Well... it is anti-scientific for starters — TheWillowOfDarkness

If it's anti-scientific, then why do scientists posit such things? If you don't think they do, then go ask a physicists if GR or QM applies to the entire universe. Go ask a biologist if evolution applies to all life. The topology of the universe itself is said to be determined by gravity, for Plato's sake.

It's also terrible with respect to interactions betweens humans. Since it is an essentialist position, it has us thinking we know the "nature" people without taking a moment to consider them and their relationship to our theories and actions. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Well, there must be something about humans which differentiates us from duckbill platypuses or peat moss. That people have gotten all worked up about what exactly that is and done terrible things doesn't change the fact that we're not dogs.

But if the OP means that anybody who votes for a conservative is complicit in the death culture of America's advanced capitalist danse macabre, I'll agree to that. — Landru Guide Us

What good does making statements like that do except preach to the choir?

For that matter, what good does it do to state that Americans like murder when there are other possibilities, such as Americans think the 2nd Amendment is important and understand it a certain way? There's lots of things in modern life we accept as necessary despite the negative consequences, such as driving cars. That's because we think cars outweigh the disadvantage of pollution and deaths or injury from accidents. Similarly, enough Americans, or at least those who care about the issue, think that the right to own guns outweighs the terrible tragedies when certain individuals get their hands on guns and shoot up the place.

You might disagree with valuing a right Americans have considered fundamental since our founding, perhaps because your country does not, and that's fine, but to say that we like murder is a complete mischaracterization. At any rate, you're only rallying your own troops, who already agree with you. It has negative impact on the opposition. Not a single gun owner will be persuaded otherwise by being told they like murder.

What makes it disgusting? GR and QM are said to apply to the entire cosmos. It is an inference that can be shown incorrect, but the problem of universals is that we so readily universalize over particulars.

Then accept the reality of universals. Many particulars really do have things in common. It's empirically evident. X and Y are both (correctly) described as having a negative charge or being circle. It's still not clear to my what the problem is. — Michael

I tried to explain, but it's been considered a problem in philosophy since the Ancient Greeks.

We say that it's true for the entire cosmos, and if it successfully describes and predicts all relevant phenomena then it is and if it doesn't then it isn't. — Michael

It's not a problem if one accepts the reality of universals. It is if one doesn't. Then you need to account for laws of nature some other way. To say that it just fits observation is to ignore the problem, which is to account for the existence of such principles.

I don't understand. We do it by doing it. We say "gravity is inversely proportional to distance squared for all objects having mass" and then if this statement successfully describes (and predicts) every experiment then we say that it is true. — Michael

Yes, but it's saying more than that. It's saying that it's true for the entire cosmos, which is impossible to test. We have an expectation that when we come across new stars or galaxies, the same principle will apply. That's what makes it universal.

But just as we don't then conclude that universities aren't real we shouldn't then conclude that universals aren't real. — Michael

Well, Some philosophers don't think that universities are real.

What you should ask is "is X a real universal?" And if X is something that many particulars have in common then X is a real universal. It is an empirical fact that many particulars have things in common (shape, size, colour, etc.) and so it is an empirical fact that these things (shape, size, colour, etc.) are real universals. — Michael

Does this imply a kind of strong emergence for universals then? Could you have predicted the existence of universities from their parts before there were any universities?

This sounds like essentialism, and as I argued here, essentialism doesn't really work. — Michael

Universals and essentialism seem related. If you accept that universals are real, can you still deny essentialism? You are agreeing that it's true that things in common share the same properties.

The contradiction comes from stating that we can't get outside our perspective to say what the world is like without us, and yet very important and successful scientific theories do exactly that.

You seem to be working on the premise that it's less problematic for each individual particular to behave in its own unique manner. But what warrants this premise? — Michael

I may have made a mistake here in my characterization of the problem. It's not just that particulars have similarities. It's that we universalize over all potential particulars to say things like gravity is inversely proportional to distance squared for all objects having mass. But of course we don't experience all matter, so how are we able to do that?

