There's nothing 'if-then' about my experience. You're conflating experience with possibility.

There's nothing 'if-then' about my experience. You're conflating experience with possibility. — Janus

Every "fact" in your experience corresponds to, implies, and can be said as, an if-then fact.

"There's a traffic roundabout at the corner of 34th & Vine."

"If you go to the corner of 34th & Vine, you'll encounter a traffic roundabout."

Additionally, any "fact" about your experience corresponds to a proposition that is (at least part of) the antecedent of some implication-facts, and is the consequent of other implication-facts.

Conditional grammar describes the events of your experience as well as declarative indicative grammar.

What we call "facts" in our experience, correspond to hypothetical propositions that are part of the abstract implication-facts that I've mentioned.

A set of hypothetical physical quantity values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a physical law), together comprise the antecedent of an implication fact. ....except that one of those hypothetical physical quantity-values can be taken as the consequent of that implication.



A proved mathematical theorem is an implication fact whose antecedent includes at least a system of mathematical axioms.

Every "fact" in your experience corresponds to, implies, and can be said as, an if-then fact. — Michael Ossipoff

It's not my experience, but an arbitrary add-on., an ad hoc, an 'after the fact'. There is no such thing as an "if-then fact"; there are if-then propositions. propositions are not facts. I'm amazed you're still going on about this, after I and many others have corrected you many times about it. What's the point of coming on here and just repeating the same nonsense over and over? Why not find something new, interesting and productive to exercise your mind?

While I largely agree that the question of universals is more or less rubbish, it seems to me that its no less a jumping of the gun to say that the question is psychological. — StreetlightX

The point isn't that similarity is a psychological issue – I don't think that makes any sense. But the question of how people come to recognize similarities surely is. — Snakes Alive

The point, I think, is that any good, meaningful question already presupposes, if not a particular answer, then a particular kind of answer. Simply asking "Why this?" makes as much sense as the babbling of a baby. Snakes Alive is right in that a psychological question would be a suitable question to ask, but StreetlightX is right in that this is a question, not the one and only question - at least we should not assume that it is without some reflection. And that is what philosophy is good for: looking for good questions to ask and dissolving bad, pseudo-question. (Of course, most often good questions occur to us as a matter of course, as we learn new facts and develop our conceptual tools, e.g. via scientific theories.)

And that is the root of @Marchesk's problem: after so many pages of discussion, not only can he not explain the answer and how it actually answers the question, he cannot even explain what the question is and why it needs to be answered.

There is no such thing as an "if-then fact" — Janus

Incorrect.

There's such a thing as a propositions whose truth implies another proposition. When it's shown that the truth of one proposition implies the truth of another.proposition, then that implication has been shown to be a fact.

The obvious tautological syllogisms that I've posted (about Slitheytoves, etc.) here are implication-facts. They don't convey any new information, but they're nonetheless factual, even if trivially so.

A mathematical theorem that has been established to be true, has thereby been established to be an implication-fact. ...as I explained in a previous post.

; there are if-then propositions.

Of course. An implication-proposition is a proposition about an implication.

propositions are not facts.

Of course they aren't. They're just propositions.

I take "implication" to refer to a kind of fact. ...a fact that the truth of one proposition implies the truth of another proposition

Of course there can be a proposition about an implication. That would be an implication-proposition.

But, just in case someone here feels that "implication" means "implication-proposition", I say "implication-fact" to clarify that I'm referring to a fact. ...a fact that the truth of one particular proposition implies the truth another proposition.

It's not my experience, but an arbitrary add-on., an ad hoc, an 'after the fact'. — Janus

...because you've been experiencing things before this discussion started?

In an experience-story, of course you experience that story's propositions as "facts". what else would you expect?

As Faraday pointed out, all that physics experiments measure is relation.

But I haven't convincingly worded an answer to your objection, which is the same as T. Clark's initial objection. I iike my metaphysics because of its simplicity and assumption-less-ness. I posted my metaphysics here to find out what the arguments against it would be, and how they can be convincingly answered. ...and if they can.

It's true that I haven't convincingly answered your objection about your experiences not seeming "if-then".

