Demanding Evidence

[Touchstone]

Syntax:

Sure, our intutions disagree. But I am supporting my intuitions with arguments, you are not. Your intuitions are already deeply entrenched within scientific naturalism and you can’t see beyond that.

You’re right, I can’t see beyond naturalism, and I don’t know anyone who can, despite lots of “visions” and “imaginations” that are never shown to be anything more than that. Those problems notwithstanding, though, I still don’t identify any argument you’ve offered for your intuitions beyond intuition itself. Maybe you can appeal to incredulity, your ignorance (and mine) about the exhaustive mechanics of how cognition works as your basis for Propositions in The Magical Realms™.

For my part, you’ve already granted your understanding propositions as “partially” sourced in language itself. I’m claiming that what you’ve already granted is wholly sufficient. If it’s not, what’s missing? This calls for a demonstration of the missing parts, not an appeal to the intuition, or the contention that what doesn’t accord with your intuitions is *ipso facto *absurd.

The very thesis fueling your naturalism seems to be the implicit and false positivist assumption that what can’t in principle be empirically observed therefore doesn’t exist or doesn’t have truth-conditions.

I’m not positivist. I’m something more of anti-positivist, or one who understands (liability to) falsification to be the essential epistemic principle that makes empiricism practically successful as a means of acquiring knowledge. Positivism doesn’t cut it that way, but falsification does. If you can’t demonstrate, in principle at least, how a proposition could be falsified, there’s no meaning in saying it’s “true”.

Your disagreement with me is that I should’nt count some abstract objects, other than physical ones, as existent entities into my ontology. My disagreement with you is that, if reductive physicalism is true, then types don’t exist, only tokens, and meaning, communication, and various forms of linguistic practice are left without explanation for what makes this practice possible.

What’s close enough is close enough. If my concept of cat and yours are distinct, different, but overlapping enough to enable successful communication, to facilitate conveyance of practical meaning, then that is sufficient.

And that matches our observations, dovetails with empirical analysis; communication does happen, but its fraught with misunderstandings, overloads and clean “misses” – failures in communication. When we do autopsies on these failed communications, we very often find the underlying terms and concepts are mismatched, dissimilar enough to break down the transfer of effective meaning. The words may be the same, but the referents are too far apart…

We need a premise that will warrant the inference from,

(A) Language-expressions are a necessary conditions for the expression of propositions

to

(B) Language is a necessary condition for the existence of propositions

There is no such inference to make. Can’t get there. (B) is trivially true, as a tautology, irrespective of (A), which isn’t needed at all to address (B). By definition, the existence of a proposition entails language. It’s the basis for meaning of the term (the concept) “proposition”. Just like the formula, the meaning of “formula”, only obtains meaning from symbolic calculus – math. Where you have formulae, or even math concepts, you have symbolic calculus – symbols manipulated according to forms and rules.

It is your own intuition that is guiding this inference which I don’t share whatsoever, because if it is true, we get into too many absurdities such as sentence-types being identical to propositions (which I’ve already explained is false–something you should clearly be seeing by now).

I have no such inference to make – it misunderstands the relationship between language and propositions, not to mention confusing types and instances.

-TS

 

[Syntax]

These are all approximations. Every brain has a different set of neurons and patterns. We have identified different loci for various functions (cf. Wernicke’s Area), but the particular brain-state for person A that would map to “cat” is going to be different than the particular brain-state for person B.

I agree with this. But it is completely irrelevent. My argument works from those aspects of their token mental states that are similar, not different.

What makes these concepts the “same” is functional equivalence. Person A, and Person B, despite difference in the particular neuronal pattern that fire upon seeing a cat, nevertheless have a neuronal response that fires for “cat”; They both have the concept of “cat” and these are the same concept in practice. But the abstraction, the “magical proposition” is just descriptive of practically isomorphic brain-states. They align functionally, not as identical electrical schematics in the brain.

Thanks for your “functionally-equivalent” behavioral descriptions of *how *“sameness” arises. Describing how sameness arises is still irrelevent to the question of whether types are identical to the set of token instantiations of it. So let’s just start from what you call “isomorphic brain states” and run my original argument through again, shall we? Are there types for which isomorphic brain-states are tokens?

(As a side note, I really don’t sympatheize with your functionalist view anyway. Problems with cognitive science models in explaining human behavior, understanding, and intelligence should be enough to make your description of how “sameness” arises merely speculative at best.)

I don’t know what you mean by “different”, here. Above, I pointed functional equivalence, whereby we decide that “different” applies when functional divergence obtains. If A and B do not respond to the same questions or semantic distinctions regarding “bachelor” (perhaps A identifies some set of known-to-be-married men as “bachelors” along with lots of unmarried men), we consider that a substantive basis for saying their concepts of ‘bachelor’ are “different”. If we can’t come up with a way to elicit different answers or responses based on testing the semantics for A and B, and they identify the same objects in discriminating tests the same way every time, we have a basis for describe the concepts of “bachelor” for A and B to be “same”…

Ibid.

There’s not binary polarity here – either “understanding” or “not understanding”. Understanding obtains in levels of overlap and through approximation. Perhaps Person A considers a widower to be a “bachelor”, where Person B insists that a bachelor is “a man who has never been married”. These are not identical ideas, but they are partially compatible, and they would both identify a male college graduate who’d never been married as a “bachelor”, agreeing in that case. Anyone familiar with language translation will be aware of the “approximation factor”, whereby words from one language to another get mapped, but are only approximate in their semantic content. “Dasein” has connotations and overtones for German speakers that only approximately map to the English word “existence”, for example.Only in practical terms. By “type” we simply mean practical overlap between the various instances such that it is useful as a handle to refer to the group.

The phenomenon of “overlap” is all I need to make my case several posts ago about the existence of types, even if non-overlapping differences in the meanings of -type-concepts is maintained between two token instances of it in individuals. It is clear you don’t want to concede my argument, but instead, you’d rather weasel around it by offering a naturalistic/behavioral account of how “sameness” arises in language and communication. Do you think types exist, irrespective of whether or not your account is true here? And what are they? Can you identifiy them for me? I already offered a naturalistic identity statement of what a concept is, namely, the set of token brain-states among multiple individuals. Do you agree with this, or no?

