Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Consul
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by Consul »

Felix wrote: July 13th, 2019, 4:01 pm
Consul said: There's a distinction between the apparent location of experiences, particularly of sensations in the subjective, egocentrically organized space of phenomenal consciousness and their real location in objective physical space. For example, a toe-pain is phenomenally located where a visual color-shape impression of my toe is phenomenally located; but both the toe-pain and the visual toe-impresssion are really located somewhere in the physical space occupied by my brain rather than where my physical toe is.
That's silly, it's like saying the orchestra I hear playing on my radio is actually located inside the radio. You're confusing perception with conception.
No, that's not silly, because the complex sound-impression you experience when you listen to a symphony is actually located in your brain. It is realized by and in your brain. This is not to say that it's phenomenally located where impressions of your head are phenomenally located, but that it's physically located where your head is physically located.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by GaryLouisSmith »

Jklint wrote: July 13th, 2019, 5:36 pm A Medieval mind game of absolutely no importance to the here and now. Whatever perspectives exist in this realm are nothing more than philosophical speculations with no apparent use except as a mind game of dueling terms and conditions. It devolves to dividing experienced realities into artificial abstractions forcing gestalt phenomena as encountered into sections and paradigms which are inherently alien to it.

These kind of long-term Scholastic conceptualizations as practiced in the West did have a positive function once in training the mind to think abstractly as disciplines fundamental to math and the sciences as it emerged in the West. The best that can be said on such historical intellections is they were preparatory for the more complex and pertinacious ones which conjoin to create the realities we experience but now remain devoid of purpose though still subsisting within the hallowed halls of academia as barely visible remnants of past speculations.
“A Medieval mind game of absolutely no importance to the here and now.” I sort of agree. The problem is our general conception of “medieval” is something created by the Romantics of the nineteenth century. It has become a thing of high romance. Still, the real Medieval time did have a lot of romantic poetry, both religious and secular. That said I will admit that I am one who plays “Medieval mind-games”. The glass bead game.

“It devolves to dividing experienced realities into artificial abstractions forcing gestalt phenomena as encountered into sections and paradigms which are inherently alien to it.” Dividing Dividing Dividing. Yes, that’s what I do. I call it analysis. Sparagmos. Sacrificial cutting. Everything becomes doubled. The particular is other than the Form that it exemplifies. When one deals in doubles, one is in the paranormal with ghosts and romance. And, yes, it is of no importance to the here and now. I and my analyses are other.
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Felix
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

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Consul said: No, that's not silly, because the complex sound-impression you experience when you listen to a symphony is actually located in your brain. It is realized by and in your brain. This is not to say that it's phenomenally located where impressions of your head are phenomenally located, but that it's physically located where your head is physically located.
That is so absurdly simplistic that I don't know what to say... can you or anyone else pinpoint the physical location in your brain of every subjective experience you have?
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

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Felix wrote: July 13th, 2019, 8:44 pmThat is so absurdly simplistic that I don't know what to say... can you or anyone else pinpoint the physical location in your brain of every subjective experience you have?
Experiences aren't precisely locatable in the brain unless the precise locations of those neural processes therein are known which constitute them.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Consul
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

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Consul wrote: July 13th, 2019, 9:02 pmExperiences aren't precisely locatable in the brain unless the precise locations of those neural processes therein are known which constitute them.
Even if we cannot pinpoint the precise location of an experience in the brain, it is nonetheless located somewhere in the brain.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Jklint
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by Jklint »

GaryLouisSmith wrote: July 13th, 2019, 8:11 pm “A Medieval mind game of absolutely no importance to the here and now.”

I sort of agree. The problem is our general conception of “medieval” is something created by the Romantics of the nineteenth century. It has become a thing of high romance. Still, the real Medieval time did have a lot of romantic poetry, both religious and secular. That said I will admit that I am one who plays “Medieval mind-games”. The glass bead game.
That's fine, no objections, as long as one realizes it's only a game, however hyper-intellectual it pretends to be. Aside from the pleasure of dueling metaphors, terms and conditions, it has nothing to offer in a world whose underpinnings are even more abstract and artificial separations philosophically argued appear thoroughly extraneous without consequence.

