They argue that a universal must be a mind-independent thing to be real but also that to be a particular is to be a mind-independent thing, and so they're saying that a universal must be a particular to be real. But of course that makes no sense. — Michael
But the concepts "matter", "spacetime", "atoms", etc are abstractions over particular instances. — Marchesk
Okay, so what is the Y for particulars? Particulars are a real ____?
It doesn't, if to be real is to be a mind-independent thing, where thing is a particular. But independent just means it doesn't depend on us thinking or perceiving Y, if you like.
For example, colors are real if they don't depend on organisms like us seeing stuff.
That the concept of matter is an abstraction is not that matter is an abstraction. — Michael
But it's the aboutness that determines whether not the theory is correct. Therefore if physics is about particulars then the truth of its theories depends on the existence of the particulars, not on the mind-independent existence of the abstractions that we require to make sense of the particulars. — Michael
I still don't understand the difference between being mind-independent and being a mind-independent thing. — Michael
Therefore if physics is about particulars then the truth of its theories depends on the existence of the particulars, not on the mind-independent existence of the abstractions that we require to make sense of the particulars. — Michael
So, I have been contending that Platonism, as traditionally conceived, is incoherent, that is all. — John
But what does that resemblance amount to? How is it to be explained, since we are dealing with particulars? — Marchesk
Trees are real to us humans, and many other terrestrial creatures. If you were a being whose body consisted solely of energy, and whose vision consisted of - I don't know - beams of neutrinos, then the whole notion of 'a tree' might be unintelligible to you.
Scientific realism starts with an image of the Universe. It is mediated by strict protocols, and the like, but it is nevertheless an image. It works, it is consistent, predictive - but when you're talking about fundamental existents, you can nevertheless call such things into question. — Wayfarer
That's what scientific realism means. What 'realism' meant in the context of the 'realism v nominalism' debate was something completely different to that, and it is important to understand how 'scientific realism' came about, and how it fits into the overal history of ideas, when you make statements like that. — Wayfarer
So it is of course true that F=MA whether or not anyone is aware of that fact, but, knowing such facts determines how we view the world. So i'm referring to 'mind' here, not as 'your mind' or 'my mind' or 'the contents of conscious thought', but the very framework of understanding within which anything we deem 'real' exists. — Wayfarer
What makes a neutrino a neutrino? All neutrinos have the same properties. Well, how is that possible? How can multiple particulars share the same properties? Or, how is it that you have the same properties across multiple particulars? — Marchesk
Because a neutrino is defined as that which is described using predicates X, Y, and Z. Your question is comparable to asking "why are all bachelors described as unmarried men?". — Michael
it shows the way that the mind itself understands and interprets reality, according to such things as 'number'. And grasping 'number' is close to grasping 'universals' - which is why Platonic realism generally accepts both the reality of universals, and of numbers, and why, conversely, nominalism tends to understand both as 'conventions' or 'mere words' or 'mere ideas'. — Wayfarer
So in that sense, the world isn't 'mind-independent'. Even if we imagine the world going on in our absence, or in the absence of the whole human species, that 'going on' is still imagined from an implicitly human perspective. Belief in the 'view from nowhere' is 'transcendental realism' - the construction of an idea of a universe with no observers in it. But I'm saying, it is literally impossible to conceive of such a world, because even to conceive of it requires an implicit perspective. — Wayfarer
Modern realism presumes 'mind-independence', because it implicitly tries to understand the nature of reality from no viewpoint, by bracketing out the subjective or the personal (as covered in Nagel's View from Nowhere.) — Wayfarer
Stating that neutrinos are defined as having certain predicates is to miss the problem, which is how we can predicate across particulars. What needs to be explained is the similarities between particulars. Universals play this role well, but they do so at the cost of being strange and hard to accommodate, particularly in their more extreme forms. — Marchesk
Seems to me universals are not needed at all. To understand a similarity between states, what we need to know is that those particulars share a certain expression of meaning. We predicate across particulars by knowing the particulars in comparison to each other, not by finding some form which exists regardless of particulars. — TheWillowOfDarkness
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