Communication does happen, as the types are synthetic, made up of clusters of approximately analagous semantic and logical constructs. Person A and B have slightly different concepts of “cat” – when the word is invoked in the same sentence it may conjure up slightly different images and semantic relationships, yet it is close enough betweent them that communication obtains. “That cat on the mat is black” is sufficient to connect to both A and B’s concept of cat, even though their particular concepts differ to some degree; they are similar enough for the hearer to understand the speaker.

Ibid.

 

[Touchstone]

“The only tools we have produce ‘maps’”? (Huh?) What does it mean to ‘use’ a map? It’s to go somewhere?

It’s pedagogical language for ‘isomorphism’. That word is effective here, but it doesn’t go over well, as it’s unfamiliar to most people. “Map” and “territory” are familar, and get the general idea across. But it’s not about navigation per se, the principle is the connection between a model of some kind and the subject of the model.

So depending where we want to go, we’ll make different maps? …But you’re not saying we make maps; rather, “tools we have produce maps” - …so what is involved in that production process?

Well, when my 3 year old son touches a hot stove, he gets burnt, and cries. And hopefully, he augments his “map” of the world around him. Not just “that thing here might be hot enough to burn me”, but also “It’s beneficial to be careful about what I touch, and to think a bit more before just acting on impulse”. When Mom says “that’s hot”, the map now has some annotation with exclamation – Warning! This can cause terrible pain!

(Remember, in answering this question you will be making a map, and constituting whatever it is you are mapping as a territory, as reality, so your answer must allow for an appropriate kind of self-referentiality.)

That’s a key feature of our map-making, being able to refer to our map as a map, and having the map interact with itself. This is am important aspect of making ever-improving maps.

We can also identify differences, which destroys the allegedly stark parsimony you assert above.

No, it doesn’t. There are any number of unknowns, and competing hypotheses that don’t agree. That’s not any problem for an objective reality. We have no reason to suppose ourselves to be omniscient or infallible. We can and do misunderstand, all the time. That doesn’t need any more explanation than noting our epistemic limitations.

But the areas where there is objective agreement demand an explanation. How can there be such specific agreement across so many independent observers, for these things? The starkly parsimonious (in contrast to any other explanation offered) answer is the simple, straightforward, economical one: we actually are interacting with a shared, objective reality. It is “appearing to us” in the areas we find objective performance that withstands critical examination.

I think you are right that the map-metaphor starts to break down here, I’m glad you noticed that. Here you have started making postulates about the normative conditions governing map-making. You are no longer talking about a territory with any independent standing - the territory that you are mapping is all territory that you have constituted through your normative suppositions, so its own claim to having a basis in extramentality is groundless.

Not sure what you consider “grounds”, in that case. It works (“map” doesn’t just mean “geography”, by the way – a map is device that maps one phase space to another phase space, geography just being the most popular “retail” use of the term).

In terms of grounds for extramentality, it’s a moot objection, and such a commitment needs no grounds; we are physiologically wired to accept the extramentality of the world around us. It’s not an option we can refuse even if we try. My regular reminder to see how long you can hold your hand over an open flame if you doubt this.

Given that commitment, our commitment to the basic relationship between our minds, our senses and the extramental world.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Betterave:

Excellent, you have identified the issue. Now you just have to understand why your position on it is false. ‘Territory’ is the correlate of ‘map.’ A territory is simply the object of a map. One map can be the object of another map. So maps and territories are not really distinguishable in principle.

That a map can also be the object of another map does NOT meant that a map and its object are indistinguishable. That’s the whole point behind the “map is not the territory” adminition. These are distinct entities, and confusing them leads to all manner of errors and mistakes.

Map-making is itself a constitutive contribution to reality. Therefore the territory is changed by maps (on your account).

Reality is different for having “map-makers” in it than it would be without them, for sure. But the model/object relationship is such that making maps doesn’t restructure the territory. If I’m creating a topological map of the county I live in, I might use my 3D software to approximate the elevations according to my measurements. But if I should decide to elevate one particular area, the part of my county that part of the map corresponds to doesn’t change elevation along with it, right? Right. The hills around here don’t care what my 3D software does in map making. They are what they are.

No, I don’t think it does appear - that would radically change your position. It is only imperfect models, i.e., maps, that appear. And in the very asking of the question “what is it that appears?,” we engage ourselves in the production of a map of the relation of reality/territory and appearance-of-reality/map - but how can this be a coherent enterprise?

It might not be. We don’t know up front. Science and discovery are research projects – there’s no guarantee that our efforts in model-building will produce coherent and performative results.

But that appears to be how things have turned out, and we have a slew of areas where our models are performative – highly precise and reliable in practice.

Only if we have some access to reality beyond its conceptual expression in our maps. But we must have this - how else did we get maps in the first place (maps of real territory, that is)?

Maps are advantageous in evolutionary terms. Beings that build better maps of the world around them tend to survive and reproduce more predictably and efficiently. Nature selects for better map making in areas where the “territory” relates to survival and reproduction.

Your appeal to the impressiveness of the achievements of aeronautical engineering is strange - is this a new kind of stipulation you are building into your map-building manual? (If so, then you should grant that it is not grounded in extramental reality.) Or is such a normative gesture supposed to map a feature of the real territory? (That would call for some careful explanation.)

It’s just a handy and effective example of where objective methods produce practical results, results that aren’t just useful, but dramatically innovative over what was possible just a few decades ago. The idea of breakfast in New York and late lunch San Francisco would be just a fantasy for all of humanity prior to the 20th century.

It’s one are where applied science and advanced technology make something long impossible almost an afterthought today, and an affordable afterthought on even fairly modest budgets.

(“The reality of reality” cannot be considered an hypothesis, as you suggest, until it has received some kind of coherent content.)

It’s not a hypothesis for humans. It’s an axiom, a necessary proposition which we cannot reject even if we’d like. Try the hand-in-the-flame thing if you are unclear on this.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

I agree with this. But it is completely irrelevent. My argument works from those aspects of their token mental states that are similar, not different.

