Where do thoughts come from? Are they eternal? Does the Mindscape really exist?
I first encountered the idea of the mindscape in Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinity by Rudy Rucker. From page 36: Just as a rock is already in the Universe, whether or not someone is handling it, an idea is already in the Mindscape, whether or not someone is thinking it. A person who does mathematical research, writes stories, or meditates is an explorer of the Mindscape in much the same way that Armstrong, Livingstone, or Cousteau are explorers of the physical features of our Universe. The rocks on the Moon were there before the lunar module landed; and all the possible thoughts are already out there in the Mindscape. [Bold added.]
Does the mindscape really exist? Lets suppose it does not and derive some consequences.
If all possible thoughts dont already exist in the mindscape, then where do thoughts come from? How do thoughts and ideas come into existence? It seems the only possible answer is that a thought or idea doesnt exist until someone thinks it. The play Macbeth didnt exist until Shakespeare wrote it, i.e., created it.
Question: once created, are ideas and thoughts eternal? Can an idea cease to exist? Can an idea die?
For instance, if the Earth and everyone on it disappeared tomorrow, if all memory of the play Macbeth vanished, would the play still exist in some form or another? Yes or no? Before answering, consider that the basic question is about all ideas and thoughts. If the Big Bang had never occurred, would the thought two plus two equals four exist? Yes or no?
It seems that the answer to the two questions must be the same. Otherwise, wed have the conclusion that some thoughts and ideas are eternal and others are not. I see no way to support that conclusion.
But if thoughts and ideas exist eternally into the future, it seems natural to accept that they exist eternally from the past, which is more or less the idea of the mindscape: all thoughts already exist from all eternity in the mindscape. Otherwise, we have the situation where a mortal man, Shakespeare, creates an idea which will then exists eternallyI cant prove that isnt true but I find it difficult to believe that thoughts and ideas are half-eternal,, i.e., that they dont exist until someone creates them but they then exist for all eternity.
Another problem with saying the thinker creates the thought is as follows. Consider Grog, the first caveman on Earth who realized that two plus two equals four. Is Grogs idea now eternal? Suppose some being somewhere in the universe realized millions of years ago that two plus two equals four. So, Grog didnt really create the idea. Actually, the idea two plus two equals four was created on some distant planet in another galaxy, millions of years in the past. So, some alien creatureperhaps a green slime creature with two headscreated the idea two plus two equals four? That seems difficult to accept.
So, has the thought two plus two equals four always existed in the mindscape, or did some unknown alien create it millions of years ago. Given the choice, the mindscape seems the more reasonable conclusion.
But the mindscape does have some unintuitive implications. For instance, Shakespeare didnt create the play Macbeth. Rather, he discovered it in the mindscape where it had been from all eternity. And Albert Einstein didnt invent the Theory of Relativity. Rather, he found it lying in the mindscape where it, too, had been from all eternity.
And this post has been lying in the mindscape for all eternity, just waiting for someone to read it.
Hm.
Does the mindscape really exist? Lets suppose it does not and derive some consequences.
If all possible thoughts dont already exist in the mindscape, then where do thoughts come from? How do thoughts and ideas come into existence? It seems the only possible answer is that a thought or idea doesnt exist until someone thinks it. The play Macbeth didnt exist until Shakespeare wrote it, i.e., created it.
Question: once created, are ideas and thoughts eternal? Can an idea cease to exist? Can an idea die?
For instance, if the Earth and everyone on it disappeared tomorrow, if all memory of the play Macbeth vanished, would the play still exist in some form or another? Yes or no? Before answering, consider that the basic question is about all ideas and thoughts. If the Big Bang had never occurred, would the thought two plus two equals four exist? Yes or no?
It seems that the answer to the two questions must be the same. Otherwise, wed have the conclusion that some thoughts and ideas are eternal and others are not. I see no way to support that conclusion.
But if thoughts and ideas exist eternally into the future, it seems natural to accept that they exist eternally from the past, which is more or less the idea of the mindscape: all thoughts already exist from all eternity in the mindscape. Otherwise, we have the situation where a mortal man, Shakespeare, creates an idea which will then exists eternallyI cant prove that isnt true but I find it difficult to believe that thoughts and ideas are half-eternal,, i.e., that they dont exist until someone creates them but they then exist for all eternity.
Another problem with saying the thinker creates the thought is as follows. Consider Grog, the first caveman on Earth who realized that two plus two equals four. Is Grogs idea now eternal? Suppose some being somewhere in the universe realized millions of years ago that two plus two equals four. So, Grog didnt really create the idea. Actually, the idea two plus two equals four was created on some distant planet in another galaxy, millions of years in the past. So, some alien creatureperhaps a green slime creature with two headscreated the idea two plus two equals four? That seems difficult to accept.
So, has the thought two plus two equals four always existed in the mindscape, or did some unknown alien create it millions of years ago. Given the choice, the mindscape seems the more reasonable conclusion.
But the mindscape does have some unintuitive implications. For instance, Shakespeare didnt create the play Macbeth. Rather, he discovered it in the mindscape where it had been from all eternity. And Albert Einstein didnt invent the Theory of Relativity. Rather, he found it lying in the mindscape where it, too, had been from all eternity.
And this post has been lying in the mindscape for all eternity, just waiting for someone to read it.
Hm.
Comments (139)
Put down the ganja and walk away slowly. Breath heavily and take lots of water. Lay down. The world will stop spinning soon. Dry mouth will continue for several hours.
But seriously, fun post. However, several things:
Is direct sensory experience in the mindscape or just abstracted thoughts? In other words is me experiencing stepping in shit part of the mindscape too? And if it is, is it the abstracted aspect or the sensory aspect? What makes something mindscape worthy and others passing detritus?
Plato and Schopenhauer I feel, have this problem in defining what counts as a Form
I have a couple of questions about the mindscape hypothesis.
First, is there any way to test this empirically? Another way to say that is to ask if there are any consequences if the hypothesis is correct? If the answer is "no," as I suspect, then this is a metaphysical question and not a matter of fact.
Second, if this is a metaphysical question, does it give us useful guidance into how to study and make sense of the world. Again, I think the answer is probably "no."
[Edit] In a later post I changed my mind on this last sentence. I think there the mindscape metaphysical position my be useful in some situations.
My answer to that is "yes." For me, the value in metaphysics is that it provides a framework, a foundation, on which to build our factual structures. As an example, a materialist, physicalist metaphysics could provide a good basis for science. Another - an idealist metaphysics may be a good approach for mathematics. The mindscape is an idealist approach. I've heard of sculptors who think what they carve from a block of stone is already in there, they just have to find it. It's a poetic way of seeing things. A recognition that many of our ideas seem to come from nowhere.
Agree. The concept of mindscape suggests universal mind, an idealist concept.
"Really exist'? :chin:
As far as I can discern it (i'm a fan of Rudy Rucker, btw),"the mindscape" is only an idea like Max Tegmark's 'mathematical universe hypothesis' or George Ellis' 'possibility spaces' a provocative (platonic) supposition.
Quoting Art48
I think (post-Kantian) "metaphysical questions" (mostly) make explicit the limits of reason for "making sense of the world".
Does this make any sense? Another way to look at it, if all ideas and thoughts did not exists in the "Mindscape"; would humans be able to think about these ideas at all? If one says, "yes" this is exactly the implication, humans would not be able to think these ideas at all. Can anyone coherently explain how this is so? It reminds me that this problem is similar as the one brought up by Elisabeth of the Palatinate to Descartes with regards to the "Mind-Body" interaction.
We first learn of ideas and how to think not by introspection, but by our fellow human beings, learning a rich intellectual tradition handed down from generation to generation. This picture of "Mindscape" would make you think we could isolate ourselves from others, and tap into the "Mindscape" to learn our ideas, and that there is no need to interact with another human being. It starts first by learning of ideas from other humans, not by private introspection into alternate realities. Do we introspect? Of course, with ideas that are learned in a public world taught by our fellow humans.
The contribution from your fellow human beings and the world around us is a better explanation of thoughts/ideas than appealing to introspection of a private world call "Mindscape."
If all humans could access the Mindscape, would it qualify as a "private world"?
has rediscovered Popper's World 3, which in turn is yet another version of Plato.
i'm rather taken by Searle's account of how "...counts as..." brings such things about.
SO while the OP is somewhat muddled, there is much that can be said here.
Learning through interaction with others is certainly an important source of "how we think" although I wouldn't put it in those terms. There is also an important source from a generalized cognitive function; direct observation, and inborn capacity and instinct. I recognize that the contribution of inborn factors is somewhat controversial, but it is not my intention to argue that here.
