Can anyone explain how nominalists aren't moronic? How can you even do the act of thinking WITHOUT creating categories? You can't think anything without using categories.
Someone explain???
 Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
 |
Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
Nominalism doesn't necessarily mean that categories aren't useful, it just denies that universals are real beyond our use of them.
I think there are other valid criticisms, but to say that they deny categories would be unfair.
>categories aren't useful, it just denies that universals are real beyond our use of them.
What does "real" mean?
Well categories clearly do exist in the abstract mind. Where and how else could they exist?
>Well categories clearly do exist in the abstract mind
WTF is the abstract mind? Categories are clearly subjective to the person doing the categorizing.
>Where and how else could they exist?
In your own mind where you make them up.
Well duh. Where else would they exist? What are nominalists vs realists even talking about?
If you believe they exist only because of your mind then you are a nominalist. If you believe they exist independent of your mind then you are a realist.
So basically it comes down to God versus no God, or non-solipsism vs solipsism. Because I agree that if you look just at the MATERIAL a frog is indistinguishable from everything else, absent a human mind to differentiate it, but the reality is that there is a thing-that-it-is-like-to-be a frog. In other words, a being. Same for humans. It's not enough to only look at the material world and say "well there are no distinctions in nature, because all matter is energy, therefore distinctions only exist in mind." You can't say that because it ignores the fact that other BEINGS exist that are clearly separate and distinct things ("you" and "me").
>What does "real" mean?
Mind independent
The rules that rule the mind are mind independent and include embedded in them emergent phenomena like unicorns.
What is an "emergent phenomena"
If I define a set of rules there exists a possibility space the rules encompass. Within that space are all the phenomena that can exist within it. The possibility space of the game of life contains all the emergent "lifeforms" and patterns, the part of the platonic plane for the given logical context.
Thanks, that's a very useful term
If you aren’t also aware, “emergent” is a very popular term to describe the mind-brain relationship. Even those who fall on the materialist side of the mind-body problem use emergent as a way to describe how the properties of experience we attribute to “mind” emerge from the brain without being reduced to it. The utility of the term is debatable because it doesn’t really explain what or how consciousness emerges, but it is often used to signal a position which is nonreductive but still fundamentally materialist.
Nothing is mind independent lmao. You cannot comprehend anything outside of mind.
are you asking for help on your paper or are you just this dull?
I am a platonist
No I haven't thought it through
Frick you
simple, this shows up and I'm tired now dream eyes
I can think about a unicorn without thinking unicorns really exist. Nominalists deny that universals and abstract objects have some type of metaphysical existence and all the problems that causes.
>I can think about a unicorn without thinking unicorns really exist.
If you're a moron that accepts incoherent statements. If you're a brainwashed idiot that thinks reality is defined by your brainwashing you can say that. The unicorn has certain properties a physical horse doesn't, that's all.
how does it not exist you fricking moron, if it didn't exist it would be nothing yet it is not, it is the thought of an unicorn, it is something
>boohoo I am not seeing it right now why can't I lick my thoughts
get thee to an insane asylum
I'm thinking of God creating Evil. Does that exist?
get btfo Black person cry about it i mog you
I said God, not YHWH
REKT
im going to pump my children into you
yay
What is nominalism and how do universals work? If I say
>This OP has been penetrated by a particular phallus
Did I accidentally use a universal? Or did I manage to express a thought without creating categories? Please advise.
What is a phallus? You just used a category.
First of all, nominalism contains an inherent contradiction, namely, the contradiction that if universal truths really couldn’t be apprehended, then neither could the universal truth that universal truths couldn’t be apprehended. Moreover, there’s a distinction drawn between apprehending universal truths and universal truths really not existing. Something can exist despite my inability to apprehend it. But this goes back quite frankly to the East-West schism and the Catholic vs. Orthodox conception of God and thus of the divine mind and of possibility of knowledge. Catholics always left room for nominalism, while Orthodox insisted that their conception of God really did justify universal truth and make its apprehension possible, but they do this in ways that are not strictly reasonable. They might say, for example, the reasoning your way to the existence of God and thus universal truth is not possible and that access to universal truth must come from the heart. It’s a fair argument because strictly speaking, there is no reasonable argument that necessitates knowledge can only be derived by reason alone and basically nobody actually believes this. So it’s possible that nominalism simply puts too much importance on the reasoning faculties, as the whole of Western philosophy does according to the Orthodox Christians.