I think it’s relevant because it forms the basis for the similarity. For any set of “cat” concepts people have, there may be enough commonality to facilitate effective communication – the transfer of semantic freight – through the term. That’s important because that means that the “type” is synthetic, that is, synthesized from the various concept instances for “cat”. There’s no Platonic “form” needed, it’s a de facto type, made up of the sum of the individuals’ concepts.

Thanks for your “functionally-equivalent” behavioral descriptions of *how *“sameness” arises. Describing how sameness arises is still irrelevent to the question of whether types are identical to the set of token instantiations of it. So let’s just start from what you call “isomorphic brain states” and run my original argument through again, shall we? Are there types for which isomorphic brain-states are tokens?

Yes, but as concepts themselves (language), not as some kind of immaterial-but-real [sic] entity that is magically reified somehow.

I forget which thread it was, but I recently brought up again the question of whether “walking” exists. Does it? Well, as a concept, we can show that it does, as another concept exists. But there’s no other entity called “walking” we recognize as discrete, subsisting apart from brain-states. It’s just a description of particular phenomena.

The types you are talking about have the same features. They exist as concepts, descriptions of a “cloud of concepts” that overlap and align to some degree or other, if not perfectly. But no “cat concept” exists apart from that, so far as we can tell, and moreover, there’s no need or basis for thinking such a construct should exist. “Cat” as a generic symbol to the “cloud of concepts” all “cat-concept-holders” have is sufficient for our communications, and importantly, matches our empirical analysis.

(As a side note, I really don’t sympatheize with your functionalist view anyway. Problems with cognitive science models in explaining human behavior, understanding, and intelligence should be enough to make your description of how “sameness” arises merely speculative at best.)

Much of the mechanics of cognition in this area is unkown, and rife with speculation. But I’m not sure what makes that ‘unsympathizable’. This is how human knowledge works. The maps are being made, and we are much more clued in on these subjects than we were just a decade ago. Our map-making is proceeding apace. Embracing superstition in response to unknowns, well, to each his own.

The phenomenon of “overlap” is all I need to make my case several posts ago about the existence of types, even if non-overlapping differences in the meanings of -type-concepts is maintained between two token instances of it in individuals.

I ask you again. What do you mean by “exist”? I’ve addressed this from my perspective repeatedly now, and you’ve not, conspicuously.

Differences in “cat” concepts does nothing to reify “cat” as a Platonic form, or some kind of dunno-what that exists immaterially [sic]. Just as “walking” exists as a concept, and we apply that term to body movements that are not all identical, “cat” is the generic concept – the label we point at the “cloud of instances”, just as “walking” is the label we point at the “cloud of instances” of human locomotion by various coordinated motions of the legs and body. The “types” are just descriptions of aggregated instances. There’s no “discrete entity” for a type. If there is, then the onus is on you to first render “exists” as a coherent term in that usage (it’s currently not as you’ve used it), and to show somehow that our observations support that concept as actual.

It is clear you don’t want to concede my argument, but instead, you’d rather weasel around it by offering a naturalistic/behavioral account of how “sameness” arises in language and communication.

I’d rather say I find the the naturalistic model far more parsimonious and coherent than the superstitions about “types existing” in some unspecified/incoherent way. That doesn’t strike me as weaseling, but good, disciplined thinking.

Do you think types exist, irrespective of whether or not your account is true here?

As you are using the term ‘type’ – as something distinct from a brain-state that reifies the concept of the generic – I don’t think ‘exist’ is even meaningful from you. It isn’t even false yet, as you either can’t or won’t provide any semantic value for the term ‘exist’. If you accept that a ‘type’ is a kind of concept that represents an abstraction of a group of instances, then of course, I think that can and does exist, just like any other brain-state does.

And what are they? Can you identifiy them for me? I already offered a naturalistic identity statement of what a concept is, namely, the set of token brain-states among multiple individuals. Do you agree with this, or no?

I have no objection to seeing “cat” as the “sum of all brain-states invoked by ‘cat’”. That just makes it a group of concept instances, an aggregate. We can take that description and make that, itself, a concept, as I’ve just done, and perhaps you have now, too, if you are following me.

But that set would be a collection of natural phenomena – electrons and synapses and neurons and chemicals filling and receding from synaptic clefts. I reject “Platonic universals” as the incoherent, empty verbage it is. Not even wrong, as it is expressed, a deep irony, I note, considering the topic of concepts and effective communication we are discussing.

-TS

 

[Syntax]

I think it’s relevant because it forms the basis for the similarity. For any set of “cat” concepts people have, there may be enough commonality to facilitate effective communication – the transfer of semantic freight – through the term. That’s important because that means that the “type” is synthetic, that is, synthesized from the various concept instances for “cat”. There’s no Platonic “form” needed, it’s a de facto type, made up of the sum of the individuals’ concepts…

Yes, but as concepts themselves (language), not as some kind of immaterial-but-real [sic] entity that is magically reified somehow.

You have been merely making the problem more complicated, but my original argument still goes through. Call the overlapping parts of 3 individuals’ unique concepts of a cat an isomorphic-cat-concept–this would be the actual concept they shared, anyway, that made the communication possible between these individuals from the start. Suppose John’s own cat-concept has the following set of microstructrual conceptual features {a1,d1}, Bill’s cat-concept has the set of features {b2, d2} and Bob’s cat-concept has the features {c3, d3}. We will dub the overlapping proper parts of each concept the isomorphic feature **each concept shares with the other concept indicated by the set of tokens {d1, d2, d3}=D

Suppose further that they all understand each of their unique cat concepts are slightly different in some ways from the others indicated by the features such as a1, b2, and c3, so they agree to refine each of their original cat-concepts into another isomorphic-cat-concept they all can share, precisely where their original concepts overlap, cross-sectioning the features d1, d2, and d3. So they agree the *feature-type *D is the fundamental feature of the isomorphic-cat-concept they all share, even though they understand they have different peculiar images and features associated with their original conceptions of a cat. So the

isomorphic-cat-concept=D.

