"Explain what you mean by "abstract" and "reality" and "things". (The above seems like language gone on holiday again.)"
— 180 Proof

Language is a universalizing activity. Whenever you say that 'something is something', or 'something means something', then ... — Wayfarer

:roll:

Again. Your logorrhea explains nothing, Wayf, certainly not what you've quoted me requesting.

The gratuitous, improper, and inappropriate use of these words in what is straight and uncut theology cries out the usual fraud to me, of wanting a place at the wrong table, and signaling that whatever this writer has to say cannot be taken at face value. — tim wood

As you say, your understanding of 'what is real' is constituted by what is 'materially existent', and the only role of religion is to provide a 'safe space' where people are allowed to entertain comforting fantasies about things that aren't real but which are at least edifying. That's about right isn't it?

The point about Platonic metaphysics is that it purported to be rational and not based on 'pistis' or 'doxa'. But over the course of centuries, it was incorporated into Christian theology such that it became identified with religious belief rather than philosophy as such. And in our secular culture, 'religion' is fenced off, not the subject of discussion for sensible people.

But the point about Platonist philosophy is that it makes a strong argument for the sense of a reality beyond the physical - hence 'meta-physical' - which can nevertheless be known - hence 'epistemological'.

I hesitate in granting that any concept is objective simply because it is grasped by many subjectivities. — Mww

Such concepts are not objective, they’re used to determine what can be considered objective. They're prior to judgements of objectivity.

Your logorrhea explains nothing, Wayf, certainly not what you quoted me requesting. — 180 Proof

Like I said before - I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you. It requires a shift in perspective, one which you're not the least interested in, so let's just leave it at that.

Such concepts are not objective, they’re used to determine what can be considered objective. They're prior to judgements of objectivity. — Wayfarer

Agreed, without equivocation or amendment.

I agree that formal concepts are 'not private' in that they're not the creation of individual minds. In that sense, they're 'public' — Wayfarer

My rendering of concepts is not objective hence private, your rendering of formal concepts is, in a sense, public. Can you illuminate the difference between private concepts that facilitate judgement of objectivity, and formal concepts that are not creations of the individual minds?

:yawn:

Okay. I'll take that as your admission you don't know what you're talking about. Sure, let's just leave it at that.

Can you illuminate the difference between private concepts that facilitate judgement of objectivity, and formal concepts that are not creations of the individual minds? — Mww

A question that occurs to me is whether mathematical proofs are objectively true? I mean, they are in a sense, but on the other hand, strictly speaking they don't appeal to objects as such; they're perceivable by reason alone. But mathematics is used to arrive at determination of what is objectively true, in the case of scientific experiments and observations.

So what interests me about that, is that if you ask what is the ultimate truth criterion, most people will say what is 'objectively' so. But it seems to me there are domains of discourse, like mathematics, and logic, where that is not exactly the right word. And I think that says something.

Mathematical proofs are only 'true' within the system of mathematics. For they rely upon the axioms, symbols and rules of the system. Hence they cannot be said to be 'objectively true'. I am talking about pure mathematics here, which is where mathematical proofs are found. Applied maths is a different story.

A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once. — Wayfarer

The exactitude of ideal triangles is something which we stipulate against the realization of the inexactitude of actual triangular objects; it is just the realization that exactitude is conceivable.

My view is that once h. sapiens evolves to the point of being a language-using and meaning-seeking being, then we have capabilities that are beyond the scope of biological theory per se. — Wayfarer

This says nothing more than that the evolutionary advent of symbolic language enabled the genesis and evolution of shared cultures which cannot be exhaustively described and explained in purely biological terms. Biological evolution itself cannot be described and explained in terms of physics either.

These kinds of insights seem fairly obvious, but what further conclusions do you think you are rationally warranted in deriving from them?

On the one hand, no human is possible without the antecedent humanity, but on the other, a general condition of some empirical unity is in itself insufficient to explain the multiplicity of disparate conditions of its particulars. — Mww

Could you elaborate on the second part of this?

In other words, why I’m this, or why I think this, doesn’t explain why you’re that, or why you think that, merely because we’re both human. — Mww

This makes sense to me.

And if what we want to know is why, which is almost always the case, then we see it just won’t answer anything if we ground our investigation on some fundamental ontological condition. — Mww

I read this in terms of a wariness about pseudo-explanations. For instance, 'God' is often (not saying always) just rug under which we hide our ignorance. 'God' can also be used symbolically, not in an act of science/philosophy. And there's also the issue of whether literal and metaphorical meanings can be cleanly separated.

