Asserting something commits the speaker to believing in the content of the assertion. "It's raining, but I don't think it is" (and its variants) therefore state that the speaker doesn't believe something via one conjunct, and commits them to believing it via the other.

The sentence itself is not contradictory, and it can be true, but the speaker incurs contradictory commitments in uttering it. Therefore, the meaning of a sentence considered in isolation is not the same as the commitments one takes up in uttering that sentence, which are richer. The two can come into conflict where one alone doesn't.

No, I think that take on things is rather silly. That is clearly not the reason – though it is something like the 'public relations' answer.

So you're saying it's self-evident that universals refer to nothing, and yet people have debated whether they refer to something. — Marchesk

This was actually known as Moore's Paradox in the earliest analytic philosophy (not the Moore's Paradox for which Moore eventually became famous) – why do philosophers say things they know to be false, or argue about things with which there is obviously no issue? It takes a kind of moment of forthrightness to ask this question, because if you don't, you'll just be drowned in a sea of the usual 'but it's not obvious, I think metaphysics is meaningful, etc. etc.' ad infinitum. Of course, philosophy will always have tools to pull its practitioners back into the conversation and dazzle them once again – we know the moves to make, we know the spooks to raise, we know the sentences to say, kind of like magic spells (you can see many of them in this thread). The appeal is to 'stop pretending' for a minute.

Yes, we're all pretending, and we know if we think for even a moment – even our friend Wayfarer knows why he really does this, and he gives his reasons here:



My interest is not in bashing metaphysics for the umpteenth time, or trying to 'refute' the same tired old criticisms of positivism or 'verificationism' for the umpteenth time. My interest is in asking why we do all this. Wayfarer's revealed reasons seem to be mistaken, and not even coherent if thought about for a bit – but there we have those fears, that there are two 'worldviews' locked in mortal combat, and if his loses, well then, we're all just a bunch of fucking beasts...so maybe if I squint hard enough and argue hard enough, and argue enough that nothing a monkey or crow or elephant does is really (thinking / feeling / reasoning etc.), then I'll make sure we're not beasts, and civilization won't collapse, etc. This is evidently just the sort of thing Lazerowitz meant – and of course, it's silly! It's wrong in its presuppositions, about there existing two such opposed worldviews, and it's wrong in its particulars, as to the link between believing things medieval theologians have said and our own purported dignity. But it's not silly to us when we engage. And quotations by Niels Bohr, even when irrelevant to the conversation, can come to seem like magic talismans to ward off evil.

Yes, I'm asking a question about the human ability to put individual things into categories and hierarchies. It's either an epistemological question or a metaphysical one about the world of individual things, events, relations. — Marchesk

No, that's a psychological question.

Anyway, this thread has long since degenerated past the topic and into the very sorts of meaningless disputes it was meant to examine, so I'm going to bow out.

The idea that there are individual things classified as "electron" is the issue. How do we make this classification of individuals? — Marchesk

How is this a metaphysical question? Depending on what you mean, it's probably a historical, linguistic, or psychological one. Are you asking about who coined the word 'electron,' and why they decided to apply it to a certain class of individuals? Are you talking about the general ability to use nouns? What?

How is that there is such a thing as "kind"? — Marchesk

Are you asking how it is possible that different things share properties?

That there is a discussion to be had here as to how a world of individual things can be categorized. I'm not saying universals is the right answer to that. Only that it's a possibility to be debated. — Marchesk

It does not become a possibility to be debated until you can clarify in some sense what you are talking about.

So what is the question?

Is it, do electrons exist? Okay, sure. Is it, do electrons have similar properties? Okay, sure.

What else is there to say?

Besides, the point I'm labouring here is not to convince you that universals are real, but to point out that I think it's a real argument, not simply a matter of verbiage. — Wayfarer

I'm really just not seeing that from anything you've written.

For one thing to be north of another is for the two things to exist on or near the surface of an approximately round object or space that has been marked conventionally with two poles, both on the diameter of the round space, their exact location either due to convention or tracking some feature of one pole versus the other (like being a magnetic pole), and for one to be closer to one of those poles (marked 'north') than the other, along the axis running between the poles across the surface of the space.

