Occam's Razor and Your Ontology!

[Fifty]

Yup. And it was already there before you named/described it.

Ahh so you're one of those gosh darned mereological extremists!

 

[Fifty]

Here's my take on the chair/particle issue: a random association of particles is a chair. It's not just that we call it a chair because that's easier than calling it a "chair-like association of particles"... the association of particles meets all the criteria for being a chair, so, by definition, it is a chair.

Let me know if I missed something you were trying to convey in the OP.

The problem is that we are asking whether chairs, in the sense of a composite object (i.e., a single object composed of proper parts) exist. The lexical definition of a chair is not "a chair-wise arrangement of particles". Ordinarily, people think that there is a thing there, a chair, that is composed of its proper parts, rather than defined by its parthood relations.

So lets distinguish two senses of "exist". There is exist in the "reference sense", where something is said to exist if there is, in this world, a referent to a concept involving fitting a functional role or something of that sort.

But there is exist in the "ontological sense". In that sense, to ask whether something exists is to ask whether its ontological kind exists as "a kind apart" from other ontological kinds.

In the "reference sense", of course chairs exist. Nobody disputes that collections of particles bearing certain location relations to one another can be properly called a chair, but the question is whether ordinary material objects exist as ontological kinds.

It seems like most people here who are hung up on the reference sense of exist are really mereological nihilists. Which is interesting! Of course, I'm not entirely sure whether anybody here really grasps the problem besides Perf and Ayatollah, and the usual suspects are being as blatently stupid as ever, but whatevs!

Speaking of which:

Birdjag and bardolph, could you guys please not continue posting in this thread? I mean I know you have the right to and stuff, but I'm really trying to have a big kid conversation here and I am extremely skeptical that anything fruitful could come of our interactions. I understand if you can't possibly bring yourself not to continually spout your proud confusions, but I'd appreciate it if you'd show some restraint. Since I'm sure your self-congratulatory circle-jerk will continue unabated and un-replied-to, why not just do it via PM? Again, I know you can post here if you want, I'm just asking you to please not.

 

[Kosez]

I actually think that according to Occam's Razor chairs do exist rather than just being a sum of particles. Everything is sum of something else, except for smallest, basic particles.
From purely ontological point of view, chair is a simpler entity than chair-shaped-sum-of-particles (which are also a sum of particles, and so forth). It isn't so just because of linguistic simplicity; if we deny existence to objects that surround us, we've entered in a realm of total relativism, which has nothing to do with Occam's razor. I don't think it's sensible to deny that objects posses their own uniqueness.
Because, objects that surround us are defined by us, and there is no ontological need to call a chair anything else than a chair. If we do that, we are no longer discussing ontology. At least that is my opinion, i don't really like too much of a relativistic ontology, whatever that means,

 

[Perfection]

I actually think that according to Occam's Razor chairs do exist rather than just being a sum of particles. Everything is sum of something else, except for smallest, basic particles.

I don't think that's true. Words aren't the sum of particles, in my mind. I'd say words are existant things, with a ultimately physical basis, but they cannot be realistically discribed in terms of particles.

 

[bardolph]

Birdjag and bardolph, could you guys please not continue posting in this thread? I mean I know you have the right to and stuff, but I'm really trying to have a big kid conversation here and I am extremely skeptical that anything fruitful could come of our interactions. I understand if you can't possibly bring yourself not to continually spout your proud confusions, but I'd appreciate it if you'd show some restraint. Since I'm sure your self-congratulatory circle-jerk will continue unabated and un-replied-to, why not just do it via PM? Again, I know you can post here if you want, I'm just asking you to please not.

Umm, I think this quote speaks for itself.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Birdjag and bardolph, could you guys please not continue posting in this thread? I mean I know you have the right to and stuff, but I'm really trying to have a big kid conversation here and I am extremely skeptical that anything fruitful could come of our interactions. I understand if you can't possibly bring yourself not to continually spout your proud confusions, but I'd appreciate it if you'd show some restraint. Since I'm sure your self-congratulatory circle-jerk will continue unabated and un-replied-to, why not just do it via PM? Again, I know you can post here if you want, I'm just asking you to please not.

For the record, Fifty, the circle jerk is your own and, as you have repeatedly shown in the past, you have little capability for a "big kid conversation". But since you asked so nicely with your public insult rather than via pm as you suggest others use, I will refrain from posting here.

