Oh. In that case, I must say you do philosophy very well, but you’re terrible at mischievous.

Rather, it is both. — creativesoul

I think not. Without that to which north relates, north of is empty.

That simply presumes that arguments cannot be constructed around things which are self-evident. — Isaac

So you're saying it's self-evident that universals refer to nothing, and yet people have debated whether they refer to something.

That's the question here so it's begging it do assume at the outset that the mere existence of debate automatically legitimises the terms of that debate. — Isaac

If one can understand the terms of the debate and participate in the debate, then yes, it's meaningful.

But it's not a philosophical puzzle. That's what I'm saying, it's a sociological one. — Isaac

Is the argument over universals a topic in sociology?

None of them have a coherent meaningful notion of thought and belief that is amenable to evolutionary terms and/or progression.
— creativesoul

There’s a blatantly obvious reason for that. — Mww

Which is?

Besides, the point I'm labouring here is not to convince you that universals are real, but to point out that I think it's a real argument, not simply a matter of verbiage. — Wayfarer

I'm really just not seeing that from anything you've written.

For one thing to be north of another is for the two things to exist on or near the surface of an approximately round object or space that has been marked conventionally with two poles, both on the diameter of the round space, their exact location either due to convention or tracking some feature of one pole versus the other (like being a magnetic pole), and for one to be closer to one of those poles (marked 'north') than the other, along the axis running between the poles across the surface of the space.

I really have no idea what your discussion of 'the relation of being north' adds to what I just said. It seems to me deeply confused.

I really have no idea what your discussion of 'the relation of being north' adds to what I just said. It seems to me deeply confused. — Snakes Alive

That "north of" is a universal relation in that it doesn't matter what sort of locations there are on a spherical region of space like a planet, some locations will be north of other locations, and this fact exists independent of humans, although there's nobody around to call it "north of", or to name the particular locations. With the caveat that which pole is "north" is arbitrary. Some things will be closer to one pole than the other. In the case of Earth, "north of" meaning the Arctic Circle.

Bertrand Russell was using "north of" to illustrate how we utilize concepts which are universal across particulars, but these concepts are not simply made up. Locations have spatial relationships.

When what you believe is inconsistent with every traditional or conventional school of thought, don't you think it's time to reconsider? — Metaphysician Undercover

Not when what I've charged them with hits the mark dead on. Show me someone, anyone, who draws and maintains the distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief...

Just one.

Are you denying that there is such an actual distinction?

So, does this creature have a 'soul?' Can it access the Platonic realm of 'abstractions?' These are stupid questions – instead, look at what it can, and can't, do! — Snakes Alive

Are you making a case for nominalism ... :razz:

Plato's forms aren't the only kind. Aristotle's are more grounded. Let's just take one example from physics. All electrons have the same properties of mass and charge, along with others like spin which can vary. And they play a fundamental role in chemistry and electromagnetism. So we classify all such subatomic particles as a fundamental particle called an electron, which is universal across space and time.

The form of a subatomic particle is its essence that make it an electron and not something else like a proton, where the essence is the collection of properties and functions.

...some locations will be north of other locations, and this fact exists independent of humans... — Marchesk

I think that this is mistaken March. The relation which we call "north of" already exists prior to our calling it such, but... it is not the same thing as being north of until we call it such. There are some cultures which do not use cardinal directions to talk about spatial relationships. What some would call "north of" would be called something else by such people. So, why give this independent of human precedence to one and not the other?

Independent of those who use cardinal directions... there is no such thing as "north of".

Independent of those who use cardinal directions... there is no such thing as "north of". — creativesoul

True. The spatial relation of being closer to one pole versus the other exists, though. And that can matter for climate and other things. Russell should have clarified.

...the spatial relation of being closer to one pole versus the other exists, though. — Marchesk

Indeed it does. It's what we call "north of", as compared/contrasted to being north of.

So what is the question?

Is it, do electrons exist? Okay, sure. Is it, do electrons have similar properties? Okay, sure.

What else is there to say?

Is it, do electrons exist? — Snakes Alive

The idea that there are individual things classified as "electron" is the issue. How do we make this classification of individuals?

Okay, sure. Is it, do electrons have similar properties? Okay, sure. — Snakes Alive

Not just similar properties, but the same when it comes to mass and charge, and the same kind of properties overall. How is that there is such a thing as "kind"?

