This issue is more complicated though. The Neo-Platonists took Plato's name and claimed to continue Plato's school, but their ontology is consistent with what you call platonist. Aristotle's school claimed to be the true Platonists but the Neo-Platonists took the name. So you have to take on the Neo-Platonists, and tell them that they should call themselves Neo-platonists, as not true Platonists. But this problem has been around for millennia, and they do not like being accused of misrepresenting Plato, they like to claim the true continuation of Plato's teaching. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am a Neoplatonist, and I don't care whether you capitalize the P or not! :grin:

I agree. but my spell check doesn't like little p platonism. And, I count the distinction as unimportant because there really would be no such thing as big P Platonism if we maintained that distinction. Plato pitted ideas against each other so there's no real ontological position which could qualify as big P Platonism. So they end up being the same meaning anyway. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you're discounting the importance of community. If it's not stretching your spine out of shape, you can go along with the rest of the phil of math and write it as platonism. It's a little nod to the deep bonds that hold us together over the millennia as our brothers and sisters try to take freakin' Greenland and what not.

It's called nominalism. I would ask one favor though. Stop capitalizing the P in Platonism. The phil of math view of platonism. Plato pitted opposing ideas against each other, so for instance, in Parmenides, he outlines a lethal argument against the Forms. That's why they use a little p: platonism.

1. Two views about mathematics: nominalism and platonism

In ontological discussions about mathematics, two views are prominent. According to platonism, mathematical objects (as well as mathematical relations and structures) exist and are abstract; that is, they are not located in space and time and have no causal connection with us. Although this characterization of abstract objects is purely negative—indicating what such objects are not—in the context of mathematics it captures the crucial features the objects in questions are supposed to have. According to nominalism, mathematical objects (including, henceforth, mathematical relations and structures) do not exist, or at least they need not be taken to exist for us to make sense of mathematics. So, it is the nominalist's burden to show how to interpret mathematics without the commitment to the existence of mathematical objects. This is, in fact, a key feature of nominalism: those who defend the view need to show that it is possible to yield at least as much explanatory work as the platonist obtains, but invoking a meager ontology. To achieve that, nominalists in the philosophy of mathematics forge interconnections with metaphysics (whether mathematical objects do exist), epistemology (what kind of knowledge of these entities we have), and philosophy of science (how to make sense of the successful application of mathematics in science without being committed to the existence of mathematical entities). These interconnections are one of the sources of the variety of nominalist views. — SEP

Oh oh, the set {1,2,3} has 3 numbers. :gasp: — jgill

A nominalist entirely rejects set theory because it's a mountain of abstract objects.

Again, "integer" is a faulty concept, because it assumes that "a number" is a countable object. — Metaphysician Undercover

So apples are countable, but numbers aren't. :grin:

Yes, I'm aware of that - and of the startling results that followed when his view was set aside and infinity was treated as real, thus enabling the invention/discover/development of the calculus. — Ludwig V

Aristotle is not set aside by calculus because it does not deal with actual infinity. Set theory is a different matter.

When you said a picture of Cagney is a representation of Cagney, that's true, but it's a different sort of representationalism than what we're talking about. That's just a picture. — Hanover

I know. There's also a homunculus problem with using Cagney as an example, but I wasn't trying to say that watching a movie is a comprehensive analogy for perception. My point was that highlighting the fact that we call Cagney's representation "Cagney" is not philosophically significant. It does not at all imply that we don't know the difference between the thing and its representation.

I don't see how we can move on to the real philosophical problems with indirect realism if we're stuck on an inflationary reading of common speech ("inflationary" in that it's drawing conclusions about the state of things by various turns of phrasing.)

Therefore, the representation (assuming indirect realism) would be of the object Cagney versus the phenomenal Cagney or it could be of the picture of Cagney versus the phenomenal state of the picture. As you've described it, you have the real Cagney versus a picture of Cagney. That is not the sort of representationalism we're interested in here. — Hanover

I don't understand what you're saying here. I'll leave you with a painting by Magritte (I had a poster of it on my wall as a teenager.) It's about indirect realism.

