What is it that you would contrast mathematical elements to? What is it that completes the sentence "mathematical elements are real, not..."? — Banno
Neoplatonic mathematics is governed by a fundamental distiction which is indeed inherent in Greek science in general, but is here most strongly formulated. According to this distinction, one branch of mathematics participates in the contemplation of that which is in no way subject to change, or to becoming and passing away. This branch contemplates that which is always such as it is and which alone is capable of being known: for that which is known in the act of knowing, being a communicable and teachable possession, must be something that is once and for all fixed.
Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, “has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science.” The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he’ll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?
I am not sure I understand how one is supposed to access or understand 'pure ideas' such as truth or beauty in order to appreciate them in our reality. — Tom Storm
So presumably an idealist, who makes judgements about beauty is identifying how an instantiation of something (a sculpture or painting, say) reflects an ideal form. Ditto ethics. — Tom Storm
Sure. I specifically am asking for an idealist account of this so I can better understand the thinking. — Tom Storm
So much could be contained in this one statement. — Tom Storm
Any idealism worthy of the name goes further, insisting that there cannot even be a way that things are without mind. — Banno
You apparently wish to be both an idealist and a realist. I can't see, on the logic offered, how you could make these compatible. — Banno
The way things are is different dependent on one's spatial-temporal perspective, and only a mind cam have such a perspective. This is the fundamental principle of relativity theory. — Metaphysician Undercover
Numbers are not free-floating entities that minds find and interact with. — Real Gone Cat
Should that neurologist be able to cause the exact same synapse pattern to fire an hour later, what do you think will happen? — Real Gone Cat
I am not sure I understand how one is supposed to access or understand 'pure ideas' such as truth or beauty in order to appreciate them in our reality. — Tom Storm
A genuine (scholastic) realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom — Joshua Hochschild, What's Wrong with Ockham?Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West
the particular synapse pattern associated with "3" that accompanies the 3 apples I see today is not exactly the same as the 3 miles I must drive tomorrow. But some commonality will exist. — Real Gone Cat
"Real" gets its meaning by being contrasted to what is not real. It's real money, not counterfeit; it's a real van Gogh, not a print; it's a real lake, not an hallucination.
What is it that you would contrast mathematical elements to? What is it that completes the sentence "mathematical elements are real, not..."? — Banno
you seem to define what is 'real' as if the category were clear (in terms of its membership criteria) and we could assign certain things to it - numbers, logical laws etc. But I don't see how you've arrived at those membership criteria. The set {all things which are real} doesn't seem to be well defined. — Isaac
Where and how do you draw the line here so as to be able to make the distinction you’re trying to make between what is constructed and what is prior to and independent of construction? — Joshs
an authoritative and life-altering wisdom — Joshua Hochschild, What's Wrong with Ockham?Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West
Note how every instantiation of idealism is also a tool of power. It creates, in each instance, a class of people who can 'see' and those who cannot. — Isaac
having said all this, just because there are powerplays doesn't make it ipso facto wrong. — Tom Storm
I am wanting is someone to defend or steelman a version of idealism..... — Tom Storm
philosophy wants to get the roots, the total, the ultimate, the general, the universal. The problem is that philosophy gets the ultimate by using the primitive instruments I said before. — Angelo Cannata
The result is that we would define the universe by saying, for example, that it must be necessarily “a shouting banana on a chair”, or a “guitar shouting to a banana”. Why are these example ridiculous? It is because they try to define something extremely wide, great, extended, general, which is the universe, by extremely specific words like the ones I used. We don’t realize how ridiculous is to talk about “material”, “external”, “exists”, and so on, because we think that those concepts are wide, great, general, so that they are appropriate to talk about the universe. Once we realize that those great concepts are actually extremely rough, unclear, local, limited, then we can understand how ridiculous is to talk about “external material world”. — Angelo Cannata
when we talk about such big things, like “space”, “time” and so on, we are actually moving inside the cage of our mental categories — Angelo Cannata
Don’t confuse science and materialism. Science assumes materialism for practical reasons, it’s when it becomes a philosophical ideology that it is problematical. There are many scientists who don’t hold to it. — Wayfarer
I agree that those concepts are quite unclear, but I do not understand what do you mean by them being rough, local and limited — Hello Human
It all hinges on the meaning of the word "external" as used in the OP question, doesn't it? External in what sense, external to what? And precisely how is it external to the what? — charles ferraro
But we can watch others directly interact with things, and so need not assume that this is untrue of ourselves. — NOS4A2
But the cogito is NOT a view of idealism. Descartes is a dualist. — L'éléphant
Don't you exist independently of other conscious beings? — Luke
Since those conscious beings each have material bodies, then there is something material which exists independently of you: other people. Otherwise, do you assume that we are each free-floating consciousnesses without material bodies? — Luke
So, I would like to "hear" your own position on your own subject "Is there an external material world?" — Alkis Piskas
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