First, the concept would need to be one that sets out the elemental constituents of the candidate in question
— creativesoul

So I am right that you simply fail to get what a structuralist ontology is about? You are wedded to logical atomism. Aristotle wasn't. — apokrisis

The candidate is what counts as being "a man". Are you saying that being a man doesn't involve being a composition of things that are not existentially contingent upon language? If "a man" is a universal, and being a universal requires existential independence from language, then being a man requires consisting entirely in/of that which is not existentially contingent upon language.

Ad homs are a sure sign that one doesn't have an argument.

I said that a continuity is measured by discrete units. — Metaphysician Undercover

So are these discrete units bounded lumps of continuity or not?

What dichotomy properly defines your notion of "unit" here. Clearly you have in mind the idea of a sameness that repeats. We can cut the whole into a set of similar parts. The one can stand for the many.

I see a whole tangle of metaphysical dichotomies in play here. The usual story. As it should be.

Ad homs are a sure sign that one doesn't have an argument. — creativesoul

Hey, you just invented a new category of fallacy!

Yeah well, give me an award.

I'd rather you directly address what I've said. I mean, quote me in it's entirety, and let me know what you think. Do you agree or disagree with it, and if you disagree explain why.

The candidate is what counts as being "a man". Are you saying that being a man doesn't involve - in large part at least - of being a composition of things that are not existentially contingent upon language? — creativesoul

I'm saying that counting shaping or structuring constraints is different from counting compositional elements.

So you are thinking like a reductionist. Aristotle was thinking like a holist.

The candidate is what counts as being "a man". Are you saying that being a man doesn't involve being a composition of things that are not existentially contingent upon language?

If "a man" is a universal, and being a universal requires existential independence from language, then being a man requires consisting entirely in/of that which is not existentially contingent upon language.

That's an argument. Do you agree or not?

Or perhaps, set out the difference between how my thinking sets out what counts as a universal, and how Aristotle's does...

So you are going to bore me with repetition as usual? I've already told you why I don't agree. Your move.

What are you disagreeing with?

So are these discrete units bounded lumps of continuity or not? — apokrisis

Of course not, that would be contradictory to say that a continuity has bounded lumps. If it has bounded lumps, it is not a continuity. This is simply a matter of avoiding contradiction.

What dichotomy properly defines your notion of "unit" here. — apokrisis

That things are defined by dichotomies is where I strongly disagree with you. This is the point I am making. Things are defined by description. According to the description, we may place classify the thing. The class is a universal. A universal itself may be defined by a dichotomy hot/cold, big/small, etc.,, but the individual thing, is not defined by a dichotomy. The "unit", being an individual thing cannot be defined by a dichotomy, it can only be described.

p1. Being a man is universal
p2. Being universal requires existential independence from language
C1. Being a man requires existential independence from language

I removed the portion which seemed at issue.

Do you agree with it as it is now?

Your compositionalism vs Aristotle's structuralism.

Set out the differences between how my thinking sets out what counts as a universal, and how Aristotle's does and explain the relevance of your noting it.

Of course not, that would be contradictory to say that a continuity has bounded lumps. If it has bounded lumps, it is not a continuity. This is simply a matter of avoiding contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover

So how do you divide up a foot into inches unless there is some underlying continuity to be divided?

The "unit", being an individual thing cannot be defined by a dichotomy, it can only be described. — Metaphysician Undercover

So now you have switched track from epistemology back to ontology? One second we are talking about units of measurement, the next about actual substantial objects out there in the real world?

Always a pleasure doing business with you, MU. ;)

But sure, a complex substance is going to be predicated of multiple dichotomies or universal contrasts. But surprise. That is why Aristotle defined complex being in terms of hierarchies of constraints.

Having done so, I'm waiting for a sensible reply. I realise that will never come.

You've claimed that I approach the notion of universal differently than Aristotle.

So what?

Set out the problem with my approach. There is a clear and plain argument given that eliminates the compositional aspect. Do you agree with it? If not which premiss are you rejecting?

Snore....

Looks like apo has nothing to add...

Back to the topic...

What counts as being a universal? Moreover, what counts as an adequate criterion?

If being a universal requires existential independence from language, then an adequate method for determining what counts as a universal must be able to set out that which is not existentially contingent upon language as well as that which is.

Senses of "man" are all existentially contingent upon language. Do any of those senses take account of only that which is not existentially contingent upon language?

If we remove all things existentially contingent upon language from our notion of being a man, what is left to call a man?

A penis does not a man make. Geckos have those.

If being a universal requires existential independence from language, then all universals must consist entirely in/of that which is not existentially contingent upon language. — creativesoul

Are you continuing with this nonsense even after I explained why it is nonsense?

A structuralist approach to language use emphasises its role in the construction of a social reality. A semiotic generalisation of linguistic structuralism shows how reality in general is the product of structuring constraints.

So if we are talking ontology, then human language use really does construct humans - at a social level. But it doesn't construct them at a more basic neurological or biological level. You need the language or neurons or genes to do that.

So when Aristotle started the business of thinking about reality in structuralist terms, he could see that the universal definition of "a man" would have to reflect these levels of organisation. Men were reasoning animals that might even participate in an even more abstracted logical realm of semiotics.