But D is a type, not a token. And now that we have individuated the concept and made it distinct, my question is this: How do you propose to specify the identity of the isomorphic-cat-concept D? It seems there are two options: either the concept is a identical to the set of tokens {d1, d2, d3} (which you say is the “sum” of its “individual instances”), or the concept is not identical to the set of tokens but something over and above the set of tokens.

(1) D={d1, d2, d3}

or

(2) D (not=) {d1, d2, d3}

If (2) is true, then when John dies, the isomorphic-cat-concept D still exists inside Bill’s and Bob’s minds.

But if (1) is true, then when John dies, the isomorphic-cat-concept {d1, d2, d3} ceases to exist for Bill and Bob, for if you take away one member of a set, the set is no longer the same identical original set; instead, we now have the set {d2, d3}. Therefore, in virtue of our originally stipulated identity we know that,

D (not=) {d2, d3}

But this is absurd because Bill and Bob can still have a mutual understanding and agreement that the the feature D still holds as a type for which d2 and d3 are individual tokens. So surely, in the very least

D (not=) {d2,d3} is false and

D={d2, d3}

must be true.

But surely the two identities,

D={d2, d3}
D={d1, d2, d3}

cannot both be true because they are distinct sets (one is the subset of the other, but the identity still cannot hold for both sets). So which one is it, and how is this decided?

If this is the case, then one moral we can derive from this is that the type-feature D is not dependent on the existence of John’s conceptual token-feature d1, since

D={d2, d3}

can just as easily qualify as the correct identity as

D={d1, d2, d3}

can.

So the isomorphic-cat-concept D can exist independently of John, and the original identity claim

D={d1, d2, d3}

is false.

So (1) is false and (2) is true.

The other option you have is simply to deny there are such things as types. But then you have brute fact on hand for which you cannot explain–mutual understanding and linguistic agreement.

 

[Syntax]

I ask you again. What do you mean by “exist”? I’ve addressed this from my perspective repeatedly now, and you’ve not, conspicuously…I don’t think ‘exist’ is even meaningful from you. It isn’t even false yet, as you either can’t or won’t provide any semantic value for the term ‘exist’.

Huh??..You are really confused. I’ve already addressed this. The burden should not be placed on me anymore than you to define “exist.” It just means “to be.” Existence is not even a property. I hate to break it you, but “to be a physical entity” is NOT a definition of “to be”: it just means what it says, namely, that all and only the entities you want to include in your domain of discourse are physical–“being physical” is simply a predicate that specifies the type of entity it is, not that it is. So you haven’t provided a defnition either!!

Contrary to all the convoluted existentialist hype about the concept of being, I don’t think there are different “ways of being”–that just doesn’t make any sense to me. But you seem to think that “being physical” is just another one of these different “ways of being.” There’s different ways of locomotion, for instance, such as walking and running. But walking and running are not different “ways of being”; they are different ways of travelling.

This whole crazy notion of different “ways of being” is completely non-sensical, but you continue to push me into this area which I’m convinced gets no one anywhere.
For this reason, I don’t think an immaterial entity “be’s” in a “different way” than a physical entity “be’s.” I think immaterial entities are no less “actual” than physical entities. Material and immaterial entities either exist or don’t–period. So existence is a “1 or 0” kind of notion, not some “way of being”. You should join the continental philosopher camp with individuals like Sartre, Heidegger, and Meinong if you insist on talking this way. But I won’t.

In a round-about way, I agree with Quine that “to be” is simply to be the value of a variable in an existentially quantified statement, but this still doesn’t tell us *what *exists, or what the definiton of “to exist” means. Naturally, I would think our disagreement is just about what it is that exists, not about the definition of “existence” anyway. So I don’t know why you keep harping on this point. It doesn’t even make sense to me.

I’d rather say I find the the naturalistic model far more parsimonious and coherent than the superstitions about “types existing” in some unspecified/incoherent way. That doesn’t strike me as weaseling, but good, disciplined thinking.

The “superstitions” remark is your own naturalist bias. Quite honestly, naturalism seems quite superstitious to me because it is not even a thesis that can be verified by science, ironically enough, because it is philosophical bias at its core. Your **verification criterion of meaning and existence ** implicit in all your argument is also very superstitious–this also cannot be supported by science, and in spite of how “natural” it appears, there is no evidence for it. Second, your own desert landscapes, however parsimonious, don’t have any explanatory power. Third, your reduction of types to tokens leads to more “incoherent” results than my posit of types to account for tokens. You are left with brute facts without explanations. I would dub your view “ostrich nominalism,”–hiding your head in the sand and not facing up to the pressing philosophical problems at hand.

 

[Touchstone]

You have been merely making the problem more complicated, but my original argument still goes through. Call the overlapping parts of 3 individuals’ unique concepts of a cat an isomorphic-cat-concept–this would be the actual concept they shared, anyway, that made the communication possible between these individuals from the start. Suppose John’s own cat-concept has the following set of microstructrual conceptual features {a1,d1}, Bill’s cat-concept has the set of features {b2, d2} and Bob’s cat-concept has the features {c3, d3}. We will dub the overlapping proper parts of each concept the isomorphic feature **each concept shares with the other concept indicated by the set of tokens {d1, d2, d3}=D

Suppose further that they all understand each of their unique cat concepts are slightly different in some ways from the others indicated by the features such as a1, b2, and c3, so they agree to refine each of their original cat-concepts into another isomorphic-cat-concept they all can share, precisely where their original concepts overlap, cross-sectioning the features d1, d2, and d3. So they agree the *feature-type *D is the fundamental feature of the isomorphic-cat-concept they all share, even though they understand they have different peculiar images and features associated with their original conceptions of a cat. So the

isomorphic-cat-concept=D.

OK, fine.

But D is a type, not a token. And now that we have individuated the concept and made it distinct, my question is this: How do you propose to specify the identity of the isomorphic-cat-concept D?

