Is this a property it acquires naturally, along with its chemical composition, its mass, etc?

Or do we deem each object to be an instantiation of One? — Srap Tasmaner

If an object has a unique identifying chemical composition and mass "naturally" would this qualify it as being one thing naturally? If we go down the road of thinking that some properties are merely "ascriptions" where would we draw the line?

And you don't see any circularity here?

Remember the issue was whether number could be a property of an object, and it just obviously can't unless sets count as objects. It's really straightforward and it pissed Quine off considerably. — Srap Tasmaner

When I think about the visual field, comprising many things, it has the property of number. We can think of it as one or many. Do you think our seeing it as comprised of many is constrained by actual structure, actual diversity, difference and configuration, or does the brain make it all up from scratch?

Thanks for your response. I have a full-on week of work starting tomorrow, so it may take me a while to respond further, but I'll just say one thing for now...each object is an instantiation of one, and groups of things obviously have different numbers of objects in them. You can see the difference between one object and a group of ten or any other small enough number.

I don't understand what you mean by saying:

but then moral propositions do not exist, which seems pretty absurd. — Bob Ross

Can you explain?

Likewise, in this version of the position, one can't say that the moral proposition "one ought not torture babies" is true for them: they would have to say that "I believe one ought not torture babies" is true for them. I think most moral subjectivists do not realize this, and fall into the (internally inconsistent) trap that I outlined in the OP.

They would no longer be discussing ethics, essentially.

If torturing babies is morally repugnant to me, then why can I not say that it is truly morally wrong for me? I may feel that others should also see it as morally wrong, but if I am a consistent moral subjectivist I cannot justify that feeling. Does that matter?

I distinguish ethics from moral philosophy as I see it as being concerned with the question as to how I should live. It doesn't necessarily concern how others should live although whether it does or not might depend on one's starting assumptions. Moral philosophy concerns how I think I should treat others and perhaps also how I think others should treat others,

But what does that mean? Is "different" a property an object can have?

Yes, I'm being a little cagey, but you can do better than a shrug. — Srap Tasmaner

We don't see individual objects in isolation, but as embedded in and different from their surroundings, so difference if not a property of some putative completely isolated object, but a property it displays in its situatedness.

Do you mean numbers as abstracted from any particular instantiation if them? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes that sounds about right.

What do you think of the claim that discrete entities only exist as a product of minds? That is, "physics shows us a world that is just a single continuous process, with no truly isolated systems, where everything interacts with everything else, and so discrete things like apples, cars, etc. would exist solely as 'products of the mind/social practices.'" — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see any reason to think that we carve up the world arbitrarily, but rather I see many good reasons to think that we are constrained by its actual structures.

I don't see why it should be a "tough sell". If diversity, sameness and difference are acknowledged as being real, then number would seem to naturally follow. It is easy enough to physically demonstrate all the basic operations of arithmetic with actual objects; you start with, say sixty objects and then group them to show how they can be variously added, subtracted, multiplied and divided.

Many people will ignore that too because they will say that numbers aren't real (Field, Azzouni).
I, personally, think mathematics is an empirical endeavor. — Lionino

I think mathematics is an empirical (as well as logical) endeavor also, so we agree on that. But note I said number is real, not numbers.

The dualist will say that they are abstract objects (not spatial, not temporal, causally inefficacious).
— Lionino

Yes, and unfortunately, we have no idea what it could mean to be such an object, apart from, as I said above, it being thought by some mind. — Janus

If number is real in the sense I say it is, that is in the sense that there are numbers of objects, then number would be a real attribute of objects, and the objects would be real, but the numbers themselves would only be real as ways of thinking and dealing with objects, and also as elements in formalized systems of rules elaborated upon that basis.

even distribution of prosperity at the present total level of consumption would be sustainable, or anywhere near sustainable.
— Janus
Of course it would be, if the economic base were changed and the population levelled off, and we allocated the redistributed resources intelligently. — Vera Mont

What I wonder about is whether. assuming all but necessary wastage could be eliminated, even distribution of prosperity at the present total level of consumption would be sustainable, or anywhere near sustainable. — Janus

It would help the conversation if you quoted the entirety of passages instead of truncating them. In any case, the underlined section of your response allows for population reduction so it is not really addressing the question I asked. That is because if the population were levelled off, the present level of total consumption would obviously not be as great. Also by "changing the economic base" I assume you mean a model that involves less consumption and waste, independently of a population reduction.

