Would it be incorrect to understand universals as "POTENTIALS OF EVERYTHING THAT IS POSSIBLE"? — darthbarracuda

Ah, yes! I call this one the "profligacy argument." It's the nominalist argument that basically says, "Well, then there would have to be abstract entities correlating to all kinds of things!"

My response to this is as follows: so what? The only force that this argument really has is that the idea of a huge universe of abstracta offends the nominalist's sense of decorum (Quine's "desert landscapes"). I can only shrug at this. If a huge universe of abstracta exists, then so much the worse for the nominalist's sense of decorum.

It seems to me that a lot of discussion about abstraction gets caught up in semantic irrelevancies, where we draw weird distinctions between "real" and "being" and "existing" and "happening" and whatnot.

If you look at the history of philosophy, attempts at nominalism or anti-realism or whatever form a sea of shipwrecked theses that never went anywhere. But realism about abstracta has the same problem. See, realism's problem is epistemic, inasmuch as realists have never been able to provide a convincing story about how our particular, concrete minds manage to get ahold of abstracta.

All of the pseudo-scientific arguments to this point fail. Replacing "mind" with "brain" does fuck-all for this debate. Just replace the mentalistic terms with brain-y terms and you end up with the same arguments. Unless you're one of those jackasses who has to engage in "more-rational-than-thou because I know sciencey words" posturing, this will do nothing.

I don't see much in the third man argument, mostly because there's no reason to accept self-predication. Why would "redness" itself be red? Why the fuck would you even assume that an abstraction can have a color, or a size, or whatever? Self-predication is just such a weird premise that I don't see any sense in it.

No verbal Judo here. More like verbal baseball bat to the cranium. :-O

In all seriousness, it never ceases to amaze me that academics in the humanities - the people who never get tired of prating about "equality" - are such elitist asswipes.

Generally speaking, is the quality of internet philosophy low? Yeah. But to say that it's impossible for anyone to do any serious philosophy on the internet just reeks of unwarranted self-importance by academics. What, do lecture halls contain special vibrations that make you better at philosophy or something?

Care to comment on my actual argument about universals? — TheWillowOfDarkness

Well, here we go:

So in the relevant sense, names do not exist. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Our name for something is our action. It exists. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Um...

Anyway, let's say that I say "Bob" twice. In what sense were both actions "the same?"

I'm sorry, but if you want to be butthurt about Judith Butler, can you do so in a PM or something? I'm trying to have a conversation here.

Argh, this is a very frustratingly confusing topic. I think the best way of explaining what I'm getting caught up with the most is that, perhaps, the Realist is correct because properties are like the "life" of an object. I think actually a better question instead of asking what makes things similar is what makes things different. The nominalist would answer that what differs is the material structure of the particular, like the atomic structure, or the string/quantum foam/etc structure. But this begs to question as to why these different structures give rise to different properties. — darthbarracuda

Whichever question is better, there's nothing to stop me from asking, "What makes them the same?" And so I will: why are two tropes similar? If A and B are resembling tropes, but C is not a resembling trope to either, then why is that?

And what's a structure? Because if two objects can have the "same" structure, then you're appealing to universals again. Ditto for the "brain-interpretation" counter, which seems to be positively full of holes. Is the brain doing the same interpretation over and over? And even if red is "just" an experience, is it the same experience over and over?

That's the problem with the nominalist response that appeals to "brains" or "minds" in order to try and get away from realism. All such responses operate on an implicit dualism that assumes that, if something is "in the mind," then it's safely cordoned off from the rest of the world. If abstractions can exist in my mind, but not in the rest of the world, then you need a good reason why they can only live in my mind. I don't think that minds are particularly unique "metaphysical ecosystems," if you get my drift.

Same for "names." Let's say that every name is an action rather than a universal. So what? The question then arises: if I say "Bob" twice, then in what sense did I say the same thing twice?