So you're acknowledging rampant equivocation, where we call objects and representations the exact word in all cases outside philosophical circles. The noumenal Cagney and the phenomenonal Cagney are always called "Cagney."

Under what scenario do you distinguish the noumenal from the phenomenonal, and can you tell me the specific difference between the two? If you use the term interchangeably, and you don't even know how the two are different from one another, what exactly are you protecting? — Hanover

There are a couple of issues here, but what I'd like to first square away is the notion that philosophy results in delusional behavior. Jimmy Cagney is dead. You didn't actually see Jimmy Cagney in the movie. You saw a representation.

Can we first agree that there is a difference between Jimmy and his representation?

I think that it is not necessary for the infinite number of numbers to exist in my mind. All I need to have in my mind is S(n) = n+1. — Ludwig V

This is Aristotle's finitism. Finitism is like this: if we put you in a spaceship that has an odometer, you will never see any but a finite number on it. You'll never see an infinity symbol, though you never stop moving forever and ever.

Per Aristotle, infinity exists in potential. The actual is always finite. Set theory, by handling infinity as a set, appears to be defying finitism. This is an unresolved issue in phil of math. Someday it may result in a shift in thinking about set theory.

If they're different, why do you call them both "Trump"? — Hanover

Say you watched a Jimmy Cagney movie. You report that you saw Jimmy Cagney in the movie, though you also know what you saw was a representation.

Is this because there's no reasonable basis to maintain a distinction between Jimmy and his re-presentation?

If that, why not for simplicity sake just consider the noumena the same as the phenomena since you can't tell me how the specific distinction between what is and what is perceived except to say there is general consensus as to what the ship is. That sounds like a form of direct realism. — Hanover

We know data comes into your brain in discreet bits. What you experience is a seamless whole. The architecture of the nervous system testifies that what you're experiencing is a construction, in some ways like a movie.

When I say I saw Trump on the TV, what I mean is that I saw digital data that came from sampling the light bouncing off Trump, which was then digitally transmitted to my computer, which regenerated the pictures of Trump and sent them to my screen. What I say is that I saw Trump. That's indirect realism.

I reject the assumption of any "mathematical objects" finite or infinite, as Platonism, and unacceptable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok.

Your view is called finitism. It's from Aristotle.

Nobody cares

Awe is not an argument. — Banno

Neither is word smithing.

You want I should be awe struck into agreement? Nuh. — Banno

You have an awe deficit.

Your jump from "neural processes are necessary for perception" all the way to "the world is generated by the brain" is illegitimate. — Banno

You completely missed my point. Oh well. :grin:

Or is it that you hung your flag on the "indirect realist" mast, then found that you basically agreed with what I had to say? — Banno

Take a moment to stop and take in the world around you: the sights, sounds, movements in time and space. Now take in that all of it is generated by your brain (possibly with some quantum magic).

I wouldn't want your word smithing to make you miss out on the touch of awe associated with that.

An hallucination is defined precisely by there being no object of which one is aware, only a belief-like state produced in a derivative way. — Banno

More word smithing.

Got ya. :up: — Tom Storm

Many people think this, but there's probably a very good argument to the contrary.

I'm not sure I know what that might mean; but I do hear my wife's voice, through the telephone. — Banno

Telephony creates an illusion, and so does television. There's no tiny Donald Trump inside your TV.

The causal chain remains the same, but our attention(the blanket) can be placed in differing locations. So in one throw we can refer to your wife’s voice, in another to the electronically constructed reproduction, and so on. — Banno

You don't have access to your wife's voice. If you did, you wouldn't need a phone.

Think of your sensory nervous system as technology that allows that grey blob in your skull to gain information it wouldn't otherwise have access to.

