This is talking about how neural network models might represent neurons, not how the physical instantiation of those models represent the external world. — Isaac

The physical instantiation is the model. the thing represented by that model is neurons. The point being that we cannot determine the reason (why) for the thing, through reference to the reason (why) for the representation. So we cannot determine whether the neurons act representatively, through reference to the model, because the model represents how the thing behaves, not the reason (why) for that behaviour.

Th neural net is not making a model that you then see with your mind. It is your mind seeing. — Banno

No the neural net is not the same as your mind seeing, because "seeing" obviously requires the activity of the eyes as well, the rods and cones for example. Otherwise seeing and dreaming might be the same thing. But REM is a different type of eye involvement. And we do know what other features are required as well, (the role of memory in seeing?). So the activity of the neural net cannot be said to be "your mind seeing". The "neural net" is a model which people have constructed and some might claim it to represent "your mind seeing", but it is a deficient model.

Spot on. — Isaac

Spot off, as explained above.

No, they are not built to represent a thing. It's simply not what they do. — Isaac

Banno loves Wikipedia, so:

The central connectionist principle is that mental phenomena can be described by interconnected networks of simple and often uniform units. The form of the connections and the units can vary from model to model. For example, units in the network could represent neurons and the connections could represent synapses, as in the human brain. — Wikipedia, Connectionism

That's explicit. representative models. I wouldn't exclude the possibility that Wikipedia is wrong though.

Sorry Banno, but you're not making any sense at all. There is a vast multitude of different ways of representing. That a process is not representational in a specific way, does not mean that it is not representational in an absolute way.

Connectionist models are just representations, so they are built for a reason other than the reason for which the thing represented was built, as they are built to represent that thing.

And I'll tell you one more time, knowing how the thing works allows you to build a representative model of it. But this provides you with no information as to whether or not the thing represented is itself a representation. A child can copy a word without even knowing that it's a word. To determine whether the action is representational requires a knowledge of why the thing is doing what it does. And that is completely different from why the model of the thing does what it does, because they are produced for different reasons.

Knowledge of how neural nets work will not inform you as to whether or not they are representational. This would require knowledge of "why". Knowing how the human vocal chords produce the sounds which are words, for example, does not provide you with information as to whether or not the sounds are representational. Again, this is fundamental to "meaning".

So the supposed 'external cause' of the sensation is not a cause at all, and cannot even be truthfully said to be a necessary condition. Therefore it is not at all irrational to be skeptical of the reality of a proposed 'external world'.

This isn't addressing the issue. Your eyes and my eyes are stimulated by the same light, reflected by the same external world source. Yet I see red and you see green. If "red" and "green" refer to some hidden state in the external world cause then what does it mean for me to "see red" and you to "see green" in this situation? The "red" and "green" are referring to some quality of our experiences. — Michael

The sensation of colour is best described by reference to the activities of the "cones" and the "rods" of the eyes, rather than reference to some external source. But even this does not account for the huge role of brain activity. Since we dream in colour, it may actually be brain activity which causes the sensation of colour. The role of REM in relation to dream imaging is not well understood.

Weightings in neural networks. You are thinking in terms of brains containing representations, but neural nets are not representational. — Banno

Why do you say that? Any pattern could symbolize something. And not all symbols necessarily appear like symbols to everyone. So I don't see any basis for the claim that "neural nets are not representational". To me, it looks far more likely that they actually are, as any ordered structure can be said to be representational. That's fundamentally what "ordered" is, a representation of the intent which orders, in other words, meaning.

It doesn't mean the rock doesn't fall through, or that anything even particularly different happens to it there. — noAxioms

It means that the concept of a rock falling through the event horizon, is incoherent. In other words, the theories applied, mathematics applied, or both, are faulty, because they produce an incoherent scenario.

