the universe certainly exists — RogueAI

Plenty of valid philosophies would disagree with that, so it is hardly a certain thing. Just for an example, an idealist would say only the ideal (the concept of the universe) exists, and there is no real universe (noumena).

Existence is fairly well defined for an object. An object has a location and duration. An object is contained by both space and time, and it doing this constitutes 'existence'. The universe is a different category, and it does not exist in space (except to those who naively posit the a big bang as an explosion of stuff into pre-existing empty space), and it exists in time only to those that posit it to do so, which makes the existence of the universe a problem to those that hold that view. But that's not the only alternative. The prevailing view is that the universe is contain by neither space nor time and is thus not to be treated as an ordinary object To say it exists requires a very different definition of 'exists', and I'm not impressed with the utility of any of the definitions I've seen attempted.

Similarly, some (Platonists?) suggest that the natural numbers exist. That requires a different definition of 'exists' else one can meaningfully ask where their location is, and when/how they came into existence. If they are not temporal objects (if they were, they'd change over time), then why does the universe have to be? What difference does it make if the natural numbers exist or if they don't? It certainly makes a difference for an object, but the natural numbers are not objects. There are those that don't suggest that numbers meaningfully exist, and yet they are no less capable of counting their toes.

The issue boils down to a problem to a realist: How does one explain the reality of whatever one asserts to be real? Shorter but less rigorous version: Why is there something and not nothing? Positing a creator doesn't solve the problem; it only regresses it.

Not my problem. I abandoned realism for pretty much the unanswerability of such questions.

The only way around that I can see is to say it's eternal.

There are multiple meanings to that word.

Dictionary version: Lasting forever, without beginning or end.
Philosophy version: Eternalism: That time is contained by the universe, and is bounded at one end just like North is bounded on Earth. This is opposed to time that flows, and the universe is contained in that flowing time.

I'm loosely guessing that you're using the former definition, that there is no bound to time in either direction. The theory I linked above presumes a model something like that, but the big bang has to be discarded. There is a half-empirical test for the view. Half because one can prove the consensus view to ones self, but not to others, similar to proving an afterlife. You have to go through a 1-way door. If you survive that, you cannot communicate your findings to the other side of the door.

Nothing caused the the universe to come into existence? How does that work? — RogueAI

No, 'nothing' cannot be a cause. I don't posit that the universe is the sort of thing that 'came into existence', something that only describes objects within our universe, such as a raindrop. Treating the universe as an object is a category error.

Time isn't something that began to exist. It is simply a dimension of our universe, per consensus view. Time is contained by the universe, not the other way around.

I have one argument for nothing to something is impossible which I discussed it in this thread. — MoK

Physics very much supports uncaused events, but even such events are not from nothing. I don't think anybody is pushing a stance of something from nothing, except as a straw man alternative to whatever it is they actually are evangelizing. Craig regularly commits such a fallacy.

P1) Time is needed for change

For temporal change, sure. There are other kinds of change that don't involve time. e.g. 'The air pressure changes with altitude'.

nothing to something is not possible

'nothing' isn't even really a defined thing, so the conclusion is more meaningless than impossible.

Bob Rose's argument:
...
P3: Change requires temporality.

Bob also seems to treat the universe as something subject to temporality, that is, something contained by time. This model was outdated over a century ago.

If you want to eliminate the alternative to your pet idea, at least knock down the consensus view of things instead of the straw man 6th century one.

Time is needed for a thing to begin to exist since the thing does not exist at a point and then exists.

Just so. Hence the category error.

Do mind to provide a link to such models?

Here's the main one, perhaps the first one to generalize LET theory to include gravity. It was published almost a century after Einstein generalized his Special relativity theory.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45904833_Black_Holes_or_Frozen_Stars_A_Viable_Theory_of_Gravity_without_BlackHoles
It is an absolute theory, with the universe contained by time, hence absolute time. All the premises of special relativity are denied, and different premises are used.

The 6th century argument perhaps had some teeth back in the day, but it presumes a model of the universe (that of being an object contained by space and time) that is today a fringe model at best. That of course doesn't detract Craig whose paying audience is hardly versed in modern cosmology theory, so they of course eat it right up, despite the fact that the same argument can be used against whatever was the cause. Craig doesn't care that the argument doesn't hold water. He cares that he gets his check for asserting it anyway.

It's sort of like proving the Earth rests on a turtle since anything that holds something up must itself be held up by something. The model worked back in the day, but is today about as naive as the Kalam thing.

So premise 1 is a premise that only applies to objects IN the universe, and even then it isn't necessarily true except under fully deterministic interpretations of physics.
Premise 2 totally goes against the consensus view among cosmologists where time and space are contained by the universe instead of the other way around. Such a model does exist, and it necessarily denies things predicted by the prevailing view such as the big bang or black holes.

one can also say that the material has existed since the beginning of time — MoK

The universe is not posited to have been built from 'material'. Any material did not show up on the scene until several epochs beyond the big bang.

So we're in agreement about the lack of soundness of the argument, but for different reasons.

You can reject arithmetical truth, until you make use of it, or of a statement that happens to be equi-consistent with it. — Tarskian

I cannot use arithmetic without first presuming some axiomatic truths. Yes, arithmetic is useful, but only useful relative to worlds in which it works, or at least seems to.

For me I start with the presupposition that both the object and the subject exist. — Benj96

That seems to be an assertion of realism.

How is it begging an objective ontology any more than it is begging a subjective one. — Benj96

In attempt to find the truth of realism vs some alternate ontology (idealism say were only ideals, and not objects, exist), presuming one of the two conclusions cannot lead to the truth of the matter.

I would have thought the assumption that the objective and subjective both exist is common intuitive knowledge.

Common & intuitive, yes, although not entirely. Several posters on this topic hold alternative views. Knowledge: no. It isn't knowledge if the truth of the premise cannot be demonstrated.

It's sort of like Einstein's special theory of relativity. It posits two premises (physics not being frame dependent, and local-frame-independence of the speed of light), neither of which has ever been demonstrated. There are alternative theories that deny both premises, and those alternative have not been falsified. So presuming what Einstein did may be useful, but it doesn't prove that Einstein's premises were the correct ones.


Still, you seem to be talking about subjective, vs not-subjective, like there's a realist objective view that denies subjective experience. Never head of anything like that, I admit.

The topic is posted under morals/ethics, and the OP mentions objective vs subjective morality. I don't think morality is either. There's no evidence of it not be relative to this or that, and since you cannot experience it in any obvious way, it isn't subjective either. So the OP gives a false dichotomy.

Being 'noAsioms', I do not presume that X exists. I try to be open to alternatives, and it turns out that I find issues with it that don't occur with a relational view.

Similarly if only the subjective exists then scientific discovery and the tech based on those discoveries is null and void and only subjective imaginings of how things are is valid.

Disagree. If only subjective exists, then science still yields new ways to have new/better subjective experience, however not nonexistent the science is.

So by all means explain why both don't exist?

The question is why it is not necessary for both to exist (or either). I never asserted that both don't exist. Anyway, the answer depends heavily on one's definition of 'exist'. Yours seems to be "something that 'acts'.", followed by examples of things that don't exists despite the fact that they very much act.
The definition I find to work best is a relation: X exists to Y if Y measures (is causally affected by) X. Given that non-objective definition, it is meaningless to say 'X does or does not exist', but it is meaningful to say that X exists (or not) to Y.
That does not mean I assert that my definition is truth. It's just one that I find has fewer problems that the alternatives. I don't know if there is a correct answer to the topic, even though most presume there is a correct answer despite our inability to know it.

It is actually presented as relativism vs. objectivism in the OP. A bunch of people, me included, got it mixed up though, presumably when they tried to refresh themselves on the whole objectivism vs. subjectivism thing. — ToothyMaw

The OP also posted this in the ethics forum, meaning he's talking about moral objectivism vs moral, well, not-objectivism, where the line between moral relativism and moral subjectivism is almost nonexistent. Most of my posts have been about the more general relational view in general (such as relational ontology), where the distinction between the two metaphysical views (relative vs subjective) is quite significant.

So, I think you must use the term "relative" by your own reasoning, and not "relational" - especially if you think that an evaluating entity would have to exist to connect the laws of physics in two different universes, although it is not entirely clear if you do. — ToothyMaw

The relational view isn't one that requires evaluations, and a given entity has no empirical access to other universes, so any evaluation is entirely an abstract exercise.

Maybe I should be more direct: what exactly do you mean when you use the term relational?

Relational means that moral, ontology, perhaps even truth, are examples of relations.
It is not wrong to kill your children in some cultures.
Ontology: X exists in relation to Y if Y is causally effected by X (Y measures X). This definition only works with structures where causality is meaningful.
Truth: A relative truth would be that most watermelons are larger than most plums. A subjective truth would be 'the sky is blue presently' (also a relation since 'presently' references a time). The 3+5=8 example was my attempt at an objective truth.

Given the definition of objective and subjective from here, the truth is objective if it is a set of statements that are true and independent of opinion, biase, conscious experience, and the like. — MoK

You reference the wiki site, which equates objective to not-subjective. It works for morals at least, but not to general relational metaphysics. They give an example of a subjective assessment of the weather, but no example of what they consider objective. Their objective definition seems contradictory, that it is something to be evaluated, and yet true in the absence of a mind which supposedly is needed to do the evaluating. Perhaps I'm being picky. Yes, I can imagine a world absent anything with subjective experience (Wayfarer would disagree), at least enough to discuss it.

When I read this post (mine, not yours, MoK) I can't help but feel that what I'm saying is fallacious, but I can't tell where it goes wrong. — ToothyMaw

I actually agreed with it in general.

I think I see where I'm going wrong. A relative truth would be that relative to a society of evangelical Christians, gay marriage is indeed wrong on the basis of their subjective belief that it is wrong. — ToothyMaw

basis of their belief... Are not all beliefs subjective, pretty much by definition? One can have a belief about some objective thing (yes, 3+5 really is unconditionally 8), but the belief itself is subjective.

For me I start with the presupposition that both the object and the subject exist — Benj96

That is begging an objective ontology. Commonly assumed, but not valid thing to do in a metaphysical debate about whether such a premise is correct or not.

For physical truth, you can observe it. — Tarskian

An empirical truth then. The sun is bigger than Earth, and so forth, and then it becomes a relation to that which is observed. Arithmetic truth is more objective precisely due to the lack of an obvious relation.

In almost all cases, we make use of arithmetical soundness theorem to ascertain the truth of a statement: The statement is true because it is provable.

But all those theorems rely on axioms which have not been proven, so they rest on a foundation that isn't objectively sound, which is why I question if 3+5 equaling 8 being an objective truth.

And therefore if relativism is true, then it is true for some and not others, which is self-refuting as a claim (i.e. relativism is relative :roll:). This is incoherent, of course, and not a viable, or reasonable, alternative to 'objective truth' (so the OP's poll is a false choice). — 180 Proof

Doesn't seem valid. Relativism doesn't apply necessarily to truth. Ontology or morality could be relative, but truth is often not considered relative. 3+5=8 seems to be an objective truth, and 'there are no unicorns', while worded in an objective way, is arguably a relational assessment. 'Relativism is true' might refer to moral relativism, which could arguably stand as an objective truth, although it would seem that if it was true, it would only be a property of this universe or that which created both the universe and said morals. A deity defining what is wrong and right is a relation. Objective morals would be something the deity would have to adhere to, rather than something the deity could dictate.

the OP posits epistemological positions (on "truth"), not any metaphysics — 180 Proof

That he does (puts it in opposition to a perspective). We seem to have lost the OP, who has not in any way tended his own topic.
I seem to use more of a metaphysical definition of truth, some of which is relational, but some of which is probably objective.

I'm no physicist, or mathematician, but this sounds suspect. If a fact - like the laws of physics - in one universe is not the same as in another universe, wouldn't there have to be some independent reference frame against which the two can be compared to evaluate them relationally? — ToothyMaw

Not sure what is being asked, especially since there isn't any entity necessarily doing any evaluation. For instance, in another universe, the cosmological constant might be different, which I suppose can be compared to (greater/less than relation) to each other. In yet another universe, there is no meaningful thing that could be considered a cosmological constant.