Can you expand on Catholic vs Orthodox on this issue? I thought that Catholicism was always realist and not nominalist.
Catholicism didn’t endorse nominalism. It’s rather that (Orthodox say) Catholic theology contained certain errors which opened the door for nominalism. They said it did the same for atheism and polytheism. The disagreement comes from basic theological and Christological differences that are supposedly revealed by scripture and tradition but interpreted by each Church. Basically, if the Bible is true then there are a long series of arguments which proceed from it which inevitably result in an endorsement of either realism or nominalism. Both Catholics and Orthodox would reject nominalism, but Orthodox argue that Catholic innovations allow for nominalism while Catholics don’t really say the same about the East because nominalism didn’t really arise in the East other than where it was inspired by Ockham.
Plato wasn’t right about everything. It is an unreasonable argument because of reason is the basis of everything, then reason is self-referential and all knowledge is fundamentally unjustified. This is why Christians, the same Christians who assimilated Platonism into the doctrine, believe that belief is a necessity for true knowledge and Orthodox Christians in particular belief that it’s fundamentally of the heart and not the mind.
>It is an unreasonable argument because of reason is the basis of everything, then reason is self-referential and all knowledge is fundamentally unjustified.
I don't understand this, could you explain?
>This is why Christians, the same Christians who assimilated Platonism into the doctrine, believe that belief is a necessity for true knowledge
Christianity is a religion based on historical/empirical beliefs (the person of Christ, etc.), so to have coherence it must reject reason as an absolute. This isn't really a convincing argument, though.
what are the Catholic errors that left the door open for nominalism?
This is a very long series of arguments that contain back and forth across ages so I don’t think I could completely summarize here, but I can quickly summarize by explaining that Catholics depart from Orthodox in regard to basic presuppositions about God. They disagree in particular on ontological truths about Christ, God’s grace, God’s acts, and the relationship of man in regard to all these things. Those presuppositions in either case result in a long series of “if X is the case then Y must be the case and if Y is the case then Z must be the case as well” and each has their own version of these sort of arguments. Orthodox would say that at the end of these arguments on the Catholic side, Catholics first of all place too much emphasis on the reasoning faculty, which, combined with Catholic “truths” about God, God’s grace, and God’s acts, led some Catholics to conclude that the divine will was basically unconcerned with human reason and thus reason wasn’t sufficient to discern God’s will. The further conclusion from there then could be that natural law is B.S., that we can’t derive universal truths from our reasoning faculties, that universal truths can’t exist, and that truth in your mind would necessarily be intelligible to truth in mine. Orthodox sometimes go even further to point out that Martin Luther and the Enlightenment grappled with nominalism, implying that nominalism led to Protestantism and Enlightenment scientism/liberalism. Catholics in turn critique nominalism, Protestantism, and the enlightenment, but unlike what Orthodox do to them, they can’t claim Orthodox presuppositions led to nominalism simply because nominalism arose out of the West and not the East and because certain Orthodox presuppositions do indeed seem to make nominalism just an outright heresy and not merely a theological error.
Thanks. Can you give me some links or resources to read? I find it really interesting. I am very curious to hear what Catholic presuppositions allowed for nominalism.
>there is no reasonable argument that necessitates knowledge can only be derived by reason alone and basically nobody actually believes this
It's not an unreasonable argument, and u KNOW (not believe) this to be true. Read Plato.
*I, not u
Doesn’t abstract mathematics completely disprove this idea? Or am I moronic?
What idea? Nominalism?
i'm a connectionist