Sure, you and I and the bird act towards some of the external world-mess of wave-particles as if they are eggs; but that does not mean that there are no eggs. Exactly the opposite. Other examples may make the point clear: money and mortgages and property and universities only exist because we act as if they exist; and yet it would be wrong to suppose that therefore they are just imaginings. "just" does not do them justice. — Banno

The problem though, is that the thing created by the mind, or brain, (I'll call it an image for now), need not even be at all similar to the supposed aspect of the real world which we assume that it represents. And minds or brains also created the "mess of wave-particles" as a type of image. We ought not assume that anything created by the mind or brain is in anyway similar to the external, real world.

For example, we know that the word "egg", and the word "cup", have no real similarity to the supposed real world things that the words represent. So why would we think that the visual image that the mind or brain creates, which we assume as a representation of a real world thing, is in any way similar to what the real world thing actually is. Just like a word, the visual image might be simply a convenient symbol.

don't think that follows at all. Electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of ~650nm consistently triggers the experience of the colour red. — Michael

Things are not so simple. We see the object as red, we do not see the radiation as red. The object interacts with radiation which is everywhere around it, and emits 650nm, and this allows us to see it as red. I believe this is important to acknowledge, it is not really the radiation which triggers the experience, just like it is not the hammer which drives the nail. The radiation is a medium, and whatever it is, which is going on within the object, that is what is seen, just like the hammer is a medium, and the person swinging it is actually driving the nail.

Stand near a warm stove for example, and feel the radiant heat. What you are feeling, is the stove directly interacting with your body, despite the fact that this interaction is modeled by science as occurring through the means of some mysterious substance called "radiation". The problem is that we model the two distinct objects as distant from each other, separated by "space", and it is very counter-intuitive to think that these two objects could be directly interacting with each other, because there appears to be "space" between them. But in reality, we know that objects which appear to be separated by "space" actually do interact with each other directly, through gravity.

So the objects actually overlap each other, in space, and occupy the very same space as each other. Therefore we ought to recognize that this whole way of modeling objects as separated from each other by "space", and assuming a mysterious medium between them, "radiation", and saying that the radiation is what we sense, rather than sensing the object itself, directly, is fundamentally faulty.

With Trump, you know he left a calling card.

Well, that went over my head, but what caught my eye is that what you seem to be saying is our options aren't ∞∞ i.e. we may restricted to finite mathematics, even if not all the time, some of the time. — Agent Smith

What I think, is that we allow "infinite" so that we will always be able to measure anything. If our numbers were limited to the biggest thing we've come across as of yet, or largest quantity we've come across, then if we came a cross a bigger one we would not be able to measure it. So we always allow that our numbers can go higher, to ensure that we will always be able to measure anything that we ever come across. In that way, "infinite" is a very practical principle.

Don't go messing' with mathematicians with your "c'mon, be reasonable" attitude; they'll have none of it. — unenlightened

I guess that's why TIDF split the scene. But we were just playing, it's nothing harmful.

Initially I was of the opinion that infinity had to be replaced by an extreme number like Graham's number but the result ∑∞n=1=−112∑n=1∞=−112 (used in string theory) is evidence the number that we swap infinity with in a calculation, surprise, surprise, doesn't have to be large, a wannabe infinity; a small, nevertheless most special number like −112−112 will do just fine. — Agent Smith

Fractions are actually very tricky. The common approach is to assume that any object can be divided in any way, so there is an infinity of possible divisions for each thing to be divided. In reality though, the way an object can be divided is highly dependent on the composition of the object. So producing ratios in theory, and applying them without proper standards as to the true way that things can be divided, can be very misleading.

This becomes quite evident in wave theory, as the ancient Pythagoreans who studied harmonies and the properties of musical tones found out. There is a very real problem with the assumption that time (hence frequency) can be divided arbitrarily (in any way that one wants). This produces the uncertainty principle of the Fourier transform.

An object that has no members is either the empty set or an urelement. And of course, an object that has in it only one object is a non-empty set. — TonesInDeepFreeze

An "object" is one. To allow that an object has members requires a special definition. We can say that this object is a set, and define a "set" as a collection of objects. But to say that there is a collection of objects with no objects is contradictory, whether you admit to this fact or not.

