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Author | Topic: Question.... (Processes of Logic) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
crashfrog Member (Idle past 1719 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I know you don't like it. I know you don't think it's important. But it is, however, the entire point: If you can't change it simply by thinking about it, then it isn't a mental construct but a physical one. Since when? That's never been a requisite for mental concepts, as far as I know.
Sure you can. That's exactly how meanings of words change: People think they mean something different. That's how new words come into existence: People think them into being. "Spam" didn't exist as a word until the Hormel company came along and then a bunch of computer geeks started using it to mean not a registered trademark referring to canned pork and pork shoulder but to junk email. It all happened with a thought. Ah, now I begin to understand your misapprehension. People - emphasis on the plural - can change language, because languages are defined by communities of thinkers, not an individual. Just as the President is elected by a community, not by an individual. And just as one person can't change the election by voting "harder", no one person can change language by thinking any harder than they usually do. I mean, if what you say is true - that one or even several thinkers could alter the meaning of a word for everybody else - then why would Hormel (and I'm oh-so-glad you brought up the example of spam) have to sue to prevent the use of the word "spam" in reference to junk email? If what you say is true they could change the meaning by thinking hard. They wouldn't have to bother with the lawsuit. It's obvious (to everyone but you, perhaps) that languages aren't thought into being by an individual, but rather agreed upon by a community. Sometimes the community agrees that the language won't change, as is the case with "dead" languages. Esperanto has not changed significantly since it's inception, nor LogLang or any other contrived language. That they are more constant than English is not indicative that they represent some kind of independant reality.
You can change language simply by thinking about it. If this is true, then do it. Change the meaning of a word in a way that would be congruent to how you're asking me to change the number of fingers on my hand just by thinking about it. Why don't you make more of my fingers "thumbs"? While you're at it, change who the President is by voting really hard.
In the nothingness. Ooh, spooky. Now how about an answer that's not mystical claptrap? It's becoming obvious that Platonism is an occupational hazard for mathematicians. I can only surmise that it's because the idea that everything they've studied and worked on for so many years could be nothing more than ideas in their heads is a hard cheese to swallow. But then, linguists have exactly the same problem - they're studing something that exists only as something in the heads of a community of thinkers - without any such delusions of independant reality. And make no mistake, there are deep grammars that are every bit as universal and "real" as any truth in mathematics. But that's no more evidence for the independant reality of language than universality of number is evidence for the independant reality of math. Languages share deep, universal structures to as large an extent as cultures share numbers. But we don't hear you arguing for the independant existence of language. I can only assume this inconsistency is the result of a mental timidness that won't allow you to view mathematics as what it truly is - just another human langauge with very, very strict grammar. [This message has been edited by crashfrog, 07-08-2003]
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John Inactive Member |
quote: Do you really not understand the difference between an objects and a count of the objects?
quote: No, Rh, the THING exists outside the person's mind, not the count of it. Number is not a THING. Number is grouping. That's just the problem. You are thinking of number as if it were something like color or texture. Here is an experiment. There are X identical objects on my desk. I'll ship these objects, one each, to several independant labs. Now here is the question I'll ask each lab, "How many objects were in the original group of objects on my desk?" If number were a real thing, a genuine property of reality, there should be a test these labs could perform to answer this question. What test would that be? They could test for color, texture, density, and a hundred other things; but what would be the test for number? How do we measure the number-osity of the objects? None of the other properties of the objects change just because the objects have been moved and no longer sit side by side. Color, mass, texture... all stay the same. The only things that change are relationships. Relationships are abstractions, not things. Consider this relationship. "Harrap's New College French and English Dictionary is a foot from my left arm." This relationship is the same as the numerical relationships between objects, yet is this also a 'real' thing? I can't change this relationship by thinking reeeeaaaaalllllly hard. Is it an entity? Nope ( though by your formula for determining a things reality, it must be. ) If you answer otherwise, any such arbitrary relationships become 'real' things. This is a major problem with Platonism, and, well, it was realized as early as Aristotle. So you are a bit behind the curve. ------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1719 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Another mental construct that's immune to "change by thinking hard" is ownership. Rrhain owns his computer, but that's not a physical property of the computer. There's no way to determine ownership unless Rrhain's left his name and address in it. But I can't make his computer mine just by "thinking really hard".
Clearly the "thinking really hard" argument is a straw man.