I really have no idea what your discussion of 'the relation of being north' adds to what I just said. It seems to me deeply confused.

This seems to me so deeply confused that I'm scared to touch it. Being north of something is constituted by being in space relative to something else. That's what it is to be north of something – there isn't some other ethereal thing called 'being north of' apart from this, apparently outside of space and time, with ghostly properties that we then might wonder about.

I know this is getting a bit off track, but crows are capable of technological manipulation that resembles that of the earliest modern man, and may be able to transmit it intergenerationally.



So, does this creature have a 'soul?' Can it access the Platonic realm of 'abstractions?' These are stupid questions – instead, look at what it can, and can't, do!

They demonstrably do not possess language, the ability to abstract, the ability to create technology, and so on and so on. If that's 'magical thinking', then guilty as charged. — Wayfarer

Crows and chimps actually can demonstrably create crude technologies, and as you just saw in the video, crows demonstrably can engage in quite sophisticated if-then instrumental reasoning.

That is not to say that there is somehow no difference between humans and animals. But we need to be honest and accurate about what those differences are, instead of burying our heads in the sand and dismissing counter-evidence to uphold an apparently non-existent hard distinction because it services our preconceived notions of the essence of humanity.

So we instinctively feel that 'what exists' must exist in some location, that it must be 'out there somewhere'. — Wayfarer

I don't think this is right. For example, I think that marriages and universities and money and bits of data on hard drives exist, but they do not necessarily exist in any one 'location.' In fact I'm entirely permissive – whatever can be said to exist, can be said to do so on its own grounds, and in its own way, however you like. But there must be some such way that we can orient ourselves towards and get a grip on, or we do not understand what it would mean for such things to exist. With universals, I claim, we have nothing at all, not just 'nothing localized to a particular location.' And so you are attacking a straw man, based on your (false) pre-conceived notions of how 'scientific worldviews' work and how they are purportedly juxtaposed to 'metaphysical' ones.

Funny! But I don't think nominalists or realists seriously take their positions to be reflected by such stories.

I really have no idea how to answer that question.

Does it become a scientific question as to why we have universal concepts? — Marchesk

Presumably yes, but even putting it that way is probably something I wouldn't do, since it just presupposes a bunch of useless baggage.

It's worth pointing out that the point here is that both the claims that universals do and don't exist are equally confused – that is, 'nominalism' is as much a metaphysical thesis in this sense as 'realism.'

Are the objects of mathematics real, and if so how? — Wayfarer

But what does this actually mean, is the question? I don't know what it would be for mathematical objects to be 'real' or not.

I once did read a sci-fi story in which a young man slept with a physical manifestation of the number 7 – but this is clearly not what's meant by a Platonist. But what is meant? The question 'is it real?' in isolation, when we have no idea what sort of thing we're talking about or what its 'reality' as opposed to its 'unreality' consists in, is not a fruitful question.

What is that? It appears to be a metaphysical component to conscious existence, correct? — 3017amen

I definitely think that here, as well as in many other topics, there is a lot of mystery, and we know very little, and that people are justifiably puzzled or even in awe of what they don't understand.

What I deny is that philosophy has done anything interesting to address these healthy impulses. Is there a 'metaphysical component?' Again, I'm not sure what that would mean, but if it means anything like, 'would the sort of thing that Aristotle, Descartes, and Kripke have done shed any light on consciousness?' then my answer would have to be 'no.'

I'm not sure it matters. The point is not some kind of 'gotcha!' to make fun of philosophy, or anything. The point is to understand where it comes from and how its discourse functions. Whether Lazerowitz's own ideas have a similar source or function is beside the point, and there is no tu quoque magic that 'turns around' the accusation and shows it up. Lazerowtiz himself did see his claims as meta-philosophical, but I think it would be interesting to see them as something else – psychological, historical, sociological, anthropological? It's hard to say, because as natives to the Western philosophical tradition, we've never really looked at it, just worked within it. That is part of what makes thinking about it so hard to start with.

Animals don’t reason, no. — Wayfarer

This seems like an astounding claim.

