perhaps this discussion will help you to see why someone such as I would come to the conclusion that the problem of universals dissipates if one deals with it as a language issue. — Banno

Yes, but then does this mean the problem arose because philosophers took universal concepts out of context?

You and I presumably do agree on what is green and what is red, in the main; is it because we have learned to identify some essence of red that permeates certain things, or is it just simply that we have learned how to use the word "red" in our English speaking community? — Banno

At the very least, we have learned to use red for a range of color shades. And these shades can be given numbers based on a three-value primary color scale, which corresponds to the three kinds of cones we have in our eyes.

It is interesting that some cultures may have differences in color concepts. Does that imply something about language's effect on the brain?

Could it be that what red things have in common is just that we have learned to use the word "red" when talking about them? That what they have in common is our use of a certain word? — Banno

What does this mean exactly? Because it sounds like our use of red and green are arbitrary, and we could have divided up color space differently, and it would have been just as useful.

Sometimes we don't. At the edges, we do differ as to our opinions of which colour word is appropriate. — Banno

This is a good point. Boundary conditions are important to take into consideration.

Sure we can wonder, but if there is nothing in common among reds, how are we able to discriminate them from greens?

Fine. WHat I am trying to establish is, is the example a suitable one for the problem of universals? — Banno

I guess we can just focus on a color property, and notice that we use the universal term "red" for all the particular instances of reds.

In which case, is this a question about what it is that certain sports cars and sunsets have in common, or is it a question about hw we use the word "red"? — Banno

I would say we use the word red the way we do because lots of things have reddish hue.

Is the problem that of working out what a universal refers to? What sort of thing? — Banno

The problem is working out how universals are useful. They may or not point to a particular thing (a universal object) in the world, but it would be fair to assume there is something about individual things which allows us to universalize.

At which point we look at the similarity among individual things and debate what that entails. Or alternatively, the similarity reflects an organizational feature of our minds.

Let's take another example. Do ordinary objects like tables and chairs exist? This is a bit different from external world skepticism. The problem arises by noticing that the scientific explanation of ordinary objects leads to contradictions with our notions of what ordinary objects are supposed to be. The problem of many is one such contradiction. Science says that a table is a collection of particles bound together by the electromagnetic force. But the surface of an object is not well defined on a molecular level. This leads to the realization that we can't say for sure which exact collection of particles is the table, meaning that there could be many tables where we conceive of one.

But if we look at how ordinary objects are used in everyday language, then we can dismiss the problem as misunderstanding the role ordinary objects play. Tables and chairs are meaningful and useful for us.

However, what if I want to know whether our understanding of ordinary objects is backed up by science? Then I'm back to the same problem. Because then I'm not asking about the usefulness of tables and chairs, I'm asking whether they exist as we think of them. I'm asking a question about the world and our commonsense understanding of it. My conclusion is that our ordinary language is simply mistaken. The problem is with our everyday concepts, not the philosophical inquiry.

Ordinary objects are a good example of the loose fit between language (or mind) and world (or science).

That's the sense in which Wittgenstein's philosophy is more like Protestant than Catholic mysticism, but it still has that mystical side to it. — Wayfarer

Or like Zen Buddhism. It's interesting that Witty said concerning consciousness and the beetle in a box not that it's nothing, only that we can't speak about it. Which is something Dennett noted and disagreed with Witty about, because obviously it must be eliminated!

Which makes me wonder, is language under Wittgenstein's understanding equivalent to a p-zombie? I'm digressing from universals here, but I heard on a recent panpsychist podcast discussing Wittgenstein where the philosopher guest stated that there was no hard problem because Witty showed us mind is public because language is public.

Anyway, the point of this discussion is whether philosophical problems such as universals, free will or consciousness can be dismissed by analyzing their use in language games and subsequent misuse by philosophers. But in the case of universals, if you're right that meaning is grounded by them, then we can't so easily dismiss them, since it goes deeper than playing language games. Universals make language games possible, if I understand you correctly.

I am awfully sorry, Marchesk, but in my favourite universe when someone introduces a topic, they describe the situation in their own words, and not simply insert a link to a (probably) very lengthy script. — god must be atheist

I did, and you responded by saying you didn't understand the well known positions in the example used, so I posted links for you to familiarize yourself. The problem of universals isn't the point of this topic, it's Wittgenstein's approach to dissolving philosophical problems by saying that language goes on holiday when philosophers fail to understand words in their proper language games. This is also well known in philosophy, but The NY Times article sums that up nicely, and it's not a long read.

That is, universals were an attempt to solve a problem that the ancient Greeks had with their understanding of nature. — tim wood

That's a good point. I could have used free will or skepticism, it's just they seemed harder to express simply in this conversation.