Michael Ossipoff

And that is the root of Marchesk's problem: after so many pages of discussion, not only can he not explain the answer and how it actually answers the question, he cannot even explain what the question is and why it needs to be answered. — SophistiCat

I have it explained it. But some of the posters pretend that they can't understand it to support the verificationist argument against metaphysics.

The question and proposed answers can be boiled down to this observation:

We perceive a world of individuals, yet our language is full of universal categories of properties and relations. So how do we reconcile the two?

As for the verification argument against metaphysics being meaningful, it falls prey to the same objection, since it's neither analytic nor verifiable.

Let's take a related topic. Our ancestors realized the could count different things. Three rocks, three sticks, three birds, etc. From this they generalized to the number three, and from countability, math was born. We can ask two questions about this.

1. How does the human brain from the abstract concept of number?

2. Is there something interesting about the world that lets us do this?

Question two is best exemplified by asking why math has been so useful for the sciences. Does that imply a mathematical structure for the world?

The third question isn't empirical, it's an ontological question.

We perceive a world of individuals, yet our language is full of universal categories of properties and relations. So how do we reconcile the two? — Marchesk

You need to spell out why these two conditions give rise to a problem. What problem?

ou need to spell out why these two conditions give rise to a problem. What problem? — Srap Tasmaner

How our language comes to have universal concepts when the world is full of individuals. What is it about the individual things that leads us to form universal properties and relations such that we can group them into categories?

One possible answer is that universal properties and relations exist in the world in some manner.

Take E=MC^2. This is a universal relation between mass and energy that science has discovered. One interpretation of this is that science was able to discover this equation because there is a law of nature forming a causal relationship such that matter always converts to the energy in the same manner.

Now if the world was made up of individual bits of matter and packets of energy (both matter and energy are also universal concepts), then how is it we can formulate an equation across all of them?

A different interpretation would be that all the bits of matter just so happen to form a regularity whereby they always convert to the same amount of energy given their mass. This regularity becomes it's own universal pattern that we notice and form an equation from. So the world has at least universal patterns to it, even if they're just regularities.

Ray Kurzweil has called himself a "patternist", which I suppose is an alternative to universal categories (or classes). This is probably similar to Dennett's use of the Game of Life whereby the starting conditions and a few simple rules can generate complex patterns, or Wolfram's cellular automata.

What's still missing is something like this:

(1) We can only think about what we have experience of.
(2) We only have experience of particulars.
∴ (3) We can only think about particulars.

You want to argue that (3) is false, therefore one of (1) and (2) is false. Either we also have experience of non-particulars -- they are really out there in the world -- or we have the capacity to form non-particulars to think about all on our own. If it turns out (1) is false, then you are inclined to ask further why we resort to thinking about non-particulars, and how exactly we do that.

Yes, thank you. The problem for empiricism if (1) is false is that non-particulars are often about things in the world (dog, tree, planet, force, society), and not just logical constructions. So empiricism needs a mechanism whereby the mind turns particulars into non-particulars.

I submit this is impossible, unless the particulars have similar properties and relations, which then requires inquiry into what it means for individuals to be similar.

How our language comes to have universal concepts when the world is full of individuals. What is it about the individual things that leads us to form universal properties and relations such that we can group them into categories? — Marchesk

I think what has happened is that the understanding of the role and nature of universals has been long forgotten. If you go back to the origin of the idea in Plato and Aristotle, it is closely related to the other fundamental elements of their epistemology. This is because to recognise something we have to understand its type, and in fact it derives its identity from the type of thing that it is (this is the 'essence before existence' that was criticized by Sartre.) So recognising its type is, in a sense, perceiving its form, in the Platonic sense, which is what imparts its identity, and also its purpose, under the 'four causes' epistemology of Aristotle.

Where this became disputed in Western history was with the nominalists. 'Nominalism' means literally 'name only'. So it was precisely the reality of universals that nominalists disputed; recall that in those disputes, 'realists' were those who accepted the reality of universals, very unlike today's 'scientific realists'. They clearly were still operating under the rubric of the Platonic-Aristotelian epistemology.