It seems that you do not recognize the fundamental distinction between one and many, and you are now trying to reduce many to one, by saying that a set is an object. One is not a plurality, and a plurality is not one. That is a basic self-evident truth. If you want to talk about a category, or class of objects, this is something completely different. We cannot name the category "an object", and also name the members "objects", without equivocation. Do you apprehend the category mistake, and consequent fallacy of equivocation which occurs if we call both the category, and the members within that category, by the name "object"?

Talking to you is like conversing with a computer. — Agent Smith

I thought for a while, that Tones was a bot, endlessly repeating the same thing over and over without grasping the logical problems with what was repeated. Then I realized that this is simply the way mathematics is. The students are taught very specific principles, and their minds are funneled down a very narrow path, You could say that they are programmed, like a computer is programmed, and the possibility that the program is not a very good program, so that they are being misled, is excluded from the program. The students are discouraged from looking outside the program, and seeking the truth, like philosophers do, because truth is not important to mathematics.

You are entirely ignorant of what contradiction is in mathematics. — TonesInDeepFreeze

OK, Mathematics is allowed its own special definition of "contradiction", so that statements which would qualify as contradictory in a rational field of discipline do not qualify as contradiction in mathematics.

Second, even informally, you mention a certain definition of 'set'. Mathematicians are not then obliged to refrain from having an understanding in which "collection of objects" does not preclude that it is an empty collection of objects, notwithstanding that that seems odd to people who have not studied mathematics, and so more explicitly we say, "a set is a collection, possibly empty, of objects". You are merely arrogating by fiat that your own notion and definition must the only one used by anyone else lest people with other notions and definitions are wrong. That is an intellectual error: not recognizing that definitions are provisional upon agreement of the discussants and that one is allowed to use different definitions in different contexts among different discussants. It's like someone saying "a baseball is only one such that is used in major league baseball" and not granting that someone in a different context may say, "By 'baseball' I include also balls such as used in softball". It is intellectually obnoxious not to allow that. And it is one in the deck of calling cards of cranks. — TonesInDeepFreeze

When you explain to me how a set which has no objects also has a collection of objects, and this is not contradictory, then I'll start to listen to you.

So please explain to me, your understanding of "collection of objects" in which there is no objects. As far as I can tell, either you have a collection of objects, or you have no objects, but to have both is clearly contradictory. What if you had one object? It is neither a collection of objects nor is it no objects. Do you agree? Or do you just abandon rationality for the sake of mathematics?

I've studied the law of identity for quite some time. It is rather perplexing, and requires a good deal of thought to properly understand. It is stated as 'a thing is the same as itself'. Despite the appearance of meaninglessness, there are a number of facets to this law, which we can consider.

The first thing is that this law puts the identity of the thing within the thing itself. This is important to understand, because it means that a thing's true identity is not what we, as human beings say it is, it's true identity is what it is, itself. So if we say "that person is a man", "man" is not that thing's true identity. And even if we say "that person is Art48", "Art48" is not that thing's true identity, because the thing's true identity is the thing itself. The thing itself is the thing's identity

The next thing is that the law of identity allows that a thing might be continuously changing, yet maintain its status as the same thing. This is very difficult to conceive of, because normally when a thing changes, we would say that it ceases to be what it was, and it becomes something different. But since we've allowed that the thing's true identity is within the the thing itself, then what we say about the thing is irrelevant to the thing's identity. So despite the fact that we might say that the thing has changed from being this, to being that, within itself the thing has maintained its identity, as itself, and it may continue to be the same thing which it was.

The law of identity may be denied, as I believe Hegel did. But doing this renders the other laws of logic, noncontradiction, and excluded middle, as useless. This is because these laws put restrictions on what we can truthfully say about a thing, by determining what is impossible for us to truthfully say about a thing. However, if a thing has no identity within itself, then there is no such thing as a thing, and it would be meaningless to talk about what we can truthfully say about a thing.