What else is there to say? — Snakes Alive

That there is a discussion to be had here as to how a world of individual things can be categorized. I'm not saying universals is the right answer to that. Only that it's a possibility to be debated.

The idea that there are individual things classified as "electron" is the issue. How do we make this classification of individuals? — Marchesk

How is this a metaphysical question? Depending on what you mean, it's probably a historical, linguistic, or psychological one. Are you asking about who coined the word 'electron,' and why they decided to apply it to a certain class of individuals? Are you talking about the general ability to use nouns? What?

How is that there is such a thing as "kind"? — Marchesk

Are you asking how it is possible that different things share properties?

That there is a discussion to be had here as to how a world of individual things can be categorized. I'm not saying universals is the right answer to that. Only that it's a possibility to be debated. — Marchesk

It does not become a possibility to be debated until you can clarify in some sense what you are talking about.

Indeed it does. It's what we call "north of", as compared/contrasted to being north of. — creativesoul

Being pole of? Problem is you can't reference which pole without it being an arbitrary linguistic decision. Pole of A makes it sound like A is first or top. Just like we naturally assume north is the top of the globe and most maps portray it that way. But there's no reason the south pole can't be portrayed as top. And maybe if a southern hemisphere empire had colonized much of the modern world, it would be portrayed in such a manner.

Are you talking about the general ability to use nouns? What? — Snakes Alive

Yes, I'm asking a question about the human ability to put individual things into categories and hierarchies. It's either an epistemological question or a metaphysical one about the world of individual things, events, relations.

Are you asking how it is possible that different things share properties? — Snakes Alive

That would be an important part of the debate. Do things share properties and if so, what does that entail?

It does not become a possibility to be debated until you can clarify in some sense what you are talking about. — Snakes Alive

That human language is full of categorization, yet the world of experience is full of individuals.

Yes, I'm asking a question about the human ability to put individual things into categories and hierarchies. It's either an epistemological question or a metaphysical one about the world of individual things, events, relations. — Marchesk

No, that's a psychological question.

Anyway, this thread has long since degenerated past the topic and into the very sorts of meaningless disputes it was meant to examine, so I'm going to bow out.

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. — Snakes Alive

Isn't this exactly what Lazerowitz is doing? Talking himself into his own truth? Maybe all philosophers do that, lol.

No, the formal realm is not heaven. It's the domain of laws, numbers, and so on - only by way of analogy, because it's only 'a domain' in the sense that 'the set of all real numbers is a domain'.

Oh I see what you mean now. To me this equates to the Akashic record, in theosophy.

"Henry Steel Olcott's A Buddhist Catechism (1881).[6] Olcott wrote that "Buddha taught two things are eternal, viz, 'Akasa' and 'Nirvana': everything has come out of Akasa in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and, passes away."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records

Akasa is 'space' and one of the unconditioned dharmas. There's nothing corresponding to the Platonic forms in Buddhism.

Have a skim of this passage on Augustine's ruminations on intelligible objects. That is nearer the mark.

I'm really just not seeing that from anything you've written. — Snakes Alive

Well, it is a discussion from a standard text of a traditional question of philosophy; if you find it 'deeply confused', then you ought to admit at least the possibility that you might not understand it.

Thanks, Augustine refers to it as eternal and incorporeal, so that would fall into what I describe as eternity. All things truly real are there, including those which are incorporeal.

The Akashic records, In the way it is treated in theosophy, is on the monadic plane. The lowest plane of the truly real. On this plane all forms including thoughts, concepts, principles of manifestation*, kingdoms of nature. All ideal forms, truths and past and future events, combinations of forms are found. They are incorporeal in that they are not subject to material, but mind. They are the daily bread of the immortals, while to us they are highest and purest ideals and the most refined forms of thoughts and concepts.

* by principles of manifestation I mean the equivalent of a rule book, or pathway via which all incarnate and physical worlds are manifest, which necessarily encapsulates their entire period, or eons of existence. From when they form to when they pass.

Forgive me if this comes across as spiritual hokum, I realise this is a metaphysics thread.

I see what you're getting at - it might as you say be a reference to what I have called 'the formal realm' albeit in theosophical terminology. I don't think it's hokum, although many no doubt will. But in the context, I think 'metaphysics' ought to have a narrower focus, specifically in terms of the mainstream tradition of metaphysics, commencing with Plato and Aristotle.