I would like to believe that this position is nearer to Kant’s transcendental idealism. There’s no way I posit anything like Descartes ‘res cogitans’ or the seperatness of mind and body. — Wayfarer

Are you not arguing for two kinds of reality—the reality of the body and the different reality of the mind?

↪Janus You always argue from an unquestioned empiricism and can’t see how anything that challenges that can ‘make sense’ in your terms. — Wayfarer

This just seems to be an ad hominem deflection. I have asked for an account of the reality you want to claim for abstracta, which is alternative to the account that says they are real insofar as they are thought, and you have not been able to give me any account to comment on.

So, it's a bit rich for you to be claiming that my position is "unquestioned" and that I am incapable of seeing anything that challenges it, It is my long and deeply considered view that the only kinds of intersubjective justification that are possible for beliefs are the empirical and the logical/ mathematical, but I am open to having my mind changed if someone presents an alternative to those that is convincing. I hold that view because I am yet to see such an account.

And I shouldn't have to remind you that it is my position that people can be justified in believing things which cannot be empirically or logically supported on the basis of their own intuitions or experience, but I maintain that that cannot be justification for anyone else believing those things (unless of course they share the same intuitions and/or experience).

So, my position is not positivism, despite your repeated attempts, despite repeated corrections, to paint it as such. And in any case even if it were pure positivism, that does not let you off the hook from being called upon to actually give an account instead of the constant hand-waving and claims to be misunderstood you do generally present.

Not quite sure what you're driving at, but logic was always a formalization of what is understood to be the necessary characteristics of real things.

I read it and agree with @Banno that you are saying there are two realities—the physical ("sensable") and the mental (abstract) which is basically dualism.

You still haven't given an answer as to why the reality of number (as "sensably") instantiated could not possibly explain our understanding of mathematics. Nor have you explained in what sense an abstract "object" could be considered to be real beyond its being thought by humans (or other suitably competent beings).

The dualist will say that they are abstract objects (not spatial, not temporal, causally inefficacious). — Lionino

Yes, and unfortunately, we have no idea what it could mean to be such an object, apart from, as I said above, it being thought by some mind.

I don't see that quoted passage from @Wayfarer as an argument. I think he continues to ignore the fact that number is real; it is merely diversity, number is instantiated everywhere we look.

I have asked him to explain what could be meant by saying that numbers are real beyond our recognition of number in the world, and the formalization of the idea of number in the symbolic language of mathematics, but he does not seem able to proffer an answer.

So initially the population will grow, but then stabilize and decrease, as the majority will be older people. — jkop

And then we may face the problem of insufficient workforce to sustain the population.

If it is not your claim, did you refer to the article in order to agree or disagree with it?

As for the unfathomable subtlety of living organisms, I'm all for it. I think many things we describe as 'instinct' are impossible to fathom, but that's a completely separate issue. — Wayfarer

It's not a separate issue if we include mathematical understanding as one of these unfathomable capacities of living organisms, a capacity much more developed in our own case, itself a fact which would seem to have much to do with our command of symbolic language.

But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies. — Wayfarer

Can you state just why you think that incompatibility obtains? Many animals appear to have extraordinary capabilities, capabilities that we call instinctive without being able to explain them. How can we understand the idea that we and other animals have resources and capacities which would not be possible for the body/ brain alone when we really understand so little about these unimaginably complex organic beings.

