And yet you repeated none of those things, except in an abstract sense. And get a girlfriend - unless a gentlemanly decency had you omit that detail. — tim wood
Lovely idea. — Srap Tasmaner
Out there, nothing repeats. — tim wood
Anyway, what's so abstract about the pattern whiteness I see in clouds, snow, and other white objects? — TheMadFool
Anyway, what's so abstract about the pattern whiteness I see in clouds, snow, and other white objects?
— TheMadFool
You see a resemblance of a sort in clouds, snow, and other white objects. Yes? What is a resemblance, exactly? Think it through. If you can conclude that the notion of resemblance is in those things, and that is what you perceive, then kindly describe how that works? — tim wood
If I grab one of those ducks that are in a row and squeeze, I shall likely discover that ducks aren't always gentle and cute. It will bite and kick and quack up a storm. On the other hand, if I try to grab the row that they're putatively in, well, do you see a problem there?Define ‘thing’ without using a notion of pattern or relation. — Joshs
Arghhh! That is exactly what you do not do. First of all, what is "white"? Is white a one or a many, or is everything you see as white, the same white? And do you see them all simultaneously? I think not. But you see one, and attach a memory of what you think of as white. You see something else that reminds you, and you suppose them the same, and so on. That is, what you suppose you do, and admittedly what gets a certain amount of the world's work done, is not at all what happens. Not. At. All. Break it down, think it through.I see the color white in all white objects. That's all there is to it. — TheMadFool
That’s not a pattern. If you had a row of stones, 4 black, 1 white, repeating - then you’d have a pattern. ‘Whiteness’ in that sense is nearer to a Platonic universal. — Wayfarer
I'm just going to throw some shit out there, and see what sticks — unenlightened
I see the color white in all white objects. That's all there is to it.
— TheMadFool
Arghhh! That is exactly what you do not do. First of all, what is "white"? Is white a one or a many, or is everything you see as white, the same white? And do you see them all simultaneously? I think not. But you see one, and attach a memory of what you think of as white. You see something else that reminds you, and you suppose them the same, and so on. That is, what you suppose you do, and admittedly what gets a certain amount of the world's work done, is not at all what happens. Not. At. All. Break it down, think it through. — tim wood
It's getting late, but still worth a try. When you say repetition, I do not know what you mean in terms of the world that is. Nothing repeats. If repetition means anything, it is that you assign certain values to certain phenomena, that in sum you recollect as repetition. But nothing, in itself, repeated. Not even the sun coming up. That's the reality. What we do and think for convenience and utility something else, and not to be confused. — tim wood
Do I have a mind that imposes all kinds of regularities and even some irregularities? You bet! Are they i the world? No. Exercise: next time you see a tree you're accustomed to thinking of as green, take a good look at it especially if there's a wind and see just how many colors you can discern, even that aren't green. And then ask yourself where your notion of green came from, exactly.Does your life have a routine, a pattern, to it or no? — TheMadFool
Different things here. Even if my life were predictable - whatever that means - do you imagine you or anyone else could predict it?if you say "no", your life would have to be completely random. In short, are you, as one poster remarked, predictable? — TheMadFool
If you cannot get that these are abstract idea.... Ok, let's assume the sunrise repeats, that is, repetition is something the sun does, and you merely notice it, and not that you impose it in any way. So what exactly does the sun do on this morning that it also did the morning before. Ans.: nothing. If you think it did, try listing a few, and save us both the trouble by testing them yourself. I think that with even just a little critical thinking you will soon enough cure yourself of the non-critical parish-pump idea that such things are "out there."Nothing repeats? The sunrise, the tides, the seasons,.. — TheMadFool
Nothing repeats? The sunrise, the tides, the seasons,..
— TheMadFool
If you cannot get that these are abstract idea.... Ok, let's assume the sunrise repeats, that is, repetition is something the sun does, and you merely notice it, and not that you impose it in any way. So what exactly does the sun do on this morning that it also did the morning before. Ans.: nothing. If you think it did, try listing a few, and save us both the trouble by testing them yourself. I think that with even just a little critical thinking you will soon enough cure yourself of the non-critical parish-pump idea that such things are "out there." — tim wood
Does your life have a routine, a pattern, to it or no?
— TheMadFool
Do I have a mind that imposes all kinds of regularities and even some irregularities? You bet! Are they i the world? No. Exercise: next time you see a tree you're accustomed to thinking of as green, take a good look at it especially if there's a wind and see just how many colors you can discern, even that aren't green. And then ask yourself where your notion of green came from, exactly.
if you say "no", your life would have to be completely random. In short, are you, as one poster remarked, predictable?
— TheMadFool
Different things here. Even if my life were predictable - whatever that means - do you imagine you or anyone else could predict it? — tim wood
If you cannot get that these are abstract idea — tim wood
And how could it? The sun is different and in a different place, as is everything else. Nor even is the rising the same, it always in a different place and time. Everything different, nothing the same. Where is the repetition if not in your head as an abstract idea? — tim wood
Because to recognise a pattern is to simplify, and it is the thing that science and philosophy and literature and music all lean towards...
It is the very substance of the faculty of understanding,... It is surely what big brains are evolved to do. — unenlightened
I’m taking issue with the claim in the OP which is much stronger than that.
— Wayfarer
Clarify? I'll read. — tim wood
You do realize there is no such thing as sunrise, yes? The sun does not rise. The earth turns, and it's all a more-complicated-than-generally-understood dance reduced poetically to a single term, sunrise. And that idea can repeat all you want. — tim wood
But I’m taking issue with the idea that everything comes down to or can be understood in terms of patterns. — Wayfarer
I don’t know if philosophy can be said to have an essence — Wayfarer
According to Ernst Mayr, population thinking is a metaphysical theory. Mayr's essentialism, amounts to the view that types, including conceptual categories, are real while individual variation is illusionary. In contrast, population thinking entails the opposite view: Types are not real in nature, only individuals exist. According to Sober, the explanatory goal for essentialists is to find an underlying order that unites and underlies the variation one sees in nature. Population thinking as a methodological doctrine states that regularities that occur in populations such as extinction, speciation, and adaptation emerge from the collective activities of individuals. — Andre Ariew (Oxford Handbook of Biology)
Population thinking:
According to Ernst Mayr, population thinking is a metaphysical theory. Mayr's essentialism, amounts to the view that types, including conceptual categories, are real while individual variation is illusionary. In contrast, population thinking entails the opposite view: Types are not real in nature, only individuals exist. According to Sober, the explanatory goal for essentialists is to find an underlying order that unites and underlies the variation one sees in nature. Population thinking as a methodological doctrine states that regularities that occur in populations such as extinction, speciation, and adaptation emerge from the collective activities of individuals.
— Andre Ariew (Oxford Handbook of Biology)
If we expand population thinking to events, then regularities that occur in events such as the sun rising emerge from collectively perceived potential/significance of individual events. Patterns are not real in nature, only individual events exist. It is language concepts, then, that reify patterns such as ‘the sun rising’. — Possibility
Nothing repeats — tim wood
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