However, certain of those concepts, ideas, thoughts, whatever you wish to call them, are not empirically verifiable as others are. They serve a different purpose, It's merely that we should distinguish one kind from another, and not treat them as the same or having the same function. — Ciceronianus the White
our inability to verify it (at least currently). — Marchesk
Nobody thinks that's a criterion for meaningfulness. Anyone who goes down the verificationist road will say, x is a meaningless proposition if it cannot in principle be verified. — Srap Tasmaner
hypothetical ways to verify — Marchesk
Can you come up with a hypothetical way to verify that there really are entities you'd call universals? — Srap Tasmaner
Can you come up with a hypothetical way to verify that there really are entities you'd call universals? — Srap Tasmaner
Actually, I don't think we have to be able to in principle determine the truth of a proposition to say it's meaningful. — Marchesk
My evidence for this is that when asked what it is about, they can't explain it. — Snakes Alive
But as I said then, this is silly: to ask why a tiger is a member of the tiger-class is to ask why a tiger is a tiger. If this is the "problem," then it's not a very difficult one. — Snakes Alive
Why on Earth would the existence of individuals be in conflict with the existence of classes? — Snakes Alive
(I would add a caveat about "determining" the truth: a verificationist would at least like to know what would count as evidence, whether obtainable or not, whether dispositive or not.) — Srap Tasmaner
(1) Classes aren't individuals
(2) Therefore, there can't be classes, if there are individuals? — Snakes Alive
No, there can't only be individuals. Classes are a universal concept. — Marchesk
I would add a caveat about "determining" the truth: a verificationist would at least like to know what would count as evidence, whether obtainable or not, whether dispositive or not. — Srap Tasmaner
I have no notion of a class except a group of individuals, or a criterion for sorting individuals into groups. — Snakes Alive
So hard core nominalism. — Marchesk
You mentioned before that individuals can share the same properties. I assume you group based on shared or similar properties. The class is what is common to the particulars in your group. — Marchesk
You can group things together however you want. It can be by a shared property, or not. It makes no sense to ask "how you group." — Snakes Alive
If the class is what is common to the particulars in the group, then you seem to be talking about a property. If so, why not speak ordinary English and refer to it as a property? — Snakes Alive
How is it that particulars can have the same property? — Marchesk
There is no one answer to this question. For example, tigers have a bunch of properties in common because they sexually reproduce according to a biological template. Nuts and bolts made from a factory have a lot of properties in common because they're cut according to a mold. Jokes by comedians can have properties in common because comedians have similar sense of humor, etc. — Snakes Alive
If your question is about why, given that people perceive that something has a certain property, they conclude other things have it too, this is a psychological question. — Snakes Alive
In mathematics properties are sometimes defined as the equivalence class of all objects possessing that property. For instance, once can define the class 'three' as the collection of all sets that have two elements.A class isn't one property, it's all the properties shared by a group. — Marchesk
The examples used by Carnap are statements unlike those, made by a philosopher I will not name and involve what the nameless one called "the Nothing." — Ciceronianus the White
This raises an interesting question: If the only green things in the universe were also glossy (as opposed to matt), and no non-green things were glossy, would we be able to develop separate concepts of green and of glossy? I suspect we would not. — andrewk
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