Or we can say that all apples have the properties X, Y, Z without ever experiencing all apples. That's different from taking 100 apples and lumping them in a category of similar traits. And yet we have a great deal of confidence that certain properties make an apple an apple, which differentiate it from non-apples.

Lakoff and Johnson would say so. In their Philosophy in the Flesh book, they traced Plato's forms to utilization of the kind metaphor. I don't think they gave his work the proper treatment, as they were in kind of a rush to characterize all of western philosophy as being built on top of various metaphors.

The question is whether making universals out to be metaphors dispenses with the issue, and what sort of implications that has for scientific theories. Is GR with it's curved spacetime metaphorical? They seemed to think so.

Well, no, because I reject realist ontology. If, however, you want a realist ontology, and if universals are inconsistent with a realist ontology, and if universals are apparent, then clearly realist ontology fails. — Michael

Realism in this debate means there are universals in addition to particulars, either in the particulars themselves, or some other realm. Maybe there are other options, but the point is they exist somewhere outside of our thoughts and language.

But earlier you said that we experience similarities and that universals are similarities. Therefore we experience universals. — Michael

I stated that universals are an explanation for similarities, and that if one wishes to dispense with universals, then particulars must play the role of explaining similarities.

Well, that's not true. We do know about universals. — Michael

We know that we utilize universals in language. Whether they exist in the world somehow in addition to the particulars is the age-old debate.

I don't know what you mean by this. Just that two particulars in different locations each behave in the same way? Yes. But, again, what's strange about this? — Michael

No, it's rather that there is something else called a universal by which the two particulars share properties or relations.

t is of course something of an oddity that scientific terms can shift in meaning quite a lot over time. 'Electron' is not what it was in Rutherford's day. 'Gene' is quite a different thing from when Dawkins wrote 'The selfish gene'. 'Species' is quite an uncertain beast. But perhaps that's my own hobby-horse and not this thread's — mcdoodle

There is that. I recall reading where some physicists have speculated that the fundamental constants vary over time. But I don't know if there is any empirical evidence for this so far.

There are no non-unique features. Any feature of a state of existence, by definition, is of that state only, including in instances where a feature is similar to what is found in some other particular. — TheWillowOfDarkness

If that's the case, then how does our universalizing work at all? How is it that we can categorize anything, or notice relationships between any particulars? In a universe of 100% unique particulars, generalization is impossible.

Unless you want to argue that the mind imposes a structure on the world which doesn't exist. That we're the ones adding the similarities in. I suppose that's what conceptualism amounts to.

I would dispute this. A trope theorist would argue that the attributes that are shared are actually just particulars that are part of a set. — darthbarracuda

Maybe so? If tropes can do the work, then there is no need for universals in one's philosophy. The question is can they? I take it that's an ongoing debate.

One issue for tropes is that they are themselves strange. The notion of abstract particulars is bound to draw similar stares of disbelief as universals do.

I don't understand the problem. You say that "we experience a world of particulars" but also that "we ... experience similarities". So if particulars aren't problematic then why are similarities? We experience them both. — Michael

It is accounting for the similarities that is problematic. We experience similarities among particulars. How is that? What is going on?

How are they hard to accommodate? We describe the structure and behaviour of two particular things using (more or less) the same sentence. What's strange about this? — Michael

For one thing, that universals are not bound to any single location. And for another, that particulars somehow participate in, or share properties with the universals. And finally, that universals are not epistemic. We experience particulars, not the universals themselves. Although maybe an Aristotelian can clarify their position here.

Perhaps; if you wish to keep universals our of our ontology. But why do you wish to do this? What, exactly, is the problem with saying that we use the single word "triangle" to describe the shape of two different particular things? — Michael

You're the one who has been challenging realism about universals in this thread, which would mean to keep them out of one's ontology. I was just explaining what that amounts to. If there are no universals, then particulars must do the work instead. That's all.