Aristotle's are more grounded. Let's just take one example from physics. All electrons have the same properties of mass and charge, along with others like spin which can vary. And they play a fundamental role in chemistry and electromagnetism. So we classify all such subatomic particles as a fundamental particle called an electron, which is universal across space and time. — Marchesk

That's not correct. That's atomism, and neither Plato nor Aristotle accepted atomism (although with a caveat). Besides, the 'uncertainty principle' means that the question 'do electrons exist?' actually should be answered 'it depends on what you mean by "exist" '. As is well known, such entities can manifest either as discrete particles, or as waves, dependent on the context in which they are viewed - this is Bohr's famous 'wave-particle duality'. Are they 'really' waves, or 'really' particles? That question, according to Bohr and Heisenberg, can't really be answered, but Heisenberg did have this to say:

This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here, the development of quantum theory some forty years ago has created a complete change in the situation. The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.

During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?

I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics. — Werner Heisenberg

The Debate between Plato and Democritus

None of them have a coherent meaningful notion of thought and belief that is amenable to evolutionary terms and/or progression.
— creativesoul

There’s a blatantly obvious reason for that.
— Mww

Which is? — creativesoul

Evolutionary terms: nomenclature related to the theory of evolution;
Meaningful notion of thought: a theory or relevant consideration of the human cognitive system;
No philosopher has a theory of the human cognitive system promulgated in the nomenclature related to the theory of evolution.....because there is no direct correspondence between increases in cranial capacity and neuron count due to evolution of the species, and cognitive abilities of that species.

No point in philosophizing with respect to human thought, when the condition of the thought being examined is unknowable.

(This was part of the point of my oblique reference but I didn't pursue it, because it's a guaranteed derailer. The argument is that the assumption that evolutionary theory explains all there is to know about H. Sapiens inevitably reduces the mind to the level of an adaptation, and its only proper aim to survival - so it's a kind of 'animalising' philosophy. That's what I took to be the, or a, metaphorical meaning of the Planet of the Apes. A lot of the time, this assumption is implicit, but it follows from the premise that evolutionary biology has displaced Christianity as an account of human origins and that, therefore, philosophy ought to be grounded in 'modern' biological theory, rather than 'archaic' metaphysics. Please regard this comment as a footnote.)

I'll bite my tongue...

@Wayfarer When I think about the OP, it seems to me less an attack on metaphysics than a zoomed-out (or frame-adjacent) recalibrating. Metaphysics exists, but it's not what it thinks it is. I think one tack to approaching the OP, is, rather than to ascribe to it a surreptitious metaphysics against which one can argue ,instead to see it as an invitation to reflect on what we do when we argue metaphysics.

Like, personally.

I was trying to push at you a bit (push back!) about why your posts tend to take as foil a proponent of scientisim who is then, himself, pushed back with quotes from the relevant authorities. What would it mean if the last proponent of scientism was pushed over with a quote? What would you do to commemorate the occasion? What are we doing when we cite Bohr against Churchland?

Well, I appreciate your interest in my posts.

I agree that what often is said in the name of metaphysics is pompous twaddle. But I'm taking issue with the implicit presumption in the OP - that nobody in their right mind could ever accept that metaphysics means anything. The argument is basically straight out of the positivist playbook - even though metaphysical statements appear grammatically and semantically coherent, they can't mean anything, or refer to anything real, so how can apparently intelligent people believe that they do? Then a bit of meta-analysis regarding why that might be, such as 'a desire for the world to be some way, and expressing this desire, typically secretly and unconsciously, by holding metaphysical views' which are 'existing on the border of the unconscious' - which is Freudian, rather than positivist, but still condescending in the extreme. And equally pompous twaddle, as far as I'm concerned.

So I brought up a discussion of the ontology of universals, from Russell's Principles of Philosophy, and other sources on the ontology of math, referencing a couple of articles from SEP and IEP. I note very little reaction to or comment on those issues, which are actually the kinds of things that academic metaphysics discusses. And I think that metaphysics can be perfectly intelligible in the appropriate context, conveyed by those who really understand it, even if you don't agree with them. I have in mind some of the Thomists and neo-Thomists, like Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, John Haldane. Of course, they go against the spirit of the age, because they're associated with religious philosophy.