There is no magic. Very much to the contrary. At a bare minimum, it is algorithmically verifiable whether a given formal expression is well formed and then whether a given sequence of formulas is a formal proof. That is a courtesy given by formal logic that is not hinted at in various handwavings and posturings by cranks as often found in a forum such as this. And I have given extensive explanation of many of the formulations I have mentioned. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Whether an expression is well formed or not is irrelevant to whether it is self-contradictory, because to determine contradiction we must analyze the meaning, and this is the content, not the form.

Yet no one who says things like the above has ever demonstrated that Zermelo set theoretic infinitistic mathematics implies a contradiction. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Have you forgotten the conversations we've had earlier? The empty set for instance, involves contradiction.

Yet, again, we remind that a contradiction is a statement of the form "P and not-P" — TonesInDeepFreeze

Oh, now I remember, you have a very odd notion of what constitutes contradiction, and this is how you insist that there is no contradiction even after contradiction is demonstrated to you. If the statement doesn't explicitly say "P and not-P", then there is no contradiction in your interpretation, regardless of what the statement means.

The law of noncontradiction states that the same object cannot both have and not have, the same property, at the same time, in the same respect. So consider the empty set for example. For simplicity, let's say that a set is a collection of objects. Therefore a set necessarily has objects. The empty set has no objects. Therefore "empty set is self-contradicting. The empty set is said to have objects (necessary to being a "set", or collection of objects) and also to not have objects (necessary to being empty), at the same time, and in the same respect

Agent Smith is poking at us. He is much more intelligent than he seems. — jgill

Gives TonesInDeepFreeze 8 mg of Zofran. — Agent Smith

TIDF can be very entertaining that way, and also quite enlightening. But eventually it gets boring when TDIF refuses to divulge the secrets of the mathemagician's smoke and mirrors.

In a sense then ∞∞ in science has a job description similar to contradictions - separates the possible from the impossible. — Agent Smith

This is actually a very good point. Every time infinity is employed in the application of mathematics, it's like employing a contradiction. This becomes very clear in an analysis of the common mathematician's claim to have resolved Zeno's paradoxes.

You're just restating the same point, that one ought not doubt everything, such a doubt is irrational, because "to doubt there must be one who doubts". But as I said, showing that such doubt is irrational does not demonstrate that it is logically impossible. Therefore it is you who is actually missing the point by refusing to accept that this sort of irrational uncertainty is a very real part of human life.

And, as I explained with those 750 wasted words, the point you are missing is very important epistemologically, as Socrates demonstrated. Because you miss this point, you will continue with your belief in platonic realism, falsely assuming that some non-temporal, intelligible objects of absolute certainty, underlie all our knowledge as a foundation to it. And, you'll be attracted to faulty theories, like the theory of recollection expressed in Plato's Meno, to support your false belief.

Actually, it's what you posted which is beside the point. Look, Augustine demonstrates that one "ought not" doubt such things, just like Wittgenstein claimed to have demonstrated such doubt to be irrational.

So whoever acquires a doubt from any source ought not to doubt any of these things whose non-existence would mean that he could not entertain doubt about anything. — Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji Self, 2006, p.219

The point though, is that claims that we cannot have this sort of doubt, it is logically impossible, because doubting, it is claimed, presupposes certainty. And that is what I objected to, the claim that doubting presupposes certainty, so that such doubt is logically impossible. That someone might demonstrate such doubt as irrational, or another might claim that one ought not doubt some specific things, is beside the point. The point being that such doubt is a very true aspect of reality, whether it's irrational or not, as many living beings, humanity included, commonly do irrational things.