We could say that the problem of free will can be dissolved by looking at how free will is used in ordinary language, until we realize the free will is expressing a view of human agency that many people implicitly hold. And this isn't simply a language game. It's more of an experience people have of being able to make what seems like undetermined choices originating with the person. And that's why people can be held responsible for their actions.

Now that might be partially cultural, owing to Judea-Christian influence in the West. And maybe one would say the Jewish-Christian language games have come to predominate in certain cultures.

Buy I'm skeptical that casting philosophical problems as misunderstanding language games really gets at the issue those concepts are expressing in the language game. Free will wouldn't be part of a language game if we didn't experience some sort of freedom in making choices.

Philosophy is not language on a holiday; rather it is language put to the hardest possible work. — tim wood

I like that. Turns out that a lot of everyday notions are problematic, and don't stand up that well under inquiry. Science backs philosophy on this.

I don't care about the theological application of universals, only the philosophical problem, which goes back to Plato, and still exists today. It's just an example where it's easy to see how one might dismiss it on grounds that philosophers are abusing language, while failing to see what gave rise to it.

Here's maybe a better link to the problem: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/

but the functions exist prior to the language and that can be examined for philosophical analysis. — Forgottenticket

That's a good way of putting it.

A lot of times in philosophy, I stumble upon something I came up with before on my own but didn't know the communal terms to describe it. — Forgottenticket

Yeah, long before I read about p-zombies or even solipsism, I remember sitting in a busy dinner with a friend, and I started focusing on the clang of silverware and dishes with the buzz of conversation all around me, and the thought occurred to me that everyone else could just be acting as if they were experiencing the diner, yet I was the only one. For a few minutes, it actually seemed believable.

It is a very different approach from those who tell you where and when things went south. — Valentinus

Descartes seems to be the big bad of philosophy, but I think he's just rephrasing what arose in ancient philosophy. And I don't think it's unique to Western Philosophy. The context and language might be a bit different, but the general ideas are there. Debates over idealism, realism, materialism, skepticism can be found in Indian and Chinese philosophy.

What IS the problem? Shouldn't we spell out in plain, simple language, what the problem is, before attempting to solve it? — god must be atheist

The NY Times had a good article on this a few years ago: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was-wittgenstein-right/

I don't understand this. I frankly admit it. What's universalism? Nominalism? Conceptualism? Platonism? — god must be atheist

The problem of universals. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/universals-medieval/

I used it as an example, because it's easy to say how it might be stated as philosophers playing with feces while missing the deeper point it raises.

I think starting from the presumption of radical private-ness and separation is one of the less fruitful ways, since it's logic leads straight to epistemological solipsism. — Janus

Yes, just like indirect realism leads to a veil of perception and potentially radical skepticism. But maybe that's just our epistemic position as animals. And perhaps it's not quite so radical, but just enough that skepticism can get a foot hold.

We have the similar issues with memories, dreams and sanity.

e live in an inter-subjective world such that the mental lives of others are beyond doubt, — Janus

Do we really? It's not like I can read people's thoughts or have their experiences. What I think's happening is that inferring other people's minds is such a natural thing that it appears we live in an inter-subjective world. Just like it appears I'm looking out at the world through my eyes.

How good are we at detecting lying? How well do we really know other people? There have been cases of friends and families (including spouses) not knowing that someone was a serial killer.

If I'm day dreaming, you might be able to tell that I'm lost in my thoughts and not paying attention to my surroundings, but you don't experience what I'm imagining. Yes, I can tell you. But from your perspective, all you have to rely on is my word and behavior. You can lie. You can omit the embarrassing part. We often don't get the full truth from people about what they're thinking or feeling.

Also, this inter-subjectivity is not so natural for everyone. Some people, notably autistic folks and maybe sociopaths (lack of empathy), have a certain mind-blindness. This would indicate that mind-inferring is an ability. Some would say that we simulate other people's minds to try and predict their behavior.

I don't get this. We don't look at minds at all. — Janus

Right, but we experience a mental life for ourselves, and infer that in others based on behavior and similar biology. That's what's laid out with the start of the harder problem.

omething that scientists can work with. That is, differentiating sentient creatures from non-sentient creatures (which we can point to) and providing testable hypotheses for explaining those differences. — Andrew M

Assuming two things:

1. We can differentiate sentient from non-sentient creatures.
2. Sentience captures everything qualia or phenomenal does.

If we can't reliably do #1, then we still have a harder problem (epistemic), and if sentience is leaving something out, then we're just redefining the problem away, which is ignoring the issue.

