It's in there. Otherwise, when kids point at things and ask "what is this?" we should have little idea what they are referring to, since it could be any arbitrary ensemble of sense data. But when a toddler points towards a pumpkin and asks what it is, you know they mean the pumpkin, not "half the pumpkin plus some random parts of the particular background it is set against." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I understand what you're saying. But if you tell me what things in the toddler's visual field she's pointing to, each one of those elements is a universal. Each one is an idea: orange, round, bumpy, etc. She's pointing to ideas. Yes, there's a visceral aspect to experience with the world, but the whatness of it isn't physical. It's ideas.

Yet if there were no objects (pumpkins, etc.) given in sensation, kids should pretty much be asking about ensembles in their visual field at random, and language acquisition would be hopelessly complex. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Unless the kid comes equipped with a smorgasbord of ideas ready to deploy? Are you familiar with Meno's paradox? I'm not saying the ideas are deployed at random. What I'm pointing to is that the world is a duck-rabbit picture. Whether it's duck or rabbit is not present in the picture.

It's kind of curious then, when you consider what our most accurate physics says what an atom is, has nothing to do with the intuition that leads us to believe that atoms are these visible concrete things, that make the world up.

And atom is far from that, and perhaps should be considered more of a kind of "cloud" of activity, which is so far removed from anything we can visualize it starts to look like an idea of sort, which is NOT to say that the atom itself is an idea. — Manuel

I think physics is prompting a shift in worldview. Whether it catches on, I don't know.

Maybe. But since we are by and large visual creatures and we cannot well visualize how physics at the most fundamental level would look like, it's hard to see such a view spreading.

Who knows?

Whether it's duck or rabbit is not present in the picture.

Yes, exactly. That's s the way it is for things. You could know the exact make-up and location of every particle in a sheep and this, taken by itself, would not tell you that it is a sheep or what a sheep is. It's the same way that you can't tell what the bishop does in chess just by staring at the piece really hard. Likewise, such "complete physical information" about a cup of coffee also wouldn't even tell you if it is hotter than the ambient enviornment (and thus was made recently), and it certainly wouldn't tell you what a cup is or what coffee is. And if you don't know what a cup or coffee is, how can you possibly tell where one stops and the other begins?

You can't get to what things are without reference to context. That's issue of determining universals. However, in the same way, you can't delineate the boundaries of anything without the idea/universal. The idea is what tells you "include this, not that," or "stop here."

That's why looking for such delineations "in physics" without reference to things' external relations makes no sense. To be sure, all these relations are presumably physical, but the relations don't exist "in" the things. E.g., Salts' ability to dissolve in water isn't properly "in" salt, for salt only dissolves when it is placed in water, not when it is off by itself. Things' external relations, particularly their relations to minds, determine "what they are." Then the idea of what they are delineates their boundaries. But it's silly to talk about whether individual atoms are "part of a cat," because a cat isn't defined in terms of ensembles of atoms but by relations to move, to litter boxes, to people, etc.

However, the idea that things must ultimately be definable in terms of what they are "built up from" remains strong in modern philosophy, and so people keep looking for "catness" in groups of atoms and for the boundaries of individuals cats in "clouds of atoms."



To borrow a line from J.S. Mill, I think one would have had to make some significant advances in philosophy to believe that children experience statistics and not things (or have had some very strange childhood experience.) The things of experience are given. Questions about what underpins them is another matter.

I totally agree, and also with what you said about the universe becoming monolithic by virtue of the imperative of relationship. That shows up in Schopenhauer as well.

But then surely the concept of an object as an objective thing would be incoherent? — Apustimelogist

Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?

'Connected' means to be joined to something else. — javi2541997

But [ object, connected, joined, touching ] all seem to be restricted to mere concepts, having similar lack of physical basis. OK, touching sort of has some physical basis since electricity passes through circuits that are everywhere 'touching', except this isn't true in say a transistor, so it still gets fuzzy.
Still, there is no actual touching of a pair of particles. There is only 'sufficient proximity'.

I can't see how the air or the clouds could be golden too, according to your argument.

My argument just follows somebody's definition of 'connected'. I don't think it was yours. You've not really provided a rigorous one that would allow the existence of multiple objects, a distninction where say the twig would turn to gold, but not the moon.

"what constitutes an 'object' is entirely a matter of language/convention. There's no physical basis for it."
— noAxioms

Is this the premise you're examining? — ucarr

Yes.

I would only quibble with the topic of a "physical basis". Does that mean a basis in physics? — Manuel

It means a basis in something other than semiotics/language/convention. That doesn't leave much except for physics.
I mean, there is quantum physics, where there are these fundamental particles/field-disturbances. Those are pretty dang objective 'things'. It's when you start collecting them together into sets of multiple particles, where physics has little if anything to say about where the set of particles is bounded. Mathematically, any subset is as good as another, so there's no correct answer to 'what one subset of particles is this particle a member?'. Absent a correct answer to that, there doesn't seem to be an objective 'object'.