EDIT: Yes, a simple and polite pm would have sufficed.

 

[The Yankee]

Moderator Action: Just a warning here before anything may get out of hand. Certainly such disputes about posts in a thread could be taken to PM. There is no need for trolling here.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[C~G]

So child's brain learn that there are things that people can place their bottoms while their legs are placed on the floor.

Somebody has once made them and child refers them to as "guorhkha" this time around.

Do these things really exist or not?

Would it really matter if they would be sitting on rocks instead?

Probably not, but since chairs are more comfortable but as people have learned to control their enviroment over time rocks have evolved into chairs and since people have learned how important precise communication is, we call them "chairs".

But of course since humans can draw from earlier experiences through memories linking them together almost perfect and vivid imagenery and even name things that they see, you could call that image of chair really entirely existing as individual phenomena or you call it just an illusion created for a simulation for your brain about possible entities interacting with each other in similar fashion as your brain create image of yourself.

In the end you can only ask do "you" really exist as separate entity or are you just sum of smaller parts.

The whole thing goes in a way that during the process it really seem that something more that sum of it's parts are created for the whole when it really it's just the process checking itself out for any possible errors and correcting them as you go by them. You never ever will touch the end product since "you" are part of the same process so you're just running in endless circles.

You may experience in certain moments though (circle comes complete, moment of Zen maybe) but trying to figure out it rationally will just make you like you're missing out something or saying "this can't be it, the answer is too simple". So you go out look for better answer that throughoutly satisfies you. And all I can ask who's the circle jerk now?

AND I know some might don't know what I'm talking about but I'm not going to name any names since that would be just childish trolling.

 

[Fifty]

Do these things really exist or not?

Would it really matter if they would be sitting on rocks instead?

Probably not, but since chairs are more comfortable but as people have learned to control their enviroment over time rocks have evolved into chairs and since people have learned how important precise communication is, we call them "chairs".

But of course since humans can draw from earlier experiences through memories linking them together almost perfect and vivid imagenery and even name things that they see, you could call that image of chair really entirely existing as individual phenomena or you call it just an illusion created for a simulation for your brain about possible entities interacting with each other in similar fashion as your brain create image of yourself.

In the end you can only ask do "you" really exist as separate entity or are you just sum of smaller parts.

The whole thing goes in a way that during the process it really seem that something more that sum of it's parts are created for the whole when it really it's just the process checking itself out for any possible errors and correcting them as you go by them. You never ever will touch the end product since "you" are part of the same process so you're just running in endless circles.

You may experience in certain moments though (circle comes complete, moment of Zen maybe) but trying to figure out it rationally will just make you like you're missing out something or saying "this can't be it, the answer is too simple". So you go out look for better answer that throughoutly satisfies you. And all I can ask who's the circle jerk now?

AND I know some might don't know what I'm talking about but I'm not going to name any names since that would be just childish trolling.

So, from what I've gathered, you seem to be gravitating towards a form of mereological nihilism (no composite objects strictly exist, they just "loosely speaking" exist), which is the literal opposite of Ayatollah So's view! Cool!

 

[kuukkeli]

So lets distinguish two senses of "exist". There is exist in the "reference sense", where something is said to exist if there is, in this world, a referent to a concept involving fitting a functional role or something of that sort.

With few corrections this appears to be the only meaningful existence. It doesn't matter where something is (i.e. not necessarily in this world) and there's no need for any functional role (a referent to a concept is enough).

But there is exist in the "ontological sense". In that sense, to ask whether something exists is to ask whether its ontological kind exists as "a kind apart" from other ontological kinds.

Either your description is bad or the idea is bad: what use would there be for a definition of existence that leads to conclusion that a "whole" is separate from its "parts"; that a clunk of matter exist apart from its fundamental particles?

 

[Mise]

If "a chair" is linguistically "a bunch of particles arranged chair-wise", then wherever I use "chair", you could equivalently replace it with "bunch of particles arranged chair-wise", and the sentences would mean the same thing. We agree that "a bunch of particles arranged chair-wise" exists; hence "a chair" exists.

Where's the problem? Have I missed something?

 

[Perfection]

I think the compositional/particle part of a chair is not important. Chairs can be made out of many different types of particles, arreanged in many ways. Adiditonally, a child will know what a chair is and know it exists before he knows that it's made of particles, this is also true of adults in environments with chairs but without knowledge of atoms.

