That you disagree with my thinking about numbers doesn't prove I am wrong, though. You don't actually argue a rival category: you don't say what type of entity you think a number is, — Olivier5
One could still validly ask: how come Mr Hacker has a body AND a mind, and how do these two work together (or not) within the entity called "Mr Hacker"? So the problem has not disappeared at all. It was just a slight of hands... — Olivier5
To repeat, to say that our ordinary talk of the mind is a mere façon de parler, or that it is a logical construction, is not to say there are no minds. On the contrary, it is to say that there are, only that they are not kinds of things. — Human Beings – The Mind and the Body: Wittgensteinian-Aristotelian Reflections - Peter M.S. Hacker, 2007
But note that Hacker said that asking what sort of entity a number is is a pernicious question. Which is to say, is it a question that is decidable according to some obvious or accepted criteria, or is it just a matter of deciding in favor of one's preferred philosophy (say, idealism or materialism)? — Andrew M
One's body and mind aren't entities that "work together" any more than the wax "works together" with the impression on it — Andrew M
The reason I don't think this is a language problem is that "mind" while hard to define for someone else is easy to define for one's self- we all know what our own mind is, even if we can't put into words just what it is. So, for any person who can think, they're going to realize it's impossible they can be mindless. — RogueAI
They're also going to ask themselves how a bunch of non-conscious stuff can combine a certain way with some electricity and produce conscious awareness. I don't see a language problem anywhere there. — RogueAI
That is not how I read the word pernicious, which to me implies that there is something untoward in the question. Otherwise all questions of philosophy would be pernicious: they are all about what criteria to use to judge things or categorize them. So "what is a chair?" would be just as pernicious as "what is a number?". — Olivier5
Careful scrutiny of the use of the word ‘mind’ will enable us to resist, at least pro tempore, the temptation to answer the philosophical question ‘What is the mind?’ by giving a definition. ‘The mind’ being a nominal, ‘What is the mind?’ is commonly construed as ‘What sort of entity is the mind?’ But this is as pernicious a question as ‘What sort of entity is a number?’ It raises the wrong kind of expectations, and sends us along the wrong paths before we have had a chance to get our bearings. So the first step to take is to examine the use of the noun ‘mind’. — Human Beings – The Mind and the Body: Wittgensteinian-Aristotelian Reflections - Peter M.S. Hacker, 2007
1 A thing with distinct and independent existence.
1.1 [mass noun] Existence; being.
I suspect Hacker has a specific problem with concepts.
So do you, apparently. In your example of the basket of apples, the basket functions as a set, whose cardinality is the number of apples. When you add an apple to the basket, you are adding an element to a set. And a set is a concept. — Olivier5
One's body and mind aren't entities that "work together" any more than the wax "works together" with the impression on it
— Andrew M
It does. The impressions change the shape of the wax. Wax accepts impressions, can be impressed. Aristotle chose the example of wax for a reason: because among all the materials that he could think of, wax was the most easily malleable. A piece of wood (xyle in greek, a word which Aristotle often used for his concept of matter) would not "work" as well in this metaphor. — Olivier5
it's easy to start imagining minds and numbers as things with distinct and independent existence. — Andrew M
Yet a water molecule was composed of three atoms prior to the emergence of humans in the universe, violating that dependency. — Andrew M
The point for me here is that the Aristotelian (holistic) conception of form and matter is fundamentally different to the Cartesian (dualistic) conception of mind and body. — Andrew M
it's easy to start imagining minds and numbers as things with distinct and independent existence.
— Andrew M
Yet a water molecule was composed of three atoms prior to the emergence of humans in the universe, violating that dependency.
— Andrew M
Aren't you contradicting yourself in those two paragraphs? In the first you say numbers have no mind- independent existence, and then you say the opposite in the second para. — Olivier5
I think we can do better than Aristotle. — Olivier5
Aristotle’s profound account of psuche was concerned with demarcating the animate from the inanimate, with the classification of the animate into (very general) categories according to the classes of powers that characterize living beings – the vegetative psuche and the sensitive psuche being the powers that characterize plant and non-human animal life. What is distinctive of humanity over and above the powers of the vegetative and sensitive psuche is the rational psuch – the ability to reason and to act for reasons. To have a mind, according to the Aristotelian-scholastic tradition, is to have an intellect and rational will. It is to be able to reason, to apprehend things as affording reasons for thinking, feeling and acting. It is to be able to deliberate, decide or choose what to do or believe, and to modify one’s feelings and attitudes, in the light of reasons. These far-reaching and complex powers are corollaries or consequences of being language-users. — Human Beings – The Mind and the Body: Wittgensteinian-Aristotelian Reflections - Peter M.S. Hacker, 2007
Per the above example, the quantity of atoms is independent of mind (real), but dependent on the atoms (immanent). So the quantity doesn't have an independent existence. — Andrew M
I think we can do better than Aristotle.
— Olivier5
Maybe, but it's worth noting that Aristotle's project was very different to Descartes' — Andrew M
My metric? — 180 Proof
What we empirically experience is not 'material stuff' but merely qualities of experience. Someone, somewhere, sometime, decided to call these qualities 'material' but there's no actual reason to do so. And as far as I know, nobody has ever given a reason to do so.
Qualities exist, what they are called is, as far as I can tell, irrelevant. The real question is: are these qualities true, and real? And that's the problem of universals. If these qualities aren't genuine, nothing is. Because reality exists only in relation to qualities in experience juxtaposed to other qualities. Hence, nominalism is nihilism. Only Platonism (in the broad sense) can make sense of our qualities of experience.