Note that I switched to 'objective' there instead of 'physical', which is dangerous because the word has connotations of 'not subjective' and has little implication of 'not subject to convention'.

Look at the visual field that includes the pumpkin. Feel of the pumpkin with your hand. Smell the pumpkin. Where in any of this data is pumpkin? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Don't care. The question is, why should anything from physics prefer this particular subset of particles which humans collectively describe as 'pumpkin'?
When a kid points to it, the convention is implied. It's obvious to most humans that the object of attention is this fruit that the kid wants to know the name of.
I have an autistic son, and such conventions are not so obvious. You point to something, and he's not considering the thing being pointed to. He's looking at the end of your finger, wondering what's there that you're talking about. Not all conventions we find so natural come naturally to someone not neural-normal.

But when a toddler points towards a pumpkin and asks what it is, you know they mean the pumpkin, not "half the pumpkin plus some random parts of the particular background it is set against."

But the phaser beam (the beam itself) does not know this.

I've been puzzling over, and reading up on, the basic dictum of Plato's metaphysics, which is 'to be, is to be intelligible'. — Wayfarer

Quite the epistemological definition, but there is no 'intelligible' in physics.
I took a very nonstandard view when crafting my definition of 'to be', which is more along the lines of 'being part of the cause of a given event/state'. I avoided epistemology with that one at least since I wanted 'being' to be prior to awareness.

Quite the epistemological definition, but there is no 'intelligible' in physics. — noAxioms

But even though fundamental particles and their properties can’t be envisaged, the equations that describe their interactions are accurate to one part in a trillionth (or something.) The fact that those equations can be taught and learned and put to use means there’s at least something intelligible about them, doesn’t it? There’s a difference between understanding them correctly, and not understanding them. So there must be something that the mind can get hold of through those equations, isn’t there?

But then on the other hand you’ve got Feynmann’s ‘nobody understands quantum physics’, so maybe it’s not intelligible. That has puzzled many more highly-trained minds than my own.

I took a very nonstandard view when crafting my definition of 'to be', which is more along the lines of 'being part of the cause of a given event/state'. — noAxioms

Your ‘non-standard view’ is very much like the definition of being that is offered in this post from one of the protagonists in a Platonic dialogue:

I am saying that anything actually is, once it has acquired some sort of power, either to affect anything else at all, or to be affected, even slightly, by something totally trivial, even if only once. Indeed, I propose to give a definition, defining things that are, as nothing else except power. — ibid. 247d

"what constitutes an 'object' is entirely a matter of language/convention. There's no physical basis for it." — noAxioms

Is this the premise you're examining? — ucarr

Yes. — noAxioms

Are we outside the language game within the realm of Kant’s noumena?

So this got me thinking, and I could only conclude that what constitutes an 'object' is entirely a matter of language/convention. There's no physical basis for it. I can talk about the blue gutter and that, by convention, identifies an object distinct from the red gutter despite them both being parts of a greater (not separated) pipe. — noAxioms

I believe that the principal way which we distinguish objects is with the sense of sight. We see boundaries which mark the edges of things, and when a boundary encompasses an area this is seen as an individual object. The sense of touch confirms what sight shows us. I consider this to be the "empirical basis" of what constitutes "an object".

Notice though, that "physical" (meaning of the body) is derived from the assumption of objects, as a body is an object. So it is actually impossible to separate "physical" from "object" in the way you seem to suggest, as this is an essential relation, physical is necessarily, by definition, of the object. What is actually the case then, is that there is an objective (of the object) basis of "the physical", and the inverse cannot be the case. "Physical" is based in the object, and "object" is not based in the physical.

To borrow a line from J.S. Mill, I think one would have had to make some significant advances in philosophy to believe that children experience statistics and not things (or have had some very strange childhood experience.) The things of experience are given. Questions about what underpins them is another matter. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Or perhaps simply these "things" are statistics, to completely deflate the idea of an object. This would simply be a matter of what brains do - infer and de-correlate latent regularities in statistical and learn transition statistics for the sake of control. An "idea" is just what is latent in ineffably complex transition and control statistics.

Ah, thinglihood. The Achilles heel of all great thinkers.Hearkens back to the conflict arisen from the first true philosophers, who of course remain absent from "observable" or rather "reputable" history.

You must first acknowledge your question "answers" itself by "defining" a truth it attempts to discover. Or as some say, constitute a statement and remains a non-question. If this is confusing, this is further proof of this acknowledgement, otherwise, your use of the word "physical" retains a basis of that which is commonly perceived as "physical" as in: easily evidenced. My point being the fact you mention the "physical" means you acknowledge there is a "non-physical" that stands guard just over the boundary of what you (or presumably, the majority) consider physicality. Otherwise, there is no distinction only but another thing. What I mean is, your question remains a non-question because it dictates a debated concept "physicality", which deprives the purported environment in which you wish to have such a debate of a sole propriety.