If there were something similar to Newton's laws in both

Newton's laws are pretty basic and don't so much involve things like constants, other than fundamentals like there being 3 spatial and 1 temporal dimension. Other universes could have any values for either of these, and dimensions that are neither spatial nor temporal. Newton's laws wouldn't work in any of those.

I think you're stretching the meaning of the word "relativism" here. "Universe" means everything. — T Clark

It has multiple definitions. If it always meant 'everything there is' (a global and very objective definition), then 1) the concept of a multiverse would be meaningless, and 2), there are many definitions of 'what is', including relational ones.

We only have access to this scope

A very finite scope in fact. Sufficiently distant things are no more part of that scope than is a unicorn on Earth.

Yes, if there is no objective justification ("proof") then there won't be (an objective) consensus on whether it is true or not, rendering such truth subjective. — Tarskian

I'm using 'objective' in a way that isn't the opposite of 'subjective', but rather as opposed to 'relative'. Objective truths are not a matter of consensus, which is perhaps opinion or some sort of empirical conclusion, but actual truth seems not to depend on proof or even anything being aware of it.
There have been topics on this, and that statement is certainly debatable.

Welcome to TPF!

Objectivism asserts that truth exists independently of human beliefs, emotions, or perceptions. — Cadet John Kervensley

This seems more of a definition of non-anthropocentrism. Neither objectivism nor relativism hinges on humans (anthropocentic) or perceptions (idealist).

According to this view, there are facts that are true regardless of who examines them or under what circumstances.

For example, is the sum of 3 and 5 equal to 8, or is that just a property of our universe? Mathemaical 'truths' are often held as objective, but proving that is another thing.

For example, the laws of physics or mathematical truths are often cited as examples of objectivism in action.

The laws of physics are not necessarily the same from one universe to the next, so that would be an example of relativism (or relational, as I tend to use the word, to distinguish it from Einstein's relativity theory, which is something else).

relativism claims that truth is subjective and dependent on context,

Subjective implies a perceiving subject. A relational view does not require a subject. A subject is only required for the view (the map), but not the territory. A rock can get wet without a human to notice it. The water exists relative to the rock.

Something like moral relativism does indeed require perceiving subjects, since it is relativism of abstrations. Your post seems to largely focus on opinions being objective or relative, and not so much the more general scope of the two terms.

truth depends on each person's viewpoint?

The 3+5 thing borders on objective truth. Most all of the rest you mention seems to be opinion, which has nothing to do with truth. If there are for instance objective morals, then opinions on the matter are completely irrelevant to that truth.

Does relativism allow for greater respect for differences, or does it lead to moral chaos?

Chaos seem to only result from pushing one's opinion onto those that don't share it.

And is objectivism too rigid to accommodate human diversity?

Not at all since no counterexample can be shown. To do that, one would have to demonstrate an objective truth. Plenty try, but all seem to beg their opinion.


I find a relational view (in ontology say) to make more sense, to have far fewer self contradictions. The view doesn't really touch on opinions such as personal morals.

Does the universe objectively exist, or does it exist only in relation to some things? If there is a correct answer to that question (however unknowable), then that would be an objective truth, regardless of which of the two is that correct answer. Some say that there must be a correct answer, however unknowable, but I'm not even sure of that.

Even if we disagree, the OP still doesn't make sense — T Clark

I don't disagree with that

C1 states that there is a gap between all pairs of distinct points of the continuum. — MoK

What do you mean by 'a gap'? If you mean that the two distinct points are not the same point, then yes, by definition. There's a gap between 4 and 13.

If you mean by 'a gap' that there is nothing between these two distinct points, then C1 is false. For instance, 10 is between 4 and 13. 'The gap' is not empty, and C2 seems to rely on any such gap being empty.

Are you challenging (P1)?

Without a definition of a gap, P1 is ambiguous. It states that either G or ~G, which is tautologically true, making P1 empty. The word 'distinct' is not part of P1.
My challenge was C2 following from C1, or any of what preceded C2.

It however can be shown that there is the smallest interval on the real number so-called infinitesimal. — MoK

Show it then. What about the number that is halfway between this smallest positive number and zero? You've shown that it doesn't exist?
Funny that the smallest number happens to be a perfect power of 0.1
What are the odds of that?

You can define [the center of mass of a body] it in quantum physics as well. Of course, you cannot measure it.

Define it then, without making classical assumptions (like a particle having a location, or some counterfactual property.

C1) Therefore there is a gap between all pairs of distinct points of the continuum (from P1 and P2)
C2) Therefore, the continuum does not exist (from A and C1) — MoK

C2 doesn't follow at all. In the real numbers, there being a gap between 4 and 13 does not imply that the real numbers (or even the rationals) is not a continuum. You need to demonstrate that there is nothing between some pairs of points that are not the same point. Then you've falsified the continuum premise.

A point is an abstract mathematical entity which doesn't correspond with any phenomenon in the world of our everyday existence — T Clark

I disagree. Yes, a point can be an abstraction, but can also correspond to a location in space say.
It indeed does not 'take up space', by definition. You seem to imply that something real must take up space.
Perhaps it's all a linguistic quibble, but it isn't one that takes apart the OP argument.

The center of mass of your body is a point. — MoK

Only in classical physics, and our universe isn't classical. But I accept your refutation of the rebuttal to the OP. Do you accept my rebuttal?

If determinism is true then the present is set. — Fire Ologist

If determinism is true,then there wouldn't be a meaningful present to be set.

They could be some other free agent, operating me like a puppet at their free will - who knows? — Fire Ologist

You just described dualism. Free will is typically framed in such terms, with the free agent operating outside the physical causal laws. No explanation as to how this agent is itself free from however it works.

Some prefer X and other mock X for thinking they can prefer X. The argument there is dead in the water. — I like sushi

Does the preference influence decisions? Then there's no basis for mocking it, unless I suppose if ones chosen preference influences decisions in a negative way. But even the negativeness of those decisions is a judgement being made by somebody else who likely holds different preferences about what is positive and negative behavior.

noAxioms, you said my decision will be different after deliberation then what it would have been had I not deliberated, will it also be better for having deliberated? — NotAristotle

Probably, yes. I'm sure you can find anecdotes illustrating the reverse, but in general, there would have been no point in evolving a fairly expensive mechanism for making choices if it didn't make better ones than choices made without said expensive mechanism.
Notice that this holds regardless of determinism or no, or regardless of free will or no. Hence my stance that free will is of no benefit to anything since I cannot think of a situation where it would help.

My anecdote: Many government decisions are made before deliberation. The deliberation is not a significant contributor to the decision (vote) submitted.

If it is false it might still be 'better' to believe in compared to believing in Non-determinism. — I like sushi

Again, it depends on how that belief, one way or another, affects one's choices. I personally cannot provide good arguments for this belief one way or another in the determinism issue since I cannot think of how it would make any empirical difference. But somebody else (Not-A above) might hold a belief that it does make a difference, hence the choice of position would make a difference.

Determinism frames the premise that our futures are set and unchangeable (human choices are not real), whereas non-determinism frames the premise that humans can change their fate (human choices are real). — I like sushi

This is unreasonable. Human choice is real, determinism or no. Do not make the mistake of equating choice with free choice, responsibility with external responsibility. Your post seems to equate the two.

Secondly, even in nondeterministic views, one cannot change the future. One is a causal part of it, sure, but using the word 'change' suggests that it was one thing, and later the same future is different. That isn't true even if free will is presumed.

I do like your usage of 'our future', which doesn't automatically presume a view where there is a 'the future', having a different ontological state than the present.

The question posed here is what is better to believe.

Few ask this. In short, believe whatever makes you do the more correct thing. If your beliefs in this matter don't significantly influence your day to day decisions, then the beliefs don't particularly matter. If fear of the wrath of the FSM makes you a better person, by all means make that part of your beliefs.

To start, if determinism is true, it makes no difference what we believe as what we believe is preordained.

Externally preordained, yes. This does not imply that your belief is not a choice.

If non-determinism is false, then it makes no difference as determinism would be true - the same situation as stated with determinism.

Double negative? The lack of determinism does not necessarily imply free will, but again, your continued post obviously presumes otherwise. Maybe you should be asking about free will, and not worry about determinism at all, starting with a decent definition of what you think it is.

The human choice of entering this machine is effectively a denial of reality in favor of a world where human experiences are determined by the machine rather than chosen directly by the human.

So this machine, unlike a video game where the player makes choices, is more like going to the cinema and having your experience done for your, except fully immersive. A story told is not a life lived. A purpose is served, but it's not your own. I agree with Nozick in this sense. But has he illustrated the difference between choice and free choice, or just choice and no choice?

Compatibilism, in a nut shell, is the view that free will is compatible with determinism. — wonderer1

I googled 'compatibilism' and it ended with "Compatibilism does not maintain that humans are free.". I don't see much difference in this view and 3) no free will.
On a side note, I also don't in any way see why free will is a good thing.

What you are describing as determinism I would call fatalism.

My understanding of fatalism is that things will turn out the same in the long run regardless of the choices made. If you save a life of a person fated to die today, he'll die by another means shortly.

If determinism is true, then there is no good reason to deliberate because such thought will not change how I decide (I must choose, or "act" the same way whether I deliberate or not). — NotAristotle

Nonsense. Thought very much has a causal influence on decisions. If you deliberate, the choice will very much be different than if you don't deliberate.

Conversely, you can prove the existence of free will by proving that it is impossible to construct such app. — Tarskian

So by your argument, you've used Turing's argument to prove free will. Somehow that doesn't follow from the impossibility of such an app since the app is impossible even in a pure deterministic universe.

All of those objects serve a purpose for humans, but I think this is not the main point of my argument. Although they are dependent on human purposes, they are necessarily part of a house. — javi2541997

I don't get your point at all. Perhaps a summary is in order. Without people,there is no house at all, just a collection of material, not particularly a bounded one either. It's a house only because humans consider it to be one.

You use the word 'flourish' in your post, which seems only something that reproduces does (not necessarily a life form). I don't see meaning of that word at lower levels.

And yes,the last candle I lit up was in the sun, just a coincidence

Didn’t you ever think of the pure lonely existence of that sofa?

All I'm worried about is what demarks objects in the absence of a name. Calling something a sofa automatically invokes a convention. I am trying to find object in absence of human convention. What use humans have in one object doesn't seem to come into relevance in pursuit of that investigation.

Consider what happens if a nuclear bomb destroys all of human life and leaves only that sofa. Do you believe the sofa will lose its sense since it will no longer meet a human need?

No, I don't think a sofa has a sense of anything. There is still the narrator of the story about the bomb that is giving the object a name. But what if it isn't named at all?

Are you really sure? ... — javi2541997

Yes. The whole point ot the topic is about when human demarcation is absent.

Where does the building stop? — noAxioms

This was a different context, meant to illustrate that even when a human convention is invoked, the demarcation is still never precisely defined.

What I don't understand is why you wish to eliminate such principles.

I didn't want to eliminate them. I wanted to show where they stand in the hierarchy of levels.
BTW, the heirarchy (ideal mind bio chem phys math) is kind of a human one. Different paths can lead to 'building' being meaningful, such as (ideal, cognitive entity, computation, electrical, physics, math) which means that our AI would probably be able to demark a building despite it not being a biological mind.

Are you arguing that there could be an intriguing object that lacks human ideals?

I meant to look for one in reality. Found plenty in fiction. The fact that they're only in fiction shows that such concepts have no actual physical basis, and 2) people readily accept/presume otherwise.

I don't think a beam of energy say 'knows' anything about human purpose.
— noAxioms
Obviously

Yes, obviously, except nobody complains when a beam of energy does exactly that in a fictional story.

What I tried to argue is that there are objects which are dependent upon others just for need. The furniture, walls, ceilings, etc. are attached objects to the principal which is the building. Otherwise, where would you put furniture? In middle of the forest?

