Then, you need to think in terms of meaning, not just glyphs. — Olivier5
There is likely very little difference between what you conceive as Pi and what I conceive as Pi. Nevertheless, there will always be one guy or another out there who has a different conception, e.g. who thinks that Pi is equal to 3, or that it's a rational number.
Therefore the term "universal" is not really correct, even for Pi. I guess the word "concept" is better here, as it expresses the possibility of a personal or personalized concept, whereas a "universal" cannot logically be "personal". — Olivier5
I have not and would not deny the existence of concepts. — Isaac
If we take a mathematical example, I think we can agree that the number Pi (singular) is not "physical" in the sense that it is not an individual thing out there that people can see or take in their hand, and that the number Pi is therefore an idea. But we can also agree that it is a very precisely defined idea that leaves very little room, if any, for personal interpretation. — Olivier5
Dealing with the category of circles, taking perfection -- the average shape of a circular thing irl -- as a symbol of any referent (generalisation), was a way of making predictions about physical objects and processes — Kenosha Kid
(setting aside that circles have a precise conceptual definition, not based on an average of approximate circles) — Olivier5
our experiences of real, imperfect, circular things is prior to our concepts of circles. — Kenosha Kid
it doesn't make them less interesting to precise and refine... — Olivier5
In that sense I agree that precise concepts are not fundamental to our experience. They are derived from it, but in my mind precise concepts are nevertheless useful, and to the degree that they are useful, they aquire reality, if only as useful hypotheses. — Olivier5
The key factor here is that nominalism allows for each of these concepts to be exactly the neurons on which they are coded in each individual's brain. A different entity in each brain, just very, very similar to each other example. — Isaac
To require a non-physical stuff you need a true universal, something which cannot reside in each individual's brain because it is mind independent, so identical in each instance that it is one entity (law of identity), which means it cannot reside in each person's brain (otherwise each instance would have a different location and so be a separate thing). — Isaac
Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once. — Feser
It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ...In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea'...also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts. — Bertrand Russell, The World of Universals
Really modelled in your real brain. — Kenosha Kid
Not only in mine, that's the hick. — Olivier5
What you are saying is that "universals" are not as universal as we may think, their limits are hazy, which is true and indeed an important point in that the verification of universals by interviewing locutors is never perfect. You can always find a guy who disagrees somewhere. — Olivier5
Yes, but more than this: we define demarcations of categories individually. Homogeneity of environment, pedagogy, similar objects of experience, and feedback help to make our models similar, while differences in experience and minor differences in hardware will ensure that no two models are identical. It's like DNA... yours is yours, individual enough to convict you of a crime, but similar enough to mine to make us the same kind of object. — Kenosha Kid
I agree that much too much is made of "universals", that they are not as universal as they seem, and they only need to be sufficiently universal, or somewhat homogenous across individuals, not perfectly equal, like in your example of human DNA. — Olivier5
Didn't we just play this tune though? — Kenosha Kid
So it's being on a plane is not a property of your ideal triangle? — Isaac
Would a non-euclidean object with those properties still be a triangle? — Isaac
What about shapes matching that description but in non-standard topologies? — Isaac
They could not simply derive the answers by comparing their new objects to some ideal form — Isaac
So are we mis-naming the things we commonly call triangles? — Isaac
There's only yours, mine, everyone else's. — Isaac
All, no doubt very similar to your ideas, since we share a culture, language community, biology etc. — Isaac
and plenty of evidence from developmental psychology that we use our own personal models to identity objects, not ethereal universal ones. — Isaac
As has already been shown, neural activity shows no such regularities or patterns that can be discerned when the brain is exposed even to a simple stimulus. — Wayfarer
To require a non-physical stuff you need a true universal, something which cannot reside in each individual's brain because it is mind independent, so identical in each instance that it is one entity (law of identity), which means it cannot reside in each person's brain (otherwise each instance would have a different location and so be a separate thing). — Isaac
Which is just what universals are. — Wayfarer
Would a non-euclidean object with those properties still be a triangle? — Isaac
If it’s non Euclidean it wouldn’t have straight edges. — khaled
What about shapes matching that description but in non-standard topologies? — Isaac
If it’s not on a standard topology it wouldn’t have straight edges. — khaled
False, that’s exactly how they found the answer. They had the ideal form, and checked if a non Euclidean “triangle” can have its proprieties. It can’t. Then they checked if non standard topologies can. They can’t. Etc. — khaled
So are we mis-naming the things we commonly call triangles? — Isaac
Technically yes. — khaled
Definition of triangle
1 : a polygon having three sides — Merriam Webster
Definition of straight
(Entry 1 of 4)
1a : free from curves, bends, angles, or irregularities
There's only yours, mine, everyone else's. — Isaac
If someone’s idea of a triangle includes that it is comprised of 4 vertices, don’t we have justification to tell them they’re wrong? From where do we get that justification? — khaled
“very similar” is not enough. When speaking of geometry, it has to be exact. — khaled
you do admit there is a unified idea of “triangle” that we all (basically) share. — khaled
you seem quite happy to paraphrase the results from a paper in neuroscience as if you understood it without a hint of humility. — Isaac
in any case you do admit there is a unified idea of “triangle” that we all (basically) share.