This is often confusing so if I may circle back.The ignorant observer, which I likely wager you to see me as. Philosophy is the Colosseum of non-violent gladiatorial custodianship of that which not only is and is to be, but rather should be for reasons not needed to be physically asserted in perpetuity. Basically, my statement is though you in intent ask one question, three questions are in fact begged of the viewer.

What is physicality? What is a basis? Determined by who? Is said basis justified? By or denounced by what? What is constitution? The sub-questions are truly endless.

But to assume the "most reasonable" assumptions as fact:

Well, even operating on such strict standards offers a world of flexibility, I suppose the most base being:

Is there any observable (repeatable event or testimony) that is "consistent" that which is also repeatable or consonant,

It becomes a non-question almost. More details or information requested.

Sometimes objects seem simpler than they really are because you can just implement a particular kind of control where you can ostensively point at things and say a word, completely ignoring the rest of the total complexity in which one makes distinctions at various scales, precluding well-defined boundaries. We choose to point at things based on the pragmatics and perspective of the kind of scale we exist on and evolved in the universe, based on the sensitivities to things we can pick out due to neural hardware, due to the affordances in which we can act in the environment. But could we point at other less obvious "objects"? Yes. If they become important to survival could they become bonafide "objects"? Yes. Ultimately, pointing and naming something is just the idealized, superficial surface of your ability to distinguish and manipulate things.

The thing is that sight and touch are coarse-grained depending on one's perspective and in any case, touch is about fundamental physical interactions or forces, not the actual touch of a thing. They tell you about affordances of an object in some context, not "contact" with an object.

What distinguishes "object" from "non-object"? Statistical salience.

Don't care. The question is, why should anything from physics prefer this particular subset of particles which humans collectively describe as 'pumpkin'?

Depends on what you mean by "from physics?" Obviously, people do recognize things like pumpkins and even cultures that developed largely in isolation from one another make distinctions that are far more similar than dissimilar. Presumably, the causes behind the emergence and development such distinctions are physical, and the reasons for their being similar are also physical.

Actually, we have a pretty good history of the development of many of these notions. We know how people have probed questions like "what is water?" and "are whales fish?" for millennia. Any explanation of the development of these concepts is going to involve the myriad physical observations people have made of said objects and their careful examination of their physical properties and physical relations vis-á-vis other entities (e.g. through experiments).

Hence, I'd argue that object clearly plays a role in the development of the concepts associated with it, and this role seems to flow from its physical properties and relations. So in that sense, the distinction does come "from physics," and indeed in an ontology like physicalism it seems to be a requirement that all such distinctions can be explained in terms of physics (although perhaps they are not reducible to physics—whether "non-reductive physicalism" is a coherent concept depends on how physicalism is defined).

But if you want an explanation in terms of the subject matter of physics, or in terms of some superveniance vis-á-vis "a set of particles" (which is not necessarily how "physics" would like to define things anyhow) then yes, the object can never be defined "from physics." This doesn't mean that do not objects exist, it means that trying to define them in terms of ensembles of particles won't work. In general, I think the focus on particles as "building blocks," and the desire to define things in terms of them, while quite ancient and still popular, is based on fundamentally flawed assumptions.

So:

Mathematically, any subset is as good as another, so there's no correct answer to 'what one subset of particles is this particle a member?'. Absent a correct answer to that, there doesn't seem to be an objective 'object'.

See: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/912501

Asking for objects to be defined in terms of sets of particles is like trying to figure out what the letter "a" is, what it does, and how it should be distinguished from other letters/the background, by only looking at the shape of the letter, the pixels that make it up, etc.

I'd argue that the question: "why should anything from physics prefer this particular subset of particles which humans collectively describe as 'pumpkin'?" is simply the wrong sort of question and itself presumes things that I don't think are true— namely that "what things are" is completely a function of "what they are made of." But consider what would happen if you moved a volume of water to a parallel universe with slightly different physical constants. Perhaps "water" as defined as "H2O" can still exist there (if we define H and O based on their atomic numbers), but it might have completely different interactions with everything around it and between parts of itself. For example, a few tweaks get you water where the solid form is denser than the liquid form, which in turn would seem to make life much more difficult to form (an example often given for "fine tuning). But if something has totally different properties, how is it "the same substance?" I would say it isn't; change the fields and you get different things.

All the properties of objects are relational (e.g. lemon peels don't reflect yellow light in a dark room, salt only dissolves in water when placed in salt). Non-relational properties, the properties things have when they interact with nothing else and with no parts of themselves, are, at the very least, epistemicaly inaccessible. Such "in-itself" properties can never make any difference to any possible observer. Hence, Locke made a grave mistake on making "in-itselfness" the gold standard of knowledge, and this culminates in the incoherence of the "view from nowhere." Looking for "what things are" without reference to their relations then is never going to work.

Objects are defined in terms of their relational properties. Things' relationships with minds are often denigrated as somehow "less real" than relations between mindless things. However, I don't think there is much to support such a view. It's based on presuppositions that I think it is difficult to support, and a sort of (often unacknowledged) dualism.

