Universals are real, they are just not actual. Hospitality is real, but it is no where to be found. — Cavacava
Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because 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.
Would it be incorrect to understand universals as "POTENTIALS OF EVERYTHING THAT IS POSSIBLE"? — darthbarracuda
My objection to the idea of " a huge universe of abstracta" existing is that we have no idea what it means. For me it is really no better than gibberish. — John
I read it and it said precisely nothing about what it means for an abstraction to exist; and you haven't augmented your paucity of explanation since. If you can't be bothered explaining yourself then fine; I'm happy to end this here. — John
You still haven't said anything about how the existence of your computer is analagous or similar to the supposed existence of abstracta. — John
I have no idea what it means to say 'abstractions exist' — John
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