Understanding a complex logical argument results from the associating of its parts, The parts consist of immediately apprehended insights and the associations between them are also direct insights. What else could the associations be but further direct insights ? They cannot be composed of mechanically following rules without any insight, because then you would need further rules to tell you how to follow the rules, creating an infinitely regressive and complex proliferation of rules which would make any understanding or following of logical arguments impossible. — John
Whether you draw the general form of the maple leaf or merely imagine it, it cannot be the exact form of any particular maple leaf. It is a kind of 'averaged' form. — John
It appears like you do not distinguish between a particular and a universal. We would need to come to some agreement on this before we could produce any progress in this discussion.I am not going to attempt too address any of the rest of your long post. I think these are the salient points, anyway, and discussion will be much more manageable if we just deal with them. — John
So you've rendered all forms of thought as intuitive. There is no distinction for you between things known intuitively and things known by reason? — Metaphysician Undercover
When you draw a maple leaf, it is a particular form which you have drawn. It is not the general form of the maple leaf. — Metaphysician Undercover
Any individual person has rules or principles which one follows, guiding one to class a particular thing as a maple leaf. — Metaphysician Undercover
Sure every drawing of a maple leaf is a particular form, just as every drawing of an equilateral triangle is really a particular form. But the drawings are particular only in terms of their inevitable imperfections. — John
We abstract that particular form, and this constitutes our representation of object MLt3 — Metaphysician Undercover
Consider the most unambiguous symbol of triangularity there could be—a picture of a triangle, such as the one to the right. Now, does this picture represent triangles in general? Or only isosceles triangles? Or only small isosceles triangles drawn in black ink? Or does it really even represent triangles in the first place? Why not take it instead to represent a dinner bell, or an arrowhead? There is nothing in the picture itself that can possibly tell you. Nor would any other picture be any better. Any picture would be susceptible of various interpretations, and so too would anything you might add to the picture in order to explain what the original picture was supposed to represent. In particular, there is nothing in the picture in question or in any other picture that entails any determinate, unambiguous content.
Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.
But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it.
I'd say that when it comes to visual forms at least, to grasp something just is to form a visual image of it. So, I guess I disagree with Feser. — John
mental images are always to some extent vague or indeterminate, while concepts are at least often precise and determinate. To use Descartes’ famous example, a mental image of a chiliagon (a 1,000-sided figure) cannot be clearly distinguished from a mental image of a 1,002-sided figure, or even from a mental image of a circle. But the concept of a chiliagon is clearly distinct from the concept of a 1,002-sided figure or the concept of a circle. I cannot clearly differentiate a mental image of a crowd of one million people from a mental image of a crowd of 900,000 people. But the intellect easily understands the difference between the concept of a crowd of one million people and the concept of a crowd of 900,000 people. And so on.
the most powerful nation has just elected a liar and charlatan as leader of the free world — Wayfarer
If esse est percipi, then others are exhausted by your perception of them. — dukkha
I don't know why this fallacy keeps repeating itself. — Michael
It stems either from someone saying they can only know their own mental content — Terrapin Station
or from not explaining how only mental phenomena exist yet nevertheless one can know and or experience other mentalities.
Then it's a matter of epistemology, not ontology. — Michael
In any case, the OP is an example of many of the kinds of objections that Berkeley's imagined opponents came up with in his dialogues. He didn't address the 'drugged water pitcher' scenario — Wayfarer
I don't know why this fallacy keeps repeating itself. There's a difference between "to be is to be perceived" and "to be is to be perceived by me". You can't go from the former to "others are exhausted by my perception of them". — Michael
I don't believe we can visualize extremely complex objects except to kind of mentally traverse the charateristic features we are familiar with that make them the uniqely particular objects they are.
So I wouldn't agree with Feser that we can have a mental image of a chiliagon at all, other than kind of vaguely imagining what it might look like by analogy with something we can visualize like a hexagon or octagon.
I am basing what I say on my own experience, on what I find I can and cannot visualize. Others may well be able to do things I cannot. — John
I believe OP is arguing against a subjective idealism where the only minds that exist are human minds (and possibly, some animals). Whereas the drugged water for Berkeley's idealism continues to be 'held' in existence by the mind of god. His whole argument makes no sense if he's arguing against Berkeley. — dukkha
I'm sure you are aware that in modern physics there is a large number of sub-atomic particles. The existence of the particles are understood with mathematics. When speaking to physicists, they will often caution you, not to try to visualize the things which they are telling you about. The words used, such as "particle", tend to bring up certain images, but you are told by the physicists not to refer to these images. The concepts are purely mathematical, and the words in the context of particle physics, refer to these mathematical concepts, rather than any image you can make in your mind. — Metaphysician Undercover
Physicists spend a great deal of time and computing power creating images of what they are studying, including new fundamental particles: — tom
The problem is, that these images don't adequately represent concepts which cannot be represented by images, so all they're doing is making an appeal to the sensibilities of common people who enjoy such phantasms. That they spend a great deal of time and computing power on this is an indication that they need public funding. — Metaphysician Undercover
Have you ever come across the word "simulation" before? — Metaphysician Undercover
do you recognize that the drawing of the maple leaf you have presented to me is a particular? — Metaphysician Undercover
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