Why are universals regarded as real things? Because these are things which are done by minds, and all of our examples of them, are done by minds. If it happens in nature, then this is something other than what we are talking about, because we are talking about the instances which are done by minds. Why would we assume that the thing which minds do, happens in nature without a mind? We see that minds do very special things, creating products, manufacturing, and all sorts of artificial things. Why would we think that what a mind does would happen naturally without any minds? — Metaphysician Undercover
I think you have it backwards.
Our minds reproduce what occurs in nature and not that nature arranges itself to conform with what occurs in our minds.
Also this does not really answer my question.
How do you know that these things do not occur in nature.
That you have a mind is not proof that these things do not occur without minds.
An end is a goal, so to be justifiable means that the end is demonstrably good. — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think that this follows.
We must know the ends that justify the means or we can not be sure the means are real.
To me it seems you are appealing to some teleology here.
How can you be sure that in order for something to be real it must rely upon teleology?
So whether or not our models are useful is not at all an issue. Of course they are useful, or else we would not produce them, we only produce them for a particular purpose, and if a model did not fulfil that purpose it would be thrown away, and we'd choose another instead. The issue is "what is that purpose". — Metaphysician Undercover
That is not what I asked, I asked why should they be useful at all if they are not models of something real?
To "navigate reality" does not answer that question at all, because this only constitutes a coherent purpose in relation to a further purpose, which tells us where we want to go in our navigation. Navigating is meaningless nonsense unless there is some place where you are going, because "navigating" refers to the means (how to get there) rather than the end (where you are going). — Metaphysician Undercover
Maybe it doesn't answer the question of where we are going, but it does seem odd, to me at least, that we should regard reality as a thing unknown and then marvel at the miracle that our arbitrary quantification of reality should meet with any results.
Or it could be that our quantification are not arbitrary they are tuned to obtain real results in a real world.