As I said above, I can find no basis for positing types as discrete entities. There are no “general objects”, just particular objects which we herd into groups conceptually. In this case D is a concept itself with its referents being the set of newly adopted concepts (“refined” is how you put it) regarding agreed-upon features of ‘catness’.

Types are façon de parler, a useful way of speaking, but not tied to any existential form. I used the example of “walking” to show the utility, and the (apparently) illusory nature of this way of speaking. “Walking” is not an abstract entity, but a concept that *represents *an abstraction concerning a group of particulars, in this case particulars regarding human locomotion.

So the identity of D is just a concept, a cognitive construct that provides a useful “map” across a set of concrete particulars.

It seems there are two options: either the concept is a identical to the set of tokens {d1, d2, d3} (which you say is the “sum” of its “individual instances”), or the concept is not identical to the set of tokens but something over and above the set of tokens.

(1) D={d1, d2, d3}

or

(2) D (not=) {d1, d2, d3}

If (2) is true, then when John dies, the isomorphic-cat-concept D still exists inside Bill’s and Bob’s minds.

But if (1) is true, then when John dies, the isomorphic-cat-concept {d1, d2, d3} ceases to exist for Bill and Bob, for if you take away one member of a set, the set is no longer the same identical original set; instead, we now have the set {d2, d3}. Therefore, in virtue of our originally stipulated identity we know that,

D (not=) {d2, d3}

You are confusing members of the set (or the cardinality of the set) with the qualifying features of the set. The membership doesn’t matter, the qualifying features do. That is, it’s the “d” in “d1, d2, d3…” not the ordinal (e.g. “1”) that qualifies the set. We build the set from the instances, not the other way around. An easy way to apprehend this is to ask what changes semantically or logically in D when John dies. If, as you’ve stipulated, d1 == d2 == d3 with respect to “feature-type D” (as you referred to it), feature-type D remains in D, and it is thus unchanged when John dies. If we name {d2, d3} = D’. D’ === D as a type, by your own measure; you declared that feature-type D was the “fundamental feature of [D]”. It is preserved from D to D’ when John dies.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

But this is absurd because Bill and Bob can still have a mutual understanding and agreement that the the feature D still holds as a type for which d2 and d3 are individual tokens. So surely, in the very least

D (not=) {d2,d3} is false and

D={d2, d3}

must be true.

But surely the two identities,

D={d2, d3}
D={d1, d2, d3}

cannot both be true because they are distinct sets (one is the subset of the other, but the identity still cannot hold for both sets). So which one is it, and how is this decided?

This is just simple equivocation on “=”, and either you’re trying to be funny here, or you are hoping no one is paying attention. Do you think saying “But surely” will grant you a pass on that? Cardinality of the set is NOT test for equality or identity here. It’s true that in set theory we define identity in terms of its members, because that’s our tautological purpose. Sets in that case are defined by its members. But a type is not defined by its members, as you’ve said yourself right in this post.

So you’ve made the point that feature-type D is preserved in D’, and then “surely” (!) decided that all of a sudden, for no reason whatsoever, you would abandon that basis for identity, and equivocate, switching to cardinality and member lists as the basis for identity. This is equivocation, and trades on two independent, and in this case conflicting senses of “equals”. So what you call “distinct sets” are NOT distinct sets by your own rules, until you change the rules in mid-post.

If this is the case, then one moral we can derive from this is that the type-feature D is not dependent on the existence of John’s conceptual token-feature d1, since

D={d2, d3}

can just as easily qualify as the correct identity as

D={d1, d2, d3}

can.

OK, so why did you just adopt the membership test above?

So the isomorphic-cat-concept D can exist independently of John, and the original identity claim

D={d1, d2, d3}
is false.

D as a type is not constituted in that way. It’s synthetic and algorithmic.

D’’ = {Σ (instances having feature-type-d) }

The set is a product of qualifications, which means that particular members coming into or out of the set say nothing about the set as an entity itself.

Consider the set of prime numbers. Over time we discover more and more prime numbers. Has the type of “prime number” changed? No, it has the same attributes and distinctives it always had. It’s membership grows as we discover new primes, but the set is not defined by it’s members. Rather its members are defined by rule, by isomorphic qualification. The membership changes, but the conceptual features of the “prime number” are constant, by definition. Same goes for “bachelor”, or “feature-type D”-based sets.

Thus, {d1, d2, d3} === {d1, d2} === {d4,d7, d9, d44} so long as “===” isolates against the feature “d”, which it does, by your own definition.

So (1) is false and (2) is true.

This only obtains through equivocation. Membership lists are not the identity principle for the types you are trying to analyze, and you’ve said so yourself, here. Repeatedly.

The other option you have is simply to deny there are such things as types. But then you have brute fact on hand for which you cannot explain–mutual understanding and linguistic agreement.

As I said above, I’m fine with “type” as a concept, which provides the basis for its exists – a brain-state. Types of the Magical Realms™ aren’t credible as a claim, empirically or epistemologically.

For all the various points of disputation between nominalism and realism regarding tokens and types, I’m not aware of mutual understanding and linguistic agreement being problematic at all for nominalists. Wetzel, for example, doesn’t dispute nominalist capacity for semantic transfer and effective communication, but rather that “type-talk” is so ubiquitous that it’s untenable (in her view) to suppose that all of that could be just a façon de parler, especially in light of what she identifies as the irreducibility of many sentences that do refer and quantify over types to clean paraphrases that do NOT refer/quantify over types.

For a nominalist, close enough in particulars is close enough. If my “cat” is different than your “cat”, the differences can be and often are inconsequential for transmitting semantic content; my listener will correctly identify my intended subject when I point and say “the cat is on the mat”. The “type” that we would say unites our (to some degree) divergent ideas of “cat” is a conceptual construct, something like “prime numbers” would be.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Huh??..You are really confused. I’ve already addressed this. The burden should not be placed on me anymore than you to define “exist.”

There’s no more burden for you than me. I’ve just been carrying my burden and you have not. I can supply (and have supplied) you not just with a definition, but an operative definition we can apply as a test. You’ve not done so.

It just means “to be.”