As to what this "how we think" is, I experience it as a mostly non-verbal conceptual model of the world whose basis is primarily based on empirical factors, both social and non-social, and probably temperament. My brother and I have very different understandings of how the world works, although we were raised in the same manner by the same people. I call this intuition, but others here on the forum disagree with that and think intuition is something else.
It has always seemed to me that this "universal mind" is just another name for God.
Quoting Banno
Although I disagree with some of what you've written, I agree with Banno that you have provided a good view of how thought worksclear and consistent.
Do babies enter the Mindscape,? Infants? Children? Adolescents? Adults? A certain IQ level? Cultural background?
How would anyone teach a language to describe this private world they so call accessed? No one has access to anyone else's private world because it is inaccessible. But we got the public world.
I think it's coherent that we experience thoughts exactly how we experience trees, rocks, and people. In both cases, we experience pre-existent entities. Of course, this doesn't prove the mindscape is true. But it seems coherent.
Quoting Richard B
No one said the mindscape is private. Quite the opposite.
Quoting Banno
Interesting. I haven't seen that before. Reading Wikipedia now.
Quoting T Clark
I'd say that if God exists, then God is universal mind. But there could exist a universal mind that contains all possible thoughts but is not all-good, all-powerful, etc., as so is not God as usually conceived.
Quoting Richard B
Just as there is one "landscape" (i.e., the physical world) where anyone can roam, there is one mindscape where any being capable of thought can roam.
I certainly am not an qualified to have a definitive opinion, but it is my understanding that this is not consistent with current results from cognitive scientists and cognitive and language psychologists.
Quoting Art48
I agree. It is my understanding that it's not consistent with the beliefs of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic doctrine, but that's not what I'm arguing. I'll change the relevant text in my post.
Quoting T Clark
This has been argued by philosophers in meaning and objective reality. If you believe in objective reality, then meaning is out there for us to grasp and make sense of. For this to be possible, our mind is equipped with concept formation so that when we encounter something unfamiliar, we can readily make sense of it. We were not bewildered as pre-historic humans that mountains and rivers and trees exist. Our mind has the ability to accommodate new things, and understand them.
There needs to be a degree of rigor in formulating such an idea. Our minds are constantly occupied by a stream of thoughts, some vocalised, some comprising imagery or awareness of sensations and drives. And so on. So when you speak of an 'idea' it has to be something more than simply a passing thought or whatever pops up in your inner dialogue from moment to moment.
Having said that, I'm sure that there are at least some ideas as 'constitutive elements of reason'. There are principles that any sentient rational being might be expected to have discovered - such as the law of the excluded middle and other logical principles. Many fundamental arithmetical principles must be similar - this is the sense in which they are said to be 'true in all possible worlds'. That kind of statement must be logically necessary and true in every conceivable scenario, regardless of the particular circumstance. How far that extends is obviously a vexed question, subject of many unsolveable debates in philosphy of mathematics. But I'm impressed by the Platonist view that there is a vast domain of logical necessity and that it is not a product of, but a discovery made by, the mind.
'Intelligible objects must be independent of particular minds because they are common to all who think. In coming to grasp them, an individual mind does not alter them in any way, it cannot convert them into its exclusive possessions or transform them into parts of itself. Moreover, the mind discovers them rather than forming or constructing them, and its grasp of them can be more or less adequate.' - Cambridge Companion to Augustine.
As to whether there might be a specific play called 'Macbeth' in the absence of humans, I would say obviously not. But I would also say, were there other species of sapient beings in the Universe, they might produce something corresponding to drama, exploring the same themes as those found in Shakespeare. This is the idea behind Joseph Campbell's studies of comparative mythology - that archetypal themes tend to come up again and again in different cultures, even if their specific expressions are culturally-conditioned and hugely diverse.
So there's an interplay between some constitutive elements, and other elements, which might be creative or novel or unpredictable - it's not an all-or-nothing proposition.
(See also Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge.)
Well expressed, interesting link. Wittgenstein, of course, took a contrary view to Augustin as to how we learn a language, treating it as becoming a participant in the activities of a community. It's not apparent hat this account could not be used here, that those "intelligible objects" are grasped as one becomes acquainted with the way they are used in a community. So learning what "2" is consists in learning how it is used by those around you, and using it within that community.
It's reductionist, though. And it's also a lot like the empiricist criticisms of mathematics (i.e. Mill) that we become familiar with numerical concepts by using them. But if you're a creature that can't form concepts of numbers, then no amount of experience will imbue you with that ability. We are endowed with reason - of course an Augustine would say that was God-given, whereas we think it is probably a consequence of evolutionary adaptation. But even so, the abilities it provides go well beyond those that can be explained merely in terms of adaptation (hence also my scepticism about Donald Hoffman).
There's a book I've noticed, Jerrold Katz, The Metaphysics of Meaning. (Reviews here and here). This book, and indeed most of Katz' career, was dedicated to critiquing Wittgenstein, Quine, and 'naturalised epistemology' generally. He also studied under Chomsky, but I think the basic drift is Platonist, i.e. meaning has to be anchored in recognition of universals as constitutive elements of reason - not simply conventions or habits of speech.
Wittgenstein never said communication was the essence of language , neither did he equate in all cases, truth conditions with community agreement. Sure, in some language games a sign such as "2" might be defined in relation to community responses - a good example is the Github code-repository for the mathematics library of the Lean Programming language that is used automate mathematics; it implements and comprises the meaning of "2" for the community of Lean users. But then there are many other use-cases that don't fall under this definition, such as the isolated platonist who privately identifies "2" with what he is seeing or imagining. If his use-case bears no relation to his community, then he might be said to be playing a single-player "Augustinan" language-game. Perceptual and aesthetic judgements tend to fall into this category.
Recall that Wittgenstein rejected logicism - he rejected the fundamentalism that equivocates arithmetic with analytic tautologies. He is in record of saying "I think I know what Kant meant when he said that 2+5 = 7 is synthetic" . If the propositions of arithmetic are regarded as being synthetic, then it implies that the meaning of such propositions is open to interpretation in each and every case.
There seems to be a difference. The mindscape exists independent of the physical but Popper's World 3 seems to be dependent on it.
Quoting Banno
How so? "Reification is when you think of or treat something abstract as a physical thing." I'm not suggesting thoughts are physical; merely, that they are pre-existent. And picturing the mindscape as a place is merely metaphor. The claim is all thoughts are pre-existent (just as the trees we encounter when we walk in a forest are pre-existent). "Mindscape" is the phrase for the collection of all thoughts, just like "Black Forest" is a phrase for the collection of all trees in "a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland."
From Augustines Confessions where he gives an account of how he had learnt to speak:
I noticed that people would name some object and then turn towards whatever it was that they had named. I watched them and understood that the sound they made when they wanted to indicate that particular thing was the name which they gave to it, and their actions clearly showed what they meant.
So Augustine was questioning, observing, inferring, concluding, what you would call thinking, before he had learned a single word.
Wittgenstein in PI 32 says Augustine describes the learning of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not understand the language of the country; that is, as if the child could already think, only not yet speak.
This picture of a Mindscape being accessible to a child assumes this very same thing. That the child can learn any idea like cause, intention, hope, without learning any language from anyone. That they can dive into their private world and figure out these ideas without any guidance from anyone whatsoever. And even if they wanted to, others have no access to this private world to provide any guidance.
Reading this after the Heidegger thread that unfortunately has been relegated to the Lounge, I see the potential for a grave risk. Heidegger attempts to avoid political and ethical responsibility and put in its place "heeding the call of Being". We are not the source of our ideas and so our only responsibility is to heed or fail to heed the call of Being. T
...as you treat thoughts as a landscape. But more, the use of "exists" in a way that is analogous to it's application to rocks and hills and stuff - that was there before we mapped things out, as it were. Or describing thoughts in terms of the German countryside. The analogy can only go so far.
:up: I think what you're groping towards is reflected in some aspects of Platonism, which I've already implicitly stated, but it's worth spelling it out. It revolves around the belief in the reality of the Platonic ideas, or more generally, universals, which are held to explain relations of qualitative identity and resemblance among individuals, classroom examples being the redness common to both rubies and apples, which are in all other respects completely different.
In this connection it's worth reading Bertrand Russell's chapter in The Problems of Philosophy called The World of Universals, from which:
He then gives these examples:
[quote=Bertrand Russell]Consider such a proposition as 'Edinburgh is north of London'. Here we have a relation between two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it, on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth's surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe. ...We may therefore now assume it to be true that nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is north of London. But this fact involves the relation 'north of', which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation 'north of', which is a constituent part of the fact, did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not create.