Also, In context, when I say "Medieval", it was meant to denote Scholastic philosophies when such mind games were rampant but disciplined and not some 19th century imagery of troubadours in the Middle Ages.
GaryLouisSmith wrote: July 13th, 2019, 8:11 pm “It devolves to dividing experienced realities into artificial abstractions forcing gestalt phenomena as encountered into sections and paradigms which are inherently alien to it.”

Dividing Dividing Dividing. Yes, that’s what I do. I call it analysis. Sparagmos. Sacrificial cutting. Everything becomes doubled. The particular is other than the Form that it exemplifies. When one deals in doubles, one is in the paranormal with ghosts and romance. And, yes, it is of no importance to the here and now. I and my analyses are other.
I think of it more in terms of Mozart's description of coloratura singing...cutup noodles.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by GaryLouisSmith »

Jklint wrote: July 13th, 2019, 9:35 pm
I think of it more in terms of Mozart's description of coloratura singing...cutup noodles.
You call it a game and thereby trivialize it. I, in my writing, call it madness and madness is far from being trivial. Furthermore, like Plato I attribute that madness to the god Eros. Philosophy is erotic madness. The mistake you make, by calling it a game, is that you make is mere frivolous decoration. What you should be doing is condemning it as evil. You should be seeing it as a curse on good society. You should try mightily to eradicate it from the world. It is religion. And like your fellows you should find it a horror that we must stamp out. It is not a mere trivial game. It is not coloratura. It is EVIL. And it is everywhere. This would be a good time for paranoia.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by Jklint »

GaryLouisSmith wrote: July 13th, 2019, 10:15 pm
Jklint wrote: July 13th, 2019, 9:35 pm
I think of it more in terms of Mozart's description of coloratura singing...cutup noodles.
You call it a game and thereby trivialize it. I, in my writing, call it madness and madness is far from being trivial. Furthermore, like Plato I attribute that madness to the god Eros. Philosophy is erotic madness. The mistake you make, by calling it a game, is that you make is mere frivolous decoration. What you should be doing is condemning it as evil. You should be seeing it as a curse on good society. You should try mightily to eradicate it from the world. It is religion. And like your fellows you should find it a horror that we must stamp out. It is not a mere trivial game. It is not coloratura. It is EVIL. And it is everywhere. This would be a good time for paranoia.
I'm no-longer certain whether we're discussing the same subject. From the way I read your post philosophy is a type of madness tantamount to evil or I misunderstood your intention. I never considered it as such but more in the nature of being or becoming bureaucratically deformed by the imposition of too many theories which attempt to analyze reality as generally understood and experienced. Since anyone can deconstruct and reconstruct according to one's own mental blueprints the resulting thought webs appear as if done by a spider on too much caffeine...useless, a comedy of errors, its comedic effect enhanced by an overly strained intellectualism to confirm an argument. But if philosophy is evil, which depends purely on content as individual as the person proclaiming it, can it not by the same means also go in the opposite direction?

Whether on philosophy forums or works published by so-called professionals, thoughts and ideas are like chess pieces played against each other seeking credibility by argumentation. It's easy to notice things which are stupid, small-minded and nonsensical; sometimes it's hilarious and sometimes frustrating but hardly evil. There are some things I'm paranoid about but philosophers and would-be versions are not particularly concerning.

But, as mentioned, I may not have understood what you meant.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by GaryLouisSmith »

Jklint wrote: July 14th, 2019, 1:24 am
Whether on philosophy forums or works published by so-called professionals, thoughts and ideas are like chess pieces played against
each
Your view of philosophy is much more benign than that of many other people, especially people who are from an older generation. I really don’t know anything at all about you. I don’t know how old you are or how much or how long you have been thinking about philosophy. I know that you write a very learned sentence. Believe me, most positivists from the twentieth century wrote the most condemning things about philosophy. There was great violence in their words. They thought it was religion by another name. If you know about the French Revolution, then you know that the clergy and scholastic philosophers were condemned to death. Religion and religious philosophy was the great evil. Today on social media you can still find such people. The anti-theists abound. I write a theistic philosophy.

I also think philosophy is not benign. And I really do think it is madness. Whether that madness is demonic or divine is another question. That was the question of Plato’s Phaedrus. First Socrates made a speech in which he described it as demonic. Many people today would agree with that speech. Next he made a speech in which he described it as divine. Many people today would disagree with him on that. I think the madness is divine, but it is madness. I come out of a charismatic church. My grandmother was a religious fanatic, a Pentecostal speaking-in-tongure, holy roller. A wild woman.. She taught me how to argue theology.

