That simply presumes that arguments cannot be constructed around things which are self-evident. — Isaac

So you're saying it's self-evident that universals refer to nothing, and yet people have debated whether they refer to something.

That's the question here so it's begging it do assume at the outset that the mere existence of debate automatically legitimises the terms of that debate. — Isaac

If one can understand the terms of the debate and participate in the debate, then yes, it's meaningful.

But it's not a philosophical puzzle. That's what I'm saying, it's a sociological one. — Isaac

Is the argument over universals a topic in sociology?

But there must be some such way that we can orient ourselves towards and get a grip on, or we do not understand what it would mean for such things to exist. — Snakes Alive

What if space and time are not fundamental, but emerge from something more fundamental which we can only allude to? I bring it up because the bedrock reality in this case would be something outside space and time as we understand them, so it wouldn't exist in any normal sense.

In the conventional story, it is explained to Gilbert that the University is the way the buildings are organized. — Andrew M

Except that a university is also a social organization, and organizations are more difficult to be relegate to a name for a group of individuals, land and buildings, since the social structure has an important effect on society.

Presumably yes, but even putting it that way is probably something I wouldn't do, since it just presupposes a bunch of useless baggage. — Snakes Alive

Do you deny the existence of universal concepts in our language?

That's a good summary of the arche-fossil argument. What I take from all this is correlation is limited by the fact that we're born and die into this world, as individuals and a species. Yet we know a lot about the world without us thanks to science, which means we're not entirely trapped within a correlationist circle, or we wouldn't have such knowledge. Unless we're willing to deny the world without us and relagate it to mere appearance.

Thus evolution happened [Not Really].

I believe the argument is that science references a time where we didn't exist which gave rise to our correlated existence in which the world appears a certain way to us. And a time after us. So science gives us a link to the absolute, which is the world without us. And that world is understood mathematically.

It's worth pointing out that the point here is that both the claims that universals do and don't exist are equally confused – that is, 'nominalism' is as much a metaphysical thesis in this sense as 'realism.' — Snakes Alive

That would be dissolving the issue as meaningless to debate on any side of the issue as you set out in the OP. But what does it mean to say the universal debate is meaningless? Does it become a scientific question as to why we have universal concepts? The question of using universal concepts is not meaningless. Nor are particulars.

That it references nothing in the world is self-evident. You can't identify the thing it references. — Isaac

If it was self-evident, there wouldn't be long-standing philosophical debates over universals.

You can't identify the thing it references. — Isaac

Platonists think they can.

"We do it because..." sounds like a sociological issue — Isaac

Not if it's motivated by a philosophical puzzle.

"We do it this way..." sounds like a linguistic issue. — Isaac

Only if linquistics can show how universal concepts are constructed without appealing to other universals.

Reductionism in science is the idea of unity of science: that different special sciences present different aspects of the same fundamental order of nature. If you believe that such an order is at least plausible, then you should not find the idea of reductionism objectionable. — SophistiCat

Isn't it a bit more than this? That the special sciences are in principle replaceable by a single fundamental science, usually physics. That means causation is bottom up, and there's no strong emergence of any entirely novel properties.

@Snakes Alive

It should be noted this is similar to Hume's issue with causality. We talk as if all sorts of things cause or cause other things. That's the way the world works according to our language. However, the cause itself is never in experience.

So then the question arises whether causality actually exists, or it's just constant conjunction. Both causality and constant conjunction are meaningful concepts. If causality doesn't exist, then how did it end up in our language? One answer would be a habit of thought from witnessing constant conjunction. Another would be Kant's response.

Now what does it mean to say Hume's skepticism and the debates it sparked are meaningless? That our everyday notion of causality is all there is to the matter?

What does it mean to conceptualize the world 'as if' it had something, when we can't even tell what it would be for it to have that something? What are we 'conceptualizing?' Apparently nothing. — Snakes Alive

We're conceptualizing the particulars into abstract categories for some reason. And it ranges from laws of nature to chairs and dogs. Now, you can say this conceptualization references nothing in the world. That's nominalism. But it leaves open the questions around why and how we do it.

