Numbers are always abstract........ it is not real.
Seems a little nebulous there, maybe you can directly answer the questions, as asked.
I am in agreement with a lot of what Ortega says in some respects. I like that he has idenitified the meaning of 'ex-ist' which implicitly means a different thing to 'to be'.
except for the definition of 'circumstances'. I am in agreement with the idea that I-and-circumstances is a basis for reality, rather than subject-and-object. But circumstance is very open-ended. What is the circumfrence, as it were, of your circumstances? Where do they begin, and what governs them? Are you thrown into them, or do you create them, or both?
And 'my life' as the radical reality - in what way is it 'mine' and how does this avoid solipsism? Does this mean other people are only considered insofar as they are part of 'my life' or do they too inhabit a radical reality also called (from their viewpoint) "my life'? Jack has touched on this too.
If you mean by this 'numbers are not real', I beg to differ. If they were not real, why are they the same for all who perceive them? The value of Pi is the same anywhere in the universe. The philosophy of maths is a very difficult subject with no agreed foundation so we are not going to get an agreement here. But you can't say that number is simply made up or subjective. It may be fair to say they are abstract, but surely they are the most concrete form of abstraction.
Anyway all of the area you have touched on - Universals and the like - is the subject of centuries of debate in philosophy, and is still not resolved. Most people have just decided to ignore it.
Which is not to criticize you for raising it, but it leads into a very huge topic.
The great difficulty we have with universals is always one of 'well, where is a universal. Show it to me.' .
I believe you really think you are doubting what you say you are. The question I am raising is whether you are really doubting what you say you are doubting. A person who really doubt that (say) there is a table in front of him will not place a vase (which he doubts exists) full of water (ditto) on that table. What you seem to mean by "doubting in the abstract" is what Peirce called "fake" or "paper" doubt. The fact that you believe you doubt does not certify that you really doubt, any more than that you believe that there is table in front of you, certifies that there really is a table in front of you. In either case, your belief (that you doubt) or (that there is a table) may very well be completely sincere, but you may, nevertheless, be mistaken.
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Peirce held that science suggests that the universe has evolved from a condition of maximum freedom and spontaneity into its present condition, in which it has taken on a number of more or less entrenched habits, sometimes more entrenched and sometimes less entrenched. With pure freedom and spontaneity Peirce tended to associate mind, and with firmly entrenched habits he tended to associate matter (or, more generally, the physical). Thus he tended to see the universe as the end-product-so-far of a process in which mind has acquired habits and has "congealed" (this is the very word Peirce used) into matter.
This notion of all things as being evolved psycho-physical unities of some sort places Peirce well within the sphere of what might be called "the grand old-fashioned metaphysicians," along with such thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Whitehead, et al. Some contemporary philosophers might be inclined to reject Peirce out of hand upon discovering this fact. Others might find his notion of psycho-physical unities not so offputting or indeed even attractive. What is crucial is that Peirce argued that mind pervades all of nature in varying degrees, and is not found merely in its most advanced animal species.
This pan-psychistic view, combined with synechism, meant for Peirce that mind is extended in some sort of continuum throughout the universe. Peirce tended to think of ideas as existing in mind in somewhat the same way as physical forms exist in physically extended things, and he even spoke of ideas as "spreading" out through the same continuum in which mind is extended. This set of conceptions is part of what Peirce regarded as (his own version of) Scotistic realism, which he sharply contrasted with nominalism. He tended to blame what he regarded as the errors of much of the philosophy of his contemporaries as owing to the nominalistic disregard for the objective existence of form.
If you mean by this 'numbers are not real', I beg to differ. If they were not real, why are they the same for all who perceive them? The value of Pi is the same anywhere in the universe. The philosophy of maths is a very difficult subject with no agreed foundation so we are not going to get an agreement here. But you can't say that number is simply made up or subjective. It may be fair to say they are abstract, but surely they are the most concrete form of abstraction.
Anyway all of the area you have touched on - Universals and the like - is the subject of centuries of debate in philosophy, and is still not resolved. Most people have just decided to ignore it.
Which is not to criticize you for raising it, but it leads into a very huge topic.
Subjective experience is 'real' to the one who is experiencing. But is 'not Real' to others who are not experiencing the same. hence subjective. thats obvious, isn't it?
But the problem lies when ones so-called 'real' experience is taken up in general and by saying 'That's Reality'. The fault lies in such a extrapolation. The individual 'real' cannot be the general 'Reality'. Hope this comes out clear.
Numbers are always abstract........ it is not real.
Concepts are always Unreal
[A concept] is abstract, it is notional, it is metephorical, it is representative.
Used in language by terms as a representation of conceptual ideas.
A couple of Example's on concepts:
1) Forests - word representation of group of trees or any vegetation.------ keyword is trees or vegetation or flora (again a conceptual representation for all biotic plants with chlorophyl).