What would it mean if the last proponent of scientism was pushed over with a quote? — csalisbury

You rarely change anyone's mind on these subjects, but a philosophy forum is an appropriate place to discuss them.

What are we doing when we cite Bohr against Churchland? — csalisbury

As I said, the context of that remark of Bohr's was after a lecture he gave to the Vienna Circle positivists, whom he plainly felt had not understood the drift of his remarks. Which is ironic, considering that the Vienna Circle's main concern was with make philosophy more scientifically-oriented. They're kind of the poster boys for scientism. This is the full context of the quote, as recounted by Bohr and recorded by Heisenberg:

Some time ago there was a meeting of philosophers, most of them positivists, here in Copenhagen, during which members of the Vienna Circle played a prominent part. I was asked to address them on the interpretation of quantum theory. After my lecture, no one raised any objections or asked any embarrassing questions, but I must say this very fact proved a terrible disappointment to me. For those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. Probably I spoke so badly that no one knew what I was talking about."

Later in their conversation, Bohr added,

"I can readily agree with the positivists about the things they want, but not about the things they reject. …Positivist insistence on conceptual clarity is, of course, something I fully endorse, but their prohibition of any discussion of the wider issues, simply because we lack clear-cut enough concepts in this realm, does not seem very useful to me—this same ban would prevent our understanding of quantum theory. — Neils Bohr

source

You may recall that ultimately the same criticism as Bohr says here, was made of A J Ayer's Language Truth and Logic (which I studied for a semester back in the day), which is that verificationism itself is not something which could ever be verified by its own criteria; philosophical positivism is not in itself an empirical theory. As my lecturer, David Stove, often wryly remarked of positivism, 'it's like the uroboros (i.e. the mythical snake that consumes itself.) The hardest part is the last bite!' :-)

I understand the critique of positivism or empiricism, or verificationism. Condensed: The empiricist's methods cannot be empirically verified, and so they have to ground what they're doing in something nonempirical. You can't verify verificationism, no. The snake eats it own tail, we stand and watch....

But the OP wasn't advocating for the opposite, so we're denied the satisfaction of watching the snake's own inevitable suicide (the snake's alive :mask: ) The point isn't one side is wrong, so it has to be the other. The point is each side can endlessly change the goalposts, and adust their language

For example, Verificationism is wrong, yet

Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, John Haldane. — Wayfarer

we are directed to the sources, verified. And their verification is important - one can cite Bohr, but not Velikovsky. One cites the SEP, or double underlines a quote is from a canonized text. The whole point of Bohr is that he's verified, that's why the quotes feel like they have a pique, or victory-oomph, when quoted, no?

I point out, that, despite your rejection of verification, you compulsively reference verified sources qua verified. Though you reject pure experience as authoritative, and refer to the non-empirical, a priori methodology, you always approach that methodology via empirically-derived understandings of which texts are authoritative. Bohr, not Velikovsky. SEP, not reddit. It becomes clear that, following your lead, we learn, through experience, how to approach experience. We have folded-over, double empiricism.

Well, doesn't a whole universe of objections pop up? But this subtle shifting will characterize all metaphysics. You can shuttle things around things endlessly. If you're clever enough, you can do the inverse of the move I just did to you, back to me, and then, if I'm clever enough, I can do it back to you; and if neither of us are clever enough, someone will come later to do it for us. And it can go on forever, if we're clever enough, or, at least, if the people that come after us are.

But what's more interesting is what we're doing when we do this, and why. I've noticed I tend to talk compulsively about the things I most need, that I'm most scared of evaporating if I don't talk about them, which means I never really had them to begin with, and could only convince myself of their reality by arguing for them against an enemy.

So you're saying it's self-evident that universals refer to nothing, and yet people have debated whether they refer to something. — Marchesk

Yes, basically.

If one can understand the terms of the debate and participate in the debate, then yes, it's meaningful. — Marchesk

Agreed. So how do we establish that one has understood the terms of the debate? The point is, this becomes self-fulfilling. One cannot question whether the terms of a debate are meaningful because if they weren't they wouldn't be terms in a debate. Simply using terms cannot in of itself be held as demonstration that they are meaningful, otherwise the Jabberwocky is meaningful.

Is the argument over universals a topic in sociology? — Marchesk

The argument over universals is meaningless. You brought up the fact that what we might really be arguing about is...

the questions around why and how we do it. — Marchesk

Those are topics in sociology and linguistics, yes.