So you're not positing nonphysical properties of some nonphysical substance, but nonphysical properties of physical substance? (Remember that I'm asking you about this in terms of ontology) — Terrapin Station

I don't know what the answer is to the hard problem. But I would be very hesitant to support substance dualism. I mention property dualism as a more reasonable possibility.

t would have to be some sort of substance, object, etc., no? Even if you're positing nonphysical objects, substances--whatever that would be. — Terrapin Station

Yeah, there's something that has properties. It could be a field, particle swarm, ordinary object, process, brain state, whatever.

I mention property dualism because it doesn't say there is a nonphysical substance mental states belong to. Rather, brain states have non-physical properties.

We don't see things exactly as they are, or science wouldn't surprise us all the time. Clearly, our senses are limited. The big question is whether the way we perceive things is direct or has to be inferred. We might say we see a solid brown table as it is given our visual system. Then we can use tools like microscopes to see more of the table.

It gets tricky when we wish to describe the table independent of our perception of it. Is the table properly described as brown, solid and smooth? Or do we need more rigorous concepts backed up by data from our tools?

"properties have to be properties of something. Do you agree with that?" — Terrapin Station

I guess if "something" is defined sufficiently broadly to include more than objects.

Sometimes I get the impression that what folks mean by "nonphysical(s)" is something like, "We're just not going to bother doing ontology and we're instead going to talk about things in 'functional' terms per common language." — Terrapin Station

You have an idiosyncratic definition of physical where it becomes almost impossible to discuss non-physical options. I don't believe in winning arguments by definition.

But so you know, qualia, universals, mathematical platonism, and supernatural are considered examples of non-physical something. And property dualism would mean non-physical properties in addition to the physical properties of brain states or whatever.

Think of light as the TV screen. We don't see objects. We see light, which explains the optical illusions of mirages and bent sticks in water. We look at the TV to indirectly get at the football game in another city. We don't see the game, we see the TV, which transmits information via causation. — Harry Hindu

That doesn't sound right. We see the game via the TV. Otherwise, how would you be able to see what goes on? The tv is a means by which we can remotely watch a game. Even in person, we're still seeing the action via light. That's how vision works.

When looking at a distant star, the light takes thousands of years to reach your eye. The star could have exploded yet the light is still traveling across space and interacting with your eyes. When you see the "star" what is it that you are attending in your mind? — Harry Hindu

The star as it was thousands of years ago.

didn't ask about location. I asked about shape. Why do minds take the shape of brains when I look at them? The mind can still be located in the head, but why the shape of a brain in the head? — Harry Hindu

For whatever evolutionary and biological reasons brains are needed to take that shape. It sounds like you're saying a brain in a head is an image that might not reflect the actual geometry of heads. But geometry is something that's easy to figure out from light. That's why visual perception is so advantageous.

Why does the mind take a shape in another mind at all? — Harry Hindu

It has to do with color experience in spatial arrangement forming shapes.

s there no room for indirect realism? — Harry Hindu

Sure. But you've made indirect realism difficult by locating all the properties with the perceiver.

You seem to think the only viable options are dualism or naive realism. — Harry Hindu

There's quite a bit more options.

Do minds have shapes? — Harry Hindu

Minds do perceive shapes, but as far as we can tell, shape does not depend on the perceiver. That's what makes it an objective property.

Why do minds take the shapes of brains when I look at them? — Harry Hindu

Probably because that's the biological center for having minds.

I think we also have no warrant to assume dualism simply because we cannot answer a question which seems on analysis to be incoherent. The assumption of monism or physicalism may be equally flawed. Our models simply have their limits, and we have no way of deciding if or how they might accord with the human mind-independent real. — Janus

I'm sympathetic to that, but it gets you called a "New Mysterian" and a defeatist. I always liked McGinn's arguments for cognitive closure, regardless.

Youre not answering the question and I dont know if id agree that shape is a property of objects. It certainly is a property of our perception of objects. — Harry Hindu

If you can't tell what properties exist in perception and what exist in objects, then why be a realist?

But anyway, science is able to do it, that's how we have physics, chemistry, biology, etc.

So is imagination an example of nonphysical substance on your view? — Terrapin Station

This is all assuming physicalism is everything else that we have to fit consciousness into. Like Schop, I don't know anymore than anyone else does.

But we can make it broader than that. It's fitting the subjective into the objective, on the empirical grounds that the objective is what gives rise to minds that have experiences.

But yeah, if we're giving an account of reality that leaves out imagination, that's a problem.

I guess I'm asking about the ontological differences and similarities between a part and the whole? — Harry Hindu

We want to know to what extent the world is like our experiences and to what extent it's different. So for example, we've determined that an object's shape is a property of the object, but not its color and only partially it's solidity.