The perceived motivation was that, at the time of these debates, medieval Aristotelianism had become bogged down in interminable arguments about final causes and the like. In fact the meme of 'how many angels could dance on the head of a pin' hails from these disputes. So the nominalism of Ockham and Bacon wanted to clear the decks of all of this pointless metaphysical verbiage and get back to the nitty-gritty of actual observed particulars. As they're very much the forefathers of modern empiricism, so mainstream philosophy was very much influenced by nominalism, to the extent that the traditional attitude of 'realism' is barely encountered in analytic philosophy (and we've seen in this thread how alien the notion of universals is for many people.)

What's Wrong with Ockham: Reassessing nominalism in the dissolution of the West, J P Hothschild provides an analysis. It's a longish read, but well worth the effort.

Critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defence, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality.

This piece discusses the metaphysical consequences of nominalism. It also mentions a book called Ideas Have Consequences, by a Chicago Professor of English, Richard Weaver, which was a surprise best-seller in the post-war years, on this theme (which has since become a staple of the American conservative movement.)

Practically the only philosophers that nowadays support traditional realism are (neo)Thomists. A useful neo-Thomist summary can be found in this blog post by Feser.

When I perceive anything I can compare it to memories that I have of perceiving other things and recognize similarities and differences between the two things perceived. It is the fact that there are never sheer perceptions of 'bare' particulars, but always simultaneous affective and cognitive processes of comparison and re-cognition that explains how generalities are generated. Generalities then become reified as universals.

What sorts of claims are (1) and (2)? Are they empirical? If empirical, is one or both a question a question for psychology? What exactly do we mean by "experience" here? Does "experience" mean the same thing in (1) and (2)?

(1) We can only think about what we have experience of.
(2) We only have experience of particulars.
∴ (3) We can only think about particulars. — Srap Tasmaner

Setting aside what I said in my previous post, does (2) mean that we can only experience one particular at a time? Say, I'm looking at two faces; what precludes me from noticing differences and similarities between them? The similarities and differences between two objects are themselves, as well as being types of similarities and differences, also particular similarities and differences, unique to those two objects. We never directly see the type of the similarity or difference, we see the particular, and think the type. I'd say this is really a question for phenomenology, not for psychology, or at least, only secondarily for psychology.

What sorts of claims are (1) and (2)? Are they empirical? — Srap Tasmaner

Good question. Revisiting:

(1) We can only think about what we have experience of.
(2) We only have experience of particulars. — Srap Tasmaner

I would say they are claims about epistemology. Can epistemological claims be settled by psychology (or neuroscience)? I don't know. Not yet, anyway.

Hume provides an example of a concept that is neither in experience nor from logic: causality. Psychology might someday explain how we came to form that concept. I don't know what implication that will have for philosophy. There might be a good reason we formed the concept.

Hume provides an example of a concept that is neither in experience nor from logic: causality. — Marchesk

I don't think it can reasonably be disputed that we experience causality directly in the form of forces acting on our bodies and our bodies acting on other things. Hume was wrong; he was tricked by his tendency to reduce perception to the visual; of course it's true that we don't actually see causality.

Hume was wrong; he was tricked by his tendency to reduce perception to the visual; of course it's true that we don't actually see causality. — Janus

That's an interesting thought. Philosophers do seem rather focused on the visual. Makes me wonder what would happen if we met aliens whose primary sense was smell. How would their philosophical views differ from ours?

Every time you use or think the terms ‘is equal to’, ‘is’, ‘is not’, ‘is more than’, ‘doesn’t mean’, ‘must mean’ then essentially you’re relying on universal abstractions in order to arrive at a judgement. Even in order to arrive at a ‘neuroscientific analysis’ [or any scientific analysis] you need to do this. But you don’t notice you’re doing it, and if it’s pointed out you don’t see what it means.

I find it hard to imagine any embodied being whose primary sense would not be its own embodied-ness. So, just as we don't see causality, we don't hear, smell, taste or touch it either. Touch is the closest to the kind of feeling I am thinking of. If you run your fingers along the skin of your forearm you can feel the textures of skin and hair, as well as seeing your fingers moving up and down your arm and perhaps hearing the sound made by the rubbing of the surfaces of your fingers and your forearm.

