Alright, for the sake of this idea we're going to say you have just concieved of an imaginary creature (here defined as a creature existing solely in your mind). Does this creature exist?
Let me explain where I'm coming from. So more broadly, I want to know if ideas in general exist? If they don't "exist" then how would one describe conceptual creatures, concepts, or entities? Is there an official name for the theory of conceptual entities "existing"?
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"Proving god exists isn't hard. Proving god is God is the tricky part" - Roommate
is a symbolization of a sentence that is sometimes true, if Fa is taken to mean 'a is a concept' and G taken to mean a statement of the observability and reality of a thing according to its alleged real defining traits.
"exist" is a word that can't be defined. Everything exists. Nothing doesn't. It is not a sense that discriminates anything, but rather an understanding of reality that co-operates with the notion of "everything" and "nothing" themselves to interdefine each other. 'Exists' everything that's true. False formulae are those which are not satisfied of any thing which exists, i.e., of any thing period.
~\/xUx
Ua means "a is a unicorn". There is no unicorn. But something exists which allows me to mean something when I write the above sentence about 'U' and for you to get that meaning. For lack of a better phrase, I call this the idea of a unicorn. That exists.
I still don't see 'where you're coming from.' What are you really interested in? No matter what words pass on this forum, you aren't going to perceive anything new. Paradoxes and misbeliefs go right on happening, because the universe doesn't run on the consistency of thoughts inside it like a model that can crash; it's just a bunch of Things composed of Stuff.
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If you wish to determine whether something exists or not, you must first define existence.
If by 'exist' you mean something you can sensorially interact with on the physical plane, then no, they do not exist. The electrochemical processes of the brain that allow you to conceptualize them exists, but ideas themselves have no physical form. This is not to say they cannot have a great effect in the world. Where would we be without nations or religions? Just because something is not physically in existence does not mean we have to disregard them. Another example would be 'future generations'. They do not yet exist, but many people go to great lengths to ensure the world they may end up inheriting is a decent one.
Think of it like this: Some things exist on the physical plane, and others exist in the imagination. As for a word that describes imagined things, there most certainly is one. They're called 'Ideas'.
I still don't see 'where you're coming from.' What are you really interested in?
The question came to me after a few hours of reading the religion sub-forum, and specifically spawned from the question of whether or not God does or does not exist. I figured, even if no tangible entity of God existed, wouldn't he still exist because he was an idea? That prompted the question of whether ideas exist (I guess it's a weird way to phrase it, as everyone knows that ideas in general exist. What I was more curious is if the content of an idea exists because it has been conceived). From there though, I realized that the question could be broadened beyond religion to include any concept that resides only in the mind.
So if you want to use the God example for a better idea of what I'm wondering about, that might be better. I'm just curious if God automatically exists because people have conceived him (as opposed to existing because people have encountered him in nature).
Quote from "Sir Mu" »
It depends on how you define exist.
I know, but the problem is, I'm not sure how I define existence. That was actually why I asked if there was a separate term for things that "exist" only in the mind. Referring to the example above, people tend to refer to God in terms of whether or not he exists. Does that mean that the general definition of existence refers only to things that exist in the physical world? If so how does one describe ideas?
I get the feeling that this question is really more of a word mess than anything. Apologies.
I also intentionally didn't put the God example in initially to avoid this becoming a religious debate. Please try to avoid looking into the religious roots too much and just look at the question on a more broad scale.
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"Proving god exists isn't hard. Proving god is God is the tricky part" - Roommate
The CONCEPT of the creature exists. It cannot be denied that you conceptualized this creature, as you can attest. This principle is the basis of "I think therefore I am."
So, the concept of the creature exists, and to answer your question, Ideas in general exist.
The SUBJECT of those ideas may not, to use an example; let's look at the world of Lord of the Rings.
The world does not exist, sure. But the world exists within the confines of an idea, which does exist. Imagine an idea is a capsule that holds imaginary things. The capsule exists to the outside world, but things within the capsule do not.
...-ant to use the God example for a better idea of what I'm wondering about, that might be better. I'm just curious if God automatically exists because people have conceived him (as opposed to existing because people have encountered him in nature).
Okay now I think where you're coming from is you want someone to give you something to use to show you understood the Ontological argument for God. I first saw it in Hume.
Here's what there is to understand: It doesn't work.
If you don't get it, then you are somewhere behind and ahead of fellow students who get it.
From Hume's approach, what there is to understand is Humans like the idea of perfection, but they don't observe it ever. Hume just weaseled the idea that perfection could never have been an idea without being an impression (an experience), despite foregoing pages that allowed for synthetic ideas from other ideas. This demonstrated, aha, Humans must have perceived perfection in itself, which must have been God.
I applaud Hume for making the ontology argument at least non-circular, but all his words really do is take a stab at psychology, a stab that has interesting successes and failures.
I get the feeling that this question is really more of a word mess than anything. Apologies.
Ur doin' it right.
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I think what you're getting at, Quirkiness101, is not that the idea exists but instead does it affect what's real? You said you came up with this question from viewing the religion thread. So if you use the example of God, well the idea can exist, but does that prove god?
We can have ideas that formulate non-physical representations of things based on reality, but they still don't land an effect (beyond personal misconception).
However if you really are just wondering about ideas in general, then I think I'd just agree with Zelderex.
Alright, for the sake of this idea we're going to say you have just concieved of an imaginary creature (here defined as a creature existing solely in your mind). Does this creature exist?
It exists as a figment of your imagination. It'd be more understandable to say it isn't real. And if someone tells you the creature doesn't exist, they probably mean outside your mind.
The context is important here.