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Rrhain Member (Idle past 260 days) Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
crashfrog responds to me:
quote:quote: Since brains became powerful enough to think abstractly.
quote: But numbers aren't. You can't change numbers no matter how many people you get involved. You will notice that human communities, when left to their own devices, will come up with completely separate languages. But they will come up with the same mathematics. Oh, they won't develop the same notation, but the Pythagorean Theorem was developed by the Chinese independently. Newton and Liebniz discovered the calculus independently. If mathematics were just something in your head, then we should have all sorts of mutually exclusive mathematics. But we don't. It's all the same no matter what culture or perspective the person studying the topic comes from. Isn't that what we claim is part of the justification for science? It's consistent and real because you can do the same thing and come up with the same results? That it doesn't matter what your personal opinions are, so long as you follow the method then you wind up with the same result?
quote: Sure they can. Remember The Fifth Element? That weird language Milla Jovovich was speaking? She wasn't just babbling. It was a language she and her brother (if I recall correctly) invented. Klingon is completely artificial. One person invented it. Now you're right that one person can't change other people's words just by sitting in a corner and thinking about it, but one person can change language by his useage and getting others to think about it. And thus, through a process of simple thought, the language shifts. No matter how much you think about it, you won't be able to change number. We can conceivably get all the speakers of a language to use the word "clelf" for the number of fingers on your hand, but that wouldn't change the actual number of fingers there.
quote: Their lawsuit is irrelevant for two reasons. First, their suit is over money. They don't want the brand name diluted so that other manufacturerers of potted meat could call their product "Spam." Of course, I doubt they could even win that claim since the use of "spam" as a reference to email does not dilute the connection of the term "Spam" to potted meat as email and potted meat are not similar. You will notice that there is "Apple" to refer to computers and "Apple" to refer to music and there is no conflict. Why? Because computers and music are not related. If we're talking about music and we refer to "Apple," it is generally understood that we're talking about the music publishers, not the computer company. Similarly, if we're talking computers and we refer to "Apple," it is generally understood that we're talking about the computer company, not the music publishers. Second, they cannot control the popular useage. The lawsuit can come forward, but if it can be shown that the term has become so common and popular then there is nothing to be done about it. Alas, Kleenex and Aspirin and all those other names have entered the vernacular as common words. So Hormel can sue all they want and they might be able to get some money out of it in the process, but they won't be able to stop anything. Google may be worried that their trademark is being diluted, but you can't sue the general population.
quote: Tell that to Dr. Okrand, the inventor of the Klingon language. He's written a few books about the subject: The Klingon Dictionary, Conversational Klingon, and Power Klingon. Esperanto is another artificial language created by people. Since there is no true "community" of speakers of Esperanto, it is still in tight control by the people on the language board. Similarly, Latin, since it is a dead language, is also under the control of the board that oversees the language.
quote: I haven't said they are. However, these languages betray your point. Because they are not actively used by an independent community of speakers, they are subject to the whim of those that monitor the language. Thus, people can directly state what words mean.
quote:quote: Fine: Beetaratagang and clerendipity. Ask me what they mean. How about I describe the opposite direction: The destruction of a word. When I was younger and in the Boy Scouts, I read the Boy Scout Handbook thoroughly in order to prepare for the interviews. In the section on "Do Your Best," the book kept using the word "best" over and over and over. So much so that the word lost its integrity and simply became, for me, a collection of letters. I was directly experiencing the arbitrariness of the system. To this day, I still have a hard time with the word. When I'm reading, words come as complete units and it isn't like I consciously look at every single letter. But with the word "best," there's a bit of a hiccup and I suddenly see each letter individually and I have to reconstruct it. My friends have had similar experiences. We call it "losing a word." When a word gets repeated over and over again, we start to lose it as a word and it becomes just a vocal reverberation or particular visual pattern.
quote: We already have. Notice how "bad" means "good" these days? How if something is "hot," it is "cool" to have it?
quote: I can. At the beginning, it will only be me who understands this. But if it catches on, soon others will be calling them "thumbs," too. No matter how much I try, I can't manage to get the number of fingers on your hand to change just by thinking about it. Perhaps you can help me. How can I possibly get the square of the hypotenuse of a planar right triangle to be unequal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides?
quote: Um, voting isn't a mental action. It's a physical one.
quote:quote: You're calling cosmology "mystical claptrap"? Tell me: What came before the Big Bang? Doesn't it seem to be the case that there is no "before" in that case, at least as we understand it? Since time came into being at the Big Bang, the concept of "before" is nonsensical. Is that "mystical claptrap"?
