Surely it would be that universals like "the perfect triangle" or "perfect body proportion" are just an ideas within our minds and hold no physical existence outside of our thinking of them. — intrapersona
Just to confirm, physicalism and universals are non-compatible right? — intrapersona
As I understand it, the issue is whether universals are nevertheless real - i.e., whether there are modes of being other than individual, particular actuality. Setting aside the notion of "perfect," the idea is that a triangle is a universal - there is an infinite continuum of potential triangles, with different combinations of angles and side lengths. They are all real because they possess certain characteristic properties, regardless of whether anyone thinks that they do. — aletheist
whether there are modes of being other than individual, particular actuality. — aletheist
there is an infinite continuum of potential triangles, with different combinations of angles and side lengths. — aletheist
They are all real because they possess certain characteristic properties — aletheist
Surely it would be that universals like "the perfect triangle" or "perfect body proportion" are just an ideas within our minds and hold no physical existence outside of our thinking of them. — intrapersona
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. And so forth. In general, to grasp a concept is simply not the same thing as having a mental image.
Now the thought you are having about triangularity when you grasp it must be as determinate or exact as triangularity itself, otherwise it just wouldn’t be a thought about triangularity in the first place, but only a thought about some approximation of triangularity. Yet material things are never determinate or exact in this way. Any material triangle, for example, is always only ever an approximation of perfect triangularity (since it is bound to have sides that are less than perfectly straight, etc., even if this is undetectable to the naked eye). And in general, material symbols and representations are inherently always to some extent vague, ambiguous, or otherwise inexact, susceptible of various alternative interpretations. It follows, then, that any thought you might have about triangularity is not something material; in particular, it is not some process occurring in the brain. And what goes for triangularity goes for any thought that involves the grasp of a universal, since universals in general (or at least very many of them, in case someone should wish to dispute this) are determinate and exact in a way material objects and processes cannot be.
Why are universals regarded as real things? — intrapersona
If something is real, does it not need to have existant properties in some way? How can something be real and not exist? — intrapersona
Where does this infinitum continuum of potential exist? — intrapersona
Don't potential states of affairs need to depend on spacetime in order for them to be "potential"? — intrapersona
We could only ever say that I "may" have characteristic properties and we might not ever know what they are, incase out of the infinite amount of possibilities, I end up turning in to a pineapple in 3.5 minutes. — intrapersona
Surely it would be that universals like "the perfect triangle" or "perfect body proportion" are just an ideas within our minds and hold no physical existence outside of our thinking of them. — intrapersona
Why does it sound like philosophers are saying that certain ideas of objects and forms actually have an existence outside of the mind? That just sounds silly, yet I know I am missing something here...
Just to confirm, physicalism and universals are non-compatible right? — intrapersona
All universal theorists are arguing for is the existence of an entity that somehow exists in multiple places at the same time. The red of that firetruck is similar to the red of that fire hydrant in virtue of the fact that both objects instantiate the universal "red-ness".
It can be helpful to think of properties as ways objects are. Universal theorists think that these "ways" are repeatable entities. Those with the same property are literally instantiating the same universal.
Furthermore, it should be noted that not every single property has to be a universal, or has to have a copy somewhere. The more complex systems become the more likely unique arrangements of atoms will occur, arrangements that may never occur ever again.
Thus similarity is oftentimes not literal same-ness but rather a close resemblance in virtue of instantiating a certain number of similar universals, but perhaps not all. — darthbarracuda
Re the parts in italics above, and especially the terms in bold, how would the entities in question be physical? Where would they be instantiated first off? — Terrapin Station
What makes a universal physical is whether or not it is necessarily instantiated only in cases in which the property of physicality is instantiated. — darthbarracuda
Okay, but you're positing an entity that's not identical to its instantiations in particulars, right? What I'm asking you is how that entity is physical. — Terrapin Station
What makes a universal physical is whether or not it is necessarily instantiated only in cases in which the property of physicality is instantiated. — darthbarracuda
[Universals are] simply a reification, in the sense of a psychological projection into the objective world, of ideas and the mental aspects of language. — Terrapin Station
in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.
….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Loyd Gerson
Would that include fields? Fields are studied by physicists, their effects can be detected by instruments, but they have nothing in common with physical objects, because they're not physical objects, and some of them are not detectable except in terms of their effects. — Wayfarer
However, if number is included under the heading of 'universals', then it is clear that numerical reasoning has many consequences in the objective world, and enables many accurate predictions which otherwise couldn't be made. The history of science is practically built on such discoveries. — Wayfarer
Letters on a computer screen can only exist on a computer screen. It doesn't make sense to talk about the computational letter "B" in Times New Roman outside of its existence on a computer screen.
Similarly it doesn't make sense to talk of things like mass or shape outside of how they are instantiated by physical objects. I already said that physicality and other universals are not necessarily identical, but I also said that physical universals are "physical" in that they cannot be instantiated apart from physicality. They are separate properties but are unable to be separated.
Aristotelian substance is the name for the thing that exists without predicates, in which everything else is predicated of. You cannot have universals without substance, but without universals substance isn't anything discernible. — darthbarracuda
It sounds like you're saying that under physicalism, "universals" are simply the properties that obtain via particulars. But that's not realism on universalism at all--that's nominalism. — Terrapin Station
Not necessarily, realism about universals would be that these properties, obtained by particulars, are one and the same across particulars. They are not physical, they are properties, universals, just as physicality is a universal. — darthbarracuda
Okay, but if they're not physical, then it's not physicalism. — Terrapin Station
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