If he doubts, he knows that he does not know. — Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14 quoted in Richard Sorabji Self, 2006, p.219

It is a mistake to classify doubt as a type of knowing. Doubt is a form of uncertainty, and knowing is a form of certainty. So in relation to any particular subject, one effective excludes the other. Uncertainty, doubt, is a lacking, privation, or want of knowledge, and it is absolutely false to say that the person who is deprived of knowledge must know oneself to be so deprived. That is contradiction at its most fundamental level. This is the common mistake of all such arguments, to classify doubt as a type of certainty, and insist that the uncertain person must be certain of one's uncertainty. But that is nonsense which completely mischaracterizes, and demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of uncertainty.

To properly understand uncertainty and doubt, we can look at the behaviour of children, babies, and other creatures which have not developed the certainty of epistemic knowledge. This gives us a far better understanding of the uncertainty which ought to be associated with radical skepticism, and radical doubt. The issue is with the understanding, or interpretation of meaning. If a person is unsure of what a word or combination of words means, that person will have real doubt with respect to the proposition. And if the person is uncertain of the meaning of all words, then that person has doubt about everything which is expressed in words.

So we cannot portray radical doubt, (or foundational uncertainty as I prefer to call it, in opposition to those who insist on a form of foundational certainty) in the way that Augustine does here. A person does not need to know oneself to be uncertain (doubtful) in order to be uncertain, and this is a very important fact about the nature of knowledge, which Socrates did an excellent job of demonstrating. Knowing-how is prior to knowing-that. So Socrates went through the entire range of human activities, from artists to craftspeople, to manufacturers, to mathematicians, scientists, lawyers, and theologians, and demonstrated that in all forms of human activity people were doing things who could not explain, or understand what they were doing. Doing precedes the human capacity to understand what one is doing. Consider as examples, a child learning to talk, or at the other extreme end of knowledge, the activities of quantum physicists.

The fact that we learn how to do something before we learn what we are doing, demonstrates the priority of uncertainty, because knowing-that involves a higher degree of certainty than knowing-how. And, it shows that it is not required that the person who doubts, knows oneself to be doubting. To portray uncertainty in this way, such that the person who is uncertain must be certain that oneself is uncertain, is a mistaken and profoundly incorrect representation of the nature of knowledge. Contrary to popular belief, knowledge is not based in certainty, it is supported by uncertainty. As Socrates said, wonder is the base of philosophy. And we know that wonder is a form of uncertainty. and philosophy is what supports knowledge. So we can conclude that knowledge is itself supported by uncertainty, the support being distinct from that which is supported.

I don't see how infinity is relevant. Your proposed "infinity of doubts" is unwarranted, and a person's consciousness may simply be a doubtful, or uncertain consciousness, i.e. the skeptic.

If you're doubting everything, of course you'd be doubtful of your doubting. Where's the problem?

He means you have to be certain of something, because when you TRY to doubt EVERYTHING then you can't doubt anything — Gregory

I don't see the logic. Why not just doubt everything? There's no problem with that.

:100:

As Kant said about the noumenal world (which is the same as the mind-independent world), nothing can be said about its objects except that they exist.

But when we say of the independent objects, that they exist, we use "exist" as a property. And, we've already said, that objects are a property of "the independent world". So we have already a double layer of predication. From this perspective, we've made the predicate "objects", into a subject and we proceed with another layer of predication, concerning the objects. But we are restricted in what we can say about "the objects" by the first premise, already assumed, that these are property of a further object, the world.

The issue is that the first object "the independent world", as a united thing, is not a justifiable assumption or conclusion. This assumption cannot be made as a premise as it is not at all supported by empirical observations, and we do not have the premises required to conclude logically that there is a united object which we can call "the independent world". So there is absolutely no support for "the independent world".

By Occam's razor, we cut this first principle, "the independent world", and we start with what sensation and intuition gives us, individual objects. In Platonic terms, the first principle is "the Many" instead of "the One", then we can proceed to enquire as to what makes an individual object an individual object, in a way which was exemplified by Aristotle, and from this enquiry we can derive principles to justify the existence of "the One", as an individual, rather than as a whole.

