Magical thinking in science and philosophy

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Terrapin Station
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Terrapin Station »

Atla wrote: January 18th, 2020, 6:26 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: January 18th, 2020, 5:33 pm "Everything has properties" or rather "everything is coextensive with properties" (I just usually don't write it the latter way because then I have to explain it too much)
Don't you mean that everything that exists can be described using coextensive properties.
No. I wasn't saying something about descriptions. I was saying something about what the world is like in general.
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Atla »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 18th, 2020, 7:08 pm How would you have any difficulty understanding that? Brownian motion properties are properties of some matter. Transducer properties are properties of some matter. And so on. Different matter, in different dynamic relations with other matter, amounts to different properties. This shouldn't be news to you.
1. So then again, in that sense EVERYTHING is a property of matter, so the word property becomes meaningless. That's what I was objecting to from the start, you are making a fool of yourself.

2. Calling everything a property and you don't realize that when such macro-sized behaviour is in question, your 'properties' are clearly abstract descriptions. Yet you reify them and see them as somehow inherent in matter. That's not how to think.

3. Mental properties are the properties of some matter only in a certain sense. If you had exposure to philosophy before you should know that. You are avoiding the most important philosophical realizations by miscategorizing some aspects of the 'mental', effectively killing philosophy.
The four fundamental forces and the elementary particles are not everything physical. Again, how can you not know this?
Yes gravity for example is lacking etc., that's why I said incomplete several times.
Maybe you need more help so I'll spell it out again: INCOMPLETE.
Where was the part of the standard model where it talks about listing the properties of each collection?
Again see 2. above. I've seen you criticize others for their reification fallacies and yet you do that too.
I didn't ask you to tell me to find something. I asked you to give me a citation for a physics source talking about the properties of elliptical machines. An elliptical machine manual or something like that wouldn't cut it. That's not a physics source. You'd have to give me something that's specifically under the purview of physics. Because you made a claim about physics.
Apparently you haven't heard of physics before so you don't know that physics describes the building blocks of everything including elliptical machines.
Guess it's your admittance of ignorance. I don't know if there are physics studies on elliptical machines but there are certainly many studies on all the elements the machines are built from, google if you want.
Because you ignorantly said that physics talks about all physical facts.
And it does. Guess, again, you are ignorant about physics.
How it be that you don't understand common English usage?
circular
adjective
1.
having the form of a circle.

How it be that you aren't familiar with the need on a philosophy forum to differentiate between perfect and imperfect circles, and abstract and concrete 'circles'?
You're conflating concepts and what the concepts are in response to. How can you make such a simple mistake?
Again, you are conflating concepts with what they are in response to. Stop being so confused.
Pseudo-properties? lol. What is the pseudo property versus non-pseudo property distinction you're making?
Well you don't get that do you, because you reify all 'properties'.
No. I wasn't saying something about descriptions. I was saying something about what the world is like in general.
Yes, and the world isn't like that in general. Because you were only talking about desriptions actually.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

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If someone is continually disagreeing with me and the posts seem to threaten to keep getting longer on multiple issues, I do one thing at a time:
Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 3:33 am
1. So then again, in that sense EVERYTHING is a property of matter, so the word property becomes meaningless. That's what I was objecting to from the start, you are making a fool of yourself.
Does "everything" apply to everything? Does that make "everything" meaningless? If so, how do we understand what you're saying when you use the word "everything"?
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Atla »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 9:24 am If someone is continually disagreeing with me and the posts seem to threaten to keep getting longer on multiple issues, I do one thing at a time:
Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 3:33 am
1. So then again, in that sense EVERYTHING is a property of matter, so the word property becomes meaningless. That's what I was objecting to from the start, you are making a fool of yourself.
Does "everything" apply to everything? Does that make "everything" meaningless? If so, how do we understand what you're saying when you use the word "everything"?
No, it doesn't make "everything" meaningless, nor did I say that.
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

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Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 11:40 am
Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 9:24 am If someone is continually disagreeing with me and the posts seem to threaten to keep getting longer on multiple issues, I do one thing at a time:



Does "everything" apply to everything? Does that make "everything" meaningless? If so, how do we understand what you're saying when you use the word "everything"?
No, it doesn't make "everything" meaningless, nor did I say that.
Sure. So the fact that x would apply to everything wouldn't be sufficient to make x meaningless then, would it?
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Atla »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 2:24 pm
Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 11:40 am
No, it doesn't make "everything" meaningless, nor did I say that.
Sure. So the fact that x would apply to everything wouldn't be sufficient to make x meaningless then, would it?
We were talking about physical properties, not some "x", address that or don't.
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

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Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 2:42 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 2:24 pm

Sure. So the fact that x would apply to everything wouldn't be sufficient to make x meaningless then, would it?
We were talking about physical properties, not some "x", address that or don't.
The argument you implied was that if something applies to everything, that makes it meaningless.

