Where do clouds come from? — 180 Proof

Evaporation of water from the oceans that condenses in the cooler air as small droplets, I think.

Where do ocean-waves come from? — 180 Proof

Ah, that's the wind I think, causing ripples on the surface which grow. Not sure on the precise mechanics.

Where do sunspots come from? — 180 Proof

Don't know that one, sorry.

Aren't these items for a physics forum though?

I'm asking how exactly does an idea like 2+2=4 cease to exist. You seem to say it dies when the last representative in its equivalence class dies, but don't address how the last idea (or any idea) could cease to exist. — Art48

It seems to me that, without realizing it, you assuming what you want to prove. It's as if you are still assuming some kind of transhuman ideastuff that precedes and outlasts us. I presume you imagine an infinitely fine strand of angel's hair to run from human expressions like '2 + 2 = 4' to a particular associated mindcrystal in the platonisphere. I'm being playfully and explicitly metaphorical here to maybe dig out the unrecognized metaphoricity of your own thinking. I know the platonisphere or mindscape is not a 'normal' place. Can you give a meaning to your signs here ? Are we dealing with a piece of white mythology ? *

Consider also the equivalence class {1/2, 2/4, 4/8,...}. The mainstream view is that this entire class/set is a rational number most familiarly represented as '1/2.' Any member of the set can function as a name for the set, so it has many names. In fact it's even just the set of its names. We have a bunch of objects whose differences make no difference for this or that purpose. If all of those objects are lost, it's hard to see how the set (which is something like the similarity of certain objects) isn't lost too.

*Detail on metaphorical point

I was thinking how the Metaphysicians, when they make a language for themselves, are like … knife-grinders, who instead of knives and scissors, should put medals and coins to the grindstone to efface … the value… When they have worked away till nothing is visible in these crown pieces, neither King Edward, the Emperor William, nor the Republic, they say: ‘These pieces have nothing either English, German, or French about them; we have freed them from all limits of time and space; they are not worth five shillings any more ; they are of inestimable value, and their exchange value is extended indefinitely.’ (WM 210). — Anatole France

The idea is that metaphysical terms are anemic or whitewashed myths that have lost their vividness. Breath becomes the soul and we forget we are still savages trading hieroglyphics. We know not what we mean...but what can I mean by that ?

The “usury” of the sign (the coin) signifies the passage from the physical to the metaphysical. Abstractions now become “worn out” metaphors; they seem like defaced coins, their original, finite values now replaced by a vague or rough idea of the meaning-images that may have been present in the originals.

Such is the movement which simultaneously creates and masks the construction of concepts. Concepts, whose real origins have been forgotten, now only yield an empty sort of philosophical promise – that of “the absolute”, the universalized, unlimited “surplus value” achieved by the eradication of the sensory or momentarily given. — link

https://iep.utm.edu/met-phen/#H4

"Where do thoughts come from?" :roll:

And isn't this topic for a cognitive neuroscience forum?

I'm puzzled why there have been so many posts about the word "exist". — Art48

To me it's the opposite of puzzling. One of the things a philosopher does is help people see that they don't or only barely know what they are talking about. The obvious and the familiar are exactly the rocks under which our deepest and most hobbling prejudices hide. Or that's one theory.

And isn't this topic for a cognitive neuroscience forum? — 180 Proof

It might be, and it's definitely a topic for a philosophy forum.

Why? What's philosophical about the question?

Establishing the mind-independent existence of abstract objects (numbers) might be hard enough, — Jamal

To me there's also the problem of establishing what one even means or can mean by mind-independent abstract objects. It's a bit like the hunt for round squares.

Why? — 180 Proof

Because the matter is not settled in the way that clouds waves and sunspots are.

Are they settled? Your answers to those question, for example, seem underdetermined (guesses) at best. Besides, just because a question lacks a "settled" answer doesn't make it philosophical (e.g. How many grains of sand are on all the beaches on Earth today?)

Last point. You can also think of signs as imperfectly repeatable patterns in the 'tornado' of what we humans do on this planet. It's as if there were a mindscape. It's a good metaphor for certain purposes. It's as if there was a ghost in the machine. This metaphor made a certain kind of sense along with a certain kind of nonsense. The problems arise when yesterday's optional metaphors are misunderstood by today as necessity, as brutely given and 'obvious.' This to me is why a focus on what we even think we mean is so often appropriate.

