Ontology of Works of Art

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Consul
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

Post by Consul »

Consul wrote: February 1st, 2019, 4:54 pmAn existential object is a thing
Note that by "existential object" I don't mean an existent/existing object but simply an object in the narrow ontological sense of the term, because whether something belongs to the ontological category <object> is independent of whether it exists. Santa Claus is an (existential) object, but not an existent/existing one.

Existent objects can but needn't be intentional objects (of thought), but all nonexistent (fictional/imaginary) objects must be intentional objects (of thought), because there is nothing more to them (than being an intentional object). In the case of nonexistent objects, being reduces to being thought about (or being represented in some other way); so they are nothing in themselves independently of our representations of them. Being thought about or being represented is not an existence-entailing property, so it doesn't contradictorily turn something nonexistent, a nonentity into something existent, an entity.
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

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Consul wrote:I'm saying that works of music such as symphonies are abstract types; but, as opposed to platonistic realists about abstracta, I'm an antirealist or fictionalist about them.
But that will only mean that you're antirealist about platonic abstracta, but realist about other non-platonic abstracta. It would be different if you stated that you're antirealist about any possible abstracta, making you a nominalist. However, you do seem to conceive non-platonic abstracta, since you say that there are non-platonic abstract types such as symphonies. That's why your next sentence looks quite contradictory:
Consul wrote: So I must say that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony qua abstract type does not exist, being nothing but a nonexistent object of thought. Ontologically, it has the same status as Santa Claus.
That something can be nonexistent, in the strict sense, seems absurd. If something is an object of thought then it is an existent object of thought. Therefore, you're proposition actually stands as saying that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony exists as an object of thought. Since thoughts are constituted by concepts, then it follows from your proposition that the Ninth is a concept. Ontologically speaking, leaving aside platonism, concepts can be either mental representations or mental abilities. And if there's something to call abstract, while not being a platonist, we're only left with only those two options.
Consul wrote: I'm aware that my view appears counterintuitive, because one of its consequences is that the Ninth wasn't created by Beethoven. For to create something is to bring it into existence, and what doesn't exist has never been brought into existence by anybody.

But what did Beethoven do then when he composed his Ninth? Well, he did create something, but something different from it: auditory images (sound-images) of (a performance of) it in his mind and its score.
Again, I spot a contradiction when you first say the Ninth was not created (composed) but then ask how Beethoven composed his Ninth. If you took the nominalistic view that Beethoven created something that just happened to be called Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, it would imply that the Ninth is a concrete, existent object.
Consul wrote: The set/class of volcanoes is the extension of the concept <volcano>; but platonists about sets/classes think the former exists independently of the latter, because sets/classes don't depend for their being on being concept-extensions. So the set of volcanoes existed long before the human concept of a volcano was created.
Sets and classes are the outcome of the mental process of categorization, as such they are mental objects created in our minds after several volcano entities have come to our knowledge. In theory I would need just one particular concrete volcano to form the particular concept of that volcano. I could have no name for it yet, it's just that thing that has those properties. When other objects resembling that particular volcano appear in my experience, then I would extract all their perceived common features to form the abstract universal <volcano>, a general conceptual category which subsumes all past, present and future volcanoes, being just the same or equivalent to the set/class of all volcanoes. Then the order of things will be: a real volcano -->the concept of that real volcano -->awareness of more real volcanoes -->the general concept of volcano and its application to sets of all volcanoes.
Consul wrote: Tokens of mental representations are concrete, but they are not substantial in the sense of being substances.
Perhaps under some definitions of the word "concrete" it could also point to mental objects, which immediately would imply abstract objects only as non-mental objects if we acknowledge the universal duality abstract/concrete. But given that distinction, I prefer to think of "concrete" as real, mind-independent, substantial physical objects, and by extension, their properties and relations.
Consul wrote:I think the concept C doesn't exist at all, because concepts as ways of thinking of things don't exist absolutely but relatively to persons/subjects.
I understand you make a distinction of concept C as a neutral, non-mental thing (belonging to an ontology which I'm not quite clear yet, because it seems to have no ontology whatsoever, perhaps just a name) and my or your concept C as a mental thing. I cannot help but find a relationship between concept C and my or your concept C, since realistically speaking, concepts can only be mental objects.
Consul wrote: As Jonathan Lowe would put it: This chair and this dog are "primary substances", and they are instances of the "secondary substance" or substantial universal (kind-universal) chairhood or doghood. That is, every chair instantiates the kind chair and every dog instantiates the kind dog. These kinds are respectively characterized by a set of attributes (properties) which are exemplified by all chairs or dogs.
I would put it differently than Lowe. This chair and this dog are substances, indeed, but their kinds are not. They are mental categorizations, so it's not like a non-mental token object instantiating a non-mental kind object, but a a non-mental token object instantiating a mental (aka abstract in my view) kind object.
Consul wrote: If concepts are mental representations, are they conscious ones or nonconscious ones? If the former, they are mental images or mental words; but if the latter, it is not clear what they are. Words in a nonconscious "language of thought"? But there is no empirical evidence for such a nonconscious system of mental representation in the brain.
I don't think there's any other alternative for concepts than being objects of thought, and therefore, conscious.
Consul wrote: What exactly do you mean by "substantial entities"? Things, objects, substances? But concrete entities can belong to other ontological categories as well, e.g. properties and events.
I would agree with the last remark only if we refer to properties and events of real, substantial objects.
Consul wrote: All concrete, mental or physical candidates for the referent of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" turn out to be unfit for the job. No performance of Hamlet is Hamlet, and no performance of the Ninth is the Ninth. So I think the relationship between Hamlet or the Ninth and its performances, which are located in space and time, is best described in terms of the type-token distinction.
A performance of Hamlet or the Ninth are performances of literary or musical compositions, respectively. Surely they alone are not the composition, but the composition is implied in the performance, and the composition exists regardless of it being performed. What makes the job is that its constitutive elements and relationships have been permanently established, and allow me to reemphasize: permanently established, which means physically registered in some medium, so as to be objectively (mind-independently) appropriated in time and space by independent subjects. A pure mental object, even the most structured one, by its own definition, could not be objectively, permanently established. Perhaps we could call Beethoven's Ninth and other art works "social objects" with their singularity defined as shareable and transposable properties, using several mediums, while keeping faithful to their formal structure.
Consul wrote: What exactly do you mean by "composition"? Of course, you can send a physical copy of the Ninth's score or a physical recording of a performance of it into space; but if you do, you're not thereby sending the Ninth itself into space.
A composition is a form, a conscious creation, a unique configuration of elements constituting an organic whole. Some creators compose architecture, sculpture or paint, some others compose music, poetry or choreographies. If I sent a printed edition of Hamlet into space, wouldn't I be sending at the same time the work of art Hamlet into space? What's the difference with the Ninth?
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

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Consul -

Thanks for the patient reply. I cannot disagree now I understand the manner in which you’re using the terms. I’ll leave you and Count to it for now although there is something of a tangential idea I’d like to hear your thoughts about.

I’d also like to clarify a little about Kant maybe, but not massively important because you say “non-existent” for “abstract entity” which is perfectly sound in the manner you’ve presented it whether I’d choose other words to say the same thing or not - I hope you can appreciate that many other people may misunderstand too.
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

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Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 amBut that will only mean that you're antirealist about platonic abstracta, but realist about other non-platonic abstracta. It would be different if you stated that you're antirealist about any possible abstracta, making you a nominalist.
"I believe there are only concrete objects or entities. That is, I reject ontological abstractism aka platonism = realism about abstracta."
—Consul: viewtopic.php?p=327966#p327966

So, yes, I'm a nominalist (fictionalist) about all abstracta.

But what's the difference between "platonic abstracta" and "non-platonic abstracta"?
Well, if you think there are abstracta which don't exist eternally, independently, and necessarily in a non-spatiotemporal "Platonic heaven", you may call them non-platonic. Abstract artifacts or games are candidates, but there is still the crucial question as to how mental or physical actions can naturally bring something into existence that is neither mental nor physical.

"Some abstract objects appear to stand in a more interesting relation to space. Consider the game of chess, for example. Some philosophers will say that chess is like a mathematical object, existing nowhere and ‘no when’—either eternally or outside of time altogether. But that is not the most natural view. The natural view is that chess was invented at a certain time and place (though it may be hard to say exactly where or when); that before it was invented it did not exist at all; that it was imported from India into Persia in the 7th century; that it has changed over the years, and so on. The only reason to resist this natural account is the thought that since chess is clearly an abstract object—it’s not a physical object, after all!—and since abstract objects do not exist in space and time—by definition!—chess must resemble the cosine function in its relation to space and time. And yet one might with equal justice regard the case of chess and other abstract artifacts as counterexamples to the hasty view that abstract objects possess only trivial spatial and temporal properties."

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/

And David Lewis writes:

"Sets are supposed to be abstract. But a set of located things does seem to have a location, though perhaps a divided location: it is where its members are. Thus, my unit set is right here, exactly where I am; the set of you and me is partly here where I am, partly yonder where you are; and so on."

(Lewis, David. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. p. 83)

I find this very mysterious. If Lewis is right, then I am always accompanied and surrounded by the set whose only member I am, i.e. my singleton (unit set). I cannot bring myself to believe in such an obscure entity that is imperceptible in principle.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 amThat something can be nonexistent, in the strict sense, seems absurd. If something is an object of thought then it is an existent object of thought. Therefore, you're proposition actually stands as saying that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony exists as an object of thought. Since thoughts are constituted by concepts, then it follows from your proposition that the Ninth is a concept. Ontologically speaking, leaving aside platonism, concepts can be either mental representations or mental abilities. And if there's something to call abstract, while not being a platonist, we're only left with only those two options.
I'm not saying that there are nonexistent objects, because I'd indeed contradict myself by saying so. So I'm just saying that some objects (of thought) don't exist. And I reject the view that being thought about entails being. To say that the Ninth is an object of thought is not to say that it "exists as an object of thought."

"If an object is non-existent, it is non-existent. End of story."

(Priest, Graham. An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. p. 296)

Note that there's nothing absurd about saying that an object is nonexistent, because to be nonexistent is simply not to be existent. A nonexistent object doesn't really have the negative property of being nonexistent, it just lacks the positive property of being existent.
I generally believe that there are no negative properties such as being a nonsmoker. For example, to be a nonsmoker is simply not to be a smoker, to lack the property of being a smoker.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 amAgain, I spot a contradiction when you first say the Ninth was not created (composed) but then ask how Beethoven composed his Ninth. If you took the nominalistic view that Beethoven created something that just happened to be called Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, it would imply that the Ninth is a concrete, existent object.
From my point of view, to compose a symphony is to create a symphony-score. Beethoven's original manuscript is certainly an existent concrete object, but it's not the symphony itself.

Generally, to create object-thoughts (thoughts of an object) is not to create thought-objects (objects of thought). To create a mental idea or image of something is not to also create what it represents.

For the paradox of creation, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art- ... atParaCrea
Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 am
Consul wrote:The set/class of volcanoes is the extension of the concept <volcano>; but platonists about sets/classes think the former exists independently of the latter, because sets/classes don't depend for their being on being concept-extensions. So the set of volcanoes existed long before the human concept of a volcano was created.
Sets and classes are the outcome of the mental process of categorization, as such they are mental objects created in our minds after several volcano entities have come to our knowledge. In theory I would need just one particular concrete volcano to form the particular concept of that volcano. I could have no name for it yet, it's just that thing that has those properties. When other objects resembling that particular volcano appear in my experience, then I would extract all their perceived common features to form the abstract universal <volcano>, a general conceptual category which subsumes all past, present and future volcanoes, being just the same or equivalent to the set/class of all volcanoes. Then the order of things will be: a real volcano -->the concept of that real volcano -->awareness of more real volcanoes -->the general concept of volcano and its application to sets of all volcanoes.
Sets or classes (provided there are such abstract objects) aren't mental creations existing in our minds. We create a concept (as a mental representation existing in our minds) and thereby select a set/class, viz. the one of the things falling under the concept (which may be the empty set/class). Since concepts can be arbitrarily defined by us, the sets/classes which are their extensions can be picked out arbitrarily by us too; but the latter aren't thereby mentally or conceptually created by us.

(By the way, there's a useful distinction between natural classes and unnatural classes. However, it's not an exclusively binary distinction, because there are different degrees of naturalness, depending on the degree of objective resemblance or similarity among the class's members. A perfectly natural class is one whose members are qualitatively identical such as the class of electrons. This is the highest degree of naturalness a class can have.)

"Cantor speaks of a collection into a whole, and this may lead to the mistaken view that sets somehow depend for their existence on some collecting activity of a mind. According to this misconception, which is rather widespread among philosophers, sets are mental creations. The set consisting of the desk before me, the oldest living rabbit in Australia, and a hair on Napoleon's head, is a perfectly wholesome set of three things. Some philosophers have thought that in order to form this set, there must be something in common between its members, and since they could not come up with some plausible common feature, they concluded that being thought together in one thought is the uniting force. What 'makes a set' out of these diverse things, they maintain, is the mental act of thinking them together. And then they infer that the same holds for every set: every set is a whole, a unit, by virtue of the fact that its members are thought together. But this conception is mistaken. The three things just mentioned form a group, a set, whether anyone thinks of them together or not. Since each one of the three things exists (existed at some time), the group exists. To put it differently, there are many sets of things nobody has ever thought of together.

The mistaken notion that sets depend for their existence on minds is invited by Cantor's reference to 'intuition or our thought'. But, as I just tried to emphasize, the members of a set need not be thought of in order to be members of that set. There are millions of things that form sets, there are millions of sets, of which nobody has thought or ever will think. I believe that Cantor speaks here of objects of our intuition or thought in order to make clear that any thing whatsoever can be a member of a set. Members are not confined to certain kinds of thing, to certain categories of thing. There are sets of individual things like the set of three things just mentioned. But there are also sets of numbers, and sets of properties, and sets of relations, and so on. Whatever there is, is a member of a set. If it exists, it is a member of a set."


(Grossmann, Reinhardt. The Existence of the World: An Introduction to Ontology. London: Routledge, 1992. pp. 58-9)
Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 amPerhaps under some definitions of the word "concrete" it could also point to mental objects, which immediately would imply abstract objects only as non-mental objects if we acknowledge the universal duality abstract/concrete. But given that distinction, I prefer to think of "concrete" as real, mind-independent, substantial physical objects, and by extension, their properties and relations.


Okay, but that's very different from the definition of "concrete" in contemporary ontology, which includes mental entities. (Correspondingly, the definition of "abstract" excludes mental entities.)

"The abstract/concrete distinction in its modern form is meant to mark a line in the domain of objects or entities. So conceived, the distinction becomes a central focus for philosophical discussion only in the 20th century. The origins of this development are obscure, but one crucial factor appears to have been the breakdown of the allegedly exhaustive distinction between the mental and the material that had formed the main division for ontologically minded philosophers since Descartes."

Abstract Objects: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/
Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 am
Consul wrote:As Jonathan Lowe would put it: This chair and this dog are "primary substances", and they are instances of the "secondary substance" or substantial universal (kind-universal) chairhood or doghood. That is, every chair instantiates the kind chair and every dog instantiates the kind dog. These kinds are respectively characterized by a set of attributes (properties) which are exemplified by all chairs or dogs.
I would put it differently than Lowe. This chair and this dog are substances, indeed, but their kinds are not. They are mental categorizations, so it's not like a non-mental token object instantiating a non-mental kind object, but a a non-mental token object instantiating a mental (aka abstract in my view) kind object.
Of course, "secondary substances" (qua substantial universals/forms or kinds) are categorially different from "primary substances" (qua individual objects or things).