This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation 'north of' does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask 'Where and when does this relation exist?' the answer must be 'Nowhere and nowhen'. There is no place or time where we can find the relation 'north of'. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the relation 'north of' is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither material nor mental; yet it is something.
It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ... In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.
We shall find it convenient only to speak of things existing when they are in time, that is to say, when we can point to some time at which they exist (not excluding the possibility of their existing at all times). Thus thoughts and feelings, minds and physical objects exist. But universals do not exist in this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where 'being' is opposed to 'existence' as being timeless.[/quote]
My bolds.
Another place you find discussion of universals in contemporary terms is in Ed Feser's books and blog site. Have a browse of Think, McFly, Think.
I don't think you could call this a 'mindscape' but it shows that a fundamental element of reason, namely predication, is only understandable through a cognitive act. In other words, when we grasp a concept, we're seeing commonalities (and differences) between whole classes of things - and, as Russell says, they not the product of thought, but can only be grasped by reason. And that kind of ability is essential to language, and so to discursive thought generally. That's what I think you're looking for.
Thanks for the extended response. The mindscape idea is that all thoughts are pre-existent; that when we have a thought, we dont create the thought. Rather, we perceive something pre-existent in the mindscape, just as when we see a tree, we are encountering something pre-existent in the landscape. This view is similar to Mathematical Platonism, which says that mathematical truths exist independently of us. The mindscape extends this idea and says that all possible thoughts exist independently of us.
Russell, apparently, regards thoughts differently, as acts. He writes: One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's. Under this view, thoughts are ephemeral; they last only as long as the act continues. And the thought, as an act, belongs only to the thinker, who is doing the thinking. You seem to have the same view when you write predication, is only understandable through a cognitive act.
The two views of thoughts are different. I dont argue that regarding a thought as an act is invalid. But I claim that regarding a thought as a pre-existent entity is equally valid. Once that view is accepted, it seems to me an acceptable step to call the entirety of all thoughts the mindscape.
One possible objection with the mindscape concept is that the mindscape might be called the thought of all thoughts. The logical problems with the set of all sets are well-known; it might be suspected the thought of all thoughts has similar problems.
Rather than defend against such a charge, Ill simply note Rudy Rucker, the author of Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinity, is a Ph.D. mathematician and his book goes into set theory in great detail. Apparently, Dr. Rucker did not believe the mindscape concept has the same problem as the set of all sets concept.
You've taken the way we talk about the common stuff around us existing in a place and a time and applied it unjustifiably to Russell's paradox.
Paradoxes are not just like trees and rocks.
[i]Russells paradox is the most famous of the logical or set-theoretical paradoxes. Also known as the Russell-Zermelo paradox, the paradox arises within naïve set theory by considering the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Such a set appears to be a member of itself if and only if it is not a member of itself. Hence the paradox.
Some sets, such as the set of all teacups, are not members of themselves. Other sets, such as the set of all non-teacups, are members of themselves. Call the set of all sets that are not members of themselves R. If R is a member of itself, then by definition it must not be a member of itself. Similarly, if R is not a member of itself, then by definition it must be a member of itself.[/i]
Did Russells paradox exist before he . . . discovered it? Or . . . invented it? Which is it, discovered or invented? If discovered, then yes, the paradox was there since before the Big Bang, just waiting to be found. If invented, then no, the paradox came into existence the moment Russell first thought of it.
The paradox exists. For how much longer? Can an idea stop existing? That doesnt seem right. It seems if all humanity vanished tomorrow, Russells paradox would still exist. But if an idea cannot cease to exist, then it obviously must exist for all eternity into the future. If Russell created the paradox, that would mean the idea is half-eternal, having a start time in the finite past but no end time in the future. It seems rather odd to say a mortal human being can create something which will exist for all eternity. It seems to make more sense to say that Russells paradox was discovered, not invented; that it has always existed.
Existed where? One answer is: in the mind of God. But this answer assumes an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing being, which are more assumptions than we need. The minimum is merely to stipulate a place where all thoughts exist, without saying anything more about the place. I call the place the mindscape. [reference to this thread omitted]
I dont claim the above is a proof; any of the steps in thinking can probably be disputed. But its a train of thoughtan interesting train, at least, for methat leads to the idea of the mindscape.[/quote]
I merged this thread with the older OP because they're substantially about the same question. You're dealing with the reality of abstract objects, such as ideas, numbers, universals, and so on. I agree with you that it's a valid question and an important question, and I also agree that such things as ideas, numbers, universals, and the like, are real. But they're not existent as phenomena, they are not real in the sense that tables and chairs and trees are real. That's the conundrum you're outlining - how can these ideas be real if they don't actually exist? It is a metaphysical question par excellence.
So in my view, you're asking a question about the fundamentals of metaphysics. But I think that metaphysics as understood by classical philosophy has been more or less forgotten or abandoned in philosophy as whole except for in the case of classes and books specifically about that subject. I mean, the subject still exists, but it is not appreciated that the real basis of metaphysics as a living subject revolves around the very question you're asking. Because it asks us to deeply question what we take for granted as what is real, what exists. It introduces a wholly other dimension to the question.
Quoting Art48
Yes - but look at the context! He says 'universals are not thoughts, but when they're known, they appear as thoughts'. He distinguishes thoughts from universals, because he says that universals (such as whiteness) must be the same for all. Which is just the same for mathematical and geometrical proofs! They too are the same for all who can grasp them. So they can only be grasped by thought, but they're not the product of thought. I hope you can see this distinction. They exist as what tradition would call 'intelligible objects' i.e. they are real only as objects of reason, not as sense-able phenomena. But that distinction is largely lost in modern philosophy because of its exclusive emphasis on empiricism (what can be sensed).
I'm trying to situate your ideas within the context of the debate about the reality of universals, because that's what I think you're actually talking about. I don't claim to be an expert but I'm someone who has noticed that it *is* a question, and also someone who believes that it is a central question of philosophy.
Do ideas exist or not? Would you rather the world "subsist"? Or some other word?
You make interesting points.
Quoting Wayfarer
I perceive thoughts, ideas, and emotions directly in consciousness. I perceive the external world indirectly, via the five physical senses. The ideas I perceive definitely exist. The water I perceive may be a mirage, or I may be a brain in a vat. It seems odd (and wrong) therefore to say tables and trees have more reality than thoughts, ideas, and emotions, although I admit it's a widespread and understandable view.
Quoting Wayfarer
So, universals pre-exist in what is called the mindscape? It's a short step to say all thoughts exist there, although, of course, the step has to be justified.
Yes, if you consider thoughts a process.
On the other hand, the mindscape idea says thoughts are pre-existing and we encounter them, just as we encounter the pre-existent tree in a landsacpe.
As I said earlier, I think you need to distinguish thought in the sense of random neural chatter from the formal aspects of thought.
I also think the basic problem with the 'mindscape' is that it is trying to project the activities of reason onto a kind of external or objective landscape, like the so-called 'ethereal realm' of Platonic objects. It draws on the sense of being located in physical environment as an analogy, as if there is a literal 'realm of ideas'. But that is a reification - there is no literal 'realm of natural numbers', although it is conceptually real.
Now I am curious, what is an example of something that is conceptually unreal?
The trouble is you haven't set out what it is you are asking; how you are using the word "exist".
It's a word that can be parsed in several quite different ways. It can be a quantifier, or indicate membership of a class, or set out membership of a domain, just for starters.
"Exists" in "Anthony Albanese exists" is not being used to do the same thing as "exists" in "The largest prime less than 1000 exists". One you might meet in the street, the other, no so much.
Your failure to notice these distinct uses leads you to propose absurdities.
The point I'm trying to make is simply that to depict the denizens of 'the realm of ideas', such as logical principles, or natural numbers, in terms of 'mindscape', suggests a 'landscape' - which is spatially and temporally extended. Whereas the 'domain of logical principles' or 'the domain of natural numbers' are neither. So my argument is that they're real, because they're the same for all who think, but they're not strictly speaking existent. They are real as the constituents and objects of rational thought. (I think this is the original, as distinct from the Kantian, meaning of 'noumenal'.) So this is a distinction which I am trying to make between the nature of the existence of perceptible objects (or phenomena), and the nature of intelligible objects, which are perceptible only to reason.
Good post ! Rucker is great. Let me throw a wrench into the machine. What is an idea ? One approach, that might save us some trouble, is that it's an equivalence class of expressions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_class
I'm happy to explain the concept of an EC if you are interested.
In short, I don't think ideas always existed. Or always will exist. I don't think it makes much sense to try to 'get around' the historical 'space of reasons.'
