Universals, what's the problem?

Still about the same brother. Most have jetissoned Plato's view (a side effect of science who cares only about what it can observe) and have embraced Aristotles view that the Universal only exists in our head (I think this is gaining credence the more we understand of the mind through psychology).

TF

There seems to be another stance taken, that universals do exist, but only exist in objects, and not independently of objects.

What do you mean Ray - I am not following you. How can universals only exist within particulars? I don't get it.

TF

I mean, Plato believed that universals exists independent of objects and objects are mere copies of it, but I've read of a stance taken that universals do exist but does not necessarily exist independently of objects. Meaning that for a universal to exist, it needs a physical thing to accompany it.
Like the redness of an apple does not exist independently of the object, but the redness do exist in the object.

This might be what you were noting earlier.

This set me thinking of something. Perhaps you can help me determine wether it is relevant or not. I started thinking about "nothing". It occured to me that it is impossible to define "nothing". The closest I got was "the absence of something", but that is not satisfactory. Another word like this is "a hole". What is it? Define a hole. I've tried. It seems you have to include whatever the hole is in... I am at a loss. I don't know the connection to this thread, except that it got me thinking of this. If I am way off base I apologize.

The way I see it there are universals. But it has to be said that the way objects are separated is a human affair. It is a human desicion that a chair is not a stool though both could be made from wood. What I am saying is that from the universe's side all matter and all forms are equal. A universal is for instance gravity, that puts a boundary on how tall a tree can grow. But then gravity is determined by the shape and movement of the earth, wich in turn is subject to a different universal.
I don't know. Does this make sense?

cyracuz

I think universals are only fonction of the language. We can only comunicate using common concepts, like "the stone", "the apple", "the red". If I tell you I have a red rose in this room, you can only understand me if you have a linguistic understanding of the abstract notion of rose, red and room. That does not mean that universals exist outside the language reference. They are linguistic models. There are apples, not "the apple". The rose in my room is a physical entity, existing in the space and time of my experience. "The rose" is a semantic entity that, within a formal system, like English language, allows you and me to understand what I mean when I talk about the rose in my room.

But, there is a problem in all this, and Plato saw it very well. If I say that "this rose is beautiful" and that is the particular - the universal being "the rose" and "beauty" - and if I also say that the universal doesn't exist except in convencional language, how can I know that this rose is beautiful?
I think the only answer is: through language and perception. Looking to this rose I have some kind of feeling, a pleasurable one let's say. From there - and because human perceptions are very similar from individual to individual - we create the concept and word "beauty". We have only a very general and obscure notion of what beauty is. But I know that, to me, this rose in my room is beautiful.

Universals are conventional concepts, allowing us to comunicate. But only particulars exist in our field of experience, in our presence in the world.

I would say that perception is a key word. Language can never be better or more accurate than our understanding. Whenever an inaccuracy is discovered in our understanding it is rectified in our language. This process is not automatic. It requires consious effort to do so. Language is our tool for communication, and the spoken word is only part of that language. I am under the impression that universals are something more.
"Red" might be a universal, but only because we through language agree that this thing that has this attribute will be referred to as "red". I have no way of knowing wether your red looks more like my green. We may both call it red, but that is a result of our learning.
I think what plato meant by universals were something outside of man. Man himself is according to plato a particular corresponding to the universal of man. The only way I am capable of understanding this at this time, and in such a manner that it does not contradict Plato's thoughts is if these universals are the frames upon wich this world is built. But then another question arises, wich I am most familiar with through Kant's philosophy. Are the forms an attribute of this world or our perception of it?

It's true that language enforces the concept of universal but I think that universal still exist even without it. When someone perceives two leaves, they see two green leaves whether or not they would describe the object. They see the relation between the two objects. When we describe universals, I believe that we are describing it for what it is (at least to the limit of our understanding). We need to know universals.

The greenness is present in both leaves, but only exist in the leaves. And the identity of a leaf is present in both objects. We know things by identifying them and universals are key to doing that.

Ray

If you see two green leaves you are seeing particulars, not universals. But you never see any "relation". Relation is a concept and it is an universal. You can't see a relation. Or a cause. You think of relations, of causes.

About the "greenness". Again, I disagree. You see a green leave. Not a leave + green colour. The green leave is what you perceive. Like the read or brown leave.

About "greenness", let me ask you this question:
"Is the greenness" green?"

Val wrote:


I take it you are asking if I can know what you call green is really green to me? We may point at a color and agree that it is green, but this is a result of learning, like I said above. For all I know, you see green as something similar to what I call red, but since you are taught that that color comes with the tag "green" it is green. Regardless of whatever color it actually is. Color is not a universal. It is an attribute.

Another answer to your question occured to me: No! Greenness is not green. It only looks that way because we see the surface as green because it is the only color it does not absorb. So in reality one might say that a green door is actually every color but green...

I disagree. I believe that relation is a concept which describes the real world. I see a leaf and it is green, thus there must be some thing in the leaf which makes it reflect green light like the other green leaf, thus I see the greenness in it.