Note that I switched to 'objective' there instead of 'physical', which is dangerous because the word has connotations of 'not subjective' and has little implication of 'not subject to convention'.

:up: Right. That the bishop always moves diagonal is a convention but it's an objective fact. But presumably it's also a fact with physical causes and underpinnings.

I have an autistic son, and such conventions are not so obvious. You point to something, and he's not considering the thing being pointed to. He's looking at the end of your finger, wondering what's there that you're talking about. Not all conventions we find so natural come naturally to someone not neural-normal.

The atypical can only be defined in terms of the typical. That something is "convention" does not make it arbitrary. Barring some sort of libertarianism where man's actions are unconditioned by the way the world is, there is presumably a causal chain behind conventions. And that conventions synch up so well, even when developed in isolation, and that their historical evolution is demonstrably driven by physical examinations of things, I believe demonstrates that the conventions surrounding objects are determined by their properties. I mean, what is the alternative, that conventions re objects don't have anything to do with objects themselves? Do they spring from the aether then? Presumably something about "tiger" makes it an important distinction for all peoples who encounter tigers to make, in a way that grue or bleen are not.



Perhaps, but your prior post seems to be elevating potency far above act in the analysis. No one uses grue and bleen and I don't imagine you could ever get them to, not least because:

A. It isn't obvious when objects were created by looking at them, smelling them, etc.
B. When an object is "created" is itself a dicey philosophical question.

But you might imagine something like splitting the visible spectrum in half and having words for size AND color for some colors and then shape AND color for others, such that "square + purple" and "yellow + small" are their own discrete words. And yet absolutely no society does this. They use colors and sizes.

It is of course logically possible for conventions to be very many ways. But in actuality they aren't. Presumably, this is not "for no reason at all" and I also see no reason to think it comes from some sort of sui generis and spontaneous uncaused freedom unique to man. Hence, convention cannot be arbitrary but emerges from the interaction between man and the world, something that is presumably "physical" in an important sense and involves the properties of objects in conjunction with human nature and culture.

BTW, a similar delineation problem occurs when trying to define computation in physical systems. You can map all sorts of computations onto all sorts of physical systems. There is no one canonical mapping. This is why folks like Terrance Deacon arrive at the conclusion that life is required to make sense of information (although I disagree with this view).

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computation-physicalsystems/#SimMapAcc

The simple mapping account turns out to be very liberal: it attributes many computations to many systems. In the absence of restrictions on which mappings are acceptable, such mappings are relatively easy to come by. As a consequence, some have argued that every physical system implements every computation (Putnam 1988, Searle 1992). This thesis, which trivializes the claim that something is a computing system, will be discussed in Section 3.1. Meanwhile, the desire to avoid this trivialization result is one motivation behind other accounts of concrete computation.

Likewise, you can encode an MP3 song into all sorts of media: DNA, discs, tapes, even rocks or water pipe valves. But what makes that encoding that song can never be found in the encoding or the objects in which it is encoded themselves. It's a relational property.

The corpuscular view has many difficulties here. For one, in an a deterministic universe of little balls of stuff bouncing around, where the little balls define everything, information theory becomes difficult to conceptualize. There is no real "range of possible variables" for any interaction. The outcome of any "measurement" (interaction) is always just the one you get, there is no "potential." The distribution relevant for any system is just that very distribution measured for all the relevant interactions. You need some conception of relationality, potency, and perspective to make sense of it (Jaynes arguments for why entropy is, in some way, always subjective I think are relevant here). Arguably, you need perspective to explain even mindless physical interactions, but the legacy of the "view from nowhere/anywhere" is strong.

The corpuscular view has many difficulties here. For one, in an a deterministic universe of little balls of stuff bouncing around, where the little balls define everything, information theory becomes difficult to conceptualize. There is no real "range of possible variables" for any interaction. The outcome of any "measurement" (interaction) is always just the one you get, there is no "potential." The distribution relevant for any system is just that very distribution measured for all the relevant interactions. You need some conception of relationality, potency, and perspective to make sense of it (Jaynes arguments for why entropy is, in some way, always subjective I think are relevant here). Arguably, you need perspective to explain even mindless physical interactions, but the legacy of the "view from nowhere/anywhere" is strong. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Could you dumb this down a little for dummies like me? :grin:

It means a basis in something other than semiotics/language/convention. That doesn't leave much except for physics.
I mean, there is quantum physics, where there are these fundamental particles/field-disturbances. Those are pretty dang objective 'things'. It's when you start collecting them together into sets of multiple particles, where physics has little if anything to say about where the set of particles is bounded. Mathematically, any subset is as good as another, so there's no correct answer to 'what one subset of particles is this particle a member?'. Absent a correct answer to that, there doesn't seem to be an objective 'object'.

Note that I switched to 'objective' there instead of 'physical', which is dangerous because the word has connotations of 'not subjective' and has little implication of 'not subject to convention'. — noAxioms

Yes, there is always going to be a potential issue with any word we choose, but from my perspective the whole "physical" argument is so often repeated as if a substantive distinction is being made, I don't think that's the case.