:up:
[i]Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.[/i]
And it would be unreal if theyre different for all who think? But this would just be different ideas. Or, someone is thinking the same thing but the idea is different compared to someone else thinking the same thing? This does not make sense. Austin said the following about real, Real, is also a word whose negative use wears the trousers (a trouser-word)
I'm familiar with equivalences classes. The same idea can be expressed in different ways (for instance, in different languages). But I'd give logical priority to the idea itself so defining the idea in terms of its expressions seems backwards.
Quoting green flag
Can you describe how and when an idea goes out of existence. For example, 2+2=4 is an idea. Will it ever cease to exist.
Ideas exist. Tell me if there's a sense of "exist" where you think the statement is true and maybe we can go from there.
A few posts seem to be quibbling over the word "exists". What word would you prefer instead? Subsist? Something else?
It's far more than a quibble but I can see it's useless to try and explain why, so I give up.
"There are ideas" just places ideas in the domain of the discussion. But you erroneously take this to mean that they have a place or a time or some such. That doesn't follow. You take "P exists" to imply that P has a spatial location, then when they are not found down the back of the lounge you invent a magical space for them to exist in.
But that's exactly the step that I'm questioning (I go into this in my Semantic Finitude thread.) It is arguably the basic superstition and the basic confusion of Western philosophy, tangled up with the complementary immaterial subject for whom such beings are supposed to be mysterious and immediately present.
If we stick with the equivalence class metaphor (with a blurry substitute for the mathematical version), then the idea dies with its last representative, just as it was born with its first.
It's conceivable that we'll include 'Klingon' expressions in such an equivalence class, if we last that long and someone finds us.
:up:
It's way too easy to use words like 'idea' and 'exist' without hearing their hollowness, their elusiveness, their contextdependence, ...
To me there's a relatively reasonable interpretation of 'mindscape' along the lines of 'geist' or 'spirit' or culture. We humans live together in a symbolically articulated lifeworld. We have marriages and milkshakes and murder and mud here. We are held responsible for what both what we say and what we do and their relationship. The language we are "in" does transcend the individual, but you seem to want to make it transcend the species.
Some philosophers pretend they can break up this unity into components without talking nonsense, but I don't think it's so easy. The confusion is various versions of secret insides, like ideas that hide inside or behind expressions, ghosts that hide inside meatsuits and drive them around with nothing but willpower and a pineal periscope, the the really really stuff that hides beneath every namable floor.
Maybe I can go along with an ontological pluralism in which ideas can be said to exist in their own domain, but they would exist in a different way from stars and brains (which is just/also to say that "exist" has different meanings in different domains, as @Banno has pointed out).
As @green flag said, we can use concepts like lifeworld or culture, and maybe the manifest image is along the same lines. I'll add another one that's more granular and ontological: fields of sense. This is Markus Gabriel's concept: a field of sense is a context, domain, or background in which or against which something stands out, and thereby exists.
So ideas exist in their own domain. Very well. But what is happening to this concept when it turns into the mindscape? What justifies this leap? On the face of it, it's a wildly speculative reification that attempts to turn, say, an analogical way of thinking about ideas, one that's familiar to artists and geniuses, into a mind-independent ontology: not only do ideas exist, but they have always existed, and we tap into the mindscape to think them. But in fields of sense or the lifeworld, we might say that ideas exist, but we do not thereby establish eternal existence independent of people, because these domains are strictly human and finite realities, and I can't see the justification for the leap, at least not in the OP (I haven't read all of Rucker's online presentation of the idea).
Is this what happens when you combine the thought of a universe of physical objects with the thought of universals and abstract objects like numbers, as I think @Wayfarer is suggesting?
So you end up with something like Platonism I guess, although as far as I can tell the existents of the mindscape seem to be concrete and/or particular, rather than being merely universal forms: in this mindscape there are instantiations, like Macbeth, and not only forms.
On the other hand, the idea of a shared landscape of ideas is an attractive one, but only as at least part-analogical--there may be a world of ideas that we are part of when we think, but it's more map than landscape (but this might be in conflict with ontological pluralism, I'm not sure).
When I say the mindscape is the place where ideas exist, "place" is a spatial metaphor, not to be take too literally.
Quoting green flag
I'm asking how exactly does an idea like 2+2=4 cease to exist. You seem to say it dies when the last representative in its equivalence class dies, but don't address how the last idea (or any idea) could cease to exist.
Quoting Jamal
True, but isn't that obvious? I'm puzzled why there have been so many posts about the word "exist". The definition of mindscape would be essentially unchanged if "subsist" or some other word were used.
Quoting Jamal
Mindscape says ideas exist in their own domain and, as you point out later your paragraph, that ideas are eternal.
Quoting Jamal
I think the reification accusation can be avoided if for "exist" people substitute "subsist" or whatever word they like that allows ideas to be.
Quoting Jamal
Yes! I read the mindscape as applying Mathematical Platonism to all ideas, not just mathematical ideas, which is my opinion of what Rucker, a Ph.D. mathematician, has done. Before I posted, I would have thought it uncontroversial that 2+2=4 is an idea which has existed from all eternity, just as the square root of 2 has been an irrational number from all eternity, and always will be.I was surprised that some people took issue with the word "existed."
Quoting Jamal
I agree, and never intended for mindscape to denote a literal place in spacetime.
.
But you did intend it to denote a literal domain of existence in which ideas exist eternally and independently of minds, yes?
Yes. Well said.
First, once we admit a thought exists (or subsists or "is" or whatever word someone wants to use), it's difficult to see how it could go out of existence or cease to be.As I wrote to green flag above, "I'm asking how exactly does an idea like 2+2=4 cease to exist. You seem to say it dies when the last representative in its equivalence class dies, but don't address how the last idea (or any idea) could cease to exist."
IF we allow that thoughts don't go out of existence, then we either say 1) a mortal man such as Shakespeare can create something eternal, or 2) the idea has always existed.
2) implies the mindscape.
Evaporation of water from the oceans that condenses in the cooler air as small droplets, I think.
Quoting 180 Proof
Ah, that's the wind I think, causing ripples on the surface which grow. Not sure on the precise mechanics.
Quoting 180 Proof
Don't know that one, sorry.
Aren't these items for a physics forum though?
It seems to me that, without realizing it, you assuming what you want to prove. It's as if you are still assuming some kind of transhuman ideastuff that precedes and outlasts us. I presume you imagine an infinitely fine strand of angel's hair to run from human expressions like '2 + 2 = 4' to a particular associated mindcrystal in the platonisphere. I'm being playfully and explicitly metaphorical here to maybe dig out the unrecognized metaphoricity of your own thinking. I know the platonisphere or mindscape is not a 'normal' place. Can you give a meaning to your signs here ? Are we dealing with a piece of white mythology ? *
Consider also the equivalence class {1/2, 2/4, 4/8,...}. The mainstream view is that this entire class/set is a rational number most familiarly represented as '1/2.' Any member of the set can function as a name for the set, so it has many names. In fact it's even just the set of its names. We have a bunch of objects whose differences make no difference for this or that purpose. If all of those objects are lost, it's hard to see how the set (which is something like the similarity of certain objects) isn't lost too.
*Detail on metaphorical point
[quote = Anatole France]
I was thinking how the Metaphysicians, when they make a language for themselves, are like knife-grinders, who instead of knives and scissors, should put medals and coins to the grindstone to efface the value When they have worked away till nothing is visible in these crown pieces, neither King Edward, the Emperor William, nor the Republic, they say: These pieces have nothing either English, German, or French about them; we have freed them from all limits of time and space; they are not worth five shillings any more ; they are of inestimable value, and their exchange value is extended indefinitely. (WM 210).
[/quote]
The idea is that metaphysical terms are anemic or whitewashed myths that have lost their vividness. Breath becomes the soul and we forget we are still savages trading hieroglyphics. We know not what we mean...but what can I mean by that ?
[quote = link]
The usury of the sign (the coin) signifies the passage from the physical to the metaphysical. Abstractions now become worn out metaphors; they seem like defaced coins, their original, finite values now replaced by a vague or rough idea of the meaning-images that may have been present in the originals.
Such is the movement which simultaneously creates and masks the construction of concepts. Concepts, whose real origins have been forgotten, now only yield an empty sort of philosophical promise that of the absolute, the universalized, unlimited surplus value achieved by the eradication of the sensory or momentarily given.
[/quote]
https://iep.utm.edu/met-phen/#H4
And isn't this topic for a cognitive neuroscience forum?
To me it's the opposite of puzzling. One of the things a philosopher does is help people see that they don't or only barely know what they are talking about. The obvious and the familiar are exactly the rocks under which our deepest and most hobbling prejudices hide. Or that's one theory.