It is questionable whether we have the intellectual capacity to comprehensively understand biological complexity.

Those are all good examples and points. What I wonder about is whether. assuming all but necessary wastage could be eliminated, even distribution of prosperity at the present total level of consumption would be sustainable, or anywhere near sustainable.

Exponential population growth has been made possible by the exponential growth in technologies, notably medical technology. I think it is arguable that this exponential growth on technologies has been possible on account of fossil fuels (cheap energy) but the whole process, which has included a massive burgeoning of wasteful consumption, is "all of a piece", and the question seems to be whether it would have been possible without that wasteful consumption.

Human life is so unimaginably complex that I'm not confident that the whole can be understood sufficiently to answer such questions. It also seems impossible to separate considerations of over-population from thinking about excessive consumption, or any level of consumption. Every organism is a consumer when it comes right down to it.

The upshot seems to be that it is not merely a political problem we face—we may just have been too clever, technologically speaking, for our own good. At the same time, it seems impossible to see how more technological innovation, however brilliant, will be able to halt the damage being done to ecosystems, the degradation of which is proceeding apace and not, overall slowing down, but rather accelerating.

1. A belief is a (cognitive) stance taken on the trueness or falseness of a proposition; and
2. Beliefs make moral propositions true or false. — Bob Ross

You seem to misunderstand moral subjectivism. Beliefs do not make moral, or any other, propositions true or false per se, but moral subjectivists may assert that their believing what they understand to be a moral proposition makes it true for them. It doesn't follow that the propositions they hold to be true are truth apt—propositions may or may not be truth apt, regardless of whether or not they are believed to be true or false.

If there were life on millions or billions of planets and we were somehow able to study the evolution of life on all those planets, would we even then be able to show whether or not evolution is "directed"?

Since any putative "director" logically must exist outside the system to be directed, and thus beyond our capacity to detect it, I think the more relevant question is as to whether we have any good reason to think evolution is directed.

On the other hand, some say that continual and unending growth is required to supply a growing population with the means to live the kind of life we live now, or even a better life. — BC

If the population grows must not the economy grow with it if prosperity is to be maintained? If current consumption was evenly distributed how much of a reduction would average Western consumption experience? Would that redistributed consumption be sustainable? Probably not. Even if it were, would we vote for it?

That they have a common reference, that the value of a number is not a matter of opinion or choice. — Wayfarer

I agree. We can all immediately recognize a small number of whatevers. Larger numbers of things we can count, and there is no room for disagreement. Each number is a kind of recognizable pattern or configuration. So, I would say number is real because it is instantiated everywhere. But I can't imagine any sense beyond that in which we could say numbers are real.

I wonder what you mean when you say that numbers are real. Can you explain?

I do understand your perspective. I don't think there is any determinate fact of the matter to be discovered. Our scientific theories tell us the Universe is much older than humanity. You can try to get around that by saying that knowledge and understanding is all in the human mind. but for me, that strategy doesn't hold water. We simply see it differently and neither of us can demonstrate the truth of their position or the falsity of the other— which means it comes down to personal preference and/ or faith.

I also don't think that how we might prefer to answer that question matters much in relation to the far more important matter concerning how to best live. You probably disagree with me on that too, as it seems to me you treat it as a kind of moral crusade.

We’re the only ‘tiny fraction of the cosmos’ who know what that means. It’s amusing in the extreme that objective science, which is a cognitive mode only available to h. Sapiens, then declares its authors insignificant in the ‘grand scheme’ - a grand scheme that is their own mental creation! — Wayfarer

I doubt many scientists think in terms of a grand scheme, since as I already pointed out, the idea implies the existence of a grand schemer. So, I agree that a grand scheme would be a human conceptualization. much like the idea of 'laws of nature'. You could argue that the idea of laws implies the existence of a lawgiver, but it seems to me it is just the human way of conceiving of what seem to be the strict natural regularizes that are observed.