Kinds qua universals are not "mental categorizations" but mind- and concept-independent entities. But, of course, you needn't acknowledge kinds as universals.

The Positions in the Ontology of Kinds (Sorts/Species/Genera/Types):

1. antirealism: there are no kinds
2. realism:
2.1 reductive realism: there are kinds and they are…
2.1.1 many as one: sets/classes of objects
2.1.2 many as one: sums/fusions/aggregates/groups of objects
2.1.3 many as many: pluralities or collectives of objects
2.1.4 complex/structural attributes (universals)
2.2 nonreductive realism: there are kinds and they are entities sui generis: substantial forms/universals ("secondary substances")
Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 amI don't think there's any other alternative for concepts than being objects of thought, and therefore, conscious.
We consciously think about concepts, so they are objects of thought; but what is a concept (in itself), ontologically asking?

If concepts are part of my field/stream of consciousness, they must be mental entities; but what mental entities are therein which are properly called concepts? There are mental images that represent their objects iconically or picture-like (like photographies) or symbolically or word-/sentence-like. For example, when I think about dogs, doing so is an episode of inner speech containing the word "dog(s)". Is the concept <dog> identical to the word "dog" or the class of the word's mental tokens?
Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 am
Consul wrote:All concrete, mental or physical candidates for the referent of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" turn out to be unfit for the job. No performance of Hamlet is Hamlet, and no performance of the Ninth is the Ninth. So I think the relationship between Hamlet or the Ninth and its performances, which are located in space and time, is best described in terms of the type-token distinction.
A performance of Hamlet or the Ninth are performances of literary or musical compositions, respectively. Surely they alone are not the composition, but the composition is implied in the performance, and the composition exists regardless of it being performed. What makes the job is that its constitutive elements and relationships have been permanently established, and allow me to reemphasize: permanently established, which means physically registered in some medium, so as to be objectively (mind-independently) appropriated in time and space by independent subjects. A pure mental object, even the most structured one, by its own definition, could not be objectively, permanently established. Perhaps we could call Beethoven's Ninth and other art works "social objects" with their singularity defined as shareable and transposable properties, using several mediums, while keeping faithful to their formal structure.
A symphony (qua abstract type) is represented by its score and realized by its performances (qua concrete tokens). ("to realize" in the sense "to bring into concrete existence", "to give actual or physical form to")

None of the concrete mediums you're referring to are or contain the Ninth itself. For instance, a CD that digitally encodes a performance of it isn't and doesn't contain the Ninth itself.

Again, the question is: What does the proper name "Beethoven's Ninth Symphpony" refer to? If it refers to something, it refers to one thing and to no other thing(s). My contention is that this one thing isn't any concrete, mental or physical entity.

The reason why I don't believe in the existence of abstract musical compositions (works of music) is that it is unintelligible to me how mental or physical actions of a composer could create something that is neither mental nor physical. How could the writing of a score (and the composer's musical imagination involved in it) cause the popping into being of an abstract entity? That would be an act of magic!
Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 amA composition is a form, a conscious creation, a unique configuration of elements constituting an organic whole. Some creators compose architecture, sculpture or paint, some others compose music, poetry or choreographies. If I sent a printed edition of Hamlet into space, wouldn't I be sending at the same time the work of art Hamlet into space? What's the difference with the Ninth?
If one particular printed edition of Hamlet were Hamlet (itself), then all the other textually identical ones wouldn't be Hamlet, since one thing cannot be identical to two or more different things.

If one particular printed edition of Hamlet were only a token of Hamlet (itself), then there would be no ontological problem, since there can be indefinitely many textually identical printed editions of Hamlet qua different concrete Hamlet-tokens of one and the same abstract Hamlet-type.

There are relevant distinctions between the kinds of art. The type-token distinction is applicable to works of music, works of literature, works of theater, works of dance, works of cinema, but not to buildings, sculptures, or paintings.

By the way, Nelson Goodman distinguishes between "autographic" and "allographic" artworks: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/good ... eForWorArt
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

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Burning ghost wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 2:59 amI’d also like to clarify a little about Kant maybe, but not massively important because you say “non-existent” for “abstract entity” which is perfectly sound in the manner you’ve presented it whether I’d choose other words to say the same thing or not - I hope you can appreciate that many other people may misunderstand too.
If an entity is something that exists, then "nonexistent entity" is certainly a self-contradictory phrase.

That abstracta don't exist is certainly not true by definition (of "abstract"). It's a substantive metaphysical thesis.
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

Post by Count Lucanor »

Sorry for the delayed response, it's been a busy week.
Consul wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:But that will only mean that you're antirealist about platonic abstracta, but realist about other non-platonic abstracta. It would be different if you stated that you're antirealist about any possible abstracta, making you a nominalist.
"I believe there are only concrete objects or entities. That is, I reject ontological abstractism aka platonism = realism about abstracta."
—Consul: viewtopic.php?p=327966#p327966

So, yes, I'm a nominalist (fictionalist) about all abstracta.

But what's the difference between "platonic abstracta" and "non-platonic abstracta"?
Well, if you think there are abstracta which don't exist eternally, independently, and necessarily in a non-spatiotemporal "Platonic heaven", you may call them non-platonic. Abstract artifacts or games are candidates, but there is still the crucial question as to how mental or physical actions can naturally bring something into existence that is neither mental nor physical.
If you're a nominalist, then you don't accept any abstracta at all, but there's a strange ontological sense to your idea that something can exist as non-existent. So, while you deny the possibility of existence of abstracta, at the same time you acknowledge its being in a realm that is neither mental or physical, but still ontological, that is, real. I cannot agree that "whether something belongs to the ontological category <object> is independent of whether it exists". It must exist to be in any ontological category. I had said earlier that abstract objects don't exist as substance, as real concrete entities, but the brain processes that constitute the experience of thought, abstraction events implied, certainly exist. Therefore, abstraction as process and mental representation does exist in that sense, or another way to put it: what the brain does, does exist. Does the running of a marathoner exist? One could argue that it doesn't, neither races, boxing matches, and so on, but I don't find any practical benefit from holding that position.
Consul wrote: And David Lewis writes:

"Sets are supposed to be abstract. But a set of located things does seem to have a location, though perhaps a divided location: it is where its members are. Thus, my unit set is right here, exactly where I am; the set of you and me is partly here where I am, partly yonder where you are; and so on."

(Lewis, David. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. p. 83)

I find this very mysterious. If Lewis is right, then I am always accompanied and surrounded by the set whose only member I am, i.e. my singleton (unit set). I cannot bring myself to believe in such an obscure entity that is imperceptible in principle.
Paraphrasing your statement about the Ninth itself not going into space, sets of things cannot go into space either, as they can't be located somewhere, because they are not the things in themselves!! Lewis just reifies the mental categorization of sets.
Consul wrote: I'm not saying that there are nonexistent objects, because I'd indeed contradict myself by saying so. So I'm just saying that some objects (of thought) don't exist. And I reject the view that being thought about entails being. To say that the Ninth is an object of thought is not to say that it "exists as an object of thought."

"If an object is non-existent, it is non-existent. End of story."

(Priest, Graham. An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. p. 296)

Note that there's nothing absurd about saying that an object is nonexistent, because to be nonexistent is simply not to be existent. A nonexistent object doesn't really have the negative property of being nonexistent, it just lacks the positive property of being existent.
I generally believe that there are no negative properties such as being a nonsmoker. For example, to be a nonsmoker is simply not to be a smoker, to lack the property of being a smoker.
Simply it's not possible that a being lacks the essential property of being. Then there's no being, no object to refer to. OTOH, an accidental property could be expressed in language in positive or negative terms. Something could be a thing that lacks the property of being in a certain mode, while maintaining its properties of being in some other sense. It could be a non-existent object as a substantial concrete object, but existent as a relation, a name, a mental process. An object of thought has the property of being in that sense.
Consul wrote: From my point of view, to compose a symphony is to create a symphony-score. Beethoven's original manuscript is certainly an existent concrete object, but it's not the symphony itself.
In theory, a symphony can be created without a written score. Actually, most modern music gets transcribed to standard notation (if they ever) after being composed and recorded. The score and the sound recording are just mediums to register the musical work that has been composed. They are not the work of art, but they inseparably carry the work of art with them.
Consul wrote: Generally, to create object-thoughts (thoughts of an object) is not to create thought-objects (objects of thought). To create a mental idea or image of something is not to also create what it represents.
Since there can be mental ideas of fictional beings, it follows that the mental idea does not create or imply at the same the real being. But that doesn't mean that the mental idea of a real thing and the thing in itself are not connected and that the mental process does not occur.
Consul wrote: Sets or classes (provided there are such abstract objects) aren't mental creations existing in our minds. We create a concept (as a mental representation existing in our minds) and thereby select a set/class, viz. the one of the things falling under the concept (which may be the empty set/class). Since concepts can be arbitrarily defined by us, the sets/classes which are their extensions can be picked out arbitrarily by us too; but the latter aren't thereby mentally or conceptually created by us.
Classifications are mental creations, quite subjective, and as such, a bit arbitrary. Once again, I'm reminded of Borges' fictitious Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, a Chinese Encyclopedia, which describes the taxonomy of the Emperor's animals:

In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (ii) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) etcetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

Consul wrote:
Okay, but that's very different from the definition of "concrete" in contemporary ontology, which includes mental entities. (Correspondingly, the definition of "abstract" excludes mental entities.)

"The abstract/concrete distinction in its modern form is meant to mark a line in the domain of objects or entities. So conceived, the distinction becomes a central focus for philosophical discussion only in the 20th century. The origins of this development are obscure, but one crucial factor appears to have been the breakdown of the allegedly exhaustive distinction between the mental and the material that had formed the main division for ontologically minded philosophers since Descartes."

Abstract Objects: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/
It may be true that the mental/physical distinction corresponding to the abstract/concrete distinction is outmoded in philosophical circles, but in other points of that same SEP entry it's not yet a settled matter, as described in The Way of Abstraction, which resembles more accurately my own position. Also, interesting to note is that the statement in the quoted paragraph is supported by the work of a neoplatonist (Frege) and that the paragraph ends with this remark:
The common theme in these developments is the felt need in semantics and psychology as well as in mathematics for a class of objective (i.e., non-mental) supersensible entities. As this new ‘realism’ was absorbed into English speaking philosophy, the traditional term ‘abstract’ was enlisted to apply to the denizens of this ‘third realm’.


See also:
Platonism is the view that there exist such things as abstract objects — where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and non-mental. Platonism in this sense is a contemporary view... The most important figure in the development of modern platonism is Gottlob Frege...


https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/
Consul wrote:
The Positions in the Ontology of Kinds (Sorts/Species/Genera/Types):

1. antirealism: there are no kinds
2. realism:
2.1 reductive realism: there are kinds and they are…
2.1.1 many as one: sets/classes of objects
2.1.2 many as one: sums/fusions/aggregates/groups of objects
2.1.3 many as many: pluralities or collectives of objects
2.1.4 complex/structural attributes (universals)
2.2 nonreductive realism: there are kinds and they are entities sui generis: substantial forms/universals ("secondary substances")
Assuming that kinds could have an ontology, some options are missing in this one, such as kinds as mental categorizations.
Consul wrote:
We consciously think about concepts, so they are objects of thought; but what is a concept (in itself), ontologically asking?
I would say we think with concepts, they constitute our thoughts.
Consul wrote:
If concepts are part of my field/stream of consciousness, they must be mental entities; but what mental entities are therein which are properly called concepts? There are mental images that represent their objects iconically or picture-like (like photographies) or symbolically or word-/sentence-like. For example, when I think about dogs, doing so is an episode of inner speech containing the word "dog(s)". Is the concept <dog> identical to the word "dog" or the class of the word's mental tokens?
I don't believe that thinking of a word is the same as thinking of what the word represents. I also think that "mental images" is a figure of speech due to our inability to accurately describe the nature of our cognitive processes.
Consul wrote:
A symphony (qua abstract type) is represented by its score and realized by its performances (qua concrete tokens). ("to realize" in the sense "to bring into concrete existence", "to give actual or physical form to")

None of the concrete mediums you're referring to are or contain the Ninth itself. For instance, a CD that digitally encodes a performance of it isn't and doesn't contain the Ninth itself.
In fact, they do contain a composition, its codified structure. Just as the collection of printed letters arranged in a predefined order (or the audiobook version) carry an identifiable work of literature. They don't just represent the work, they don't stand in replacement of the absent work, they realize the work in order to be perceived, decodified and appropriated. In music, this requires that the encoded sounds are "activated" at the moment the subjects are ready to contemplate the work of music, and we call that a performance, or a reproduction. But no one calls an audiobook a "performance" of a literary work, even though the same relation between score and sounds seems to work, because what's encoded in the verbal symbols is semantic in nature. Theatrical plays are a bit different because other formal elements, the scenes in relation to the contemplating public, are involved.

Consul wrote:
Again, the question is: What does the proper name "Beethoven's Ninth Symphpony" refer to? If it refers to something, it refers to one thing and to no other thing(s). My contention is that this one thing isn't any concrete, mental or physical entity.

We need to be cautious, not to confuse semantics with ontology. The name "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony" could refer to many things in the social, cultural domain, such as the general understanding of the work by the public, its performances, recordings, etc. The vagueness of such connotations makes it difficult to point to a particular object. But in the strict sense it certainly denotes something singular and concrete, which is the original composition itself. When we use the word "The White House" it could have several connotations and some of them could be "the President of USA, the US government, etc.", but it could just mean a building.

Consul wrote:
The reason why I don't believe in the existence of abstract musical compositions (works of music) is that it is unintelligible to me how mental or physical actions of a composer could create something that is neither mental nor physical. How could the writing of a score (and the composer's musical imagination involved in it) cause the popping into being of an abstract entity? That would be an act of magic!
Human creations are the result of a process that starts as an idea, a mental image of the transformations to apply to physical materials, which will guide the creator through the actual physical process of constructing the work. So it doesn't just pop up into existence, there's no mystery or magic in it. It's not an abstract entity that gets itself transformed automatically into a physical entity, and it's not even a complete mental image. The creator uses the physical medium to experiment with different arrangements of the elements of the composition, which means constant rethinking of the work and transformation of the physical materials, until the last version is achieved.

What happens with musical compositions is that they work with sounds produced by instruments, which unlike painting and sculpture, need to be played or reproduced to be contemplated. Instead of an executed work, we have the instructions or encoding to reproduce the work, which in some sense is similar to what happens with literary works. Before written literature, works of art that transmitted verbal meanings only used oral performances, later they were registered in writing, becoming its notation a sort of score of the verbal utterances.
Consul wrote: If one particular printed edition of Hamlet were Hamlet (itself), then all the other textually identical ones wouldn't be Hamlet, since one thing cannot be identical to two or more different things.
All and any of the editions of the work of art Hamlet are the work of art Hamlet, since all are reproductions of the original edition that brought to existence that play. All reproductions of Bohemian Rhapsody need not to be particular works of art that are said to be identical or different among them, they are all the same Bohemian Rhapsody.
Consul wrote: If one particular printed edition of Hamlet were only a token of Hamlet (itself), then there would be no ontological problem, since there can be indefinitely many textually identical printed editions of Hamlet qua different concrete Hamlet-tokens of one and the same abstract Hamlet-type.
The only problem is that Hamlet, or any work of art, as a singular work with particular properties that appeared in a place and time, cannot be a type, a general category at the same time. It wouldn't be recognizable as Hamlet.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

Post by Consul »

Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amSorry for the delayed response, it's been a busy week.
No problem.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amIf you're a nominalist, then you don't accept any abstracta at all, but there's a strange ontological sense to your idea that something can exist as non-existent. So, while you deny the possibility of existence of abstracta, at the same time you acknowledge its being in a realm that is neither mental or physical, but still ontological, that is, real.
To deny the actual existence of something is not necessarily to deny its possible existence; but if abstracta exist necessarily by definition, they exist impossibly if they don't exist actually. (To use the language of possible worlds, a necessary being exists either in all possible worlds or in no possible world.)