When the lights go out at the end of the day, there’s nobody there but ourselves. “Know thy-self”, and all those other colloquial admonishments, doncha know. Which, ironically enough, leave off “as best you can”, or, “but you’re probably wrong”. — Mww

I agree. So a sense of humor & play is helpful.

Just trying to learn something, is what it boils down to. — Mww

Me too, and I appreciate the feedback.

A question that occurs to me is whether mathematical proofs are objectively true? I mean, they are in a sense, but on the other hand, strictly speaking they don't appeal to objects as such; they're perceivable by reason alone. — Wayfarer

I find it helpful to recall that objective is just unbiased. That we tend to conflate it with objects speaks perhaps to how uncontroversial talk about couches and cars tends to be. The objective view is one that is purified of subjective distortion and/or the intersection of a personal perspectives.

In proofs without words, the background assumption seems to be that we all perceive/intuit space in the same way, which implies a kind of ideal, shared subject. 'Anyone' can see that area is preserved by the mere translation and rotation of shapes and therefore grant various formulas for the area of a triangle as necessarily true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x-NFKZrnMM

We expect such theorems to remain true, which suggests that this Anyone is fixed or outside of time. This allows us to imagine aliens who are partially human in the sense of participating in this Anyone.

Christian Realism, per Gilson, is the result of a conscious choice of the church fathers in putting together Paganism and early Christianity. In so putting together, they created problems that blew up c. 1325 AD. For details, Gilson's account is a marvelous read, at Amazon or AbeBooks or your public library. — tim wood

As you mentioned Etienne Gilson, you might be interested in this analysis by Peter Redpath, in a talk given called Why Gilson? Why Now? It's the authors view of Gilson's critique of modernity. I don't know for sure, but I think there would be a fair degree of convergence between Gilson's view, and that of Hothschild, whose essay on Nominalism I referred to.

(Catholicism, due to the presence of the Scholastic tradition, is in some ways the last surviving outpost of Greek philosophy in a living tradition. I'm not Catholic, but as an intellectual philosophy I certainly prefer neo-Thomism to modern scientific naturalism.)

Subject (pov)/gauge-invariant scientific models either defeasibly explain some transformation - physical or formal - or they don't. That's all they are used for. "The 'rational subject'" which uses scientific models cannot also be the object of scientific modeling anymore than eyes can also be within their field of vision. Territories necessarily exceed maps, or abstractions (i.e. informational compressions - simplifications) of territories; the map-maker - map-making - is always the enabling lacuna of every map and any lacuna-free map - corresponding 1:1 to a territory - would be useless as a map. — 180 Proof

I like this. 'Enabling lacuna' is great. Complexity lurks in 'explain.' While I'm not eager to collapse explanation into prediction and control, it does seem science's prestige is largely founded on the power it gives us. We can employ and develop models that don't agree with our intuition.

If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics. — Feynman

So are explanations can indeed only partially intelligible if they empower us. The problem for philosophy is or can be that the philosopher claims a profound understanding of reality that may not be recognized by others and also fails to manifest an uncontroversial/'worldly' power. We are 'forced' to listen to those who can destroy us, outperform us. The alternative is some form of antithetical, world-rejecting metaphysics. The first are not really first but perhaps last.

I hesitate in granting that any concept is objective simply because it is grasped by many subjectivities. — Mww

If we understand 'objective' to mean unbiased or ideally intersubjective, then the problem disappears. I think you are suggesting that we can't see around our own eyes, with which I agree. Placing shared concepts in some realm beyond doesn't make sense to me. I understand, though, why philosophers want to talk about such a realm.

Popper's World 3 contains the products of thought. This includes abstract objects such as scientific theories, stories, myths, tools, social institutions, and works of art.[2] World 3 is not to be conceived as a Platonic realm, because it is created by humans.[3] — link

As I see it, we have repeatable insights. Anyone who repeats the thought process can come to something like the same conclusion (ideally, anyway). This 'anyone' is relatively immortal. It doesn't die with the individual. But it quite plausibly dies with the species. The temptation is to place this cultural realm in a beyond that is 'really' there, even when we aren't. Hence my interest in this 'subject' or 'Anyone' as a them running through philosophy.