The way you spoke against scholastic philosophers, many of whom I admire, made me think you too thought such philosophy was evil. Like a positivist you defended science against the barbarians. I thought you were a f*cking rationalist. Those people are clean clean clean clean and will tolerate no mention of sex in their clean clean clean logic. Yes, religion and my philosophy speak of the flesh often and with relish. Sartre in his book Nausea describes how a philosophical vision will make you sick. Yes, it will. So will erotics. Those books by Hesse, Mann and also Gide are gay romance. I think a young gay person first reading them and understanding what is being said will feel a nervous anxiety in his stomach. And he will become paralyzed by them. He will not be able to take care of the things he must. He will become decadent. I did. I still am.

So is philosophy evil? Gide wrote that a certain kind of desire was immoral because it made a person forget to take care of his property. He became numb and just couldn’t do what was right according to society. Philosophy, as I do philosophy, is that kind of desire. I have written up as much. Such a philosopher is not an upstanding member of society. But if philosophy is only what you said it was, then it is nothing at all. Now if you want I can write something about Nietzsche.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

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Consul wrote: July 13th, 2019, 9:07 pm
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2019, 9:02 pmExperiences aren't precisely locatable in the brain unless the precise locations of those neural processes therein are known which constitute them.
Even if we cannot pinpoint the precise location of an experience in the brain, it is nonetheless located somewhere in the brain.
Consul is right

https://www.theguardian.com/science/200 ... sofscience
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by GaryLouisSmith »

Belindi wrote: July 14th, 2019, 3:59 am
Consul wrote: July 13th, 2019, 9:07 pm

Even if we cannot pinpoint the precise location of an experience in the brain, it is nonetheless located somewhere in the brain.
Consul is right

https://www.theguardian.com/science/200 ... sofscience
To say that an experience is located in the brain is utter nonsense. But you knew I would say that.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by Felix »

GaryLouisSmith said: To say that an experience is located in the brain is utter nonsense.
Yes, I agree. It's a passe 19th Century Newtonian concept, which has been effectively discredited now by quantum physics and chaos theory.
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by Belindi »

Consul wrote: July 13th, 2019, 7:59 pm
Belindi wrote: July 13th, 2019, 7:38 pmAre universalia in rebus the same as definiens?

definiens (plural definientia) (semantics) The word or phrase that defines the definiendum in a definition. In the defining statement “A lake is a large, landlocked, naturally occurring stretch of water”, “large, landlocked, naturally occurring stretch of water” is the definiens.
No, if (immanent or transcendent) universals exist, they can be represented linguistically, but they aren't linguistic entities.
Do concepts such as 'large', 'landlocked',and 'naturally occurring' become particulars ? It could be true that linguistic form and lexicon determine worldviews such as believing Aristotelian universals exist.

These three concepts together with other so-called 'universals' may be considered to be universals because they are so commonly distributed around our world. There could be scenarios where a large(noun), or 'a landlocked'(noun) , is one of many potentially quantifiable particulars. It's already the case that 'a naturally occurring'(noun) is one of many increasingly rare quantifiable particulars in the modern world where most particulars are artificial.

Briefly, so-called universals might come to be experienced in real lives as significant particulars. Icons of the beautiful or the good might become particular beauties or goods. Keats's nightingale became enduring particular beauty as Keats explained.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by Belindi »

GaryLouisSmith wrote: July 14th, 2019, 4:13 am
Belindi wrote: July 14th, 2019, 3:59 am

Consul is right

https://www.theguardian.com/science/200 ... sofscience
To say that an experience is located in the brain is utter nonsense. But you knew I would say that.

Does experience require an experiencer? Or not? I say experience requires both an experiencer and an object of experience and that the experience itself is the relationship between the subject and the object. The brain-mind's function at least the cognitive part of the brain-mind is seeking and establishing relationships between subject and object. The liminal state is much to be desired for several reasons however you will always be tolled back to your sole self.
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Re: Are you a Realist or a Nominalist?

Post by Tamminen »

GaryLouisSmith wrote: July 14th, 2019, 4:13 am To say that an experience is located in the brain is utter nonsense.
Right. An experience is "located" in the "world" of experiences if we can meaninfully say that it is located anywhere. The brain is located in the world the experience is about. The experience has material correlates in the brain. So let us not make this more complicated than it is.
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