quote: Strange how so many of them seem to do just fine.
quote: No, it's because we can see them in real life. Remember the beginning of A Beautiful Mind? John Nash is looking at the refractions of light coming through a glass and he notices the patterns repeating in the fruit and the table cloth and traces them up to a pattern on a colleagues tie at which point he quips, "There has to be a mathematical explanation for how bad that tie is." Are you saying the tie doesn't exist? This is why I keep coming back to the same questions: Are you saying you don't have five fingers on your hand? Your fingers exist. There are five of them. Therefore, five exists, too. It is part and parcel of your fingers.
quote: Well, that's what you get for assuming. I think I had pointed out the difference quite directly: If I think hard enough, I can change the langauge. No matter how hard I think about it, I can't change the number of fingers on your hand. ------------------Rrhain WWJD? JWRTFM!
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Rrhain Member (Idle past 260 days) Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
John responds to me:
quote:quote: Do you really not understand that number is part of existence?
quote:quote: But the count is outside the person's mind, too. Are you saying that if you stop thinking about it, the number of fingers on your hand changes? That if everybody were to drop dead right now where they are, the number of fingers on your hand would change?
quote: But grouping is a thing.
quote: That's because it is. Does the number of fingers on your hand change when you look away any more than the color or texture of your hand change when you look away?
quote: And there is: Look at all of the objects. You seem to be forgetting that you are taking something apart, looking at only a single part of it, and then trying to determine the properties of the whole. Is an atom a real thing? But if I take it apart, send all the protons, neutrons, and electrons to different people and ask them what kind of atom they came from, they're going to be hard-pressed to make that determination. Why? Because an atom is the collection of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Suppose I take a long chain molecule and break it up into its constituent atoms and send those atoms to different labs. Do you think they'll be able to tell what the original molecule was? Even if we told them what all the other atoms were, they still might not be able to since many times you can get very different molecules from the same set of atoms. Why? Because a molecule is the collection of atoms. So why are you picking on number when you would never do this with other objects?
quote: Yes and no. Your arm exists, the book exists, space exists, and thus the space between your arm and the book exists and can be mathematically described. Now, a "foot" is an arbitrary thing. We can change the definition of a "foot" just by thinking about it. But we can easily determine the number of both arbitrary and concrete objects that can fit between your arm and the book.
quote: And thus, it isn't a mental state. It is real.
quote: Congratulations. You figured it out. It is, indeed, real. Are you saying the space between your arm and your book doesn't exist?
quote: (*sigh*) Has it occurred to you that "Platonist" doesn't quite mean the same thing in mathematics as it does in philosophy, even though the terms are related? ------------------Rrhain WWJD? JWRTFM!
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1719 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
When I read your responses, it's like you're responding to a totally different post and then putting my quotes in to make it look like a reply.
Since brains became powerful enough to think abstractly. This doesn't even begin to address my point. Try actually reading my posts. Mental malleability is not inherent in every mental construct. Math could simply be (and my position is, it is) a language with a very strict grammar.
You will notice that human communities, when left to their own devices, will come up with completely separate languages. You're quite wrong about this. All languages obey basic deep grammars (which first began to be outlined by Chomsky). No human has ever invented a language that runs counter to those deep grammars. They're so universal that it has been proposed that they're actually hardwired into our brains. But their universality doesn't mean they have independant existence outside of our minds.
If mathematics were just something in your head, then we should have all sorts of mutually exclusive mathematics. Why? Deep grammars are just a mental concept, and we don't find all sorts of mutually exclusive grammars. Instead we find just one deep grammar.
Second, they cannot control the popular useage. Ah, but you made the claim that they would be able to - by "thinking hard" as you put it. You said that by "thinking hard" they could change the meaning of words. So, can they change the meaning, or can't they? You don't seem too sure about this.
We already have. Sorry, I was talking about you, not us. Change my fingers into thumbs.
Um, voting isn't a mental action. It's a physical one. Not quite right - technically, it's an "locutionary act".
You're calling cosmology "mystical claptrap"? We weren't talking about cosmology. You certainly made no cosmological statements. I just asked you where the numbers are if there's nothing to count. I mean, there's zero, obviously, but where are the rest of them? They can't be "in the nothingness", because if they were, there wouldn't be nothing, would there? Or do you think numbers are nothing? That would be equivalent to my position, I guess.
