Realism - Conceptualism - Nominalism.

[Procrustes Stretched]

If you had to pick one that best fits your beliefs which would it be?

Me? I think it would be Conceptualism.

 

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The problem of universals is an ancient problem in metaphysics about whether universals exist.

Universals are general or abstract qualities, characteristics, properties, kinds or relations, such as being male/female, solid/liquid/gas or a certain colour, that can be predicated of individuals or particulars or that individuals or particulars can be regarded as sharing or participating in. For example, Meena, John and Poppy all have the quality of being human or humanity is the universal they have in common.

While many standard cases of universals are also typically regarded as abstract objects (such as humanity), abstract objects are not necessarily universals. For example, in an article on nominalism by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, numbers can be held to be particular yet abstract objects.

The problem of universals is about their status; as to whether universals exist independently of the individuals of whom they can be predicated or if they are merely convenient ways of talking about and finding similarity among particular things that are radically different.

This has led philosophers to raise questions like, if they exist, do they exist in the individuals or only in people's minds or in some separate metaphysical domain?

Questions like these arise from attempts to account for the phenomenon of similarity or attribute agreement among things. For example, living grass and some apples are similar, namely in having the attribute of greenness. The issue, however, is how to account for this and related facts.

 

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from Wikipedia: There are two main positions on the issue: realism and nominalism (sometimes simply called "anti-realism" in regards to universals).

Conceptualism is a doctrine in philosophy intermediate between nominalism and realism that says universals exist only within the mind and have no external or substantial reality.

 

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Conceptualism in scholasticism

In late and "second" scholasticism, the doctrines that would now be classified as conceptualist were called either moderate nominalism or seminominalism. By means of the late scholastic terminology, conceptualism can be defined as belief in universal formal concepts (resulting by means of formal precision) and rejection of objective concepts (resulting, supposedly, by means of objective precision. In other words, moderate realism and conceptualism both agree in admitting universal mental acts (formal concepts), but differ in that moderate realism claims that to such acts correspond universal intentional objects, whereas conceptualism denies any such universal objects.

In the medieval thought, the first conceptualist was probably Pierre Abélard, but some thinkers classify him as a moderate realist. The bulk of late medieval thinkers usually called "nominalists" were in fact conceptualists: William Ockham, Jean Buridan, etc. In the 17th century conceptualism gained favour for some decades especially among the Jesuits: Hurtado de Mendoza, Rodrigo de Arriaga and Francisco Oviedo are the main figures. Although the order soon returned to the more realist philosophy of Francisco Suárez, the ideas of these Jesuits had a great impact on the contemporary early modern thinkers.

[edit] Modern conceptualism

Conceptualism was either explicitly or implicitly embraced by most of the early modern thinkers like Descartes, John Locke or Leibniz - often in a quite simplified form if compared with the elaborate Scholastic theories. Sometimes the term is applied even to the radically different philosophy of Kant, who holds that universals have no connection with external things because they are exclusively produced by our a priori mental structures and functions.[citation needed] However, this application of the term "conceptualism" is not very usual, since the problem of universals can, strictly speaking, be meaningfully raised only within the framework of the traditional, pre-Kantian epistemology.

Conceptualism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" are used in philosophy (epistemology) to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments. A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience (for example 'All bachelors are unmarried'); a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence (for example 'Some bachelors are very happy'). A priori justification makes no reference to experience; the issue concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in question—what justifies or grounds one's belief in it. Galen Strawson wrote that an a priori argument is one of which "you can see that it is true just lying on your couch. You don't have to get up off your couch and go outside and examine the way things are in the physical world. You don't have to do any science."[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori_(philosophy)

 

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How do Moderate realism:

Moderate realism as a position in the debate on the metaphysics of universals holds that there is no realm in which universals exist (against platonism, nor do they really exist within the individuals as universals, but rather universals really exist within the particulars as individualised, and multiplied. They exist as universals only as objects of our intellect, due to abstraction.

It is opposed to both full-blooded realism, such as the theory of Platonic forms, and nominalism. Nominalists deny the existence of universals altogether, even as individualised and multiplied within the individuals.

Aristotle espoused a form of moderate realism.


...and Conceptualism differ?

 

[Diuretic]

Okay I'll put my hand up and hop in early, I haven't fully digested all your posts, I'll go back and do so but I'm rushing a bit (getting ready for work). Is this where Plato's forms come in? I never did fully understand any of it.

But that last claim of mine is probably going to be self-evident.

Edit - you mentioned forms, sorry, must read carefully or be mocked.