So why can’t the same be said of New York? Or “A”? — khaled
don't you think the claim that ideas are 'represented in' or 'inscribed on' neurons is rather confused? Because it seems to me, amateur that I am, that both 'representation' and 'inscription' refer to semiotics or semantics. How could a physical state or disposition of elements 'represent' anything, in that sense? Do you see what I'm questioning? — Wayfarer
in any case you do admit there is a unified idea of “triangle” that we all (basically) share.
So why can’t the same be said of New York? Or “A”? — khaled
Good development. So there exist what we could call "near universals", concepts that we all or nearly all agree about, like Euclidian triangles. — Olivier5
What we're in the business of doing when we have 'ideas' is the modelling of the hidden states we assume are causal in respect to our sensations. Triangles, letter 'A's, some multiple of similar objects, a city... these are all postulates, models of the causes of the sensations we receive. The same is true of thoughts. Thoughts are all recalled post hoc — Isaac
that yields the sensation (interoception) - 'triangle'. — Isaac
But isn’t this a problem for science? I mean, science of all types must assume the basic rules of inference to even begin to hazard what such and such neural data means. And science has been doing that with respect to a vast range of subjects for hundreds of years. So there must be some a priori principles to even propose such a theory. — Wayfarer
When you understand a logical principle, or algorithm, say, to make a prediction, or solve some arcane mathematical conjecture - how can this be possibly be categorised as a ‘sensation’? — Wayfarer
So if the concept you have in mind is demonstrably post hoc relative the the actual mechanism your brain uses to identify triangles, then it must either be coincidental (possible), or it must be itself a model of the that process, an inference of what's going on (the hidden states) in the subconscious mind, that yields the sensation (interoception) - 'triangle'. — Isaac
The disagreement is over the existence of actual universals, not over things which are nearly, or quite like universals. The distinction is absolutely crucial for the argument at hand because the law of identity would have us hold that only where the concepts are identical in every way can they be said to be one entity, identical with itself. Otherwise we're talking about several entities, all very, very, very similar. No matter how many 'very's I put in there, it will not be enough to qualify as identical and so not one unity requiring it's own existence. — Isaac
I doubt it, seriously. Science as a whole is but a façon de parler that happens to be useful... I think your quest here is not knowledge-driven. Rather, it is a self-defeating metaphysical crusade against concepts, i.e. against yourself. Like all naïve materialists, you are sawing the conceptual branch on which you sit.when we're discussing something like the physicality of the mind, that contextual convenience does not just carry over by default. The context has changed, it may no longer be convenient to use the façon de parler in this new context.... in fact it's getting very much in the way. — Isaac
our insistence on treating educated adults as if they come shrink-wrapped and fully formed is particularly apparent in philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the Rationalists of the Enlightenment. — Kenosha Kid
Let us agree then that anything that has sufficient resemblance to universals is a universal, for all reasonable purposes. — Olivier5
Well then we'd have multiple, slightly differing universals, a definitional contradiction. — Isaac
why redefine universalism to resemble nominalism, why not just call it nominalism in the first place? — Isaac
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