Are you saying you don't have five fingers on your hand? Your fingers exist. There are five of them. Therefore, five exists, too. It is part and parcel of your fingers. This is what I mean about asking the same questions over and over again. Remember when I answered this with a "no"? Guess not. Just because we all agree that I have five fingers on my hand doesn't mean that five has an independant existence. Everyone who develops language agrees on certain deep grammars - universally. That doesn't mean that they have an existence outside of our heads.
If I think hard enough, I can change the langauge. Go ahead and do so. Change the deep grammars. You won't be able to change them anymore than I can think an extra finger onto my hand. That still has nothing to do with the independant physical reality of number or language.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1719 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
That if everybody were to drop dead right now where they are, the number of fingers on your hand would change? Another question that you keep asking, and the answer is "no". If the fingers cease to exist then the number of them ceases to exist as well. What's hard to understand about that?
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Rrhain Member (Idle past 260 days) Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
crashfrog responds to me:
quote: Not at all. Ownership is a completely mental process. We can transfer ownership of something simply by thinking about it. If I have something that I think is mine and I want to make it yours, I don't have to do anything to it. I simply think it's yours and that's that. When I buy pizza for my friends, one could claim that they're mine. After all, I paid for them. And yet, my friends are eating the pizza and I don't feel as if they have stolen from me. Nothing about the pizza has changed, but it has suddenly become community property. Simply because we thought it was.
quote: But that doesn't make it mine. If I break into your home and put my name and address on your computer, that doesn't make it mine. Ownership is a mental construct. Things belong to people simply because we think they do. As a society, we have developed methods of arbitrating differences in opinion, but they are opinions, nonetheless.
quote: Sure you can. And I'll try to stop you from making good on that thought because I seem to think that it's mine. Fortunately, everybody else seems to think that it's mine, too, and thus if I complain to them about what you did, they'll generally side with me. Not because anything in the object has changed. Simply because they think it. The only way they'll come to agree with your thought that it's yours is if it can be shown that I, too, think it's yours.
quote: Nope. It's the actual argument. If you can change it simply by thinking about it, then it's a mental construct. But if you can't change it simply by thinking about it, then it isn't. ------------------Rrhain WWJD? JWRTFM!
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1719 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
But if you can't change it simply by thinking about it, then it isn't. Whether or not you can change it with your mind has nothing to do with whether or not it's a mental construct. There are mental constructs that cannot be changed. There are even ones we agree that we won't ever change - math is simply one of those.
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Rrhain Member (Idle past 260 days) Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
crashfrog responds to me:
quote:quote: Nothing. It's my point, however. If the number of them ceases to exist when the fingers cease to exist, then the number must be part and parcel of the fingers. And if the fingers exist, then the number exists, too. The color of the fingers and the texture and such are all part and parcel of the fingers. If the fingers go away, so does their color and texture. And their number. Since number behaves identically to color and texture, then if color and texture exist as a real thing, then number does, too. ------------------Rrhain WWJD? JWRTFM!
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Rrhain Member (Idle past 260 days) Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
crashfrog responds to me:
quote:quote: Incorrect. That's the point behind a mental construct: It exists simply because you think it does.
quote: No, there aren't. Mental constructs, by definition, exist only in your mind. Therefore, all you need to do is change your mind. ------------------Rrhain WWJD? JWRTFM!
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Rrhain Member (Idle past 260 days) Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
crashfrog responds to me:
quote: Hey, I can't control what you write. If you don't like your own words, then change what you're saying.
quote:quote: Ah, but I did. Notice how I keep including your words. If you don't like what you said, then change what you're saying. Remember how you said that you didn't think I was the most honest of debators? Did you ever stop to think that perhaps I have the same opinion of you?
quote: Incorrect. Mental constructs by definition exist only in your mind. Thus, they can be changed simply by changing your mind.
quote: So you're saying the number of fingers on your hand does change when you stop thinking about them?
quote:quote: No, I'm quite right about this. That's why English in the US is different from English in the UK and both are different from English in Australia. They became isolated and changed. They evolved.
quote: Logical error: Changing the subject. Language is not grammar, though languages have grammar. And if humans are hard wired to have a huge preference for a single type of grammar, that just means we have an intense bias, not that there cannot be any other grammar. By the way, Chomsky's concept of "deep grammar" isn't exactly universally accepted.
quote:quote: Because mental constructs are by definition all in your head.
quote: So sayeth Chomsky. Others think he's full of it and that his "deep grammar" doesn't even exist.