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"If you're Havengul problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems and a Lich ain't one." - FSM
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
People are teasing apart the notions of unicorn and idea of a unicorn, and they're quite right in stating that while unicorns are uncontentiously said not to "exist", ideas of a unicorn are (more contentiously, but still pretty commonly) said to "exist". Almost certainly there is a configuration of neurons and chemicals in my brain that we can point to and say, "That is Blinking Spirit's idea of a unicorn." But there is another distinction that can be made that I have not yet seen on this thread. Consider, I trust without overmuch pleasure, my head being consumed utterly by flame. I am now dead, and my brain is now ash; surely the idea of a unicorn that I had has ceased to exist. And yet all of you who survived me have your own ideas of a unicorn in your own brains. Consider further a time two hundred years hence, when all the rest of you are as dead and dust as unfortunate I, and our children's children's children have their own ideas of a unicorn in brains that did not exist while we were alive. What we want to be able to say is that all these ideas are in some sense distinct, because they all reside in different individuals, but that they are also in some sense identical: that when you consider your idea of a unicorn, and I consider mine, we are both considering what is the same idea. In other words, we should distinguish between ideas as particulars, as mental states, and ideas as universals, as abstract forms. This is often considered to be essential for communication, for it renders coherent the notion that I can think about a unicorn, say "unicorn", and the people who hear me will begin thinking about the same thing I was thinking about. But the question this thread is asking is: do these universals exist?
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Well in addition to the most important problem of the multiple different (and each quite useful and important) definitions of "exist" ( you switch between them a lot in your first post). I would like to point out something else:
If you conceive a "unicorn" in your mind, your belief or non-belief in it's existence does not determine whether a physical "unicorn" that correlates to your concept exists or doesn't somewhere. Just because you can conceive of it, and you believe it's imaginary, doesn't mean it's imaginary.
In addition, all concepts of physical objects that exist in our minds are a simplification of those physical objects, based partly on our senses combined with approximation to known concepts. Because every physical object is infinitely complex:
Draw a red circle on a piece of white paper as perfectly as you can (trace or use a stencil if you like). Study it as long as you like. Now close your eyes. Is it a perfect circle? No. Can you describe the circle perfectly to yourself? No. Can you even find a finite number of words to describe the drawing perfectly? No. Can you describe the circle To another person so they can "know" the drawing? No. Even if I cheat and try to take a photo to show somebody the drawing, how many megapixels would it have to be so that the memory card would truly contain ACCURATE description of the drawing that you aspired to make a circle? Infinite. In your head, what do you have? "drawing I made that looks sort of like a circle, in red marker, on a crinkly piece of paper..." and the more you study it the more you could write about it...
We often think of our conceptualizing the world as a process of taking in as much information as possible, but really the most amazing thing we do is CONSTANTLY filter out and simplify the world in a way that makes it manageable and meaningful, ignoring and discarding the huge majority of what we see. { TANGENT: It's probably at least one reason why feng shui and clutter clearing works. When you have clutter in your house, especially objects that have sentimental value or negative feelings you associate with them, then every time you look at them, your mind does devote a little bit of cognitive overhead to assessing and recalling, before you ignore that thing. Every time you pass that old T-shirt on the floor, you get a flash of association with the memories you associat with that old t- shirt, then maybe a flash about how messy you are and kicking yourself about it, maybe an association with other shirts you have, color, who knows? etc. If your whole place is a mess, the walk from bedroom to bathroom means walking by 100 extra objects/concepts, scattered across your path. For a subset of mentally ill people known as hoarders, this may be comforting and familiar, but for most of us, it's actually a significan cognitive overhead wasted, and reduces our energy and efficiency for getting crap done. E.g. Like having unpaid bills all over your desk, while you're trying to study there. How many times in an hour do you end up glancing at them and having some dark thought? Similarly one aspect of some forms of autism spectrum and ADHD, is an inability to discard or ignore the "less relevant" parts of the overwhelmingly large amount of information bombarding us at any time. }
Our internal concepts of that red circle are not "accurate" or correct. It is generally described or grouped in your head in relation to previously encountered concepts. We didnt even get into the chemical properties of the ink that make it red, and the thickness of line, imperfections in the paper, molecular level, quantum level descriptions, impermanence (that drawing was fading even as you were drawing, and no object is static... EVERYTHING is aging, paper is oxidizing, ink is oxidizing, etc. It changes one moment to the next) Most people talk about a horse and they can't even tell you how many toes it has, or how long the hair on it's belly is. Does anyone's concept of a horse really have much to do with the (presumed) reality/existence of a horse? We know which end to hand the apple to. But even the owner doesn't know what the horse is thinking. And even the horse doesn't know what stage of digestion the apple in it's belly is at.
Some people believe that "concepts" are the ONLY things that exist. Especially if you're one who believes there is no objective reality.
The world does not exist, sure. But the world exists within the confines of an idea, which does exist. Imagine an idea is a capsule that holds imaginary things. The capsule exists to the outside world, but things within the capsule do not.
Good explanation, helped with visualization a lot.
Quote from "Horseshoe_Hermit" »
From Hume's approach, what there is to understand is Humans like the idea of perfection, but they don't observe it ever. Hume just weaseled the idea that perfection could never have been an idea without being an impression (an experience), despite foregoing pages that allowed for synthetic ideas from other ideas. This demonstrated, aha, Humans must have perceived perfection in itself, which must have been God.
I applaud Hume for making the ontology argument at least non-circular, but all his words really do is take a stab at psychology, a stab that has interesting successes and failures.
I'd actually never heard of the ontology argument before, and thanks for the explanation
What I more meant was since God seems to violate, or be outside, many of the laws of reality (such as the argument that he's outside of time) I was curious if he could possess those traits if people believed him to possess those traits? If the idea of God possessing those traits existed (and most of the people here seem to agree that ideas themselves exist), I wanted to know if that meant that the subject of the idea also existed (a.k.a. God existed)?
A few disclaimers:
A.) I understand that the idea of people bringing into existence a being that had created them is retrospectively a big enough hole to torpedo this idea in an of itself, but I hadn't really thought of it at the time of posting.
B.) If this is the same as the ontology argument, then I guess I really didn't understand HH's post as well as I thought. Again, apologies, I have no prior knowledge of the Ontological argument.
Quote from "Dcartist" »
Some people believe that "concepts" are the ONLY things that exist. Especially if you're one who believes there is no objective reality.
Just realized how much that parallels with 1984 [\off-topic point]
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"Proving god exists isn't hard. Proving god is God is the tricky part" - Roommate
Alright, for the sake of this idea we're going to say you have just concieved of an imaginary creature (here defined as a creature existing solely in your mind). Does this creature exist?
Let me explain where I'm coming from. So more broadly, I want to know if ideas in general exist? If they don't "exist" then how would one describe conceptual creatures, concepts, or entities? Is there an official name for the theory of conceptual entities "existing"?