The 'string' upon which these 'pearls' rest. — Dharmi
I'm an 'epicurean-spinozist' (or absurdist) meaning that aponia & ataraxia without transcendent illusions (or sisyphusean eudaimonia) is (my) "hedonism".... how do you entrench yourself in the realm of materialism without trickling down into excessive hedonism? — Ignance
Materialism is, in my understanding, an enabling-constraint on explanations (that coarse-grains away 'immaterialist' considerations & ad hockery) and is not itself an explanatory hypothesis. Read some studies in cultural anthropology (re: amazement) & cognitive / developmental psychology (re: musical experience).materialism may be more “efficient” per say as for the survival of an organism, but it doesn’t explain why im amazed at gazing out into the void of the universe, or the experience of a song that i really like.
Why wouldn't it for that very reason? Besides, we humans are proximate, not "ultimate", beings, so things need not "matter ultimately" to us – what could "ultimately matter" even mean? – for them to matter at all.if it’s just material, why does it ultimately matter?
Well, for starters, we humans have excessively large forebrains ... :smirk:why not focus on biological goals exclusively such as reproduction then?
I never said "philosophy" was "useful" "in a practical manner". I say materiality offers a less maladaptive stance than any immaterialist stance (e.g. shared practices are less maladaptive than 'dogmas'; fallibility is less maladaptive than 'infallibility'; clinical medicine is less maladaptive than 'faith healing'; public health & hygiene are less maladaptive than 'exorcism & mortification'; sustainable ecology is less maladaptive than 'anthropocentricity'; esp. for humans, the cooked is less maladaptive than 'the raw'; dancing is less maladaptive than 'astral projecting', sound logic is less maladaptive than 'occult magic'; etc). :mask:i don’t think much good philosophy can come from by how “useful” it is in a practical manner.
I understand where you're coming from. My reply before was kind of pompous sounding. You sound sympathetic to mysterianism. — RogueAI
Per the above example, the quantity of atoms is independent of mind (real), but dependent on the atoms (immanent). So the quantity doesn't have an independent existence.
— Andrew M
This is a mistake. Before you can count anything, you have to set the boundaries of what you want to count. Those boundaries are not real, they are postulated, conceived by the person counting. — Olivier5
For instance, I fail to see how to ground logic on forms. — Olivier5
Criticisms of Aristotle’s logic often assume that what Aristotle was trying to do coincides with the basic project of modern logic.
...
Aristotle, however, is involved in a specialized project. He elaborates an alternative logic, specifically adapted to the problems he is trying to solve.
Aristotle devises a companion-logic for science. He relegates fictions like fairy godmothers and mermaids and unicorns to the realms of poetry and literature. In his mind, they exist outside the ambit of science. This is why he leaves no room for such non-existent entities in his logic. This is a thoughtful choice, not an inadvertent omission. Technically, Aristotelian science is a search for definitions, where a definition is “a phrase signifying a thing’s essence.” (Topics, I.5.102a37, Pickard-Cambridge.) To possess an essence—is literally to possess a “what-it-is-to-be” something (to ti en einai). — Aristotle: Logic - IEP
All human beings are animals.
Socrates is a human being.
Therefore, Socrates is an animal.
Materialism is, in my understanding, an enabling-constraint on explanations (that fine-grains out 'immaterialist' considerations & ad hockery) and is not itself an explanatory hypothesis. — 180 Proof
I choose what to measure and how to measure it. But when I do so, that I measure three atoms in a water molecule doesn't depend on my mind, it depends on the water molecule itself. — Andrew M
Otherwise aren't you effectively saying that the world isn't real, but mind-dependent?
So logic about forms is, basically, logic about things that we investigate naturally. For example, what-is-it-to-be a human being? Well, what differentiates us from other animals is our language and reasoning capabilities. A word signifying that might be "rationality", i.e., what-it-is-to-be a human being is to be a rational animal. So that's a definition. But note that rationality isn't itself something substantial like a Cartesian mind. It is instead a formalization of one class of things (human beings) in terms of a broader class of things (animals), with a differentiating criterion (rationality). — Andrew M
Using Collingwood's presupposition analysis:
1) You are assuming there is such a thing as "the water molecule itself", as opposed to, say, one single Schrödinger equation describing the whole universe. — Olivier5
2) You are in your mind conceiving ONE such molecule, so you are already counting right from the start. — Olivier5
Otherwise aren't you effectively saying that the world isn't real, but mind-dependent?
No. If one considers one's own mind as real, then things that are mind-dependent can be perfectly real so the distinction "mind vs real" does not apply. — Olivier5
All I am saying is that numbers are concepts. They are made in the mind. Otherwise, who's counting? — Olivier5
My question is not about how to use logic on forms, but how does logic itself emerge from the geometric (spatial) shape of things. — Olivier5
Morphe never means mere shape, but shapeliness, which implies the act of shaping, and eidos, after Plato has molded its use, is never the mere look of a thing, but its invisible look, seen only in speech (Aristotle's Physics 193a 31). Idea, from the same root as eidos, is used primarily when technical discussions within Plato's Academy are referred to, but the English words "idea" and "ideal" are distortions of it, suggesting something that can only be present in thought, which no-one who used the Greek word intended. — Joe Sachs (translator of Aristotle's works)
Logic comes from the Greek word logos, originally meaning "the word" or "what is spoken", but coming to mean "thought" or "reason". — Logic: History - Wikipedia
So we all make assumptions. But that doesn't imply that what we're talking about - water molecules, say - have a dependency on our assumptions - or even on our existence. — Andrew M
Our language, and consequently logic, emerges as a result of our interactions with things in the world. — Andrew M
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