But it isn't even furniture without humans to name them so. They serve purpose to humans. Your examples are of human made artifacts, which serve a specific purpose to a human.

So at the biological level, there are objects of sorts. Not so much twig say, but maybe 'pollen', which is a natural unit of reproduction to many plants. The beam of light, not being biological, cannot demark one pollen bit, but a different plant (than the one that made it) can. It's not an ideal to the plant, so it serves a physical purpose as an object, and not just as an ideal of an object.

Similarly, DNA constitutes information, perhaps below the biological level and reaching down to the chemical level. This is information (objects of a kind) without being ideals. So there are examples out there.

I think those 'objects' know the destination of its utility.

A sofa 'knows' it is a sofa, or at least where its boundaries are, or that it is useful to humans? in what way does that make sense?

x

If you say there is any level where there is “no mental anything” aren’t you pointing out a non-ideal thing, an object in itself regardless of the mental? Haven’t you admitted there is a physical (non-mental) world where objects (particles) speak for themselves? — Fire Ologist

Yes to all, except maybe the 'speak' part. Not sure how you meant that choice of word.
'Level' is a better word than the 'field' that xkcd used, which was meant more as a field of study.

Yes, I follow you and the sense of your OP. I remember when we talked about chopping the twig off, for instance. I know that it would sound silly to say that without a twig, the tree no longer exists — javi2541997

If I point to a severed twig, I'm probably not indicating the tree, although severed twigs and such are very much still part of a forest, so barring a convention, what is being indicated is still questionable.

You asked me: Where does the building stop?

No, I asked where 'this' stops. I never said 'building'. Using a word like that invokes the convention, however inexact.

Of course, it includes furniture and people. :smile:

I'm part of a building if in one. Not sure if that's standard convention. Most would say the humans occupy it, but are not themselves part of the building. But my early example of a human typically includes anything that occupies or is even carried by the human. They're all part of the human. Not so much with the building. Different convention.

What would be the point of constructing a building, then?

Is it relevant? It could be. An object is demarked by its purpose, but that doesn't help. I point to 'this', and am I talking about the brick (purpose to support and seal a wall), the wall (similar purposes), the suite, or the building (different purposes), or something else (to generate rent income)
Still, purpose is defined by the humans that find utility in the 'object'. The topic is about an object in absence of such ideals such as purpose.

They ‘know’ that the building is of interest to them.

I don't think a beam of energy say 'knows' anything about human purpose.

Physical, not mental, basis? — Fire Ologist

There is no mental anything at the physics level. I'm talking about territory here, not map. Map is our only interface from mental ideals to territory. A real particle in itself probably bears little resemblance to our typical mental model of it.

And I guess the distinctions between psychology and biology and physics are ideal only?

Those words all refer to ideals, so yes, distinctions between them seem ideal.

My point is, you cannot speak, we cannot form an ideal, without some real distinctions apart from the mind on which we make any move, perform any act, posit any field, say anything like “particle”.

Unclear on what you mean here. Examples perhaps? I think we're talking past each other since there's talk of both ideals (references) and the referents, of both map and territory.

Why did we ever conceive of the notion of “object” in the first place? — Fire Ologist

It has utility, a general word to encompass a given subset of material without further classification into a more specific object kind.

Why did we not always know “when I reach out and touch, I am touching one giant dinstiction-free object?”

We don't know what is being referenced, but even in the act of reaching out and touching in a specific way, a convention is conveyed, and I would probably guess correctly on first try what was meant. Clue: Probably not the forest.

But it surprised me when I read that, according to your view, the Midas example proves the opposite of what I say. — javi2541997

Remind me what the Midas example 'proves'...

and you ask me how large the bark is

That's a lot different than asking what 'this' is, and touching the twig bark. But even if the 'object' is partially demarked by the word 'bark', it still leaves the extent of it unspecified. Bark of just the twig? The whole tree? Something else?

Imagine a building for a second. This structure encloses walls, roof, floors, columns, etc. If I talk about a “building” I also refer to all those elements, right?

Probably, yes. The word invokes a convention, and the convention typically includes all those parts, but how about the piles or the utility hookups? Where does the building stop? Does it include the furniture and people? That question was asked in the OP where I explore the concept of what you weigh, and exactly when that weight changes.

But in the absence of language, how does anything 'know' that 'building' is the object of interest?

Why does it appear like there are no answers?

Category error. There are answers, but not in the wrong category.

His interpretation is his mental picture. It resides within his cranium. As such, it is an internalized representation of something at least partially outside of and beyond the dimensions of his cranium. — ucarr

Fine. That's a fairly concise summary of a physicalist view.

Do the material details of the natural world constrain to some measurable degree the material details of the human's constructed interpretation?

Yes. The mental model is built from perceived experiences. First tree, then he perceives the tree, and puts the short tree into his mental model of the local reality.

If we arrive at this conclusion, do we know that the constructed interpretation has an analogical relationship with the independent and external world?

We assume that. Saying 'know' presumes some details that cannot be known, per say Cartesian skepticism. I'm indeed assuming that my perception of the tree outside is not a lie.

How is my understanding of your quote a mis-reading of it? — ucarr

Maybe I'm misreading your quotes. I don't know. Given a convention, an object can often be demarked. Language is one way to convey the desired convention.

If find it useful to begin an exam of the writer's post by asking grammatical questions. That's all I'm investigating here. I'm not yet examining philosophical content.

Convention in this context is the binding of an agreed upon demarking of a specific thing with a language construct, a word say, but not always a word. Utility is used like 'usefulness'. There is utility in assigning the word 'mug' to the collection of ceramic that holds my coffee. A mug is a fairly unambiguous 'object' to a typical human, although one can still indicate its parts in some contexts.

Apologies to all for slow reply. It's gets busy on some days.

So if you would admit there are two distinct people in the universe, but don’t see any distinct physical objects apart from your own idealizations, is the distinction you make between you and me only ideal, or do I have to have some sort of physics to me that you can let speak for itself? — Fire Ologist

I'll try to clarify. There are multiple fields, and a given description must be consistent with one of the fields. This xkcd comic illustrates what I mean:

The fields as I see relevant here are ideals, mind, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics. One can use any of them, but the two in bold are frequently referenced. In the mental field, there are ideals, which are say people, forum posts, letters, sounds, etc. In the physics field, there are none of these things. Objects are at best particles interacting with each other according to physical law.
So yes, I am a being with a mind, and that lets me identify/name my ideals: of multiple people existing for instance, including myself (just another ideal). The mind is not fundamental at all since each field supervenes on the field to the right of it. Hard idealism stops the list there, making mind fundamental. I don't know which philosophers suggests that sort of hard idealism. I don't much care.

Confusion results if fields are mixed. For instance, there are those that assert that computers can't be conscious because their operation is nothing but transistors switching on and off, which is like saying that humans can't be conscious because they're nothing but neurons switching on and off. The comments are not even wrong because they mix fields (mind vs electronics say).
Of course, the people that assert the lack of machine consciousness are often ones that also assert that human consciousness is not a function of neuron operation, so there's that.

one Federico Faggin, who developed the first microprocessor — Wayfarer

What, like the 4040 or something even older? Interesting read I bet.

True, Pinter's books doesn't mention 'idealism'

Well, what you quote from Pinter seems to make sense, and if he never mentions idealism, then there's your significant difference between idealism and what is becoming fairly clear to me.
I never considered idealism to be spooky etherial mind stuff. It is actually fairly consistent, a version of realism (with the problems that come with that), and it simply uses an epistemological definition of what is real. There is nothing wrong or spooky with such a definition. I just don't choose to use it.

That there is 'material behind it' is precisely the belief in question!

I know. I didn't say otherwise.

Does “convention” equal “A way in which something is usually done in accordance with an established pattern.”? — ucarr

Pretty much that, yes. If humans find sufficient utility in a given convention, a word might be assigned to it. So you have one word 'grape' that identifies an edible unit of food from this one species of vine, and 'cluster' as a different unit describing what is picked from the vine, as opposed to what is left behind. We find utility in both those units, so two words are coined to make this convention part of our language.

Are you saying ‘object’ is a non-physical construction of the mind?

An ideal, which yes, is a construct of the mind. As for it being non-physical, not so keen on that since mind seems to be as physical as anything else. Opinions on this vary of course.

Are you saying the mind constructs an interpretation of the physical world, and that that construction is radically different in form from its source?

I'll agree with that even if I didn't particularly say as much anywhere in this topic.

Does the mind_physical world interface come before the interpretation?

Don't know what you mean by ';comes before'. That the interface happens at an earlier time than the interpretation that forms from it? Much of interpretation is instinctive, meaning it evolved long before the birth of an individual and the interface to that individual.

must we conclude the mind never perceives the physical world directly?

People have different definitions of what it means to directly perceive something, what the boundaries are for instance. There's no one convention that everybody uses.

But the point here is to know to what extent things exist or not due to universal convention. — javi2541997

This sounds like 'objective convention', and the lack of example seems to suggest the conventions are either human or that of some other cognitive entity. Many different things will find utility in the same conventions, so there is some aspect of universality to it.

I would like to use the example of a few pages before: a twig is followed by a tree and then the combination of these two makes the forest. This set is interesting. I personally believe a set of different things are dependent on universal convention, for instance.

That example was meant to demonstrate the opposite. If I reach out and touch the bark and ask how large 'this' is, am I talking about the twig, branch, tree, forest, or something else? If there was a physical convention, there'd be an answer to that. There seemingly isn't.

When I exchanged some thoughts with him, he claimed everything object is connected to something.

That was given a definition of 'connected' as 'the existence of forces between the two halves in question'. I didn't like that definition precisely because it rendered everything connected. There cannot be two things.

Are you utterly isolated, perhaps the sole being there is, fabricating each of the impressions or ideals in your experience?

Or are you utterly isolated, fabricating each of the impressions or ideals in your experience using incomplete and vague data from outside of you like a sort of mental clay? So you are not the only thing in the universe, you just cannot communicate with any of the other things, and instead translate and transform those things into nice packages for your own isolated world?

Or are you one of many physical things that occasionally has to avoid being hit when crossing the street to pick out a unique and distinct sandwich to be placed in a distinct belly to relieve a distinct and localized feeling of hunger, and you just can’t explain all of that clearly because of the second option? — Fire Ologist

None of the above. Third option looks like an argument either for or against free will. I do admit the use of ideals in my interactions with the world 'out there'.

to understand that we couldn’t have this conversation without something separate from both of us to mediate it.

Agree with this. The separate mediation is apparently not a 'thing'. It is just physics, motion of material and such, having no meaning until reinterpreted back into ideals by something that isn't me.

We are using material objects between us.

Material yes. Objects, not so much. Their being objects is only an ideal, per pretty much unanimous consensus of the posters in this topic. Physics works and does its thing all without human designations of where the boundaries of 'separate systems' are. The need to declare their distinctions is only a need of the communicating intellects.


Thank you for your continued input. It seems we're mostly hacking out the same ideas with different language surrounding it. I'm not in the habit of articulating this sort of interaction since it's sort of a different way of looking at things for me.

I think what you expect to find is an object unmediated by our categories, for example. But that is like saying we are going to perceive something without perceiving. Every perception involves an adaptation, an interpretation. There is no access to reality that is not mediated, but we can ask why our means are embedded in reality, and above all, we can ask why they work and what the link is between the world we are in and our categories, our language, our ideas, etc. Therefore, the world would have something ideal-ish that allows our thinking and our perception to maintain a certain continuity with the world. — JuanZu

Agree with all this. Some comments. We have little access to reality that is not mediated. Reality itself has such unmediated access, but that doesn't qualify as perception.

I would agree to that, with the large caveat that "ideals," (inclusive of the accidental properties of particulars) are generated by the physical properties of objects, which include (perhaps irreducible) relations to minds. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Some examples would help here. Are you only talking about relations to minds?
Not otherwise sure of what you're saying. In particular, what sort of properties (other than a relation to a mind) would an object have that a mere subset of material doesn't? What would distinguish the two cases? There is 'kind' for instance. Here is a relatively contiguous region of state X or material M, such as what a human would designate as a cloud. The atmospheric conditions external to the cloud are different than the conditions within it, and that simple change of kind from one region to the next defines a fairly natural boundary for a physical object. It isn't 'connected' (one of the attempted but failed definitions), but at least it is (more or less) contiguous. The more-or-less part comes into play when it gets less defined if there is one cloud or two smaller ones that are merely nearby. Physics obviously cares not about this distinction.