Are they settled? — 180 Proof

My answers to them were shite. The method for answering these questions, at least up to a certain depth is settled though in a way that the origin of ideas is not. We don't even know how to go about answering the question of where ideas come from.

It is a big step and probably the cause of much discussion in this thread. That 2+2=4 is eternal is one thing. — Art48

atever word someone wants to use), it's difficult to see how it could go out of existence or cease to be. — Art48

Let us see if we can provide a clearer path to seeing one’s way out of this conceptual muddle. I will use the “2+2=4” example.

1. We needs to recognize that humans invented the symbolism of “2+2=4”. Other symbolism could be used, and I am sure other humans have used different symbolism.

2. What makes these symbolisms the same is how they are used by humans. It is not that they refer to the same eternal objects.

3. “2+2=4” symbolism will cease to exist if there are no more humans using these symbols for any purpose. In fact, they will cease being symbols.

4. But one could say, even if there are no more human around, there could be two trees, etc. Yes, but there is not a tree and another tree, and “two-ness”, just a tree and another tree.

5. Last step, let us imagine we have no symbolism, nor anything else in the universe to count. What is left to articulate? Remember, humans do not exist, our symbolism does not exist, and the physical universe does not exist.

I would say this is easier or as easy “to see” as adding “Mindscape”/“Platonic realms”. And if we value parsimony, dropping “Mindscape/Platonic realms” would be wise.

I'm asking how exactly does an idea like 2+2=4 cease to exist. You seem to say it dies when the last representative in its equivalence class dies, but don't address how the last idea (or any idea) could cease to exist. — Art48
It seems to me that, without realizing it, you assuming what you want to prove. — green flag

Do you believe ideas exist (or subsist or whatever word you wants to use). If no, then end of discussion. If yes, then do you believe an idea can cease to exist? If no, then end of discussion. If yes, then how?

1. We needs to recognize that humans invented the symbolism of “2+2=4”. Other symbolism could be used, and I am sure other humans have used different symbolism. — Richard B

The symbolism seems to me entirely irrelevant. The idea 2+2=4 can be represented in Roman numerals, binary notation, the Babylonian number system, etc.

2. What makes these symbolisms the same is how they are used by humans. It is not that they refer to the same eternal objects. — Richard B

Would not basic arithmetical facts be true in all possible worlds? That were any sentient rational species to evolve elsewhere in the universe, then these would still obtain?

I'm asking how exactly does an idea like 2+2=4 cease to exist. — Art48

It neither begins to exist, nor ceases to exist, because it does not, in fact, exist. It is real only as an intellectual operation. What impressed the ancient Greeks about mathematical truths was precisely this lack of temporal delimitation. It was deemed ‘higher’ because it was not subject to change, unlike the objects of sensory perception.

It neither begins to exist, nor ceases to exist, because it does not, in fact, exist. — Wayfarer

Is there a word you prefer instead of "exist"?

I'm pressing the point that there is a difference between reality and existence. That there are things - they are not actually 'things' - that are real, but that they don't exist, in the sense that chairs and tables and other objects of perception exist. Whereas there is a vast range of intelligible relationships and forms that can only be grasped through the operations of reason. But, as Jacques Maritain says, in mankind, the senses are so 'permeated with reason' that we appeal to reason without noticing that in so doing we are constantly appealing to something that doesn't exist in the material or phenomenal sense, and so we overlook it, or take it for granted. This is one of the consequences of the cultural impact of empiricism, subject of Maritain's essay.

In everyday speech, it is acceptable to say that the law of the excluded middle exists, or that the number 7 exists. But, if you read up on the philosophical controversies around platonism, which is precisely the argument about the sense in which abstract objects exist, you will discover that this is very much a live debate. In what sense are abstract objects (what you are describing imprecisely as 'thought') real?

Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing “outside of space and time” makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.

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? — What is Math? Smithsonian Institute

There is an answer to that, of course: empiricism is indispensable when it comes to things we can touch and feel. But it is in no way a boundary condition of knowledge which is how it is nowadays treated.

↪Art48
I'm pressing the point that there is a difference between reality and existence. That there are things - they are not actually 'things' - that are real, but that they don't exist, in the sense that chairs and tables and other objects of perception exist. — Wayfarer

Wayfarer,

Thanks for your response. Perhaps we differ on the following fundamental point. In my view, chairs and tables and other “objects” of perception are theoretical constructs, i.e., ideas. I do not directly perceive a table. Rather, I directly perceive rectangular, brownish patches of light and the idea of a table arises in my mind. If I touch the “table”, I experience the hard, smooth tactile sensation I expect the “table” to have. If I rap it, I hear what I expect to hear. Similarly, in a mirage I directly experience a shimming sensation that I associate with the idea of water. But if I try to take a drink, I realize my idea is wrong.