Ah, and “to be” means “to exist”. This is shirking the burden. What is the operative principle here? How would we test if a putative thing “exists” or “does not exist”. I’ve given you my principle that divides “exist” from “not exist”. You have not. “To be” adds nothing as a dividing principle, and is completely non-operative.

Existence is not even a property. I hate to break it you, but “to be a physical entity” is NOT a definition of “to be”: it just means what it says, namely, that all and only the entities you want to include in your domain of discourse are physical–“being physical” is simply a predicate that specifies the type of entity it is, not that it is. So you haven’t provided a defnition either!!

I regularly include imaginary entities in my discourse – the types we have been talking about, for example. It’s useful to speak of types as if they were “things”, and an effective way to communicate and share ideas. So ‘physical’ does not constrain the dicourse, but rather the grounds for what we can classify as ‘real’. Nothing wrong with talking about imaginary, unreal things. It’s just useful to be able to distinguish between unreal and real.

I still have no idea what principle you would deploy to distinguish between ‘exists’ and ‘does not exist’, between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’. What is that principle for you?

Contrary to all the convoluted existentialist hype about the concept of being, I don’t think there are different “ways of being”–that just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Well, perhaps that’s your difficulty here – you’ve abandoned a key bit of the conceptual background for thinking about this. I don’t buy a lot of that same hype, but “doesn’t make sense to me” is a lazy response. Quantum physics, an area of keen interest to me, “doesn’t make sense” in many ways and on several levels. But that is no reason to reject it. Rather, it’s the catalyst for improving my sense-making.

But you seem to think that “being physical” is just another one of these different “ways of being.”

I’m not committed to ‘physical’ being the only mode of existence. It may not be. But neither am I aware of any other mode of existence that is even roughly consistent and coherent. It’s not necessary that it is “the” mode, but it might be “the” mode, and it looks to be only mode that we can conceptually rectify.

There’s different ways of locomotion, for instance, such as walking and running. But walking and running are not different “ways of being”; they are different ways of travelling.

This whole crazy notion of different “ways of being” is completely non-sensical, but you continue to push me into this area which I’m convinced gets no one anywhere.

Well, think of this as giving you a hand up from your nihilism.

If you deny that “being physical” is even a way of being, then I’m not sure there’s much more to address than that. If you can show us other ways of being, then you are one the road to fame and fortune. As it is, naturalist semantics for “be” and “exist” are the only ones that perform at all, that get anyone anywhere. Like I said, on naturalism, “being” is addressible in practical ways – we can fly coast to coast in just hours based on this view of being, of what existence means and how it obtains.

For this reason, I don’t think an immaterial entity “be’s” in a “different way” than a physical entity “be’s.”

It’s profoundly different. A physical entity is objectively verifiable, at least in principle. For an immaterial entity, “verifiable” and “objectively” aren’t even coherent terms. This is precisely how “immaterial being” cannot approach “material being”. That’s not to say immaterial being cannot obtain; possibly it could. But no one has any idea of how that coheres as an actuality, at all. And this is the salient difference from material being.

I think immaterial entities are no less “actual” than physical entities.

That’s impossible to say when “actual” is undefined for “immaterial”, non? If I’m mistaken and there is an operating principle at work driving “actual” in the immaterial sense, I’d appreciate your pointing it out to me.

Material and immaterial entities either exist or don’t–period.

What does that mean, “–period”? “Immaterial existence” isn’t even a meaningful phrase, so far as I’m aware. “Material existence” is a meaningful phrase – kick your friendly nearby wall for a demonstration of what it can mean to exist in a material sense. You have a shared, well understood principle on one hand (material existence) and an empty, meaningless term on the other (immaterial existence) – a “square circle” of sorts, in existential terms.

So existence is a “1 or 0” kind of notion, not some “way of being”.

You’re more materialist then I, in that case. On materialism, we can deploy such a binary notion – extended in space/time/energy/matter, or not. But in your immaterialist view, there’s no distinguishing between “1” and “0”. “Exist” and “not exist” mean precisely the same thing, and pass the very same tests, which is to say no meaning, and no tests whatsoever.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Syntax:

You should join the continental philosopher camp with individuals like Sartre, Heidegger, and Meinong if you insist on talking this way. But I won’t.

Philosophy uninformed by science has a terrible track record, doesn’t it?

In a round-about way, I agree with Quine that “to be” is simply to be the value of a variable in an existentially quantified statement, but this still doesn’t tell us *what *exists, or what the definiton of “to exist” means. Naturally, I would think our disagreement is just about what it is that exists, not about the definition of “existence” anyway.

I’ve given you my definiton, which is an operative one, and you’ve responded with “to be”, a complete inert tautology. Based on this, I don’t see that you have any principled way to determine what exists and what does not. “What exists” is very much at issue, then, between us. I can’t even be persuaded by your argument for the existence of ‘types’, because neither of us has any clue what it takes to satisfy that claim.

So I don’t know why you keep harping on this point. It doesn’t even make sense to me.

It’s a major difiiculty. “Types exist” is not even wrong as you have it. It’s just meaningless. The first hurdle to overcome is the incoherence of the claim. That’s where we are stuck. Once we have some grounds for what it means for a type to exist, then we can apply that test and see how it fares.

The “superstitions” remark is your own naturalist bias. Quite honestly, naturalism seems quite superstitious to me because it is not even a thesis that can be verified by science, ironically enough, because it is philosophical bias at its core.

I understand superstition to be the embrace of supernatural or immaterial beings and entities due to ignorance about the natural world. I think if you survey the use of the word, and the examples of superstition from history, you will see this fits as I’ve applied it. It’s decidedly not a stance I embrace. Materialism may be wrong, but in any case it’s non-superstitious.

Your **verification criterion of meaning and existence ** implicit in all your argument is also very superstitious–this also cannot be supported by science, and in spite of how “natural” it appears, there is no evidence for it.

OK, now I have to ask what you mean by ‘superstitious’. What would a “non-superstitious” disposition look like to you? As it reads, it sounds like a “I’m rubber, you’re glue” level response here. Oh yeah, well then you’re superstitious, too! But maybe I just need to hear your definition of superstition.