To put the problem as simply as possible, particulars are particulars because they are unique. And yet these unique particulars seem to have attributes which are not unique. It is those non-unique attributes which allows us to generalize. What needs explaining is how unique particulars appear to have non-unique features.

Seems to me universals are not needed at all. To understand a similarity between states, what we need to know is that those particulars share a certain expression of meaning. We predicate across particulars by knowing the particulars in comparison to each other, not by finding some form which exists regardless of particulars. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The problem is that we're able to successfully compare particulars. If all there are is particulars in the world, then where does the comparison come from? You mentioned two objects being red. How is it that they are both red? Sure, you can give a scientific account involving electrons and photons, but then you are just moving the problem to subatomic particles, which share the same properties.

If there are no universals, we still have particulars resembling each other. What are to make of these commonalities, resemblances, similarities? Something needs to take the place of universals to explain that.

So in that sense, the world isn't 'mind-independent'. Even if we imagine the world going on in our absence, or in the absence of the whole human species, that 'going on' is still imagined from an implicitly human perspective. Belief in the 'view from nowhere' is 'transcendental realism' - the construction of an idea of a universe with no observers in it. But I'm saying, it is literally impossible to conceive of such a world, because even to conceive of it requires an implicit perspective. — Wayfarer

Even though Kantians make a strong argument, the big problem with it is that our best scientific theories say something very different. They describe a deep time before us, leading up to us. Our very existence is explained by cosmology, astronomy, geology and evolution. If that's just from our human perspective, then our scientific theories are making false claims. They have to be uttered with a huge caveat. There were dinosaurs long before people, or so it appears to us living now.

I tend to fancy realism, particularly scientific realism, so that sort of thing really bothers me. I'm not interested in how the world appears to humans living now. I'm interested in how it is. If we can't get beyond our perspective, then what's the point in having theories of evolution or cosmology?

Because a neutrino is defined as that which is described using predicates X, Y, and Z. Your question is comparable to asking "why are all bachelors described as unmarried men?". — Michael

The essential problem of universals is that we experience a world of particulars, yet our language is full of properties, relations, and kinds. That's because we also experience similarities among the particulars, allowing us to generate taxonomies, distill patterns, create models, and so on. If there were no similarities, we could not universalize.

Stating that neutrinos are defined as having certain predicates is to miss the problem, which is how we can predicate across particulars. What needs to be explained is the similarities between particulars. Universals play this role well, but they do so at the cost of being strange and hard to accommodate, particularly in their more extreme forms.

If we wish to keep universals out of our ontology, then particulars must fill the role that universals play in our language. We should be able to replace all talk of universals with particulars, and leave nothing out. So particulars must be able to explain the similarities we notice amongst them. Noting that we can categorize particulars because we're able to assign predicates to them is to entirely miss the point. We already knew that. That's where the problem begins.

Why do we describe all neutrinos using the same predicates? Has the problem been addressed by using different words?

So it is of course true that F=MA whether or not anyone is aware of that fact, but, knowing such facts determines how we view the world. So i'm referring to 'mind' here, not as 'your mind' or 'my mind' or 'the contents of conscious thought', but the very framework of understanding within which anything we deem 'real' exists. — Wayfarer

So are you arguing for conceptualism here? I'm not quite clear what you're saying. Are you saying that it is necessary for any mind to understand the world in terms of abstractions such as 3? But this is only a feature of minds making sense of the world?

So universals are necessary for minds (ones that employ abstractions - leaving aside questions of animal intelligence). But this fact doesn't mean that F=MA is something in the world?

My inclination would be to say that science does not require universals to exist. But, perhaps, if we believe that science is a good basis for ontology, then science strongly suggests that universals do exist. — Moliere

Okay, I can agree with this. Can we then say that science requires the utilization of universal concepts to build its theories? Now If science isn't a good basis for ontology, the question becomes could scientific theories in principle be replaced by just talk of particulars? Or perhaps in that case, science is just a useful tool, and not an accurate model of reality.