When we say that objects are a product of language, we are simply shifting the problem from the external world to the interiority of language. We then say that there are objects in language. — JuanZu

Perhaps I used the wrong words. It has become more clear in the subsequent posts. What most everyone seems to have concluded is that 'object' is an ideal. Ideals are manipulated (expressed to others say) through language, and my initial post focused on the language and convention part instead of naming it for what it was: an ideal.
My attempts to find a non-fictional example of an object not being an ideal has failed. This is strong evidence for the conclusion reached.

Doesn't this mean that if there are objects in language, then there are also objects-ish in "the world external to language" that authorize and enable our language to function?

Apparently not. No example of this has been found, at least if you alter the statement to say 'external to ideals'. There are certainly things that arguably don't use language as we know it that nevertheless treat preferred groups of material as 'objects'.

It’s a fictional thing.
Problem solved. — Fire Ologist

I don't think there ever was a 'problem', only an observation, an investigation into such things.

But if you are grappling with atoms and void and finding not enough void anywhere between groupings of atoms…

Ah, 'sufficient void between groups', except that me and the ground one since there's no void between us. Human convention usually considers air and liquid to be classified as 'void' for such purposes. King Midas still breathes air, not gold.

Or are you saying a man can’t step into the same river twice

A river is an object by convention, and you step into the same river each time. If it's a different river each time, then it's also a different me each time doing it, so a man cannot even 'be' twice since, like the river, the material changes from moment to moment. Anyway, no, I'm not saying that. I talk about identity quite often, but this topic is not about that.
The 'river', and 'me' stepping in it, are both ideals.

Or are you just being contrarian

Pretty much everybody is concluding the same thing, so it doesn't seem to be an example of being contrarian.

Thanks for looking at it, I appreciate your feedback. But I’d like to think that the essay is compatible with the canonical idealists, such as Berkeley (with some caveats), Kant, Schopenhauer, and our contemporary, Bernardo Kastrup. — Wayfarer

Problem is, several people, (you especially) throw these names around, which is great for the readers that know them and their views, but I'm not one of those. I don't know the names, and I'm apparently discovering things for myself that have already been discussed somewhere by these famous guys. I'm behind the curve. I didn't bother with learning a lot of the history because so many of them were pre-20th century and the main reason I came to this site (well, the old PF actually) was because nobody seemed to discuss the philosophical implications of 20th century science, such as the nature of time, of identity, of the finite age of the universe, of wave function collapse and such. All these modern findings really put a hole in a lot of the older views, forcing their adherents to look the other way instead of face the new issues.

Anyway, point is, I don't much know the teachings of the famous guys, but that also means I am covering ground that has already been covered by somebody else. Relevant quotes are helpful. Names are noi.

the idea that the existence of objects is intrinsically tied to the presence of a subject that perceives them. — Wayfarer

I've come to agree with that, but I would put 'object' in scare quotes since the thing in itself (or better worded, the stuff in itself) is not so tied to perception. A subject yes, but not necessarily a perceiving one.

If one defines 'reality' to be what one knows about, that epistemological definition leads to proper idealism. Mind is fundamentally real (so still a realist position) in that view since without mind, nothing is known and thus nothing exists.

A standard scientific realist view is not about epistemology at all. It says loosely that there is a set of what is real, and anything not in that set isn't real. What is and isn't real cannot be known. MWI for instance is a hard realist interpretation: the universal wave function is real, and it evolves according to the Schrodinger equation.

I don't consider myself to be a realist of either kind since the reality of whatever is posited to be fundamentally real, say the mind or the universal wave function, cannot be explained.

I take a relational view where if state X is part of the cause of state Y, then X exists (is real) to Y. It is a sort of backwards ontology. Future things cause past things to exist relative to them by being affected by said past things. There is no objective reality with such a definition, no meaningful 'view from nowhere'. And none of the above has dependence on epistemology or 'minds', so fundamentally, it's not idealism.

our understanding of the world is mediated through perception and cognition. He argues that objects, as we know them, do not exist independently of our perception. This aligns with the broader philosophical stance of idealism.

Agree with this, at least until perception becomes fundamental, and fundamental properties are given to 'the will' like it's something more special.

Schopenhauer asserts that the existence of the objective world is contingent upon a perceiving subject. Without a subject to perceive, there can be no object. This challenges the notion of an independently existing material world.

No, it just challenges 'object', one of a list of words that can similarly be demonstrated to be ideals. That we put words to sets of material that we find useful does not imply that the material behind it is challenged.

The phenomenal veil, of our own construction, that cloaks and hides the thing-in-itself. — Fire Ologist

Maybe because there's only 'stuff in itself'. It's us that makes 'things' of it all.

I see three things:
The world which is there (for ages).
Us in it, the human subject, also there, but now there with.
And our perspectival experience the unique picture made of the other two, existing only in our head, filled with “objects” that are unlike the other two things. — Fire Ologist

Pretty much a realist stance, with some of the findings of this topic highlighted.

We need all three.

The “objective world” that is “really there” requires not just the ideals to the subject, but also the idealized thing without the subject (however that thing appears to me, or better, to us.)

An objective world, by definition, would not require a subject or its ideals at all.

consider, if the nature of objects is imputed by the observer, then why doesn't the same apply to the ‘external world?’ — Wayfarer

It likely does. Consider if MWI were true, then 'world' right there is an ideal. The theory itself does not posit them. It's only a side effect of entanglement of states, and even 'states' becomes an ideal. There's not much left to objective reality except that one wave function and its evolution.

Bold but true, I believe.

That was in reaction to your Magee quote, and it seems to presume a more fundamental (proper) idealism than the one described by your paper or Pinter.

How can you possibly demarcate where some object ends without any idea at all of what it is you want to demarcate? — Count Timothy von Icarus

From the lack of examples outside of fiction, it seems pretty obvious that you can't.

If I understand you right, you want some beam to paint a particular bug, pumpkin, etc. and lable them "thing" against some background not labeled "thing."

In a search for an objective object, yes, I want that. Seems completely impossible, so the conclusion is that all these things are but ideals.

Take a look at The Mind-Created World. — Wayfarer

Pretty much like Pinter seems to say. But your paper doesn't seem to be the position held by most self-identified idealists who consider mind to be fundamental, supervening on nothing else.

So barring the label, I agree with most of it. The though experiment near the top is questionable. There can be a view from nowhere, but it would be by definition not perspectival. A simple classical example would be a spacetime diagram, especially a gif that continuously rotates it through frame transformations so as not to imply a preferred one.
Take away 'classical' and the view from nowhere can get far more abstract since semi-perspectival things like worldlines might go away. A perspective can collapse a wave function. Can God (with the supposed 'view from nowhere') do that?

Dontcha think this might have to do with the standards all being magical devices? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Since it seemingly cannot actually be done, all such devices are necessarily fictional/magical, yes. If there were a solution to the problem, we could find a non-fictional example to illustrate the point.

This was, in fact, the problem with Maxwell's Demon. It took a very long time to figure out why it couldn't exist, but finally people thought to challenge the assumption of the thing essentially having a non-physical/magical memory.

Godel certainly shoots that down, but perhaps it was already shot down by that point.

Think about it this way, if "being a pipe" or "being a cow' is "strongly emergent" or something like that, then it's quite impossible to determine if some particle belongs to a cow, etc. or not.

You seem to still be approaching the problem from the wrong end. You're taking a cow and looking for a very precise (down to the atomic level) demarcation of that already defined convention.
I am starting with only 'this', an indication of some classically local substance, say the non-air surface (say a leg exoskeletal surface of a 0.1 mm bug sitting on a shirt) upon which the phaser energy beam is focused. Now this beam needs to perform its function to the entirety of the 'object' of which that surface is a part. The energy beam itself (and not the gun) needs to figure this out. And worse, it cannot perform its function until after the beam shuts off, but that problem is not entirely related to this topic.
The description of the bug leg is very specific, but any real beam held active for 0.6 seconds is going to wiggle around and not remain focused on the bug leg the whole time. It will at least directly hit 'shirt' for some percentage of the time.

Was there a before King Midas touched, when the world wasn’t gold, and then what happened to Midas afterwards? — Fire Ologist

The story does not describe the universe being converted, so the supplied physical definition is not the correct convention obviously.
It means my guess of msc was closer to the Midas example than was your guess.

When we look at the premise: What constitutes an 'object' is entirely a matter of language/convention. There's no physical basis for it., we see that the interface connecting language with physical parts of the natural world is denied.
— ucarr

How is my understanding of your quote a mis-reading of it? — ucarr

Well for one, the suggestion is that convention is very much the interface between the physical world and 'object'. Convention comes from language and/or utility. So the interface is not denied, but instead enabled by these things.

We should compare guesses. — Fire Ologist

I indicated my guess and it was different than yours. Now what? Is yours also a guess? Which of us is wrong? Both seems likely.
Your guess seemed to include everything (all of the black and white pattern repeated three times), which is sort of one of the obvious defaults. The entire universe turns to gold because King Midas cannot avoid touching the universe. My guess was obviously smaller. Are we back to square one?

Isn't there a middle ground between there being "one canonical border," and any assignments being arbitrary? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It would be nice, yes. We're 150 posts in here, and no such middle ground that holds water has been suggested yet, but I'm open to it.
Any suggested bound is going to be put to the test of one of my OP examples, or the Midas thing.

If assignments were truly completely arbitrary then people should make such distinctions at random.

Nonsense. People can create conventions to put the distinctions at pragmatically useful places. Nothing random about that.

But they clearly don't do so. So wouldn't it make sense to look for the object in exactly what causes people to delineate them in such and such a way in the first place?

That seems to be along the lines of giving AI and thus conventions to devices, difficult to do with an energy beam. The OP mentioned a teleporter that moves that to which it is 'attached'. So (kindly ignore the fact that I'm using language here) it gets strapped to a railing at the edge of the roof of a building that is integrated into a city block of building connected by shared walls and interconnecting passageways. Question is, what are the bounds of what the device teleports?
I picked this example because it's not clear even to a human what the requirement is, so a device that tries to demark objects the way a human does would make a clear determination.

Water can become ice or steam, but it doesn't do both simultaneously.

Not so. We boiled water until it froze, as an illustration of how to reach the triple point. The boiling was done via pumping air (and steam) out of the jar with the water. After not long, ice forms on the boiling surface.
Just some off topic FYI.

I'm well aware of the idealism that goes on with our categorization of the world, but in the end, I want to resolve the issue brought up in the OP. If the idea can't do that, then it doesn't seem to help.

I think [idealism leading to solipsism] is a misrepresentation of idealism. — Wayfarer

I suspect you're right. I'm no authority, but other people/minds are nothing but ideals themselves to me, and one has to get around that. I don't know how its done.

None of the canonical idealist philosophers believe that only my mind is real.

So they must have solved the problem then. Again, I know very little of the positions pushed by various famous philosophers. I'd not pass a philosophy course in school since that's mostly what they teach, sort of like how history was taught to us.

language - a system of human communication rooted in variations in the form of a verb (inflection) by which users identify voice, mood, tense, number and person. — ucarr

Ah, human speech and representations thereof. If 'language' only refers to that, then a sentient being can definitely cognize a things without the mediation of language

word-processing software delineates language into sentences, paragraphs and chapters.

I suspect that word processing software has no more awareness that it is dealing with language than does my tongue.

we see that the interface connecting cognitive language with physical parts of the natural world is denied.

This denial raises the question: How does language internally bridge the gap separating it from the referents of the natural world that give it meaning?

I don't see a denial of the indicated connection, so it's a question you must answer.