Calling our definition of a chair as a collection of particles seems contrary to how we think about chairs.

 

[Ayatollah So]

But there is exist in the "ontological sense". In that sense, to ask whether something exists is to ask whether its ontological kind exists as "a kind apart" from other ontological kinds.

Either your description is bad or the idea is bad: what use would there be for a definition of existence that leads to conclusion that a "whole" is separate from its "parts"; that a clunk of matter exist apart from its fundamental particles?

Yeah, I find the "ontological sense" scary, too. How disconnected must two categories be to count as "a kind apart"? For example, the difference between mathematical vs physical objects seems pretty stark to me, yet physical objects can be described mathematically. Or to take another example, how about fields vs particles?

 

[brennan]

Both fields and particles consist of energy and mass (which are equivalent) and therefore have a physical existence, which fulfils the most basic use of the term 'exists'.

An object like a chair posesses the property of existence insofar as it is a label we apply to an arrangement of things that exist, i.e. the particles and fields from which it is formed.

 

[Mise]

I think the compositional/particle part of a chair is not important. Chairs can be made out of many different types of particles, arreanged in many ways. Adiditonally, a child will know what a chair is and know it exists before he knows that it's made of particles, this is also true of adults in environments with chairs but without knowledge of atoms.

Calling our definition of a chair as a collection of particles seems contrary to how we think about chairs.

Most definitions seem contrary to how we think about the thing it's defining. We often know how to use words before we know what those words mean. We often learn what objects in particular actually are long after we learn the word for them (I didn't know that "water" was "H2O" at first, for example).

Moreover, you seem to be arguing any definition of anything of the "necessary-and-sufficient" type.

 

[Perfection]

Most definitions seem contrary to how we think about the thing it's defining. We often know how to use words before we know what those words mean. We often learn what objects in particular actually are long after we learn the word for them (I didn't know that "water" was "H2O" at first, for example).

I don't think so. I do believe that we had a coherant definition of water before water came to be chemically known.

 

[Gogf]

The problem is that we are asking whether chairs, in the sense of a composite object (i.e., a single object composed of proper parts) exist. The lexical definition of a chair is not "a chair-wise arrangement of particles". Ordinarily, people think that there is a thing there, a chair, that is composed of its proper parts, rather than defined by its parthood relations.

Well then what defines a chair if not its parts?

Here's what I think I really don't understand: nobody would deny that a chair is composed of particles, so what is the difference between a "chair" and a "composition of particles arranged chair-wise"? As far as I can tell, the two are identical, and so no matter what the criteria for chair-hood is, they must both meet it.

I suppose the problem could be that I shouldn't be defining chairs in terms of criteria that must be met in order to be a chair... but I'm sure your reply will be more coherent than my speculation.

So lets distinguish two senses of "exist". There is exist in the "reference sense", where something is said to exist if there is, in this world, a referent to a concept involving fitting a functional role or something of that sort.

But there is exist in the "ontological sense". In that sense, to ask whether something exists is to ask whether its ontological kind exists as "a kind apart" from other ontological kinds.

In the "reference sense", of course chairs exist. Nobody disputes that collections of particles bearing certain location relations to one another can be properly called a chair, but the question is whether ordinary material objects exist as ontological kinds.

Okay, I'm having a little trouble making sense of this, because I don't really understand a lot of the philosophical terms you're using. Here's how I'm understanding it:

1. In one sense, chairs exist in a "reference sense" because particles arranged chair-wise exist.
2. Chairs only exist in an ontological sense if they are a distinct entity... ie if there is nothing else that is "essentially a chair."

(#2 seems like it's where I'm probably wrong. Please correct me if that's the case.)

So, based on that, it seems like your argument is that:

1. Something else that is the same "ontological kind" as a chair exists.
2. It is simpler to believe that this other ontological kind exists.
3. Therefore, by Occam's razor, we can say that chairs do not exist and this other ontological kind exists instead.

Is this basically what you mean, or am I missing something?

If that is in fact what you mean, then I still don't understand what the difference between a "chair-wise arrangement of particles" and a "chair" is.

I hope I'm on the right track to making sense of this and not just totally off-base...

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Don't forget that a chair-wise arrangement of particles doesn't always define a chair. (a chair-wise arrangement of particles contained within a six foot cubed monolithic rock is not a chair... yet.)