No, nonexistent (abstract or concrete) objects do not "exist as non-existent"; nor are they in any real realm of reality. For "reality does not contain more than what exists." (Tim Crane)
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amI cannot agree that "whether something belongs to the ontological category <object> is independent of whether it exists". It must exist to be in any ontological category.
Nonbeings/nonentities/nonexistents don't fall under ontological categories qua categories of being/existence/reality; but the same categories (concepts or predicates) can be applied to them as "meontological" ones. (Meontology = the study of nonbeing.)

For example, (the real planet) Venus is an object and (the unreal planet) Vulcan is an object too; and Vulcan's being an object doesn't entail its existing, especially as "(is an) object" is just a formal concept/predicate which doesn't represent a real kind or (sortal) property, such that to say that the (sortal) concept/predicate "object" applies to Vulcan is not to say that there is a real property—being an object—or a real kind—objecthood—that is instantiated by it. (Generally, there is no 1:1 correspondence between concepts/predicates and properties.)
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amI had said earlier that abstract objects don't exist as substance, as real concrete entities, but the brain processes that constitute the experience of thought, abstraction events implied, certainly exist. Therefore, abstraction as process and mental representation does exist in that sense, or another way to put it: what the brain does, does exist. Does the running of a marathoner exist? One could argue that it doesn't, neither races, boxing matches, and so on, but I don't find any practical benefit from holding that position.
No brain process is an abstract entity. Abstraction as a cognitive process isn't an abstract entity either. And processes or events such as races and boxing matches aren't abstract entities either. These are all concrete occurrences (occurrents) rather than substances.

In the broadest sense, "occurrence"/"occurrent" is an umbrella term for events and processes, but also for states (of affairs) and facts (which are all nonsubstances). The former are time-dependent, dynamic entities by definition, while the latter aren't (by definition). All dynamic occurrences, i.e. all events and all processes, are concrete by definition. There could be abstract states or facts, but there couldn't be abstract events or processes. There is no happening, no becoming and no change in a (timeless) world of abstracta, but only static being.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 am Paraphrasing your statement about the Ninth itself not going into space, sets of things cannot go into space either, as they can't be located somewhere, because they are not the things in themselves!! Lewis just reifies the mental categorization of sets.
Lewis doesn't regard sets as mental objects, but as nonmental ones out there where their (concrete) members are. The set of dogs is where the dogs are. Of course, they are not all at the same place, so both the dogs and their set have a divided location.

By the way, Lewis argues ingeniously (in his book Parts of Classes, 1991) that "a class is the fusion of its singleton subclasses." In other words, according to him, a set is the (mereological) sum of the unit sets (singletons) of its members.
For example: {a, b, c} = {a} + {b} + {c}
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amSimply it's not possible that a being lacks the essential property of being. Then there's no being, no object to refer to. OTOH, an accidental property could be expressed in language in positive or negative terms. Something could be a thing that lacks the property of being in a certain mode, while maintaining its properties of being in some other sense. It could be a non-existent object as a substantial concrete object, but existent as a relation, a name, a mental process. An object of thought has the property of being in that sense.
Of course, no being can be beingless; but a nonbeing can.

Reference doesn't entail existence. It can very well be existentially unilateral as an intentional relation—in the sense that only the referrer and the referring exist, and what is referred to (the object of reference) doesn't.

A mere, i.e. fictional or imaginary, object of thought has neither existence nor subsistence, nor any other mode of being. The thoughts of it are there, but it itself isn't.

Nonexistent things do not exist as anything (else), because they do not exist at all. For example, it is false and misleading to say that the planet Vulcan doesn't exist as a celestial body in physical space but only as an idea/concept or name or thought in people's minds. For no idea/concept, name, or thought is identical to Vulcan and called "Vulcan"!
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amIn theory, a symphony can be created without a written score. Actually, most modern music gets transcribed to standard notation (if they ever) after being composed and recorded. The score and the sound recording are just mediums to register the musical work that has been composed. They are not the work of art, but they inseparably carry the work of art with them.
Okay, you can mentally compose a symphony by creating (a sequential complex of) mental images of musical sounds (and remembering them). But to do so is to imagine a first (physical) performance of it, and no imagined or real performance is the symphony itself.

By the way, in cases of musical improvisation as we find it in Jazz, the physical performance is the act of composition.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amClassifications are mental creations, quite subjective, and as such, a bit arbitrary.
That classifications are mental actions doesn't mean that classes (or sets or kinds) of things are mental creations. Classification is class-selection and class-representation (by means of concepts), but not class-creation or class-construction.

Keith Campbell rightly calls the claim that "no kinds [or classes] of thing existed before we discerned, classified and labelled them" "grotesquely anthropocentric." (Abstract Particulars, 1991, p. 18)
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amOnce again, I'm reminded of Borges' fictitious Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, a Chinese Encyclopedia, which describes the taxonomy of the Emperor's animals:

In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (ii) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) etcetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.
The arbitrarily defined and extremely distributive concept <animal which is (a) or…or (n)> selects and represents, but doesn't thereby create or construct the class of things falling under it, because the class-members exist independently of the class-concept.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amAlso, interesting to note is that the statement in the quoted paragraph is supported by the work of a neoplatonist (Frege) and that the paragraph ends with this remark:


Platonism is the view that there exist such things as abstract objects — where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and non-mental. Platonism in this sense is a contemporary view... The most important figure in the development of modern platonism is Gottlob Frege...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/
Right. What Frege called drittes Reich (before the political Third Reich of the Nazis came, with Frege having been sorta proto-Nazi himself) is a realm of abstracta, i.e. of entities which are neither mental nor physical. For example, what he calls Gedanken (thoughts) aren't concrete thoughts in the psychological sense (= acts/events of thinking) but abstract propositions (what Bernard Bolzano had earlier called Sätze an sich [sentences in themselves].)
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 am
Consul wrote: The Positions in the Ontology of Kinds (Sorts/Species/Genera/Types):
1. antirealism: there are no kinds
2. realism:
2.1 reductive realism: there are kinds and they are…
2.1.1 many as one: sets/classes of objects
2.1.2 many as one: sums/fusions/aggregates/groups of objects
2.1.3 many as many: pluralities or collectives of objects
2.1.4 complex/structural attributes (universals)
2.2 nonreductive realism: there are kinds and they are entities sui generis: substantial forms/universals ("secondary substances")
Assuming that kinds could have an ontology, some options are missing in this one, such as kinds as mental categorizations.
No, because this option belongs to 1: To replace kinds with mental categories or concepts (or linguistic predicates) is to be an antirealist or nominalist about them.

By the way, I forgot to mention that there are not only kinds of things or objects but also kinds of stuffs or materials.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amI would say we think with concepts, they constitute our thoughts.
I would say we think with words, because I think thinking is inner, silent speaking.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amI don't believe that thinking of a word is the same as thinking of what the word represents.
Of course, there's a difference between using a word object-linguistically to think about what it represents and using other words meta-linguistically to think about the word itself.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amI also think that "mental images" is a figure of speech due to our inability to accurately describe the nature of our cognitive processes.
I don't think so. Mental images are real ingredients of the conscious mind, being the elements of imagination, including cogitation (thought). There's no imagination without mental imagery. (And there's no thought qua inner speech without linguistic imagery.) Imagination and cogitation qua mental actions mean the use of (various kinds of) mental images for certain purposes.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 am
Consul wrote:None of the concrete mediums you're referring to are or contain the Ninth itself. For instance, a CD that digitally encodes a performance of it isn't and doesn't contain the Ninth itself.
In fact, they do contain a composition, its codified structure.
What exactly do you mean by "composition"?
A performance of the Ninth takes place on the basis of and is guided by its score, since that's what makes it a performance of the Ninth. A performance of the Ninth's score is an acoustic translation (and interpretation) of it.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amJust as the collection of printed letters arranged in a predefined order (or the audiobook version) carry an identifiable work of literature. They don't just represent the work, they don't stand in replacement of the absent work, they realize the work in order to be perceived, decodified and appropriated. In music, this requires that the encoded sounds are "activated" at the moment the subjects are ready to contemplate the work of music, and we call that a performance, or a reproduction. But no one calls an audiobook a "performance" of a literary work, even though the same relation between score and sounds seems to work, because what's encoded in the verbal symbols is semantic in nature. Theatrical plays are a bit different because other formal elements, the scenes in relation to the contemplating public, are involved.
In the case of literature, of books and audiobooks, we always stay in the sphere of (written or spoken) language. A printed copy of Hamlet (qua token) is a material realization of Hamlet (qua type); and as such, i.e. as a mere object, it cannot be called a performance of it. But reading from it is a performance, so an audiobook is a recording of a linguistic performance.

Is the reading (aloud) a performance of Hamlet? Playing Hamlet on stage is a theatrical performance of it. (The actors certainly don't read from the book on stage, since they recite the text from memory.) If we distinguish between written and spoken realizations of a work of literature, reading from or reciting a written (graphic) Hamlet-token can be regarded as a spoken (acoustic) Hamlet-token; and as such it can be regarded as a literary performance of Hamlet, especially as there is such a thing as oral literature.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 amWe need to be cautious, not to confuse semantics with ontology. The name "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony" could refer to many things in the social, cultural domain, such as the general understanding of the work by the public, its performances, recordings, etc. The vagueness of such connotations makes it difficult to point to a particular object. But in the strict sense it certainly denotes something singular and concrete, which is the original composition itself. When we use the word "The White House" it could have several connotations and some of them could be "the President of USA, the US government, etc.", but it could just mean a building.
Then which thing is "the original composition itself"? The original score? But the score of a symphony is not the symphony itself but only a written representation of it. If it were the symphony itself, music would be nothing but musical literature.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 am Human creations are the result of a process that starts as an idea, a mental image of the transformations to apply to physical materials, which will guide the creator through the actual physical process of constructing the work. So it doesn't just pop up into existence, there's no mystery or magic in it. It's not an abstract entity that gets itself transformed automatically into a physical entity, and it's not even a complete mental image. The creator uses the physical medium to experiment with different arrangements of the elements of the composition, which means constant rethinking of the work and transformation of the physical materials, until the last version is achieved.
Yes, artists do use mental materials (ideas, images) and physical ones; and as far as artworks are concerned to which the token-type distinction is inapplicable such as paintings and sculptures, their creation is ontologically unproblematic, since everything remains in the realm of the conrete. But those who believe in the existence of created abstract artworks (qua types) need to explain how they can be created non-magically through the mental or/and physical activities of artists. For the very idea of a created abstractum or abstract artifact seems ontologically incoherent, given that concrete materials cannot be transformed into an abstract object (like a lump of bronze can be transformed into a statue), with the concrete (the mental-or-physical) and the abstract (the nonmental-and-nonphysical) being mutually exclusive.

By the way, when I say that a token "realizes" its type, I don't mean to say that an existing abstractum is transformed into a concretum. For, as I already said, I regard abstract types as ficta, i.e. as mere objects of thought that aren't part of reality like concrete tokens.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 am All and any of the editions of the work of art Hamlet are the work of art Hamlet, since all are reproductions of the original edition that brought to existence that play. All reproductions of Bohemian Rhapsody need not to be particular works of art that are said to be identical or different among them, they are all the same Bohemian Rhapsody.
Again, given that "one thing cannot be identical to two or more different things," this is incoherent unless you use the token-type distinction. One type can have many tokens, and many (numerically different) tokens can belong to one and the same type; but many (numerically different) tokens cannot be one type. (Nor can one token be one type.)
So you should have written instead that:

"All and any of the editions of the work of art Hamlet are tokens of the work of art Hamlet."

"All reproductions of Bohemian Rhapsody…are all tokens of the same Bohemian Rhapsody."
Count Lucanor wrote: February 10th, 2019, 12:04 am The only problem is that Hamlet, or any work of art, as a singular work with particular properties that appeared in a place and time, cannot be a type, a general category at the same time. It wouldn't be recognizable as Hamlet.
Well, Hamlet qua fictional/unreal artwork-type—with types being particular objects rather than universals—never "appeared in a place and time," because only its real tokens did and do—especially Shakespeare's original manuscript as its first token.

If I believed that there really are abstract artifacts or artworks qua types, I'd argue that there are no tokenless types. Types are generically existentially dependent on their tokens. That is, they are not rigidly existentially dependent on any particular token of them, but on there being some tokens (at least one). This means that an artwork qua abstract type cannot exist before its first concrete token begins to exist, and it cannot cannot continue to exist when its last token ceases to exist.
And types cannot be identified or recognized other than by means of their tokens.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

Post by Count Lucanor »

Consul wrote:To deny the actual existence of something is not necessarily to deny its possible existence; but if abstracta exist necessarily by definition, they exist impossibly if they don't exist actually. (To use the language of possible worlds, a necessary being exists either in all possible worlds or in no possible world.)

No, nonexistent (abstract or concrete) objects do not "exist as non-existent"; nor are they in any real realm of reality. For "reality does not contain more than what exists." (Tim Crane)
Consul wrote:Nonbeings/nonentities/nonexistents don't fall under ontological categories qua categories of being/existence/reality; but the same categories (concepts or predicates) can be applied to them as "meontological" ones. (Meontology = the study of nonbeing.)

For example, (the real planet) Venus is an object and (the unreal planet) Vulcan is an object too; and Vulcan's being an object doesn't entail its existing, especially as "(is an) object" is just a formal concept/predicate which doesn't represent a real kind or (sortal) property, such that to say that the (sortal) concept/predicate "object" applies to Vulcan is not to say that there is a real property—being an object—or a real kind—objecthood—that is instantiated by it. (Generally, there is no 1:1 correspondence between concepts/predicates and properties.)
OK, in relation to the existence of abstract objects, maybe we might be getting closer to an agreement if, as I suspect, abstract objects are for you objects of language, mere linguistic references or names which point at nothing substantially concrete, but mentally represented. That would be consistent with a nominalistic approach and from the strict ontological point of view, we would agree. The difference may be that I call abstract objects the mental representations, which I deny exist as objects, as substantial things per se, but I consider them to be real in the sense that mental representations (whatever we think they are) do exist.
Consul wrote: No brain process is an abstract entity. Abstraction as a cognitive process isn't an abstract entity either. And processes or events such as races and boxing matches aren't abstract entities either. These are all concrete occurrences (occurrents) rather than substances.
I never said the brain processes were entities, they are not in the strict sense, so again, it looks like we agree. As a materialist monist, I deny the existence of other substances than the material ones, while acknowledging there are events, states, relations, processes of matter that point to real, objective properties of things, without being substances themselves.
Consul wrote: In the broadest sense, "occurrence"/"occurrent" is an umbrella term for events and processes, but also for states (of affairs) and facts (which are all nonsubstances). The former are time-dependent, dynamic entities by definition, while the latter aren't (by definition). All dynamic occurrences, i.e. all events and all processes, are concrete by definition. There could be abstract states or facts, but there couldn't be abstract events or processes. There is no happening, no becoming and no change in a (timeless) world of abstracta, but only static being.
Mostly agree, except for the part that there can't be abstract events or processes. They are material processes and given the previous statement about monistic materialism, they only exist in that sense, without the need to invoke another realm. I also make the distinction that while processes that happen to real things independent of our minds are to be called <concrete>, those that are mind-related should be called <abstract>. So, under this terminology, occurrences of real, substantial things are concrete, but the mental representations of occurrences (not the occurrences of mental representations), are abstract.
Consul wrote: Lewis doesn't regard sets as mental objects, but as nonmental ones out there where their (concrete) members are. The set of dogs is where the dogs are. Of course, they are not all at the same place, so both the dogs and their set have a divided location.