There could also be issues with "objective" as you mention, but I think we should take it for granted that we are always speaking from a human centric viewpoint, we don't have an alternative, so in that respect it is less controversial.

I agree that plenty of our distinction are made by convention, you can use a knife as something to cut fruit and vegetables or you can use it as a weapon, or a pencil sharpener.

However, these conventions follow certain restraints: we could group together two books and call those two books taken together to be one single book (as an object), but there are quite practical reasons for treating books the way we do.

So yeah, conventions are always at play, what's curios is that they don't seem entirely arbitrary either.

No one uses grue and bleen and I don't imagine you could ever get them to, not least because: — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you could if you gave them a reason where they needed to use those concepts, where those concepts suddenly became useful and had statistical significance. People don't because there is no pragmatism in those concepts but they are completely intelligible otherwise we wouldn't be talking about them. And it follows that if we had to use the concepts in everyday conversation or had to look out for grue and bleen things... then we would.

A. It isn't obvious when objects were created by looking at them, smelling them, etc.
B. When an object is "created" is itself a dicey philosophical question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No average person realistically knows any of these things for objects.

But you might imagine something like splitting the visible spectrum in half and having words for size AND color for some colors and then shape AND color for others, such that "square + purple" and "yellow + small" are their own discrete words. And yet absolutely no society does this. They use colors and sizes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, because we have no reason to use these yet these concepts still exist or you wouldn't be able to talk about them. At the same time they depend on how your biology happens to be. If you had a different type of color vision then what decomposition of colors seems "natural" may not be the same as a regular person. At the same time, if you had a sense that was inherently able to detect "size + color" then you would have a completely different conception of what seemed "natural".

But in actuality they aren't. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But they do exist. The fact that it is not useful to use a certain kind of concept doesn't preclude it.

And again, I think you confuse concepts and words with out ability to engage with the world. A cat doesn't need words to distinguish and interact with the world. You can train a cat to react to and behave in accordance to arbitrary "colour + size" combinations and neuroscientific experiments have precisely done this. We are fully capable of engaging with the world in a multitude of ways that far strips words and concepts we use. Words are just for communication, not things in themselves. Worda don't do any work. Complicated brains with huge numbers of degrees of freedom do the work with regard to incredibly complicated statistics that show up in our sensory organs with patterns at various scales. Obviously these statistics have root in some kind of physical connection via physical apparatus. Obviously how we interact with the world is arbitrary. But no visual scene is a fixed decomposition into discrete objects. We have access to a huge amount of information in the visual field that allows us to flexibly engage with it in ways much greater than a fixed decomposition of objects. We are engaging with statistical regularities at different scales and have some ability to attend to some over others.

This topic was called the problem of 'natural kinds' when I was at university. Someone might have mentioned this already, I haven't read the whole thread.

Obviously, people do recognize things like pumpkins and even cultures that developed largely in isolation from one another make distinctions that are far more similar than dissimilar. Presumably, the causes behind the emergence and development distinctions are physical. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're still reaching for human meaning, when I'm trying to avoid it. I am in no way suggesting that the concept of objects is meaningless to us.

Admittedly one can argue for a fruit being an object. Apples, like leaves and other termporary structures, will detach at predictable boundaries when 'ready'. Not so sure about the pumpkin, which for all I know rots with the rest of the plant if left to its own. and hence is harder to describe as physically distinct from the vine from which it grows.
Such examples are still from biology, not an intellect, but much of biology has some kind of notion of independently existing units, which make nice objects. By 'physics', I was hoping for something more fundamental than biology. Even chemistry has crude 'objects' which are distinct, with collections of similar objects constituting a 'substance', but not a bounded larger object.

None of my OP examples seem to work at the chemical level.

Take for example a typical free body diagram. Such a diagram is a human construct depicting hypothetical physical objects connected in various ways and applying forces to each other. Take away the human semiotics, and all that is left is a classical physical system of particles, the motion of each being determined by the net forces acting upon them. No part of that description demarks object boundaries, except at the 'particle' level.

See: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/912501

From that post then

Yes, exactly. That's s the way it is for things. You could know the exact make-up and location of every particle in a sheep and this, taken by itself, would not tell you that it is a sheep or what a sheep is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your description has already demarked the sheep by selecting "the exact make-up and location of every particle in a sheep". The object at that point has already been defined, despite not stating that the object constitutes a sheep.

Asking for objects to be defined in terms of sets of particles is like trying to figure out what the letter "a" is, what it does, and how it should be distinguished from other letters/the background, by only looking at the shape of the letter, the pixels that make it up, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that. It's just perhaps ink particles on parhaps paper particles. There's two 'kinds' of substances there that can more or less be sorted, but at best you can say of this system is that here's where the particles of the one substance are, and here's where the particles of the other substance are, and perhaps each of those subsets constitutes an 'object', since there's at least one way to determine their approximate bounds. Other information is missing, such as that it is the darker substance that is more of interest, and that it can contain meaning, but it's more meaningful when considered from a limited set of view points.