In this way we can proceed toward an understanding of what it means to "exist". The quoted passage says that all we can say of objects is that "they exist", but this is rather insignificant if we do not know the conditions for existence. So we dismiss the united object, whatever you call it, "the independent word", or "the universe", as an unsound premise which will only mislead, and ask what does it mean to be one of the many independent objects, thus justifying the concept of "existence".

Wittgenstein in his book On Certainty: "If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty." — Gregory

This is incorrect, and Wittgenstein was obviously wrong with this principle. In reality, we go ahead and act when we are still in doubt of the outcome. Certainty is clearly not a requirement for acting.

So for example, earlier in this thread you gave Berkeley's reasoning for why objects extended in space can't exist, because of infinite divisibility. This ignores what modern physics has to say about subatomic particles and limits to length. It probably also ignores the resolution to Zeno's paradox in math. — Marchesk

Mathematicians do not have a resolution to Zeno's paradoxes, they just use a work around. And what modern physics says about subatomic particles, is to some extent a product of that work around, because physicists use it. But of course, modern physics is incapable of providing an understanding of subatomic particles.

So we ought to conclude that the work around which mathematics uses, is not very good.

There's an entire essay in this question, but to answer very briefly - I think 'eternal' is oversold for Platonic ideas and the like. It's more that they're non-temporal - that they don't come into or go out of existence - they're not temporally delimited or composed of parts. — Wayfarer

Temporality is often associated with change. If something changes, it is temporal, and if it is temporal, it must be generated and destroyed. These are the ideas which Aristotle grappled with in his physics, spatial change and temporality. So Aristotle would argue that if something is non-temporal, it must be never changing and therefore eternal. This is why "eternal", in the sense of Christian theology, has the meaning of outside of time, non-temporal, never changing, while "eternal" in the materialist or physicalist sense means endless time. You can see how different the two senses of "eternal" are, the theological one requires that time has limits, in order that there can be something outside of time, non-temporal, while the materialist one denies that time is limited.

When we posit the reality of something outside of time, "eternal", we must allow for the means for a relationship between the eternal, that which is outside time, and the temporal existents. Are you familiar with Aquinas' conception of "aeviternal", or "aeviternity"? He uses this conception to describe the medium, "the aevum", which is between the eternal and the temporal, and assigns to it the existence of the angels. I believe it's based in a Platonic proposal, of something which is changed, or changes when coming into being, but then is changeless.

The evolution of h. sapiens is fairly well understood. But I share with Alfred Russel Wallace scepticism that the intellectual, artistic and creative faculties can be understood solely through the lens of evolutionary biology. — Wayfarer

I don't think that the artistic and creative faculties of any living being can be understood through the lens of evolutionary biology.

How would you separate the aspects of human thought which are innate and eternal, as platonic realism dictates, from the aspects which are constructed by the human mind, and are "evolving"? Is this an example of the distinction between content and form? Would you propose that the content, being some fundamental platonic forms, which constitutes the subject matter of thinking, is distinguishable from the formal structures which the mind creates, as a "world-picture" for example.

The reason I ask this, is that you seem to adhere strongly to platonic realism, which would understand "ideas" or "Forms" as eternal unchanging, innate features of our intelligible universe, yet you also allow features which are constructions of the mind when you want to discredit naive realism. The following is a quote from a few posts back.

But it is interesting how both support the model of the mind as a constructive process that creates, generates or builds our world-picture, which seems to me to irrevocably disrupt the view of naive realism. — Wayfarer

The issue here, is the nominalist/realist debate which you often refer to. You seem to employ nominalist principles when you are arguing against some forms of realism, But then when it comes to supporting platonic realism, you appear to be anti-nominalist.

Would you be proposing some sort of hylomorphism of intelligible objects? In this case, a conceptual structure would consist of some parts which are eternal unchanging platonic ideals (the subject-matter or content of the intelligible object), and some parts would be constructs, produced or created by the human mind (the formal aspect of the intelligible object).