By the way, Lewis argues ingeniously (in his book Parts of Classes, 1991) that "a class is the fusion of its singleton subclasses." In other words, according to him, a set is the (mereological) sum of the unit sets (singletons) of its members.
For example: {a, b, c} = {a} + {b} + {c}
And I must disagree with Lewis. It's clear that regarding sets as "non-mental objects out there" is nothing but the reification of a mental categorization, one concerned with the relationship between parts and the whole (what mereology is about), characterized by the arbitrary definition of the parts. Is a human body a set of living cells, a set of molecules, or a set of atoms?
Broadly speaking, in English we can use ‘part’ to indicate any portion of a given entity. The portion may itself be attached to the remainder, as in (1), or detached, as in (2); it may be cognitively or functionally salient, as in (1)–(2), or arbitrarily demarcated, as in (3); self-connected, as in (1)–(3), or disconnected, as in (4); homogeneous or otherwise well-matched, as in (1)–(4), or gerrymandered, as in (5); material, as in (1)–(5), or immaterial, as in (6); extended, as in (1)–(6), or unextended, as in (7); spatial, as in (1)–(7), or temporal, as in (8); and so on.
(1) The handle is part of the mug.
(2) The remote control is part of the stereo system.
(3) The left half is your part of the cake.
(4) The cutlery is part of the tableware.
(5) The contents of this bag is only part of what I bought.
(6) That area is part of the living room.
(7) The outermost points are part of the perimeter.
(8) The first act was the best part of the play.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/

This is no different than the Emperor's animals.
Consul wrote: Okay, you can mentally compose a symphony by creating (a sequential complex of) mental images of musical sounds (and remembering them). But to do so is to imagine a first (physical) performance of it, and no imagined or real performance is the symphony itself.

By the way, in cases of musical improvisation as we find it in Jazz, the physical performance is the act of composition.
A mental musical composition, in case such thing was feasible, would be abstract. It wouldn't exist as a real composition, as anything in the world of the real. It exists only in the imagination and only when it becomes physically tangible, it becomes a real composition.

Jazz improvisation actually means completing the composition, since there's already a basic predefined structure over which the improvisation takes place. Many musical forms, even symphonies, use the ad libitum resource and its place within the musical structure is carefully planned and annotated in the score. This means that no actual performances of such works could ever be the same, and yet they are recognizable as representations of the same work.
Consul wrote: That classifications are mental actions doesn't mean that classes (or sets or kinds) of things are mental creations. Classification is class-selection and class-representation (by means of concepts), but not class-creation or class-construction.
It means exactly that. Classes, sets or kinds are always classes of things, they are not the things themselves, nor things by themselves. If they entail the common properties of a given number of things, they are clearly abstract, mental things. To create or construct a class only means to identify the common features and ascribe objects membership to a mental category.
Consul wrote: Keith Campbell rightly calls the claim that "no kinds [or classes] of thing existed before we discerned, classified and labelled them" "grotesquely anthropocentric." (Abstract Particulars, 1991, p. 18)
But it could be argued that classification is an innate cognitive feature of other species, so that would get rid of the anthropocentric accusation. Humans only add the labeling.
Consul wrote: Right. What Frege called drittes Reich (before the political Third Reich of the Nazis came, with Frege having been sorta proto-Nazi himself) is a realm of abstracta, i.e. of entities which are neither mental nor physical. For example, what he calls Gedanken (thoughts) aren't concrete thoughts in the psychological sense (= acts/events of thinking) but abstract propositions (what Bernard Bolzano had earlier called Sätze an sich [sentences in themselves].)
My point was that endorsing Frege's position about what it means for something to be abstract implies endorsing platonism.
Consul wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote: Assuming that kinds could have an ontology, some options are missing in this one, such as kinds as mental categorizations.
No, because this option belongs to 1: To replace kinds with mental categories or concepts (or linguistic predicates) is to be an antirealist or nominalist about them.

By the way, I forgot to mention that there are not only kinds of things or objects but also kinds of stuffs or materials.
With ontology I presume existence, some mode of being, so if something doesn't exist, it has no ontology. Option 1 dismisses any mode of existence and therefore, nothing could be predicated about anything. The only option left is to rely on realism, which means kinds are something, and that something can only be mental categorizations.
Consul wrote: I would say we think with words, because I think thinking is inner, silent speaking.
Does a dog think? If so, does it think with words?
Consul wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote: I also think that "mental images" is a figure of speech due to our inability to accurately describe the nature of our cognitive processes.
I don't think so. Mental images are real ingredients of the conscious mind, being the elements of imagination, including cogitation (thought). There's no imagination without mental imagery. (And there's no thought qua inner speech without linguistic imagery.) Imagination and cogitation qua mental actions mean the use of (various kinds of) mental images for certain purposes.
Mental images are reproductions of the content of perceptual experience, but we cannot think of them as substances residing inside our minds. Experience of the real world is recreated in our minds and we seem to perceive a world in our inner self, and so the term "images" entails the representation of its forms, but it's just an analogy of visual perception.
Consul wrote: In the case of literature, of books and audiobooks, we always stay in the sphere of (written or spoken) language. A printed copy of Hamlet (qua token) is a material realization of Hamlet (qua type); and as such, i.e. as a mere object, it cannot be called a performance of it. But reading from it is a performance, so an audiobook is a recording of a linguistic performance.
Is the reading (aloud) a performance of Hamlet? Playing Hamlet on stage is a theatrical performance of it. (The actors certainly don't read from the book on stage, since they recite the text from memory.) If we distinguish between written and spoken realizations of a work of literature, reading from or reciting a written (graphic) Hamlet-token can be regarded as a spoken (acoustic) Hamlet-token; and as such it can be regarded as a literary performance of Hamlet, especially as there is such a thing as oral literature.
Perhaps reading aloud a theatrical play would be a performance (and I'll argue that it's not), but plain reading of a novel is closer to mere contemplation. In that case a loud reading cannot be a performance because the written symbols are solely intended to carry verbal, semantic ideas, not sensory experiences to an audience. In the case of theatrical plays like Hamlet, they can be just plainly read and enjoyed by its semantic content and even the musicality of its verses, being this a type of aesthetic consumption different than what the theatrical form is designed for, which requires a theatrical set, actors and a live audience, adding in that way the sensory experiences that plain reading cannot deliver. A loud reading then, it's not really a performance.

In any case, the type/token distinction does not apply, because a type points to a general category to which particulars are made members of. A singular work of art can belong to a general category, can be said to be of that type, but cannot be a category in itself.
Consul wrote: Then which thing is "the original composition itself"? The original score? But the score of a symphony is not the symphony itself but only a written representation of it. If it were the symphony itself, music would be nothing but musical literature.
A representation of something implies the real or virtual presence of that which is represented. It is its symbolic reproduction. So a symphony could not be represented if the symphony itself didn't exist and that's the only way a score could be its written representation.
Consul wrote: But those who believe in the existence of created abstract artworks (qua types) need to explain how they can be created non-magically through the mental or/and physical activities of artists. For the very idea of a created abstractum or abstract artifact seems ontologically incoherent, given that concrete materials cannot be transformed into an abstract object (like a lump of bronze can be transformed into a statue), with the concrete (the mental-or-physical) and the abstract (the nonmental-and-nonphysical) being mutually exclusive.
If there's someone who believes in the existence of abstract works of art, they will need to do some explanations. Those like me who don't believe works of art are abstract types, but concrete particulars existing in space and time, are not faced with the problem of magical creation.
Consul wrote: Again, given that "one thing cannot be identical to two or more different things," this is incoherent unless you use the token-type distinction. One type can have many tokens, and many (numerically different) tokens can belong to one and the same type; but many (numerically different) tokens cannot be one type. (Nor can one token be one type.)
So you should have written instead that:

"All and any of the editions of the work of art Hamlet are tokens of the work of art Hamlet."

"All reproductions of Bohemian Rhapsody…are all tokens of the same Bohemian Rhapsody."
It might look incoherent from the point of view of the type/token distinction, but it is actually this distinction applied to works of art that is incoherent. Neither Hamlet, nor Beethoven's Ninth are "general sorts of things" of which their editions or performances are their particular concrete instances. A musical work of art doesn't even need to be ever performed to exist as a work of art, as long as the composition has been registered in some medium. The performance allows us to perceive its realization for the general audience it was intended to, but in theory a well trained musician could judge the work by just reading the score (it is well known that Beethoven was deaf when he wrote the Ninth). Regarding the type/token distinction, there may be the type "rock songs" or even "Queen's songs", of which Bohemian Rhapsody will be a token, as well as the Ninth will be a token of the type "classical music" or "Beethoven's symphonies". General sorts of things imply many singular things sharing common features, and if musical performances are tokens of some type, the types of these performance-tokens can only be performance-types, such as musical performances in general, musical performances of Beethoven's music, or musical performances of the Ninth. Von Karajan's 1955 performance of the Ninth is a token of any of these.
Consul wrote: Well, Hamlet qua fictional/unreal artwork-type—with types being particular objects rather than universals—never "appeared in a place and time," because only its real tokens did and do—especially Shakespeare's original manuscript as its first token.
Again, it doesn't make sense to say that a William Shakespeare's play called Hamlet did not really appear in a place and time in history; it certainly did. To say that it couldn't have happened because of the type/token distinction just shows that such distinction does not apply in these cases. The only fictional nature of Hamlet lies in the events depicted in the play, which only happened in Shakespeare's imagination.
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

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Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmOK, in relation to the existence of abstract objects, maybe we might be getting closer to an agreement if, as I suspect, abstract objects are for you objects of language, mere linguistic references or names which point at nothing substantially concrete, but mentally represented. That would be consistent with a nominalistic approach and from the strict ontological point of view, we would agree. The difference may be that I call abstract objects the mental representations, which I deny exist as objects, as substantial things per se, but I consider them to be real in the sense that mental representations (whatever we think they are) do exist.
Mental representations aren't objects/substances, but they are (ontologically) concrete, since being (ontologically) abstract entails being non-mental.

Anyway, I think the only (genuinely) mental representations are experiential/conscious ones: sense-data or (linguistic, verbal/sentential or non-linguistic, pictorial) mental images. I'm skeptical about nonconscious mental representations as postulated by cognitive science:

"The notion of a “mental representation” is, arguably, in the first instance a theoretical construct of cognitive science. As such, it is a basic concept of the Computational Theory of Mind, according to which cognitive states and processes are constituted by the occurrence, transformation and storage (in the mind/brain) of information-bearing structures (representations) of one kind or another."

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ment ... sentation/

Note that I do not deny the existence of information-bearing/representing neural structures or processes in the brain! Neuronal networks do encode information, but there is nothing (genuinely) mental or mentally contentful about nonconscious neural information.

As far as propositional attitudes such as belief and desire are concerned, I don't think there are any proposition-containing and -storing "belief boxes" or "desire boxes" in the brain.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmI never said the brain processes were entities, they are not in the strict sense, so again, it looks like we agree.
If "entity" is used synonymously with "thing", "object", or "substance", then processes and all other sorts of occurrences (events, states) are non-entities. But in the broad ontological sense, everything that is/exists is an entity, including processes.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmAs a materialist monist, I deny the existence of other substances than the material ones, while acknowledging there are events, states, relations, processes of matter that point to real, objective properties of things, without being substances themselves.


I'm a materialist substance monist (substance materialist) too. I believe there are no immaterial/spiritual substances (minds/souls/spirits/ghosts).

But not all entities are substances, since occurrences (processes, events, states, facts) are non-substances.

(Reductive) Materialism about substances doesn't include (reductive) materialism about occurrences. And neither the former nor the latter includes (reductive) materialism about adherences/inherences, i.e. attributes (properties or relations).
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmMostly agree, except for the part that there can't be abstract events or processes. They are material processes and given the previous statement about monistic materialism, they only exist in that sense, without the need to invoke another realm. I also make the distinction that while processes that happen to real things independent of our minds are to be called <concrete>, those that are mind-related should be called <abstract>. So, under this terminology, occurrences of real, substantial things are concrete, but the mental representations of occurrences (not the occurrences of mental representations), are abstract.
So, given your idiosyncratic terminology, being abstract is compatible both with being physical and with being mental. Abstract events or processes are then just a kind of physical or mental events or processes. Right?

But your concept of abstractness is essentially different from the one used in contemporary ontology, which refers to a "third realm" of entities which are neither mental(ly reducible) nor physical(ly reducible).
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmAnd I must disagree with Lewis.
It's clear that regarding sets as "non-mental objects out there" is nothing but the reification of a mental categorization, one concerned with the relationship between parts and the whole (what mereology is about), characterized by the arbitrary definition of the parts. Is a human body a set of living cells, a set of molecules, or a set of atoms?[/quote]

If Lewis is right, then "the relation of a class to any sub-class turns out to be mereological." (David Armstrong) But there aren't many who share his view. The standard view is that class-/set-membership isn't parthood, because the members of a class/set aren't parts of it, with classes/sets not being mereological sums of their members: {a, b, c} ≠ [a + b+ c]

As I said, I don't believe in the existence of abstract objects such as classes/sets; but if they existed, they would be abstract, non-mental objects out there.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmIs a human body a set of living cells, a set of molecules, or a set of atoms?
If a human body were a set, it would be an abstract object, which it is clearly not. So it's a concrete (mereological) aggregate/sum/fusion of cells, which are themselves sums of molecules, which are themselves sums of atoms, which are themselves sums of elementary particles. (Whether there are true metaphysical atoms, i.e. mereologically simple, non-composite physical objects, is an open question.)

However, a human body or any other living organism is not a mere sum or heap of spatiotemporally and causally/functionally unrelated or unconnected things. A purely mereological whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts; but an integral whole is something more, because its parts are structurally and functionally connected.

For example, as far as the mere sum of the atoms is concerned of which your body is composed, the spatial distances between them are totally irrelevant to the existence of their sum. They could be lightyears away from one another, and their sum would still be the same; but a mere sum of atoms lightyears away from one another surely cannot constitute a human body or any other individual organism.
What turns a mere mereological sum or whole into an integral, organized whole, a complex or system is structure and function, which connect and unify the parts.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pm
Broadly speaking, in English we can use ‘part’ to indicate any portion of a given entity. The portion may itself be attached to the remainder, as in (1), or detached, as in (2); it may be cognitively or functionally salient, as in (1)–(2), or arbitrarily demarcated, as in (3); self-connected, as in (1)–(3), or disconnected, as in (4); homogeneous or otherwise well-matched, as in (1)–(4), or gerrymandered, as in (5); material, as in (1)–(5), or immaterial, as in (6); extended, as in (1)–(6), or unextended, as in (7); spatial, as in (1)–(7), or temporal, as in (8); and so on.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/

This is no different than the Emperor's animals.
Are you saying there are no objective facts about parthood?

According to mereological universalism (as defended by Lewis and many others), for any two or more things, there is a thing which is their sum or fusion, and which exists independently of any mental categorization/conceptualization/classification.
Lewis' "trout-turkeys" are a famous example. A trout-turkey is "the mereological fusion of the front half of a trout plus the back half of a turkey" (Lewis), and it is as concept- and mind-independently real as trouts and turkeys, despite the fact that nobody uses the concept of a trout-turkey in addition to the concepts of a trout and a turkey.