Did you have another argument in mind for what makes something meaningless than that?
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Atla »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 3:15 pm
Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 2:42 pm
We were talking about physical properties, not some "x", address that or don't.
The argument you implied was that if something applies to everything, that makes it meaningless.

Did you have another argument in mind for what makes something meaningless than that?
Learn to read first before you make statements. We were talking about physical properties, not "something".
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

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Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 3:46 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 3:15 pm

The argument you implied was that if something applies to everything, that makes it meaningless.

Did you have another argument in mind for what makes something meaningless than that?
Learn to read first before you make statements. We were talking about physical properties, not "something".
Sure. You said that if properties apply to everything then they're meaningless. So that's not simply due to properties applying to everything then--because other things that apply to everything are not meaningless simply by virtue of the fact that they apply to everything--but it's due to what additional factor?
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Atla »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 3:57 pm
Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 3:46 pm
Learn to read first before you make statements. We were talking about physical properties, not "something".
Sure. You said that if properties apply to everything then they're meaningless. So that's not simply due to properties applying to everything then--because other things that apply to everything are not meaningless simply by virtue of the fact that they apply to everything--but it's due to what additional factor?
It makes no sense to say that everything is a property because most properties can generally be seen as abstractions.
It also makes no sense to say that everything is a physical property because then equally we could say that everyrthing is a mental property as well.
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

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Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 4:02 pm It makes no sense to say that everything is a property because most properties can generally be seen as abstractions.
That's the very overplayed chestnut of conflating concepts and what the concepts are in response to.
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Atla »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 4:09 pm
Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 4:02 pm It makes no sense to say that everything is a property because most properties can generally be seen as abstractions.
That's the very overplayed chestnut of conflating concepts and what the concepts are in response to.
Yeah whatever you say, after pages you still haven't been able to explain what you objected to in my OP. Maybe you don't know either.
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Terrapin Station »

Atla wrote: January 19th, 2020, 4:16 pm
Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 4:09 pm

That's the very overplayed chestnut of conflating concepts and what the concepts are in response to.
Yeah whatever you say, after pages you still haven't been able to explain what you objected to in my OP. Maybe you don't know either.
I said this very simply in my first post in the thread: "Matter isn't nothing. Matter necessarily has properties." So no one is claiming that "mind comes from nothing."
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Terrapin Station »

Re matter necessarily having properties, that should be very simple to understand. Anything that exists (matter or not) is going to have some set of characteristics, some set of ways that it is, some set of ways that it interacts with other things, etc. Those are properties.
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Re: Magical thinking in science and philosophy

Post by Consul »

Terrapin Station wrote: January 19th, 2020, 5:08 pmRe matter necessarily having properties, that should be very simple to understand. Anything that exists (matter or not) is going to have some set of characteristics, some set of ways that it is, some set of ways that it interacts with other things, etc. Those are properties.
There is still the ontological question of whether the truthmakers of truths about ways things are involve a category of entities called properties, which is answered in the negative by nominalists/antirealists about them.

By the way, there are different versions of property nominalism:

QUOTE:
1. "Class Nominalism. The reductive doctrine that for particulars to have the same property, or to have the same relation, is for them to be members of the same class of particulars." (p. 136)

2. "Concept Nominalism. The reductive doctrine that for particulars to have the same property, or to have the same relation, is for them to fall under the same concept." (p. 137)

3. "Mereological Nominalism. The reductive doctrine that for particulars to have the same property, or to have the same relation, is for them to be parts of the same aggregate of particulars." (p. 138)

4. "Predicate Nominalism. The reductive doctrine that for particulars to have the same property, or have the same relation, is for the same predicate to apply to them." (pp. 138-9)

5. "Resemblance Nominalism. The reductive doctrine that for particulars to have the same property, or have the same relation, is for them to have a sufficient resemblance to some paradigm particular(s)." (p. 139)

"Besides the five versions of Nominalism already outlined, we should perhaps include a sixth: Ostrich or Cloak-and-dagger Nominalism. I have in mind those philosophers who refuse to countenance universals but who at the same time see no need for any reductive analyses of the sorts just outlined. There are no universals but the proposition that a is F is perfectly all right as it is. Quine's refusal to take predicates with any ontological seriousness seems to make him a Nominalist of this kind." (p. 16)

(Armstrong, D. M. Nominalism & Realism. Vol. 1 of Universals & Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.)
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