It might be, and it's definitely a topic for a philosophy forum.
To me there's also the problem of establishing what one even means or can mean by mind-independent abstract objects. It's a bit like the hunt for round squares.
Because the matter is not settled in the way that clouds waves and sunspots are.
Last point. You can also think of signs as imperfectly repeatable patterns in the 'tornado' of what we humans do on this planet. It's as if there were a mindscape. It's a good metaphor for certain purposes. It's as if there was a ghost in the machine. This metaphor made a certain kind of sense along with a certain kind of nonsense. The problems arise when yesterday's optional metaphors are misunderstood by today as necessity, as brutely given and 'obvious.' This to me is why a focus on what we even think we mean is so often appropriate.
My answers to them were shite. The method for answering these questions, at least up to a certain depth is settled though in a way that the origin of ideas is not. We don't even know how to go about answering the question of where ideas come from.
Quoting Art48
Let us see if we can provide a clearer path to seeing ones way out of this conceptual muddle. I will use the 2+2=4 example.
1. We needs to recognize that humans invented the symbolism of 2+2=4. Other symbolism could be used, and I am sure other humans have used different symbolism.
2. What makes these symbolisms the same is how they are used by humans. It is not that they refer to the same eternal objects.
3. 2+2=4 symbolism will cease to exist if there are no more humans using these symbols for any purpose. In fact, they will cease being symbols.
4. But one could say, even if there are no more human around, there could be two trees, etc. Yes, but there is not a tree and another tree, and two-ness, just a tree and another tree.
5. Last step, let us imagine we have no symbolism, nor anything else in the universe to count. What is left to articulate? Remember, humans do not exist, our symbolism does not exist, and the physical universe does not exist.
I would say this is easier or as easy to see as adding Mindscape/Platonic realms. And if we value parsimony, dropping Mindscape/Platonic realms would be wise.
Do you believe ideas exist (or subsist or whatever word you wants to use). If no, then end of discussion. If yes, then do you believe an idea can cease to exist? If no, then end of discussion. If yes, then how?
Quoting Richard B
The symbolism seems to me entirely irrelevant. The idea 2+2=4 can be represented in Roman numerals, binary notation, the Babylonian number system, etc.
Would not basic arithmetical facts be true in all possible worlds? That were any sentient rational species to evolve elsewhere in the universe, then these would still obtain?
Quoting Art48
It neither begins to exist, nor ceases to exist, because it does not, in fact, exist. It is real only as an intellectual operation. What impressed the ancient Greeks about mathematical truths was precisely this lack of temporal delimitation. It was deemed higher because it was not subject to change, unlike the objects of sensory perception.
Is there a word you prefer instead of "exist"?
In everyday speech, it is acceptable to say that the law of the excluded middle exists, or that the number 7 exists. But, if you read up on the philosophical controversies around platonism, which is precisely the argument about the sense in which abstract objects exist, you will discover that this is very much a live debate. In what sense are abstract objects (what you are describing imprecisely as 'thought') real?
[quote=What is Math? Smithsonian Institute;https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-math-180975882/]Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing outside of space and time makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago.
Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science. The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, hell take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all?[/quote]
There is an answer to that, of course: empiricism is indispensable when it comes to things we can touch and feel. But it is in no way a boundary condition of knowledge which is how it is nowadays treated.
Wayfarer,
Thanks for your response. Perhaps we differ on the following fundamental point. In my view, chairs and tables and other objects of perception are theoretical constructs, i.e., ideas. I do not directly perceive a table. Rather, I directly perceive rectangular, brownish patches of light and the idea of a table arises in my mind. If I touch the table, I experience the hard, smooth tactile sensation I expect the table to have. If I rap it, I hear what I expect to hear. Similarly, in a mirage I directly experience a shimming sensation that I associate with the idea of water. But if I try to take a drink, I realize my idea is wrong.
As the brain in a vat thought experiment demonstrates, objects are theoretical constructs that make sense of what we experience. A brain in a vat could have exactly the same sensations as I, have exactly the same ideas as I, believe it is experiencing the exactly same exterior world as I, but nonetheless be mistaken: it would in fact be experiencing no objects at all, only sensations.
So, in my view, I directly experience sensations: i.e., the five physical senses, emotions, and thoughts. Everything else is an idea that makes sense of my perceptions.
Therefore, my sensations have a more secure epistemological status than a theoretical construct I create to explain my sensations. My ideas certainly have reality and existence. Matter, maybe, maybe not.
Meh. Not to be taken too seriously, either.
Your thread is a classic of how language can lead one up the philosophical garden path.
Interesting question. There is a lot to unravel here when using terms like "facts", "true", and "possible worlds" which will lead to much confusion.
1. What is an "arithmetical fact"? That we use a human invented symbolism like "2+2=4" and that this has rules of use, and has application in our world. OK. Or, do you mean "2+2=4" is a fact because it corresponds to some eternal idea. I reject this later position as metaphysical nonsense.
2. What make "arithmetical facts" true? That we use these human invented symbolisms like "2+2=4", we agree on the use, we agree on judging correctness. Ok. Or, do you mean "2+2=4"is true because it corresponds correctly to some eternal idea. I reject this later position as metaphysical nonsense. (As Wittgenstein says in PI 241"So you are saying that human agreement decided what is true and what is false?- It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. This is not agreement in opinions but in form of life."
3. Lastly, what to make of "true in all possible worlds"? First, I like what Saul Kripke said in N&N, "In the present monograph I argued against the misuses of the concept that regard possible worlds as something like distant planets, like our own surroundings but somehow existing in a different dimension, or lead to spurious problems of 'transworld identification." and "'Possible worlds' are stipulated, not discovered by powerful telescopes." Are you thinking this very thing by discussing other sentient being across the universe? Second, is it not hard to imagine a fictitious natural history where human do not have this symbolism, its use, its general agreement in judgment? If so, it would not be "true in all possible worlds".
"'To be practical, mathematics must tells us facts.'-But do these facts have to be, the mathematical facts?-But why should not mathematics, instead of 'teaching us facts', create the forms of what we call facts?" From Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, Wittgenstein.
I don't question any of that. However, you also interpret meanings, which is why you are able to communicate in writing. That is not something reducible to sensations.
Quoting Richard B
I think the way you're putting it somewhat reifies it. What I mean by 'all possible worlds' is simply that basic arithmetical propositions such as those we're discussing, are necessarily true. I understand Wittgenstein, Austin and the ordinary language philosophers are averse to metaphysics, but I don't share their aversion. In any case, I'm of the view that at least some of the fundamental elements of arithmetic and logic are not the inventions of humans, but are discovered by humans who have developed the intelligence to be able to grasp them. Conversely, I don't believe that the basic furniture of reason is dependent on the human mind or are simply conventions. Yes, this has metaphysical implications, but that's what interests me. I'm interested in the history of the subject, and of how scholastic realism regarding universals was displaced by nominalism and eventually by today's empiricism.
Quoting Richard B
Well, a vulgar example is, get your maths wrong, and your bridge will collapse or your rocket will blow up at launch. And so on. But that's applied mathematics. What makes basic arithmetical operations true is kind of a redundant question - I don't know if it can be explained. Mathematics after all is the source of the explanation of many other things, but asking why it's true, is rather like asking why two and two are four, which doesn't have an answer. Or, to the question, what does two plus two equal, the answer 'four' is the terminus of explanation, as it were.
What I'm interested in exploring is the ontology of number, as I've indicated. And I'm also interested in Wigner's 'unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in the natural sciences'. I think it says something interesting.
Whats the difference between saying they exist in a different way, and saying they dont exist but theyre real? What have you got against the use of exist for ideas, numbers, etc.?
What about nations and conversations?
If both tables and numbers are real, but only tables can also be said to exist, then it looks like youre downgrading numbers just because theyre not objects of physical science.
I think @Art48 is right to question your terminological critique.
I noticed that something that is characteristic of phenomenal objects is that they are temporally delimited - they come into and go out of existence - and they are composed of parts. Numbers - well, prime number, but anyway - don't come into and go out of existence, and are not composed of parts.
They can be described in terms of of Frege's 'third realm' - the realm of abstract objects such as numbers, sets, and functions. He believed that these abstract objects existed independently of the physical world and the mind, and that they had a different kind of reality that was not reducible to either physical or mental phenomena.