 

[Diuretic]

If you had to pick one that best fits your beliefs which would it be?

Me? I think it would be Conceptualism.

I'll go with Aristotle. Always a safe bet.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Okay I'll put my hand up and hop in early, I haven't fully digested all your posts, I'll go back and do so but I'm rushing a bit (getting ready for work). Is this where Plato's forms come in? I never did fully understand any of it.

But that last claim of mine is probably going to be self-evident.

Edit - you mentioned forms, sorry, must read carefully or be mocked.

Understanding is not always required. Just listen to any grad student or Prof. of philosophy prattle on about this shit and then ask them to explain it in plain English that a child could comprehend. very few can and why is that so important to me? because any nitwit worth spit can parrot what they read or hear.

Plato and Ari did have something to say about this shit. I am always curious where I stand on this stuff. From time to time I rethink what it is I believe about reality, existence, the universe....life.

Keeping an open mind to all variations, of most of the theories out there, has been fun. It appears with more and more knowledge and experience living I have yet to change what I believe. If I ever do it will most likely be because of some scientific fact that reshapes how I attempt to understand the universe around me.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

I'll go with Aristotle. Always a safe bet.

Aristotle comes after Plato (his student) and he refined or expanded on the earlier works of Plato, both were realists?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle%27s_theory_of_universals

 

[Diuretic]

Excellent! The Big Test - I like it, "break it down for me in terms I can understand". That tests a wanker. A good teacher will do exactly that, make it understandable, a poor teacher will retreate into exclusive language and eventually tell you you're too stupid to understand.

I like to think about these things as well, in my own non-technical way. I remember having forms explained to me and - best I can remember of it - the argument was that the chair we were looking at was only a pale imitation of real chair, a chair that had pure chair essence, which was somewhere else (probably in a hidden dimension). I remember thinking, it's a chair, what's this about? I think I failed the test

But the more I think about these abstract questions, ironically, the more I get towards a form of nihilism. And that's a bit of a worry

 

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Here we have a short Wikipedia article on Aristotle's Realism

Aristotle's theory of universals is one of the classic solutions to the problem of universals. Aristotle thought—to put it in a not-very-enlightening way—that universals are simply types, properties, or relations that are common to their various instances. In Aristotle's view, universals exist only where they are instantiated; they exist only in things (he said they exist in re, which means simply "in things"), never apart from things. Beyond this Aristotle said that a universal is something identical in each of its instances. So all red things are similar in that there is the same universal, redness, in each thing. There is no Platonic form of redness, standing apart from all red things; instead, in each red thing there is the same universal, redness.

To further flesh out Aristotle's theory of universals, it is useful to consider how the theory might satisfy the constraints on theories of universals listed in the problem of universals article.

First of all, on Aristotle's view, universals can be instantiated multiple times. Aristotle stresses, after all, the one and the same universal, applehood (say), that appears in each apple. Common sense might detect a problem here. (The problem can arise for other forms of realism about universals, however.) Namely, how can we make sense of exactly the same thing being in all of these different objects? That after all is what the theory says; to say that different deserts, the Sahara, the Atacama, and the Gobi are all dry places, is just to say that the exact same being, the universal dryness, occurs at each place. Universals must be awfully strange entities if exactly the same universal can exist in many places and times at once, or so one might think. But maybe that's not so troubling; it seems troubling if we expect universals to be like physical objects, but remember, we are talking about a totally different category of being. So a common defense of realism (and hence of Aristotle's realism) is that we should not expect universals to behave as ordinary physical objects do. Maybe then it is not so strange, then, to say that the exact same universal, dryness, occurs all over the earth at once; after all, there is nothing strange about saying that different deserts can be dry at the same time. The question is whether this could still be said if the earth had only one biosphere.

Are Aristotelian universals abstract? And are they, then, what we conceive of when we conceive of abstract objects such as redness? Perhaps. It will help to explain something about how we form concepts, according to Aristotle. We might think of a little girl just forming the concept of human beings. How does she do it? When we form the concept of a universal on Aristotle's theory, we abstract from a lot of the instances we come across. We as it were mentally extract from each thing the quality that they all have in common. So how does the little girl get the concept of a human being? She learns to ignore the details, tall and short, black and white, long hair and short hair, male and female, etc.; and she pays attention to the thing that they all have in common, namely, humanity. On Aristotle's view, the universal humanity is the same in all humans (i.e., all humans have that exact same type in common); and this allows us to form a concept of humanity that applies to all humans.