Obviously, we are not insignificant in the world, when that is conceived as the human world, including all of science and all the other human understandings. That is one perspective. But science presents us with a cosmos that seems to be almost infinitely older and larger than humanity, and as far as we can tell we occupy only a tiny corner, both in time and space of this vast universe.

Thanks it seems I misunderstood the Kantian idea of intuition.

:up:

:up: Far be it for me to tell someone they shouldn't spend time on something interesting to them. The time-wasting part would be thinking about something that is unknowable in the hope of getting to the truth about it.

Things that grab the creature's attention 'stand out'. Anything external to the creature may 'stand out', given the creature is capable of perceiving it. Those things that 'stand out' may already be meaningful to the creature. They may not. That's often the first step in becoming meaningful. — creativesoul

Do you count anything which does not stand out as being perceived? Per the question I asked you above, everything perceptible in your external environment is currently broadcasting information in the form of light, sound, smell, and tactile sensation to your eyes, ears, nose and skin. Would you say all that counts as being perceived merely by virtue of that information affecting the body?

How does anything become meaningful before it is ever perceived? — creativesoul

From my post above:

So, on that account perceptible things become meaningful, and are thus perceived. On this account there must be some pre-perceptual interactions already going on of course, and of course they involve the objects and the senses but are yet to reach the status of perception. I think Kant refers to this as "intuition", but Mww may correct me on this. — Janus

But again, if you want to use "perception" in a different way, then your point might stand.

However, I could ask as to how anything can be perceived if it doesn't stand out for the perceiver, and on account of what could it stand out if not on account of it being already of some significance or other.

Here's another question: imagine your total external surroundings right now including everything that potentially could be seen, heard, smelt, touched. On your use of 'perception' would you say that you are perceiving all of that?

Does the bear perceive the cave as a place to sleep? Bears go there to sleep, but unless they think about the cave as a subject matter in its own right, they do not perceive it as anything. They perceive the cave. The cave is part of the bear's experience. The cave is meaningful to the bear. Going back to the cave is a meaningful experience to the bear. How does it become meaningful for the bear? — creativesoul

See my post above yours. We agree that the bear does not conceive of the cave as cave, It may in some pre or proto-conceptual thinking of it as a place to sleep—we don't really know.

So when you say they perceive the cave that is a kind of "mixed metaphor" because you are just saying they perceive what we would call a cave. They perceive something and conceive (or if that word seems wrong then substitute "imagine") that something (the cave in this example) as of some use or other. I think this qualifies the claim that the cave has meaning for them

We don't really know what bears specifically experience, but it seems reasonable to think they can imagine even if they cannot conceive, because we think of the former as involving images and the latter as requiring linguistically mediated ideas.

So, only previously meaningful things are perceived? — creativesoul

I think that's right. But it might not be the only way to use the term, and this can result in confusion. Can we say that a percipient has perceived something if it does not stand out in some way? If not, then the question would follow: 'On account of what do things stand out for percipients?'. I tend to think it is because they are of some interest, concern, significance, meaning or whatever you want to call it to the perceiver.

So, on that account perceptible things become meaningful, and are thus perceived. On this account there must be some pre-perceptual interactions already going on of course, and of course they involve the objects and the senses but are yet to reach the status of perception. I think Kant refers to this as "intuition", but @Mww may correct me on this.

:up: :100: I like the idea that things stand out from their surroundings for percipients as gestalts. The question is what drives gestalting? I think it could be many things for animals and many more things for humans on account of language, as you say.