So the question is, in what sense is the idea of apple real? And that is a metaphysical question. — Wayfarer

I really don't understand what the question is supposed to be. Again, what is the difference between 'the idea of apple' being real or not? It sounds like nonsense to me, but maybe you can show otherwise.

I'm really not sure what to make of any of these questions.

As to necessary truths, I tend to think that they're the result of conventions of language use. It's not clear to me that a better notion of necessity than this has ever been put forward. Of course there are truths 'necessary' in a banal sense within some domain, as in 'It's necessary for you to apply for a new passport before your current one expires,' or 'necessarily, if you remove the foundation of a house, it'll collapse.'

As to how a term can have 'universal applicability,' I'm not sure what this means. Is the question, for example, how we can use the same word for multiple things? How it is that 'apple' can refer to multiple fruits, for example?

We don't tend to believe in an ability to manipulate reality in that way as adults. — Isaac

I'm not quite sure about this. As I grow older I see more and more that people do behave in a magical way, and have trouble distinguishing between their desires and reality. There is a conscious, overt belief that things don't work this way in most adults, but much of people's behavior seems to have magical implications. If you look at reports of ongoing contentious political events, for example, people don't seem to have the ability to recognize that something might happen independent of their desires or ideology, and can 'deduce' what has actually happened in the world from whichever ideology they prefer. At the very least, reality manipulation is our baseline, from which some sort of conscious adult mind pulls us, and this conscious adult mind is never fully present.

It seems to be almost entirely some kind of cultural tradition that came about at some point in our history and was practiced almost entirely by one sub-class of one culture. — Isaac

This is an attractive hypothesis, and I'm interested in the historical origin of this sort of thinking in classical Greece, but I'm troubled by apparent independent parallels across the world, especially in India and Tibet, which developed parallel stylized forms of philosophical argumentation. I think it would make things easier if the historically contingent hypothesis were true, because even if individual historical events are harder to explain fully, they remove the burden of looking into more general mechanisms.

I think a way was devised by which knowledge could be claimed in way immune to this new risk of being shown to be demonstrably wrong. It's this immunity which draws people into obscure metaphysical discussion, I think. — Isaac

Interesting idea. I don't deny that this is one appeal of philosophy – but there is also a kind of magical thinking here, isn't there? On the one hand, my conclusions must be substantive – or else there is no point in drawing them – but on the other, they must be devoid of content, or that content could potentially be shown to be mistaken.

It should be noted this is similar to Hume's issue with causality. We talk as if all sorts of things cause or cause other things. That's the way the world works according to our language. However, the cause itself is never in experience. — Marchesk

The difference with causality is that I recognize the difference between causality and constant conjunction by how it appropriately motivates the manipulation of cause and effect (that removing or placing the cause is a good course of action to place or remove the effect). The point is not about seeing. The point is about telling the difference in any way.

Now what does it mean to say Hume's skepticism and the debates it sparked are meaningless? That our everyday notion of causality is all there is to the matter? — Marchesk

I think in large part they probably are meaningless, but as I said just above, I do think that in many practical situations, the way one reasonably should behave in the face of mere constant conjunction versus causation is quite different. For example, if my friend always rings my doorbell at 1:00 p.m., and one day I don't want to see him, it will be appropriate to smash the clock in order to prevent him from coming, if I think there is a causal relation. If I don't, this is a silly thing to do, since my friend will come regardless.

Because they exist in our language when we talk about the world. We conceptualize the world as if it had universal categories of some kind. — Marchesk

Okay, so you see...

What does it mean to conceptualize the world 'as if' it had something, when we can't even tell what it would be for it to have that something? What are we 'conceptualizing?' Apparently nothing.

Yes, we can say anything we like. But that's no proof of anything substantive to it.

Note that it needs to avoid using universals to do so. — Marchesk

How can one be worried about 'avoiding' something that we cannot even describe?

Rather, it needs to show how universal concepts are constructed from particulars without positing any universals in the world. — Marchesk

How can we even posit universals if we don't know what it would be like for there to be universals or not?

Is that a meaningful question?