2); Clergy: - word representation of a group or section of men or women, also refered to or called as people (people again is a concept) of a class called priests (again a conceptual reperesentation). key word is men or women.
Einsteins 'Cosmological Constant' which he theorised but could not find, and later regretted, is an example that numbers, arithmatics or mathematics have a limitation.
God is a mathematician but perhaps not a moralist.
Agreed. However, for the sake of clarity, the term "subjective experience" is redundant. There is no experience that is not "subjective." The "subject" is the "I" or "My I" that is doing the experiencing. Similarly, there is no experience that is not "objective." The "object" is what is experienced by "My I."
Again, agreed. The general "Reality" is an abstraction of the individual realities. It is sometimes called "consensus reality," meaning that it is generally agreed upon by most people.
Of course, mathematicians have bollixed up the works by speaking of "real" numbers and "imaginary" numbers. Both are "imaginary" in the sense that they are concepts. Both are "real" in the sense that they can be a part of a person's "circumstance."
A concept is "real" to the person conceiving it. They may conceive of it on their own or upon it being referred to by someone else or in something they are reading.
I am glad we agree. And I am with Plato on that, although I would be interested to know whether he actually said 'eyes, but no intellect'.
And I don't know why the same principle cannot be used to argue for the reality of 'incorporeal objects or planes of existence' then.
---------- Post added 01-29-2010 at 10:43 AM ----------
actually that last remark (of mine) is a red herring. What I meant to say was in regards to the effect of this on the idea of 'mind-independent reality'. I think that this idea is the current definition of reality, based on Descartes and especially Galileo's idea of objectivity. However what the 'intelligibility' argument shows is that the manner of the existence of a thing is determined in part by the means by which it is perceived. It is not really 'there' in any absolute sense. It is there as part of the act of perception. So I think it actually undermines the idea of the 'mind-independent reality'.
Incidentally there is a lot in Pierce that I like the look of, and have much in common with, although I have only read small pieces here and there. I do, however, note that according to Wikipedia he was a Scholastic Realist.
This opens the door to relativism though. Something is true, because it is true for me, and there is no other criteria. 'Consensus reality' is merely me believing something must be so, because the bloke next to me says it is. But this does not make it true. In 1300 most people believed the world was flat.
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Nevertheless I am sure the consequences of one's intentional actions are realised with mathematical precision.
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False. A concept is "real" to the person conceiving it. They may conceive of it on their own or upon it being referred to by someone else or in something they are reading.
If you mean that "abstract" and "notional" are words that can be used to characterize concepts, I agree. However as to "metaphorical" and "representative," they should be used to characterize words or linguistic expressions, not concepts.
I'm not sure what you mean, but I should point out that "conceptual ideas" is redundant.
According to the OED, the word "forest" is derived from the Medieval Latin word forest-em, the 'outside' wood (i.e. that lying outside the walls of the park, not fenced in), from the Latin foris, "out of doors."
It is defined as follows:
1. a. An extensive tract of land covered with trees and undergrowth, sometimes intermingled with pasture. Also, the trees collectively of a 'forest'.
1. b. In Great Britain, the name of several districts formerly covered with trees, but now brought more or less under cultivation, always with some proper name attached, as Ashdown, Ettrick, Sherwood, Wychwood Forest.
2. Law. A woodland district, usually belonging to the king, set apart for hunting wild beasts and game, etc.; having special laws and officers of its own.
[Note the following quotation given under this definition:]
1883 F. POLLOCK Land Laws ii. 40 The presence of trees..is not required to make a forest in this sense. The great mark of it is the absence of enclosures.
3. A wild uncultivated waste, a wilderness.
Definitions of "clergy" from the OED:
1. The estate or office of a cleric or clerk (in ecclesiastical orders); the clerical office. Obs.
2. concr. The clerical order; the body of men set apart by ordination for religious service in the Christian church; opposed to laity. Sometimes, in popular speech, used of the ordinary clergy as distinguished from bishops, etc., as in 'the bishop met the clergy of his diocese'. Originally a term of the Catholic church, but also commonly used in those Protestant churches which have an ordained ministry. (As with similar terms, its application is often made a matter of principle.)
3. transf. The priestly order in the Jewish and other non-Christian religions. Obs.
4. As a rendering of the Greek kleros; see quotes.
[Again, here are the quotes indicating a Biblical meaning of "clergy" of which I was not aware:]
1641 MILTON Ch. Govt. II. iii. (1851) 164 The title of Clergy S. Peter gave to all Gods people, till Pope Higinus and the succeeding Prelates took it from them.
1643 J. BURROUGHES Exp. Hosea i. (1652) 159 You shall find in Scripture the people are called Clergy in distinction from the Ministers, and never the Ministers..from the people.
1736 CHANDLER Hist. Persec. 459 The words Clergy and Church are never once used in Scripture to denote the Bishops or other Officers, but the Christian people.