According to Frege, this third realm was a necessary foundation for mathematics, which he saw as a discipline concerned with the study of these abstract objects. He argued that mathematical concepts such as "2+2=4" were not simply facts about physical objects or mental states, but were instead true in virtue of the abstract objects they referred to. It is generally regarded as platonist, although Frege did not really articulate it in those terms, it more that he simply assumed it to be true. (See Tyler Burge, Frege on Knowing the Third Realm.)
Quoting Jamal
Not at all. I believe that numbers, principles, natural laws, and the like, belong to a different realm to the phenomenal domain, but that generally modern philosophy has lost sight of this differentiation. As Russell points out in the chapter I referred to above about universals, they exist 'no-where and no-when', but they're real nevertheless. But I think that's the gist of Platonic epistemology, as outlined in the Analogy of the Divided Line in the Republic. As a consequence, we tend to think that what is real, and what exists, are synonymous, but I'm arguing that what exists is only one aspect of what is real.
I get that it's a form of metaphysics, and I also get that this style of metaphysics is very unpopular, but it interests me.
So as not to lose sight of the differentiation, I suppose. But another way of paying attention to the differentiation is to say that something exists in a different way. My question is what the difference is between these terminological choices.
I think it's a concession to both reductionism and reification to accept that only physical objects exist. That's partly what motivated Markus Gabriel's ontology, in which tables, quarks, numbers, nations, and ideas all exist. There are alternative theories that do the same kind of thing, like critical realism and speculative realism.
Quoting Wayfarer
But you want to go one step further and say they don't exist?
I agree - that's what I'm trying to say. What Russell says is:
[quote=Bertrand Russell]We shall find it convenient only to speak of things existing when they are in time, that is to say, when we can point to some time at which they exist (not excluding the possibility of their existing at all times). Thus thoughts and feelings, minds and physical objects exist. But universals do not exist in this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where 'being' is opposed to 'existence' as being timeless. [/quote]
Also note this from an IEP article:
Whereas, what I'm arguing is that I think the very idea of there being 'degrees of reality' is no longer intelligible. So there are no 'different ways' in which things can exist - we say that things either exist, or they don't. Tables and chairs exist, unicorns and the square root of 2 do not. Whereas, I'm saying, intelligible objects, such as numbers, are real, as constituents of reason, but not existent, as phenomenal objects. So that re-introduces a distinction I think has been lost.
Again, you are conceding that the gold standard of existence is that of physical objects. You seem to accept physicalist assumptions perhaps without realizing it. Because to say that something exists in a certain way is not to say it is more or less real than things that exist in a different way.
Russell says "we shall find it convenient" to say of universals that they subsist, and not that they exist, but it's not much more than one way of making the distinction. It's a concession to physics to say that only things that are in time exist.
And do you accept his classification, wherein ideas do exist, and it's only universals that don't?
Perhaps in order to justify saying that we would need to commit to a determinism so strict that we would have to think that everything that has ever happened, including every thought ever entertained was inevitable, and that every thought that will be entertained is inevitable.
On the other hand if indeterminism were metaphysically fundamental, then what would be potentially possible would expand considerably, perhaps infinitely, as well as constantly changing. Then true novelty would be possible.
I am saying that existence properly refers to phenomenal objects. But that is not privileging them. What Russell is articulating is a distinction in modes of being - between things that exist in time and space, and universals, which subsist. Its an awkward distinction, I agree.
Heres a really obscure reference, to the philosophical theology of Scotus Eriugena, but its about the only place that actually articulates what Im driving at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/#FiveModeBeinNonBein
Although to be honest, I'm more interested in ideas and thoughts than I am in universals and abstract objects, because that's what seems most radical/incredible about the concept of the mindscape.
The seven sensations and ideas exist. Ideas are not reducible to sensations, but sensations can communicate ideas.
Quoting Richard B
The Pythagoreans were shocked to discover that the square root of 2 was irrational.It is an eternal fact that the square root of 2 cannot be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers. That fact was true before the Pythagoreans discovered it and it will be true for all eternity. You seemed to be taking the Mathemetical Formalism route, which is a minority position among working mathematicians, most of whom accept Mathematical Platonism.
I have a M.A. in math and did 2 years of Ph.D. work but didn't complete it. For me, Mathematical Platonism is an empirical fact. Irrespective of symbolism, the square root of 2 cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole number; that's a fact. Moreover, there was no time in the past and there will be no time in the future, when that fact is/was false. Similarly, there is no largest prime number; never was and never will be.
Quoting Richard B
That they logically derive from accepted axioms.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, and we come to know these abstract object via mental phenomena, i.e., thought.
We will probably never stop trying to figure out exactly what an idea is (what we mean by 'idea.'). I think they exist (whatever exactly that means), and I think they are at least like blurry equivalence classes. So 'I forget my umbrella' and 'Oh shit I left my umbrella' express the sameenough idea. So the idea is a clump of marks (written sentences) and noises (spoken sentences) that do pretty much the same thing --- so we throw them in the same category for convenience, which, incidentally, seems fundamental to thinking. We make unequal things equal. We ignore differences that make no differences (small enough differences to be neglected by faulty but magnificent self-replicating machines like ourselves.)
An idea can cease to exist if all the marks and noises that belong in its category vanish, such as if we forget about those marks and noises or we die.
To me it seems possible that aliens can find our books after we are gone and learn to translate our ideas into their language (they would have similar-enough equivalence classes to learn something from us, and integrate ours with theirs.) They'd probably have to see how the signs (marks) connected with the residue of our other animal actions besides tying and dragging graphite and ink on paper.
The body is arbitrary but a body is necessary. The dove found that it could fly faster in thinner air and was confident it would fly still faster in a vacuum.
This is why, by the way, the body or vessel metaphor is potentially misleading. An equivalence class is a less mystified approach -- unless Mystification is the Point.
This is a classic view. It's the model-T of metaphysics. You should at least test drive something from the 20th century. :starstruck:
:up:
It's also hard to make sense of the claim that only such objects exist, perhaps because that sense would not itself exist, unless as a physical object ? If senses (ideas) are physical object, what is not physical ? Where's the contrast that makes the claim more than a tautology ?
Quoting Jamal
Haven't read Gabriel, but I can relate. The world (lifeworld) is a swirling unity of relationships. We believe in quarks because we trust scientific norms which were invented by primates who evolved with the help of DNA which is explained by physics and we are back to quarks.
This argument came out of my attempt to show that existence pertains to phenomenal objects, and that intelligible objects, like number, exist in a different way to phenomenal objects, in that they can only be grasped by rational thought, not by the senses. Russell uses the term to subsist in distinction from to exist. They are, in the pre-Kantian sense, noumenal, meaning, objects of nous. (I say pre-Kantian because Kant appropriated the term noumenal for another purpose.) I think that distinction can be mapped against hylomorphism, but that since the abandonment of scholastic realism concerning metaphysics, it is a distinction which has become lost in the modern lexicon. So Im not saying that theyre non-existent, but that theyre real in a different sense to phenomenal objects.
(This is also related to the negative theology of Paul Tillich, for anyone familiar.)
I wouldn't even say they are so different. They are just more abstract. We grasp objects (artichokes and aardvarks) as unities, which makes them countable. If Cantor is right, there are two basic operations of abstraction in this context, ordinal and cardinal. If you haven't read Cantor, this one is a gem:
https://www.amazon.com/Contributions-Founding-Transfinite-Numbers-Mathematics/dp/0486600459/
It's some beautiful, revolutionary math. So I recommend it to anyone who wants in on the infinity of infinities.
You might like:
https://www.amazon.com/Early-Heidegger-Medieval-PhilosophyPhenomenology/dp/0813221870/
A man of faith takes what he can from what he calls Heidegger's "phenomenology for the godforsaken." Lots of scholastic thought in it, as Heidegger started there, eventually incorporating Luther's thought as well as various mystics. The author even thinks that it's only after a kind of atheist moment that a genuine theology is possible. Something like that ! I'm reading it off and on with a pile of other books.
There is a difference between phenomenal objects which are temporally delimited and composed of parts, and those objects of thought which are not. Which is a distinction that I think is basic theme of Greek philosophy, between sensible and rational. Doesn't mean a dichotomy or a conflict, but a distinction.
I agree that we can discursively break the world up and think about the category or concept of a dog as apart from any particular dog. We indeed have that sort of metacognition.
Real dogs come and go. Concepts also come and go, but far more slowly, for the most part. "Impersonal conceptual schemes" (Braver) are something like a shared set of concepts that dominate and limit and make possible the thinking of a mortal generation. This is a synchronic abstraction, for time and the mutation of our concepts waits for no man.
Ideas, meanings, and thoughts are just not very thingy, are they? The static ontology of medium-size dry goods doesnt feel right. (Some would say that a static ontology doesnt even work for them either, which I suppose is process metaphysics.)