As you say, your understanding of 'what is real' is constituted by what is 'materially existent', — Wayfarer

No. no. no. So many nos but way fewer than the number of times I've written that (I hold that) ideas are real, as mental constructs, which make them different from bricks, trees, & etc., but not less real. Unless you're prepared to argue that the non-material world and its contents does not exist!

and the only role of religion is to provide a 'safe space' where people are allowed to entertain comforting fantasies about things that aren't real but which are at least edifying. That's about right isn't it? — Wayfarer

Is that you're understanding of religion? Not very nice if it is! Did you miss this?

I hold that belief is the gift that allows us to think and speak in substantive terms about things that aren't, the thinking itself usually to some end and for some reason. — tim wood

And in our secular culture, 'religion' is fenced off, not the subject of discussion for sensible people. — Wayfarer

Not wackdoodle religion, but that's a noun substantive. Religion is something else, and sensible people know it matters. Among the problems with many religions, is that they themselves do not understand what religion is, in terms of what it's for, substituting instead a dead-end "what-it-is."

But the point about Platonist philosophy is that it makes a strong argument for the sense of a reality beyond the physical - hence 'meta-physical' - which can nevertheless be known - hence 'epistemological'. — Wayfarer

I do not have a problem with "sense" of reality. I'm old enough to have had to take geometry in school. Looking back, I think it's wasted on the young. Anyway, I have a fair idea what a triangle is, in terms of what is needed to use the idea of a triangle. Does that make the triangle real? And as well, on what kind of encounter with triangles would anyone suppose that there existed an ideal triangle, and how would he know?

So far yours are just claims/beliefs. Such things can be useful and powerful and efficacious. But you want them to be real. The reality that i understand is one of demonstration and proof. If you want in, pay the price of admission.

I don’t want to go too far afield here; it’s Tim’s barndance after all, and I’m not qualified to speak Plato or Platonic ideals. While I didn’t dig an accommodating response out of you comment pursuant to my query, I didn’t find anything disagreeable either, so.......call it a draw.

Redpath recapitulates in florid terms all that R. G. Collingwood laid out with a good deal more precision in his main books on history and metaphysics. When the ideas a culture is built upon fail, then the culture shifts or fails. I do not have Gilson's book in hand. He did (as I recall) make clear that Descartes' day was done. But if philosophy buries its undertakers, it certainly does not resurrect them.

As you say, your understanding of 'what is real' is constituted by what is 'materially existent',
— Wayfarer
No. no. no. — tim wood

Forgive me, but I was harking back to your recent thread on just this point, which started with what I took to be an unequivocal statement to just that end:

1a) Material existence shall be an absolute qualification for existence - the materiality, obviously, being demonstrable. If you might stub your toe on it, then it's difficult to see how it isn't. — tim wood

.

Did you miss this?
I hold that belief is the gift that allows us to think and speak in substantive terms about things that aren't, the thinking itself usually to some end and for some reason.
— tim wood — tim wood

I took it from the comment about 'things that aren't' that you believe the - how shall we say - subjects of religious philosophy are unreal, or at any rate, something that only exist in the minds of believers. Am I wrong?

, I have a fair idea what a triangle is, in terms of what is needed to use the idea of a triangle. Does that make the triangle real? And as well, on what kind of encounter with triangles would anyone suppose that there existed an ideal triangle, and how would he know? — tim wood

That is just what is at issue. Lets say the subjects of geometry are real - in what sense are they real? I would say that they're real in that everyone who studies geometry is studying the same concepts, they are common to all who think. But you're not going to 'encounter' them in any sense other than through the mind's eye, so to speak. Ergo, real but incorporeal.

The temptation is to place this cultural realm in a beyond that is 'really' there, even when we aren't. Hence my interest in this 'subject' or 'Anyone' as a them running through philosophy. — Eee

Might interest you to know that Popper co-authored a book with neuroscientist Sir John Eccles on dualist philosophy of mind.

But you're not going to 'encounter' them in any sense other than through the mind's eye, so to speak. Ergo, real but incorporeal. — Wayfarer

I agree. Now, where do they dwell when they're at home, these incorporealities, that I call ideas and house in minds.