You would have to use physical eyes and senses because it’s a physical thing — Fire Ologist

I did, but lacking knowledge of the bounds of the physical thing, I was reduced to guessing, which I did. That's the msc

That guess is likely wrong, but lacking any physical definition of object bounds, it's as good as any other guess.

that’s the only way to investigate and find if you see border or edge or particular “object

I did all that, and found an object, but probably not the object you meant, since all I had to go on was the physical.

And this border is distinct

That wording makes it sound like there's one preferred border, when in fact there is an arbitrarily large number of ways the border can be assigned, none better than any other. There is no 'this border'. There is only 'a border', among many other possibilities.

It’s not word. Don’t idealize it.

It’s a physical pile of black and white. Can you see the border? I could go cut and paste it for you. — Fire Ologist

Ah, OK. In that case I don't know where you're pointing. Perhaps it is only the msc part that is the pile of black and white in question, situated between different shaped physical piles of black and white. How would I know?

But you seem to be leaning towards an idealist view yourself. Can you say why you're not? — Wayfarer

To re-quote your Pinter snippet:

The atoms of a teacup do not collude together to form a teacup: The object is a teacup because it is constituted that way from a perspective outside of itself. — Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter

That sounds somewhat like idealism as well and I totally agree with it. Something (humans, whatever) finds pragmatic utility in the grouping of a subset of matter into a named subset, which is what makes an object out of that subset. That's the similarity with idealism. But if I am correct, idealism stops there. Mind does not supervene on anything. There's no external reality, especially a reality lacking in names and other concepts to group it all intelligibly. There is only 'cup', and no cup.
Idealism leads to solipsism. Intellects sharing categorization via language does not.

M-U would word it differently I imagine.

because of change, the still object referenced in the “moon” is really an ideal moon, because the actual moon isn’t a still object. — Fire Ologist

I personally never think of the moon as a 'still', unchanging ideal. Seeing its shadow come right at me really drove home that point. Yes, like all things designated as 'objects', they change and will eventually no longer be that object, if only by the lack of something to so name it.

It very much seems you cannot since there's nothing that says to continue while it's a pumpkin, but not beyond, where it ceases to be pumpkin. And certainly nothing to say that 'pumpkin' is what matters in the first place.
— noAxioms

You couldn’t give the example of how a pumpkin is not a distinct object if there were no distinct objects. You certainly couldn’t covey such a thought to me from your mind if you didn’t place an object, like a pumpkin, translated as “pumpkin” into language, but otherwise able to be thrown in the direction of my head, in between us. You could have said “gourd” or “cheese sandwich” but you made reference to a distinct thing instead.
— Fire Ologist

Unless you, like me think, some distinctions are ideal, and others are physical.

Some distinctions are indeed physical. Object boundaries don't seem to be one of them.

hgtiigumsolee

I was envisioning something more like 'this'. Making up a word with no reference is running away from the issue of a reference without a word.

— Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, to make things worse, I've seen many physicists and philosophers of physics call into question the idea of even particles as discrete objects, i.e., "they are human abstractions created to explain measurements" etc.

All true, but I did say 'classical'. Your comment goes beyond a classical description.

How can you tell where a given pumpkin ends if you don't know what a pumpkin is?

It very much seems you cannot since there's nothing that says to continue while it's a pumpkin, but not beyond, where it ceases to be pumpkin, and certainly nothing to say that 'pumpkin' is what matters in the first place.

Clearly there is a physical basis for hands being distinct parts of bodies, but it can't be found in the hand itself.

Agree. I said as much in my comments with Wayfarer about the 100 million year old foot.

Anyhow, you keep framing things in terms of particles. People have been trying to give this question an even somewhat satisfying answer in terms of particles ensembles for over a century now. I think it's just a fundamentally broken way to conceive of the problem. You don't get any discrete boundaries if you exclude any reference to minds.

We seem to be in agreement then.

Let’s equate an “object” with a whole pizza, and “extension” with the dough, and “language” with the sauce, and “concepts/minds” with the cheese.

You are trying to define an object separately from the other components of the same object, like trying to define a pizza without any dough, or without any sauce or cheese. — Fire Ologist

Per your weird assignment of terms, it would be an attempt at a pizza with dough but without the cheese and sauce, except that the dough seems undefined without sauce on it.

when is there ever a concept without a mind?

I didn't suggest such a thing.

From what I read, I agree with the Pinter view.

Can a sentient being cognize a thing-in-itself without the mediation of language? — ucarr

Any cognition is at some level a language, but I suppose it depends on how 'language' is defined.

All distinctions are ideal, and not physical, aren't they? — Metaphysician Undercover

Only to an idealist.

my experiential transformation from typical matter into a human
...
my miraculous existential fortune — Dogbert

Either I "just happen" to be among the infinitesimal fraction of matter that became human beings ... — Dogbert

All your wordings demonstrate a presumption of being a thing that has somehow won an incredibly low odds lottery and has 'become you'. It's a different wording of the old 'why am I me?' question.
It seems this stems from your stated belief in panpsychism. Maybe if you cannot explain this very valid question that arises from such a view, perhaps you should question the view.

I was never into panpsychism, but I still asked the same 'why am I me' question, getting no satisfactory answer. I had to realize that the question reflected my biases, and was thus the wrong question. Instead of 'why am I me', one could start with "is there an 'I' that got to be me?" Answer: Super low probability except in a anthropocentric view, which panpsychism isn't.


Your current collection of matter is quite (over 99%) different than it was in the past, so how is this different collection of matter the same 'you' that it was back then? I've never really understood the panpsychist viewpoint, so forgive if my question is naive.

Obviously, people do recognize things like pumpkins and even cultures that developed largely in isolation from one another make distinctions that are far more similar than dissimilar. Presumably, the causes behind the emergence and development distinctions are physical. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're still reaching for human meaning, when I'm trying to avoid it. I am in no way suggesting that the concept of objects is meaningless to us.

Admittedly one can argue for a fruit being an object. Apples, like leaves and other termporary structures, will detach at predictable boundaries when 'ready'. Not so sure about the pumpkin, which for all I know rots with the rest of the plant if left to its own. and hence is harder to describe as physically distinct from the vine from which it grows.
Such examples are still from biology, not an intellect, but much of biology has some kind of notion of independently existing units, which make nice objects. By 'physics', I was hoping for something more fundamental than biology. Even chemistry has crude 'objects' which are distinct, with collections of similar objects constituting a 'substance', but not a bounded larger object.

None of my OP examples seem to work at the chemical level.

Take for example a typical free body diagram. Such a diagram is a human construct depicting hypothetical physical objects connected in various ways and applying forces to each other. Take away the human semiotics, and all that is left is a classical physical system of particles, the motion of each being determined by the net forces acting upon them. No part of that description demarks object boundaries, except at the 'particle' level.

See: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/912501

From that post then

Yes, exactly. That's s the way it is for things. You could know the exact make-up and location of every particle in a sheep and this, taken by itself, would not tell you that it is a sheep or what a sheep is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your description has already demarked the sheep by selecting "the exact make-up and location of every particle in a sheep". The object at that point has already been defined, despite not stating that the object constitutes a sheep.

Asking for objects to be defined in terms of sets of particles is like trying to figure out what the letter "a" is, what it does, and how it should be distinguished from other letters/the background, by only looking at the shape of the letter, the pixels that make it up, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that. It's just perhaps ink particles on parhaps paper particles. There's two 'kinds' of substances there that can more or less be sorted, but at best you can say of this system is that here's where the particles of the one substance are, and here's where the particles of the other substance are, and perhaps each of those subsets constitutes an 'object', since there's at least one way to determine their approximate bounds. Other information is missing, such as that it is the darker substance that is more of interest, and that it can contain meaning, but it's more meaningful when considered from a limited set of view points.

I'd argue that the question: "why should anything from physics prefer this particular subset of particles which humans collectively describe as 'pumpkin'?" is simply the wrong sort of question and itself presumes things that I don't think are true, namely that "what things are" is completely a function of "what they are made of."

Remember that I'm more interested in where the pumpkin stops than what it is. My wording (that you quoted there) attempts to convey that. "What things are" does not, and such wording already presumes the preferred grouping of this particular subset of particles.

But something has totally different properties, how is it "the same substance?"

There's no convention for comparing materials from different universes, where 'is the same substance' can meaningfully be assessed. It is on the list of things requiring a convention, and in this case, not having one.

Non-relational properties, the properties things have when they interact with nothing else and with no parts of themselves, are, at the very least, epistemicaly inaccessible.

Such as the property of 'existence', just to name one.
The only property I'm interested in is "is a member of this one preferred subset of particles/substances": Particles not in that set are members of different (disjoint?) preferred subsets of substances. I think a contradiction is reached if the sets are not disjoint.

I believe demonstrates that the conventions surrounding objects are determined by their properties.

I believe the conventions are determined from consideration by the intellect that finds the utility in the convention.

I mean, what is the alternative, that conventions re objects don't have anything to do with objects themselves?

Without the convention, there are no 'objects themselves'.

Likewise, you can encode an MP3 song into all sorts of media: — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's encoded in the digital expansion of Pi. Can't get rid of that one, but does that mean that any song, recorded or not, is 'out there'? Why does its existence in Pi not matter? Because it doesn't.

The fact that those equations can be taught and learned and put to use means there’s at least something intelligible about them, doesn’t it? — Wayfarer

Sure, I'm not saying that physics isn't intelligible. I'm saying that it doesn't seem to supervene on comprehension by some intellect. Some say it does. I'm just not one of them.

Maybe the mathematics that the universe seems to follow/obey is descriptive. Maybe it is proscriptive. Those are different views, but neither view seems to have object bounds as something independent of the intellect.

Your ‘non-standard view’ is very much like the definition of being that is offered in this post from one of the protagonists in a Platonic dialogue:

I could not follow the gist of the dialog, sorry.

Are we outside the language game within the realm of Kant’s noumena? — ucarr

I believe that the principal way which we distinguish objects is with the sense of sight. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you read the OP, I'm not asking how we distinguish objects. I'm asking how such distinctions are physical, not just ideals.
I give many examples illustrating what I'm after.

My point being the fact you mention the "physical" means you acknowledge there is a "non-physical" that stands guard just over the boundary of what you (or presumably, the majority) consider physicality. — Outlander

I'm using 'physics' here to mean 'more fundamental than the comprehension of an intellect'.

Basically, my statement is though you in intent ask one question, three questions are in fact begged of the viewer.

What is physicality? What is a basis? Determined by who? Is said basis justified? By or denounced by what? What is constitution? The sub-questions are truly endless.

Kindly apply some of these questions to some of my examples, that I can glean what you mean by them. I always try to be open to having begging logic and biases identified.

you can just implement a particular kind of control where you can ostensively point at things and say a word — Apustimelogist

Trick is to do it without saying the word. Any word immediately invokes a convention.
There's no 'importance to survival' since the question is being asked in absence of anything which can meaningfully assign 'importance', salience, or which can meaningfully 'survive'.

This topic was called the problem of 'natural kinds' when I was at university. — bert1

I looked that up, and it seems to be a different problem, about kinds, not the objective limits of a thing's extension.

But then surely the concept of an object as an objective thing would be incoherent? — Apustimelogist

Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?

'Connected' means to be joined to something else. — javi2541997

But [ object, connected, joined, touching ] all seem to be restricted to mere concepts, having similar lack of physical basis. OK, touching sort of has some physical basis since electricity passes through circuits that are everywhere 'touching', except this isn't true in say a transistor, so it still gets fuzzy.
Still, there is no actual touching of a pair of particles. There is only 'sufficient proximity'.

I can't see how the air or the clouds could be golden too, according to your argument.

My argument just follows somebody's definition of 'connected'. I don't think it was yours. You've not really provided a rigorous one that would allow the existence of multiple objects, a distninction where say the twig would turn to gold, but not the moon.

"what constitutes an 'object' is entirely a matter of language/convention. There's no physical basis for it."
— noAxioms

Is this the premise you're examining? — ucarr

Yes.