"Most of all, it is the axiom of Unrestricted Composition that arouses suspicion. I say that whenever there are some things, they have a fusion. Whenever! It doesn't matter how many or disparate or scattered or unrelated they are. It doesn't matter whether they are all and only the satisfiers of some description. It doesn't matter whether there is any set, or even any class, of them. (Here's where plural quantification pays its way, for better or worse.) There is still a fusion. So I am committed to all manner of unheard-of things: trout-turkeys, fusions of individuals and classes, all the world's styrofoam, and many, many more. We are not accustomed to speak or think about such things. How is it done? Do we really have to?

It is done with the greatest of ease. It is no problem to describe an unheard-of fusion. It is nothing over and above its parts, so to describe it you need only describe the parts. Describe the character of the parts, describe their interrelation, and you have ipso facto described the fusion. The trout-turkey in no way defies description. It is neither fish nor fowl, but it is nothing else: it is part fish and part fowl. It is neither here nor there, so where is it? – Partly here, partly there. That much we can say, and that's enough. Its character is exhausted by the character and relations of its parts.

I never said, of course, that a trout-turkey is no different from an ordinary, much-heard-of thing. It is inhomogeneous, disconnected, and not in contrast with its surroundings. (Not along some of its borders.) It is not cohesive, not causally integrated, not a causal unit in its impact on the rest of the world. It is not carved at the joints. But none of that has any bearing on whether it exists. If you wish to ignore it, of course you may."


(Lewis, David. Parts of Classes. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. pp. 79-81)
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmA mental musical composition, in case such thing was feasible, would be abstract. It wouldn't exist as a real composition, as anything in the world of the real. It exists only in the imagination and only when it becomes physically tangible, it becomes a real composition.
What "exists only in the imagination" is not its (intentional) object but its (experiential) content, i.e. a mental image (of its object). A composition such as Beethoven's Ninth as an intentional object of musical imagination is an imaginary object that doesn't exist in anybody's mind. The musical imagery involved in musical imagination is not fictional but real; but Beethoven's Ninth doesn't consist of musical images in somebody's mind.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmJazz improvisation actually means completing the composition, since there's already a basic predefined structure over which the improvisation takes place. Many musical forms, even symphonies, use the ad libitum resource and its place within the musical structure is carefully planned and annotated in the score. This means that no actual performances of such works could ever be the same, and yet they are recognizable as representations of the same work.
Yes, improvisations can be regarded as spontaneous variations on a given theme.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pm
Consul wrote:That classifications are mental actions doesn't mean that classes (or sets or kinds) of things are mental creations. Classification is class-selection and class-representation (by means of concepts), but not class-creation or class-construction.
It means exactly that. Classes, sets or kinds are always classes of things, they are not the things themselves, nor things by themselves. If they entail the common properties of a given number of things, they are clearly abstract, mental things. To create or construct a class only means to identify the common features and ascribe objects membership to a mental category.
From the point of view of (abstractist/platonist) realism about classes/sets—which isn't mine!—, conceptualizing or naming a class/set isn't constructing/creating or making it, because for any plurality of things there is a concept-independent class/set whose members they are, no matter how similar or dissimilar they are from one another. As Grossmann says, "the set consisting of the desk before me, the oldest living rabbit in Australia, and a hair on Napoleon's head, is a perfectly wholesome set of three things."

Of course, the classes/sets of things we and particularly scientists are interested in are the ones whose members are more or less similar to one another; but this doesn't mean that only those classes/sets exist whose members exhibit some perceptible and recognizable degree of similarity or resemblance.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pm
Consul wrote:No, because this option belongs to 1: To replace kinds with mental categories or concepts (or linguistic predicates) is to be an antirealist or nominalist about them.
By the way, I forgot to mention that there are not only kinds of things or objects but also kinds of stuffs or materials.
With ontology I presume existence, some mode of being, so if something doesn't exist, it has no ontology. Option 1 dismisses any mode of existence and therefore, nothing could be predicated about anything. The only option left is to rely on realism, which means kinds are something, and that something can only be mental categorizations.
I doubt that true predication always requires existence.

If kinds don't exist, you can either stop using the word "kind" and thereby stop talking about kinds, or you can continue using it and thereby continue talking about kinds, and even saying true things about them. However, of course, true statements about nonexistent kinds aren't made true by kinds but by other things that exist, which may be concepts. But even to say that (existing) concepts are part of the truthmakers of true kind-statements is not to say that kinds are concepts.

I think it's a category mistake to say so, because, to use Husserl's terms, <kind> is one of the (nonrepresentational) "categories of objects", while <concept> is one of the (representational) "categories of meaning". Concepts represent, are about something/some things, but kinds don't and aren't. For example, the concept dog represents (the) dogs, but the kind doghood does not.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pm
Consul wrote:I would say we think with words, because I think thinking is inner, silent speaking.
Does a dog think? If so, does it think with words?
No, it can only think in the sense of using nonlinguistic mental images. That is, dogs can only "think with pictures". So, if thought is the same as imagination, then languageless animals are capable of thought; but I use "thought" more narrowly.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmMental images are reproductions of the content of perceptual experience, but we cannot think of them as substances residing inside our minds. Experience of the real world is recreated in our minds and we seem to perceive a world in our inner self, and so the term "images" entails the representation of its forms, but it's just an analogy of visual perception.
Imagination isn't only reproductive but also productive or creative.

Visual imagery is just one sort of mental imagery among many others:

"Another way in which the expression ‘mental imagery’ (together with many of its colloquial near-equivalents) may be misleading, is that it tends to suggest only quasi-visual phenomena. Despite the fact that most scholarly discussions of imagery, in the past and today, do indeed focus mainly or exclusively upon the visual mode, in fact, quasi-perceptual experience in other sensory modes is just as real, and, very likely, just as common and just as psychologically important (Newton, 1982). Contemporary cognitive scientists generally recognize this, and interesting studies of auditory imagery, kinaesthetic (or motor) imagery, olfactory imagery, haptic (touch) imagery, and so forth, can be found in the recent scientific literature (…). Although such studies are still vastly outnumbered by studies of visual imagery, ‘imagery’ has become the generally accepted term amongst cognitive scientists for quasi-perceptual experience in any sense mode (or any combination of sense modes)."

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/

Of course, mental images aren't substances; and they aren't even objects like physical images or pictures (e.g. photographies and paintings). I agree with you that imagination is quasi-perception or quasi-sensation. It's the mental simulation of sensation. Mental images are imaginative impressions (as opposed to perceptive impressions); and as such they are event-like rather than thing-like, being mental "imagings" rather than mental images. Husserl calls the experiential contents of imagination "Sinnesphantasmen"/"sense-phantasms", which may be regarded as simulated sense-data.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmA loud reading then, it's not really a performance.
Okay, a theatric or cinematic performance of a literary text is relevantly different from a loud reading of it.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmIn any case, the type/token distinction does not apply, because a type points to a general category to which particulars are made members of. A singular work of art can belong to a general category, can be said to be of that type, but cannot be a category in itself.
If types were predicable universals, you'd be right; but I think they're not. I think types are (or would be, if they existed) non-predicable particulars or individuals (particular or individual objects). So the relationship between a type and a token of it is (or would be) one between two particulars rather than one between a universal and a particular.

The ontological relationship between its performances (qua tokens) and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (qua type) is different from the one between Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the universal property of being a symphony. A token realizes but doesn't instantiate its type (qua non-universal). Performances of Beethoven's Ninth realize it without instantiating it. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has the property of being a symphony, but its performances don't have the property of being a Beethoven's ninth symphony.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmA representation of something implies the real or virtual presence of that which is represented. It is its symbolic reproduction. So a symphony could not be represented if the symphony itself didn't exist and that's the only way a score could be its written representation.
No, being represented doesn't entail being. We think, talk and write about things which aren't existent or present in any way. The representational function of a symphony score doesn't depend on the existence of the symphony it represents.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmIf there's someone who believes in the existence of abstract works of art, they will need to do some explanations. Those like me who don't believe works of art are abstract types, but concrete particulars existing in space and time, are not faced with the problem of magical creation.
Which concrete particular is BNS, and where is it (now)?
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pmIt might look incoherent from the point of view of the type/token distinction, but it is actually this distinction applied to works of art that is incoherent. Neither Hamlet, nor Beethoven's Ninth are "general sorts of things" of which their editions or performances are their particular concrete instances. A musical work of art doesn't even need to be ever performed to exist as a work of art, as long as the composition has been registered in some medium. The performance allows us to perceive its realization for the general audience it was intended to, but in theory a well trained musician could judge the work by just reading the score (it is well known that Beethoven was deaf when he wrote the Ninth). Regarding the type/token distinction, there may be the type "rock songs" or even "Queen's songs", of which Bohemian Rhapsody will be a token, as well as the Ninth will be a token of the type "classical music" or "Beethoven's symphonies". General sorts of things imply many singular things sharing common features, and if musical performances are tokens of some type, the types of these performance-tokens can only be performance-types, such as musical performances in general, musical performances of Beethoven's music, or musical performances of the Ninth. Von Karajan's 1955 performance of the Ninth is a token of any of these.
As I already explained above, if types were "general sorts of things", i.e. (substantial) universals, you'd be right; for then neither Hamlet nor BNS could be types, because they are particulars or individuals. Tokens (qua particulars) instantiate universals—e.g. a performance of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody instantiates the property of being a musical performance—, but they don't instantiate the types (qua non-universals/particulars) they realize—e.g. a performance of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't instantiate the property of being a Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Count Lucanor wrote: February 17th, 2019, 3:45 pm
Consul wrote: Well, Hamlet qua fictional/unreal artwork-type—with types being particular objects rather than universals—never "appeared in a place and time," because only its real tokens did and do—especially Shakespeare's original manuscript as its first token.
Again, it doesn't make sense to say that a William Shakespeare's play called Hamlet did not really appear in a place and time in history; it certainly did. To say that it couldn't have happened because of the type/token distinction just shows that such distinction does not apply in these cases. The only fictional nature of Hamlet lies in the events depicted in the play, which only happened in Shakespeare's imagination.
The question relevant here is not whether what (the play) Hamlet is about is fictional or real, but whether (the play) Hamlet itself is fictional or real. Of course, if Shakespeare's original manuscript is Hamlet, then Hamlet did "appear in a place and time in history." But to think so is to turn Hamlet into a (unique) piece of paper, which is highly implausible.
Of course, all concrete Hamlet-representations—the original manuscript and all printed versions of it—did and do appear at some place and at some time; but Hamlet itself is not to be confused and not to be equated with any concrete (mental or physical) representation of it.
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

Post by Count Lucanor »

Consul wrote:Mental representations aren't objects/substances, but they are (ontologically) concrete
Mental representations can point to concrete objects/substances in the real world, but since they come from a process of abstraction, they are abstract. If something is not an object/substance, or the properties or relations of an object/substance, then it cannot be concrete. <Abstract> refers to a general idea of something, including the general characteristics of a concrete particular, in other words, an abstract particular. We might acknowledge there's a different level of abstraction in a process that creates a mental representation triggered by the sensory experience of objects, as compared to one construed from the memory of past experiences. In both we are dealing with abstract particulars, but one seems to be more specific. I understand some will want to call "concrete" this abstract particular, but this is not my preferred distinction between abstract and concrete.
Consul wrote:since being (ontologically) abstract entails being non-mental.
I understand that is Frege's position, that entails the ontological existence of abstract objects in a third realm (non-physical, non-mental), and for which he is considered a platonist. If one is not a platonist, abstract objects don't exist, and they can only be mental objects in the sense we have discussed before. I prefer to take as much distance as possible of platonism, so I cannot endorse Frege's view of abstracta as non-mental, non-physical entities, no matter how conventional that view might have become in contemporary philosophy.
Consul wrote:So, given your idiosyncratic terminology, being abstract is compatible both with being physical and with being mental. Abstract events or processes are then just a kind of physical or mental events or processes. Right?
The brain process of abstraction produces the experience or event of mental representation that we call <abstract>.
Consul wrote:But your concept of abstractness is essentially different from the one used in contemporary ontology, which refers to a "third realm" of entities which are neither mental(ly reducible) nor physical(ly reducible).
Again, assuming contemporary ontology (along with it, the philosophy of mind) has finally endorsed Frege's platonism, and assuming the SEP entry is right on this, I may be endorsing a traditional, outmoded view:

The most important alternative to the Way of Negation is what Lewis calls the Way of Abstraction. According to a longstanding tradition in philosophical psychology, abstraction is a distinctive mental process in which new ideas or conceptions are formed by considering several objects or ideas and omitting the features that distinguish them. For example, if one is given a range of white things of varying shapes and sizes; one ignores or ‘abstracts from’ the respects in which they differ, and thereby attains the abstract idea of whiteness. Nothing in this tradition requires that ideas formed in this way represent or correspond to a distinctive kind of object. But it might be maintained that the distinction between abstract and concrete objects should be explained by reference to the psychological process of abstraction or something like it. The simplest version of this strategy would be to say that an object is abstract if it is (or might be) the referent of an abstract idea, i.e., an idea formed by abstraction.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abst ... s/#WayAbst

Consul wrote: If a human body were a set, it would be an abstract object, which it is clearly not. So it's a concrete (mereological) aggregate/sum/fusion of cells, which are themselves sums of molecules, which are themselves sums of atoms, which are themselves sums of elementary particles. (Whether there are true metaphysical atoms, i.e. mereologically simple, non-composite physical objects, is an open question.)

However, a human body or any other living organism is not a mere sum or heap of spatiotemporally and causally/functionally unrelated or unconnected things. A purely mereological whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts; but an integral whole is something more, because its parts are structurally and functionally connected.