Are Aristotelian universals the sorts of things we refer to when we use general terms, like 'redness' and 'humanity'? Again, perhaps. The idea is that when we refer to humanity, we refer to the type, human being, that appears identically in each human. We do not refer simply to all the humans, but instead the type, human being, which is the same in each human.

This theory goes against the theory of Plato (his master). Plato's theory consists of putting art in the lowest level. This is due to the fact that Plato believed that our world is subject to the five senses and so it is not real; because we are subject to time, time is equal to change, change is equal to decay and decay is equal to death. something which changes, (according to his theory) is something which cannot be identified because it is always changing, hence why this world is not real. And so art is an imitation of not (like Aristotle) the universals of the particulars but a copy of the unreal world.

 

[Diuretic]

Okay, I can definitely go with Aristotle on this.

So a chair is a chair is a chair. There is no "chairness" stored in another dimension.

If you can sit on it (it's primary use) then it's a chair. Chairness is the quality of something designed to be sat on.

Or something like that.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Excellent! The Big Test - I like it, "break it down for me in terms I can understand". That tests a wanker. A good teacher will do exactly that, make it understandable, a poor teacher will retreate into exclusive language and eventually tell you you're too stupid to understand.

I like to think about these things as well, in my own non-technical way. I remember having forms explained to me and - best I can remember of it - the argument was that the chair we were looking at was only a pale imitation of real chair, a chair that had pure chair essence, which was somewhere else (probably in a hidden dimension). I remember thinking, it's a chair, what's this about? I think I failed the test

But the more I think about these abstract questions, ironically, the more I get towards a form of nihilism. And that's a bit of a worry

funny.


a dear old friend of mine is a retired teacher. jesuit trained and all that. he forgets half of what most he and everyone knows. I would always fuk with him by failing to grasp what he was saying after he'd try and tell me what it was I was supposedly saying.

He was a Catholic seminarian in training from high school on. There breadth and depth of his knowledge was mind blowing. I learned things listening to him. I'd look things up after talking and hanging around with him.

ahhhh, sigh...I miss his company. Being on the phone with him is just not the same as being there. I need to call him and thank him again for being a friend and for being such an influence on and in my life.


out the door soon.

ltr

d.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Okay, I can definitely go with Aristotle on this.

So a chair is a chair is a chair. There is no "chairness" stored in another dimension.

If you can sit on it (it's primary use) then it's a chair. Chairness is the quality of something designed to be sat on.

Or something like that.

hold that thought---if you can.

 

[Diuretic]

hold that thought---if you can.

I wrote it down in my little notebook, that's the only way I can hold on to any thought

 

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I wrote it down in my little notebook, that's the only way I can hold on to any thought

things in here have gotten so abstract I am experiencing a paramnesia, moment. and that is one that is NOT all over again


so you'd qualify as a modern realist?

 

[Diuretic]

Good word that paramnesia - I'll add that to my notebook (the indexed one).

Modern realist? If i knew what it meant I might admit to it but I'm going to be a bit cautious - I wouldn't want to get labelled a Randian or something cultish like that.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Good word that paramnesia - I'll add that to my notebook (the indexed one).

Modern realist? If i knew what it meant I might admit to it but I'm going to be a bit cautious - I wouldn't want to get labelled a Randian or something cultish like that.

Funny. Some editor over at Wikipedia used paramnesia along with promnesia in describing deja vu.


and you are either a sly murtha or wise beyond the ages for guessing that you'd be called a Randian something or other if you didn't qualify things.

let me check something out....be right back.

 

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I found part of what I was looking for. There are some who have said Rand's Objectivism is a sort of Modern or Moderate Realism. There are so many aspect to her crap, crap being the ODD (Official Dev Description) of her works. Modern Realism and Objectivism infect the arts and everywhere else (Randians just may be the human response to cockroaches alone surviving a planetary disaster of unimaginable proportions), and they are written about so much I've lost interest in trying to make sense of it all. Well D'Oh, to me!

I like what this guy has to say as I've always looked at Objectivism (after my brief juvenile fling/perusal with/of it) as a materialistic nitwitticism:

Objectivism vs. Materialism and Idealism

Is Objectivism Merely a
Disguised Materialism?

by Jonathan Dolhenty, Ph.D.

 

[Diuretic]

If I really knew anything about Randian objectivism I might come up with something approaching useful. I don't know anything about it therefore I've got no hope of adding anything useful.

Now I'm confused about my own views. I'm not an Idealist, I know that. I lean towards Materialism, I know that. I suppose I'm a moderate Realist.

No, scrub that, put me in with the Materialists. Human consciousness is simply the effect of the operation of the great ravell'd knot.

I feel better now