I would only quibble with the topic of a "physical basis". Does that mean a basis in physics? — Manuel

It means a basis in something other than semiotics/language/convention. That doesn't leave much except for physics.
I mean, there is quantum physics, where there are these fundamental particles/field-disturbances. Those are pretty dang objective 'things'. It's when you start collecting them together into sets of multiple particles, where physics has little if anything to say about where the set of particles is bounded. Mathematically, any subset is as good as another, so there's no correct answer to 'what one subset of particles is this particle a member?'. Absent a correct answer to that, there doesn't seem to be an objective 'object'.

Note that I switched to 'objective' there instead of 'physical', which is dangerous because the word has connotations of 'not subjective' and has little implication of 'not subject to convention'.

Look at the visual field that includes the pumpkin. Feel of the pumpkin with your hand. Smell the pumpkin. Where in any of this data is pumpkin? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Don't care. The question is, why should anything from physics prefer this particular subset of particles which humans collectively describe as 'pumpkin'?
When a kid points to it, the convention is implied. It's obvious to most humans that the object of attention is this fruit that the kid wants to know the name of.
I have an autistic son, and such conventions are not so obvious. You point to something, and he's not considering the thing being pointed to. He's looking at the end of your finger, wondering what's there that you're talking about. Not all conventions we find so natural come naturally to someone not neural-normal.

But when a toddler points towards a pumpkin and asks what it is, you know they mean the pumpkin, not "half the pumpkin plus some random parts of the particular background it is set against."

But the phaser beam (the beam itself) does not know this.

I've been puzzling over, and reading up on, the basic dictum of Plato's metaphysics, which is 'to be, is to be intelligible'. — Wayfarer

Quite the epistemological definition, but there is no 'intelligible' in physics.
I took a very nonstandard view when crafting my definition of 'to be', which is more along the lines of 'being part of the cause of a given event/state'. I avoided epistemology with that one at least since I wanted 'being' to be prior to awareness.

And didn't my comment elaborate on that very idea? — Wayfarer

Indirectly. The comment talked about even bugs having gestalts, but a bug has no pragmatic use for a concept of a foot.
All kind of off topic, since I am looking for an 'object' that is independent of a gestalt, even if discussion of it necessarily isn't.

If Midas touches one of the elements, the set turns gold. However, because 'everything' is connected, we may believe that the ground and then the earth will become golden as well. I disagree with the latter. — javi2541997

Doesn't stop with Earth either.
So what changes along the way? In the absence of semiotics, why demarks the border between what turns to gold and what doesn't? It isn't being 'connected' because there's no border to that. If that was the definition, the universe would contain exactly one object, rendering the term essentially meaningless.

There are no trees in the desert, thus I don't understand how it is dependant on the first set of twig + tree + forest.

I don't understand how it got from twig to tree. The word 'connected' was floated around, but no finite physical definition of that was supplied. If it means particles that interact by fields of force, then the twig is connected to the desert because there's force between the two subsets. There's no finite limit to that.

Several people made similar comments. The concept of 'twig is part of a tree, but not part of a continent' is pretty intuitive for a human, but when you take away the human convention, it's not so easy to pin down.

Everything is not necessarily connected. — javi2541997

Then come up with a definition of 'connected' that doesn't make everything into one connected thing.

In order for everything to be connected, you have to have separate things that connect. — Fire Ologist

Or there is but one thing. By the only definition of 'connected' I've seen, it implies one universal object, one that Midas cannot avoid touching.

Otherwise you are saying all is one thing and nothing else.

So come up with a better definition of 'thing' that still doesn't involve human convention. How is a device, to which the convention has not been communicated, able to perform its function on the object indicated, and not on just a part of it, or on more than what was indicated.

My liver is connected to my brain but my liver is separated from my brain.

By what definition is this true? Sure, by language, 'liver' and 'brain' demark a region of certain biological life forms. But in the absence of that language, is 'this' the same thing as 'that'? Perhaps this and that are the same life form. Perhaps this and that each refer to only a cell wall and not an organ or organism at all. Only with language/semiotics does it become demarked, which is what this topic asserts.

I say 'semiotics' because it isn't just language. A seagull might pick out the eyes of some fresh dead thing it finds. It doesn't have words for that, but it knows that eyes are the best part.

I don't think so. — frank

You don't think so what? My comment that you quoted was a reply to your suggestion of communicating the convention to the device, and then you say "I don't think so", which makes it sound like either programming the device isn't a form of communication, or maybe denying your earlier suggestion of making the device 'smart'.

There's no physical evidence behind the way we divide the world up.

I pretty much said that in my OP, yes.

The sci-fi examples or the Midas Touch I think are unanswerable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But that's an answer isn't it? — noAxioms

Certainly.
...
But we could consider that an AI or machine could distinguish things based on form. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course. A machine has access to the same conventions and language as biological things. An AI would often be able to utilize the appropriate convention if there is language involved, but there still isn't language involved in shooting a gun, so it must rely on typical conventions and guesswork. Worse, it isn't the gun that needs to decide, but rather the energy beam that it shoots that needs to figure this stuff out.

A machine charged with eliminating White Snake's "Lonely Road,"

Sounds like somebody communicated with it, demarking the boundaries, however arduous the task might be.

Note too that you're treating data like an object, not a particular, but all patterns that meets a certain criteria. Your question then becomes, where it that line drawn between something that matches sufficiently and something that isn't. The boundaries are demarked, but not clearly, so judgment must be employed.

Same logic can be used with a gun: "Kill Bob", which can be interpreted as "eliminate the existence of the current state of Bob" which is effortless since Bob is continuously changing. So it becomes 'make a sufficiently significant change to Bob, which may leave a life form behind that no longer qualifies as Bob.

Ok thanks. I was wondering if perhaps my last post was so far off the mark that you gave up on me (possible); or so brilliant that I thoroughly refuted your argument (unlikely); or you just got bored (also possible. I'm simulated out myself). — fishfry

I'll sign off if I feel I'm done. Don't like to ghost a conversation. Your post was way off the mark, which made it very easy to keep the reply short.

The last thing I remember is that you said the sims have actual bodies, made in the sim factory operated by the simulators. If I understood you correctly, that has massive implications and I find it hard to believe this is what Bostrom had in mind.

No factory anywhere. No bodies in the GS world. The bodies are in this world. I, like most people, Bostrom included, presume I have a body.

By simulated to you mean manufactured?

You're thinking of an android. A simulated anything is the product of a computer simulation. A storm simulator has one simulated storm. The storm is probably not created, but is rather already there, part of the initial state. The purpose of simulating it is to see where it goes, and how strong it gets, and which areas need to evacuate.

I do not know what that means.

Then we're pretty stuck. Most people can at least get that much out of Bostrom's abstract. If you can't, but rather insist on this weird replicant track, I don't know how to unmire you.

You said the sims have bodies.

You don't think you have a body then? You think perhaps you were created in a factory instead of being born of your mother? I said that nobody (but you) suggests this, but you persist.

Where are you?

At my keyboard. Both it and I are in this world, the world that I experience. You seem to find that to be an odd answer.

A gestalt is a meaningful whole - basically, an object, but an object as perceived by a cognising subject, which distinguishes the object from its sorroundings and sees it as a unit. — Wayfarer

But I suspect that nothing 100 million years ago envisioned a foot as a distinct object. That was the point of my comment. Maybe I don't give the being of that age enough credit. It's all just either 'me', 'not me', or perhaps bulk goods.

Is object just not a coherent concept? — Apustimelogist

Question is, it is anything more than a concept? Nobody is suggesting that as a concept, it is incoherent. Well, mostly nobody.

Still, an inanimate object can make distinctions you program it to recognize — frank

Then you've communicated the convention to it. The question is if 'object' is defined in the absence of that communication.

The phaser doesn't have any motives that aren't given to it. — frank

Are the motives given to the beam itself? Because the phaser doesn't pick what disappears, the beam does. It also doesn't shoot past the thing it just disintegrated, a strange side effect for something that emits a beam for a full half second or so.

THEN one can look closer at the two things touching and learn they are so connected they might be one thing — Fire Ologist

But I believe the essential point is that it only impacts things that are connected to one another. — javi2541997

But everything is connected, or nothing is. I mean, everything interacts via fields of force (as jkop put it). What is a connection if not that?

I thought you said Midas touched a twig, not a forest. Why do you think the entire forest becomes golden? By this logic, wouldn't literally everything on Earth become golden when a twig is touched. — NotAristotle

Not just Earth. So the logic (from 'twig' to 'tree') doesn't work.

how do we know the gun doesn't know ... — ucarr

Because the gun 'knowing' anything violates the OP.

Apologies for slow reply fishfry, but another topic has consumed much of my attention and I didn't even see your notify in my mention list.

We're simulated biological beings

Do you mean to say that? It's revelatory. If your position is that the simulators are creating androids or robots, as in Data from Star Trek but perfectly biological. — fishfry

I meant to say that 'we are 'simulated (biological beings)'. Your interpretation of those words was 'we are (simulated biological) beings', which is perhaps what Data is. Data is an imitation human in the same world as its creator. The sim hypothesis is that we're biological beings in a different (simulated) world. I've said this over and over, included in the very statement you quoted above your response there.
No, it's not Blade runner. No robots/replicants. You seem quite determined to paint a very different picture from the one Bostrom posits. Your running with this idea for most of the post seems more designed to disengage than to communicate.

I say your mind is just your own subjective experiences and thoughts.

This works.

I mean, you do have subjective experiences, right? You don't just eat breakfast.

In my world, I do both. I am not in the GS world, so I don't do either there.

No mind object. Disagree. There IS a mind object.

I find 'process' not to fall under the term 'object'. It's not an assertion of ontology, just how I use the language.

Thus there was a time dinosaurs weren't conditioned by the human understanding. But they still had properties and stuff. Like they had teeth and bowel movements. They had feet. — fdrake

Did they have feet? Did anything (back then) treat dinosaur feet as a particular? To the dinosaur, probably not. If it steps on something sharp, it might perceive that it hurts down there and to back off the further bearing of weight, but that's it. There's no no reason to draw a line where 'foot' is no longer applicable and 'rest of leg' comes into play. That's a complex model of a body with distinct parts all hooked together, and the dinos probably didn't work with such needlessly complex models. Maybe I'm wrong about this.
They likely did have concepts of some parts. There's this stegosaurus over there and one wants to maintain awareness of the Thaginator, the most dangerous end of it. That's a particular that both of them might model as a particular thing.

The chemistry examples are good. Chemistry, at a basic level, treats molecules as objects. At least small molecules. For big ones, the objects become more like receptor sites and such, and we start getting into semiotics when working at that level.

Or I suppose you bite the bullet and make all of natures' processes effectively arbitrarily demarcated from each other. Even when they have different laws and levels.

Another good point. Demarcation where the rules change. That's better than just 'if I pull here, the object is what all comes along with it', which is a difficult definition to apply. I cannot define a tree that way, because who knows where it will break when I pull hard enough. I might get an entire stand of trees if I pull in the right place, or I might get only a twig.

The process there is a collision, and in terms of momentum transfer the truck+load is the relevant object.

Sort of. The momentum transfer there is almost the same whether the truck is empty, or loaded with double its unladen mass. It can almost be modelled as a car hitting a somewhat malleable brick wall.

But for the process of unloading the truck, the truck+load behaves as a truck with a load in it.

Yes. There's purpose to that activity, making it normative.

One of the books I was singing the praises of a couple of years back was Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter. He’s a maths emeritus (now deceased although he lived until a ripe old age. I wrote to him about his book in 2022 and got a nice reply.) It’s not a fringe or new-age book, it’s firmly grounded in cognitive science and empiricism. A glance at the chapter abstracts in the link will convey something of its gist. — Wayfarer

I will try to find this one. Yes, it seems relevant. I looked at the table of contents, if not chapter abstracts. First try: trip to the library.

It’s about the fact that science is conducted by humans, who are subjects of experience, who are attempting to arrive at the purported ‘view from nowhere’ which is believed to be something approaching complete objectivity — Wayfarer

I don't think 'a view from nowhere' is particularly coherent in our physics. An objective description may well be coherent, but it isn't a view. A picture cannot be drawn from it. Such seems to be the nature of our physics. I think this objective description is what is being sought, but anybody who calls it a view is going down the wrong path.