But Aristotle didn't know about genes and neurons. So that is why his approach to substantial being was a little hazy on the details of what might properly constitute the different levels of structuralism going on.

So my complaint - which you have so far failed to answer clearly - is that you are bringing an epistemic quibble to an important ontological debate. You are simply saying all knowledge of reality is linguistic and so every concept a cultural construct.

Well, yes. It is a pragmatic fact that we need a more abstract semiotic machinery - like language - to do the meta-structuring of our biologically and neurologically structured experience of the world. Pigeons can categorise. But speech let's us take it to another level. And formal mathematical language can take us a step even beyond ordinary language. All this is epistemically understood.

But then it is an ontic category error to confuse the linguistic basis of knowledge with the knowledge claims then being made.

So "being a universal known as a man" has to be understood in terms of what constraints really form "a man". And it is an ontic mixture. Social constraints - our shared cultural image of masculinity - clearly play a real part in producing "real men". A man can be measured by the degree to which he does or does not conform to some generic cultural stereotype.

But then there are also the neurological and biological constraints in play. Any reasonable use of language is going to acknowledge this at least implicitly. A man has a dick, two balls, and the usual complement of X-chromosomes, on the whole.

He is generically an animal while also generically a reasoning being. And neither of these generalisations are "social constructions". They are both accounts of the reality. It is just that the cause of this reality is on some levels genetic and neurological, on others social and cultural.

Maybe you get this, maybe you don't. But you seem to be striving to blur the line between social construction as an epistemic issue and social construction as a cause of substantial being.

You keep repeating your magic phrase - "existentially contingent upon language". Well some aspects of "being a man" are clearly existentially contingent on the cultural ideas that only language encodes.

It we were talking about bacteria, or stars, then no, our conceptions of them have very little bearing on their existence. We can exert some constraints on bacteria - like inventing antibiotics and seeing them evolve resistance. But really, we don't construct their existence through just talking about them.

However palaces and fences and iPhones are examples of other kinds of objects - artifacts - that are clearly very dependent on the games of linguistic social construction. Through our conceptions, we are the causes of their existence - the reason why they exist materially.

Perhaps it is unfortunate you picked on such a confusing example of "a man" as your example of a universal. It could be a good example as it illustrates the hierarchical nature of structured being. But only if you are already clear about the pansemiotic underpinnings of structuralist holism.

Note Plato's criterion for universals/forms: "When two or more things are called by the same name, they have the same nature." In other words, "same name, same nature"

Aristotle viewed universals as "predicates that can be attibuted to more than one individual".

So, obviously universals exist (as predicates or "names") as a function of "What can be said". The question of the ontological status of universals is rather whether they are simply elements of language or are features of the non-linguistic world. One fundamental question of Metaphysics, then boils down to how we think language is related to the world.

creativesoul, in saying "If we remove all things existentially contingent upon language from our notion of being a man, what is left to call a man?" seems to suggest that universals are "linguistically created features"; in other words, Nominalism. Or am I misunderstanding something.

A penis does not a man make. Geckos have those.

Do geckos exist apart from language? Is "gecko" a universal?

To be honest Mitchell, I'm highlighting the need to be able to determine whether or not our candidate can be adequately assessed as being simply an element of language or a feature of the non-linguistic world. It's about method.

I'm also working from the idea that being a universal requires being independent of language in a more stringent way than my toaster existing independently of language. On my view, being independent of language requires existential independence. If something is existentially contingent upon language, then it is most certainly not independent thereof.

Is my toaster, or automibile, or any other product of human activity, something that "is existentially contingent upon language"?

↪creativesoul
Is my toaster, or automibile, or any other product of human activity, something that "is existentially contingent upon language"? — Mitchell

Not all products of human activity are existentially contingent upon language.

Toasters most certainly are, for they are existentially contingent upon the technology, and the technology is. The same holds good for automobiles.

True belief, however is existentially contingent upon human activity but not language. It would be best put as... not all true belief is existentially contingent upon language.

As mentioned earlier, the difficult part seems to be devising a method by which we can assess something with regard to whether or not it is existentially contingent upon language.

P.S.

True belief is actually not contingent upon human activity. Not all true belief anyway. Human true belief is. Other agents' is contingent upon their own activity, not necessarily ours unless we're involved in activities together, such as feeding my cat. In that circumstance, her true belief is contingent upon my activity and hers.

A penis does not a man make. Geckos have those. — creativesoul

What? Even the females?

That which we call 'X', whatever 'X' may be, must consist entirely in/of that which is not existentially contingent upon language.

Let X = a penis

I would think that clearly penises are not existentially contingent upon language. Thus, "penis" sets out something that is properly called ontologically "independent" of language, for it is not existentially contingent upon our taking account of it via naming it.

A penis does not a man make. However, if we take a more compositional approach, if all men have penises, and penises are not existentially contingent upon language, then we have one elemental constituent of being a man that is not existentially contingent upon language. It takes more than that, although that's a start.

As mentioned earlier, the difficult part seems to be devising a method by which we can assess something with regard to whether or not it is existentially contingent upon language. — creativesoul

So you won't answer the direct ontic question - are you backing realism or nominalism. Instead your issue is epistemic - how could we determine the matter either way. Where is our "access" to reality.

And yet pragmatism has already been "devised" as a method. :-}

Go back to sleep. I like talking to Mitchell.