That's the central problem: if nominalism were true, then I'd expect my experience of things to be a completely chaotic flux of absolute randomness with no identifiable patterns whatsoever, because as soon as identifiable patterns crop up, universals have already snuck back in. But experience is not a chaotic flux of absolute randomness.

Nominalists aren't stupid. They've come up with countless clever answers to how things are the way they are without universals. But all of those clever answers seem to be susceptible to different forms of the same problem. Perhaps the problem is universal. ;)

Your penultimate paragraph, by the way, beautifully summarizes the motive behind nominalism:

Additionally, I fail to understand how we can come to understand such things as "abstract" objects. To be perfectly honest they simply come across as spooky, superstitious ghosts. — darthbarracuda

The main counter to this is that, if abstractions are spooky, superstitious ghosts, then the nominalist is just as haunted as the realist; every time the nominalist banishes a ghost out the front door, another one slips in the back.

Moreover, what isn't a spooky, superstitious ghost? In recent times, you see, we have learned that the ordinary, solid matter that we see around us is made up, at the smallest scales, of really weird stuff that isn't anything like our commonsense notion of matter. And yet, the nominalist wants to appeal to that commonsense notion in order to get rid of universals.

I'll address the third man argument, as well as your last paragraph, later, because they're both almost worthy of threads in themselves.

I've tried really hard to be a nominalist for a long time. What I've found is that, if you're too quick to reach for Occam's Razor, you slit your own throat.

Off the top of my head, I don't have a general argument for metaphysical realism. I rather make the observation that, if you look at any attempt to flesh out nominalism, you find that the nominalist ends up appealing to some abstraction or another. To me, this seems futile, because as soon as you exorcise one abstract "phantom," you end up inviting another into your system.

For example, a short dialog, between a nominalist named N and a realist name R:

N: Universals are merely names that we have for particular things. There is no entity that can be instantiated over and over again.
R: Are names real?
N: Yes, but they exist only in our minds.
R: Whose mind: yours or mine?
N: Both.
R: So a name can be realized, or instantiated, or however you want to put it,in multiple minds?
N: Yes.
R: So how are names different from universals?
N: Well, it just means that we react in the same way when we see two objects, so both objects fall into the same category.
R: So what's similar about our reaction in both cases? Are there not, then, "reaction universals?"
N: Perhaps they're just similar reactions.
R: What makes them similar?
N: There are aspects of each reaction that are the same.
R: Are the aspects universals, then?

That's the problem, really. I think that the reason for there being so many different kinds of nominalism is that nominalists tie themselves up in knots trying to reduce the non-concrete to the concrete without invoking the non-concrete, and failing, and then trying something else. If the problem keeps resurfacing like that, then you should probably take that as a hint that your approach isn't working.

Of course, realism has its own problems. But they seem more like "interesting questions" than things that undermine realism itself.

It's okay. I'm so smart and magnanimous that any time someone insults me I immediately intuit the psychological shortcoming that caused them to do so and forgive it — The Great Whatever

I can't tell if you're making fun of yourself or everyone else. :/

Reality, existing biological traits and acts of classification, is not as the practitioners of the naturalistic fallacy (i.e. you) think and would have us believe. For something to be classified in some way don't necessarily mean anything about it. All it means is, for the moment, that particular people place it under a certain category. Whatever the concurrent nature of the object in question, it isn't described in the category. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The problem is that you are attempting to drive a wedge between classification and everything else that just doesn't work out. You say,

All it [classification] means is, for the moment, that particular people place it under a certain category.

Which is only true if classification is entirely unrelated and hermetically sealed-off from the rest of reality.

You can't have your cake and eat it: either there are causal relations between acts of classification and everything else in the world, as well as logical relations between classifications themselves and other parts of human discourse, or classification exists in its own universe, unless you want to create an entirely new causal realm (heaven, perhaps?).