For example, as far as the mere sum of the atoms is concerned of which your body is composed, the spatial distances between them are totally irrelevant to the existence of their sum. They could be lightyears away from one another, and their sum would still be the same; but a mere sum of atoms lightyears away from one another surely cannot constitute a human body or any other individual organism.
What turns a mere mereological sum or whole into an integral, organized whole, a complex or system is structure and function, which connect and unify the parts.
Mereological means more than the sum, but the relationship between the parts and the whole, so that the parts define the whole and the whole defines the parts. But it is clear that the identification of the parts that make the whole relies on convention and is almost arbitrary, since there are no limits to this criteria. Sets as classifications are indeed mere abstractions (mental things), while the actual members of these sets, their properties and relations, may not.
Consul wrote: Are you saying there are no objective facts about parthood?
Not really, because the relationship between the parts and the whole of a real object are real, but there are almost infinite relationships to choose from. Therefore, any set is an arbitrary and abstract classification, which lies more in the mind of the observer than in the objects themselves, which is what naturally happens with relational properties. It may be a fact that I'm standing next to a tree, but there are many other ways to describe the same situation considering other elements of reference (the ground, the coordinate system, the observer's position, etc.)
Consul wrote: According to mereological universalism (as defended by Lewis and many others), for any two or more things, there is a thing which is their sum or fusion, and which exists independently of any mental categorization/conceptualization/classification.
Lewis' "trout-turkeys" are a famous example. A trout-turkey is "the mereological fusion of the front half of a trout plus the back half of a turkey" (Lewis), and it is as concept- and mind-independently real as trouts and turkeys, despite the fact that nobody uses the concept of a trout-turkey in addition to the concepts of a trout and a turkey.
Lewis defense of his arbitrary "fusion" as an objective reality is the best exposition against it.
Consul wrote:A composition such as Beethoven's Ninth as an intentional object of musical imagination is an imaginary object that doesn't exist in anybody's mind. The musical imagery involved in musical imagination is not fictional but real; but Beethoven's Ninth doesn't consist of musical images in somebody's mind.
That looks like a rewording of the same thing I said, so we agree.
Consul wrote:From the point of view of (abstractist/platonist) realism about classes/sets—which isn't mine!—, conceptualizing or naming a class/set isn't constructing/creating or making it, because for any plurality of things there is a concept-independent class/set whose members they are, no matter how similar or dissimilar they are from one another. As Grossmann says, "the set consisting of the desk before me, the oldest living rabbit in Australia, and a hair on Napoleon's head, is a perfectly wholesome set of three things."
Yes, it's a wholesome arbitrary collection of three things, not essentially tied to each other to conform an ontological, substantial unity. And even when we point to the constituent parts of a whole, we can arbitrarily select infinite collections of these parts to describe the same whole. So, as collections of things, as membership, they are clearly concept-dependent, in other words, subjective.
Consul wrote: I doubt that true predication always requires existence.
There can't be attributes of a substance that doesn't exist. There can be, however, imaginary attributes of imaginary beings, which are not real, of course.
Consul wrote: If kinds don't exist, you can either stop using the word "kind" and thereby stop talking about kinds, or you can continue using it and thereby continue talking about kinds, and even saying true things about them. However, of course, true statements about nonexistent kinds aren't made true by kinds but by other things that exist, which may be concepts. But even to say that (existing) concepts are part of the truthmakers of true kind-statements is not to say that kinds are concepts.
Any statement about non-existent things cannot be true, but we can certainly make statements about real things and real properties, including classifications of them, but such classifications are not meant to be empirical facts, but agreements about how to organize in concepts our knowledge of the world.
Consul wrote: I think it's a category mistake to say so, because, to use Husserl's terms, <kind> is one of the (nonrepresentational) "categories of objects", while <concept> is one of the (representational) "categories of meaning". Concepts represent, are about something/some things, but kinds don't and aren't. For example, the concept dog represents (the) dogs, but the kind doghood does not.
Actually, both <dog> and <doghood> can be said to be concepts or kinds, the difference lies only in that one concept represents the entities dogs and the other the properties that make dogs, and both can be at the same time categories.
Consul wrote: No, it can only think in the sense of using nonlinguistic mental images. That is, dogs can only "think with pictures". So, if thought is the same as imagination, then languageless animals are capable of thought; but I use "thought" more narrowly.
So it looks as we had two different domains of thought, one linguistic and the other one non-linguistic. Or, thought is non-linguistic and language is just an added feature. This is what makes more sense and it would take quite an effort to prove that animals don't think. But then, properly speaking, thinking will not be about words.
Consul wrote: Imagination isn't only reproductive but also productive or creative.
That is true if we take into account that imagination involves combining previous representations to make new ones. That's what makes possible creating completely unrealistic entities and environments.
Consul wrote: Okay, a theatric or cinematic performance of a literary text is relevantly different from a loud reading of it.
Sure, because some other elements have been added to the consumption of the work of art, which immediately recalls the conditions for its production, actually becoming another form of art. As we well know, Hamlet movies and other literary adaptations are valued as cinematic works of art, not as literature.
Consul wrote: If types were predicable universals, you'd be right; but I think they're not. I think types are (or would be, if they existed) non-predicable particulars or individuals (particular or individual objects). So the relationship between a type and a token of it is (or would be) one between two particulars rather than one between a universal and a particular.
We obviously disagree, but I think it might be just a matter of preference. Your original reference to the type/token distinction seems to support my view (see below), although in some other places the same entry contradicts itself.
The distinction between a type and its tokens is an ontological one between a general sort of thing and its particular concrete instances...

...Are types universals? They have usually been so conceived, and with good reason. But the matter is controversial. It depends in part on what a universal is. (See the entry on properties.) Universals, in contrast to particulars, have been characterized as having instances, being repeatable, being abstract, being acausal, lacking a spatio-temporal location and being predicable of things. Whether universals have all these characteristics cannot be resolved here. The point is that types seem to have some, but not all, of these characteristics. As should be clear from the preceding discussion, types have or are capable of having instances, of being exemplified; they are repeatable. To many, this is enough to count as universals...

...So far, then, types appear to be a species of universal, and most metaphysicians would so classify them.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/
Consul wrote: No, being represented doesn't entail being. We think, talk and write about things which aren't existent or present in any way. The representational function of a symphony score doesn't depend on the existence of the symphony it represents.
By saying "virtual presence" I acknowledged that being represented doesn't entail being, although there are some nuances to this statement: we just simply cannot produce a first-time thought of things that don't exist, because if they never existed, they were never perceived, they would not be intelligible, nor reproducible. That does not mean that we cannot imagine non-real things, by way of recreating previous representations of real things, combining them in different ways. Let's be reminded of gargoyles as imaginary beings or Piranesi's etchings of Rome.

But the real point was that every representation is the symbolic reproduction of something else, the representation of A entails A (real or unreal). A physical (real) representation of a gargoyle does not imply the realistic nature of gargoyle characters. But a musical score cannot represent an unreal symphony, unless it was not really a score, perhaps something that looks like it, but does not refer to something playable. So, a real musical score entails the being of real musical composition.
Consul wrote: Which concrete particular is BNS, and where is it (now)?
I think it is, as a said before, a social or cultural object. As such, it can be anything that contains and reproduces the original Beethoven's score. In that sense, all of these are actually occurrences of the original composition, a concrete singular.
Consul wrote: As I already explained above, if types were "general sorts of things", i.e. (substantial) universals, you'd be right; for then neither Hamlet nor BNS could be types, because they are particulars or individuals. Tokens (qua particulars) instantiate universals—e.g. a performance of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody instantiates the property of being a musical performance—, but they don't instantiate the types (qua non-universals/particulars) they realize—e.g. a performance of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't instantiate the property of being a Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Clearly, particular performances of BNS or Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody can be tokens of abstract types, of general categories, such as "performances of BNS" or "Queen's music". That can be said of any particular, but that is not to say that there can't be occurrences of a concrete particular:
Now this may seem impossible; how can one and the same thing occur more than once without there being two tokens of it? Simons (1982) concludes that it can't. Wetzel (1993) argues that it is useful to distinguish objects from occurrences of them. For example, in the sequence of numbers <0,1,0,1> the very same number, the number one, occurs twice, yet its first occurrence is distinct from its second. The notion of an occurrence of x in y involves not only x and y, but also how x is situated in y. Even a concrete object can occur more than once in a sequence—the same person occurs twice in the sequence of New Jersey million dollar lottery winners, remarkably enough. If we think of an expression as a sequence, then the air of mystery over how the same identical thing can occur twice vanishes.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/#Occ
Consul wrote: The question relevant here is not whether what (the play) Hamlet is about is fictional or real, but whether (the play) Hamlet itself is fictional or real. Of course, if Shakespeare's original manuscript is Hamlet, then Hamlet did "appear in a place and time in history." But to think so is to turn Hamlet into a (unique) piece of paper, which is highly implausible.
Of course, all concrete Hamlet-representations—the original manuscript and all printed versions of it—did and do appear at some place and at some time; but Hamlet itself is not to be confused and not to be equated with any concrete (mental or physical) representation of it.
When we think of these are occurrences of the original theatrical composition, then the need to reduce Hamlet to a single instance disappears.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Consul
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

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Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pmMental representations can point to concrete objects/substances in the real world, but since they come from a process of abstraction, they are abstract. If something is not an object/substance, or the properties or relations of an object/substance, then it cannot be concrete. <Abstract> refers to a general idea of something, including the general characteristics of a concrete particular, in other words, an abstract particular. We might acknowledge there's a different level of abstraction in a process that creates a mental representation triggered by the sensory experience of objects, as compared to one construed from the memory of past experiences. In both we are dealing with abstract particulars, but one seems to be more specific. I understand some will want to call "concrete" this abstract particular, but this is not my preferred distinction between abstract and concrete.

I understand that is Frege's position, that entails the ontological existence of abstract objects in a third realm (non-physical, non-mental), and for which he is considered a platonist. If one is not a platonist, abstract objects don't exist, and they can only be mental objects in the sense we have discussed before. I prefer to take as much distance as possible of platonism, so I cannot endorse Frege's view of abstracta as non-mental, non-physical entities, no matter how conventional that view might have become in contemporary philosophy.

The brain process of abstraction produces the experience or event of mental representation that we call <abstract>.

Again, assuming contemporary ontology (along with it, the philosophy of mind) has finally endorsed Frege's platonism, and assuming the SEP entry is right on this, I may be endorsing a traditional, outmoded view:

The most important alternative to the Way of Negation is what Lewis calls the Way of Abstraction. According to a longstanding tradition in philosophical psychology, abstraction is a distinctive mental process in which new ideas or conceptions are formed by considering several objects or ideas and omitting the features that distinguish them. For example, if one is given a range of white things of varying shapes and sizes; one ignores or ‘abstracts from’ the respects in which they differ, and thereby attains the abstract idea of whiteness. Nothing in this tradition requires that ideas formed in this way represent or correspond to a distinctive kind of object. But it might be maintained that the distinction between abstract and concrete objects should be explained by reference to the psychological process of abstraction or something like it. The simplest version of this strategy would be to say that an object is abstract if it is (or might be) the referent of an abstract idea, i.e., an idea formed by abstraction.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abst ... s/#WayAbst
First of all, to accept and use the platonistic concept of abstractness is not to affirm that there (really) are such abstract entities.

You write that "if one is not a platonist, abstract objects don't exist, and they can only be mental objects in the sense we have discussed before." – Of course, antiplatonism doesn't include the rejection of "abstract" mental representations (ideas, concepts) or (mental or physical tokens of) "abstract" linguistic representations (words, especially nouns), which are said to result from a psychological or semiological process called "abstraction".
No such abstract (mental or physical) representation is platonistically abstract. (But note that concepts qua nonmental predicate-meanings/-senses are platonistically abstract; and so are types of linguistic signs.)

In order to avoid confusion and misunderstanding, the psychologically or semiologically abstract representations Locke and others are talking about had better be called abstractive or abstracting, or general instead.

"Abstraction. The use of words then being to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas, and those ideas being taken from particular things, if every particular idea that we take in should have a distinct name, names must be endless. To prevent this, the mind makes the particular ideas received from particular objects to become general; which is done by considering them as they are in the mind such appearances, separate from all other existences, and the circumstances of real existence, as time, place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is called abstraction, whereby ideas taken from particular beings become general representatives of all of the same kind; and their names general names, applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Such precise, naked appearances in the mind, without considering how, whence, or with what others they came there, the understanding lays up (with names commonly annexed to them) as the standards to rank real existences into sorts, as they agree with these patterns, and to denominate them accordingly. Thus the same colour being observed today in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers that appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of that kind; and having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound signifies the same quality wheresoever to be imagined or met with; and thus universals, whether ideas or terms, are made.

Brutes abstract not. If it may be doubted whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree: This, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of making use of general signs for universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other general signs."


(Lovcke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. Book II, ch. XI, §§9-10)

"How general words are made. The next thing to be considered is, how general words come to be made. For since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by general terms, or where find we those general natures they are supposed to stand for? Words become general by being made the signs of general ideas: and ideas become general, by separating from them the circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing more individuals than one; each of which, having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call it) of that sort."

(Lovke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. Book III, ch. III, §6)

"Following Lewis’ terminology, let’s call these accounts of the abstract-concrete distinction “Ways.”

One of these is what Lewis (1986 [On the Plurality of Worlds]: 84) calls the Way of Abstraction, according to which abstract entities “result from somehow subtracting specificity, so that an incomplete description of the original concrete entity would be a complete description of the abstraction.” So described, the Way of Abstraction admits of several very different interpretations. The least plausible of these takes abstract entities to be “abstractions” akin to “abstract ideas” and therefore much like our ideas of redness or sphericality that we cognitively “subtract” from experiences. Interpreted this way, the Way of Abstraction implausibly requires that all abstract entities are mind-dependent mental entities and therefore runs contrary to any standard conception of platonism.

A more plausible interpretation of the Way of Abstraction takes abstract entities to be the referents of terms introduced using what are sometimes called “abstraction principles.” These principles seek to implicitly define terms referring to abstracta by specifying the truth-conditions of identity claims about abstracta in terms of concrete entities. On this view, abstract entities are not somehow brought into existence by a mental act of “subtracting specificity,” but our success in referring to them and, in turn, our epistemic access to them owes to the relevant abstraction principles. In using such principles, a standard ambition is to implicitly define abstract objects—most notably, numbers—in terms of nothing more than certain relational predicates among concrete entities (e.g., “are in one-to-one correspondence”). One such proposal holds that we can define putative abstracta like directions in terms of a relational predicate “is parallel with” that is true of certain lines.2 Speaking loosely, such a view introduces an operator, “is the direction of” and then defines an expression like “the direction of line b” by noting that directions of lines are identical if and only if they are parallel. In this way, abstraction principles are what allow us to define and, in turn, refer to alleged abstract entities like the number of planets or the directions of lines.

There is a venerable platonist tradition that relies upon abstraction principles in providing an epistemology of mathematics and other abstract entities; however, it is unclear whether such a view might plausibly explain the abstract–concrete distinction itself. It is also rather unclear how notions like “incompleteness” or “subtracting specificity” might be of much help in this regard. Finally, there is no guarantee that abstract entities are all and only those entities that admit of contextual definition along these lines. So, while we are under no obligation to reject the use of abstraction principles and we will return to views in this neighbourhood in subsequent chapters, we can set aside the Way of Abstraction here. In its place, we will turn to reductionist proposals that invoke criteria like location, causation, and necessity to analyze abstractness."


(Cowling, Sam. Abstract Entities. New York: Routledge, 2017. pp. 75-6)
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pmMereological means more than the sum, but the relationship between the parts and the whole, so that the parts define the whole and the whole defines the parts. But it is clear that the identification of the parts that make the whole relies on convention and is almost arbitrary, since there are no limits to this criteria. Sets as classifications are indeed mere abstractions (mental things), while the actual members of these sets, their properties and relations, may not.
If sets are "mental things", what kind of mental things are they?
They're surely not concepts (qua mental representations), but nonmental concept-extensions at most, with the extension of a concept being the set of things falling under it. And sets aren't mental things.

The problem of vagueness occurs in mereology too: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/#IndFuz

However, even if there are borderline cases of parthood, where it is indeterminate whether something is part of something else or not, it is not the case that what is part of what is always a matter of human convention or decision.

Mereology is one thing and set theory is another. The members of a set aren't identical to it, whereas the parts of a purely mereological whole are identical to it. According to set theory, there is even a memberless set—the empty set—, but there are no partless wholes. (There are also sets with just one member, so-called singletons; and if parthood is a reflexive relation, such that everything is part of itself, there are wholes with just one part.)

"Mereology is ontologically innocent.
To be sure, if we accept mereology, we are committed to the existence of all manner of mereological fusions. But given a prior commitment to cats, say, a commitment to cat-fusions is not a further commitment. The fusion is nothing over and above the cats that compose it. It just is them. They just are it. Take them together or take them separately, the cats are the same portion of Reality either way. Commit yourself to their existence all together or one at a time, it’s the same commitment either way. If you draw up an inventory of Reality according to your scheme of things, it would be double counting to list the cats and then also list their fusion. In general, if you are already committed to some things, you incur no further commitment when you affirm the existence of their fusion. The new commitment is redundant, given the old one.

