But what are they really seeing? What really is a number anyway?

e.g. If I wake up at night and look at the LED alarm clock and then close my eyes again, I will see the shapes of the LED lights for a long time afterward. Likewise, if I look at some lights in stadium for example, and then close my eyes, I will see the three of four lights holding the same pattern for it seems as long as I keep my eyes closed.

"Cognitive Causality" says:

"Then the subjective idea of counting things is a type of idea which although indirectly derived from our senses, it does not actually depend on our senses. Counting therefore cannot deceive us within our own framework (unless of course there is a creator capable and willing to design this entire framework as a part of an elaborate deception). An understanding of the counting of quantities therefore falls under the category of an adventitious thought; i.e. we are given a concept of corporeal "things" through the extension of our senses and then our minds seek to place some order over the concept of quantity over the extension.

Humans are thinking (conscious) things, that is, beings who doubt, affirm, deny, know a few things, and are ignorant of many; who love, hate, have a will, and who imagine likewise, and perceive. And if we have imagined that two and three make five, there is no denying or deceiving, because counting is but a conceived framework within those confines of our own imaginations. The exercise of counting then is not subject to the senses, only to our thinking minds.

In our own minds, two and three make five. We can ask another person, and get the same; two and three make five. But then we might ask ourselves; could we be deceived even about the framework of our own imaginations? Or more importantly, who or what could possibly be capable of such an infinite deception that we could be wrong about the counting concept independently of our senses? Is there ever a possibility that two and three do not make five? And what power could exist that even the spirit of our own thinking mind could be so deceived."