Wasn't Judaism entirely made up by the Babylonians anyway? :-)

There used to be a fashion for denying that Shakespeare existed. — Cuthbert

Good. I wouldn't want sweet baby Jesus to feel all alone in this....

I for one would make similar arguments against other cults such as Mohamed and Islam or the Hindu pantheon or Odin or Zeus etc. — universeness

What is your take on Judaism? I note that you don't mention it here. Is that an oversight or do you make an exception for Yahweh?

BTW, I'm one of your fraternal atheists.

Why is all the erasing attention going to that same guy Jesus, always, as if the Buddha or Socrates did not even not exist? That's not fair. — Olivier5

Come to think of it, there are a few similar cases, such as Descartes. It always amazed me how much some philosophers bad-mouth Descartes, as if it was somehow required of them or appropriate. They still want to bury him centuries after his death. So I propose the following test of greatness in philosophy:

A great philosopher is one whose influence is so large that other, less gifted philosophers still try to nail his coffin for centuries after his death.

I take it as a tribute to Jesus, to his genius, power and influence, that some folks still have to figuratively whack him off 2000 years after his death. It's pretty amazing.

I mean, have you ever heard anyone obsessing about whether Socrates or Buddha existed historically? Nobody seems to care about them... Why are the historical erasers not concerned about the Buddha's or Socrates' existence or lack thereof? Why is all the erasing attention going to that same guy Jesus, always, as if the Buddha or Socrates did not even not exist? That's not fair.

What would be the point of talking about it? Haters wanna hate.

think we have to correct the historically incorrect claim — universeness

That's not what real, professional historians say. It is instead what rabid, irrational haters of christianity say.

I will chalk that up under "freaky things that Jesus entices folks to do": rewrite history so as to erase his name.

Himself asked his disciples "Who do you think I am?" As if he was not quite sure.
— Olivier5

More likely because the answer would reflect something about them. — Wayfarer

Both, I would think. The two are not mutually exclusive.

'Jesus is whoever the preacher tells us he is.' — Tom Storm

There's truth to that. The Jesus character has had enormous plasticity. Over two millennia, he has been pretty much what people wanted him to be. Portraits of Jesus are portraits of humankind: you have black jesuses, japanese jesuses, arabic ones, and even some blond ones... The Nazis made of him an arian. Philosophers see a philosopher in him. Some atheists too indulge in imagining him the way they would like, eg as a literary myth.

This plasticity -- which I believe stems originally from his own ambiguities -- is a significant part of his appeal.

Himself asked his disciples "Who do you think I am?" As if he was not quite sure.

Another part of his appeal is in his wisdom, and I think specifically in the inversion of values he so often practiced: money is worth nothing, your weakness is your strength, the use of love as a weapon, the exaltation of the poor, etc.

We seem to agree that the Eiffel Tower does not exist in Platonic Form, in that it seems a strange idea that prior to 1889 the Eiffel Tower existed below the ground in Algeria in the form of iron.
But your previous comment "As long as I can eat and work on it, and occasionally climb on it, the table is real enough for me" suggests that we agree the Eiffel Tower exists in Aristotelian form, in that we can both eat in the Jules Verne Restaurant and visit the Observation Platform. — RussellA

I was evidently kidding, but indeed you are right: my forms are Aristotelian. No matter without form, no form without matter.

Your questions about "where in the world is this or that relational information?" can be answered within this framework: the shape that things take is part of reality, it is objective and ontic. The shape of my table is ontic, and so is the shape of the Eiffel Tower, or the shape of Scotland, with Glasgow ontically situated where it is, i.e. west of Edinburgh...

I regret to inform that the Eiffel Tower does not exist, although on the left bank in Paris there's a bunch of iron atoms shaped in the form of the Eiffel Tower.