Second, your own desert landscapes, however parsimonious, don’t have any explanatory power.

They only have what proceeds from the model. “The Gods must be bowling” has very strong explanatory power for the phenomena of thunder. It’s just not grounded – God explanations are that way. No natural explanation can ever compete with supernaturalist/immaterialist explanations in terms of explanatory power – naturalism is constrained by nature, and supernaturalism is only constrained by the limits of imagination and fantasy, which is to say not practically constrained or accountable in the least.

Third, your reduction of types to tokens leads to more “incoherent” results than my posit of types to account for tokens. You are left with brute facts without explanations. I would dub your view “ostrich nominalism,”–hiding your head in the sand and not facing up to the pressing philosophical problems at hand.

Well, superstition, as commonly defined, is an expression of fear of the unknown. And to be sure, there’s a lot of unknowns in the area of cognition, linguistics and conceptual processing. If you want to call it evasive, suit yourself, but I’m not afraid to recognize unkowns as unknowns, or to recognize superstitions that arise from the threatening nature of those unknowns as superstitions. I am a big fan of science and discovery and empiricism, so I am all for attacking the unknowns the hard way, the real way. I’m not satisfied with them as unknowns, but understand that real knowledge is hard won and superstitions are cheap and easy.

-TS

 

[Syntax]

No. I use “=” and “is” with one and only meaning: identity.

OK, fine.

As I said above, I can find no basis for positing types as discrete entities. There are no “general objects”, just particular objects which we herd into groups conceptually. In this case D is a concept itself with its referents being the set of newly adopted concepts (“refined” is how you put it) regarding agreed-upon features of ‘catness’.

Right. If a type is just a set of particulars like you say it is, then a a type=set of tokens. That’s an identity statement. If not, you need to qualify what you mean.

-]You are confusing /-] **[there are] **members of the set (or the cardinality of the set) -]with/-] **[and] **the qualifying features of the set. The membership doesn’t matter, the qualifying features do! That is, it’s the “d” in “d1, d2, d3…” not the ordinal (e.g. “1”) that qualifies the set.

If the qualifying features are what matters, then you’ve just admitted the conclusion of my argument. This is precisely what I am asking. What is d? Is it the qualifying feature over and above the set, or is it the set itself? Is d={d1, d2, d3? Or is d (not =) {d1,d2,d3}?

We build the set from the instances, not the other way around.

It doesn’t matter how the set is built, the argument still goes through. Besides, that’s an epistemic question, not an identity question.

An easy way to apprehend this is to ask what changes semantically or logically in D when John dies. If, as you’ve stipulated, d1 == d2 == d3 with respect to “feature-type D” (as you referred to it), feature-type D remains in D,

That’s incorrect. D is not a memer of the set {d1,d2,d3}, but by stipulated definition (which is also your own), D just is that set.

and it is thus unchanged when John dies.

D would remain unchanged when John dies only if D is *not *identical to the set {d1,d2,d3}. So if D does remains when John dies, then D is something different than the original set–which is precisely the conclusion of my argument.

If we name {d2, d3} = D’. D’ === D as a type, by your own measure; you declared that feature-type D was the “fundamental feature of [D]”. It is preserved from D to D’ when John dies.

This is precisely the crux of the argument. If d is the “fundamental feature-type” they’ve all stipulated from the start, and d is “being preserved” from the **set change **D to D", then d is not identical to the original set, but is something different than that original set. So fundamental-feature-d is not dependent on the original set, therefore, d is not dependent on John.

Q.E.D

 

[Syntax]

There’s no more burden for you than me. I’ve just been carrying my burden and you have not. I can supply (and have supplied) you not just with a definition, but an operative definition we can apply as a test. You’ve not done so. Ah, and “to be” means “to exist”. This is shirking the burden. What is the operative principle here? How would we test if a putative thing “exists” or “does not exist”. I’ve given you my principle that divides “exist” from “not exist”. You have not. “To be” adds nothing as a dividing principle, and is completely non-operative.

Your “operative principle” **itself **is non-testable. So it is a tautological assumption like this:

“The meaning of ‘to exist’ should be testable on physical objects. And to be a testable physical object is what it means to exist.”

But why should this be any more plausible than its denial? You are not giving a reason why we should believe your operative principle is true from the start. Moreover, **it itself **is not even a principle derivable empirically: so it is just groundlessly stipulated.

I regularly include imaginary entities in my discourse – the types we have been talking about, for example. It’s useful to speak of types as if they were “things”, and an effective way to communicate and share ideas. So ‘physical’ does not constrain the dicourse, but rather the grounds for what we can classify as ‘real’. Nothing wrong with talking about imaginary, unreal things. It’s just useful to be able to distinguish between unreal and real.I still have no idea what principle you would deploy to distinguish between ‘exists’ and ‘does not exist’, between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’. What is that principle for you?.

Now the bold-faced I highlighted is an epistemic question about how we know what counts as reall and not-real, and this is a good question. And I would advance that the way of going about deciding this involves a play between the dictates of the principle of sufficient reason, inference to the best explanation, inductive reasoning, and the logical/semantic virtues of consistency, on the one hand, and the virtue of being parismonious on the other. The reason is that, historically, the simpler explanation turn out to be the true one, but the simpler explanation is not always the best, nor is it always the logically/semantically consistent. So I have a wealth of criteria, but by no means do I think your own emprical critierion “If I can’t observe it, then it doesn’t exist” should be the only one. In fact, there’s more reason to think it is not a good criterion for deciding what is real and what is not to begin with. Science itself operates on all the criteria I listed above **in addition to **your own empirical criterion, does it not? Science is not some purely naive empirical enterprise without the virtues of rationality, inference to the best explanation, the principle of sufficient reason, and logical consistency. Just look at the history of how empirical science has operated! There are many things it can’t directly observe, and it never will, but infers the existence of those things from the empirical data, whether those things are gravity, electrons, energy, entropy, etc. Of course, a lot of practicing scientists will interpret their theories which postulate the existence of these theoretical entities purely instrumentally–so they won’t exactly be committed to the existence of these entities. But the point is that by no means are they relying merely on your **verification criterion **of existence as the only criterion. This would be absurd, because practicing scientists simply *don’t *do this.