On the one hand, no human is possible without the antecedent humanity, but on the other, a general condition of some empirical unity is in itself insufficient to explain the multiplicity of disparate conditions of its particulars.
— Mww

Could you elaborate on the second part of this? — Eee

Substitute any empirical unity. All trees are the unity of trees, but the unity of trees doesn’t explain why some are hardwoods and some are soft, some broadleaf, some needle leaf. There’s something more needed than just being trees, to facilitate trees being hardwoods.

I took it from the comment about 'things that aren't' that you believe the - how shall we say - subjects of religious philosophy are unreal, or at any rate, something that only exist in the minds of believers. Am I wrong? — Wayfarer

Because I attend an evangelical Christian church and am plagued with these issues at every sermon, I'm inclined to be somewhat careful with phrases like "religious philosophy." In my experience, religions aren't philosophies. But never mind that. You equate unreal with only existing in the mind. Granted that's a distinction that can be made in the sense of material existence - but that not relevant here, though. Why would you think that ideas are unreal? You already grant them existence!

everyone who studies geometry is studying the same concepts, they are common to all who think. — Wayfarer

Why would that surprise us given that we are all schooled in the language of geometry by, if nothing else, the buildings we inhabit.

If we understand 'objective' to mean unbiased or ideally intersubjective, then the problem disappears. — Eee

I won’t fight over that. Intersubjective still leaves concepts as purely subjective constructs with possibly real objects which conform to them, which we call experience.

I agree. Now, where do they [i.e. mathematical ideas] dwell when they're at home, these incorporealities, that I call ideas and house in minds. — tim wood

The point is that they don't exist in any location; the so-called 'platonic realm' is real in the sense that 'the domain of natural numbers' is real. But it is real, in that 2 is in it, and the square root of 2 is not. So I am arguing that the expression 'domain' or 'realm' is a metaphor for an intellectual domain which doesn't exist anywhere, but is real nonetheless. It's part of the 'architecture of thought', the way that we make sense of the world, and in that sense, quite real. If you're an engineer and you get your numbers wrong, your rocket crashes, or your bridge collapses. I'm assuming, not without reason, that any rational being would discover principles like Euclidean geometry, and that the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry doesn't invalidate that.

I attend an evangelical Christian church and am plagued with these issues at every sermon, I'm inclined to be somewhat careful with phrases like "religious philosophy." In my experience, religions aren't philosophies. — tim wood

Thank you for your candour. I hope you don't mind me saying that it explains many of your remarks on this matter. I came to the understanding I have (such as it is) of Platonist metaphysics through the route of a philosophical search. That is, I presume, very different to the evangelical attitude, for which there is only one true way and everything else leads to perdition, and that way is based on salvation by faith alone; believe it or risk perdition. Very characteristic of modern Western thought.

Hence, some of the remarks in that Gilson essay -

After Descartes and the Protestant Reformation had come on the scene, Gilson thought that something had been radically altered in the relationship between modern mathematical physics and the classical sciences of metaphysics, ethics, and politics. Just like the Protestant Reformers Luther and Calvin, Descartes showed a distrust for natural reason. Despite the fact that Descartes is celebrated for his declaration that truth lies in “clear and distinct ideas,” Descartes had actually located all human truth and error in strength and weakness of the human will, in what Friedrich Nietzsche would famously later identify as the “Will to Power.” ... for Descartes, because [he] uses clear and distinct ideas to view the sense universe, mathematical physics is the only science that can tell us anything true about the essence of the sense world [note also here the confluence with Galileo's 'nature is the book written in mathematics'].

At present, this several-hundred year project to divorce philosophy from science and reduce science to mechanized mathematical physics has created an essential conflict within Western cultural institutions, within our intellectual, political, and religious organizations. In Cartesian thought, truth and freedom are properties of will, not reason. Hence, freedom and truth are essentially non-rational. And rationality is essentially not free or true.

This is connected with an expression I have become familiar with through these forums, namely that of the 'cartesian anxiety'

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".

Richard J. Bernstein coined the term in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.

Whereas, for the scholastic metaphysics (and fully acknowledging that this often also amounted to stultifying dogmatism in practice), as the Hothschild essay noted:

With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality.

It is just that which is lacking in modern materialistic science, which is manifesting now as the insoluble arguments about multiple universes and the like. You yourself exhibit this split between science, which you feel is a sure guide to reality as it really is, and religion, which you place in a different although very important realm. And that is not a personal attack - that is the situation of the culture in which we find ourselves. Everyone feels it, I think.