That's an easy one; it would be the tree in its entirety that turns to gold. — NotAristotle

These explanations are sufficient. To touch a branch of a tree is to touch a tree. No confusion there. — L'éléphant

Why is that the answer? Why is it easy that the other answers are wrong? What if the twig was the intent? How did Midas not touch the forest?

The twig is a portion of the tree, and the set of the latter is the density that makes up a forest. If Midas touches a twig, everything turns gold unintentionally because each element is interdependent. It would be different if Midas cut a twig with another object (like an axe) and then touched it. Once an element has been lost, the chain of turning into gold is no longer present. — javi2541997

OK, so it's an attachment thing, but the tree is attached to the ground, and thus to the other trees, no? It wouldn't break if I lifted it by the trunk if it wasn't attached so.

I am beginning to believe that you are contriving, intentionally or unintentionally, a difficulty that is not there. — L'éléphant

Well, the difficulty isn't there for us because we have language and conventions. It isn't difficulty for physics because physics doesn't care. It has not need for it. It seems only a difficulty for fictions, and it's no problem of mine that not all fictions correspond to a meaningful reality. It's a problem for me only as an illustration of how people accept such impossibilities as sufficiently plausible that they're not even questioned.

Right. Just because everything is touching, like the tree touches the Forrest floor, etc, doesn’t mean you lose sight of the separate things that are touching, you can’t lose site of the trees because of the forest either. — Fire Ologist

We lost sight of the twig because of the tree. How is that different?

It could do that with AI directed actuation. Just tell the AI what you want to shoot — frank

Again, that evades the question by using language to convey the demarcation to the device.

You've just designed a gun that emits a destructive heat ray. Your IC board supports three settings for the temperature of the emitted heat ray. In order to test your settings, you turn a dial to the middle setting. This setting maxes out at the combustion threshold for common notebook paper. Pointing your gun, you fire at a notebook paper poster framed within the boundary of an iron rectangle. Will your gun make a discrimination, thus destroying only the paper? Success! The poster bursts into flame, burns up to gossamer black carbon and stops at the edge of the iron frame. — ucarr

The poster doesn't burst into flames. It ignites only where the gun is pointed, and spreads from there. So the gun hasn't defined any definition of demarcation, the metal frame has.

Glad you're reaching for real examples though. They're hard to find outside of fiction.

I meant in the sense that for humans, there existed objects - stuff, placeholders, particulars, whatevs you wanna call it - prior to our purposes and conceptualisations. — fdrake

I don't understand this comment. If these things are prior to our purposes and conceptualisations, then how is this relationship 'for humans'?

Regardless I think you're making a distinction between purposive/normative and physical, whereas there's other graduations - like you might think of chemical, biological, systemic, ecological, intentional etc strata as other strata of existence in which nonarbitrarily individuated objects may exist.

I am kind of looking for specific examples. Chemical seems more concerned with 'bulk goods' rather than objects. Biology can work. It is a living thing, so it kind of has 'bounds', but I attacked those bounds in my OP. A tree can distinguish between the life form itself and the parts it sheds (leaves) every autumn, which thus arguably construe objects even while still on the tree.
A bacteria cell (brought up by somebody above) chasing down another is closer to chemical: It has evolved to react to chemical signals and absorb nutrients: follow its nose so to speak. This is definitely biosemiotics, brought up by Wayfarer. Not much 'object' about that until it has to absorb all of some other 'thing' and not just take 'bites' as it can.

Though you might want to say that such things still have a physical basis, because they relate to distinctions in physical processes. Bodies stuff is still star stuff. But then the ascription of a physical basis to a distinction means nothing other than a distinction. If you think everything's physical anyway. In other words, if there is a distinction drawable between two terms, in that analysis, it must be done in terms of physical properties since all properties would be stipulated to be physical.

and you may need to clarify what you would pre-theoretically count as an object.

For purposes of this discussion, "All of whatever is indicated (e.g. 'this', 'that over there'), and not more than what is indicated". How said thing is indicated is not entirely defined, but pointing, touch, and semi-enveloping are good places to start. Yes, it depends on context, but the context is usually absent in the cases I care about. A phaser set to 'kill' (and not just disintegrate) implies a single biological context, and probably not meant as a way to dispose of a container of toxic waste, despite the wonderful utility of using it that way.

The arche-fossil serves as the linch-pin for Meillassoux to assert that there is a reality independent of human perception and cognition. — Wayfarer

This seems to presume a non-epistemological definition of 'real'. I'm all for that, but not all are (notably those holding that being is fundamentally tied to our experience), and I don't use a 'realist' definition of 'real' myself, but I state the definition it if I need to use it.

A counter-argument to that, is that any meaningful conception of existence just is a human conception.

Sort of. What if something nonhuman has a meaningful concept of existence? How is that different from a human that isn't you having a meaningful concept of existence? Secondly, a meaningful concept of existence may be dependent on conceptions, but existence itself need not be.

I think we are meandering away from the question in the OP. — L'éléphant

Thank you for your contribution to the thread. I am enjoying the wider discussion this has inspired. No need to throw water on it yet.

The question is:
Is there any physical basis for what constitutes a 'thing' or 'object'?
— noAxioms
Object, of course, here, is the "thing" that philosophical theories have been trying to explain.

Best defined through the numerous examples in the OP, plus also the 'Midas' one that I thought of later. I'm sure there are more, but most examples are fictional since fiction can use a convention that the consumer of the fiction can presume, but that physics cannot.

Yes, there is a physical basis for what constitute a thing: it has to be finite, it is complete in our conception of it, and we have a coherent idea of what this thing is.
That is why we will never call the universe a thing.

Off topic, but agree, that would be a category error. A 'thing' is created in time, essentially assembled from pre-existing stuff into its thingness for a duration.
My OP is more concerned about the boundary of a given thing. What all is included? What isn't? What is the physical basis for whatever answer is given for those questions.

We don't call consciousness or the mind a thing

Some do.

We call the trees things.

I mentioned a tree in the Midas example a ways up, which illustrates the ambiguity of what exactly was indicated.

The sci-fi examples or the Midas Touch I think are unanswerable. There is no one canonical dividing line for entities to refer to when dividing objects. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But that's an answer isn't it? There's no one line, and yet a line is shown to be in the fiction, as more or less expected by the consumer of the fiction. The answer is, the fiction cannot ever be real unless we either missed something, or there's a way to convey the convention to the 'device'.

Real world examples here might be instructive. If we want to delineate the boundaries of something for a machine using ultrasound, radar, etc., we might have it calibrated "just-so" as to have returns only come on the sort of thing we want to delineate.

That's a pretty good example. We want it to ignore uninteresting stuff, but cannot always. We want it to convey discreet interesting 'objects' but it doesn't always. A fetal ultrasound is going to see some of Mom's guts, but the range and aim is designed to minimize this. The navy sonar picks up whales when it wants subs, and it maybe misses some of the subs. Heck, do they have sonar-resistant subs like they do for ships with minimal radar profies? Don't see how that is easily done without making them a lot less quiet moving through the water, which would defeat the purpose.

Another good example might be using a specific sort of solvent so that only the thing you wish to dissolve ends up being washed away. Draino, for instance, is going to interact with hair, soap scum, etc. in a way different from how it interacts with a metal pipe, and this difference essentially delineates between "pipe" and "clog."

Both bulk substances, not 'objects', but still another very relevant example.

Am I understanding you to be saying that you are unsure of whether trees are "things" or "objects?" — NotAristotle

Well, once the word 'tree' is used, the convention has been stated. We know what a tree is, and it may or may not cover the underground parts, but it is definitely separate from some other tree.
But the question abou the tree was illustrated in my Midas example when I first brough that up. Midas touches a twig. What turns to gold? The twig, branch, tree, forest? The word 'tree' was never conveyed. The intent might not even be there. The touch may have been unintended.
Answer of course is that it's fiction, so there's no requirement for there to be a correct answer. There never seems to be an answer, which seems to support my suggestion of the lack of physical basis for what constitutes all of the 'thing' indicated.

whereas "half a dog" is clearly a half. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's why the phaser set to 'kill' is somewhat clearly defined. Life forms usually have reasonably clear boundaries, but we still have trouble shooting the spider off Kirk's chest. A phaser set to 'disintegrate' (same function) has far more trouble delimiting its job.

To say that we know things only as they appear ‘to us’ is indeed to fall into scepticism and relativism. — Wayfarer

Not, relativism, no!!! Don't fall down into that wretched pit of scum and villainy (with me).

So tying this back to the OP noAxioms, it means that if we question the makeup of a human (does it include the clothes or bugs on the sleeve) — frank

I was partly asking what all is part of a human, but I'm also asking what all is included in 'that ->' when pointing at a human, but I'm actually pointing to the bug.

we'll find that however we approach the question, the conclusion will be an exercise in pragmatism.

This presumes that the physical device (which artificially made to serve a pragmatic purpose) will be able to glean the pragmatic intent when being used. Bottom line, don't use a big gun to shoot a bug off your buddy's chest.

Another fictional example to add to my list, an older one this time: The Midas touch.
King Midas touches a twig. No convention/intention is conveyed. Does the bark change to gold? The twig/branch/tree/forest? How does the curse know where to demark the effect?

Well, we do have machines that do this sort of thing, e.g., autonomous spotter drones that can distinguish tanks and IFVs from other objects. Less excitingly, there are license plate readers with can distinguish discrete characters on a moving vehicle. — Count Timothy von Icarus

All examples of something for which intent has been conveyed by some sort of language. These things aren't required to 'do your function to' 'that', all without language. The function is clear enough, but the 'that' part isn't if the 'object' in question hasn't in any way been described. A license plate reader cannot function if it doesn't know to only process 'license platey' sorts of portions of images.
I worked on a early version of such software, implementing a bin-picking algorithm to have a robot arm pull objects out of a 3D jumble in a bin, always grasping it at certain places regardless of how it was in there. At some point you've pulled all the easy ones and have to either reach too deep, or reorient the remaining ones around in order to get ones with the correct side up, which takes longer. But at least the device knew the bounds of the object in question, and pretty much how to recognize its orientation from any presented angle. We didn't get it working with all types. We had these water pumps that defied the ability of the machine doing the picking.

Your license plate reader likely needs to recognize 'vehicle' and know where to look for the plates. I live by a toll road and all the toll booths have now been replaced by plate and/or transponder readers. It gets really hard in winter weather when the plates (front and back) can become unreadable. I have a transponder, so it isn't an issue with me.
Three different toll rates: Transponder is cheapest. Pay proactively on the web is next cheapest. If they have to bill you, that is considerably more.

The Problem of the Many is, to my mind, a problem that only shows up if we accept the starting presuppositions of a substance metaphysics, where objects properties inhere in their constituent parts—a building block view where "things are what they are made of." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is more in line with the topic. A part is indicated. The question is, is it a part, or is it the 'object' in question? It might be part of something larger, and that larger thing may itself be designated to be part of something even larger, with no obvious end to the game. Hence, the convention is needed. There is no physical way to resolve this without the convention, and the convention isn't physical.

The article you linked used a cloud as its example. Two statements said that there was one and only one cloud. That convention, having been stated, left all the other premises (eight in all) consistent with each other despite the article saying that they were mutually exclusive. I didn't understand that.

On such a view, it's a serious problem that objects can't be identified in terms of discrete ensembles of building blocks.

Yes, which is why the discussion of the problem is relevant.

Process views, which are often inspired by information theory or semiotics, or the marriage of the two (Shannon's model helpfully recreated the Augustine/Piercean semiotic triad) don't have this issue.[/quote]How would it solve some of the problems I've used in examples? I have a device that yields the mass of whatever I indicate. I indicate the ground. Does it give the mass of a molecule, pebble, hill, tectonic plate? Does it include the moon since the moon is matter "bound to Earth by physical fields of force" as @jkop puts it.