But on a scientific realist account, electrons, spacetime and energy all exist, and that's strongly suggestive of universals existing.

But I don't think there's some kind of mystical inventory that has all these universals floating around somewhere in abstracta, that reeks of pseudoscientific superstitious nonsense. — darthbarracuda

It is a problematic notion, but the alternative is to explain all our universalizing in terms of particulars only. Because if the particulars can't do the job, then that means the abstracta is necessary, somehow.

aybe universals represent all that is physically possible, that is, all the different forms that matter can be construed. In which case they would exist in the same way the laws of logic exist, out of abstraction. — darthbarracuda

That sounds promising.

Does 'the law of the excluded middle' exist independently of mind? How could it? It's only perceptible to a rational intelligence. — Wayfarer

I don't know. Can particulars be and not be X? If not, then is the law of excluded middle an observation derived from that fact?

Trees are real to us humans, and many other terrestrial creatures. If you were a being whose body consisted solely of energy, and whose vision consisted of - I don't know - beams of neutrinos, then the whole notion of 'a tree' might be unintelligible to you.

Scientific realism starts with an image of the Universe. It is mediated by strict protocols, and the like, but it is nevertheless an image. It works, it is consistent, predictive - but when you're talking about fundamental existents, you can nevertheless call such things into question. — Wayfarer

Thing is that the problem of universals applies to fundamental constituents as much as it does complex objects like trees. What makes a neutrino a neutrino? All neutrinos have the same properties. Well, how is that possible? How can multiple particulars share the same properties? Or, how is it that you have the same properties across multiple particulars?

That's what scientific realism means. What 'realism' meant in the context of the 'realism v nominalism' debate was something completely different to that, and it is important to understand how 'scientific realism' came about, and how it fits into the overal history of ideas, when you make statements like that. — Wayfarer

I'm pretty sure that Plato and Aristotle's position on universals was the equivalent of being mind-independent. For Plato, they existed in a non-spatiotemporal realm. For Aristotle, they were to be found in particulars.

The nominalists and conceptualists claimed that universals were products of the mind, be they names, sets or concepts. They weren't out there in the world somehow.

So, I have been contending that Platonism, as traditionally conceived, is incoherent, that is all. — John

Ah well, okay. I wonder how a Platonist might go about defending their position.

Well, what if the universe is inherently mathematical, as Max Tegmark maintains? Would that be a form of Platonism, except that we happen to live there? I'm just curious as to what that would imply. In that case, the physicist is the one leaving the cave, with help from mathematicians.

You're asking why it is a brute fact. It has no explanation because it's brute. It is good by definition. — WhiskeyWhiskers

And what distinguishes that line of argument from mere existence by definition? We can apply bruteness to anything we like and then when challenged, just say that it's true by definition.

Therefore if physics is about particulars then the truth of its theories depends on the existence of the particulars, not on the mind-independent existence of the abstractions that we require to make sense of the particulars. — Michael

Back to this again. Why do physicists need abstractions to make sense of particulars? What is it about those particulars which leads to abstract conceptualization schemes? Obviously because there is resemblance of some kind. But what does that resemblance amount to? How is it to be explained, since we are dealing with particulars?

I still don't understand the difference between being mind-independent and being a mind-independent thing. — Michael

From doing some reading, I'm able to clarify my response. Universals exist if the same properties and relations exist among particulars. The exact same properties and relations are not themselves individual things, as they are not numerically distinct and don't have a specific location.

However, a different approach to dealing away with universals does posit tropes, which themselves are abstract particulars, numerically distinct and existing in only one location. Each particular thing has or is made up of particular tropes.

But it's the aboutness that determines whether not the theory is correct. Therefore if physics is about particulars then the truth of its theories depends on the existence of the particulars, not on the mind-independent existence of the abstractions that we require to make sense of the particulars. — Michael

Maybe, but it's the abstraction being a requirement part that worries me. What you're saying is that reality has no need for our abstractions. They are not part of the ontological furniture of the world. And yet we need them to make sense of the world.

Hmmm. I'm not sure what that means. It is either a statement on the nature of intelligence, or a problem for nominalism.

That the concept of matter is an abstraction is not that matter is an abstraction. — Michael

But the concept matter is abstracting over all instances of matter, which are particulars that have the commonality of rest mass. So physics, while being about particulars, relies on abstraction to make sense of those particulars.

That tends to be what I think, but I won't deny there are moments of intense pleasure, or just feeling real good after feeling crappy where I think to myself that all I care about is feeling good.

But then if I could be wireheaded to sit on my couch all day, everyday, doing nothing but blissing out, and assuming my needs were met, is that what I really want?

I don't think so. So then it becomes the question of whether pleasure is what I want, or pleasure is an indicator of what I want. And I think it's often the latter.

That being said, there have been experiments with rodents in which they push a button that induces intense pleasure from electrodes in their brain directly stimulating their pleasure center. The rodents will do this at the expense of eating or drinking until they die.

They argue that a universal must be a mind-independent thing to be real but also that to be a particular is to be a mind-independent thing, and so they're saying that a universal must be a particular to be real. But of course that makes no sense. — Michael

It doesn't, if to be real is to be a mind-independent thing, where thing is a particular. But independent just means it doesn't depend on us thinking or perceiving Y, if you like.

For example, colors are real if they don't depend on organisms like us seeing stuff. If they are out there in the world. But colors are not things. They are properties of things. If they're real, which I'm not stating. But there are and have been color realists.

But as I said before, if one wants to deny that they're real then one needs to deny that they're a real Y (whatever that Y is). — Michael

Okay, so what is the Y for particulars? Particulars are a real ____?

Aren't universals said to be abstract? Science doesn't say that matter, space-time, atoms, and so on are abstract. Science says that they're concrete things (i.e. particulars). — Michael

But the concepts "matter", "spacetime", "atoms", etc are abstractions over particular instances. Take time, for example. It is an abstraction from various events. We notice a commonality, and so we say there is this time dimension in which stuff happens. And there is an order to it. The past flows into the present which flows into the future. Of course that's everyday talk based on how we experience stuff happening.. The physical notion of time is a bit different. But it is an abstraction.

As is General Relativity, for that matter, with it's talk of gravity curving spacetime across the universe. Of course it's also mathematical equations backed up by experiments which can be put in such and such terms, but math itself is an abstraction, and so are all scientific equations.

If you're asking "are universals real?" is you asking "do universals exist independently of us?" then you're asking "are universals mind-independent things?". — Michael

But I didn't ask if universals are "things". I stated that they are real if they exist independent of us.

And what is a particular? Is it a mind-independent thing? — Michael

Materialists would say yes. But "particular" is a concept we utilize to denote unique objects. Maybe it's a universal as well?

Then you're asking "are universals particulars?" — Michael

And now we're close to abusing language. But it is an interesting angle to argue. I could argue for "particular" being universal and you could argue that realism amounts to universals being particulars. I'm not sure where that gets us. Is this a Wittgenstein approach to dissolve the issue?

I'm not making that move, and that's not what it means to be an idealist. — Michael

To be is to be perceived, which makes things mind-dependent, yes? I brought that up because one can deny that particulars are real, and therefore, what is the Y for particulars?

I don't see how that follows. — Michael

Because all of our scientific concepts make heavy use of universals. Matter, spacetime, atoms, etc are all universals. So is DNA, species, evolution, brain, mind, information, computation, etc.

Those are good points. The context is hedonism and TGW's comments on it. So the good is pleasure and the bad is pain. Therefore living well must have something to do with obtaining more pleasure while minimizing pain.

A non-hedonistic approach to living well might be more complicated, at least in concept. I wanted to know how one was supposed to live well by knowing what is good, which of course depends on what it means to "live well" and "good".