So part of it is figuring what are the relational or representational properties and what are properties of things themselves.

Im not sure I understand the problem. Why would you expect a part of the world, ie appearances, to be the same as the entire world? What do you mean by "the same"? — Harry Hindu

I'm not sure I understand why people don't understand the basics of these discussions. But okay, I'll continue to play along.

If there is a difference between appearance and reality, then that raises potential problems for explaining reality, since we have to get past the appearance. This is how ancient skepticism got going.

For this discussion, it's about the difference between qualia and external objects.

Yes, things aren't always as they seem. We agree on that. However the distinction doesn't imply dualism (i.e., of ontologies or worlds). Adopting dualism is a philosophical choice. — Andrew M

Right, dualism is just one possible answer to the hard problem. So let's say that you're right and there is no hard problem. So how would you decide whether a robot was conscious? What would sonar experience be like? Can Earth as a combined swarm of human activity hear its busy cities? Would a perfect recreation of your brain in software experience pain? What do X-Rays look like? What would the world look like in 5 primary colors? What does carbon monoxide smell or taste like? How many different kinds of experiences can there be?

If there is no hard problem, we should be able to reach scientific or philosophical consensus on those types of questions.

This is assuming that appearances aren't part of reality. How does that make any sense? — Harry Hindu

Of course it's all part of reality. Dreams, imagination, lies, madness, hallucinations, appearances, colors are all real in that sense. But that's not what's meant. When someone asks me if I imagined something or it was real, what they're asking is did it happen separate from my me. And when we try to understand the nature of the world, we want to know what is the same and what is different from how the world appears to us. Of course ultimately that understanding needs to include appearances. And that's where the hard problem, the problem of perception and other related matters come into play.

The world of the solipsist is one and the same with the self of the solipsist. What does this mean? It means that doubt cannot arise, because the world of the solipsist is full of certainty. To present this issue another way, epistemologically the solipsist is hermetically sealed off from anything beyond what constitutes their 'world'. — Wallows

This can be gotten around by defining solipsism a certain way. First of all, the self is just another experience. For the solipsist, all that exists is the experiences a solipsist has. There is no hidden self generating the experiences of a world.

In addition, doubt is just one more kind of experience. Also, the solipsist can doubt because they do have experiences of what appears to be an external world full of other people. Remember that solipsism is a philosophical position that only comes about through inquiry and taking skepticism to its logical conclusion. Nobody is a solipsist by default.

What solipsism is supposed to do is to provide a certain philosophical outlook based on only the experiences a solipsist has and nothing else. It's actually a response to radical skepticism. But just because the position is certain doesn't mean that the solipsist can't doubt the truth of solipsism. After-all, experience appears to be otherwise, and you have all these people in those experiences criticizing and mocking the position.

As for new knowledge, it's just another experience. The question is why is there a stream of experiences if nothing is causing them? There's no more answer to that than why anything exists.

There may be no ontological identicality either simply because all things are, as far as we know, always changing. — Janus

What about for patterns, functions, and processes? If we consider an object to be a certain patten of molecular arrangement, where pattern can allow for some changes to take place. You can even have the same pattern from an entirely different particle swarm as long as it's arranged in a way that satisfies the pattern. A pattern just needs to meet certain criteria for being a chair or a person. And yes, the murky boundary conditions are unavoidable.

It's semantic identity, which doesn't change over time or in different instantiations. I would go as far as to say that there is no identity other than semantic identity. — Janus

Things are identical to themselves. Is that semantic identity also?

f a robot has a similar shape and therefore behavior as you, then why not suppose that it has experiences as well? It seems to me you think that one's hardware (carbon-based vs. Silicon-based) is what determines whether or not there is an experience, and similar behaviors by different hardware are only the result of simulated consciousness. — Harry Hindu

I don't know what determines consciousness and I would be fine with saying Data is conscious. It's the epistemological problem that Block explains which is we can't know either it's the hardware or the functions the hardware performs. It doesn't matter whether Data is convincing. We still have the same philosophical problem.

And in the case or Data, I'm pretty sure it would also be an ethical problem. There was an episode where Data is put on trial to determine whether he's a person, or can be treated like a product and used for mass production. We would want to know whether he can really feel pain or sadness as part of making an ethical determination as to whether Data deserved rights.

This issue has come up in the real world with the treatment of animals.

OK, Grandin says she thinks in images, but she can't be forming simultaneous images of every roof she's ever seen. — Janus

Probably not. It's just interesting that she's describing a set and when I think of a roof, it's a universal concept.