Definitely not boredom. — TheMadFool

What then?

It's been called risk-taking.

It's humoristic. Evidently it's better to be slightly bored than to go through all these miseries.

All that needs to be borne in mind is that both vision and thought are information processing — TheMadFool

The senses are about acquiring information from the world. Do you disagree?

they don't have substantive existence — Janus

All the same, no need to talk about things so flicking and impermanent.

Indeed. Especially if you are right that ideas do not really exist.

How different is mental info processing from that which takes place in the eyes when it sees something? No difference, in my humble opinion. — TheMadFool

By this reasoning, eagles are smarter than us because they have better eyes.

So, if thoughts are not internally linguistically intoned they are like faint traces of cloud, or dimly sensed movements or visualizations; they seem to be anything but substantive. — Janus

I feel differently. For me, my thoughts and sensations are a first layer of reality. Then other people and things are a second layer of reality, slightly less obvious.

What use is the brain without senses and what use are senses without a brain? What use is reasoning without anything to reason with or about? — Harry Hindu

That'd be why we have both senses and reason, no?

There's Black Lives Matter and Bernie.

You take the number under my name and you subtract the number under Baden's from it, and from that you arrive at the Baden sadness score. — Hanover

Beauty contests and their queens...

To be substantial is, to my way of thinking, to be an object of the five senses and their augmentations. — Janus

Assuming you are self-conscious, you can sense what you are thinking and thus you should consider your thoughts substantive, in your way of thinking.

Glad you noticed!

I stole this from someone here, maybe you:


Ockham's razors

one decent enough answer to the thread title — Mww

IMNSHO the thread title is a bit lame and should be changed to: New York New York -- Misery of Nominalism

don't see how reasoning could be separate from sensation. — Harry Hindu

Very simple. Senses are for info gathering, reasoning is for info processing.

Not sure I see the connection. Care to elaborate?

science lights the way — DrOlsnesLea

By definition.

, in this kind of sense there is the world of fashion, the world of football, the world of advertising, and so on; there are countless worlds in this sense, and they all have a different kind of existence. The important point though, relating back to the thread from which this thread was created, that these worlds do not have a substantive existence as the physical field of sense does — Janus

What do you mean by substantive existence?

The ideal scientist has no such barriers. — DrOlsnesLea

So you are a pluralist like Popper?

From a lecture Karl Popper gave on the subject: — Olivier5

Note that in this lecture Popper challenges both the monist and dualist views and proposes, instead, "a pluralist view ... a view of the universe that recognizes at least three different but interacting sub-universes": the physical world; the mental world; and the world of ideas and cultural artifacts.

Thanks @Cuthbert and @Michael for the good manner update.

Georgie-porgie — Cuthbert

Trying to resist the urge of using this one...

So, does the concept exist apart from the instances of it being thought? — Janus

If nobody on earth thinks of the alphabet for one full minute, did the alphabet disappear for one minute?

If you keep telling me that your name is Olivier and I keep calling you Oliver or Amy then it won't surprise me if you get annoyed by it. — Michael

Story of my life.

So how is it done? They wear a T-shirt saying "I Am They"?

It could have been any city, or indeed any word. The point is, that although the representations all differ, they all mean the same. — Wayfarer

Yes. The point was to show that there is a difference between the name or concept of "New York" and any of its many possible materializations in print or drawing. Hence there is an degree of independence between the name and the material prints of the name.

As the article you posted indicates, this seems to apply to smells as written down on neurons as well.

Do you think the name 'New York' exists apart from it's visual and auditory embodiments? — Janus

Yes, I believe the concept exists as well. Signs are meaningful, they are not just what they seem.

Misgendering is cruel — K Turner

Sorry, late boomer here. Why is it such a big offence to call a he a she, or a them a he? Like, you guys think she are bad?

This discussion was created with comments split from Substance Dualism Versus Property Dualism Debate Discussion Thread — Hanover

Thanks for this; that old debate discussion thread was a bit of a zombie indeed.

For the title, i would like to suggest:

New York, New York: Misery of Nominalism

And of course, the thread soundtrack would be:

It's normal to be drawn to that which is like you — Lil

It's boring, rather. Discovering what is different from you can be loads of fun

It also requires the ability to abstract, to understand symbolic meaning, as you keep pointing out. — Wayfarer

Also the capacity to "change one's mind", to adopt new points of view, to commit to a new idea.

Why not simply scientific realism? — DrOlsnesLea

What would that be? The idea that scientific theories exist?

From a lecture Karl Popper gave on the subject:

I now come to the discussion of my central problem. Are world 3 objects, such as Newton’s or Einstein’s theories of gravitation, real objects? Or are they mere fictions, as both the materialist monist and the dualist assert? Are these theories themselves unreal, and only their embodiments real, as the materialist monist would say; including, of course, their embodiments in our brains, and in our verbal behaviour? Or are, as the dualist would say, not only these embodiments real, but also our thought experiences; our thoughts, directed towards these fictitious world 3 objects, but not these world 3 objects themselves?

My answer to this problem -- and, indeed, the central thesis of my talk -- is that world 3 objects are real; real in a sense very much like the sense in which the physicalist would call physical forces, and fields of forces, real, or really existing. However, this realist answer of mine has to be defended, by rational arguments.

