system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does the existence of numbers disprove materialism/physicalism?

We know that numbers exist outside of the human brain. One example of evidence to support this is the fact that other animals (such as ants) count things. How can this be reconcilled with physicalism?
gpt
The existence of mathematical entities is by no means a settled question and has a long history as a contentious topic of discussion in  the philosophy of mathematics. If, as acausal and atemporal abstract entities existing outside of spacetime, they were shown to exist, then their existence would pose a fatal blow to physicalism.