You can also feel the heat generated by the friction of the rubbing, but most importantly you can feel the force of your fingers against you arm in the form of pressure, and of your arm against your fingers in the form of resistance. Our bodies are constantly, mostly not reflectively consciously, feeling the forces of the surrounding environment as well as the organic processes within.

Whitehead made just this point with his two modes of perception: "presentational immediacy" and "causal efficacy". A lot of philosophical problems arise from thinking about ourselves as disembodied minds or subjects.

All these terms have their genesis in the proprioceptive experiences of the body: as abstractions they are just that; mere abstractions from a more fundamental experience. I'm probably wasting my breath, because I suspect that you really don't want to get that point, though. :wink:

Let me know when your dog gets it with his/her body. Then I would be interested.

Every time you use or think the terms ‘is equal to’, ‘is’, ‘is not’, ‘is more than’, ‘doesn’t mean’, ‘must mean’ then essentially you’re relying on universal abstractions in order to arrive at a judgement. Even in order to arrive at a ‘neuroscientific analysis’ [or any scientific analysis] you need to do this. But you don’t notice you’re doing it, and if it’s pointed out you don’t see what it means. — Wayfarer

Or someone will cry out that it's meaningless to point this out, because metaphysics.

(1) We can only think about what we have experience of.
(2) We only have experience of particulars — Srap Tasmaner

I'd say this is really a question for phenomenology, not for psychology, or at least, only secondarily for psychology. — Janus

I would say they are claims about epistemology. Can epistemological claims be settled by psychology (or neuroscience)? I don't know. Not yet, anyway. — Marchesk

How would you go about establishing that (1) is true or false, or convincing someone to assent to (1) or its negation? On its face, (1) has kind of an empirical look to it. You can imagine falsifying it by producing a counterexample. But I think it's far too vague, or at least underdetermined, to do much with.

How would you go about establishing that (2) is true or false, or convincing someone to assent to (2) or its negation? Is this the same? Maybe we can imagine falsifying this with a counterexample -- I'll bet Wayfarer thinks it can be. But it doesn't feel empirical to me. It feels more like a metaphysical claim, in which case the connecting concept here, experience, probably means something quite different from what it means in (1).

That's my gut, anyway. Anyone else feel the same? (Gut feelings all I have time fit at the moment, sadly.)

That's an utterly pointless point. Obviously dogs don't possess symbolic language ability, so they could hardly be expected to be able to abstract generalities from their experience, and reify them as universals, in the way humans can. But they can certainly recognize different faces, which obviously entails recognizing facial differences; otherwise all faces would look the same to them, wouldn't they?

Or someone will cry out that it's meaningless to point this out, because metaphysics. — Marchesk

:up:

Or someone will cry out that it's meaningless to point this out, because metaphysics. — Marchesk

That's funny! I do think it is a kind of metaphysical, but really more of a phenomenological, point. In any case, even if it is not meaningless, it is certainly a matter of interpretation and attendant presuppositions, as to just what it does mean, in the sense of what the metaphysical implications are. I think it's quite laughable that some people assume, or at least resort to claiming, that if you don't agree with their interpretation, then you just don't get it. :lol:

Hume's identification is of logic, causality is a meaning/concept, but one which is about things that exist, experiences and whats they encounter. (as contrasted to the oft imagined notion of logic as a pure abstraction defined solely in timeless a priori).

The reason he says we "see causality" or rather experience casualty is an awareness of its relation to the things we encounter. We "see" the casualty of a ball breaking a window because the causality of interested is of those things-- the causality of a ball braking a window (if someone is present), involves the sight of the ball and window in a certain reaction/relationship.

The trouble with this account is it is rectifying abstraction as creative. Supposedly, if someone was to take the step of rejecting the primacy of universal abstraction, things could not be, as if the universal abstraction were a filling to a foundation of the world which was otherwise missing.

So called universals do not have this power. The world is never an empty set which gets filled by the action of a universal. Meanings of things, which are then abstracted, have always been. There is not an empty void filled by the action of a rescuing universal. Things have always been (and will always be) themselves in their infinite meanings.

In this respect, they do not need our judgements to be. Meaning was always present and far more powerful than our particular whims of abstract judgment.

But Hume says we don't see causality.