quote:quote: And they can. To them, "spam" will never mean junk email but will always be a brand name. But since I can't actively and completely control your thoughts by my thoughts, then we have multiple people thinking different things, all of which are active. And yet strangely, we all seem to come up with the same mathematics. Everybody seems to understand that 1 + 1 = 2.
quote: No, I'm quite sure. You're simply changing the goalposts again. You're confusing one person's thoughts with anothers. You seem to want what one person thinks to be the same as what other people think.
quote:quote: Fine: They're thumbs. If you want me to call the digits on your hand "thumbs," then I'll call them "thumbs." Just to be certain, you do understand that by calling the digits on your hand "thumbs," we haven't actually changed anything about them in reality.
quote:quote: And that isn't physical?
quote:quote: We certainly were. We were talking about nothingness. That's a big subject in the question of cosmological origins because it concerns with how we can get all this something out of nothing.
quote: I thought I said "nothingness."
quote: Same place. With the objects. When space and time and all that disappear, you've got nothing. And in math, that's the empty set.
quote: Irrelevant. If you take away the light, where does the color go? If you take away the object, where does the texture go? The numbers are part and parcel of the object. You're making my point for me. If numbers were all in your head, then they'd still be there even if there were nothing there. But since they aren't there, since they come and go with the objects, then they're part and parcel of the objects and are just as real as the color and the texture of the object.
quote: Nope. There'd still be nothing. A set composed of the empty set is not empty, but the empty set is empty.
quote: Logical error: Equivocation.
quote:quote: That's because the conversation keeps hinging on the answer to it. When you're not avoiding it outright, you're saying one thing and then immediately contradicting yourself. Thus, I go back to the original question because your later statements seem to be indicative that you have changed your mind. F'rinstance, if I were to ask you what 1 + 1 equals and you were to answer 2, and if you were then to say that if I bring my apple and you bring your apple, we'd have enough apples to give one to Jane and John and Jill, you'd understand why I'd go back to the original question of what you thought 1 + 1 was equal to. That's because your secondary statement seems to be that 1 + 1 = 3 and yet just before you said it was equal to 2.
quote: No, I do remember. But then you went on to say that since you do have five fingers on your hand and that you can't change that number just by thinking about them and how about there'd still be five of them even if nobody were to count them (such as because everybody dropped dead) and such, that doesn't mean that the number of fingers is a real property but actually it is a mental property. Since those two statements contradict each other, I attempt to find out which one you really ascribe to. Thus, I go back to the beginning and try to find out how you can get to the latter statement given that you advocated the former.
quote: In and of itself, no. We might all be deluded, after all. But if the number of fingers on your hand doesn't change even if nobody counts them, then that does mean five has an independent existence and it is manifesting itself at the end of your hand. Just like the color of the fingers has an independent existence and is manifesting itself at the end of your hand.
quote: Many people think there is no such thing as "deep grammar."
quote:quote: Can't change what doesn't exist. ------------------Rrhain WWJD? JWRTFM!
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John Inactive Member |
quote: You are missing something about the mental constructs in question-- they overlay a physical reality. The mental constructs can be changed at will-- think LSD-- but you are insisting that such changes alter the physical reality as well. Consider the longitude/latitude coordinate system. This is a mental construct, no? This coordinate system overlays the surface of the planet. We can change the coordinate system at will. You could make up an unlimited number of ways to do it. But changing it does not change the geography of the planet. Yet, you insist that changing the mental construct of number, or grouping, MUST change the physical, or number is not a mental construct. It doesn't make sense. I propose that changing the coordinate system MUST change the geography of the planet OR the coordinate system is not a mental construct after all. Thus, since changing the coordinate system does not change the planet, I conclude that said system is a real thing inherent in the planetary make-up. ------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1719 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
If the number of them ceases to exist when the fingers cease to exist, then the number must be part and parcel of the fingers. And if the fingers exist, then the number exists, too. But that's inconsistent with your other statements. If the number of a set ceases to exist when the elements of the set cease to exist, what happens when we get rid of all elements of all sets? The numbers should cease to exist. But you claim they don't, that they persist "in the nothingness", whatever that means. You're caught in an inconsistency, here.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1719 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
Mental constructs, by definition, exist only in your mind. Therefore, all you need to do is change your mind. That doesn't follow. A mental construct could be predicated on rules that prevent change. If a community of speakers agrees that it won't change, it doesn't. The community of speakers that use math agree that math won't change. It's just a language with strict grammar.
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