Elf Sternberg

I don't think that invalidates the point, since you have not yet faced the possibility that those perceptive mechanisms, if they are to be anything like ours, will derive the same meaning we call arithmetic as they have the meaning of reciprocity.

Dennet's argument is that there is a Platonic standard of goodness at loose in the universe, just as there is a Platonic standard of accumulation and sums, just as there are objectively stochaistic processes that give rise to thinking matter. Whether or not you belong to a Platonic school of thought is another issue entirely.