But numbers are more thingy than thoughts, while at the same time being not or less mind-dependent, and not situated in space and time. So theres a scale of thingyness and an independent scale of abstractness.
:up:
Quoting Jamal
Or Kojeve. Or Hegel (as I make sense of him, the system is always tumbling.)
Quoting Jamal
I think instead of saying math isn't in space and time we should say that math methodically ignores the actual, local spatial and temporal situation. For instance, a Turing machine is understood to have unlimited space (its tape) and unlimited time (it can take as many discrete steps as it needs or run on forever.) No such computer can exist physically. But it's a great reasoning tool, since it saves us from worrying about space and time (which are worried about in complexity theory.)
Another example. The results of group theory in abstract algebra apply to any group, so it's killing an uncountably infinite number of birds with one stone.
I like considering more than one dimension. Our human situation is rich. James' pluralism comes to mind. There are lots and lots of kinds of things, perhaps as many as we care to notice or declare.
Which is the basis of the Theory of Forms.
I actually tracked down the source of this intuition I had about the Greeks and the ontological status of number:
[quote=Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra.] Neoplatonic mathematics is governed by a fundamental distiction which is indeed inherent in Greek science in general, but is here most strongly formulated. According to this distinction, one branch of mathematics participates in the contemplation of that which is in no way subject to change, or to becoming and passing away. This branch contemplates that which is always such as it is and which alone is capable of being known: for that which is known in the act of knowing, being a communicable and teachable possession, must be something that is once and for all fixed.[/quote]
When I experienced the 'aha' moment about why the ancients thought that maths was of a different order of reality to sensory objects, this is more or less all I saw. Subsequently I've pursued the theme as it developed, and then more or less petered out in the late medieval period (save for the remaining mathematical platonists, of whom there are always some.)
I find that agreeable, but mathematical Platonism is rampant around here.
Are numbers and other abstract objects universals, and are universals real? Old questions.
Whatever the answers, Im quite happy to say numbers and properties exist, along with thoughts and tables even in the case that they are abstract and dynamic. This is because to say that something exists isnt to say all that much. It just sets things up (semi-literally) so you can deal with them. I see being in the same way. I cant shake the thought that the controversies over what exists are motivated by a fear of irrelevance in the face of physical science. Otherwise, why worry?
EDIT: if there seems to be an anti-philosophical note at the end there, its just in the way of provocation.
From Wittgenstein's "Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematic"
I 168, "The mathematician is aninventor, not a discoverer."
II 2 "But the mathematician is not a discoverer: he is aninventor."
II 38 "From the fact, however, that we have an employment for a kind of numeral which, as it were, gives the number of the members of an infinite series, it does not follow that it also makes some kind of sense to speak of the number of the concept 'infinite series'; that we have here some kind of employment for something like a numeral. For there's no grammatical technique suggesting employment of such an expression. For I can of course form the expression: "class all classes which are equinumerous with the class 'infinite series'" (as also: "class of all angels that can get on to a needlepoint") but this expression is empty so long as there is no employment for it. Such an employment is not: yet to be discovered, but: still to be invented."
V 11 "If you want to know more about the series, you have, so to speak, to get into another dimension (as it were from the line into a surrounding plane).-But then isn't the plane there, just like the line, and merely something to be explored, if one want to know what the facts are? No, the mathematics of this further dimension has to be invented just as much as any mathematics."
From Wittgenstein's Lectures on the foundations of Mathematic
"One talks of mathematical discoveries. I shall try again and again to show that what is called a mathematical discovery had better be called a mathematical invention. In some of the cases to which I point, you perhaps be inclined to say, "Yes they had better be calledinventions"; in other cases you may perhaps be inclined to say, "Well, it is difficult to say whether in this case something has been discovered or invented."
Wittgenstein's position is an outcomes of his later views on language and meaning, exploring how these symbols become "alive with meaning." For him, Platonic views of mathematics lack utility due to offering no explanatory power and leading to confusion.
[quote=Joshua Hochschild - What's Wrong with Ockham?]Thomists and other critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional [i.e. 'scholastic'] realism with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see forms not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality.[/quote]
Quoting green flag
Two might not be enough but it's better than one, so I made a 2D ontology chart, without much thought as to how pointless or wrongheaded it might be.
I dont see how ideas can be equivalence classes because the elements of an equivalence class are logically prior to the class. For instance, the integers are logically prior to the even numbers. For 2 to be a member of the equivalence class of even numbers, 2 must already exist/subsist/be defined/etc. The elements of a set are logically prior to the set (aside from sets defined self-referentially. But such sets lead to logical problems, for example, the set of all sets.)
Do you have a response for people who do not take Wittgenstein's writings as gospel?
Try shaking harder. :) These questions were discussed long before science existed and are interesting in themselves. P.S. I like your chart of thing/process, abstract/concrete.
As I said to Wayfarer, despite appearances what I was referring to was not so much ontology as such, or the problem of universals, degrees of reality in Platonism, and so on, but more about the motivations behind the particular ways these ideas appear in contemporary concepts, like the mindscape.
OK, fair enough. But surely it's natural, given science's prestige, to wonder how concepts discussed for millennia relate to science today.
Here the significant dimension is concept/object, where the struggle is to get hold of objects without conceptualizing them. This is impossible to do in philosophy, but that's ok, because it's negative dialectics: it's trying to do what Wittgenstein said could not be done, though not with any naively hubristic metaphysical system.
From this perspective, an idea is a conceptual thing in a world of conceptual things called philosophy, or art or culture, or some other more granular "field of sense"--but the philosophical task is to uncover the real. This goes back to my first criticism: it's assumed by Adorno that the real is the material, whether the material is a table, or the relationship between an employer and an employee, or the freedom to flourish. And while these might have different strengths of conceptual flavour, that doesn't matter much, because this is historically relative and there is always in these cases something real in them. So probably the worst move to make is to try so hard to prove the realness of ideas that you invent a whole landscape out of them. That just confuses the concept/object dichotomy and reifies concepts unknowingly, thus obscuring the essential relationship between them.
Yes, there is an alternative to praying at the altar of Plato, it is appreciating humans incredible ability to create a form of life like mathematics.
As I said from the beginning, mathematical equivalence classes are only a metaphor for nonmathematical concepts. And even this was only a hypothesis, a path for exploration. Platonism has been found wanting, even if the news of its failure is ignored, so the issue is what to try next.
:up:
And let me add that folks don't hate Plato (necessarily) because they hate Jesus. They sometimes just care about truth, and Platonism doesn't work. To be fair, I know lots of math, and math is exactly the tiny slice of human thinking where Platonism is at least feasible. But leave that little crystal castle and it's a broken theory.
Yes to all of this. As I see it, a genuine alternative to scientism is something like hermeneutic phenomenology. Heidegger's reputation is justly wounded, but the kind of thing he does is the right cure for scientism. The lifeworld (just the world for those not locked in scientism) encompasses scientific discourse, religious discourse, etc. I guess the theme is holism. There's no attempt to reduce everything to one mind (God, matter, mind.)
Some versions of antiscientism end up looking like a competing variant. After all, the laws of physics are (for some) already the gleaming mind or essence of God. If only we can squeeze some ethics in there, some 'literary' stuff which is nevertheless timeless and safe from ambiguity. It looks to me like the same old flight from death and change and our fate of having to make it new again and again. Becker's vision of the Oedipus complex is like Nietzsche's will-to-power. If I can find the eternal and static mind of God, I become the Wise Man, the unmoved mover. I have beat the video game. And I might as well be dead.
Matter is the shadow of mind is the shadow of matter. 'Pure' matter is as elusive and useless and canceling as 'pure' mind. I love Saussure for driving home the contrastive nature of language. Brandom emphasizes that we just can't understand one concept without understanding many. We are not thermostats.
I think the argument against this is the existence of mathematical constants. They are understood as providing objective and universal truths about the world. Unlike empirical observations, which are subject to error and variability, mathematical constants are immutable and universally applicable. For example, the golden ratio has been used as a symbol for beauty, proportion, and harmony. Pi has been used as a symbol for the infinite and the irrational. The 'six numbers' of Martin Rees, signifying the fundamental physical constraints without which matter would not have formed. The fact that mathematical physics has frequently predicted things about nature which observation alone could never do (and in the 20th c, empirical observations frequently took decades of development to test those predictions, Dirac's prediction of anti-matter being a paradigmatic example.) Claiming that these are mathematical inventions is, to say the least, rather anthropocentric, is it not? Yet it's the same ability that gave rise to these predictions that enabled the very technology on which you are now reading this.