I say that composition – the relation of part to whole, or, better, the many-one relation of many parts to their fusion – is like identity. The ‘are’ of composition is, so to speak the plural form of the ‘is’ of identity. Call this the Thesis of Composition as Identity. It is in virtue of this thesis that mereology is ontologically innocent: it commits us only to things that are identical, so to speak, to what we were committed to before."


(Lewis, David. Parts of Classes. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. p. 81-2)
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pm
Consul wrote:Are you saying there are no objective facts about parthood?
Not really, because the relationship between the parts and the whole of a real object are real, but there are almost infinite relationships to choose from. Therefore, any set is an arbitrary and abstract classification, which lies more in the mind of the observer than in the objects themselves, which is what naturally happens with relational properties. It may be a fact that I'm standing next to a tree, but there are many other ways to describe the same situation considering other elements of reference (the ground, the coordinate system, the observer's position, etc.)
Again, the subject matter of mereology aren't sets (and the relation of set-membership).

There is only one fundamental mereological relation, viz. parthood; so I'm not sure what you mean by "almost infinite relationships to choose from".

Of course, both sets and sums of things can be arbitrarily selected and described by means of arbitrarily defined general concepts or common nouns; but it doesn't follow that a set or sum of things is always mind- or language-dependent (let alone mental itself) and "lies more in the mind of the observer than in the objects themselves."
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pm
Consul wrote:According to mereological universalism (as defended by Lewis and many others), for any two or more things, there is a thing which is their sum or fusion, and which exists independently of any mental categorization/conceptualization/classification.
Lewis' "trout-turkeys" are a famous example. A trout-turkey is "the mereological fusion of the front half of a trout plus the back half of a turkey" (Lewis), and it is as concept- and mind-independently real as trouts and turkeys, despite the fact that nobody uses the concept of a trout-turkey in addition to the concepts of a trout and a turkey.
Lewis defense of his arbitrary "fusion" as an objective reality is the best exposition against it.
Of course, a trout-turkey is a "queer" fusion, a bizarre object; but if front halves of trouts and back halves of turkeys are objectively real, then I fail to see why mereological fusions/sums of them aren't equally real.

By the way, mereological universalism with its acceptance of all sorts of unusual wholes has a nice solution to the problem of mereological vagueness: There is no objective mereological indeterminacy in the world, because all such apparent vagueness is due to "semantic indecision" (Lewis).

"The only intelligible account of vagueness locates it in our thought and language. The reason it's vague where the outback begins is not that there's this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders; rather there are many things, with different borders, and nobody has been fool enough to try to enforce a choice of one of them as the official referent of the word 'outback'. Vagueness is semantic indecision."

(Lewis, David. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. p. 212)

"Mereological Universalism. For every non-empty set S, the members of that set compose something. (Equivalent to Arbitrary Sums.)

On the plus side, Mereological Universalism is a very simple principle. In addition, if Universalism were true, there would be no vagueness or indeterminacy in the world.We would never have to worry whether some things really met the conditions necessary for composition, since there are no such conditions beyond mere existence.

On the minus side, Universalism seems to multiply entities needlessly, contrary to Ockham’s Razor. Second, Universalism is contrary to our ordinary way of identifying and counting things. Suppose we found four wooden rocking chairs in a room and were asked, ‘How many wooden things are in the room?’ We would be unlikely to answer that there were an astronomical number of wooden things, one corresponding to every possible combination of woody bits contained by the four chairs.We don’t ordinarily believe in scattered or arbitrarily gerrymandered objects."


(Koons, Robert C., and Timothy H. Pickavance. The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017. p. 507)

As for universalism's alleged disadvantages, Lewis would reply that it doesn't "multiply entities needlessly" because it's "ontologically innocent"—see the quote above! And that it is "contrary to our ordinary way of identifying and counting things" and "[w]e don’t ordinarily believe in scattered or arbitrarily gerrymandered objects" doesn't mean that these objects don't really exist. Counterintuitiveness doesn't mean falseness! If trouts and turkeys are real objects, so are trout-turkeys!
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pm
Consul wrote:From the point of view of (abstractist/platonist) realism about classes/sets—which isn't mine!—, conceptualizing or naming a class/set isn't constructing/creating or making it, because for any plurality of things there is a concept-independent class/set whose members they are, no matter how similar or dissimilar they are from one another. As Grossmann says, "the set consisting of the desk before me, the oldest living rabbit in Australia, and a hair on Napoleon's head, is a perfectly wholesome set of three things."
Yes, it's a wholesome arbitrary collection of three things, not essentially tied to each other to conform an ontological, substantial unity. And even when we point to the constituent parts of a whole, we can arbitrarily select infinite collections of these parts to describe the same whole. So, as collections of things, as membership, they are clearly concept-dependent, in other words, subjective.
No, what is concept-dependent is our thought and talk about sets or sums of things, but not the sets or sums thought and talked about. There are indefinitely many possible ways of conceptualizing, describing and classifying/taxonomizing things, but concepts don't create or invent the things they represent. They are ways of thinking of things, and not ways of making things.

Sets depend for their existence on those objects which are their members, and sums depend for their existence on those objects which are their parts; but neither sets nor sums depend for the existence on concepts of those objects.
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pm
Consul wrote:I doubt that true predication always requires existence.
There can't be attributes of a substance that doesn't exist. There can be, however, imaginary attributes of imaginary beings, which are not real, of course.
Nonexistent objects cannot have existent properties, but predication isn't the same as attribution. That is, to say that a predicate P is true of something x isn't necessarily to say that there is a corresponding property P* had by x.
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pmAny statement about non-existent things cannot be true,…
This is itself a statement about nonexistent things, so it's false if it is true. For if there were no truths about nonexistents, then there would be the truth about them that there are no truths about them. ;-)

Anyway, there are negative truths about nonexistents at least, such as that they don't exist.
Are there also positive truths about them? As a matter of fact, we do say many positive things about them such as "Sherlock Holmes is a detective" and "Sherlock Holmes lives in London, 221B Baker Street". However, of course, if there are such positive truths about nonexistents, then the question is what makes them true?
One simple suggestion is that what makes it true that Sherlock Holmes is a detective living in London is that his "creator" Arthur Conan Doyle represents (characterizes, describes) him as a detective living in London. So a positive fact concerning the fictional Holmes is made true by positive facts concerning the real Doyle.
In the case of nonexistent (fictional/imaginary) objects or persons there is no difference between being and being represented to be. They are what they are thought to be, since they are nothing more than objects of thought.

For more and other suggestions, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nonexistent-objects/
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pmActually, both <dog> and <doghood> can be said to be concepts or kinds, the difference lies only in that one concept represents the entities dogs and the other the properties that make dogs, and both can be at the same time categories.
I use "<…>" to refer to concepts; and I consciously wrote "the kind doghood" rather than "the kind <doghood>", because doghood qua kind is not a concept (no matter whether kinds are entities sui generis, i.e substantial universals, or reducible to classes/sets, aggregates/fusions/sums, or complex properties): the kind dog(hood) ≠ the concept <dog> (& the kind dog(hood) ≠ the predicate "dog").
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pm
Consul wrote: No, it can only think in the sense of using nonlinguistic mental images. That is, dogs can only "think with pictures". So, if thought is the same as imagination, then languageless animals are capable of thought; but I use "thought" more narrowly.
So it looks as we had two different domains of thought, one linguistic and the other one non-linguistic. Or, thought is non-linguistic and language is just an added feature. This is what makes more sense and it would take quite an effort to prove that animals don't think. But then, properly speaking, thinking will not be about words.
I'd say we have two domains of imagination: There is both linguistic imagination (and imagery) and non-linguistic imagination (and imagery). Whether cases of the latter can properly be called "thought" depends on the definition of "thought". If it's narrowly defined as inner speech, then non-linguistic imagination isn't thought.
So what exactly occurs in the conscious minds of animals lacking a natural language such as English that can properly be called thought. How can they think and by means of what? What exactly is non-linguistic (or linguistically non-expressed) thought and what things are its vehicles?

"It is beyond serious doubt that nonlinguistic creatures are capable of thinking and reasoning about the physical environment in highly sophisticated ways."

(Bermúdez, José Luis. "Can Nonlinguistic Animals Think about Thinking." In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Kristin Andrews and Jacob Beck, 119-130. New York: Routledge, 2018. p. 119)

However, he admits that…

"The fact of the matter, however, is that we have little idea of what the vehicle of nonlinguistic thought might be. At the level of the vehicle, nonlinguistic thoughts are rather similar to scientific unobservables (Sellars 1956/1997). We can see their effects but (as yet) only speculate as to the intrinsic nature of their vehicles." (p. 192)

And despite his belief in nonlinguistic thought, he disbelieves in nonlinguistic meta-thought, i.e. thought about thought(s):

"The central claim is that all thinking that involves intentional ascent (roughly, all thinking that involves thinking about thoughts) requires the capacity for semantic ascent (roughly, the capacity to think about words)." (p. 151)

"[W]e have reached the conclusion that thoughts can only be the objects of the type of reflexive thinking in which thoughts are the objects of thought if they have natural-language vehicles." (pp. 163-4)

(Bermúdez, José Luis. Thinking without Words. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.)
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pmWe obviously disagree, but I think it might be just a matter of preference. Your original reference to the type/token distinction seems to support my view (see below), although in some other places the same entry contradicts itself.
The distinction between a type and its tokens is an ontological one between a general sort of thing and its particular concrete instances...

...Are types universals? They have usually been so conceived, and with good reason. But the matter is controversial. It depends in part on what a universal is. (See the entry on properties.) Universals, in contrast to particulars, have been characterized as having instances, being repeatable, being abstract, being acausal, lacking a spatio-temporal location and being predicable of things. Whether universals have all these characteristics cannot be resolved here. The point is that types seem to have some, but not all, of these characteristics. As should be clear from the preceding discussion, types have or are capable of having instances, of being exemplified; they are repeatable. To many, this is enough to count as universals...
...So far, then, types appear to be a species of universal, and most metaphysicians would so classify them.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/
Types can be regarded as substantial universals (kind-universals), but then the type-token distinction isn't applicable to works of art (literature or music). It makes sense to speak of the kind(-universal) symphony, but it doesn't make sense to speak of the kind(-universal) Beethoven's ninth symphony.
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pmBy saying "virtual presence" I acknowledged that being represented doesn't entail being, although there are some nuances to this statement: we just simply cannot produce a first-time thought of things that don't exist, because if they never existed, they were never perceived, they would not be intelligible, nor reproducible. That does not mean that we cannot imagine non-real things, by way of recreating previous representations of real things, combining them in different ways. Let's be reminded of gargoyles as imaginary beings or Piranesi's etchings of Rome.
But the real point was that every representation is the symbolic reproduction of something else, the representation of A entails A (real or unreal). A physical (real) representation of a gargoyle does not imply the realistic nature of gargoyle characters. But a musical score cannot represent an unreal symphony, unless it was not really a score, perhaps something that looks like it, but does not refer to something playable. So, a real musical score entails the being of real musical composition.
If by "musical composition" you mean an abstract work of music, that's what I deny!
A score of a symphony represents the symphony and is a recipe for performances of it, telling conductors and musicians how to realize it physically. The representational and instructional functions of a symphony score don't require the existence of the symphony qua abstract object. The symphony itself is nothing more than a fictional or imaginary object.
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pm
Consul wrote: Which concrete particular is BNS, and where is it (now)?
I think it is, as a said before, a social or cultural object. As such, it can be anything that contains and reproduces the original Beethoven's score. In that sense, all of these are actually occurrences of the original composition, a concrete singular.
There is only one BNS, so which one social or cultural object is it? There are many copies of the original score, there are many performances of the symphony, there are many recordings of performances of it, and there are many musical images of it in many minds; but none of them is the unique musical object called BNS.
BNS is not a universal that can be multiply instantiated by many different things at many different places and times. Anyway, even if it were a universal, none of its instances would be it, since a universal and its instances are different things.
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pmClearly, particular performances of BNS or Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody can be tokens of abstract types, of general categories, such as "performances of BNS" or "Queen's music". That can be said of any particular, but that is not to say that there can't be occurrences of a concrete particular:
Now this may seem impossible; how can one and the same thing occur more than once without there being two tokens of it? Simons (1982) concludes that it can't. Wetzel (1993) argues that it is useful to distinguish objects from occurrences of them. For example, in the sequence of numbers <0,1,0,1> the very same number, the number one, occurs twice, yet its first occurrence is distinct from its second. The notion of an occurrence of x in y involves not only x and y, but also how x is situated in y. Even a concrete object can occur more than once in a sequence—the same person occurs twice in the sequence of New Jersey million dollar lottery winners, remarkably enough. If we think of an expression as a sequence, then the air of mystery over how the same identical thing can occur twice vanishes.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/#Occ


Wetzel doesn't say that a concrete particular (qua token) can occur multiply in the sense of being capable of spatiotemporal multilocation: "Tokens are concrete particulars; whether objects or events they have a unique spatio-temporal location." (L. Wetzel)

For Wetzel, the occurrence of a token or type is not just its existence, but is always an occurrence in a sequence (or structure). She writes that "a concrete object can occur more than once in a sequence—the same person occurs twice in the sequence of New Jersey million dollar lottery winners," but a place in an ordered sequence as an abstract n-tuple—(x1,…, xn) or <x1,…, xn> [as opposed to the order-indifferent set {x1,…, xn}]—is not a place in physical space but in "logical space". Logical or mathematical tuples (lists) are as platonistically abstract as sets. One and the same person cannot occur twice in the set of NJ lottery winners, but she can occur twice in a list of NJ lottery winners. However, the latter can be interpreted deflationarily—without any ontological commitment to abstract lists—as meaning simply that one and the same person can be a two-time winner of the NJ lottery.

Can a BNS-performance (qua concrete token) occur multiply? Being a unique event, it cannot be (wholly) multilocated in space or time. Are there any abstract sequences in which a particular BNS-performance occurs (non-spatiotemporally) more than once, in which it has at least two or more positions? For example, one and the same BNS-performance can occur more than once (have more than one position) in a list of award-winning BNS-performances, since it can get two or more awards.
Count Lucanor wrote: March 10th, 2019, 1:04 pm
Consul wrote: The question relevant here is not whether what (the play) Hamlet is about is fictional or real, but whether (the play) Hamlet itself is fictional or real. Of course, if Shakespeare's original manuscript is Hamlet, then Hamlet did "appear in a place and time in history." But to think so is to turn Hamlet into a (unique) piece of paper, which is highly implausible.
Of course, all concrete Hamlet-representations—the original manuscript and all printed versions of it—did and do appear at some place and at some time; but Hamlet itself is not to be confused and not to be equated with any concrete (mental or physical) representation of it.
When we think of these are occurrences of the original theatrical composition, then the need to reduce Hamlet to a single instance disappears.
Hum…
We need to be careful here so as not to create confusion. We have abstract types, concrete tokens, and (Wetzelian) occurrences of types or tokens (in sequences or structures). Tokens may be said to be instances of types, but they are not (Wetzelian) occurrences of types.

My contention is that the spatiotemporal occurrence of a (copy of the original) playscript of Hamlet or a stage performance of the play Hamlet is not a spatiotemporal occurrence of Hamlet itself. For example, two Hamlet-performances can take place at the same time in Germany, but this wouldn't mean that the play Hamlet itself is spatially multilocated.

