Right. The primitives do the work — darthbarracuda
Those properties, which are identical to the materials/structures/processes are not numerically identical in two different things. — Terrapin Station
And this, I contend, it impossible to maintain if you also maintain that they are similar in some respects, for numerical identity between properties is necessary for a similarity to be. — darthbarracuda
In the example you give, for example, % one has a circle to the left of a slanted line as does %, — Terrapin Station
Without universals, we're left with two white objects with no way to explain why they are white, or how we come to know that they are both white. It contradicts even our own language: the two things are white. They are under the category of "white". Members of the category are such because they instantiate a universal. Without universals there's no reason to be in a category. There's no reason why x is a square and y is a circle, or why they appear to be different. Difference requires a difference in composition which can only be done by property differences. Without universals, there is no way to differentiate between a white object and a black object, a square object or a circle object. — darthbarracuda
So if we are talking about a white thing - a thing that partakes in the property of "whiteness" - a systems view is that the real question here is "Is the thing white enough?". — apokrisis
So conventional ontology is usefully simple - it treats the world as a collection of existents, a state of affairs, a collection of formed objects that thus only partake in predicate type logic arrangements.
But a holistic ontology talks instead about such existence as a state of self-regulating persistence. The whole is forming its parts - the very parts needed to compose that formative whole. Logically, it is a closed reciprocal deal where universals cause individuation and individuation contributes to there being the steady flow of particular events that results in the emergence of the regularities we call universals. — apokrisis
Numbers seem to be digital: you have only a discrete amount of objects in a given set — darthbarracuda
They aren't identical but neither are they totally different. They share qualities, i.e. universals — darthbarracuda
You deny conventional ontology yet retain predication by talking about a state of self-regulating persistence, wholes and parts. — darthbarracuda
These subjects have properties in themselves because they are of a certain state: a state is vague when it has no "crisp" as you like to say properties - yet vagueness would be a property itself. Any sort of adjective is going to either refer to a specific property or a collection of properties abstracted into a unified concept. — darthbarracuda
Huh? Isn't the number line continuous ... as an infinity of infinitesimals? — apokrisis
Or what they share is a state of individuation sufficient to achieve the general purpose of some actual boundary condition. They are X enough (in being sufficiently, self-groundingly, not not-X). — apokrisis
We exist in a highly individuated state of being as a result of our rather particular thermal scale. We sit on a planet that orbits a star in the middle of a void which is nothing but a radiation bath 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. So a classical, reductionist, object-orientated approach to reality modelling can take a lot for granted. — apokrisis
So vagueness is not-not vagueness. Or in other words, it is at the other end of the spectrum, as distant as it is physically possible to get, from the crisp. — apokrisis
But who cares about that level of individuation? (And in the systems view, you have to have an answer to that - you have to show there is some reason to care.) — apokrisis
In bowl 1 you have 3 oranges. In bowl 2 you have 4 oranges. It is an objective fact that there are 2 bowls and 7 oranges, and an objective fact that the two bowl's contents are different in virtue of the discrete amount of oranges in them.
Properties don't just disappear just because they come from a more general source. The number 3 is still the number 3. — darthbarracuda
You're talking about classes of things. But classes are identified by their essential properties. — darthbarracuda
Furthermore objects need not be limited to the boring office desk pens, papers, coffee mugs and staplers. — darthbarracuda
Our disinterest in something doesn't make it not-true. You're more focused on pragmatics, I'm more focused on what's actually true in the correspondence sense. Not-caring about something doesn't make it go away. — darthbarracuda
Look! One of your oranges is a tangelo! Crikey, what now? Does the number three no longer exist? — apokrisis
But for "object" to be a meaningful term in a metaphysical discussion, it needs the reciprocal context of that which is its "other". — apokrisis
You are stuck in your realism which is a dualist subjectivism - naive realism in other words. There just isn't a problem for you in dividing mind and world, observer and observables, in brute and unaccounted-for fashion. — apokrisis
Pragmatism (of the Peircean kind) is all about bridging that gap by granting the ability to care to the whole of nature - even if we then wind up with "the Universe" which in fact seems to care about very little beyond arriving at its Heat Death. Bastard! — apokrisis
Not necessarily. Being-identical-to, existence, etc are no reciprocating properties. You can't have the property of non-existence...otherwise you'd exist. You can't be not-identical to yourself...otherwise you wouldn't even be. — darthbarracuda
You always tell other people they're dualists and that there's a problem with this but then never explain why it's problematic, — darthbarracuda
I might accuse you for being dualistic by separating the rest of the world from the agents that are part of the world. "The Universe doesn't care"...it does care in certain contexts when we're talking about sentients that are manifested by the Universe. Unless you want to claim that the manifest image is actually the scientific image. — darthbarracuda
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