How can we even posit universals if we don't know what it would be like for there to be universals or not? — Snakes Alive

Because they exist in our language when we talk about the world. We conceptualize the world as if it had universal categories of some kind.

Is that a problem? Shouldn't the explanation be a linguistic and psychological one? — Snakes Alive

If it can be answered by linquistics and psychology. Note that it needs to avoid using universals to do so. Rather, it needs to show how universal concepts are constructed from particulars without positing any universals in the world. Properties become problematic here, because properties can easily be universal when it's the same property shared across particulars. Thus the introduction of tropes to get around that issue.

The point isn't whether universals are real, it's whether the discussion is meaningful. And to the extent science doesn't resolve the matter without appealing to some sort of universal, the issue remains.

What is there to argue about? — Snakes Alive

Has the question of why our language is full of universals when all we experience is particulars been satisfactorily answered? Even if you say that the debate is meaningless, you're still left with the question that started the debate.

People criticizing metaphysics tend to forget what motivates metaphysical questions in the first place.

Look above as well. I updated my post.

That sentence does remain and I stand by it. You were asking for a story depicting the existence of universals. Well, that's hard to do because universals aren't something in experience. We only have the abstract concept of universals. So I don't know how you would tell that story, other than with an allegory.

What should we say about these kids? What should we say about their disagreement? — Snakes Alive

Right, but that's not how metaphysical arguments go. There is a definition for universals that differs from particulars. It's just not something available in experience. However, like math and other abstract concepts, we can create visual depictions. So you can illustrate the taxonomy of cats. You can use classes in programming languages that support object orientation. We do have universal concepts. But unlike lions, tigers or stars, we can't say what a real universal would look or smell like, anymore than we could do that for numbers.

For that matter, we can't do the same for material objects either, since how they look and smell depend on the sort of creatures we are, and perception is correlational.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FSJAWK

I don't know how well received it was. But it's an interesting approach.

My cat is literally pushing books off my shelf at the moment. — path

Sounds like that could be turned into a metaphor.

Thanks. I'm fascinated by 'philosophy is metaphors' as a metaphor that uses 'metaphor' (itself a dead metaphor) metaphysically. Derrida's essay 'The White Mythology' obsesses over this. To me this is part of the theme of us not being able to get out of metaphysics, where 'metaphysics' is used metaphorically. — path

There was a philosophy book on embodied cognition that made the claim all of western metaphysics was based on taking metaphors literally. I guess that's sort of a companion to the late Wittgenstein's approach.

It's the language we inherit with its thousands of half-dead metaphors (rivers with mouths.) — path

Half-dead metaphor, kind of a metaphor in itself. Rivers with mouths is a good example.

Exactly! You're so close to getting it! — Snakes Alive

Are you saying you have to be able to imagine something for it to be meaningful?

So, I'll ask again: what is the difference between universals existing, and not existing? Can you describe two scenarios, one in which they do, and one in which they do not? If you cannot do this, why should I believe you understand the claim or its denial? — Snakes Alive

The problem is that the world we experience is going to be the same with or without universals. That is the debate. You could have someone become enlightened and realize the truth of universals, for what that's worth. Or maybe you could try and depict a world where they don't use universal concepts, demonstrating that it's unnecessary and nominalism is correct.

But I don't know how you would actually "show" a universe with or without universals other than just stating it or having a philosophical discussion inn the book. Universals aren't a matter of the senses, whether they exist or not, so you can't just describe that world.

Did you read what I wrote about the Matrix above? I do think the claim that we live in the Matrix is intelligible, but that's just an empirical claim about robots and vats and so on. Idealists do not mean things in this concrete way. — Snakes Alive

It's only empirical if you can unplug. Otherwise, your senses are going to tell what the Matrix shows them. The universe being a simulation would be one where we can't unplug, since we're part of the simulation. Idealists would mean it that way, except there's no bottom-level physical world running the simulation.