From this perspective, would we as human beings, have a vantage point, toward understanding the nature of true, pure, separate, independent, and immaterial Forms? If this form of dualism which you seem to be proposing places the innate, eternal Ideas, of platonic realism, as the subject matter, being the material content of the intelligible object, how can we turn this around to give true separate, existence to the independent Forms, as immaterial?

Do you see the point I'm making? This type of thinking, which gives priority to platonic realism, instead of denying all forms of realism, as a first principle of Socratic skepticism, gives us an upside down, or backward starting point. If instead, we assign "intelligibility" only to what is created by the mind, under Plato's principle of "the good", then we have a true starting point, to see that anything intelligible is necessarily created by a mind. And the idea of eternal, unchanging intelligible objects, as platonic forms, must be dismissed as incoherent.

There are distinct types of types. For example, there are types of qualities, colours, tastes, etc., and there are also types of objects, houses, cars, cups etc.. As universals employed in logic, the qualities are named as predicates, and the things are named as subjects. There is a big difference in role, between a type of thing, and a type of quality.

In the case of numbers however, there is ambiguity. Some would say that a number is a type of thing, and others would say that a number is a type of quality. And of course, it depends on how you use numbers, as subjects or as predicates. Is there a thing called "three", or is "three" a specific quality of a group?

But a difficulty emerges as soon as we ask ourselves how we know that a thing is white or a triangle. If we wish to avoid the universals whiteness and triangularity, we shall choose some particular patch of white or some particular triangle, and say that anything is white or a triangle if it has the right sort of resemblance to our chosen particular. But then the resemblance required will have to be a universal. Since there are many white things, the resemblance must hold between many pairs of particular white things; and this is the characteristic of a universal. It will be useless to say that there is a different resemblance for each pair, for then we shall have to say that these resemblances resemble each other, and thus at last we shall be forced to admit resemblance as a universal. The relation of resemblance, therefore, must be a true universal. And having been forced to admit this universal, we find that it is no longer worth while to invent difficult and unplausible theories to avoid the admission of such universals as whiteness and triangularity. ... — Bertrand Russell, World of Universals

I don't think that this is a correct portrayal. We do not utilize "resemblance", when judging distinct things as having the same quality. I think this is what Banno refers to when he mentions the use of "grey". Two distinct grey things, are not both judged as grey because they have some resemblance to each other. Instead, I think that such judgements ought to be seen as a sort of categorization.

So each grey thing is placed into the category of having the colour, or quality, of being grey. This is not a resemblance, which is a type of similarity, but it is a sort of sameness. And "same" is a very distinct category from "similar" because "similar" implies necessarily a difference, whereas "same" is to deny difference.

However, by the law of identity, we cannot say that the two distinct things, which are said to have the same quality, are the same in any unqualified or absolute way. So to facilitate communication, and show that we recognize the difference between them, it is commonly said that the two things are similar. But this common way of speaking veils the reality of the mental process which is behind this use of the same word to describe two distinct things. It misleads us into thinking that the two different things have been judged as being similar, when in reality they have been judged as being in some way the same, i.e. having the same type of quality.

And, that this is a case of being misled is justified by the fact that "same" is logically distinct from "similar", such that two distinct things having been judged as having the same type of quality does not necessitate that the two things are similar, unless we define "similar" in this way. But then we see that what constitutes "a type" is simply a definition, and we are led toward nominalism instead of the realism which you prefer.

There's an infinite number of numbers which no human has ever thought of. What's the point in trying to name a random one of these? Here's one for you though, which might be worthwhile. Try naming pi to its final decimal place. That's a meaningful number which no one has ever thought of.

Bowdlerising his argument, it simply is not the case that the grey of a cloud and the grey of this laptop have something in common - apart from our use of the word "grey". Or if you prefer, abstract objects do not exist. — Banno

It seems Marchesk prefers to use the word "gray". Do you think that the use of the word "grey", and the use of the word "gray" have something in common?