Anyway, note that when Wetzel speaks of multiple occurrences of types or tokens (in something), she doesn't mean spatiotemporal occurrences. For types (occurring in other types) are non-spatiotemporal in principle, and what has no spatiotemporal location/position at all, doesn't have more than one either; and tokens (occurring in other tokens) have only one spatiotemporal location/position (at one time).
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

Post by Count Lucanor »

Consul wrote: First of all, to accept and use the platonistic concept of abstractness is not to affirm that there (really) are such abstract entities.
That's precisely the point, if abstractions are not real things, then there's no use of the platonistic concept and we must look somewhere else for a better concept. So if we give the name abstraction to something, knowing that it is not "out there", then the only option left is that it is something in our minds, a mental thing. It is not the same, of course, to say that mental things don't really exist than to say that abstractions don't exist neither "out there", nor in our minds, because then we're back to the problem of what are we referring to.
Consul wrote: But note that concepts qua nonmental predicate-meanings/-senses are platonistically abstract; and so are types of linguistic signs.
But of course that is clearly and endorsement of platonism, to make use of it as a legitimate approach to talk about things that exist in the realm of the "out there", the only "place" we can look for non-mental things.
Consul wrote: In order to avoid confusion and misunderstanding, the psychologically or semiologically abstract representations Locke and others are talking about had better be called abstractive or abstracting, or general instead.
Because abstract representations don't really exist as substantial objects, but as mental objects in the sense that they're singularly identified by our minds, they are to be called mental representations, however this must refer to the process itself that our brain does. What exists is the abstractive process, abstracting, and that is what abstracta is. Perhaps platonists like Frege will not want to think of abstract objects as things related to our minds, and will prefer to think of them as things in another realm "out there", but then the problem arises:
Frege ascribes to senses and thoughts objective existence. In his mind, they are objects every bit as real as tables and chairs. Their existence is not dependent on language or the mind. Instead, they are said to exist in a timeless "third realm" of sense, existing apart from both the mental and the physical...Frege concludes that they are abstract objects, incapable of full causal interaction with the physical world. They are actual only in the very limited sense that they can have an effect on those who grasp them, but are themselves incapable of being changed or acted upon. They are neither created by our uses of language or acts of thinking, nor destroyed by their cessation.

Unfortunately, Frege does not tell us very much about exactly how these abstract objects pick out or present their references.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/frege/
Consul wrote: If sets are "mental things", what kind of mental things are they?
They're surely not concepts (qua mental representations), .
Given that sets depend on their members, there's the need to ascribe the property of membership to items in order to construct sets, based on chosen properties of such items. The act of selection, which implies disregarding other properties of items according to the preferred criteria of classification, is obviously a subjective act of the agent, one which does not arise by necessity from the objective, real properties of the items. The same items can be members of other sets. To become a set does not involve the same subjective experience of the agent as to become a dog, a tree or the Amazon river.
Consul wrote: but nonmental concept-extensions at most, with the extension of a concept being the set of things falling under it. And sets aren't mental things.
Concept-extensions are necessarily mental. Since "concepts are the constituents of thoughts", and thoughts are mental, then concepts are mental.
Consul wrote: However, even if there are borderline cases of parthood, where it is indeterminate whether something is part of something else or not, it is not the case that what is part of what is always a matter of human convention or decision.
The issue of arbitrariness of parthood is not about indetermination of the part/whole relationship, but about the relativity of its determination. So, all part/whole relationships in an object could be determined, but which one accounts for the ontology of the object is an arbitrary convention. If it didn't work this way, two sets of things could not refer to the same object. A given set of atoms makes the White House, but so makes a given set of architectural elements.
Consul wrote: Mereology is one thing and set theory is another. The members of a set aren't identical to it, whereas the parts of a purely mereological whole are identical to it.
The parts of a whole, individually considered, are not identical to the whole either. The door handle is not identical to the door. But when you consider the handle as part of the door, that is not different than considering a member as part of a set. One is the fusion of the handle and the rest of the door and the other is the fusion of the members that become the set.
Consul wrote:According to set theory, there is even a memberless set—the empty set—, but there are no partless wholes. (There are also sets with just one member, so-called singletons; and if parthood is a reflexive relation, such that everything is part of itself, there are wholes with just one part.)
That there can be an empty set should be enough indication that sets are "ontologically innocent", a reflexive relation, a mere abstraction.
Consul wrote: Again, the subject matter of mereology aren't sets (and the relation of set-membership).
According to SEP, an exact formulation of mereology came about with Leśniewski's Foundations of the General Theory of Sets (1916). In the entry for Leśniewski, there's almost no distinction between sets, classes and parts:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lesniewski/#EarMer
Looking up more about Leśniewski and mereology, one finds that it is an attempt to explain Russell's paradox, which was a key problem of set theory.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/mereology
Consul wrote: There is only one fundamental mereological relation, viz. parthood; so I'm not sure what you mean by "almost infinite relationships to choose from".
There are almost infinite relations of parthood in objects, since objects or collections of objects can be divided in any of the multiple possible arrays of its constituent parts. A part is "any portion of a given entity" and it seems obvious that portions are not objectively defined and are limitless. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/#ParPar
Consul wrote: Of course, a trout-turkey is a "queer" fusion, a bizarre object; but if front halves of trouts and back halves of turkeys are objectively real, then I fail to see why mereological fusions/sums of them aren't equally real.
The arbitrary theoretical fusion of a portion of an entity and a portion of another will yield a theoretical parthood relationship, which by being theoretical has nothing to do with its supposed "mind-independent" reference in the real world. But trout-turkey don't exist objectively in the real world and the fact that Lewis can still come up with a mereological fusion of something called "trout-turkey" is an indication that mereological fusions, as well as sets, are mere abstractions, mental things.
Consul wrote: Nonexistent objects cannot have existent properties, but predication isn't the same as attribution. That is, to say that a predicate P is true of something x isn't necessarily to say that there is a corresponding property P* had by x.
Yes, but that doesn't imply real attributes in nonexistent objects either. True existence does imply real attributes.
Consul wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:Any statement about non-existent things cannot be true,…
This is itself a statement about nonexistent things, so it's false if it is true.
No, because this is a statement about an existent thing: false statements. The fact that there are false statements doesn't make those statements true, but true statements can be made about false statements, for example: "Peter's claim that the he is not human is false".
Consul wrote: I use "<…>" to refer to concepts; and I consciously wrote "the kind doghood" rather than "the kind <doghood>", because doghood qua kind is not a concept (no matter whether kinds are entities sui generis, i.e substantial universals, or reducible to classes/sets, aggregates/fusions/sums, or complex properties): the kind dog(hood) ≠ the concept <dog> (& the kind dog(hood) ≠ the predicate "dog").
I see no difference between kinds and concepts, other than perhaps kinds being some types or subsets of concepts. So the concept of dog is inscribed in the concept of animal, being dog (qua concept) a kind of animal (qua concept). And the concept of doghood is inscribed in the concept of animalhood, being doghood a kind of animalhood. In any case, dog implies doghood, and animal implies animalhood, with the difference that one concept represents the typical entities (dogs, animals) and the other the typical properties of said entities (doghood, animalhood).
Consul wrote:
"The central claim is that all thinking that involves intentional ascent (roughly, all thinking that involves thinking about thoughts) requires the capacity for semantic ascent (roughly, the capacity to think about words)." (p. 151)
"[W]e have reached the conclusion that thoughts can only be the objects of the type of reflexive thinking in which thoughts are the objects of thought if they have natural-language vehicles." (pp. 163-4)

(Bermúdez, José Luis. Thinking without Words. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.)
Other than the belief of my namesake, there's no clear indication of why we should endorse the position that all reflexive thinking involves linguistic capacities. And for that matter, what is exactly "reflexive thinking" in terms that avoid circular reasoning?
Consul wrote: If by "musical composition" you mean an abstract work of music, that's what I deny!
But I deny that works of music are abstract, since for me that would entail that these works dwell in a purely mental domain. That's obviously impossible, because then such things would not be accessible to anyone else.
Consul wrote: A score of a symphony represents the symphony and is a recipe for performances of it, telling conductors and musicians how to realize it physically. The representational and instructional functions of a symphony score don't require the existence of the symphony qua ab stract object. The symphony itself is nothing more than a fictional or imaginary object.
For me, this doesn't make any sense. If a musical composition were an imaginary object, it would be in any of the following senses:
  • A truly fictional entity, one that evokes the properties of substantiality, but can never leave the theoretical domain, having no concrete reference in the real world. As an imaginary object in this sense, it would share the same ontological relation with reality as a unicorn or a flying dragon. Of course, despite not being real, there are verbal descriptions and images of unicorns and dragons in the real world, real objects that represent the fictional characters. So, could we assume just the same that the purely theoretical entities called symphonies get representated in the real world by similar physical means? Obviously not. Any representation of a dragon or an unicorn suffices to function as a symbol of the fictional entities it represents, because there are no real dragons or unicorns to use as a model, they are all imaginary. Not the same with our currently hypothetical, purely theoretical symphony, which will not accept being represented by any physical instantiation. There's nothing evoking the substantial properties of music. And you cannot make a musical score at your own wish and say: "well, this will work as a representation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony". So, musical compositions cannot be imaginary objects in this sense.
  • A general sort of thing, an ideal type that is mentally created by reference to the common properties of many concrete tokens of things in the real world. So, after getting to know many individual, real, substantial horses, one comes up with the ideal concept of horse, an imaginary, bodiless, nonsubstantial entity. OTH, regarding this abstract horse, every real horse is the quintessential horse. Could we assume just the same that a symphony is this universal type, a mental creation conformed by the common properties of real musical instances? Obviously not. No single symphony could be the abstract, imaginary form of many symphonies. Neither could a symphony or any physical representation be the quintessential Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Conversely, BNS could be the quintessential symphony.
  • A nonsubstantial property or process, which is said to be "nonexistent" in the sense that it is not a material body, but nevertheless it is perceivable as real. Changes of state, movement, positional relations, are dynamic events that happen to real material bodies, but cannot be instantiated in formal entities. This, however, is not what we would call an "imaginary object", as these events happen in the real world.
Consul wrote: There is only one BNS, so which one social or cultural object is it? There are many copies of the original score, there are many performances of the symphony, there are many recordings of performances of it, and there are many musical images of it in many minds; but none of them is the unique musical object called BNS.
Yes, there is only one BNS, as there is only one Windows 10. They're not general sort of things, although they are made to be replicated, but they don't even need to be replicated many times to be what they are. The first record of BNS (the original score) suffices to be the symphony, even if had never been performed or its score copied. But it's also true that other occurrences in different formats (scores, recordings, live performances) are BNS as well, retaining the essential properties that allow us to identify its uniqueness, brought to life by the original score. That uniqueness comes from the particular values of its elements in relation to each other (their design or configuration). Anything that recalls this formula is, by necessity, the Ninth Symphony, either the scores, the recordings, live performances, etc.,
Consul wrote: BNS is not a universal that can be multiply instantiated by many different things at many different places and times. Anyway, even if it were a universal, none of its instances would be it, since a universal and its instances are different things.
It is not an universal and it doesn't correspond to the type/token distinction. It is a concrete particular with many occurrences, where occurrences are not necessarily tokens, nor they correspond necessarily to types.
Consul wrote: Wetzel doesn't say that a concrete particular (qua token) can occur multiply in the sense of being capable of spatiotemporal multilocation: "Tokens are concrete particulars; whether objects or events they have a unique spatio-temporal location." (L. Wetzel)

For Wetzel, the occurrence of a token or type is not just its existence, but is always an occurrence in a sequence (or structure). She writes that "a concrete object can occur more than once in a sequence—the same person occurs twice in the sequence of New Jersey million dollar lottery winners," but a place in an ordered sequence as an abstract n-tuple—(x1,…, xn) or <x1,…, xn> [as opposed to the order-indifferent set {x1,…, xn}]—is not a place in physical space but in "logical space". Logical or mathematical tuples (lists) are as platonistically abstract as sets. One and the same person cannot occur twice in the set of NJ lottery winners, but she can occur twice in a list of NJ lottery winners. However, the latter can be interpreted deflationarily—without any ontological commitment to abstract lists—as meaning simply that one and the same person can be a two-time winner of the NJ lottery.
That might be said about tokens in relation to their types. A bicycle in the store is the token of the abstract universal, of the general sort of thing called bicycle. As a general sort of thing, it shares its properties with all particular instances of that thing, but not all the properties that make a particular thing are present in its corresponding type, therefore the type and its token are not identical. Interestingly, an Hercules Gent's Roadster bicycle is a token of a general sort of thing called Hercules Gent's Roadster bicycles, an occurrence of that particular bicycle model, because not all particular bikes of that model are meant to be identical to the first of the series. They might have been designed to have different colors, tires, optional accesories, etc., for example. But if they were designed to be built identically, in every detail, then the original model is more than a model, it ceased to be a mere type, it is a concrete particular that can be replicated many times, and every replication is an occurrence of that particular design. Etchings and casts for Rodin's bronze statues can be said to belong to this category of things. The case is even more applicable to musical compositions as Beethoven's Ninth: it is not a mere model of symphonies to be replicated, but a particular composition on its own, with a detailed configuration that makes it a concrete particular, with all of its occurrences replicating that exact design. Of course, there can be rearrangements of Beethoven's original piece and they would be called exactly that: new works inspired on the original.
Consul wrote: We need to be careful here so as not to create confusion. We have abstract types, concrete tokens, and (Wetzelian) occurrences of types or tokens (in sequences or structures). Tokens may be said to be instances of types, but they are not (Wetzelian) occurrences of types.
Types as general sort of things. As soon as we deal with a concrete particular that is not a type, the distinction is not applicable to the occurrences of this thing.
Consul wrote:My contention is that the spatiotemporal occurrence of a (copy of the original) playscript of Hamlet or a stage performance of the play Hamlet is not a spatiotemporal occurrence of Hamlet itself. For example, two Hamlet-performances can take place at the same time in Germany, but this wouldn't mean that the play Hamlet itself is spatially multilocated.
My own contention is that both performances of Hamlet at the same time are both the play Hamlet, not as token performances of a general sort of thing (qua type) Hamlet, but as occurrences of the one and only play that could be named Hamlet. If Hamlet had been composed for characters and dialogues being replaced in any performance or written copy of the play, one might thing that it is a general sort of thing, a mere model to be instantiated, but it is not the case.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: Ontology of Works of Art

Post by GaryLouisSmith »

Count Lucanor wrote: February 2nd, 2019, 12:38 am
Consul wrote:I'm saying that works of music such as symphonies are abstract types; but, as opposed to platonistic realists about abstracta, I'm an antirealist or fictionalist about them.
For those of you who are anti-Platonists, strongly or moderately, that is to say anti-realists, I am wondering why you are that. I am an extreme Platonist. I know why I am that. It is for erotic-mystical reasons. For the last two and a half millennia there have been tons of mystical, religious, erotic writings all inspired by Plato. I love it. What is you inspiration for being anti-all that, if in fact you are? I also really really like modern and postmodern art, which I see also see as a type of Platonic Realism. I see that someone quoted Reinhardt Grossmann, one of my favorite philosophers, along with Gustav Bergmann, from whom I have gotten most of my ontology.
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by John N. (Jake) Ferris
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In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
November 2022

The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

The Smartest Person in the Room
by Christian Espinosa
December 2022

2021 Philosophy Books of the Month

The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God's Plan

The Biblical Clock
by Daniel Friedmann
March 2021

Wilderness Cry: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe

Wilderness Cry
by Dr. Hilary L Hunt M.D.
April 2021

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
by Dr Frank L Douglas
August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
by Mark L. Wdowiak
September 2021

The Preppers Medical Handbook

The Preppers Medical Handbook
by Dr. William W Forgey M.D.
October 2021

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
by Dr. Gustavo Kinrys, MD
November 2021

Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

Dream For Peace
by Dr. Ghoulem Berrah
December 2021