It's not the bookish intellectuals like Marx & Engels that the CIA is worried about, but those sword-wielding activists, like Lenin & Stalin — Gnomon

As its name indicate, the CIA believes in the power of intelligence, in the importance of theory. The FBI has had a different pedigree and culture, more classically anti-intellectual. They too spied on Sartre and Camus for decades but did not understand much. See:

The FBI files on being and nothingness
By Andy Martin, November 19, 2013
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/camus-sartre-fbi-hoover

If you can pick up apples for sixty pence a pound in Tesco, then you can pick up a pair of elementary particles for the same low price. — Cuthbert

I saw this offer, didn't know what to take. I ended up picking a pair of neutrinos... They're nice but a bit small. :-/

Intellectuals gave us Machiavelli and Marx, and Lenin has shown how to wield those ideas as weapons. If the CIA wants to create public opinion then it ought to be active on TikTok and TPF. Maybe I could get one of those cushy jobs. — magritte

They probly keep an eye on Reddit and Facebook and co. TPF i don't know, seems a bit small. But yeah, some keywords may raise flags.

All in all, I found the CIA observations on French philo life rather accurate. 50 years ago they had agents who could think. Of course they didn't foresee that PoMo would ultimately jazz up American campuses but their diagnostic re. France was spot on.

The question is, where in the external world is the information that this particular set of elementary particles each located at a particular time and space is in the form of a table ? — RussellA

It's in the form of the table, I suppose. This form is objective.

If consciousness did not come from a pre-existing proto-consciousness, then where did consciousness in the mind come from ? — RussellA

That's a different issue from the reality of tables, though. And if neurons do not exist, how come minds exist?

Not unless there is truth in panprotopsychism. — RussellA

Well, maybe, but I see no reason to believe that my table does not exist, nor any reason to attribute any protopsychism to it.

The reasoning works with any table not just mine. As long as we can depend on certain objects to perdure and maintain certain properties over time, these things exist for us. "My" table was just an example.

If we can rest assured that ONE object exists, then it follows that Steve French's thesis is wrong.

The question being: what is (or is there) a recognized procedure to ascertain the reality of things? I contend that if a thing or another can be perceived by several people independently, and if it maintains its properties over some time, it is real enough. It is dependable, usable, trackable. Empirical, hence real.

And this kind of musing is leading you where, exactly?

I'll have to take your word for it, won't I? — magritte

You don't. You can come to my place and check the reality of my table.

My table would appear as objectively real to anyone seeing or touching it, yes. Evidently, someone on Mars could not touch my table, too far, but maybe with a very big telescope said Marsian could see my table, and thus ascertain its reality.

Someone in Australia could see a picture of my table, and ascertain that it seems to be the picture of a real table. If he's not convinced, he's welcome to a Roman dinner at my table.

Le Monde commented on Rockhill's article at the time, and added the following ironic twist:


[...] The report explains in detail the reasons for the "ideological bankruptcy" of Marxism [in France]: the death of key figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, but also cultural transformations, the rise of scientific fields and the gradual abandonment of the humanities at the university. In a sub-section entitled "Perspectives on Intellectual Influence," the CIA concludes that a direct impact of the intellectual world on "political affairs" seems implausible.

[...] the CIA [1985 report] essentially concludes that there is nothing more to fear: anti-Marxism has won.

The irony of the story lies in the fact that this report came out of step. At the time of its writing, the authors cited were becoming increasingly popular... on American campuses: the texts of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan, constituted in a corpus called "French Theory", entered the literary departments before swarming into the creation of cultural studies. In American universities, departments of black studies, women's studies, post-colonial studies, etc. were born.

On these theoretical foundations, a movement of "identity politics" emerged in the United States, based on "the perception of oneself first as a member of a minority," explains François Cusset in his book French Theory. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux Etats-Unis (La Découverte, 2003). The deconstruction of the discourse of objectivity at work in Lacan and Foucault was transposed by American universities to their own cultural context: this objectivity that must be deconstructed is that of the dominant, white male.

If France no longer had anything to fear from left-wing intellectuals, by the end of the 1980s they were beginning to chip at Reagan's conservative America. At the time this report was written," comments François Cusset, "we were only a few years away from the outcry of American conservative intellectuals: they would complain, in the early 1990s, that their children were being taught French nihilism on campus." A series of best-sellers transformed these questions into a national debate, recalls the specialist, to the point that, in 1991, President Bush made an intervention at the University of Michigan on the danger of "political correctness", for which the thinkers of the "French Theory" would be responsible.