Ultimately, I do think Locke's view of "real essences" having to be defined in terms of "mental essences" gets something right here. Without minds, without the plurality of phenomenological horizons, you have a world of complete unity.

Agree, so long as 'minds' is not anthropocentrically defined.

There's a good definition - a thing is a phenomenon that holds interest for people. — T Clark

So since there's no people holding interest in my examples, you seem to agree with my views? There is no 'thing' outside of intent/convention.

If there was nothing there until we perform the convention of constructing an object, our objects would be in total disarray, incommunicable, unspeakable to another object-maker — Fire Ologist

Same comment. In the absence of the convention, there is only disarray, no objects. My topic is about the absence of convention, not how the convention might come to be by that which finds use for it.

If I call a ball an object — Philosophim

Then you've used language to invoke a convention. I can't do that with any of tools I mentioned. I cannot explain to my device what my intent is when using it.

Some objects are socially constructed and exist only by conventions, other objects are physical and exist regardless of conventions. — jkop

I contest this.

Talk of a gutter is conventional, but what it refers to consists of physical parts bound by fields of force into a recognizable whole.

All particles anywhere are parts, bound by fields of force and such. Earth's mass pulls on planets in the Andromeda galaxy Does that mean that Earth and some other planet are one object? Where does the influence end?

Sure, it's pretty intuitive for a human to consider a pipe section in isolation to be an 'object', but that's the convention doing its thing. Consider the railing mentioned in the OP. I've already used a convention by calling it a railing. I've strapped a tool to it, and it needs to move 'this'. What does it move? What does it leave behind? The tool has no easier time doing the task for a pipe section or a ball. There's no reason beyond human convention as to where 'that thing' is delimited.

A number of people seem to have conceded my point that the demarcation of an object is strictly an ideal, a mental convention.

By late 23rd C, phasers are smart. — ENOAH

Phaser work because they're at least as smart as humans. The object is demarked by knowing the intent of the shot.

It allows them to eliminate whatever, and only whatever, the writer desires. — Banno

This also reduces the issue to an ideal, that of the writer instead of the smart gun. This applies to all the fictional examples.

The biggest hurdle to this this task is fundamentally you are trying to find object in the absence of language, but you have to use language as an instrument to do it. — Fire Ologist

Using language to do it is no problem. The physical device is what cannot use language to do it.

As someone remarked in a philosophical essay I once read, ‘there’s no such thing as a thing.’ Things or objects are designated as such by a subject for a purpose — Wayfarer

I guess I'm reproducing that effort with this post. I totally agree, but I've not seen the paper in question, which is no doubt worded better.
I didn't see the relevance of Arche-fossils. Had to look it up.

Dinosaurs. — fdrake

Dinosaurs have intent. Predator and prey both need to recognize each other as distinct objects/threats/kin etc. Their convention is sufficiently pragmatic for their needs.

A human being "raised by wolves" without language would still experience objects, no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

At least as well as the dinosaurs, yes. The fictional wrist teleporter on the other hand doesn't experience objects since there's no physical definition of it, and we're presuming that it isn't an AI device which attempts to glean the intent of whatever is using the device. The device isn't in any way 'interested in' any specific interpretation of what it's being required to do.

Like face recognition. A device that sets boundaries. — Fire Ologist

Meaning definitely needs to be conveyed (via programming, huge database, etc) to perform such a task. I'm looking for an example where one need not communicate with the device for it to work.

The boundaries of such a device are loosely 'face'. Hair possibly inhibits its function. Don't know if a new hairstyle would fool it.

Anyhow, you might be interested in the Problem of the Many, which is closely related: — Count Timothy von Icarus

The top half of your post concerned the foundations of language, which seems not particularly relevant since I am trying to find object in the absence of language. The problem of the many is very relevant, and I have not yet read all of the article, but it seems to hit on many of my points.

The linked article lists 8 'mutually inconsistent' claims about what a cloud is, but I don't find the list necessarily mutually consistent without additional premises, if one starts out by accepting that there is but the one cloud and all subsets of it are not a cloud at all, but a mere portion. Maybe I didn't read it carefully enough. The cloud thing is very much like the tornado, except that from a distance the tornado's boundary is still kind of vague, especially where it's upper bound is.

You post has caused much of the delay in making this reply. Too much reading to do, a good thing.

The problem here is that fundemental particles increasingly don't seem so fundemental, having beginnings and ends, as well as only being definable in terms of completely universal fields (i.e., the whole) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I was going to bring something like that up. Quantization of field excitements has an awful lot of objectness to it, but even it fails to have identity and clear boundaries.

Wittgenstein had supposed a form of logical atomism, the notion that there were elementary facts - simples - from which a complete description of the world might be constructed. — Banno

Does this help? I'm trying to get a classical device like the fictional phaser to apply its function to a classical object without using language to convey intent. A person getting shot might be a collection of simples, but the physical device needs to select which simples to disintegrate, and which to leave be. What does it do if the shooter's aim is off, or he pans it around?

I shoot at a chessboard. Does it take out a piece, a square and whatever's on it? The whole game? Table too? How to design the gun to do the right thing? Can't be done of course.
Anything indicated is likely composite, and the physical is required to glean which simples are members of the composite without any conveying of intended composite. When put that way, the problem is simple and unsolvable, requiring information that is nonexistent, or at least unavailable.

What constitutes an object is not to be found in physics or in the physical structures around us, but in what we are doing with our language and what we are doing with the objects involved in those activities. We give consideration to the broom if we are sweeping, but perhaps only to the broomstick if we are using it to move something that is out of our reach, or to the brush if we are looking for hair for a scarecrow... — Banno

Agree to all of this. I am trying to figure out how something that isn't a person (or a device with intent) can do the same thing.

One can see that I am sort of flailing around here. I'm getting likes to all sorts of stuff I've not read before (for which I am grateful), and having that already under my belt would have helped, if only to let me reply more promptly.

But how does the phaser beam know this convention?
— noAxioms

Because the phaser beam is designed by an advanced civilization with, say, quantum computing powers, even the phaser beam has been uploaded with enough that it knows what a reasonable person of reasonable intelligence knows. — ENOAH

OK, the reasonable premise is that it is a smart device. You set it to kill (disintegrate), so it's going to work on a biological being as previously defined by its makers. So what if I shoot a teapot? What if I want to kill the scary spider on Kirk's chest without killing Kirk? How does the device handle that without needing to explain it at length first, something nobody has time for in combat?

I should post this on a trekkie site. Star Trek cannot be wrong, so they are obligated to pony up an answer, just like the star wars guys needed a plausible explanation for the "Kessel Run in Less Than 12 Parsecs" fiasco.

Same goes for that object "me". And that's the real point. "I" am a convention. What the body really is is accessed only in its is-ing. — ENOAH

Yes, it seems clear, even to animals that not only have concepts of critter, stick, whatever, but also of ownership of the object in question, such as 'my eggs', as opposed to 'no, my (food) eggs now, sorry'. But in the end, it is only convention, with apparently no physical basis.

Give the two halves a new Signifier; suddenly the ontology has changed! — ENOAH

Yes again. Suddenly a broken pipe is two unbroken gutters.
It's metaphysical since it's about what it is. Is it ontology?

You know what happens if a fly gets into the teleportation chamber! — fishfry

Any chamber, like a DeLorean time machine, is a demarked volume, so what is affected is fairly unambiguous.

Are non-climbers failing to see real things that are really there, even apart from the practice of climbing? — petrichor

They're failing to see what is relevant. Names are given to relevant things. A novice hasn't the sight, so hasn't the names.


Again, thanks to all for your responses.

Thank you all for your replies. My topic was mostly an observation. If you can think of exceptions to my 'it isn't physics' assertion, such counterarguments would be especiallywelcome.

one could decide to cut a pipe into two halves either by cutting across its length, so you get two shorter pipes — Ludwig V

What if it isn't at the center? A what point does it cease to be two pipes rather than one pipe and a scrap resulting from me getting the length of it just right. Probably the line is somewhere around where the scrap is no longer useful as a short pipe elsewhere. The distinction comes from language and purpose, and is not physical, which is the point of me posting all this.

or by cutting along its length

Or in a double spiral, resulting in a pair of very difficult to disentangle Slinkys.

When I posited painting the pipe, I did not consider painting the gutters.

The painting helps get the mental concept across. It in no way helps the phaser gun which you intended to only disintegrate the blue gutter.

Depends on what you mean by thing/object — SophistiCat

My point exactly. Nobody has explained to the phaser gun what was meant. It just magically seems to know the intent of the wielder, as is also the case with all the other fictional examples.

If you mean something like "moderate-sized specimens of dry goods,"

What if I mean 'that tornado over there'? It's a physical thing of sorts, or rather a vaguely localaized effect that emerges from non-tornado matter, which is mostly air, something hard to point to. Where are the boundaries of a tornado? The ground is a reasonably decent lower bound, at least the part of the ground that remains stationary. The rest? All a matter of convention, and the convention doesn't care in that case.

We all can’t start or have a conversation without making distinctions and understanding what these distinctions refer to. — Fire Ologist

Agree, but the point is that I cannot have a conversation with my physical device (such as the examples in the OP), so I can't convey meaning to it. All I can convey to it is 'this' (in the case of the teleport wristband), or 'that' (in the case of anything that can be pointed).

I said Terminator franchise solved the problem, but it didn't. In T2, the liquid terminator can imitate anything it touches, which means there is some kind of physical definition of 'what it touches'. So what if it touches the red gutter? Can it now imitate a gutter, or can it imitate the pipe, or perhaps the entire plumbing system of a city? Somehow meaning is conveyed through mere contact, and it can be driven to contradiction.

we can’t speak without standing on some basis that grounds the function of those words.

I'm asking if something that to which meaning cannot be conveyed still perform as designed. How does the gun know the boundaries of what it is to disintegrate? You say words can do this, but I can't tell it. Sure, I can build an AI device that can parse verbal language so as to convey intent, but that just puts the device into conceptual territory. It ceases to be physical anymore if it's done that way.

There is only one world, that of the simulators. — fishfry

We see things differently then. I have my world, and they have theirs. It's how I use the term 'world'. You don't seem to have a use for the term at all since you don't seem to see two different things to distinguish.

What world are you referencing? I believe you are imagining a world that does not exist

I'm referencing the world that I see when I open my eyes. Whether it exists or not depends on one's definition of 'exists'. To be honest, I don't thing Bostrom quibbled on ontology enough to bother giving his own definition of 'exist'. My dreams seem to exist, else I'd not be aware of them. But again, that's using my definition of 'exists', which is not, BTW, an epistemological definition.

Ok, so you are speaking as if your dream world is the world.

I said neither 'dream world' (which implies a sort of idealism, a very different ontological status) nor 'the world' which implies there's only one.

In dualism, the simulated mind lives in some spiritual realm someone linked to the computation. If I reject dualism, as you prefer me to do, then the mind must live inside the computer somehow. Maybe you can explain that to me?

There is no separate entity called a mind under naturalism. It isn't an object at all. At best, it is a process. Under dualism, the simulation probably fails because the simulated people have no way of connecting to a mind, or at least so say the dualism proponents that insist that a machine cannot summon one, despite their inability to explain how a biological thing accomplishes that.

I pretty much think of myself as the automaton, doing what physics dictates. The arrangement works for the most simple device, and it seems to not need improvement beyond that.

But I have already said that I reject dualism for sake of discussion

Good. Then there's no 'mind' object, in a computer or in a person. Just process, a simulation process in the computer, and mental process in the matter of the simulated people. The word 'mind' has strong dualistic connotations.

Feel free to convince me you have a coherent argument that a real storm and a dreamed or hallucinated storm have the same ontological status.

I never claimed a dream or hallucination. I am talking about a computer simulation, which is neither. It simulates wetness among other things. A dream or hallucination is something a person does, not a computer running a simulation, neither is it something a storm does, simulated or otherwise.

WE are the AGIs in the simulators' world. You don't follow that?

No, that's not what an AGI is. We're simulated biological beings, not a native machine intelligence (a vastly simpler thing to implement).