It's easier to come up with a fake reality scenario to base a story one than a universals one without plagiarizing Plato. Would have to think about that.

The point is, again, not jus that the question is difficult, but that one does not know what it would be to answer it, in principle. — Snakes Alive

I did edit my post to add a sports analogy. Fans will debate endlessly who's the best in a sport. It's meaningful, but is there a right answer? That's one possibility for some metaphysical claims. Not that they're meaningless, but that there isn't a right answer, because there is no clear criteria. Which is often the case in sports debates. Just throwing that out there.

Or just a paragraph, or short story, or anything. For example, can you write or imagine two scenarios, one in which there are universals, and one in which there aren't? Conversely, if someone else wrote two such scenarios, could you tell the difference between them at better than chance? — Snakes Alive

We have stories like Plato's cave, the Matrix, Inception and what not. Metaphysics is difficult because often claims are being made of reality beyond experience. So then you kind of have to rely on metaphors.

Because an argument is just an exchange of words, and one can use words in whatever way one pleases. It's evident that metaphysicians go back and forth forever without understanding anything, because they do nothing but shuffle words around. Shuffling words around is precisely not an index of understanding, as the history of the discipline shows. — Snakes Alive

But as I tried to point out before, you will find this sort of thing with any popular unsolved question. But maybe a sports debate like who is the greatest athlete or team across all eras is a good analogy. Sports fans will endless debate that sort of thing. It's meaningful, but is there a right answer?

Demonstrate you understand them using the novel-writing test. — Snakes Alive

You want me to write two novels, one where the plot demonstrates one side of metaphysical claim, and another where it demonstrates the other? As interesting as that sounds, I'm not a writer and don't have the time.

Why isn't demonstrating that one understands an argument for or against enough?

Whether a claim is meaningful to someone depends on whether they can understand it, yes. — Snakes Alive

Here's the rub. I've said I can understand metaphysical statements. But then others of your persuasion will come along and claim that I don't really understand, because the statements aren't meaningful. I argue that they're wrong, and indeed it is possible to understand metaphysical claims. But the oppositions persists in being skeptical

So then what?

I think philosophy should be studied externally, by anthropologists, and that meaning should be studied by linguistic semanticists. — Snakes Alive

Assuming they can stay free of philosophical assumptions.

Anyway, this is turning into a tired defense of basic positivism, rather than focusing on the Lazerowitz model, which I'm interested in. These discussions have all been had a million times before. — Snakes Alive

Fair enough. But that's a fundamental problem, isn't it? We can't even agree on what makes a statement meaningful. I don't know what that means for philosophy and whether we have to nail down a theory of meaning first before having these debates.

What is the difference between there being universals and there not being universals? — Snakes Alive

Whether there exists universal categories which material things take their form from. There are different possibilities. Nominalism says nope on one end and realism says yep on the other. A nominalist might put forward tropes or sets as an explanation for our use of universal concepts. Or they just consider them arbitrary. A realist thinks universal language is describing nature as it's carved up by the forms.

But the point is that those additional posits can also be cast in either framework. You will never find a substantive difference between the two. — Snakes Alive

The mind-independence part is substantive enough for Berkley to declare materialism incoherent. Whether he succeeds is another matter. But we can just look at Nagel's view from nowhere, or Kant's noumena to get an idea of mind-independence taken seriously. Also Tegmark's mathematical universe and speculative realism.

It doesn't necessarily have to do with the means of verification – it does mean that one has to be able to know what it is, in some way, for the statement to be true as opposed to false. If you don't know that, then you can't tell what makes the sentence true or false, so the statement can't be cognitively meaningful to you. No verification is actually required, even in principle – you could simply describe or imagine something, or read them in a novel, showing the difference, so you could, say, tell in a trial at better than chance level which of the affairs holds in that description. — Snakes Alive

Okay, well let's take universals. What Platonists are tying to do is explain why it is that our language is populated with universals, while particulars are the only things in experience. So they postulate forms which give structure to particulars, and that's why particulars have similarities, which reminds us of the forms. Or something. The point is to make sense of the dichotomy between how we think and talk, and our experiences.

