I think you and I agree that Coyne's view, and that of many others like him, is simplistic, dogmatic and unimaginative. It is the view of adherents of Scientism, a type of adherent for which I have yet to find a satisfactory individual noun, since Scientist is already taken and denotes something good. I've toyed with Scientismist, but lately I am more drawn to Science Worshipper. My view as a science enthusiast (but definitely not worshipper) is that Science Worshippers are the worst enemies science has, as they provide validation to idiots like global warming denialists that want to reject science entirely.I think it is widely assumed that the de facto philosophy of secular culture is some form of materialism or at least scientific naturalism functioning as normative view. One of the reactions to Nagel's book was by Jerry Coyne, who said 'The view that all sciences are in principle reducible to the laws of physics must be true unless you’re religious”. That was certainly the view of most of Nagel's critics.
Well, I did mention in the OP that I wasn't considering imaginative characters, but sure - Hamlet is real, in that we all know what the term means - but did Hamlet exist? Well, no, he exists as a dramatic character. — Wayfarer
As regards whether things exist 'in different ways' - this is just the point at issue. You see, I think that the current consensus is that things either exist, or they don't and that the term is univocal - which is the very reason why 'what exists' and 'what is real' are commonly thought to be identical. — Wayfarer
I think that's technically incorrect - whether you believe in God or not. In the classical theistic tradition, God doesn't 'have' being, but is Being. Individuals are only real because they're instantiations of being - their being is bestowed by, or borrowed from, the sole source of being. — Wayfarer
It is the view of adherents of Scientism, a type of adherent for which I have yet to find a satisfactory individual noun, since Scientist is already taken and denotes something good. — andrewk
As I said my approach is heuristic, not systematic. I'm trying to sketch out some of the ways in which the terms have different dimensions of meaning. — Wayfarer
I quite like the idea of science practitioners being called Natural Philosophers again, like Newton was. Do you think philosophers would object? — andrewk
What concerns me about Nagel's writing is that he directs his criticism at secular culture, rather than at the prevalence of Scientism within that culture. Hence he implies that Scientism is an irrevocable consequence of secular culture. That creates a great risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Unless we want to turn the ship back towards theocracy and religious intolerance, what is needed is to combat the influence and popularity of Scientism within secular culture, rather than anathematise secularism itself. — andrewk
It seems like one result of your distinction would be that something could be real and not exist or could be and not exist, which is surely absurd. — Thorongil
It seems like one result of your distinction would be that something could be real and not exist or could be and not exist, which is surely absurd. Am I wrong? I want to say that the statement "the chair is" is equivalent to saying that "the chair exists." — Thorongil
What if we returned to the pre-nineteenth century label of 'Natural Philosopher' for people that Do science, and left 'Scientist' for those that worship it. — andrewk
Natural Philosophy (or the philosophy of nature), is a developmental view of evolutionary processes, from cosmic evolution to organic (biological) and cultural evolution (see "Natural Philosophy: Developmental Systems in the Thermodynamic Perspective" [here]), now including, e.g., MEP (see "The Natural Philosophy of Ecology" [here]). Its antecedents lie in the Nineteenth Century -- with Comte, Goethe, Peirce, Schelling, Spencer, etc. It is a perspective that constructs a science-based story of where we came from and what we are doing here (see text, Becoming, Being and Passing). It is sometimes known as General Evolution, and encompasses cosmic, organic and cultural evolutions. Its goal is an intelligible creation myth (using "myth", not as a pejorative term, but as it is used in ethnography).
http://www.nbi.dk/natphil/salthe/
That seems more like identity than anything with this temporal existence for which you are reaching. 7=7 is pretty pure. But OK, you using 'exists' to describe I guess 'objects' within this universe, despite their having questionable identity. A piece breaks off a rock. Is it still the same rock? 7, having a more solid identity, seems more immune to that sort of questioning.Well, as I said previously, numbers are in some sense only identity. It's not that they have an identity - '7' can't be anything other than '7'. And '7' says all there is to know about it - you can carve the symbol in stone, draw it, or represent it in binary code, but at the end of all that, 7=7. So perhaps what I meant by 'having an identity' is 'being an individual existent'. But I admit, it's blurry. — Wayfarer
The domain of this universe is also real, but similarly has no 'where' to its existence. North of the next universe on God's shelf? (the natural numbers are kept in his box of playing cards)The domain of natural numbers is real - but where does it exist? Only 'in the mind'? — Wayfarer
It is not intended to indicate that, but rather to just distinguish those that practice science from those that make a gilded idol of it.If 'Natural Philosopher' is to indicate an acknowledgement of the entanglement of fact and value on the part of scientists , what name should philosophers give themselves in the age of the end of metaphysics?