It’s profoundly different. A physical entity is objectively verifiable, at least in principle. For an immaterial entity, “verifiable” and “objectively” aren’t even coherent terms.

That’s right, for immaterial entities “verifiable” is incoherent. So what? Who said I have to believe that if something is not verifiable, then it is incoherent? Again, this is an unverifiable assumption in itself.

What does that mean, “–period”? “Immaterial existence” isn’t even a meaningful phrase, so far as I’m aware. “Material existence” is a meaningful phrase – kick your friendly nearby wall for a demonstration of what it can mean to exist in a material sense

“to exist”–the Shakespearean “to be or not to be.” “Immaterial existence” is not meaningless. You just think it is because you assume “material existence” is the only meaningful phrase which can be applied to the verb “to exist.”

You’re more materialist then I, in that case. On materialism, we can deploy such a binary notion – extended in space/time/energy/matter, or not. .

Again you are just assuming that “spatial-temporal extension” is synonymous with “to exist” and “not to exist.” I disagree.

But in your immaterialist view, there’s no distinguishing between “1” and “0”.

This is false.

“Exist” and “not exist” mean precisely the same thing, and pass the very same tests, which is to say no meaning, and no tests whatsoever.

I gave you various criteria for deciding this.

 

[Betterave]

Your “operative principle” **itself **is non-testable.

You mean to say that pointing out the useful and dramatically innovative possibility of breakfast in New York and late lunch in San Francisco doesn’t clinch it for you? If that’s the way you want to be, I don’t know what you mean by ‘test’! You obviously need a new ‘test’-map - here take one… What? You say you don’t want it? How could you not? It’s got Parsimony; you like Parsimony don’t you? … What? You already have a map and it already has parsimony on it? Let me see that… No, you’ve got it wrong Parsimony is supposed to be over here, I checked with Reality and, trust me, that’s how it is…



(I admire your tenacity at least, TS. I’ll reply to your last reply to me later - unless you’re ready to admit defeat now? (my fingers - not crossed))

 

[Touchstone]

You mean to say that pointing out the useful and dramatically innovative possibility of breakfast in New York and late lunch in San Francisco doesn’t clinch it for you?

Of course air travel was a metonym for natural knowledge, an epistemology that does utilize that test. It’s not “spirits” that lift your jet into the sky, it’s “extended stuff”.

If the extension in STEM principle isn’t an operative test, I wonder what you think would be. It can be and is applied across the board, so it’s unquestionably operative. The complaint must be that you think the test leaves something out, or that what it counts “in” isn’t real after all?

Dunno. But as always, I’ll ask for something to compete with what I’ve offered – name your superstitions, please! Or if they are not superstitions, then I’m extra interested in what you deploy as shared test we can use to distinguish between “exists” and “doesn’t exist”, and make that an upgrade to our language and communications over the humble natural tests that get applied now, and which help get you from LaGuardia to SFO fast and safe, among a million and more other products of that epistemology.

If that’s the way you want to be, I don’t know what you mean by ‘test’! You obviously need a new ‘test’-map - here take one… What? You say you don’t want it? How could you not? It’s got Parsimony; you like Parsimony don’t you? … What? You already have a map and it already has parsimony on it? Let me see that… No, you’ve got it wrong Parsimony is supposed to be over here, I checked with Reality and, trust me, that’s how it is…

That’s the beauty of this test – it’s objective, and doesn’t require that anyone trust me at all. You can try it for yourself, and it can be applied by any third parties. The “trust” is a demand that must be made by religious appeals – “trust me, God exists”, where the claims just fail spectacularly on objective analysis. This is where natural epistemic principles on existence excel – no trusting me needed, or even relevant. It stands on the record of its own, objectively affirmed achievements.

(I admire your tenacity at least, TS. I’ll reply to your last reply to me later - unless you’re ready to admit defeat now? (my fingers - not crossed))

Trust me, you’re a bit confused.

-TS

 

[Betterave]

That’s the beauty of this test – it’s objective, and doesn’t require that anyone trust me at all. You can try it for yourself, and it can be applied by any third parties. The “trust” is a demand that must be made by religious appeals – “trust me, God exists”, where the claims just fail spectacularly on objective analysis. This is where natural epistemic principles on existence excel – no trusting me needed, or even relevant. It stands on the record of its own, objectively affirmed achievements.

Trust me, you’re a bit confused.

 

[Syntax]

That’s the beauty of this test – it’s objective, and doesn’t require that anyone trust me at all. You can try it for yourself, and it can be applied by any third parties. The “trust” is a demand that must be made by religious appeals – “trust me, God exists”, where the claims just fail spectacularly on objective analysis. This is where natural epistemic principles on existence excel – no trusting me needed, or even relevant. It stands on the record of its own, objectively affirmed achievements.

Trust me, you’re a bit confused.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

That little “;-)” at the end there was a wink, and old-school smiley. The wink was for the “Trust me”.

-TS

 

[Betterave]

Originally Posted by Touchstone
That’s the beauty of this test – it’s objective, and doesn’t require that anyone trust me at all. You can try it for yourself, and it can be applied by any third parties. The “trust” is a demand that must be made by religious appeals – “trust me, God exists”, where the claims just fail spectacularly on objective analysis. This is where natural epistemic principles on existence excel – no trusting me needed, or even relevant. It stands on the record of its own, objectively affirmed achievements.

Trust me, you’re a bit confused.

That little “;-)” at the end there was a wink, and old-school smiley. The wink was for the “Trust me”.

ah, so I missed your double entendre(?) - so really you’re saying: “don’t trust me (I am myself and myself is the easiest person to fool) - trust Reality (as I have just explained it to you)”…?

 

[Betterave]

TS, I gather that this is your view:

“concepts are STEM; but not all concepts refer to (have relationship of isomorphism with) STEM, some refer to (have relationship of isomorphism with) other concepts… but concepts *are *STEM…”

Have I got this right?