Quick thought. When we say 'the apple is red' we don't mean 'the apple is red to me.' — csalisbury
You both may very well be right, I'm not sure, but I don't understand the connection between this statement and predication as relation. The way you formatted the post suggests they're related, but I'm missing something. If anything, your discussion of predication-qua-relation seems anti-universals. — csalisbury
I am contrasting the atomist conception - where for no reason, the world starts with a bunch of balls in motion in a void - with a Peircean-style ontology where there is less than nothing at the beginning. Beginnings are vague - just unbound fluctuation without a relational organisation. There are no meaningful elements to get a game going. These meaningful elements have to evolve out of the murk via bootstrapping self-organisation. — apokrisis
It feels kind of dirty to be arguing about a specific counter-example to a far more general idea, if you'd want to transfer this discussion about how mathematical abstractions work to another thread I'd be interested in it. We're not really talking about Sellarsian nominalism any more, we've simplified to an avenue which the logical falsity of the idea turns on but we're not learning much about the idea through the discussion. At least, if you're similar of mind to me on how to learn about stuff. — fdrake
I definitely agree with this, in that I'd hold that most properties that appear simple aren't really simple (I was just agreeing that, even if redness or triangularity are simple, there are other properties that aren't obviously simple). Of course, they can't all be complex, since any theory must have its primitives. So there is a distinction here to be made.
My only disagreement is that I don't think (Carnapian?) explication is what is doing the work here---rather, I think just plain explanation is. We are not explicating a usage, we're explaining the structure of the world.
Are there any properties, in this relational scheme, that wouldn't require a percipient/sapient? Property-as-relation, as you've outlined it, feels like it tends, as if by some innate propensity, toward a kind of transcendental idealism (which is fine, I just don't know whether you'd agree with that characterization.)Yes, the statement that the apple is red is not the apple being red and requires intersubjective conditions. As to the apple being red, I probably should have said "a percipient" instead of "the percipient", with the further qualification that a percipient has to be suitably equipped to see red.
The point is that nominalism only covers half the story: what we say, and does nothing to explain what we see. We don't see universals (absolutes) we see resemblances (a kind of relation); it is language which reifies the resemblances as absolutes or universals. As I mentioned in an earlier post resemblance itself becomes absolutized. It is the web of intersubjective experience and expression that provides the context that saves us from an infinite regress. Or to put it another way around; it is forgetting that context that leads to an illusion that there would be an infinite regress without universals to form a terminus and foundation. The salvation of the virtuous hermeneutic circle.
I still don't really understand. Everything you're saying here reads like a defense of nominalism. — csalisbury
So I got salty, apo, and I hope you'll forgive me that. — csalisbury
But stilll. I mean if i see your name pop on on any thread, despite the subject, I'll have a hunch about what you'll say, — csalisbury
You never come out and play - you always bring it back to peirce. — csalisbury
The scope is limited, I mean. If the whole world is an x-partite thing, why are you always leaving out the non-peirce part. — csalisbury
Whereas its more like - come out here and tussle man! — csalisbury
What is this non-Peirce part then? What is being left out exactly?
Remember that the triadicism incorporates dualism (as the dialectical or the dichotomous) and the monadic (as the vagueness which is the pure potential, the ground of being).
But what if I'm actually really lazy and I need that hostility to motivate me to keep working on the arguments long after I am already satisfied with them? :)
That is ridiculous. I will always come out and play if people can muster their own moves.
To me the stuff in the OP feels less like an erection of a nominalist metaphysics (or an attack on a realist one) than a clearing away to make room for a less constrained approach. (Your quick sketch feels very close to what I think as well) — csalisbury
Are there any properties, in this relational scheme, that wouldn't require a percipient/sapient? Property-as-relation, as you've outlined it, feels like it tends, as if by some innate propensity, toward a kind of transcendental idealism (which is fine, I just don't know whether you'd agree with that characterization.) — csalisbury
I still don't really understand. Everything you're saying here reads like a defense of nominalism. I don't mean that in the sense that you're saying one thing, but what you're really implying is another. I mean that if i came across this paragraph and read it on a surface level, just for what it intends to say, it would strike me as being anti-universal. I don't necessarily disagree with what you've said here - I'd have to think about it - I'm just confused as to how you intend it to be read. — csalisbury
But just, like, hanging out a cocktail party (or looking at a good painting, or reading a good novel) if you bring it back....you lose something. — csalisbury
All literature is three part: It's the struggle against the father (the canonical author who precedes you), the refusal to struggle with the father (a rejection of the struggle), and the underlying thing (where the struggle comes from, what causes us to either struggle or refuse to struggle. ) (this isn't just metaphoric, this is Bloomian criticism, a real school) — csalisbury
So - and I've just started catching up on this thread, so this might have become apparent in other posts - his point is that predication is something we do, and hence predicates are not something we find but something we use?
As Austin? — Banno
Banno I hope the above also clarifies why X being above Y does not indicate the predicate, but rather indicates the general function which the predicate contingently happens to fulfil. — StreetlightX
“The extralinguistic domain consists of objects, not facts. To put it bluntly, propositional form belongs only in the linguistic and conceptual orders” — StreetlightX
I don't know what Austin's view on predicates or properties is. — Pierre-Normand
Cheers. I'll keep reading — Banno
‘Rot,’ in German, means red
as
‘Rot’s, in German, are •red•s.
“According to this analysis, meaning is not a relation for the very simple reason that ‘means’ is a specialized form of the copula” (MFC: 431).
This is described as a pragmatic approach, but looks to me more like a redundant approach - "P is true" just means P.[F]or a proposition to be true is for it to be assertible, where this means not capable of being asserted … but correctly assertible; assertible, that is, in accordance with the relevant semantical rules, and on the basis of such additional, though unspecified, information as these rules may require… . ‘True’, then, means semantically assertible (‘S-assertible’) and the varieties of truth correspond to the relevant varieties of semantical rule (SM, IV, §26: 101).
Roughly, that there is nothing had in common by, say, red things, but instead we just use the word "red" in a way that suits our purposes. The meaning of "red" is nothing more than it's use to refer to those sorts of things. To pick the red sports car from the yellow one; the red of the sunset from the grey of the associated clouds. — Banno
This is described as a pragmatic approach, but looks to me more like a redundant approach - "P is true" just means P. — Banno
In what text did Austin express that? — Pierre-Normand
Are there a priori[/i] concepts?[/i]
The argument proceeds by showing that understanding a concept is no more than understanding how to use the associated terms. So understanding the concept red is just being able to use the word "red". — Banno
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