Is that a problem? Shouldn't the explanation be a linguistic and psychological one? — Snakes Alive
Note that it needs to avoid using universals to do so. — Marchesk
Rather, it needs to show how universal concepts are constructed from particulars without positing any universals in the world. — Marchesk
How can we even posit universals if we don't know what it would be like for there to be universals or not? — Snakes Alive
Because they exist in our language when we talk about the world. We conceptualize the world as if it had universal categories of some kind. — Marchesk
What does it mean to conceptualize the world 'as if' it had something, when we can't even tell what it would be for it to have that something? What are we 'conceptualizing?' Apparently nothing. — Snakes Alive
It should be noted this is similar to Hume's issue with causality. We talk as if all sorts of things cause or cause other things. That's the way the world works according to our language. However, the cause itself is never in experience. — Marchesk
Now what does it mean to say Hume's skepticism and the debates it sparked are meaningless? That our everyday notion of causality is all there is to the matter? — Marchesk
that here the philosopher has a desire for the world to be some way, and expresses this desire, typically secretly and unconsciously, by holding metaphysical views. The philosopher knows in some sense that his attempting to change the way he or other people speak cannot change the world in this way, but there is a kind of sleight of mind where one entertains the illusion that perhaps, just perhaps, if I adduce enough arguments to show that time is unreal, time might stop. — Snakes Alive
We don't tend to believe in an ability to manipulate reality in that way as adults. — Isaac
It seems to be almost entirely some kind of cultural tradition that came about at some point in our history and was practiced almost entirely by one sub-class of one culture. — Isaac
I think a way was devised by which knowledge could be claimed in way immune to this new risk of being shown to be demonstrably wrong. It's this immunity which draws people into obscure metaphysical discussion, I think. — Isaac
People criticizing metaphysics tend to forget what motivates metaphysical questions in the first place. — Marchesk
The third (deep) layer is the layer at which the drive for making the claim in the first place exists. Though Lazerowitz does not focus on this so much, I think the drive often happens for simple confusion – we are not metasemantically transparent creatures, and often in doing metaphysics we literally don't understand what's going on (and we are, in a Wittgensteinian sense, idling the engine while thinking we're driving, or like roadrunners on a treadmill wondering why we're not moving).
But Lazerowitz's explanation is a bit more interesting – he holds that here the philosopher has a desire for the world to be some way, and expresses this desire, typically secretly and unconsciously, by holding metaphysical views. The philosopher knows in some sense that his attempting to change the way he or other people speak cannot change the world in this way, but there is a kind of sleight of mind where one entertains the illusion that perhaps, just perhaps, if I adduce enough arguments to show that time is unreal, time might stop. In other words, there is a recognition that since one can speak however one pleases, that one can in some sense 'make true' whatever one pleases, just by talking about it. But as we saw in the second layer, this has no descriptive effect, and cannot really change the world or even what one thinks about it. Yet making a sentence like 'time is unreal' true according to one's logic, which follows from the employment of words in a certain way, one can sort of blur the eyes and almost believe he has stopped time.