Just because something is a concept, it does not mean that it does not really exist.

Is greenness green? It makes people see it as green yes.

An example. Imagine that you are talking to a person who is colorblind, and you are explaining to him what color a leaf is. A leaf is green you tell him, and he believes you, because you can see color and he cannot. But then one day in autumn, when the leaves are yellow, he suddenly and miraculously gains the ability to see color. He glances out to the trees in the backyard, and to the leaves hanging from the branches, and with the conversation he had with you fresh in his mind he says: "Ahh so that is green".

Just to explain my point. The label you put on something is a result of learning. The concept exists and is absolute, I agree, but that does not mean that you will automatically enterpet it the right way.

Yeah, I agree Cyracuz, we do need to learn the concepts, but there is no denying that when one sees two green objects, the relation that he sees in the two objects are that they're green.

Yes. But there can be many relations between the object. That they are both green is something they have in common. They do not have to relate to eachother in any other way for this to be true.

Ray, I didn't say that a concept like relation doesn't describe the world, (within our experience conditions). I said that "relation" is an universal, not a particular. You cannot see relations. Or causes. They are not physical entities that can be perceived. From the way we all experience things in space we create concepts like relation. "Relation" has a reality in our mind, not in things. You cannot point to a thing and say: there is a great relation, larger than the other I saw yesterday. It is an idea, with a real existence but only in our mind, in our language.
This is why I sustained that universals have no physical existence. They are conceptual entities.

What about the relation between objects in nature. Everything relates to everything and has done so long before the time of humans. I don't see how you mean that relation in itself is a universal? Maybe it is. I just don't see how.

This is the core of where I disagree with you. It does exist whether one is describing it or not. Two similar green leaves. They both are green and are leaves whether there is someone there to perceive or describe the relation. Of course nothing is aware of it when there is no being to be aware of it, but it is there, and we as human beings, are aware of it whether we see different colours or not. I do use language to describe the relation but language serves a purpose of identifying things so we know what it is ( at least to how much we are aware of it ).

Yes, Ray, that is exactly the main problem. You believe in a "real world" that exists no matter we experience it or not. And that world has the physical characteristics that our mind is able to aprehend.
I say that we only know what is within our experience conditions (because knowledge is one of those initial conditions, understood as the configuration of the nervous system and the brain). The pretension of knowing anything beyond those experience conditions is, in my point of view, a metaphysical divagation, like the idea of a transcendent God or the platonic World of Forms.
Our divergence is not new. Since the origins of the philosophy this has been perhaps the greatest problem.
I think we can see three possible ways of dealing with this problem.
First, the position of those who reject that our mind is something within the experience conditions - for them, only perception is. That's the case of Democritus, Anaxagoras, Aristotle, most of the scholastics, Descartes, Leibniz, Galileo, Einstein. Frequently, this theory is based on the fact that we were created by a God at his image. Our mind is able to understand the world, by pure reasoning. A development of this idea can be seen in those who say that our experience conditions are those of the "real world", have the same nature (in a way, we could say they believe that the "real world" reflects itself in our mind): a great number of scientists of the XIX century had this idea. In the XX century, men as different as Lenin, Sagan, Changeux, sustained, with different arguments, this point of view.
Second, the position of those who accept that no rational knowledge is possible except within our experience conditions, but sustaining that it is possible another kind of knowledge: by intuition, mystical experience, revelation ... here, we see philosophers like Plato (in part only), Plotinus, Augustin, Bernard de Clavel, Bergson.
Third, those who say that knowledge is possible only within our experience conditions, because the world is those experience conditions. Sextus Empiricus, Hume, Kant (only in his first Critic), Wittgenstein, Heidegger ans some modern scientists.

As I see it, the problem is that we human beings are a specie whose evolution gave us tools in order to deal with a certain number of external conditions. Our nervous system, our brain, our cells, are the product of a long evolution, giving as adequacy to some of those external stimulations - but only some of them. We are evolutionary entities, like the snails or the bats.
We live interacting with things, but within initial conditions that are in us, not "outside": for example, we experience things in three space dimensions. Does the world have only three space dimensions? How can we know? Looking from the outside of ourselves through an imaginary window?
And if all the human beings perish, and all other living species, except snails, what would be then the "real world"? To me that world would be the world of the snails experience, whatever it is.
I don't see reason as something ideal or a mirror of the world. It is a tool, very useful within our experience conditions, and nothing more than that.

Well noted Val. Although I do disagree with you, your views are well put. To me, our phenomenal world, is a mirror image of a part of the real world (noumena). We don't know everything, but we do have senses that interacts with at least part of the real world. Reason to me, is a bridge to find out how something really is to the limit of our experience. When I see two green leaves, I see them as leaves that are green. Their identity is the same whether or not my reason is here to describe them. I am my reason and thus I can not deny this fact since it would be a denial of the things that I know. I hope I'm being clear in my views.