Quantity is Fundamental

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All human conception includes quantity. That's my position. Quantity, often in the form of unity, is prior to all human thought, which is to say that all human thought involves quantity.

Concepts like nature, the self, and truth are singular. Pluralities are just iterated singularities.

I say quantity is fundamental to human thought, and that unity is fundamental to quantity. I'm saying that unity is a sort of Platonic Form or Absolute.

Any comments, disagreements?

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;170664 wrote:

All human conception includes quantity. That's my position. Quantity, often in the form of unity, is prior to all human thought, which is to say that all human thought involves quantity.

Concepts like nature, the self, and truth are singular. Pluralities are just iterated singularities.

I say quantity is fundamental to human thought, and that unity is fundamental to quantity. I'm saying that unity is a sort of Platonic Form or Absolute.

Any comments, disagreements?

How could someone disagree (or agree) with anything as nebulous (where it means anything at all) as that? What would anyone be disagreeing (or agreeing) with? I say mashed potatoes are fundamental to human thought. Do you disagree?

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@kennethamy,

kennethamy;170666 wrote:

How could someone disagree (or agree) with anything as nebulous (where it means anything at all) as that? What would anyone be disagreeing (or agreeing) with? I say mashed potatoes are fundamental to human thought. Do you disagree?

If you can grasp the point, that's great. If not, I've done what I can. Even Rorty, who I admire in many ways, plays a sort of dodgeball. If you understand Kant at all, and I'm no expert, you will see that I'm talking about the structure of perception and language. For me, this is the logic that matters. The structure of human thought. It's not for everyone. You can always play it safe and avoid the topic.

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;170669 wrote:

If you can grasp the point, that's great. If not, I've done what I can. Even Rorty, who I admire in many ways, plays a sort of dodgeball. If you understand Kant at all, and I'm no expert, you will see that I'm talking about the structure of perception and language. For me, this is the logic that matters. The structure of human thought. It's not for everyone. You can always play it safe and avoid the topic.

What point? That mashed potatoes are essential to human thought?

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@kennethamy,

kennethamy;170674 wrote:

What point? That mashed potatoes are essential to human thought?

Listen to yourself. Please, can this role-play. I want to talk w/ social human beings about philosophy, not play little-boy games. Until you get serious, I'm not going to humor you with responses that are wasted on insincere questions. I'm glad that you know all that a human can know. How fortunate for you. But some of us aren't so lucky. So we still have to work at it. Please take your superiority to someone who is worthy of it. :detective:

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;170678 wrote:

Listen to yourself. Please, can this role-play. I want to talk w/ social human beings about philosophy, not play little-boy games. Until you get serious, I'm not going to humor you with responses that are wasted on insincere questions. I'm glad that you know all that a human can know. How fortunate for you. But some of us aren't so lucky. So we still have to work at it. Please take your superiority to someone who is worthy of it. :detective:

What does it mean to say that quantity is essential to human thought? Does it mean anything more than that mashed potatoes are essential to human thought except that it sounds profound, and the other sounds silly? How would we decide whether or not quantity is essential to human thought. What, as William James might ask, is the "cash value" of that belief? I am simply urging you to say something you actually know the meaning of.

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@Reconstructo,

No bites on the quantity issue ? Where are the fish tonight?

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;170664 wrote:

All human conception includes quantity. That's my position. Quantity, often in the form of unity, is prior to all human thought, which is to say that all human thought involves quantity.

Human conception does include quantity and often in the form of unity, but that all human thought includes quantity I cannot say. If I am asked a yes or no question and in my thoughts I think no does this involve quantity? is the quantity that you refer to this example regarding the quantity of the two letters that constitute the word no?

Reconstructo;170664 wrote:

I say quantity is fundamental to human thought, and that unity is fundamental to quantity. I'm saying that unity is a sort of Platonic Form or Absolute.

Any comments, disagreements?

I do not know what you mean by unity is a sort of Platonic form or absolute, but I would see quantity as being of great importance to human thought, however that quantity is utterly fundamental to human thought I cannot affirm.

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@Reconstructo,

Hello Recon. I am not one for censorship but when it comes to some, I am seriously considering it. It would nice if the originator had the opportunity to determine whom they would allow to respond to their thread, ha! Enough is enough, as they say. Granted many who do submit what can be defined as useless rhetoric do seem to come around.......eventually, but there are some whom it seems never will. i know we can't devise such a forum control, but that thought does give me a measure of comfort.

Endure my friend. Ha! It seems there are some itches we can't scratch that just won't go away, ha!

If you noticed my last thread concerning THE VENUS PROJECT you will see how, if we have a healthy respect for the Earth most plentiful resources we can all do better. Those truly natural above ground resources. Now the geothermal ones we don't need dig to get to those, we can take advantage of those when the Earth blows off a little steam. Ha! Don's waste any of yours when some try to light a fire under you. Ha!

William

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;170664 wrote:

I say quantity is fundamental to human thought, and that unity is fundamental to quantity.