I don't know what quantum mechanical theory you mis-interpreted, but the creature does not exist, the image of it exists. i.e., your brain is making certain connections and chemical reactions to make that image appear. Imagining something doesn't make it exist. If you imagining something with feeling, then the feeling exists because your mind is re-creating the feeling because its something you remember or have the capacity to think of, but the events themselves that your imagining have not happened. A lot of people don't seem to understand that quantum mechanics is actually a very mechanical thing, not a mystical force.
I don't know what quantum mechanical theory you mis-interpreted, but the creature does not exist, the image of it exists. i.e., your brain is making certain connections and chemical reactions to make that image appear. Imagining something doesn't make it exist. If you imagining something with feeling, then the feeling exists because your mind is re-creating the feeling because its something you remember or have the capacity to think of, but the events themselves that your imagining have not happened. A lot of people don't seem to understand that quantum mechanics is actually a very mechanical thing, not a mystical force.
You probably shouldn't patronize others when you obviously have a fundamental misunderstanding as to what this discussion is about. (It has nothing to do with quantum mechanics whatsoever, nor with imagining objects into existence.)
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You probably shouldn't patronize others when you obviously have a fundamental misunderstanding as to what this discussion is about. (It has nothing to do with quantum mechanics whatsoever, nor with imagining objects into existence.)
He's asking if the concept as the entity that is the concept itself exists or doesn't exist right? Well, that whole "concept" is just your brain thinking, making connections, etc.
Concepts don't exist in the sense that they are some mystical force, but they exist in the way that they are created by real physical processes in your brain.
Your conception about a real animal like, let's say, a panda, is so far from the reality of a real panda that it might as well be imaginary. And that's before we even get into the idea of a SPECIFIC panda, as opposed to "generic panda". How many chromosomes does a panda have? Anybody know off the top of their head? How many common blood types do they have? What do their willies look like? Other than looking at their private parts, how do you tell a male or female apart? You know any of this stuff? I don't.
And then you could note that MANY of us have never gone to a zoo and seen a panda. We've only zeen pictures and video... and third hand descriptions. We believe in our (very incorrect & incomplete) concept of a cuddly cute black and white bear because people tells us they exist.
Given that our "concept" of a "panda" doesn't seem to match up with a real panda very well... and most of us have never seen a "panda", is it any more REAL TO US, than a unicorn?
MOST of the textbooks & adults told us that pandas are real. But so what? Many people (a minority) have told us that unicorns existed once or will exist someday somewhere. Maybe they exist in one of those alternate, infinite universe realities (mammal doesn't seem to be biologically incopatible with a horn, and you could probably genetically engineer one someday using narwhal genes or something, right?).
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If you believe in an imaginary creature, it's "REAL" to you, and that doesn't mean that you're insane (a belief in angels or faeries is compatible with sanity by any legal definition, and is certainly compatible with NOT having psychiatric diagnoses either). It could just mean you're WRONG. Or RIGHT. Since most of us are either wrong (or ignorant) about most things in the entire universe, what definition of the word "real" are we talking about when we say "piltdown man is real. But faeries aren't real, they're only in your imagination" ? Seems like we're talking about CONCENSUS based "real", because of human limitations and the absence of an absolute arbiter of fact/reality.
Your conception about a real animal like, let's say, a panda, is so far from the reality of a real panda that it might as well be imaginary. And that's before we even get into the idea of a SPECIFIC panda, as opposed to "generic panda". How many chromosomes does a panda have? Anybody know off the top of their head? How many common blood types do they have? What do their willies look like? Other than looking at their private parts, how do you tell a male or female apart? You know any of this stuff? I don't.
And then you could note that MANY of us have never gone to a zoo and seen a panda. We've only zeen pictures and video... and third hand descriptions. We believe in our (very incorrect & incomplete) concept of a cuddly cute black and white bear because people tells us they exist.
Given that our "concept" of a "panda" doesn't seem to match up with a real panda very well... and most of us have never seen a "panda", is it any more REAL TO US, than a unicorn?
MOST of the textbooks & adults told us that pandas are real. But so what? Many people (a minority) have told us that unicorns existed once or will exist someday somewhere. Maybe they exist in one of those alternate, infinite universe realities (mammal doesn't seem to be biologically incopatible with a horn, and you could probably genetically engineer one someday using narwhal genes or something, right?).
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If you believe in an imaginary creature, it's "REAL" to you, and that doesn't mean that you're insane (a belief in angels or faeries is compatible with sanity by any legal definition, and is certainly compatible with NOT having psychiatric diagnoses either). It could just mean you're WRONG. Or RIGHT. Since most of us are either wrong (or ignorant) about most things in the entire universe, what definition of the word "real" are we talking about when we say "piltdown man is real. But faeries aren't real, they're only in your imagination" ? Seems like we're talking about CONCENSUS based "real", because of human limitations and the absence of an absolute arbiter of fact/reality.
I thin he's asking if the "concept" exists, like is there really this thing that your brain is conceptualizing, not "does whatever you can think of exist in some universe?" It's sort of like asking if the "mind" exists or if a "soul" really exists.
rokey balboa used concepts to fight strong against his fellow girls yes? we in mtg are pro paid high professor nerds who r paid to tease the masses in a hall fulla chicks. we entice and ride on "quantum inexilerated turbo officated rignerole. depend ing on these facts by our great fortune we present discoveries to university soin also accomplishing the foundation of bliss whic h is card graces.
may the cards protect us frm tresspassers & forever let be their devine protection,
Perhaps go Meinong's route and posit subsistence instead of existence? I don't know, but I think these questions lead to other questions as well: If we say that concepts, ideas, etc. exist (or even subsist), then it seems that we posit identity of some sort. Then what of macro-level objects? Do they exist? Sorites Paradoxes? To me delving into a 20th century philosophical question always delves into metaphysics. (This isn't bad, it just is). As an aside: I really like how Blinking Spirit brought up universals - I think that they are an important concept.
People are teasing apart the notions of unicorn and idea of a unicorn, and they're quite right in stating that while unicorns are uncontentiously said not to "exist", ideas of a unicorn are (more contentiously, but still pretty commonly) said to "exist". Almost certainly there is a configuration of neurons and chemicals in my brain that we can point to and say, "That is Blinking Spirit's idea of a unicorn." But there is another distinction that can be made that I have not yet seen on this thread. Consider, I trust without overmuch pleasure, my head being consumed utterly by flame. I am now dead, and my brain is now ash; surely the idea of a unicorn that I had has ceased to exist. And yet all of you who survived me have your own ideas of a unicorn in your own brains. Consider further a time two hundred years hence, when all the rest of you are as dead and dust as unfortunate I, and our children's children's children have their own ideas of a unicorn in brains that did not exist while we were alive. What we want to be able to say is that all these ideas are in some sense distinct, because they all reside in different individuals, but that they are also in some sense identical: that when you consider your idea of a unicorn, and I consider mine, we are both considering what is the same idea. In other words, we should distinguish between ideas as particulars, as mental states, and ideas as universals, as abstract forms. This is often considered to be essential for communication, for it renders coherent the notion that I can think about a unicorn, say "unicorn", and the people who hear me will begin thinking about the same thing I was thinking about. But the question this thread is asking is: do these universals exist?
Would you like to hand us a standard starting reason to think they might exist, 'cause I just wanna go with 'no'.
I think the 'identity' of our ideas is in virtue of a very plain sort of comparator; which will be specific to many particulars about the two minds in question, and will ultimately check just that I am looking for an equine thing, and a horn-bearing thing, and that my concept of equine and horn are identical to yours - the conceptual decomposition hopefully bottoming out, and I just wave hands at the fact that we know the infinity problem must not be real since we do get to the concepts that exist. since, well, I do actually have concepts.
Or rather, inasmuch as the attempt to analyse a "concept" in the cognitive sense into more basic cognitive functions can be handed off to some other scientific enterprise, I think the identity of my unicorn and your unicorn is simple and says not a thing about reality apart from the two of us.
Be advised that, signs point to "hell no" for "Concepts are something close to basic for cognition." My ability to theorize seems simpler than my ability for concepts. EDIT: Literature is the highly unsearchable "Theory Theory" for concepts. :\ It's more like proto-theories; my concepts are made of proto-theories, which, at least, can be explained without 'concept' or (true) 'theory' as cognitive functions. Hopefully.
*~*~*~
We might try the question another way:
What are the reasons some particulars/concretes are not real? How would you describe that?
The thing that failed to be real must exist for us to say why we never saw it, or it won't coexist with other things. We can intelligently or unintelligently or truly or vaguely describe the hypotheticals that didn't come to pass. That to me means they would subsist (which I use not because of its appearance in another text cited) in the same 'realm' as the things that were (furthermore) real, so that some dialogue of reasons is there, to be seen, of what's real (i.e., physics and metaphysics).
OTOH, maybe this is circular, as perhaps my "reasons" for the universe's rules are themselves the same sort of abstracta, and they, and the other stuff, as an engineer would say, "just aren't."
I -will- have to answer dcartist's most recent post, but to do it I have to review some terminology from computer science. It occurs to me that the issues to researching this topic, are due to the facts about the language of 'real' and 'exist', and I'd like to describe those linguistic practices using the jargon of a certain taxonomy of programming languages.
I think the 'identity' of our ideas is in virtue of a very plain sort of comparator; which will be specific to many particulars about the two minds in question, and will ultimately check just that I am looking for an equine thing, and a horn-bearing thing, and that my concept of equine and horn are identical to yours...
You seem to be invoking as a premise the notion of identity that I am questioning. What does it mean to say these concepts are "identical"?
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Okay, so I need to give some other kind of thing that the identity term bottoms out in. I was giving a recursive definition in case that wasn't clear; but you're rate right ('I have no raisin!'), I failed to give a starting case.
Welp... if some sort of idea of bottoming out the analysis of 'concepts' in the cognitive sciences were forthcoming, I'd have some concrete stuff to work with. But I don't. Couldn't I just say that the thing that make something in my head a concept (equally, proto-concept cognitive device), would have reasonably clear identity conditions for the same kind of thing in another person's head, and then that's what I'd call it?
I mean, the issue is we're broaching the question of reference. That's really muddy, but do we have to go there? My concept is satisfiable in some way, yours is satisfiable in some way, if they mechanically work the same, then they're the same.
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I -will- have to answer dcartist's most recent post, but to do it I have to review some terminology from computer science. It occurs to me that the issues to researching this topic, are due to the facts about the language of 'real' and 'exist', and I'd like to describe those linguistic practices using the jargon of a certain taxonomy of programming languages.
Before we get into even that part, there's the separate issue of things and what an individual knows about them.
Take the concept of a wolf. Since wolf is a class and not a single unique entity, to say a person "knows" what characteristics (which are abstract concepts) loosely define the "wolf class"...
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But let's skip the "class" vs individual wolf thing for now:
Do we know a wolf to its organ and cellular level? If I don't know those things, if I dont' know what a wolf smells like, never saw one, never saw the insides, don't know how many toes it has, just know it is scary and vaguely of German shepherd-like in appearance to my ignorant eyes, how can I begin to know the wolf exists? Is there more precise language that would describe that woefully ignorant, level of knowledge of the "wolf class"?
Then, regardless of whether we're talking about an individual wolf that we've seen, or a "wolf class", there are an infinite number of aspects of wolf-ness that can be conceived of in our heads. Wolf as something to be terrified of. Wolf as symbol of pack. Wolf as symbol of solitary. Wolf as mother. Wolf based on taxonomy and relative of dog, under mammals under animals.
In one aspect, a stuffed wolf is more like a living wolf, than a living dog is like a living wolf. DNA. Static appearance. Associations. Aspects of smell. But in most functional aspects, a living wolf is more like a living dog. Eat, poop, climb on other wolves and dogs, active cells that are respiring. Can growl at you or chew your leg off, etc.
Also, there is the issue of what specific point in time or age of the wolf or wolf class we are referencing.
Given that honestly speaking, most of the myriad aspects of the wolf that we each know are probably inaccurate, what defines being "wrong" about wolves vs being "right"?
Even without getting into the metaphysical at all, but really just talking cognitive science and the nature of information representation... it is difficult to speak of any real world knowledge as something other than gross simplification.
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It seems like we need more precise language to describe the degree of "NOT KNOW" that we have about concepts too, which would make it easier to look at this problem. Because the foundation of looking at things as right/wrong seems to be based on the fact that it's easy to work with.
The actual way we conceptualize the world is believe/ don'tbelieve/ operationallybelieve/ acceptfornow, and in fact CONSTANTLY most of the "axioms" or "supposed facts" in our inner model of the world change during our lifetime. And every concept we know is some simplification of the reality. Length of wolf? Height of wolf? Color of wolf? Number of toes? What does it like to eat? What will it eat? How fast can it run when its kind of full? None of those things is immutable, nor does it begin to accurately summarize a wolf in any way.
Welp... if some sort of idea of bottoming out the analysis of 'concepts' in the cognitive sciences were forthcoming, I'd have some concrete stuff to work with. But I don't. Couldn't I just say that the thing that make something in my head a concept (equally, proto-concept cognitive device), would have reasonably clear identity conditions for the same kind of thing in another person's head, and then that's what I'd call it?
I'm still not sure you're getting the point. This is a philosophical question before it's a cog-sci question. What I'm asking is this: How is it that we can say that two different cognitive structures in two different people's brains are "the same"? You use the word "kind", which is very significant. What is a "kind" (EDIT: if anything)?
I'm still not sure you're getting the point. This is a philosophical question before it's a cog-sci question. What I'm asking is this: How is it that we can say that two different cognitive structures in two different people's brains are "the same"? You use the word "kind", which is very significant. What is a "kind" (EDIT: if anything)?
I'm struggling to answer this without invoking Computational Functionalism or assuming strong neural correlation (i.e., that the language of "neural correlate of..." pans out in large degree for mental components.)
I'd like to point out I'm not a foundationalist about knowledge, either.
If you are asking me just what "kind" is, out of the blue, I have no answer for you other than my canned Russelian answer: A kind is a set which is an equivalence class. And the sets are those propositional functions of a particular sort. But that's just to say I have some idea how to answer such a thing. For our purposes, we might do better to simply figure I don't know what a kind is and need to use the "You danged philosophers" response. To wit, everybody knows what a kind is. It's something you is or you ain't. Of course the interesting kinds are the ones that aren't too scarce as to be names themselves. And a kind implies its opposite.
Below, I vaguely suggest that a kind comes part and parcel with a notion of the subuniverse of particulars it is meaningful within.
The following to the *~*~*~ is probably not an answer for you.
Notice I didn't say brain. Let's try this: I 'know' my mind has concepts. I know yours does. I know we are cut of the same cloth, the Human form. I make the assumption that some mental functions/devices/processes are universal at least to Humans in a sense I describe herein. What I'm getting at is, I think there's more than just the fact that my mind "does a concepting job" and so does yours, while they are achieved in two totally incomparable ways (according to some example I can't come up with ); I think analysing these devices will create, at least a few levels down, terms which will continue to have equals in our two brains - due to this being so for all Humans. Leave to the side the possibility that for certain other processes, they could be present in two given thinking-things by a series of "independent (but possibly guided by commonalities 'extra-cognitive' in some sense, e.g. evolution) inventions of necessity", by the operation of cognition being a self-organizing system. Leave aside the processes which may be determined by cognitive universals, things all minds have as a necessary truth, or appear inevitably in a developmental timeline due to some necessary item at an anterior stage.
Let me explain where I'm coming from. So more broadly, I want to know if ideas in general exist? If they don't "exist" then how would one describe conceptual creatures, concepts, or entities? Is there an official name for the theory of conceptual entities "existing"?
is a symbolization of a sentence that is sometimes true, if Fa is taken to mean 'a is a concept' and G taken to mean a statement of the observability and reality of a thing according to its alleged real defining traits.
"exist" is a word that can't be defined. Everything exists. Nothing doesn't. It is not a sense that discriminates anything, but rather an understanding of reality that co-operates with the notion of "everything" and "nothing" themselves to interdefine each other. 'Exists' everything that's true. False formulae are those which are not satisfied of any thing which exists, i.e., of any thing period.
~\/xUx
Ua means "a is a unicorn". There is no unicorn. But something exists which allows me to mean something when I write the above sentence about 'U' and for you to get that meaning. For lack of a better phrase, I call this the idea of a unicorn. That exists.
I still don't see 'where you're coming from.' What are you really interested in? No matter what words pass on this forum, you aren't going to perceive anything new. Paradoxes and misbeliefs go right on happening, because the universe doesn't run on the consistency of thoughts inside it like a model that can crash; it's just a bunch of Things composed of Stuff.
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If by 'exist' you mean something you can sensorially interact with on the physical plane, then no, they do not exist. The electrochemical processes of the brain that allow you to conceptualize them exists, but ideas themselves have no physical form. This is not to say they cannot have a great effect in the world. Where would we be without nations or religions? Just because something is not physically in existence does not mean we have to disregard them. Another example would be 'future generations'. They do not yet exist, but many people go to great lengths to ensure the world they may end up inheriting is a decent one.
Think of it like this: Some things exist on the physical plane, and others exist in the imagination. As for a word that describes imagined things, there most certainly is one. They're called 'Ideas'.
http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Epistemology_Definitions.html
The question came to me after a few hours of reading the religion sub-forum, and specifically spawned from the question of whether or not God does or does not exist. I figured, even if no tangible entity of God existed, wouldn't he still exist because he was an idea? That prompted the question of whether ideas exist (I guess it's a weird way to phrase it, as everyone knows that ideas in general exist. What I was more curious is if the content of an idea exists because it has been conceived). From there though, I realized that the question could be broadened beyond religion to include any concept that resides only in the mind.
So if you want to use the God example for a better idea of what I'm wondering about, that might be better. I'm just curious if God automatically exists because people have conceived him (as opposed to existing because people have encountered him in nature).
I know, but the problem is, I'm not sure how I define existence. That was actually why I asked if there was a separate term for things that "exist" only in the mind. Referring to the example above, people tend to refer to God in terms of whether or not he exists. Does that mean that the general definition of existence refers only to things that exist in the physical world? If so how does one describe ideas?
I get the feeling that this question is really more of a word mess than anything. Apologies.
I also intentionally didn't put the God example in initially to avoid this becoming a religious debate. Please try to avoid looking into the religious roots too much and just look at the question on a more broad scale.
So, the concept of the creature exists, and to answer your question, Ideas in general exist.
The SUBJECT of those ideas may not, to use an example; let's look at the world of Lord of the Rings.
The world does not exist, sure. But the world exists within the confines of an idea, which does exist. Imagine an idea is a capsule that holds imaginary things. The capsule exists to the outside world, but things within the capsule do not.
Join the Poetry Running Contest!
Okay now I think where you're coming from is you want someone to give you something to use to show you understood the Ontological argument for God. I first saw it in Hume.
Here's what there is to understand: It doesn't work.
If you don't get it, then you are somewhere behind and ahead of fellow students who get it.
From Hume's approach, what there is to understand is Humans like the idea of perfection, but they don't observe it ever. Hume just weaseled the idea that perfection could never have been an idea without being an impression (an experience), despite foregoing pages that allowed for synthetic ideas from other ideas. This demonstrated, aha, Humans must have perceived perfection in itself, which must have been God.
I applaud Hume for making the ontology argument at least non-circular, but all his words really do is take a stab at psychology, a stab that has interesting successes and failures.
Ur doin' it right.
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We can have ideas that formulate non-physical representations of things based on reality, but they still don't land an effect (beyond personal misconception).
However if you really are just wondering about ideas in general, then I think I'd just agree with Zelderex.
It exists as a figment of your imagination. It'd be more understandable to say it isn't real. And if someone tells you the creature doesn't exist, they probably mean outside your mind.
The context is important here.
"In a world where money talks, silence is horrifying."
Ashcoat Bear of Limited
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
If you conceive a "unicorn" in your mind, your belief or non-belief in it's existence does not determine whether a physical "unicorn" that correlates to your concept exists or doesn't somewhere. Just because you can conceive of it, and you believe it's imaginary, doesn't mean it's imaginary.
In addition, all concepts of physical objects that exist in our minds are a simplification of those physical objects, based partly on our senses combined with approximation to known concepts. Because every physical object is infinitely complex:
Draw a red circle on a piece of white paper as perfectly as you can (trace or use a stencil if you like). Study it as long as you like. Now close your eyes. Is it a perfect circle? No. Can you describe the circle perfectly to yourself? No. Can you even find a finite number of words to describe the drawing perfectly? No. Can you describe the circle To another person so they can "know" the drawing? No. Even if I cheat and try to take a photo to show somebody the drawing, how many megapixels would it have to be so that the memory card would truly contain ACCURATE description of the drawing that you aspired to make a circle? Infinite. In your head, what do you have? "drawing I made that looks sort of like a circle, in red marker, on a crinkly piece of paper..." and the more you study it the more you could write about it...
We often think of our conceptualizing the world as a process of taking in as much information as possible, but really the most amazing thing we do is CONSTANTLY filter out and simplify the world in a way that makes it manageable and meaningful, ignoring and discarding the huge majority of what we see. { TANGENT: It's probably at least one reason why feng shui and clutter clearing works. When you have clutter in your house, especially objects that have sentimental value or negative feelings you associate with them, then every time you look at them, your mind does devote a little bit of cognitive overhead to assessing and recalling, before you ignore that thing. Every time you pass that old T-shirt on the floor, you get a flash of association with the memories you associat with that old t- shirt, then maybe a flash about how messy you are and kicking yourself about it, maybe an association with other shirts you have, color, who knows? etc. If your whole place is a mess, the walk from bedroom to bathroom means walking by 100 extra objects/concepts, scattered across your path. For a subset of mentally ill people known as hoarders, this may be comforting and familiar, but for most of us, it's actually a significan cognitive overhead wasted, and reduces our energy and efficiency for getting crap done. E.g. Like having unpaid bills all over your desk, while you're trying to study there. How many times in an hour do you end up glancing at them and having some dark thought? Similarly one aspect of some forms of autism spectrum and ADHD, is an inability to discard or ignore the "less relevant" parts of the overwhelmingly large amount of information bombarding us at any time. }
Our internal concepts of that red circle are not "accurate" or correct. It is generally described or grouped in your head in relation to previously encountered concepts. We didnt even get into the chemical properties of the ink that make it red, and the thickness of line, imperfections in the paper, molecular level, quantum level descriptions, impermanence (that drawing was fading even as you were drawing, and no object is static... EVERYTHING is aging, paper is oxidizing, ink is oxidizing, etc. It changes one moment to the next) Most people talk about a horse and they can't even tell you how many toes it has, or how long the hair on it's belly is. Does anyone's concept of a horse really have much to do with the (presumed) reality/existence of a horse? We know which end to hand the apple to. But even the owner doesn't know what the horse is thinking. And even the horse doesn't know what stage of digestion the apple in it's belly is at.
Some people believe that "concepts" are the ONLY things that exist. Especially if you're one who believes there is no objective reality.
Good explanation, helped with visualization a lot.
I'd actually never heard of the ontology argument before, and thanks for the explanation
What I more meant was since God seems to violate, or be outside, many of the laws of reality (such as the argument that he's outside of time) I was curious if he could possess those traits if people believed him to possess those traits? If the idea of God possessing those traits existed (and most of the people here seem to agree that ideas themselves exist), I wanted to know if that meant that the subject of the idea also existed (a.k.a. God existed)?
A few disclaimers:
A.) I understand that the idea of people bringing into existence a being that had created them is retrospectively a big enough hole to torpedo this idea in an of itself, but I hadn't really thought of it at the time of posting.
B.) If this is the same as the ontology argument, then I guess I really didn't understand HH's post as well as I thought. Again, apologies, I have no prior knowledge of the Ontological argument.
Just realized how much that parallels with 1984 [\off-topic point]
I don't know what quantum mechanical theory you mis-interpreted, but the creature does not exist, the image of it exists. i.e., your brain is making certain connections and chemical reactions to make that image appear. Imagining something doesn't make it exist. If you imagining something with feeling, then the feeling exists because your mind is re-creating the feeling because its something you remember or have the capacity to think of, but the events themselves that your imagining have not happened. A lot of people don't seem to understand that quantum mechanics is actually a very mechanical thing, not a mystical force.
You probably shouldn't patronize others when you obviously have a fundamental misunderstanding as to what this discussion is about. (It has nothing to do with quantum mechanics whatsoever, nor with imagining objects into existence.)
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
He's asking if the concept as the entity that is the concept itself exists or doesn't exist right? Well, that whole "concept" is just your brain thinking, making connections, etc.
Concepts don't exist in the sense that they are some mystical force, but they exist in the way that they are created by real physical processes in your brain.
And then you could note that MANY of us have never gone to a zoo and seen a panda. We've only zeen pictures and video... and third hand descriptions. We believe in our (very incorrect & incomplete) concept of a cuddly cute black and white bear because people tells us they exist.
Given that our "concept" of a "panda" doesn't seem to match up with a real panda very well... and most of us have never seen a "panda", is it any more REAL TO US, than a unicorn?
MOST of the textbooks & adults told us that pandas are real. But so what? Many people (a minority) have told us that unicorns existed once or will exist someday somewhere. Maybe they exist in one of those alternate, infinite universe realities (mammal doesn't seem to be biologically incopatible with a horn, and you could probably genetically engineer one someday using narwhal genes or something, right?).
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If you believe in an imaginary creature, it's "REAL" to you, and that doesn't mean that you're insane (a belief in angels or faeries is compatible with sanity by any legal definition, and is certainly compatible with NOT having psychiatric diagnoses either). It could just mean you're WRONG. Or RIGHT. Since most of us are either wrong (or ignorant) about most things in the entire universe, what definition of the word "real" are we talking about when we say "piltdown man is real. But faeries aren't real, they're only in your imagination" ? Seems like we're talking about CONCENSUS based "real", because of human limitations and the absence of an absolute arbiter of fact/reality.
I thin he's asking if the "concept" exists, like is there really this thing that your brain is conceptualizing, not "does whatever you can think of exist in some universe?" It's sort of like asking if the "mind" exists or if a "soul" really exists.
rokey balboa used concepts to fight strong against his fellow girls yes? we in mtg are pro paid high professor nerds who r paid to tease the masses in a hall fulla chicks. we entice and ride on "quantum inexilerated turbo officated rignerole. depend ing on these facts by our great fortune we present discoveries to university soin also accomplishing the foundation of bliss whic h is card graces.
may the cards protect us frm tresspassers & forever let be their devine protection,
Amen
Spam.
Would you like to hand us a standard starting reason to think they might exist, 'cause I just wanna go with 'no'.
I think the 'identity' of our ideas is in virtue of a very plain sort of comparator; which will be specific to many particulars about the two minds in question, and will ultimately check just that I am looking for an equine thing, and a horn-bearing thing, and that my concept of equine and horn are identical to yours - the conceptual decomposition hopefully bottoming out, and I just wave hands at the fact that we know the infinity problem must not be real
since we do get to the concepts that exist.since, well, I do actually have concepts.Or rather, inasmuch as the attempt to analyse a "concept" in the cognitive sense into more basic cognitive functions can be handed off to some other scientific enterprise, I think the identity of my unicorn and your unicorn is simple and says not a thing about reality apart from the two of us.
Be advised that, signs point to "hell no" for "Concepts are something close to basic for cognition." My ability to theorize seems simpler than my ability for concepts. EDIT: Literature is the highly unsearchable "Theory Theory" for concepts. :\ It's more like proto-theories; my concepts are made of proto-theories, which, at least, can be explained without 'concept' or (true) 'theory' as cognitive functions. Hopefully.
*~*~*~
We might try the question another way:
What are the reasons some particulars/concretes are not real? How would you describe that?
The thing that failed to be real must exist for us to say why we never saw it, or it won't coexist with other things. We can intelligently or unintelligently or truly or vaguely describe the hypotheticals that didn't come to pass. That to me means they would subsist (which I use not because of its appearance in another text cited) in the same 'realm' as the things that were (furthermore) real, so that some dialogue of reasons is there, to be seen, of what's real (i.e., physics and metaphysics).
OTOH, maybe this is circular, as perhaps my "reasons" for the universe's rules are themselves the same sort of abstracta, and they, and the other stuff, as an engineer would say, "just aren't."
I -will- have to answer dcartist's most recent post, but to do it I have to review some terminology from computer science. It occurs to me that the issues to researching this topic, are due to the facts about the language of 'real' and 'exist', and I'd like to describe those linguistic practices using the jargon of a certain taxonomy of programming languages.
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You seem to be invoking as a premise the notion of identity that I am questioning. What does it mean to say these concepts are "identical"?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
rateright ('I have no raisin!'), I failed to give a starting case.Welp... if some sort of idea of bottoming out the analysis of 'concepts' in the cognitive sciences were forthcoming, I'd have some concrete stuff to work with. But I don't. Couldn't I just say that the thing that make something in my head a concept (equally, proto-concept cognitive device), would have reasonably clear identity conditions for the same kind of thing in another person's head, and then that's what I'd call it?
I mean, the issue is we're broaching the question of reference. That's really muddy, but do we have to go there? My concept is satisfiable in some way, yours is satisfiable in some way, if they mechanically work the same, then they're the same.
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Take the concept of a wolf. Since wolf is a class and not a single unique entity, to say a person "knows" what characteristics (which are abstract concepts) loosely define the "wolf class"...
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But let's skip the "class" vs individual wolf thing for now:
Do we know a wolf to its organ and cellular level? If I don't know those things, if I dont' know what a wolf smells like, never saw one, never saw the insides, don't know how many toes it has, just know it is scary and vaguely of German shepherd-like in appearance to my ignorant eyes, how can I begin to know the wolf exists? Is there more precise language that would describe that woefully ignorant, level of knowledge of the "wolf class"?
Then, regardless of whether we're talking about an individual wolf that we've seen, or a "wolf class", there are an infinite number of aspects of wolf-ness that can be conceived of in our heads. Wolf as something to be terrified of. Wolf as symbol of pack. Wolf as symbol of solitary. Wolf as mother. Wolf based on taxonomy and relative of dog, under mammals under animals.
In one aspect, a stuffed wolf is more like a living wolf, than a living dog is like a living wolf. DNA. Static appearance. Associations. Aspects of smell. But in most functional aspects, a living wolf is more like a living dog. Eat, poop, climb on other wolves and dogs, active cells that are respiring. Can growl at you or chew your leg off, etc.
Also, there is the issue of what specific point in time or age of the wolf or wolf class we are referencing.
Given that honestly speaking, most of the myriad aspects of the wolf that we each know are probably inaccurate, what defines being "wrong" about wolves vs being "right"?
Even without getting into the metaphysical at all, but really just talking cognitive science and the nature of information representation... it is difficult to speak of any real world knowledge as something other than gross simplification.
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It seems like we need more precise language to describe the degree of "NOT KNOW" that we have about concepts too, which would make it easier to look at this problem. Because the foundation of looking at things as right/wrong seems to be based on the fact that it's easy to work with.
The actual way we conceptualize the world is believe/ don'tbelieve/ operationallybelieve/ acceptfornow, and in fact CONSTANTLY most of the "axioms" or "supposed facts" in our inner model of the world change during our lifetime. And every concept we know is some simplification of the reality. Length of wolf? Height of wolf? Color of wolf? Number of toes? What does it like to eat? What will it eat? How fast can it run when its kind of full? None of those things is immutable, nor does it begin to accurately summarize a wolf in any way.
I'm still not sure you're getting the point. This is a philosophical question before it's a cog-sci question. What I'm asking is this: How is it that we can say that two different cognitive structures in two different people's brains are "the same"? You use the word "kind", which is very significant. What is a "kind" (EDIT: if anything)?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I'm struggling to answer this without invoking Computational Functionalism or assuming strong neural correlation (i.e., that the language of "neural correlate of..." pans out in large degree for mental components.)
I'd like to point out I'm not a foundationalist about knowledge, either.
If you are asking me just what "kind" is, out of the blue, I have no answer for you other than my canned Russelian answer: A kind is a set which is an equivalence class. And the sets are those propositional functions of a particular sort. But that's just to say I have some idea how to answer such a thing. For our purposes, we might do better to simply figure I don't know what a kind is and need to use the "You danged philosophers" response. To wit, everybody knows what a kind is. It's something you is or you ain't. Of course the interesting kinds are the ones that aren't too scarce as to be names themselves. And a kind implies its opposite.
Below, I vaguely suggest that a kind comes part and parcel with a notion of the subuniverse of particulars it is meaningful within.
The following to the *~*~*~ is probably not an answer for you.
Notice I didn't say brain. Let's try this: I 'know' my mind has concepts. I know yours does. I know we are cut of the same cloth, the Human form. I make the assumption that some mental functions/devices/processes are universal at least to Humans in a sense I describe herein. What I'm getting at is, I think there's more than just the fact that my mind "does a concepting job" and so does yours, while they are achieved in two totally incomparable ways (according to some example I can't come up with ); I think analysing these devices will create, at least a few levels down, terms which will continue to have equals in our two brains - due to this being so for all Humans. Leave to the side the possibility that for certain other processes, they could be present in two given thinking-things by a series of "independent (but possibly guided by commonalities 'extra-cognitive' in some sense, e.g. evolution) inventions of necessity", by the operation of cognition being a self-organizing system. Leave aside the processes which may be determined by cognitive universals, things all minds have as a necessary truth, or appear inevitably in a developmental timeline due to some necessary item at an anterior stage.
Some cognitive processes are "Human" in that, on a mental-term level (i.e. I need not reduce "mind words" out of my cognitive theory), those processes exist and fulfill their essential duty in virtue of , which is to say that the same reason for being there, for me, is the reason that process is there for you. Now I said this goes down a few levels. I will want to say that this is a robust claim in that this analysis is not a decomposition of the definitions of mental faculties considered simply; they will be non-necessary accounts of the cognitive faculties, the way that a few algorithms described by their end result have many architectures consistent with programs to achieve them. EDIT: Which is my example only because it's the only other domain I'm much familiar with; actually comparing minds to computers in the GOFAI tradition is not very tenable in my estimation
All of the foregoing is wholly unnecessary though if, in fact (I'd consider it a shame), all cognition is uniform and there's "only one way of doing it", in which case, I achieve what I'm going to say about me and you in virtue of that greater truth, rather than this one about just Humans.
Using the fact of the success of this analysis 'down a few levels' for me and for you, (which I claim is believable because we are Human, if the process in question is amenable), I can at least reduce questions - if only this "identity of concepts" one - about the process so (latin term?), to a function of the terms I have in the theory. All the better if I decomposed all the way out of the mind entirely to something else.
Carrying it down a few levels but not all the way is significant just in case where it can be said "this cognitive process" is -there- because of <the fact this agent is a Human, with a brain, and non-exceptional circumstances have developed that brain in the right way>. I think this can happen for the mental process of concepting and categorization.
That's the action I took. I could then say that the "H_H's-concept-Unicorn", a thing that exists (phrasing chosen carefully) because of my mind, is more tractable in this identity question, if we take the terms of the analysis, which would be propped up with good enough background theory, and see that "B_S's-concept-Unicorn" is actually different, because you imagine it as being brown for some reason, whereas mine are always white. Or we may need more jargon, where we'd see your concept is entangled in <obscene mathematical fortress>-way with concretes, and mine is entangled in <not jointly satisfiable fortress of equations>. Or we'd show we have the same concept, because these would work.
*~*~*~
I think identity really happens. And I think sameness happens. Sameness is numerical identity of type, because when I talk of kind rather than token, I get to say that the 'kind' of some token p, is some sort of thing T, and when the kind of token q is "the same", it is also T.
If we look at a toy example, in the Magic card game, two blue things have the same color. The one's blueness and the other's blueness (pardoning how little sense that makes outside free English) are not two things. They're not similar. The one is the same blue that the other is.
A kind is something that I will define syntactically in this way, if it can sit in a relation like blue does with objects (and is false in that relation with all others). But the course on symbolic logic I took, has in its textbook beyond the part we covered, something about relativizing a universe to some theory or something... something about dealing with the idea of even or odd, for instance, not quite holding for dogs or cats in the way we expect it to, and get mileage from Dichotomy. So I'd fail to try naively to just talk about some two-place relation about "being a given thing".
If we want to separate out the idea of the "real adjectives" from the "degenerate ones" like grue, or the scarce property of being my father, you're doing philosophy of science again, which I think puts you out of this metaphysical anteroom. We are doing cognitive science.
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