The third layer, therefore, exists on the border of the unconscious, where the philosopher harbors fantasies about the omnipotence of the intelligence, and tries to transfigure the world by means of a kind of 'verbal magic.' He can, like the sophists, 'talk about anything,' and indeed 'argue for anything' – so perhaps he can 'make anything true.' This does not work of course, and the philosopher consciously may know this. But the process itself is so intoxicating that it pulls us in pre-rationally. And it may even service deeper desires – for instance, if I fear change, the mantra that 'time is unreal' may comfort me, because that means change is unreal, and so change cannot hurt me. — Snakes Alive
What I mean by chitta chatta is all dialogue with other people, or with one's self and all conscious thinking. Also all unconscious thinking which emerges into the consciousness. Indeed all mental activity which is involved in and with the sense of self. Alternatively, If you practice meditation for a few hundred hours until you are able to still the mind, what you have stilled is the chitta chatta. The mental activity involved in communion with the higher self does involve some of this*, but is largely that which supports a growing together as an organism. Rather like the grafting of a plant, or a joining together of two plants at the graft. So that after the graft, the two plants merge and become, after some time, indistinguishable. — Punshhh
But Lazerowitz's explanation is a bit more interesting – he holds that here the philosopher has a desire for the world to be some way, and expresses this desire, typically secretly and unconsciously, by holding metaphysical views. — Snakes Alive
because if even the sense of the expressions are unclear, one can always deny or affirm a claim, by construing the words in a certain way or marshaling and endless array of supplementary hypotheses or hermeneutic and argumentative techniques, themselves undetermined or underdetermined for meaning. In other words, conversations about such metaphysical sentences are in principle endless, because they have in principle no way of being resolved, because their structure, despite being grammatically like a claim with coherent (if sometimes vague or ambiguous) truth conditions, do not have any such that the speakers can converge on. — Snakes Alive
He can, like the sophists, 'talk about anything,' and indeed 'argue for anything' – so perhaps he can 'make anything true.' This does not work of course, and the philosopher consciously may know this. But the process itself is so intoxicating that it pulls us in pre-rationally. And it may even service deeper desires – for instance, if I fear change, the mantra that 'time is unreal' may comfort me, because that means change is unreal, and so change cannot hurt me. — Snakes Alive
what is the difference between universals existing, and not existing? Can you describe two scenarios, one in which they do, and one in which they do not? If you cannot do this, why should I believe you understand the claim or its denial? — Snakes Alive
people don't seem to have the ability to recognize that something might happen independent of their desires or ideology, and can 'deduce' what has actually happened in the world from whichever ideology they prefer. — Snakes Alive
I'm troubled by apparent independent parallels across the world, especially in India and Tibet, which developed parallel stylized forms of philosophical argumentation. — Snakes Alive
On the one hand, my conclusions must be substantive – or else there is no point in drawing them – but on the other, they must be devoid of content, or that content could potentially be shown to be mistaken. — Snakes Alive
But it leaves open the questions around why and how we do it. — Marchesk
As to how a term can have 'universal applicability,' I'm not sure what this means. Is the question, for example, how we can use the same word for multiple things? How it is that 'apple' can refer to multiple fruits, for example? — Snakes Alive
there genuinely are high-level categories, like species and genera. — Wayfarer
So the question is, in what sense is the idea of apple real? And that is a metaphysical question. — Wayfarer
I’m also arguing that reason and language must make use of such ideas all the time, otherwise we couldn’t make any sense of things in a global sense. So the general ideas, which are universal, also correspond with real categories. That’s what I take scholastic realism to mean. — Wayfarer
It's a linguistic question. — Isaac
you might say that they only exist as signifiers of meaning, but as our ability to reason and navigate is grounded in our ability to discern meaning, this mode of existence is still fundamental to rational creatures such as ourselves. I like to think of them as the ligatures of reason. — Wayfarer
our ability to reason and navigate is grounded in our ability to discern meaning, this mode of existence is still fundamental to rational creatures such as ourselves. — Wayfarer
Before embarking on this study of substance, however, Aristotle goes on in Book Γ to argue that first philosophy, the most general of the sciences, must also address the most fundamental principles—the common axioms—that are used in all reasoning. Thus, first philosophy must also concern itself with the principle of non-contradiction (PNC): the principle that “the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect” (1005b19). This, Aristotle says, is the most certain of all principles, and it is not just a hypothesis. It cannot, however, be proved, since it is employed, implicitly, in all proofs, no matter what the subject matter. It is a first principle, and hence is not derived from anything more basic.
You may not notice, but you would not be able to ask such questions. You’d be chasing a stick, or something. — Wayfarer
For empiricism to get out of bed, it has to start from some assumptions, as to what to study, what to consider as ‘evidence’, what ideas to pursue. And those kinds of elements aren’t themselves empirical - they’re prior to it — Wayfarer
Is the question, for example, how we can use the same word for multiple things? How it is that 'apple' can refer to multiple fruits, for example?
— Snakes Alive
That’s close! — Wayfarer
foundations of math, psychology of consciousness, theory of reference, theory of learning, logic of induction, semiotics etc — bongo fury
Animals don’t reason, no. It’s amazing what they do - salmon returning to their home streams from across the Pacific, birds flying halfway around the planet, but none of it involves if I do this, then that will happen. — Wayfarer
So the question is, in what sense is the idea of apple real? And that is a metaphysical question. — Wayfarer
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