Trying to describe what someone MUST be merely through a category (e.g. this person must be male since they have a penis, this person must have penis because they are male) is both an error (humans are a contingent state of existence: our existence is never logically necessary) and ignores doing the relevant work (i.e. actually examining the world to check what traits someone has or how they are classified). It doesn't cut it. It is anti-scientific. Instead of observing the world and describing what it is, it involves prescribing what someone must be no matter what is happening in the world — TheWillowOfDarkness

Well, uh, it's a good thing I never said anything about any of that. Who are you arguing with?

A side note: you seem to misunderstand how logical necessity works. It is logically necessary that x+5=7 IFF x = 2. Even if x's specific value is contingent, x+5=7 is still necessary in some sense if x=2, because 5+2=7 is necessary. You treat necessity as some kind of gigantic fixed block world; relations between things can be necessary.

Okay, I give up. If you're going to take it as axiomatic that language or "classification" or whatever exists in a magical never-never land estranged from everything else, then I can't help you. I'll just classify you as "wrong" and be on my way.

What is the motivation to "do something"? — schopenhauer1

Having the energy. :)

I'm not trolling. It just seems as if pessimism is really convenient for people who want to do nothing, even if that's not always the motivation.

Are pessimists just lazy? Laying hold of things takes effort, but it's more fun than wallowing.

I think that "find a way to adapt to it" is a healthier outlook than "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"

Spurious appeals to radical contingency and "quantum mechanics did it" don't stop the world from making sense. They also don't force reality to bend to social consensus.

Trying maintain reality while making everything humans say arbitrary is a losing proposition.

In a sense, yes. And that is the problem with the accusation of ignoring reality. Classification is not any sort of object we are describing. There is no “reality” we are meeting when placing someone in a category. We are performing an indexical association, not describing a state of the world. The placement of someone in a category, even the “normal” categories, is not a description of any object we observe or can pick-up. There is no standard of “reality” to meet. To ask the question: “Is are classification accurate to reality?” does not make any sense. It isn’t doing this sort of descriptive work at any point. At this level, there is never any reality to our classifications, including the "normal" ones, and there never will be. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So, ah, at what point do social classifications become independent of reality? And how do we do this magic trick where we create a world that is completely separate from real things?

Unfortunately though, this is not what you mean. What you mean is that feelings, classifications, social standing and perception have no place in accounting our social reality, despite the fact they constitute our social existence. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So is our "social existence" (as opposed to the physical kind?) hermetically sealed off from the rest of reality, or is social consensus all that exists? Because if that's the case, you and I can enthusiastically agree that gravity isn't real, and then have a flying contest off the roof of the nearest bell tower. I'll go last.

So there is no "madness" at stake here, no ignoring what the world is in favour of some personal fantasy world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You're not ignoring reality in favor of a personal fantasy world. You're ignoring reality in favor of a social fantasy world.

I would hurt not only your feelings, but through the actions of others, through what the thought of you for claiming you are classified as "Pneumenon" rather than "Judith Butler," your social standing, perception of you mental facilities and affect what other think you are capable of. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Feelings, classifications, social standing, and perception. No reality, though.

When it comes to the questions of the ethics of categorisation, this understanding is critical. Not because creating any category is necessary any good, but rather because it enables someone to understand what the use of a category is, allowing them to avoid the naturalistic fallacy that any person must belong to any category because of some other trait they possess. — TheWillowOfDarkness

All cinnamon buns are giraffes. If you answer in the negative, it will hurt my feelings.

You are being silly. If you don't like a philosophical position, then it's acceptable to argue against it.

Perhaps pessimists are just lying to themselves? Secretly they're all happy and bursting with joy, and just refusing to admit it.

Well, that explains the huge number of upper-middle-class kids at liberal arts colleges who think that "You're not oppressed" is a refutation of an argument...

You have never met someone who had something bad happen to them, and was helped in their situation by being told to get over it?

Another thing that helps is real trouble. If you're busy being internally maudlin about someone breaking up with you two years ago, a few minutes of genuine headache can cure those ills immediately.