but that they're not existent as phenomena — Wayfarer
And that Platonistic understanding was the consequence of a very long critical tradition of philosophical analysis, which has been mostly abandoned since the Middle Ages. That is because nominalists were practically victorious over the scholastic realists, and this has had many consequences. It affects the way that culture itself understands the nature of reality; it tends to make us instinctive scientific realists, even if not consciously. — Wayfarer
My concern was that you might say that such things, because they are not what you take to be "phenomena," do not exist at all. — Thorongil
I might make a point about this, though, which is that it's strange to see a Buddhist in opposition to nominalism. — Thorongil
my interest in universals actually came out of my debates on Philosophy forums, about Western philosophy in particular. In that context [as distinct from within Buddhism] the question has a different meaning. There, the eclipse of Platonism and the rise of nominalism is one of the principle factors underlying the origins of scientific materialism. So there's no grasp of an ineffable light at the end of the tunnel - neither any moon nor finger pointing to it - but simply the endless accumulation of empirical facts against the background of an intrinsically meaningless physicalism. So in that context, the question has a different import.
So - I guess I could reconcile all this by saying that from the Buddhist perspective, such questions as the nature of universals are indeed irrelevant or tangential. But from a modern Western perspective, some insight into the thinking associated with Platonism needs to be understood, to see how we got to the barren materialism that now dominates the Western mindset - in other words, to realise what the West has lost, of what had to be jettisoned for materialism to become ascendant.
So if the Buddha is not ‘a supreme archetype’, then I’m not sure what is. But I didn’t want to push that line of argument. — Wayfarer
The point I am grappling with is that there are ‘degrees of reality’, which I don’t think is recognised in modern philosophy. The only place I see it explicitly acknowledged is in the Thomists, for example, Maritain’s Degrees of Knowledge (which is a daunting read.) — Wayfarer
One point I made in that thread is the rather mischievous suggestion that Buddhists must accept the reality of Universals - because that’s exactly what ‘the Buddha’ is! After all, the historical person of Gotama is in some respects only a vehicle or precursor for ‘the Tathagatha’, which (or who) periodically manifests ‘for the benefit of all sentient beings’ - which is why Mahāyāna Buddhism always talks in terms of ‘the Buddhas’. So if the Buddha is not ‘a supreme archetype’, then I’m not sure what is. But I didn’t want to push that line of argument. — Wayfarer
The point I am grappling with is that there are ‘degrees of reality’, which I don’t think is recognised in modern philosophy. The only place I see it explicitly acknowledged is in the Thomists, for example, Maritain’s Degrees of Knowledge (which is a daunting read.) There’s also a mention of the idea still persisting in 17th C philosophy in this article. — Wayfarer
But are possibilities real? Do possibilities exist? How do you answer there? — apokrisis
Being is the end of becoming. — apokrisis
I have long believed that there is a meaningful difference between the terms ‘reality’, ‘being’ and ‘existence’ which is often overlooked in current philosophical discourse. This is because distinguishing 'reality', 'being', and 'existence' is practically impossible in the current English philosophical lexicon, as they are usually considered synonyms. But there are fundamental differences between these terms. — Wayfarer
Typically, in our extroverted and objectively-oriented culture, we accept that ‘what is real’ is what is 'out there'; compare Sagan 'cosmos is all there is'. But Being is prior to knowing, in the sense that if we were not beings, the cosmos would be nothing to us, we would simply react to stimuli, as animals do. Our grasp of rational principles, logic, and scientific and natural laws mediates our knowledge of the Cosmos, that comprise the basis of ‘scientia’. However what has become very confused in current culture, is that the mind, which in some sense must precede science, is now believed to be a mere consequence or output of fundamentally physical processes - even though what is ‘fundamentally physical’ is still such an open question. — Wayfarer
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