I’m proposing an idea of truth as intersubjective , not simply subjective. Yes, each of us enters into relations of communication with others bringing with us our own personal perspective , but the ever evolving ‘intricate and intimate interconnections in the way we interact with the world and each other’ I described allows for a gradual convergence among personal perspectives , but not the complete disappearance of subjective perspective. Think of this subjectivity within intersubjectivity as variations on a common theme. They would be no basis for communication with anyone else if our inner perspectives were all at all times completely different from each other. — Joshs

This looks more like justification than truth, to me, demonstrating that my perspective is compatible with yours. How does truth enter this picture?

There are 22 quarks in an atom. So from simple multiplication N is 2.2e81 iff the only objects that exist are these quarks. Let's call this for now Nᵩ (and conceptually separate it from Nₘ). — Kuro

On what principles would you decide how to count all the dark matter?

Truth as correspondence with what is out there independent of us is one sort of attempt to discover ordered relationships. When I say this way masks something, I mean that it treats a complex series of intricate relations as one single sort of relation. Why does it do this? Because these more intimate dynamics within the abstraction that we call a fact of the matter are too subtle to be noticed. The generalizations that truth produces reflect what seems obvious to us: there are real objects out there in a real world, whose features are subject to conceptual interpretation but whose existence does not dependent on our concepts. What I am arguing is not that the real world is actually fake or imagined. I am arguing that this real world is not a conglomeration of objects, laws and forces that are what they are independent of us. We and the world form a single integrated web, and each human perspective contributes to the evolution of that web. Knowledge doesn’t passively represent, it changes, builds and creates within this web. The notion of objective truth assumes parts of the web of reality just sit there waiting for us to capture what they are and do. But no aspect of the web of reality remains unchanged by what changes in any other aspect of it. The world is a moving target for our scientific inquiries, and our participation in its transformation through our investigations of it change its rules, laws and facts in subtle ways. — Joshs

I take this to be saying that there is no such thing as "objective truth".

But this reciprocal
dance between us and world we call science gradually makes the world more intelligible, and thus more ‘true’ , by allowing us to build more intricate and intimate interconnections in the way we interact with the world and each other. The world becomes more anticipatable in its behavior over time this way. This is a deeper notion of truth than that of simple correspondence between concept and object. — Joshs

So how are you using "true" and "truth" here? You've denied any objective truth as correspondence, but now you say there is some sense of real truth, a "deeper notion of truth", but you haven't given any indication of what it is. Is it a subjective truth? If truth is simply "intricate and intimate interconnections in the way we interact with the world and each other", then the way I understand my relationship with you and the world is completely different from the way that you understand this relationship, and truth, it appears, would be completely subjective. Or do you propose some objectivity to these relations? In which case, I think we're back to what you denied above.

We find truth all around us, whenever we participate in forming broad abstractions that mask the interpersonal differences in purpose and perspective that accompany our social engagements. These broad abstractions can take the form of propositional truth statements producing the picture of objects existing independently of human conceptualization, and are true facts for all of us. — Joshs

Well Joshs, I don't understand this post at all. I don't see how truth could be a masking. I think it is more the opposite, an unmasking. So I think your explanation is a movement away from truth, toward deception, rather than toward truth.

This is the attempt at measurement, referred to by above.

Wage, is fundamentally a method for assigning a quantitative value to a good deed. Next, in the basic principles of economics, comes a proposal of a harmony between the value of a good deed, wage, and the value of property, capital. The problem is that these two values are not necessarily compatible, as they most often are derived from different ideals, yet they are quantified by the same monetary scale. Economics can only be successful if the two are related to each other as the means to the same end, but capital generally has a different source from wage. And Karma would probably be better measured as a form of capital rather than a form of wage.

Yes, that would involve making holes smaller. — Bartricks

Is this when you make half a hole?

:up: