Money and categories of reality

hypericin

One commonplace way to divide reality is into The Real and The Imaginary

The Real: Exists in the physical world.
The Imaginary: Exists in minds.

Opposed to both of these components of reality is
The Unreal: Doesn't exist at all, even in a mind.

Given these categories, where does money fall? Money, we all know, is a fiction. It is not the paper it is printed on or the computer bytes on which an account balance is stored. You will never see it in a microscope, nor measure it with an instrument, no matter how sensitive, as it is mind stuff.

And yet, money is the difference between eating a steak in a warm house, and starving in the cold. Money, literally, moves mountains. It makes and breaks nations. It is a force in the world. So is this really imaginary?

I think a new category is needed
The Real Imaginary: Exist in the mental world, but is projected into the physical world.

The world is filled with such things: nations, religions, ideologies, institutions, are a few examples. Money is just more stark because of its potency and because it has its own physical avatars, currency.

If there is the Real Imaginary, by symmetry there must be the Imaginary Real. And there is.
The Imaginary Real: Exists in the physical world, but is projected into the imaginary world.

This is just the world we know and experience. The world is real, but as we know it, it is purely imaginary: All the colors, sounds, and smells, exist nowhere outside of our heads. They are real things, projected into our imaginations.

Opposed to the Imaginary Real is
The Unknown Real: The bulk of the physical universe, never experienced at all

In summation, reality is for us usefully split into four categories: The Imaginary Real, The Unknown Real, The Real Imaginary, and The Purely Imaginary. When discussing things in a philosophical way, asking "what is" this or that, a good start would be, "to which category does it belong?"

Manuel

↪hypericin

This sounds awfully close to Lacan's conception on the subject. You'd only be missing what he calls "the symbolic", the other two are as stated.

We could call money a useful fiction. Something which is considered valuable solely by our considering pieces of paper to be of worth.

I think that your distinction between real imaginary and imaginary real is not needed. You can use one term to encompass both ideas.

Melanie

Rather than seeing the world as 'things projected into our imaginations" our experiences can be seen as our imaginations projected into or onto things. Things are then given form and function as we intend and perceive them.

Wayfarer

I think a new category is needed
The Real Imaginary: Exist in the mental world, but is projected into the physical world.

The world is filled with such things: nations, religions, ideologies, institutions, are a few examples. Money is just more stark because of its potency and because it has its own physical avatars, currency. — hypericin

Numbers, qualities, logical principles, scientific laws, and so on, are only discernable to the intellect but are real for all who think. So hate to dissappoint you, but it's not a new category, rather you've discovered or re-discovered the basic idea behind universals.

Also the division you propose between 'the mind' and 'the world' is very hard to sustain. There are plainly some things only in my mind, and some things in 'the world'. But if you consider the experience of the world to comprise sensations and ideas (as idealist philosophy claims) then the division is by no means neat. And if I ask where the division between the mind and the world resides, the only answer can be, 'in the mind', because there is no such division in the world.

hypericin

This sounds awfully close to Lacan's conception on the subject. You'd only be missing what he calls "the symbolic", the other two are as stated. — Manuel

I'm not familiar, his division is into the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic?

We could call money a useful fiction. Something which is considered valuable solely by our considering pieces of paper to be of worth. — Manuel

But since money is a collective fiction, it is resistant to our individual thoughts about them. It has properties of both mental and physical objects.

I think that your distinction between real imaginary and imaginary real is not needed. You can use one term to encompass both ideas. — Manuel

They are opposites. Mental objects which cast a shadow into the physical world, vs physical objects which cast a shadow into the mental world.

hypericin

So hate to dissappoint you, but it's not a new category, rather you've discovered or re-discovered the basic idea behind universals. — Wayfarer

Hate to disappoint you, but you can't give a meaningful reply after randomly half-reading a few sentences. Does money or any of the other examples I cited (and you quoted) sound anything like universals?

But if you consider the experience of the world to comprise sensations and ideas (as idealist philosophy claims) then the division is by no means neat. — Wayfarer

Again if you had bothered to read you would have seen this is exactly my point.

Wayfarer

Does money or any of the other examples I cited (and you quoted) sound anything like universals? — hypericin

They sound similar.

I'm not disagreeing with the point you're making. I'm simply saying that the idea that there are abstract reals is not a novel idea.

hypericin

Rather than seeing the world as 'things projected into our imaginations" our experiences can be seen as our imaginations projected into or onto things. — Melanie

Either way you see it, my point remains the same. Things live in the world, but cross over into the mental world in the form of sensations, and appraisals, as you point out. In the same way, a category of mental things, money among them, cross over into the physical world. .

hypericin

I'm simply saying that the idea that there are abstract reals is not a novel idea. — Wayfarer

Not abstract reals. Imaginary reals. Would numbers, qualities, logical principles, scientific laws, and so on, disappear if we collectively stopped believing in them, or if humanity was annihilated? Probably not. Would money, religions, institutions, ideologies, nations? Absolutely they would.

Is that a novel idea? Probably not. Is this way dividing the world into 4 categories the definitive way to conceptually cleave the world? Probably not, I don't think there is any such way. But it is probably useful.

Hermeticus

The Unreal: Doesn't exist at all, even in a mind. — hypericin

The Unreal is a bit elusive, isn't it? How do we know something like that exists - as soon as we think about it, it exists in mind, no?

What do you think about this framework?

It's probably the most obvious division but personally I find it more intuitive. Can the categories you describe fit onto that model?

Agent Smith

Magnifique!

I would've preferred:

1. Physical (stones)
2. Mental (unicorns)
3.. Physical & Mental (stones, but not unicorns)
4. Neither physical nor mental (Nagarjuna's tetralemma)

bongo fury

Hey Plato, nice beard!

Melanie

Instead of conceptualizing or questioning the substance of mental and physical worlds, it seems as if our existence occurs fundamentally in the encounter between the two. Everything else becomes objectification of that universal reality.

Paine

Money relates to a real exchange of commodities. As a system, it extends bartering where one is not required to have the items standing next to each other for the swap. The imaginary element enters as a possibility for an exchange and thus frames the future in the present. Throw in the dynamics of debt and time is even more thoroughly reimagined.

But does that sort of game set up alter the 'reality' of the exchange of desired things? Is the distinction between "necessary: and "fetish" goods something that hinges upon the imaginary?

Streetlight

It seems funny to me that what is at stake in the OP is that money fails the expectation of what reality somehow ought to be, rather than in fact, motivating its placement in an entire new category. In which case the problem is not reality, but our expectations. Why not admit that money really is part of what is real, but simply that what is real is far more interesting than we give it credit for (interest, credit... monetary terms)?

Manuel

I'm not familiar, his division is into the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic? — hypericin

Yep. It's extremely dense though and its value is very questionable, but there are lectures and books written about it.

They are opposites. Mental objects which cast a shadow into the physical world, vs physical objects which cast a shadow into the mental world. — hypericin

What physical object wouldn't cast a shadow of the mental world?

Banno

The approach taken on this thread is a categorical error, one that is ubiquitous in these fora. It's an error that drops out of contrasting real and imaginary; physical and mental. These categories grossly misrepresent the world.

Money is socially constructed.

This can be seen from the fact that a ten dollar note is a valueless piece of paper unless those involved in the transaction have trust in it's value.

Hence the ontology of money requires one to step outside the ontological categories of real or imaginary or physical or mental, and to recognises that there is a wider social world that transcends these limited categories. Money sets up credit relationships between folks. It has a social ontology.

Banno

Money relates to a real exchange of commodities. — Paine

No, it doesn't.

The commodity theory of money was defended by many classical economists and can still be found in most economics textbooks (Mankiw 2009, Parkin 2011). This latter fact is curious since it has provoked serious and sustained critique. An obvious flaw is that it has difficulties in explaining inflation, the decreasing value of money over time (Innes 1913, Keynes 1936). It has also been challenged on the grounds that it is historically inaccurate. For example, recent anthropological studies question the idea that early societies went from a barter economy to money; instead money seems to have arisen to keep track of pre-existing credit relationships (Graeber 2011, Martin 2013, Douglas 2016, Part III). — SEP

But that does not prevent economists misleading themselves and others by pretending it does.

Ciceronianus

This can be seen from the fact that a ten dollar note is a valueless piece of paper unless those involved in the transaction have trust in it's value. — Banno

If a ten dollar note (money) isn't a ten dollar note (money), what is it? Something else, which we merely treat as if it were a ten dollar note (money)? The "ten dollar note in itself"?

Banno

The "ten dollar note in itself" — Ciceronianus

That's just what we need: a phenomenology of money... :grimace:

Doubtless it will appear.

Paine

↪Banno

I wasn't claiming one system replaced the other by necessity. I thought my comment was more in line with:

instead money seems to have arisen to keep track of pre-existing credit relationships — SEP

The exchange of valued objects was still based on agreement about the deal regarding actual objects.

The set up did take on a life of its own. I was suggesting that the "game" like qualities of those developments did not change the fundamental basis of barter.

Banno

↪Paine

Ok, Ill take your word for it. Money does not stand in the place of commodities.

Paine

↪Banno

Money does play a big part in the exchange of commodities now. Agreeing it is not a replacement for fungible goods, as what the OP refers to as "real", does not explain that development. Presumably it is the question of how imaginary our interactions may be rather than the status of money that is being raised.

Banno

Money does play a big part in the exchange of commodities now. — Paine

Obviously. The question is, what is money? And the answer is not that it stands in for commodities in our exchanges.

Money functions in virtue of our collective intention for it to work. Nothing more.

Paine

↪Banno

That is an obvious observation of how it functions; Noticing that does not mean there is nothing else to be said. Its role in the building of our technical society requires more than agreeing with your proposition.

HKpinsky

Pecunia has become an emblematic symbol. It's not a real physical stuff anymore, nor something existing in the mind. It has become a modern-day god. Knowledge about Her and the morals She desires can be known by reading the economic bible. Banks are the new churches and Money is prayed to daily. The gospel truth is sung about on the airwaves. Her voice and tune are omnipresent. She is omnipotent. Onnibenevolent even. It's commands are taught in schools and universities. She demands inflation, possession, and relentless accumulation. Those who not comply are ignorant pagans, and the laymen should be kept lay in order for the Super Capital to grow, her highest command.

Paine

↪HKpinsky

Are you going Puritan about this angle or something more Baudrillard?

hypericin

↪StreetlightX

It seems funny to me that what is at stake in the OP is that money fails the expectation of what reality somehow ought to be — StreetlightX

No ought. I was starting from the commonplace dichotomy of real/imaginary, where what is real exists "in the world", and what is imaginary is "in the head" (note, both are part of reality). And showed that that money, for instance, is neither: while its origin and nature is in the head, it is a force in the world.

hypericin

Hence the ontology of money requires one to step outside the ontological categories of real or imaginary or physical or mental, and to recognises that there is a wider social world that transcends these limited categories. — Banno

Yes, but this is my point. The categories of "real" and "imaginary" are inadequate to describe social realities. I am attempting to amend them by expanding upon them.

hypericin

What do you think about this framework? — Hermeticus

Everyone is simultaneously mental and physical subject. Your personal identity is simultaneously mental subject and object, when you reflect on it. Money is simultaneously mental and physical object.

They don't seem to neatly cut across reality.

hypericin

If a ten dollar note (money) isn't a ten dollar note (money), what is it? Something else, which we merely treat as if it were a ten dollar note (money)? — Ciceronianus

The fact that a ten dollar note is money is not a property of the physical paper. In 5000 years whatever nation backs it will have long since collapsed, the piece of paper will only have the historical curiosity of once having been money. No matter how well preserved it is.

Money and categories of reality

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