I'd argue that the question: "why should anything from physics prefer this particular subset of particles which humans collectively describe as 'pumpkin'?" is simply the wrong sort of question and itself presumes things that I don't think are true, namely that "what things are" is completely a function of "what they are made of."

Remember that I'm more interested in where the pumpkin stops than what it is. My wording (that you quoted there) attempts to convey that. "What things are" does not, and such wording already presumes the preferred grouping of this particular subset of particles.

But something has totally different properties, how is it "the same substance?"

There's no convention for comparing materials from different universes, where 'is the same substance' can meaningfully be assessed. It is on the list of things requiring a convention, and in this case, not having one.

Non-relational properties, the properties things have when they interact with nothing else and with no parts of themselves, are, at the very least, epistemicaly inaccessible.

Such as the property of 'existence', just to name one.
The only property I'm interested in is "is a member of this one preferred subset of particles/substances": Particles not in that set are members of different (disjoint?) preferred subsets of substances. I think a contradiction is reached if the sets are not disjoint.

I believe demonstrates that the conventions surrounding objects are determined by their properties.

I believe the conventions are determined from consideration by the intellect that finds the utility in the convention.

I mean, what is the alternative, that conventions re objects don't have anything to do with objects themselves?

Without the convention, there are no 'objects themselves'.

Likewise, you can encode an MP3 song into all sorts of media: — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's encoded in the digital expansion of Pi. Can't get rid of that one, but does that mean that any song, recorded or not, is 'out there'? Why does its existence in Pi not matter? Because it doesn't.

The fact that those equations can be taught and learned and put to use means there’s at least something intelligible about them, doesn’t it? — Wayfarer

Sure, I'm not saying that physics isn't intelligible. I'm saying that it doesn't seem to supervene on comprehension by some intellect. Some say it does. I'm just not one of them.

Maybe the mathematics that the universe seems to follow/obey is descriptive. Maybe it is proscriptive. Those are different views, but neither view seems to have object bounds as something independent of the intellect.

Your ‘non-standard view’ is very much like the definition of being that is offered in this post from one of the protagonists in a Platonic dialogue:

I could not follow the gist of the dialog, sorry.

Are we outside the language game within the realm of Kant’s noumena? — ucarr

I believe that the principal way which we distinguish objects is with the sense of sight. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you read the OP, I'm not asking how we distinguish objects. I'm asking how such distinctions are physical, not just ideals.
I give many examples illustrating what I'm after.

My point being the fact you mention the "physical" means you acknowledge there is a "non-physical" that stands guard just over the boundary of what you (or presumably, the majority) consider physicality. — Outlander

I'm using 'physics' here to mean 'more fundamental than the comprehension of an intellect'.

Basically, my statement is though you in intent ask one question, three questions are in fact begged of the viewer.

What is physicality? What is a basis? Determined by who? Is said basis justified? By or denounced by what? What is constitution? The sub-questions are truly endless.

Kindly apply some of these questions to some of my examples, that I can glean what you mean by them. I always try to be open to having begging logic and biases identified.

you can just implement a particular kind of control where you can ostensively point at things and say a word — Apustimelogist

Trick is to do it without saying the word. Any word immediately invokes a convention.
There's no 'importance to survival' since the question is being asked in absence of anything which can meaningfully assign 'importance', salience, or which can meaningfully 'survive'.

This topic was called the problem of 'natural kinds' when I was at university. — bert1

I looked that up, and it seems to be a different problem, about kinds, not the objective limits of a thing's extension.

Are we outside the language game within the realm of Kant’s noumena?
— ucarr


I believe that the principal way which we distinguish objects is with the sense of sight.
— Metaphysician Undercover

If you read the OP, I'm not asking how we distinguish objects. I'm asking how such distinctions are physical, not just ideals.
I give many examples illustrating what I'm after. — noAxioms

Can a sentient being cognize a thing-in-itself without the mediation of language?

not the objective limits of a thing's extension. — noAxioms

I think you’ve given yourself an impossible task maybe.

Let’s equate an “object” with a whole pizza, and “extension” with the dough, and “language” with the sauce, and “concepts/minds” with the cheese.

You are trying to define an object separately from the other components of the same object, like trying to define a pizza without any dough, or without any sauce or cheese.

These “components” as I’ve called them are inseparable, so not really components. (Unlike a pizza so it’s tough to make a metaphor for something that would apply to a single pepperoni as it would the whole pizza). We make concepts out of things and can think of them as components, but like “mind” and “concepts” might be distinguishable as two concepts, when is there ever a concept without a mind? Are they inseparable, are they interdependent in order for either to be?

So separating a physical “object” may require a mind like an idea requires a mind. That doesn’t mean there is no dough, no extension. That doesn’t mean there cannot be natural kinds that would be distinguished and separate individuals without minds, but it means that because I happen to have a mind, when I point to a distinct object, I am always adding my own mind to the state of affairs, and that addition is now a “part” of the “object” distinguished.