What would make this false is if no theory of universals makes sense of the actual world, and if all the theories present infinite regressions or other fatal flaws. What would make it true is if there is no other way to account for similarity between particulars, and our use of universal concepts.

I should note I started a thread a while back debating the meaningfulness of universals, and there was no agreement reached as to whether they are meaningful.

An idealist can simply accept all that is so, and say those things' truth is to be cashed out in terms of their experiential effects. Indeed, you cannot possibly find a difference, since an idealist can always in principle make this move. — Snakes Alive

And idealist can make this move for experience, but that differs significantly from the move the materialist is making. Let's take the double slit experiment. What does the idealist say? We have two different kinds of experiences depending on how the experiment is setup. What does the materialist say? Well, they come up with things like pilot waves and multiverses.

[quote="Snakes Alive;422603"It should describe some state of affairs such that the one to whom it's meaningful can somehow tell the difference between that state of affairs obtaining or not obtaining.[/quote]

Is that not verificationism? The thing here is that there if you don't agree that meaning depends on verification, then there's no reason to dismiss metaphysics as meaningless just because it can't be verified.

Which is a metaphysical dispute of it's own.

OK, but what does that actually mean? — Snakes Alive

It means other animals can perceive things we can't. It means X-Rays can pass through solid objects. It means a beam of photons can produce either a wave or particle pattern depending on whether you detect which slit they go through. And so on.

Try the test: can you write a novel in which idealism is true, — Snakes Alive

If you do not have an example, I will not take the claim seriously. — Snakes Alive

Chemistry for the constitution of ordinary matter and convergent series for Zeno's paradox.

I don't know what you mean by this. I don't think unreflective experience of the world has metaphysical consequences, since metaphysical claims have no consequences. — Snakes Alive

I think it has naive realist claims.

What then is the difference between these things existing outside of perception or not? — Snakes Alive

Material things would be different since their properties and behaviors are not exhausted by our perception of them. Arguably, our perception of material things are correlated with the environment based on the kind of creatures we are. The material things themselves would not have the properties of color, sound, taste, etc.

This is completely different for idealism. Things just are as they are perceived.

Metaphysical questions cannot be decided by empirical means. Do you have any examples to the contrary? — Snakes Alive

I'm not sure. Some old philosophical questions have been answered by science or math. Of course new ones have come about as well.

You could find a way to make them significant, for example by saying 'no, I think we literally live in a Matrix world, and we could wake up tomorrow in a pod controlled by robots.' That is an intelligible claim, although one that might be hard to prove. I know what it would be to wake up in such a situation – and in fact, such a thing can even be coherently depicted, as it is in the Matrix. — Snakes Alive

Right, of course the real world in the Matrix is presumably physical. Another version of this would be an interpretation of QM where consciousness collapses the wavefunction, and everything is in a superpositioned state when not being perceived. Which I suppose you could say is physical, but it's not like any sort of traditional materialism, and certainly way outside human experience.

So yes, I would say indeed that things like global idealism, and the idea of the world as a dream, as typically intended, are not literally significant. All you are doing is taking the world as it is, and deciding to call it a 'dream' or not, but this does not change how you take the world to be. — Snakes Alive

But that's not quite right. The unreflective way we take the world to be is physical. As in there's this material stuff we perceive and interact with that continues to exist pretty much as perceived when we're not around. A more reflective view would acknowledge that material things are not entirely as we perceive them.

Idealism would say the perceiving is all there is to it. And things only persists when we're not around if there is someone like God or a universal mind to perceive. There is no mind-independent material stuff that may or may not be like what we perceive.