Has the CIA shown a prophetic flair? More reasonably, it seems to have followed its anti-communist tradition, the one that presided over the agency's creation in 1947. "To sum up, the successors of the spies who watched on Sartre are watching on Sartre's successors, without perceiving the change of era," François Cusset laughs. But they do it against the grain. "Instead of seeing the danger that threatens identity politics on its own territory, the CIA sees a communist danger." [...]


From: When the CIA spied on Foucault and Derrida
By Violaine Morin
https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2017/04/20/espionner-les-philosophes_5114306_3232.html

Translated with DeepL

I agree with the points you make about education. — Paine

I regret to mention that these are not my points. The whole post is an article written by Gabriel Rockhill, a philosophy professor, for the Los Angeles ­Review of Books

You're most welcome. I suggest Google. It's a good search engine.

Butting in, as @Ignoredreddituser has shown a limited capacity for clarification.

Steven French's eliminativism is about material objects. They can't ontologically exist for reasons which remain essentially unclear, as you (and I) pointed out.

@RussellA later clarified that:

To argue against Steven French and argue for the non-eliminativist view, one will also need to argue that relations ontologically exist. — RussellA

( Note that in this context, a "non-eliminativist" is someone -- like most of us -- who thinks that tables and other objects actually exist. )

@Cuthbert said a lot of very funny and insightful things about ontological existence, and how it was akin to canine dogs...

I said that if relations do not exist, the world as we know it cannot exist. And gave a few arguments for that.

@RussellA called upon some paradox by a certain Bradley, as per which relations cannot exist. In my view his paradox is based on a rather suspect use of language.

Bradley was an idealist, who did not believe matter exists. So again, this is not your usual "let's eliminate the mind" jamboree. It's about eliminating matter for a change.

For me, not a miracle, as I am sure that the mind is explicable by natural or scientific laws — RussellA

Well then, Bradley must be wrong. Because it would be a miracle if the human mind had relations and nothing else did.

If Bradley is correct, and relations exist in the mind and not the external world, an observer of the apple and the tree will be aware of many relationships, — RussellA

If relations exist in the mind and not the external world, is the mind a miracle?

"10. Every solution of a problem raises new unsolved problems; the more so the deeper the original problem and the bolder its solution. The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance -- the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

We may get a glimpse of the vastness of our ignorance when we contemplate the vastness of the heavens: though the mere size of the universe is not the deepest cause of our ignorance, it is one of its causes. "Where I seem to differ from some of my friends', F. P. Ramsey wrote in a charming passage of his Foundations of Mathematics (p. 291), is in attaching little importance to physical size. I don't feel in the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does. I take no credit for weighing nearly seventeen stone."

I suspect that Ramsey's friends would have agreed with him about the insignificance of sheer physical size; and I suspect that if they felt humble before the vastness of the heavens, this was because they saw in it a symbol of their ignorance.

I believe that it would be worth trying to learn something about the world even if in trying to do so we should merely learn that we do not know much. This state of learned ignorance might be a help in many of our troubles. It might be well for all of us to remember that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal."

-- Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations

IE, relations do exist, but in the mind, not the world.
— RussellA

Is not the mind part of the world? — Harry Hindu

That'd be the last nail in the coffin of eliminativism, a most bizarre fancy... :-) Well done!

Along the lines of Bradley, there is no information within the symbol "i" that there is a symbol "f" to the right of it. Similarly, there is no information within the symbol "f" that there is a symbol "i" to the left of it, and there is no information in the space between the "i" and the "f" that there is a "i" at one end and a "f" at the other end.

It follows that the meaning of the shape "if" does not exist in the world. — RussellA

And yet it can be mechanically reproduced and even read by a computer and translated by it into the French 'si'.

Information technology is all about writing "IF" and "THEN" out there in the world, as any coder will tell you. And it makes the computer or device on which you write function.