As the brain in a vat thought experiment demonstrates, objects are theoretical constructs that make sense of what we experience. A brain in a vat could have exactly the same sensations as I, have exactly the same ideas as I, believe it is experiencing the exactly same exterior world as I, but nonetheless be mistaken: it would in fact be experiencing no objects at all, only sensations.

So, in my view, I directly experience sensations: i.e., the five physical senses, emotions, and thoughts. Everything else is an idea that makes sense of my perceptions.

Therefore, my sensations have a more secure epistemological status than a theoretical construct I create to explain my sensations. My ideas certainly have reality and existence. Matter, maybe, maybe not.

not to be take too literally. — Art48

Meh. Not to be taken too seriously, either.

Your thread is a classic of how language can lead one up the philosophical garden path.

Would not basic arithmetical facts be true in all possible worlds? — Wayfarer

Interesting question. There is a lot to unravel here when using terms like "facts", "true", and "possible worlds" which will lead to much confusion.

1. What is an "arithmetical fact"? That we use a human invented symbolism like "2+2=4" and that this has rules of use, and has application in our world. OK. Or, do you mean "2+2=4" is a fact because it corresponds to some eternal idea. I reject this later position as metaphysical nonsense.

2. What make "arithmetical facts" true? That we use these human invented symbolisms like "2+2=4", we agree on the use, we agree on judging correctness. Ok. Or, do you mean "2+2=4"is true because it corresponds correctly to some eternal idea. I reject this later position as metaphysical nonsense. (As Wittgenstein says in PI 241"So you are saying that human agreement decided what is true and what is false?- It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. This is not agreement in opinions but in form of life."

3. Lastly, what to make of "true in all possible worlds"? First, I like what Saul Kripke said in N&N, "In the present monograph I argued against the misuses of the concept that regard possible worlds as something like distant planets, like our own surroundings but somehow existing in a different dimension, or lead to spurious problems of 'transworld identification." and "'Possible worlds' are stipulated, not discovered by powerful telescopes." Are you thinking this very thing by discussing other sentient being across the universe? Second, is it not hard to imagine a fictitious natural history where human do not have this symbolism, its use, its general agreement in judgment? If so, it would not be "true in all possible worlds".

"'To be practical, mathematics must tells us facts.'-But do these facts have to be, the mathematical facts?-But why should not mathematics, instead of 'teaching us facts', create the forms of what we call facts?" From Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, Wittgenstein.

So, in my view, I directly experience sensations: i.e., the five physical senses, emotions, and thoughts. Everything else is an idea that makes sense of my perceptions. — Art48

I don't question any of that. However, you also interpret meanings, which is why you are able to communicate in writing. That is not something reducible to sensations.

What is an "arithmetical fact"? That we use a human invented symbolism like "2+2=4" and that this has rules of use, and has application in our world. OK. Or, do you mean "2+2=4" is a fact because it corresponds to some eternal idea. — Richard B

I think the way you're putting it somewhat reifies it. What I mean by 'all possible worlds' is simply that basic arithmetical propositions such as those we're discussing, are necessarily true. I understand Wittgenstein, Austin and the ordinary language philosophers are averse to metaphysics, but I don't share their aversion. In any case, I'm of the view that at least some of the fundamental elements of arithmetic and logic are not the inventions of humans, but are discovered by humans who have developed the intelligence to be able to grasp them. Conversely, I don't believe that the basic furniture of reason is dependent on the human mind or are simply conventions. Yes, this has metaphysical implications, but that's what interests me. I'm interested in the history of the subject, and of how scholastic realism regarding universals was displaced by nominalism and eventually by today's empiricism.

What make "arithmetical facts" true? — Richard B

Well, a vulgar example is, get your maths wrong, and your bridge will collapse or your rocket will blow up at launch. And so on. But that's applied mathematics. What makes basic arithmetical operations true is kind of a redundant question - I don't know if it can be explained. Mathematics after all is the source of the explanation of many other things, but asking why it's true, is rather like asking why two and two are four, which doesn't have an answer. Or, to the question, what does two plus two equal, the answer 'four' is the terminus of explanation, as it were.