See the weasel word? Did you hear your wife's voice? what dis she say? Were have you thrown the Markov Blanket? Were else might you throw it? — Banno

:chin:

Rather, having an experience is having that flood of electrical data. What you experience, if we must talk in that way, is the cat. — Banno

My contribution to your word smithing would be that we do need to speak in terms of experience. Sight is not an isolated activity. It's integrated into a whole. And there is some functional entity we generally refer to as "you" which directs attention. As Isaac may have mentioned to you, a popular image among scientists is a main distribution board of some kind, from which "you" can turn focus away from sensation to a day dream, or a math problem, and then turn again to senses to see what time it is, and then the sound of a chainsaw grabs attention. It doesn't really make sense to say that you are your function of sight.

You see the cat, not your neural activity. Your neural activity is seeing the cat. — Banno

When you hear your wife's voice on the phone, that's not really her voice. It's a computer generated representation. If the logic of that throws you for a loop, I guess we could work through it. I wouldn't advise rejecting it because sounds illogical, though.

We drop any separate “object of experience” in the mind. — Banno

I don't think experience has any particular location. It's something creatures with nervous systems do. A flood of electrical data comes into the brain, and the brain creates an integrated experience. Are you denying that?

No. The content of my experience is the cat, the ship, the smell of coffee. Not my neural processes, and not my neural representations. — Banno

Sure. You experience the cat indirectly. You experience the ship indirectly. You experience the smell of the coffee indirectly. Welcome to indirect realism.

No. Humans do not experience neural representations; experience is having neural representations.

You are not separate from your neural processes. — Banno

Ok. The content of your experience is neural representations. Happy?

My objection then goes back to, how could we know unless we assume DR? — AmadeusD

Direct realism is also subject to the decomposing effects of skepticism. We all get by with pragmatism.

I've been trying to make this argument for a long time. — AmadeusD

:up:

One can admit that neural representations exist and denying that such things are the objects of perception. These neural representations are our seeing, not what we see. — Banno

You're an indirect realist. You allow that humans experience neural representations, whether we call that seeing, hearing, tasting/smelling, touching (pressure and texture sensing).

If I see a cat, I'm not in direct contact with the cat even before it enters the CNS, and I don't receive the cat on my eye. — Hanover

Your eye is directly exposed to light bouncing off the cat. That's the only directness to the situation. Humans don't have any kind of direct perception.

My point is that your distinction that sometimes we have direct contact with the world and sometimes we don't doesn't exist. — Hanover

I didn't say that.

So, you are a realist!
Good analogy. — L'éléphant

We have the same experience of moving a flashlight around in dreams. I've had a lot of dreams where the locals have these violent and horrifying customs. They do these things because that's the way it's always been done. So there's a whole history implied. It's real in the dream.

Yes this would seem to be right but I suspect cunning arguments are available against this position. — Tom Storm

There are, but they're wrong. :grin:

Again, sensory organs are interfaces. They convey electrical discharges to the central nervous system, which is separated from the rest of the body by the blood-brain barrier. The CNS even has its own private immune system as if it's a separate entity. It's not directly in contact with the world the organism lives in. It's indirect realism.

I asked this crazy guy what his all-time favorite birthday gift was. I can't tell you what it was though.

A computer sees the world indirectly through its analog to digital converters. A microphone is in direct contact with the world. The computer recording the input from the microphone is not directly connected to the sound waves.

Why is this complicated?

We need not call a spectrum inverted person erroneous unless we already assume hte premise of colour being a property of objects rather than wavelength reflection. — AmadeusD

Scientists say humans look purple to cats. So to a cat, it would be true that humans are purple. If a human says that, there might be something wrong. Except Latino babies are actually purple. For real.

I didn't think so either, but apparently its not so trivial based on the discussion generated — Philosophim

I think they probably thought you were saying something a little more substantial.

Appreciate the input. — Philosophim

:up:

I still don't get how that applies to the OP Frank. — Philosophim

It doesn't appear the OP is saying anything that isn't trivially true.

Yes, but they aren't saying "Sex preference". I'm not sure what the point was here Frank. That's not intended to sound sarcastic, I'm just not sure what you meant here. — Philosophim

They were born with a certain sex. That's true. They tell you what their gender is.