").

Penelope Maddy develops a version of this view, though, as I recall, she
thinks we can apprehend mathematical sets through our regular senses.

	http://hypatia.ss.uci.edu/lps/home/fac-staff/faculty/maddy/

(In particular, *Realism In mathematics*.)

Many of the naturalistic platonists (in the last 30 years) have tried to
put platonic mathematical objects on the same epistemic footing as
physical objects, especially the highly abstract objects of theoretical
physics.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.