. I suppose that equates roughly with what you say as the only "truth" we can ever really know is that known to us alone. We can't live in someone else's mind. Would the colour we recognise, for instance, as green be a completely different colour if we saw it through another's eyes? It wouldn't matter though because they would always know that colour as green no matter how they viewed it. Green, as a word or description, is the only thing that has concensus.
Hi long,
The other thing is on 'real'. It is also very much logical to conclude that an abstract thought is 'real'. Experiences are 'real' to the individual, and some may be agreeable to the realness of that thought or experiences. I had already stated that somewhere above.
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Agreed. However, for the sake of clarity, the term "subjective experience" is redundant. There is no experience that is not "subjective." "
Quite so. But put it in perspective. Einstein made statements about phenomena that could not be experimentally verified for 40 or 50 years after he created them. At the time he made them he was a patent clerk in an office Swizterland, looking at the clocktower on the station down the road, watching the trains come and go, and imagining himself riding a light beam. His equipment was pencil and paper.
Now we are using the world's most expensive machine to work out if Einstein's calculations were correct. And so far, everything checks out.
I have a problem with understanding how this cognitive capacity was the outcome of adaptive necessity. This is not to say there is not a natural explanation for this kind of capability, but it is to question whether we understand it yet. At the very least, I think we all have to admit that it is uncanny. And yet for many people, even that seems quite an admission.
I, myself, do not think that anything exists in any particular "matter" or "way". I think that something either exists or does not exist. And, what it means for something to exist is that it has properties. I think that when we believe something exists in some "manner" we are really thinking of how we would determine that it exist. To say, for instance, that chairs exist in a "material manner" is only to say that to decide whether a chair exists is to try to find out whether something has some material property. But chairs and numbers exist in just the same sense (if they exist at all). To say that the number three exists is just to say that something has the properties ascribed to the number three. And to say a chair exists is just to say that something has the properties ascribed to chairs. There are no "kinds" of existence. There are kinds of things that exist. We should not confuse the two.
Creating a distinction between the word 'reality' and the word 'existence' can serve to draw out two distinct types of being, by lending one of the meanings of reality to the word existence. The choice of which meaning applies to which is somewhat arbitrary, but this is mere semantics. Reality, to put it in the simplest form, is here defined as that which is not fake. Existence is that with which an encounter is comprehensible. Reality contains everything that exists, but existence is only a subset of what is real. Nothing unreal exists, but some things which are real do not exist. Existence is of objects, while reality also covers ideas beyond objects. A number is only real, while a baseball exists. The gross national product is only real, while Antarctica exists. The probability of the sun not rising tomorrow is real, while the sun itself exists.
While existence is narrower than reality, it should not be made too narrow. It would be a mistake to say that for something to exist it must be possible to go out and observe it. Taking existence in that strict sense the planet 51 Pegasus would not exist simply because with current technology we have no way to see it... clearly this wouldn't make sense, as it would have things popping in and out of existence depending on our own capabilities at a particular time. Even in cases where we haven't yet derived the existence through any means, so long as we can imagine that it would be coherent to call the thing an object we can satisfy the metaphysical criterion for existence (and are simply left with the epistemological question of it the imagined object is actually out there). In the case of anything which cannot be coherently thought of as an object -- where the form "if I were to be there, I could sense this" simply cannot apply -- we cannot say that the thing exists. A number (in the sense beyond numeral) cannot be a sense object and so does not exist... there's no place to go to look for a number. Anything which has no spatio-temporal meaning (and thus no "there" to be at to observe) cannot be said to exist. Anything which is not an event itself but instead a probability of events cannot be said to exist. Such things can be real if properly derived out of experience, but they do not exist.
Agreed. I can't remember if it was Kant or Descarte who said that truth was probably known by the few because a real truth would be too difficult for most people to grasp (or words to that effect). I suppose that equates roughly with what you say as the only "truth" we can ever really know is that known to us alone. We can't live in someone else's mind. Would the colour we recognise, for instance, as green be a completely different colour if we saw it through another's eyes? It wouldn't matter though because they would always know that colour as green no matter how they viewed it. Green, as a word or description, is the only thing that has concensus.
I suppose that is a plea for justice and morality in the world. The common origin of notions of an afterlife or reincarnation of some sort, since there clearly is not justice in this life it must be acheived in another life or by some other means. For me I doubt there is any personal afterlife other than the effects which our lives have on others and which persist after our death. I do not beleive in ressurection or reincarnation only recycling. Our lives have more or less meaning by what value or creativity we impart to the world during our personal experience. The only form of personal immortality and reward is that of contributing to the creative advance and the production of enduring value in accordance with the divine persusasion.
well I couldn't disagree more, so thanks for the opportunity. I have barely begun to research the way in which ancient and classical philosophy distinguishes the various uses of the words 'to exist' and 'to be', but there are certainly many different meanings of these words. But I have found a particularly relevant discussion of the difference between 'what is real' and 'what exists' in an essay on another philosophy forum:
