= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
fubarobfusco comments on What do professional philosophers believe, and why? - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (249)
Because what we're saying about our descriptions of things is different. For some nouns, saying that it "exists" means that it has mass and takes up space, can be bumped into and such. For other nouns, "exists" means it can be defined without contradiction, or some such.
The verb "exist" is being used polysemously, even metaphorically — in the manner that "run" is used of sprinters, computer programs, and the dyed color of a laundered shirt. A sprinter, program, and dye are not actually doing anything like the same thing when they "run", but we use the same word for them. This is a fact about our language, not about the things those three entities are doing. If there were any confusion what we meant, we would not hesitate to say that the program is "executing" and the dye is "spreading" or some such.
The whole Platonist position begins from a definition of "exists" that works equally well for abstract and concrete objects. You alternative definitions are bad: "has mass and takes up space, can be bumped into and such" isn't even a necessary set of criteria for a wide variety of concrete objects. Photons and gluons for instance.
We don't know that it "works equally well", since we don't have omniscient knowledge about the existence of abstract objects. If abstract objects don't exist, then the quantification criterion is too broad, and therefore does not work.
This straight-forwardly begs the question. I say "What it means to exist is to be quantified over in our best scientific theories". Your reply is basically "If you're wrong about the definition then you're wrong about the definition."
Your claim was "If we are right about the definition, we are right about the definition".
I'm yet to see such a definition. Do you mean the "definition" (a postulate, really) such as the one on Wikipedia? (SEP isn't any better.)
If so, then it's a separate definition, not something that "works equally well". Besides, I have trouble understanding why one needs to differentiate between the abstract world and "the world of consciousness".
It's just a way of categorising Platoniists. Conceptualists think 3 is just a concept in their mind, Ptatonists don't.
No, I don't mean that. I've given a definition/criterion like eight times in this thread include two comments up :-).
In other words, theories about the world generally make reference to entities of various kinds. The say "Some x are y" or "There is an x that y's" etc. These x's are a theory's ontological commitments. To say "the number the 3 is prime" implies 3 exists just as "some birds can fly" implies birds exist. Existence is simply being an entity posited by a true scientific theory. Making anything more out of "existence" gives it a metaphysical woo-ness the concept isn't entitled to.
What does "Sherlock Holmes is a bachelor" imply?
"Sherlock Holmes is married" is false. But the truth of "Sherlock Holmes is a bachelor" doesn't imply much about his existence.
A lot of lifting seems to be being done by the "scientific" in "scientific theory".
"Sherlock Holmes is a bachelor" implies that Sherlock Holmes exists. But when you say that you're simply taking part in a fictitious story. It's story telling and everyone knows you're not trying to describe the universe. If the fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle turned out to be a good theory of something-- say it was an accurate description of events that really took place in the late 19th century-- and accurately predicted lots of historic discoveries and Sherlock Holmes and the traits attributed to him were essential for that theory, then we would sat Sherlock Holmes existed.
I am rightly shifting the criteria of "what exists" to people who actually seem to know what they're doing.
That is not uncontentious.
In which case SH is not implied to exist. But I knew that it is a fictitious story. The point was that "the number the 3 is prime" doens't imply that 3 exists, since properties can be correctly or incorrectly ascribe to fictive entities. There is no obvious implication from a statement being true to a statement involving entities that actually exist. Mathematical formalism and fictivism hold 3 to be no more existent than SH, and are not obviously false.
You are not, because you are ignoring them when they say centres don't exist. You are trying to read ontology from formalism, without taking into account the interpretation of the formalism, the semantics. "
I don't agree that I am.
I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish with this line of reasoning. Obviously, "truths" about fictitious stories do not imply the existence of the entities they quantify over. A fiction is a sort of mutually agreed upon lie. (I don't agree, btw, that a statement about Sherlock Holmes is true in the same way that "There are white Swans" is true). But it is none the less the case that the assertion "Sherlock Holmes is a bachelor" implies the existence of Sherlock Holmes. It just so happens that everyone plays along with the story. But unlike the stories of Sherlock Holmes I really do believe in quantum mechanics and so take the theory's word for it that the entities it implies exist actually do exist.
I'm obviously aware there are alternatives to Platonism and that there is plenty of debate. I presumably have reasons for rejecting the alternatives. But instead of actually asserting a positive case for any alternative you seem to just be picking at things and disagreeing with me without explaining why (plus a decent amount of misunderstanding the position). If you'd like to continue this discussion please do that instead of just complaining about my position. It's unpleasant and not productive.
"Maddy's first objection to the indispensability argument is that the actual attitudes of working scientists towards the components of well-confirmed theories vary from belief, through tolerance, to outright rejection (Maddy 1992, p. 280). The point is that naturalism counsels us to respect the methods of working scientists, and yet holism is apparently telling us that working scientists ought not have such differential support to the entities in their theories. Maddy suggests that we should side with naturalism and not holism here. Thus we should endorse the attitudes of working scientists who apparently do not believe in all the entities posited by our best theories. We should thus reject P1."
SEP
Sorry, I should have looked first.
Ah, I see. How is it different from "we define stuff we think about that is not found in nature as "abstract""?
I guess that's where I am having problems with this approach. "Number 3 is prime" is a well-formed string in a suitable mathematical model, whereas "some birds can fly" is an observation about external world. Basically, it seems to me that the term "exist" is redundant in it. Everything you can talk about "exists" in Platonism, so the term is devoid of meaningful content.
Hmm, where do pink unicorns exist? Not in the external world, so somewhere in the internal world then? Or do they not exist at all? Then what definition of existence do they fail? For example, "our best scientific theories" imply that people can think about pink unicorns as if they were experimental facts. Thus they must exist in our imagination. Which seems uncontroversial, but vacuous and useless.
I can talk about a Highest Prime. Specifically, I can say it doesn't exist.
Would a Platonist think that a tulpa exists?
I don't think the hypothesis that there is an independent conscious person existing along with you in your mind (or whatever those people think they're doing) is the best explanation for the experiences they're describing. If they just want to use it as shorthand for a set of narratively consistent hallucination then I suppose I could be okay with saying a tulpa exists. But either way: I don't think a tulpa is an abstract object. It's a mental object like an imaginary friend or a hallucination. Like any entity, I think the test for existence is how it figures in scientific explanation but I think Platonists and non-Platonists are logically free to admit or deny tulpas existence.
A Tegmarkian would.
Really? The 'existence' status of that kind of mental entity seems to be an orthogonal issue to what (I am guessing) you mean by Tegmarkian considerations.
Tegmarkia includes every possible arrangement of physical law, including forms of psycho-phsycial parallelism whereby what is thought automatically becomes real.
Ah, fair point. I went too far. Still, I'm dubious about conflating the logical and the physical definition of existence. But hey, go wild, it's of no consequence.
Have you noticed that, although you and Jack have completely opposite (minimal and maxima) ontologies, you both have the same motivation, of avoiding "philosophising". Well, I suppose "everything exists" and "nothing exists" both impose minimal cognitive burden -- if you believe some non -trivial subset exists, you have to put effort into populating it.
I haven't noticed that Jack has a motivation of "avoiding philosophizing". And I don't say that "nothing exists", I just avoid the term as mostly vacuous, except in specific narrow cases, like math.
I would say pink unicorns do not exist at all. The term, for me, describes a concrete entity that does not exist. "The Unicorn" could be type-language, which are abstract objects-- like "the Indian Elephant" or "The Higgs Boson" but unlike the Indian Elephant the Unicorn is not something quantified over in zoology and it is hard to think of a useful scientific process which would ever involve an ontological commitment to unicorns (aside from studying the mythology of unicorns which is clearly something quite different). "3 is prime" is a well-formed string in a suitable mathematical model-- which is to say a system of manipulating symbols. But this particular method of symbol manipulation is utterly essential to the scientific enterprise and it is trivial to construct methods of symbol manipulation that are not.
Our best scientific theories imply that people can think about pink unicorns as if they were experimental facts. So thoughts about pink unicorns certainly exist. It may also be the case the unicorns possibly exist. But our best scientific theories certainly do not imply the actual existence of unicorns. So pink unicorns do not exist (bracketing modal concerns).
So to conclude: it's different in that the criterion for existence requires that the entity actually figures in scientific explanation, in our accurate model of the universe, not simply that it is something we can think about.
So, if a theory of pink unicorns was useful to construct an "accurate model of the universe" (presumably not including the part of the universe that is you and me discussing pink unicorns?) these imaginary creatures would be as real as imaginary numbers?
Sure! Another way of saying that: If we discovered pink unicorns on another planet they would be as real as imaginary numbers.
A lot of lifting is being done by "scientific" here. It's uncontroversial that scientific theories have to be about the real world in some sense, but it doesn't follow from that that every term mentioned in them successfully refers to something real.