I'm not sure why you think I have assumptions about adults. You said,

This seems to work on problems that perhaps little children have (losing a game, not getting a toy). It would be inappropriate in almost all adult circumstances. — schopenhauer1

Evidently, you have some assumptions about adults, given your reference to "adult circumstances." You were the one that brought up adulthood, not me.

You might be surprised at how childish we adults can be.

Operative word in my second sentence: "might."

If you dig down to what you mean by 'self-infliction' of these pains, you will find you don't know what you're talking about. — The Great Whatever

Well, yeah, if you're gonna deny free will, then there's no reason to think of anything as being self-inflicted. On the other hand, a "pull-yourself-together-you-sonofabitch" speech might cause a person to stop inflicting such pain on themselves.

(come to think of it, could free will be a useful delusion? I mean, believing that there's no free will might give me a means to rationalize away the fact that I'm wallowing, thus allowing me to wallow even more, even if I'm right)

I don't see any reason to believe this. Sounds like New Age crap. — The Great Whatever

You sure, man? I mean, you've never met someone who wallows in their own bullshit to the point of hurting themselves far beyond the original stimulus? I'm not saying that this applies to all psychological pain, but some of it, surely.

You know, you have a DUTY to fight for [social cause that I find important]. If you don't do that, then you're complicit in OPPRESSION. I totally don't sound like George W. Bush with this "for us or against us" rhetoric.

As for Judith Butler, she looks precisely like a gender theorist should look. It was explained to me recently what a non-binary is. There, now I've used "non-binary" in a sentence. Living the dream of pertinence in the year 2015. — Ciceronianus the White

Hey, now. The under-representation of women in philosophy means that you have to take Judith Butler seriously. Accusing me of a non-sequitur here makes you sexist.

And again, I think both Schopenhauer and I mean to speak more about genius in that phrase then the common folk. That's why you can easily have women who are scientists, engineers, philosophers, etc, but you find it really really difficult to have women who are geniuses in these fields. — Agustino

Well, Dickinson's three little stanzas get a better reaction out of me than Heidegger's endless rambling about Being-Toward-Death, despite being about very similar subjects. Of course, poetry isn't philosophy (or is it?).

Aaah, who am I kidding? I'm secretly a white supremacist Nazi KKK Grand Imperial Wizard Patriarch Racist King of Oppression, and I HATE ALL FEMALE PHILOSOPHERS.

But I don't think it was a mere accident that you went straight for a comment about her appearance. — StreetlightX

I was feeling ornery.

I am open to the idea that bullshit artists can reform. Not my job to give them a second chance, though.

Don't you mean "Your trans-phenomenological intersubjective consensus-reality-impacting physical re-structuring of your standpoint has been critically absorbed by your surrogate linguistic community."?

If that's what you mean, then wouldn't your comment about logical positivism hanging on nothing apply to pretty much every philosophical position? Of course, I suppose that may have been your point... :-O

I don't think a nuanced understanding of logical positivism is self-refuting. It does in a sense hang upon nothing, though, and so can only be justified by a certain cultural attitude. — The Great Whatever

It does seem arbitrary, doesn't it? Sort of an immature air about it.

I actually have no idea what she looks like. But her philosophy is so vapid that I can't think of anything else to say about her. "Epicene" and "Crypt Keeper" were shots in the dark - I just kind of assume she looks like an old prune. Like Bertrand Russel, but less class.

I'd get a lot of insults thrown at me about my appearance, too, if I looked like the Crypt Keeper.

because it often takes the form of the 'real deal' pain, not stupid self-help 'oh I'm unsatisfied with my life' bullshit. — The Great Whatever

The latter is evidence that, if there's not enough pain in a person's life, that person will typically invent some.

Would you say this about a man? — StreetlightX

Given Butler's epicene appearance, "Fuck Judith Butler and everyone who looks like her" would seem to include a lot of men in the first place.