I think its about plurality. Endless plurality. We can point at any aspect of a scene we want. Maybe there's no fact of the matter. But surely the words we come out with, there is inherent plurality in the schemes we use. Huge degeneracy or even redundancy in the ways we can use words to engage with things in perception. And we can do it on the fly.

Trick is to do it without saying the word. Any word immediately invokes a convention.
There's no 'importance to survival' since the question is being asked in absence of anything which can meaningfully assign 'importance', salience, or which can meaningfully 'survive'. — noAxioms

Yes but the way your brain works at any moment isn't independent of your personal or evolutionary history.

Take for example a typical free body diagram. Such a diagram is a human construct depicting hypothetical physical objects connected in various ways and applying forces to each other. Take away the human semiotics, and all that is left is a classical physical system of particles, the motion of each being determined by the net forces acting upon them. No part of that description demarks object boundaries, except at the 'particle' level.

Well, to make things worse, I've seen many physicists and philosophers of physics call into question the idea of even particles as discrete objects, i.e., "they are human abstractions created to explain measurements" etc. I do not think you're going to find what you're looking for. In physics there are no truly isolated systems and when you get down to the scale of atoms entanglement adds another wrinkle to looking for discrete entities.

Your description has already demarked the sheep by selecting "the exact make-up and location of every particle in a sheep". The object at that point has already been defined, despite not stating that the object constitutes a sheep.

Yeah, that's the point. Even if you somehow were magically given what you knew to be the canonical "mapping" of some entity, that, taken in isolation, couldn't tell you what it does in the world and how it relates to it (i.e. what it is). Which ties into this point:

Remember that I'm more interested in where the pumpkin stops than what it is. My wording (that you quoted there) attempts to convey that. "What things are" does not, and such wording already presumes the preferred grouping of this particular subset of particles.

IMHO, the two questions cannot be pulled apart.

How can you tell where a given pumpkin ends if you don't know what a pumpkin is? You can't distinguish between the pumpkin, which is full of water, and rain running off its surface, unless you know something about what pumpkins are. Likewise, if you had a human body and knew nothing about it or what a hand was, how could you possibly demarcate the hand? You couldn't. Clearly there is a physical basis for hands being distinct parts of bodies, but it can't be found in the hand itself.

Anyhow, you keep framing things in terms of particles. People have been trying to give this question an even somewhat satisfying answer in terms of particles ensembles for over a century now. I think it's just a fundamentally broken way to conceive of the problem. You don't get any discrete boundaries if you exclude any reference to minds. All other multiplicity in the world is dependent upon the multiplicity of minds, a mindless world is just one continuous process, a "blobiverse" as I've seen one physics article put it.

At the same time they depend on how your biology happens to be. If you had a different type of color vision then what decomposition of colors seems "natural" may not be the same as a regular person. At the same time, if you had a sense that was inherently able to detect "size + color" then you would have a completely different conception of what seemed "natural".

Yes, exactly, but humans aren't many potential species, we are just one. What is "pragmatic," "useful," or "good" is always conditioned by the way the world is. This is what I mean by prioritizing potential over actuality.

Of course, if the world was so different as to rewrite all our conceptions of objects, there would be different objects. But the world would seem to have to be very different indeed.

:up:

I'm also not sure why it would be important to define individuals "without any reference to their relations to minds," in the first place. For one, this seems to make the task impossible, because you've now cut any possible relationship through which we could know anything about individuals. The second thing would be: why do this in the first place? The "view from nowhere" has been beaten about as badly as any philosophical position out there. Reductionism hasn't planned out despite over a century of efforts, and I honestly think you can make a good case for it being decently well falsified. Minds are obviously "real" and so their relationships to things, including demarcating them, seem like they should be plenty "real enough" to define individuals.



Shouldn't "things-in-themselves" be impossible to cognize by definition? If it's being cognized then it's always cognized "as it relates to that mind" not "as it relates to nothing but itself." Most uses of the term I'm familiar with set it up this way at least—Locke, Kant, etc. make them unreachable by definition (and then have them do a huge share of the explanatory lifting in their explanations of the world anyhow, lol)

You could know the exact make-up and location of every particle in a sheep and this, taken by itself, would not tell you that it is a sheep or what a sheep is. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The atoms of a teacup do not collude together to form a teacup: The object is a teacup because it is constituted that way from a perspective outside of itself. — Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter

If you read the OP, I'm not asking how we distinguish objects. I'm asking how such distinctions are physical, not just ideals.
I give many examples illustrating what I'm after. — noAxioms

All distinctions are ideal, and not physical, aren't they?

Yes, exactly, but humans aren't many potential species, we are just one. What is "pragmatic," "useful," or "good" is always conditioned by the way the world is. This is what I mean by prioritizing potential over actuality.