Nevertheless, 'dharma' is both 'duty' and also 'law'. In other words, it's not simply an individual prerogative or obligation, but is inherent in the natural order (the original root being 'what upholds' or 'holds together'). — Wayfarer

Why is it "duty and also law"? I would say it is because we conceive it as such or because it is simply the way things work best. If animals instinctively follow "the way" then that would explain why they are so much less fucked up than we are. I can accept the idea that to go against what is naturally the best way for us would be a negative. Perish the thought that we might ever do that! :wink:

How do we find out what is the best way for us? Perhaps introspection, self-awareness and self-knowledge, that is what we call "the examined life", might help. When it comes to the best way to treat the environment and other animals, I would say science and compassion might come in handy. Of course, the best way for us and the best way for the other animals and the living environment arguably cannot be two different ways.

The other point I would make is that dharma and Dao are earthly law—we know little about the rest of the cosmos. We might assume that other galaxies and the far corners of the cosmos have the same or similar ways as we do. It would seem that only once life arrives can there be not merely a way, but a best way. And what makes that way best? Well, of course animal and human (and perhaps plant) flourishing, what else?

Sometimes. Not all the time.

Perceiving the tree in the yard does not require perceiving it "as a tree". Surely, we perceive the distal objects being named, right? See it "as a tree" presupposes naming and descriptive practices. Cats interact with trees all the time. They do not perceive the tree, "as a tree". That invokes a middleman where none is necessary, indeed where none can be. It could be that the tree in the yard is being directly perceived in direct relation to the rest of the hunters' mind, the tree is what the mouse is hiding behind. That's all it is at the time. It is and remains the tree, nonetheless.

Perceiving a tree "as a tree" only makes sense to me when we're referring to those who know how to use the phrase. — creativesoul

Perceiving something-you-know-not-what that might turn out to be a tree in the yard does not require perceiving it as a tree. Perceiving the tree in the yard would require perceiving it as a tree by mere definition I would have thought.

I have not said that cats perceive trees as trees, but they perceive trees as some kind of affordance or other (although I am not saying they could conceive of it linguistically as an affordance or as anything else).

I agree that for a creature to have a meaningful experience, such creature must be able to at the very least describe the conditions of that experience, even if only to himself, in order for the meaning of it to be given. — Mww

I have to say I find this questionable to say the least. Animals can recognize this as food, that as shelter or a source of warmth and so on. They can recognize their own offspring and kin. If these don't qualify for you as meaningful experiences, I'd be interested to hear why not.

All experience is meaningful to the creature having the experience. Perception is necessary but insufficient for attributing meaning to different things; meaningful experience. — creativesoul

It depends on how you are using "perception". For me, seeing something is always seeing something as something. So I think anything perceived, in the sense I use the word, is always already something interpreted, and I think that interpretation is not dependent on language, and that in fact language could never get started without it already being in place, and I think it is the case with the other animals just as it is with us.

So, I would say, to reverse what you have said, that attributing meaning to different things, in the sense that they stand out for an organism as meaningful, is necessary, but not sufficient for perception.

But there's something even deeper than that, but more simple: the resonance of mind and world as I tried to convey in that overlooked quote from David Bentley Hart - that 'the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect'. — Wayfarer

Since the idea of the natural order is an idea of the intellect by definition as are all other ideas, it is hard to see how it would not, as an idea, be akin to the intellect. As a reality for us it remains an idea. What it might be as mind-independent reality is of course unknowable (per Kant).

That might be due to your cultural heritage, might it not? Buddhists have no such difficulty. Granted, they would also probably not talk in terms of a 'cosmic purpose', but it is at least implicit in their cosmologies, without a director to supervise the whole show. But in Western culture, we're caught up in this kind of Hegelian dialectic of theism (thesis), atheism (anti-thesis) and an emerging synthesis (whatever that turns out to be). — Wayfarer

I have never encountered an idea of "cosmic purpose" in my readings of Buddhist texts, I don't think my association of the meaning of 'purpose' with a purposer is any kind of scotoma due to "cultural heritage", I think the idea of cosmic purpose has always been associated with a god or gods who are the intenders and givers of the cosmic purpose. Without that idea of intention, the notion of purpose seems reducible to simply the way things behave, or a kind of immanent cosmic balance as presented in the notions of dharma and Dao.

