@Zetherin,
Zetherin wrote:This is the part I misunderstood regarding physicalism. I thought concepts would be considered physical. All that followed within my writing assumed this to be true, so I can see why it appears so muddled.
We may wish to step back because I can imagine a physicalist response such that my claim of what the physicalist would have to hold is "loaded." "Illusory," perhaps, needs clarification. But first: a physicalist may hold that things exist which correspond to the predicate "is a concept." However, what the physicalist must hold is that whatever has the predicate has that predicate wholly physically and solely in virtue of physical reasons.
Thus, "The concept of a horse is a concept" would be a proposition which has truth-conditions that in principle appeal to physical propositions (propositions solely constituted by physical language, the language of physics, about physical stuffs and going-ons). Its truth-conditions would be propositions about physical stuffs or arrangements or events. Honestly, I wish to ask, because it seems strange to me, but would this proposition even have truth-conditions on the physicalist's account?
"is a concept" would have to be a predicate about the constitution of brains. What about languages and meanings? The physicalist may hold that concepts, meanings, etc all supervene on the physical. But wouldn't this grant them some kind of (quasi-) existence?
Is to exist
sort of to exist at all? Can something have quasi-existence? What about false concepts or things we take to be patent illusions or fictions? Do these things sort of existence?
Cultures exist. But the physicalist may have to say that a culture is nothing more than its spatio-temporal organization. But a cultures moral code? Its metaphysical doctrines?
What about implication, negation, the language of logic? What would it mean to say "The Law of Modus Ponens superviences on the physical?" And surely I doubt anyone would suggest that the laws of logic do not exist...or that they are illusory. Even if they were illusory, you may end up arguing that your own argument is illusory. That's strange.
Quote:How would concepts have an impetus, absent of human intervention? If they are not actual, how can they be stimulated; how can they have a driving force?
Because of human interaction. Why else?
So the existence of concepts presuppose the existence of human beings. But our question seems to be whether concepts can achieve the same status as human beings.
But certainly we must determine whether it makes sense to say of a concept that it has reached the status of "human being." Whether it is true or not we can entertain later. First, we, as I said, must determine whether or not it makes sense.
What would it look like for there to exist (human status concepts)?
Further, and this is a pragmatic constraint, why would or should we care, supposing that they could? Thus,
why are we talking about this? Would the result of our findings have any bearing on anything ethical, epistemological, metaphysical, logical?