That the letter f is positioned to the right of the letter i in "if" on the line (unless one is reading upside down of course) is an objective sine qua non to the word's functioning as "if". Otherwise it would be pronounced FI and it would mean nothing in English that I know of.

Bradley's Regress Argument against external relations (SEP - Relations), which concluded that we should eliminate external relations from our ontology.

Either a relation R is nothing to the things a and b it relates, in which case it cannot relate them.
Or, it is something to them, in which case R must be related to them.
But for R to be related to a and b there must be not only R and the things it relates, but also a subsidiary relation R' to relate R to them
Now the same problem arises with regard to R'. It must be something to R and the things it related in order for R' to relate R to them and this requires a further subsidiary relation R'' between R', R, a and b.

This leads into an infinite regress, because the same reasoning applies to R' and to however many other subsidiary relations are subsequently introduced. — RussellA

So we already know that this reasoning must be faulty, since there would be no possibility of any reasoning if it was true. It's a thesis that denies its own possibility. But where is the logical error?

My guess is that it's hiding in the phrase: "Either a relation R is nothing to the things a and b it relates, ...
Or, it is something to them..."

Now what does it mean "to be something to them"? Is there any clear meaning to this phrase in this context?

Like, if an apple is under an apple tree, is it something to the apple and the tree, that the apple is under the tree? What does that even mean? "To be something to someone" makes sense as in "to be among his preoccupations". But it doesn't makes sense when applied to a mindless thing.

The tree or the apple are obviously not expected to know something about their respective position, or to do something about it. So what is it to them? Nothing of course.

Still, their respective position remains an objective fact. And an important one too, especially if one is looking for apples. Like a monkey for instance, or a bird who likes apples. Do birds have minds? Yes, probably small ones. Do they eat fruits? Some of them do. That'd be why the position of various fruits respective to various tree species "is something to them." Birds care. Apples don't.

So there's some very suspect language game at the start of Bradley's argument. It looks to me that either he is projecting intentionality on mindless things, or he is just using sloppy language.

Hey, you mentioned them first.

If relations do not exist, how could books exist?

Books are in first analysis physical objects like tables. If tables do not exist, how come physical books do?

Now if by "book" you mean the text, irrespective of its material support -- a text that you could download or find in various prints but it would still be the same text -- then I would point out that any text is made of sentences, themselves made of words, themselves made of letters. And yet, a text is more than an alphabet soup. A text is structured by spatial and other relations between its elements, and only the interaction between these elements conveys meaning.

Therefore if relations do not exist, texts do not exist either.

If texts and books do not exist, what is philosophy? Who is Bradley?

Thanks for that SEP article BTW. There's a quote in it, saying that one could accept relations in one's ontology "if the price is right". The point I am making is that the cost of NOT admitting relations as real far outstretches the cost of admitting them as real.

Because Amazon sells his books. — RussellA

They sell tables too.

I personally use no fixed and universal ontology. I believe that such fixed and universal ontologies do not actually exist, and that if they existed they would be useless or even misleading. We use the concepts we need, period. And our needs are manifold. You can use one ontology one day and another one the next day. The sky ain't gona fall.

non-eliminativism is the position that the whole is more than the sum of its parts — RussellA

Why then, I'm a non-eliminativist by your definition. I strongly believe in structures.

Come to think of it, I hardly eliminate any philosophical concept, so the label fits. Too bad it's a double negative.

I don't see the advantage of eliminating space, or time, or relations, or matter, or qualia, or minds. The idea sounds self-mutilating to me, almost obscene... I'm much more interested in those things than in their elimination.

I go back to Bradley's Regress Argument against external relations (SEP - Relations), — RussellA

Before doing so, are you satisfied that Bradley himself existed ontologically? And if yes, what makes you so sure?

Russell gives the relationship of ‘being north of’ as an example of a universal. — Wayfarer

I'm afraid I've never given much thought to the issue of universals. The issue of relations is important to my systemic metaphysics, to the idea that a whole is more than the sum of its parts, etc. But I see no urgency in determining whether Pi is really really real or just a universal concept.