What's your definition of unity?

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;170664 wrote:

All human conception includes quantity. That's my position. Quantity, often in the form of unity, is prior to all human thought, which is to say that all human thought involves quantity.

Concepts like nature, the self, and truth are singular. Pluralities are just iterated singularities.

I say quantity is fundamental to human thought, and that unity is fundamental to quantity. I'm saying that unity is a sort of Platonic Form or Absolute.

Any comments, disagreements?

Many of my friends are economically irresponsible, it range from common to highly educated people who are lawyers ..etc, some of them doesn't have creditcards, because their concept of quantity of spended money are simply not there. Though they can rationalize the exact amount of moeny, it will not trigger the actual ruling of moral, it being too much or too little.

This is exactly where high interest loaning buisness comes to play, appealing to these people with easy and fast loans.

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@Reconstructo,

I was actually trying to focus on the nature of all human thought, and not just money. But money is a good example of pure abstract quantity.

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@Reconstructo,

Ok to answer the initial post a bit more clear, I don't think it's an absolute fundemental factor to the human mind, some simply doesn't have this sense of quantety, and does absolutely fine ..actually very successful.

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@ughaibu,

So whether I think of the undefinable as a category or the undefinable as subcategories, the unity of the supercategory undefinable homogenizes the subcategories into a single supercategory and up until all that can be imagined is one. So in essence everything is one giant supercategory, and quantity is a not really that important.

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@Reconstructo,

I'm saying that all of the universals that our language is made of are already quantified. Quantified in the sense of discrete. Form of Forms and all that. I'll prob limit myself to blogs on this issue. If I can resist. It might be a personal idiosyncrasy o' mine. Most find math boring it seems, whereas I experience it as high art, ideal sculpture. And yet it clicks for me with philosophy, Plato Parmenides Heraclitus....It's also not just math. It's the foundation of both Number and Concept. It's prior to language and mathematics, or I'm just a maniac......

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@Reconstructo,

Well, to get all Kantian, how do you regard quality and relation with such a statement?

I can see how you'd strike out "modality", but I'm not seeing how you'd represent quality and relation within quantity. For example, the concept of "cause-and-effect" can be said to be two things, but the important definition seems to be the relation of events and how certain we are of them occuring, rather than the number of events involved.

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@Huxley,

Huxley;171864 wrote:

Well, to get all Kantian, how do you regard quality and relation with such a statement?

I can see how you'd strike out "modality", but I'm not seeing how you'd represent quality and relation within quantity. For example, the concept of "cause-and-effect" can be said to be two things, but the important definition seems to be the relation of events and how certain we are of them occuring, rather than the number of events involved.

Causality would be a unification, from this angle. I argue that we weave a complex web from the basic unit which is unification. Pure quantity would be pure concept. It's useless except that it can relate to sensation and emotion. If we look at metaphor, it to is unification. So is abstraction.

I think you are dwelling on the numerical aspect of quantification more than I am. In my opinion, number is secondary to language, or just an offspring of language. I argue that all universals, without which we couldn't speak, are quantified ---and by that I mean singular. Even pluralities are singular. All numbers other than one are unified pluralities. For instance, 1000 is still just one quantity. It's just that this one quantity is composed of 1000 sub-quantities. To speak hyperbolicly....there is only one number, and that number is 1. But this is a metaphorical way of getting a point across. I'm well aware of all Cantor's transfinite paradise and all that jazz. I say that we merely iterate the basic intuition of the unit. And these iterations are still themselves a more complex unit.

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;171881 wrote:

I say that we merely iterate the basic intuition of the unit.

I dont see how you can get real numbers this way. You describe yourself as some kind of intuitionist, do you only accept computable real numbers?

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@ughaibu,

ughaibu;171899 wrote:

I dont see how you can get real numbers this way. You describe yourself as some kind of intuitionist, do you only accept computable real numbers?

I think we view all numbers as unities, really, even complex numbers. If we look at irrational numbers, we can see them as algorithms for the calculation of rational numbers. Pi and e exist either as rational approximations or as our unified conception of them as a way to get these approximations. This is why I find transcendental and/or irrational numbers so fascinating. They push the limits of the number concept.

But yes I argue that concept is essentially finite. But our sense of space is continuous. So the number line contains an uncountable infinity of points/numbers, precisely for this reason. We can imagine spatially infinite precision. But we only clearly conceive (count) finite and precise magnitudes. And these magnitudes are modifications of the unit. It's all about the clash of the continuous and the discrete, in my mind.

I offer this humbly. It clicks for me, but maybe not for others.

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;171913 wrote:

If we look at irrational numbers, we can see them as algorithms for the calculation of rational numbers.

Not in the case of random reals.

Reconstructo;171913 wrote:

the number line contains an uncountable infinity of points/numbers

Generally, intuitionists reject this and allow only one infinity, because a consequence of Cantor's theory is that almost all real numbers are unconstructable, which means you cant get them by any iterative process based on unity.

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Quantity is Fundamental

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