Of course, if the world was so different as to rewrite all our conceptions of objects, there would be different objects. But the world would seem to have to be very different indeed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What is pragmatic depends on how a particular animal lives its life. We are perfectly capable of inventing a multitude of completely coherent concepts or words that refer to different things, different boundaries. We just choose to use vocabulary in a certain way as depends on how we live our lives and what we want to communicate. If i just made up a concept and fit it to the world... then what is the criteria for it not to be a proper concept or object if it fits? Or if lots and lots of people start using the concept coherently? I don't think the idea that we can "rewrite our conception of objects" is falsifiable in a similar sense to how some criticize the idea of different conceptual schemes. We engage with the world and we can draw boundaries anyway we want and apply labels in anyway we want with complete flexibility, maybe partly why all "objects" are fuzzy, also perhaps reflecting the fact that nothing we encounter in our daily lives is not in some sense decomposable in very complicated ways.

— Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, to make things worse, I've seen many physicists and philosophers of physics call into question the idea of even particles as discrete objects, i.e., "they are human abstractions created to explain measurements" etc.

All true, but I did say 'classical'. Your comment goes beyond a classical description.

How can you tell where a given pumpkin ends if you don't know what a pumpkin is?

It very much seems you cannot since there's nothing that says to continue while it's a pumpkin, but not beyond, where it ceases to be pumpkin, and certainly nothing to say that 'pumpkin' is what matters in the first place.

Clearly there is a physical basis for hands being distinct parts of bodies, but it can't be found in the hand itself.

Agree. I said as much in my comments with Wayfarer about the 100 million year old foot.

Anyhow, you keep framing things in terms of particles. People have been trying to give this question an even somewhat satisfying answer in terms of particles ensembles for over a century now. I think it's just a fundamentally broken way to conceive of the problem. You don't get any discrete boundaries if you exclude any reference to minds.

We seem to be in agreement then.

Let’s equate an “object” with a whole pizza, and “extension” with the dough, and “language” with the sauce, and “concepts/minds” with the cheese.

You are trying to define an object separately from the other components of the same object, like trying to define a pizza without any dough, or without any sauce or cheese. — Fire Ologist

Per your weird assignment of terms, it would be an attempt at a pizza with dough but without the cheese and sauce, except that the dough seems undefined without sauce on it.

when is there ever a concept without a mind?

I didn't suggest such a thing.

From what I read, I agree with the Pinter view.

Can a sentient being cognize a thing-in-itself without the mediation of language? — ucarr

Any cognition is at some level a language, but I suppose it depends on how 'language' is defined.

All distinctions are ideal, and not physical, aren't they? — Metaphysician Undercover

Only to an idealist.

Only to an idealist. — noAxioms

But you seem to be leaning towards an idealist view yourself. Can you say why you're not?

Minds are obviously "real" and so their relationships to things, including demarcating them, seem like they should be plenty "real enough" to define individuals. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

All distinctions are ideal, and not physical, aren't they? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t know about “all distinctions”. There is no reason there can’t be physical distinctions. They would work well to explain the difference experience of getting up from chair and realizing my back and knees hurt from sitting. It is just an experience, a phenomenon, something epistemology hasn’t settled yet. But no physical distinction? Seems to me if there exists anything physical at all, whether it be one physical thing (say a giant ball of clay), you have distinctions and really many physical objects to distinguish.

So we minds may only work through the medium of our idealized distinctions, but it does not follow that all distinctions are ideal. The world may itself have physical distinction in it (and I don’t mind simply assuming it does, like any physical scientist has to assume.)

This is all a battle between motion and stillness. Or between fixed identity (objects) and change (not finding any objects). Motion seems to overtake everything that was once still and is now gone, including any non-ideal sense of stillness. So stillness, like the “object” noAxiom is trying to find in matter, seems the weaker component, and possibly only ideal (so not real, like motion is real).



Objects are still. The moon treated as object is the moon never changing. Visible mostly at night, white and grey, appears to reflect light and not generate any light to my eye - the moon. Fixed. We all know about it. The same moon.

But the moon moves and is slowly minutely always undergoing massive changes; so because of change, the still object referenced in the “moon” is really an ideal moon, because the actual moon isn’t a still object. Like every physical thing, nothing is a thing for long.

Unlike an object, which has a clear definition, clear border delimiting it and distinguishing it as a particular “it”, motion changes things, undoes their definitions, and reveals the ideal moon which appears fixed, is not quite accurate.

But we are smart. We can reference the moon anyway, holding it still with our minds, knowing it is changing and might not remain the moon for long. And while we hold the spinning, decaying moon still, we can show it is distinct from the sun (another moving target, but always moving distinctly from the moon).

So distinctions can be in the world, but right before our eyes they just don’t last as long, unlike the idealized distinctions we can make right before our minds that say “moon”.

Physical objects, holding themselves together for a time, is what the world looks like. Whether the distinctions last long is another question. Whether the distinctions we see and idealize create useful references, that are translatable to language like “natural satellite” instead of “moon” is another question. But whether physical objects exist is another question. And once you admit the physical, you’ve simultaneously admitted physical distinction.