Why is our language so full of universals? Well, our language is full of things like nouns and adjectives. Is that what you mean? Are these universals? Well, the same noun can apply to multiple things.

Is that a problem? Shouldn't the explanation be a linguistic and psychological one? What does the introduction of a metaphysical notion of universals do to help with anything, especially if we cannot even make sense of the notion?

OK, so you can't describe what it would be for there to be universals as opposed to there not being universals.

Notice that I did not ask you to describe it experientially – you can describe it in any way you want.

But you can't do this. So why should I believe you understand what you're talking about? Why should anyone argue with you about it? What is there to argue about?

Right, but that's not how metaphysical arguments go. — Marchesk

Ah, ah, ah. Look above. That's how it just went.

Let's suppose that we came across two kids arguing at the zoo over what a certain animal was. One insisted that it was a tiger, and the other insisted that it was a lion. They were arguing all day, and didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

Now suppose you asked them, 'what characteristics does a lion have, or a tiger?' And they angrily replied, 'well, there's no way to describe that, except to say that it's a lion or a tiger!'

What should we say about these kids? What should we say about their disagreement?

But I don't know how you would actually "show" a universe with or without universals other than just stating it — Marchesk

Exactly! You're so close to getting it!

It's only empirical if you can unplug. Otherwise, your senses are going to tell what the Matrix shows them. The universe being a simulation would be one where we can't unplug, since we're part of the simulation. Idealists would mean it that way, except there's no bottom-level physical world running the simulation. — Marchesk

Not at all. Even if I can't unplug, I can imagine what it would be to unplug, or I could recognize a story or movie in which someone unplugs, and tell the difference between the two, My ability to do this in practice is irrelevant to the meaningfulness of the claim, which is a separate matter from whether I can succeeded in determining its actual truth or falsity.

If you thought I was claiming that a question about how many stars there were was a metaphysical question, you didn't understand the post.

Fans will debate endlessly who's the best in a sport. It's meaningful, but is there a right answer? — Marchesk

That depends. Depending on whether the terms have been set out, it may not be cognitively meaningful (though it may be if by 'best' people have certain metrics in mind). That doesn't mean it's 'meaningless' in some other sense – maybe it has an emotional valence or social consequences due to a positive or negative evaluation. But cognitive significance in the sense I'm interested in it has to do with saying how things are, and if even when confronted with all the relevant facts about the teams, people persist in arguing about who is the best, yes, I will say the question is not cognitively significant.

Your sample question: how many stars...?. This is not a metaphysical question. — Wayfarer

I know. That was the point! You clearly didn't read very carefully!

Did you read what I wrote about the Matrix above? I do think the claim that we live in the Matrix is intelligible, but that's just an empirical claim about robots and vats and so on. Idealists do not mean things in this concrete way.

So, I'll ask again: what is the difference between universals existing, and not existing? Can you describe two scenarios, one in which they do, and one in which they do not? If you cannot do this, why should I believe you understand the claim or its denial?

But as I tried to point out before, you will find this sort of thing with any popular unsolved question. — Marchesk

No you will not. The point is, again, not just that the question is difficult, but that one does not know what it would be to answer it, in principle.

I'm trying to be nice when I say this, but I sincerely have no idea what you're talking about or what it has to do with my posts. I would suggest you read what I've actually said, and not respond based on what you think I've said. Whoever you're objecting to, it's not me.

Or just a paragraph, or short story, or anything. For example, can you write or imagine two scenarios, one in which there are universals, and one in which there aren't? Conversely, if someone else wrote two such scenarios, could you tell the difference between them at better than chance?

If you cannot do this. then you demonstrably cannot tell the difference between the two claims, which means you can't see how they describe or don't describe the world, which means you don't understand them in the relevant sense.

Why isn't demonstrating that one understands an argument for or against enough? — Marchesk

Because an argument is just an exchange of words, and one can use words in whatever way one pleases. It's evident that metaphysicians go back and forth forever without understanding anything, because they do nothing but shuffle words around. Shuffling words around is precisely not an index of understanding, as the history of the discipline shows.

Are you actually doubting that I understand my own claim? — creativesoul

Yes.

Demonstrate you understand them using the novel-writing test.