When I ask what the number 7 is, you will point to the number, 7, and say that is what it is. But '7' is a symbol. That is an invention and can be represented in many different symbols: VII, SEVEN. What is not invented, is the meaning of the symbol. And that is what we all agree on.
Suddenly I can see what happened. Galileo saw the significance of dianoia - 'the book of the heavens is written in mathematics.' But Plato's ethics became assimilated into Christianity - and discarded with it. So we have all the engineering, but hardly any of the vision.
Questions for Richard B
If addition was invented, who invented it?
Who invented the distributive law, i.e., that, for example 5*(3+7) always equals 5*3 + 5*7 ?
The birthday paradox of probability says that given 23 people, there is a 50% probability that two will have the same birth day (but not necessarily the same birth year). With 75 people, the probability is 99.9%. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bring-science-home-probability-birthday-paradox/
Who invented the birthday paradox? AND how did the inventor of the birthday paradox arrange it so that when I had about 23 people in one of my probability classes and decided to demonstrate the birthday paradox, that about half the time, two people had the same birth day?
I want to meet these inventors. Who are they?
If you asked me "what the number 7 is?", I may want a little more clarity on what you mean by this question. In different contexts, it could mean different things. If I did point to the symbol "7", maybe I was teaching a child how to count with mathematical symbols. Or maybe I had used that symbol to show how to add, subtract, multiple, or divide. Or, maybe I showed how numbers select out an individual in a soccer match. Or, maybe how it can be used to title a movie. All created by humans to give a dead sign "life." These symbols are created by humans, and humans give it a use which gives it a meaning.
When we talk about math, we say things like "I figured out the solution to the problem", "I constructed a proof to demonstrate such and such", or "I determine the equation for such a figure." It would be odd to say after every addition problem, "Wow I discovered '1+45=46', '25+75=100', '7+1000=1007', etc"
When we talk about "discovering meanings, ideas, eternal objects", we belittle the creative aspect of human intelligence. It gives this picture that human go into the room called "Platonic realm", find aisles of bins labeled "meanings", "idea", eternal objects" and select the one we like, call it a discovery, and share it with the world. I don't know about you, but that is not how I learn. I read books, listen to lectures, debate other people, ask questions, draw diagrams, make errors, test a hypothesis, conduct experiments, etc...in order to learn ideas or come up with new ideas.
It's very clear - 7=7 (or the sum of its factors).
Actually during this exchange, I've come to realise that what I believe is that whilst mathematical systems may be invented, numbers are discovered. I think that's the thrust of a saying by mathematical philosopher Leopold Kronecker, 'God invented the integers, all else is the work of man'. But even if mathematics is invented, it is dependent on that foundation, without which none of it could be invented. And having been invented, it has great predictive power, but only because it is grounded in reality, not simply in convention.
Quoting Richard B
I think that's an innaccurate depiction of what 'the ideas' actually represent, and we make it because we're accustomed to thinking of whatever as real as being 'out there somewhere'. But as already noted, universals (of which I am saying numbers are a subset) don't exist in that sense. They can only be apprehended by reason, which is a faculty unique to h. sapiens (although present in rudimentary form in some of the higher animals). My idea of the forms is that they're closer in meaning to 'principles' than to ghostly ethereal objects - and they're principles that, whilst independent of any particular mind, can only be grasped by the mind. Our thinking is thoroughly suffused with such principles.
In what sense is principles independent of any particular mind?
[quote=Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge]Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: 'thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he says "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it. Thought contents are true and bear their relations to one another (and presumably to what they are about) independently of anyone's thinking these thought contents* - "just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets." '[/quote]
----
* 'In his work, Frege used the term "thought contents" to refer to the meanings of sentences or propositions. He argued that the meaning of a sentence or proposition was not simply a matter of the words used, but rather the thoughts that the sentence or proposition expresses. He believed that language is a system of symbols that can be used to express these thought contents, which are themselves independent of any particular language.'
In the same way is the mystery. I can picture a hand separated in space from the hand. And I can picture the hand moving to grasp the pencil. But what am I picturing when thought content is separate from thinking? This is not a spacial relationship Maybe it is more like the relationship between a triangle and three sides, you cant imagine one without the other. So, it is unlike a hand and pencil. Thus, they are not independent of each other.
'Independent' in the sense that the concept triangle is not dependent on your thinking about it.
[quote=Edward Feser] the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition regards the intellect as a distinct faculty from the senses and the imagination. The objects of the intellect are concepts, which are abstract and universal, while the senses and imagination can only ever grasp what is (at least relatively) concrete and particular. Hence your sensation or mental image of a triangle is always of a particular kind of triangle small, isosceles, and red, for example while the concept of a triangle grasped by your intellect applies to all triangles, whether they are small or large, isosceles, scalene, or equilateral, red, green, or black. Sensations and mental images are also subjective or private, directly knowable only to the person having them, while concepts are public and objective, equally accessible in principle to anyone. Your mental image of a triangle might be very different from mine, but when we grasp the concept of a triangle, it is one and the very same thing each of us grasps, which is why we can communicate about triangles in the first place.[/quote]
The same principle is broadly applicable to all manner of geometric and arithmetic concepts, as well as to logical principles and scientific laws.
I'm not so sure. Perhaps a platonist would consider all of the entities of set theory to be timeless. It'd merely be our presentation of them which would require first the source set and then the equivalence classes.
Consider a novel that written that's been translated into 20 languages. Somehow the original text and all who know the original language are removed (taken by aliens to Jupiter, for instance.) So now we have 20 'translations' which contain the 'same' idea. Do we think perfect translation is possible ? Is a perfect paraphrase in the same language even possible ? Or are we not dealing with a sameenoughness ?
If you were dealing with a recipe, or a formula, or design blueprints, you'd better be damned sure they're accurate. (Remember that European Mars Lander that failed because an engineer confused imperial and metric?)
This is a long-standing interest of mine. Consider this question: if you have a string of text of the type mentioned above, it can be translated, not only into other languages, but completely different symbolic systems, like binary. In such cases, what changes, and what stays the same? I think the answer is, the symbolic form changes, but the meaning is constant. Same with number: we can invent all kinds of symbolic systems and relationships, but the meaning of '7' must remain invariant. That is what *I* think 'platonism' is intuiting, although I accept it's very much a minority view.
I think Frege was right about that (relative) independence. The sameenough idea can be put in lots of sentences in the same language or in some other language.
The sentences are containers metaphor has its advantages, but perhaps it can lead us astray if we forget other possibilities. Equivalence classes look to be a more neutral approach.
We pretty much agree here. I imagine that's the point of forms. Even Saussure talked of form. But equivalence classes do the same job with less commitment. The container metaphor is too spatial, in my view. Or maybe it's fine but we need more approaches. We tend to think when translating that we are unwrapping and rewrapping a Content instead of searching for a tool that does the same job.
(And there must be some other good metaphors out there besides just these.)
I suggest a structuralist approach. Imagine a game that is basically Chess but every piece is carved differently and has a different name. Translating the bishop token (its 'content') would just be pointing out the piece that does the 'same thing' (plays the same role) in the other game.
I tracked down and bought the (expensive!) textbook of the platonist Professor mentioned in that article, James Robert Brown (although you'd probably be able to make more sense of it than me). But note this passage from the essay:
Something which I would describe as 'inadvertantly revealing'.
Bless us, divine number, thou who generated gods and men! O holy, holy Tetractys, thou that containest the root and source of the eternally flowing creation! For the divine number begins with the profound, pure unity until it comes to the holy four; then it begets the mother of all, the all-comprising, all-bounding, the first-born, the never-swerving, the never-tiring holy ten, the keyholder of all.
Also recall that in Platonism, knowledge of arithmetic and geometry was 'dianoia', which is higher than opinion concerning appearances, but not the highest level, which is 'noesis'.
I finally have had a chance to read this book. Thanks for mentioning it. I have not seen many sophisticated attempts that try to argue against later Wittgenstein, but this is one of them. On the positive side, Katz does a great job of elucidating both Wittgensteins and Quines philosophy. In fact, most of the time he agrees with Wittgensteins investigation into meaning and language. However, he believes, Wittgensteins criticism does not touch certain linguistic attempts at discovering the underlying structure of language. Additionally, he believes Platonic versions of philosophical theories can explain those linguistic proto-theories better than the naturalistic positions that Wittgenstein and Quine offer.
In the end, he believes he has shown that his vision is a justifiable alternative to the naturalism positions he attempt to critique.
Hey you're ahead of me. I have to renew my alumni membership at the uni library and make the trip to get it out. Glad you found it useful.