Using an analogy, if there is a cat in a box, it does not follow that because the cat is entirely alone there is neither a cat nor a box. — RussellA

Okay, but if there's two cats in your box, they can keep each other company, play or fight one another. Right?

Now, if I were to put two cats in the same box and yet forbid them to have any relation with one another, would you find me logical? Wouldn't you wonder why I didn't put them in two different boxes, if I didn't want them to interact?

Likewise, two particles in the same universe can interact with one another, bounce against one another, attract or repulse one another, etc. etc.

If they cannot do so, in what sense are they in the same universe?

I'm very interested in what sense they exist. I'm exploring the radical idea that universals are the elements of rational thought. They are only discernable to a rational mind, but they're not the property of any individual mind, being the same for all who think. — Wayfarer

I see a difference between relations and universals, though.

If relations ontologically existed in the universe, then between any two particles in the universe there is a relationship that ontologically exists. — RussellA

See below.

Elementary particles located in time and space are sufficient for a world to exist. A world with ontological relations between these particles would be indistinguishable from a world without ontological relations between these particles, meaning that ontological relations serve no purpose. And if they serve no purpose, why have them. — RussellA

Do note that these particles exist in the same universe. Therefore they are already in a relation with one another, a spatial relation: they share the same space. Now you could say that this is a purely conceptual relation, not an ontic one. But if that is the case, then space does not exist ontologically.

For the world to exist, relations need to exist.

Thankfully the person who might have said that has not pitched up in the thread yet. — Cuthbert

Yeah? So what?

Ask any city what it's aware of - if you can work out how to ask things of cities - and you will draw a blank. Perhaps I did need to go on about category mistakes. — Cuthbert

Yes.

Thinking about it some more: if relations do not exist, then what can possibly exist? The concept of "the world" or "the universe" implies interconnectivity between the elements of the world. Otherwise, if relations do not exist, then each element of the world is entirely alone; each elementary particle is its own independent world. And thus "the world" does not exist.

For the world to exist, relations must exist.

I know that Glasgow is west of Edinburgh, but does Glasgow know that it is west of Edinburgh !

IE, the non-eliminativist must also argue for the ontological existence of relations - not an easy task. — RussellA

Thanks, that makes the thesis -- at least your interpretation -- a bit clearer.

Still, I am not quite sure why Glasgow should be aware of its geographic position respective to Edinburgh. And I still wonder what's so great about "ontological existence", or if you prefer, why anyone should be worried about a table not existing "ontologically".

As long as I can eat and work on it, and occassionally climb on it, the table is real enough for me. It is a dependable and stable object, a tool ready for use. Note that in this pragmatic perspective a table is NOT JUST a set of atoms arranged tablewise. It is first and foremost a means to an end.

But for the sake of the argument, let us agree that ontological existence is the best thing since sliced bread. So the challenge is to prove that relations do exist "ontologically". That is to say (I guess) that they exist objectively "out there", and not just as ideas in our minds.

A chemist would answer yes to this question. She would say that a molecule of water is not just the sum of one atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen regrouped conceptually in one mental set.

For one, the chemical reaction (at ambient temperature etc) is not O + 2 H --> H2O but precisely O2 + 2 H2 --> 2 H2O, i.e. the combustion of two biatomic molecules of hydrogen with one biatomic molecule of oxygen. The original molecules of hydrogen and oxygen are broken in the reaction but they are the starting point of it, not atomic hydrogen and oxygen. What exist "out there" are the molecules of oxygen and hydrogen and water. The atoms are conceptually constructed (by deconstructing the molecules).

For two, the combustion of hydrogen releases significant energy in the form of heat. This energy is objectively measurable. Therefore the chemical reaction is an objective process, not just some view of the chemist's mind. And what is a chemical reaction, if not a series of relations between ingredients?

A medical doctor would answer positively as well. A living man is very different from her perspective from a dead corpse. And yet what is life if not a series of chemical reactions and ecological relations and interdependencies?

An economist would say that markets exist 'ontologically', or she wouldn't study them. A mechanic would tell you that a functional car is far more than a concept. It takes work and money to put it together or to repair it. Etc. Etc.