There is perhaps a danger here that my central problem, the reality or existence of world 3 objects, may degenerate into a verbal issue. After all, we can call whatever we like ‘real’ or ‘existent.’ I think that we can get rid of this danger, by starting from the most primitive idea of reality, and by adopting the physicalist’s own method of generalizing this idea, and, ultimately, of replacing it altogether.

I suggest that all of us are most certain of the existence or reality of physical bodies of medium size: of a size such that we can easily handle them, turn them round, and drop them. Such things are ‘real’ in the most primitive sense of the word. I conjecture that a baby learns to distinguish such things; and I suppose that those things are most convincingly real to the baby that he or she can handle and drop, and can put into his or her mouth. Resistance to touch also seems to be important; and some degree of temporal persistence.

Starting from a primitive idea of real things like this, the
physicalist extends the idea by generalizing it. I suggest that the materialist’s or physicalist’s idea of real physical existence is obtained by including very big things and very small things, and things that do not persist through any length of time; and also by including whatever can causally act upon things, such as magnetic and electrical attraction and repulsion, and fields of forces; and radiation, for example X-rays, because they can causally act upon bodies, say, upon photographic plates.

We are thus led to the following idea: what is real or what exists is whatever may, directly or indirectly, have a causal effect upon physical things, and especially upon those primitive physical things that can be easily handled.

Thus we may replace our central problem of whether abstract world 3 objects such as Newton’s or Einstein’s theories of gravitation have a real existence, by the following problem: can scientific conjectures or theories exert, in a direct or indirect way, a causal effect upon the physical things of world 1? My reply to this question will be: yes, they can indeed.

My fundamental argument in support of world 3 [ideas] realism is very simple. We all know that we live in a physical world 1 which has been greatly changed by making use of science; that is to say, by using world 3 conjectures or theories as instruments of change. Therefore, scientific conjectures or theories can exert a causal or an instrumental effect upon physical things; far more so than, say, screwdrivers or scissors.

https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/p/popper80.pdf

I see those seven differently type-faced examples of 'New York' as sharing a common recognizable pattern, and hence being identifiable as signifying the same thing, not as representing some changeless disembodied name. — Janus

They are all identifiable as saying the same words: 'New York', even by one who never heard of the city. Are words embodied?

Horse noun
\ ˈhȯrs \
plural horses also horse
Definition:
1a: Anything that looks sufficiently like a horse. — Olivier5

For those wondering what "look" and "sufficiently" mean in the above definition, they denote whatever resembles "looking", and "sufficiently", respectively.

A's look like A's.

Mmmokay... If that's the sum total of nominalism, we certainly can do better.


Horse noun
\ ˈhȯrs \
plural horses also horse
Definition:
1a: Anything that looks sufficiently like a horse.

1b: Any other thing that may in one way or another look sufficiently like a horse.

But that 'definition' is not a definition; it is a tautology... "Any A must look like a A". Sure, but where's the definition?

Letters and words are symbols, they are more than just drawings that look like other drawings. They are made to be understood, to carry meaning from one mind to the next. And therefore they do need a degree of universality in order to function.

The traditional distinction in philosophy is between reason and sensation - both central to knowledge, but separate faculties. — Wayfarer

I have no idea what the philosophical implications are, but I would identify self-consciousness with the sense of introspection. We can 'sense' our own thoughts and feel our feelings and access our memories. At least some of them.

Reason implies a self-conscious, agency-driven (purposeful) use of logic, comparison, memory, imagination etc. So reason is not sensation, indeed, but it does require the sense of introspection, as it does require all the other senses in order to have grain to mill.

It's not a seeming contradiction. There definitely are multiple, slightly different 'A's. Hopefully no one is mad enough to dispute that. Here's one A, and here's another A, looking the same, but in a different location and microscopically different on your screen. There's also, categorically, multiple, slightly different concepts of A, some people might have different criteria to others and even for themselves in different contexts at different times in their life.

None of the above applies to universals, which are a posited philosophical entity which may or may not exist. — Isaac

It does apply. The letter A can be posited a philosophical entity which may or may not exist. You say there exist practical examples of As. I say there are practical examples of universals, in concepts that function as near-universal, such as (precisely) the letter A, or the number Pi.

If a poorly drawn A is good enough for you to consider it as a practical A, why should a not-absolutely-universal concept not to be regarded as a practical example of what a universal could be?

A's can be good enough for you, but absolutes can't be good enough?

If there can be one city that is never the same from moment to moment why can a number not be the same, in the sense of not being changeless, while being perfectly capable of being referred to by a name? — Janus

The point was that "New York" written in seven different fonts is NOT seven different names of the city. They are just one name.

Any examples of what these additional senses are, over and above the five we're taught at school? — Wayfarer

Isaac mentioned "interoception". I would add "introspection" as a major one. There are others (e.g. the sense of balance).

Isaac has a history of not understanding what I say very well, so it would not come as a surprise if he did misunderstand me once again.

All we do, intellectually, is move back and forth from observation, to inter-subjective validation, to concepts and communicable narratives using those concepts. One can try to discard this as "a tune already played", but this little tune is us, from the cradle to the grave, so one would only be discarding oneself...