What I'm interested in exploring is the ontology of number, as I've indicated. And I'm also interested in Wigner's 'unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in the natural sciences'. I think it says something interesting.

they don't exist, in the sense that chairs and tables and other objects of perception exist — Wayfarer

What’s the difference between saying they exist in a different way, and saying they don’t exist but they’re real? What have you got against the use of “exist” for ideas, numbers, etc.?

What about nations and conversations?

If both tables and numbers are real, but only tables can also be said to exist, then it looks like you’re downgrading numbers just because they’re not objects of physical science.

I think @Art48 is right to question your terminological critique.

What have you got against the use of “exist” for ideas, numbers, etc.? — Jamal

I noticed that something that is characteristic of phenomenal objects is that they are temporally delimited - they come into and go out of existence - and they are composed of parts. Numbers - well, prime number, but anyway - don't come into and go out of existence, and are not composed of parts.
They can be described in terms of of Frege's 'third realm' - the realm of abstract objects such as numbers, sets, and functions. He believed that these abstract objects existed independently of the physical world and the mind, and that they had a different kind of reality that was not reducible to either physical or mental phenomena.

According to Frege, this third realm was a necessary foundation for mathematics, which he saw as a discipline concerned with the study of these abstract objects. He argued that mathematical concepts such as "2+2=4" were not simply facts about physical objects or mental states, but were instead true in virtue of the abstract objects they referred to. It is generally regarded as platonist, although Frege did not really articulate it in those terms, it more that he simply assumed it to be true. (See Tyler Burge, Frege on Knowing the Third Realm.)

it looks like you’re downgrading numbers just because they’re not objects of physical science. — Jamal

Not at all. I believe that numbers, principles, natural laws, and the like, belong to a different realm to the phenomenal domain, but that generally modern philosophy has lost sight of this differentiation. As Russell points out in the chapter I referred to above about universals, they exist 'no-where and no-when', but they're real nevertheless. But I think that's the gist of Platonic epistemology, as outlined in the Analogy of the Divided Line in the Republic. As a consequence, we tend to think that what is real, and what exists, are synonymous, but I'm arguing that what exists is only one aspect of what is real.

I get that it's a form of metaphysics, and I also get that this style of metaphysics is very unpopular, but it interests me.

Yes, but why concede to the physicalists that the things of the third realm don't exist?

So as not to lose sight of the differentiation, I suppose. But another way of paying attention to the differentiation is to say that something exists in a different way. My question is what the difference is between these terminological choices.

I think it's a concession to both reductionism and reification to accept that only physical objects exist. That's partly what motivated Markus Gabriel's ontology, in which tables, quarks, numbers, nations, and ideas all exist. There are alternative theories that do the same kind of thing, like critical realism and speculative realism.

He believed that these abstract objects existed independently of the physical world and the mind, and that they had a different kind of reality that was not reducible to either physical or mental phenomena. — Wayfarer

But you want to go one step further and say they don't exist?

But another way of paying attention to the differentiation is to say that something exists in a different way. — Jamal

I agree - that's what I'm trying to say. What Russell says is:

We shall find it convenient only to speak of things existing when they are in time, that is to say, when we can point to some time at which they exist (not excluding the possibility of their existing at all times). Thus thoughts and feelings, minds and physical objects exist. But universals do not exist in this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where 'being' is opposed to 'existence' as being timeless. — Bertrand Russell

Also note this from an IEP article:

In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers (i.e. Spinoza, Leibniz, Descartes) held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is.

Whereas, what I'm arguing is that I think the very idea of there being 'degrees of reality' is no longer intelligible. So there are no 'different ways' in which things can exist - we say that things either exist, or they don't. Tables and chairs exist, unicorns and the square root of 2 do not. Whereas, I'm saying, intelligible objects, such as numbers, are real, as constituents of reason, but not existent, as phenomenal objects. So that re-introduces a distinction I think has been lost.

Whereas, what I'm arguing is that I think the very idea of there being 'degrees of reality' is no longer intelligible. So there are no 'different ways' in which things can exist - we say that things either exist, or they don't. Tables and chairs exist, unicorns and the square root of 2 do not. — Wayfarer

Again, you are conceding that the gold standard of existence is that of physical objects. You seem to accept physicalist assumptions perhaps without realizing it. Because to say that something exists in a certain way is not to say it is more or less real than things that exist in a different way.