I agree with you that we are justified in believing that things must have significance (meaning) for other animals, simply on the grounds that we can tell by observing their behavior that they can recognize environmental affordances enabling them to survive. They must be able to do that, or they could not survive.

According to our current understanding the rest of the galaxy is so far away that it would have very little effect on our solar system and our solar system would have a virtually negligible effect on it. Not to mention the rest of the universe.

OK, but you haven't even attempted to answer the questions i posed.

But I've always been drawn to cosmic philosophies, which are somewhat religious in nature. Not necessarily theistic, and in the sense of a cosmic-director God not at all, but something nearer the convergence of dharma and logos - that by discovering and being true to your purpose, you are doing your part in the grand scheme, and also discovering the reason of existence in a sense greater than the instrumental. — Wayfarer

I think it's easy enough to make sense of Aristotle's notion of the way in which beings when flourishing do so by actualizing their specific potentials. And that idea can be aligned with, for example, the notions of dharma or dao, when those are understood as naturally immanent to the beings themselves, as opposed to something "given from above", that is, when understood as natural as opposed to supernatural.

So, I can understand the idea that "by discovering and being true to (actualizing) your" potential (instead of "purpose") you will be living your best possible life. Whether this somehow benefits the universe in any way other than it possibly leading to you directly benefiting other proximal beings and/ or your environment, remains obscure to me. Would even benefiting the whole Earth make any appreciable difference to the Cosmos as a whole? I can't see any way to coherently understand how it could. Perhaps you can enlighten me?

The other thing that puzzles me in what you say is that, although, you don't (apparently) believe in a grand schemer, you believe in a "grand scheme". I can make no sense of a grand scheme without positing a grand schemer, a grand designer without a grand designer or a grand purpose without a grand purposer. Care to unravel it for me?

:up:

Or cold, mean and indifferent. It doesn't matter which, unless and until the universe reveals its preference and purpose in action - and we probably wouldn't recognize its intent even then. — Vera Mont

Well, yes, but you had already more or less said or implied the possibility that if the universe had a mind it was more likely to be "cold, mean and indifferent", and I was merely presenting the other possibility. But as you suggest the question is pointless anyway as we cannot know, and I would add that we could not even calculate the probability of it being one or the other.

We might care about the Earth ones. I did say Centaurian termites: we don't know whether there is any such thing. — Vera Mont

Ah, I wasn't paying attention, I just assumed it was a species of Earth termite that I had not heard of before.

Well, yes. A market can only exist in a legal framework, which is a form of regulation. I'm only referring, n short-hand to the movement at the end of the 19th century to palliate (welfare) or control (additional regulation) some of the anti-social consequences of capitalism. — Ludwig V

Totally agree—unfettered capitalism would be a disaster for all but the few.

Far more overt control, yes. Capitalism is subtler. I prefer the second, of course. — Ludwig V

As do I. I am no fan of Churchill, but I tend to agree with the statement (probably falsely attributed to him and loosely paraphrased) "Democratic capitalism is the worst of all possible systems, apart from all the others".

So either the people who control the money or the people who are members of the CCP are in charge. It doesn't look like a particularly exciting choice. Who looks after your interests and mine? — Ludwig V

Those who do, or us, or perhaps no one, I guess.

That is true when trying to grasp the identity of anything. Everything is moving.

So I’m not disagreeing with you, but I would not conclude from the difficulty of holding an identity fixed and unchanging that there is no self to seek to identify. — Fire Ologist

Right, I agree the identity of anything is as difficult to grasp as our own and I haven't suggested the self is not real either—as I said before we have a sense of self, and a consequent idea of it. That it is not determinable does not entail that it is not real, although we might say that it cannot be as fully real to us as our experience is. That said, experience itself (:wink:) is determinable only in terms of identity, and anyway what do we mean by 'real', so where does that leave us?