You equate unreal with only existing in the mind. Granted that's a distinction that can be made in the sense of material existence - but that not relevant here, though. Why would you think that ideas are unreal? You already grant them existence! — tim wood

No, what I'm saying is that intelligible objects, such as logical principles and geometric axioms, are real, but they're not phenomenally existent; they're objects of mind (so to speak) but no less real for that. In Platonism, they have a higher degree of reality than objects of sense - which goes right back to the point you were trying to make in the OP!

intelligible objects, such as logical principles and geometric axioms, are real, but they're not phenomenally existent; they're objects of mind (so to speak) but no less real for that. In Platonism, they have a higher degree of reality than objects of sense — Wayfarer

That’s how I understand it as well, in Platonism. Enlightenment philosophy subsequently dropped objects of mind down a peg or two, making them equal in degree of reality with objects of sense, calling them both representations, but arising from different faculties, thus having different rules of use. That, and logical principles and geometric axioms took on the name and form of judgements, the subjects and predicates thereof being objects of mind. When it comes right down to bare bones, all objects are objects of mind, except the real, and even those are represented as objects of mind (so to speak).

From what I know of Platonic Ideals and Platonism in general, if we are to historicize it, is that its origin has more to do with combining elements of the pre-Socratic philosophies of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and even Pythagoras. That is to say if Heraclitus' metaphysics represented a reality that is always in flux, Parmenides one that is unchanging (which Pythagoras can be said to be a special case of this with mathematical principles), then the Ideas and the shadows on the cave are like a synthesis of these two things. Reality is actually unchanging and can be displayed in universals and mathematics, but our consciousness and sense perceptions are a dim version of this, only seeing the imperfect and "flux" versions of the unchanging realities.

I think Schopenhauer actually did one of the best interpretations of Plato. He essentially interpreted from Platonism that Platonic Forms are in a sense timeless templates of objects that become temporal due to our epistemological natures which comprises time, space, and causality. Anyways, I don't really buy this conception, but I think it takes Platonism to its logical conclusions.

No, what I'm saying is that intelligible objects, such as logical principles and geometric axioms, are real, but they're not phenomenally existent; they're objects of mind (so to speak) but no less real for that. — Wayfarer

Where is the courage of a nation? I answer, in the hearts and minds of its citizens - and nowhere else. If no hearts and minds, then no citizens, no courage, and no nation. Is two, or triangle, or courage real? We agree they are. Where are two and triangle (courage being accounted for)? "They're objects of mind." If they're objects of mind, does not that place them in the mind in the sense that matters here? And do you object to calling "objects of the mind" ideas? Elsewhere you note they're immaterial. Isn't "ideas" better than "immaterial objects of the mind"?

In other words, does it seem to you as it seems to me that we're in complete agreement (with me) except for some verbiage?

I think a secret problem here is that world, communication, and mind are scanted in this business. One person understands something about the world and teaches - communicates with - others so that they understand; the knowledge then, because that is what it is, becoming a general community property (of those educated and able to understand). And where is this general community property kept? Nowhere else but in the minds of individuals, there being enough of them to obscure the nature of the keeping place(s). And the world. The world does not store ideas, but it continually presents the ground from which they can arise.

What other account can be given on evidentiary grounds?

Chewy and nutritious stuff. "Templates" is a key word - and a whole other topic!

It seems to me worth adding that Plato also was much concerned with the abuses of rhetoric called sophistry, his notions of ideals coming into play as a defense against lies. That is, if you can say what something is in some sense, then you can say what it isn't. And if you can't the former, then the latter becomes difficult, contentious, ultimately a matter resolved by force.

I'm inclined to be somewhat careful with phrases like "religious philosophy." In my experience, religions aren't philosophies. — tim wood

None other than (surprised?) Freddy Zarathustra says, “Christianity is Platonism for the masses." And I agree. Whereas religions traffic in (i.e. answering via) 'images & iconography' for anxiety / terror management, philosophies proceed by (i.e. questioning via) 'concepts & iconoclasm' for intellectual and moral agency development - the latter being the elitist version(?) of the more populist former (e.g. chemistry & ALCHEMY, Shakespeare's plays & SOAP OPERAS, astronomy & ASTROLOGY, Bebop & HIP HOP, democratic praxes & CONSPIRACY THEORIES, etc). I suppose, then, the inverse formulation follows: philosophy is religion for the ... elites. :yikes:

What other account can be given on evidentiary grounds? — tim wood

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html