Russell says "we shall find it convenient" to say of universals that they subsist, and not that they exist, but it's not much more than one way of making the distinction. It's a concession to physics to say that only things that are in time exist.

And do you accept his classification, wherein ideas do exist, and it's only universals that don't?

The question as to whether thoughts exist eternally could be approached from the perspective that any thought I might think is a logical, physical and metaphysical possibility, otherwise I would not be able to think it. Would it follow that it has enjoyed such triune possibility always? If any thought I might think exists now in potentia, then why not say that it has always existed in potentia?

Perhaps in order to justify saying that we would need to commit to a determinism so strict that we would have to think that everything that has ever happened, including every thought ever entertained was inevitable, and that every thought that will be entertained is inevitable.

On the other hand if indeterminism were metaphysically fundamental, then what would be potentially possible would expand considerably, perhaps infinitely, as well as constantly changing. Then true novelty would be possible.

And do you accept his classification, wherein ideas do exist, and it's only universals that don't? — Jamal

I am saying that existence properly refers to phenomenal objects. But that is not ‘privileging’ them. What Russell is articulating is a distinction in modes of being - between things that exist in time and space, and universals, which subsist. It’s an awkward distinction, I agree.

Here’s a really obscure reference, to the philosophical theology of Scotus Eriugena, but it’s about the only place that actually articulates what I’m driving at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/#FiveModeBeinNonBein

Yep, I do understand. I just couldn't see the point of making the distinction in the way you and Russell want to make it. For me, all these things exist. In logical terms, existence quantifies over a domain of discourse. That could be e.g., the domain of natural numbers or the domain of fictional characters (what about the domain of universals? :chin:).

Although to be honest, I'm more interested in ideas and thoughts than I am in universals and abstract objects, because that's what seems most radical/incredible about the concept of the mindscape.

That is not something reducible to sensations. — Wayfarer

The seven sensations and ideas exist. Ideas are not reducible to sensations, but sensations can communicate ideas.

1. What is an "arithmetical fact"? That we use a human invented symbolism like "2+2=4" and that this has rules of use, and has application in our world. OK. Or, do you mean "2+2=4" is a fact because it corresponds to some eternal idea. I reject this later position as metaphysical nonsense. — Richard B

The Pythagoreans were shocked to discover that the square root of 2 was irrational.It is an eternal fact that the square root of 2 cannot be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers. That fact was true before the Pythagoreans discovered it and it will be true for all eternity. You seemed to be taking the Mathemetical Formalism route, which is a minority position among working mathematicians, most of whom accept Mathematical Platonism.

I have a M.A. in math and did 2 years of Ph.D. work but didn't complete it. For me, Mathematical Platonism is an empirical fact. Irrespective of symbolism, the square root of 2 cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole number; that's a fact. Moreover, there was no time in the past and there will be no time in the future, when that fact is/was false. Similarly, there is no largest prime number; never was and never will be.

2. What make "arithmetical facts" true? — Richard B

That they logically derive from accepted axioms.

He believed that these abstract objects existed independently of the physical world and the mind, and that they had a different kind of reality that was not reducible to either physical or mental phenomena. — Wayfarer

Yes, and we come to know these abstract object via mental phenomena, i.e., thought.

Do you believe ideas exist (or subsist or whatever word you wants to use). If no, then end of discussion. If yes, then do you believe an idea can cease to exist? If no, then end of discussion. If yes, then how? — Art48

We will probably never stop trying to figure out exactly what an idea is (what we mean by 'idea.'). I think they exist (whatever exactly that means), and I think they are at least like blurry equivalence classes. So 'I forget my umbrella' and 'Oh shit I left my umbrella' express the sameenough idea. So the idea is a clump of marks (written sentences) and noises (spoken sentences) that do pretty much the same thing --- so we throw them in the same category for convenience, which, incidentally, seems fundamental to thinking. We make unequal things equal. We ignore differences that make no differences (small enough differences to be neglected by faulty but magnificent self-replicating machines like ourselves.)

An idea can cease to exist if all the marks and noises that belong in its category vanish, such as if we forget about those marks and noises or we die.

To me it seems possible that aliens can find our books after we are gone and learn to translate our ideas into their language (they would have similar-enough equivalence classes to learn something from us, and integrate ours with theirs.) They'd probably have to see how the signs (marks) connected with the residue of our other animal actions besides tying and dragging graphite and ink on paper.