Janus

Kant, Spinoza and Hegel all reject the supernatural and modern metaphysics in general has no truck with it; so to say that the only alternative to the...

I disagree; number is inherent in multiplicity which is found everywhere in nature. Think about social animals like dogs or baboons where each individ...

That could well be so.

Yes I believe universals are more than merely names and I don't believe there is anything over and above the natural.

Number is inherent in nature if there are multiple things.

No, all I have to do is remember seeing the cat come in each morning, or the sun set each evening, to know that those things have happened with an obs...

No, you still have it wrong: that there has been a pattern or regularity to your cat's activities is a matter of observation: that there will be such ...

Well, obviously you are not going to find fives or tens laying around; and I said "number is inherent in nature" not "numbers are inherent in nature"....

All morality is man-made. All men are nature-made. Therefore all morality is nature-made.

Wayfarer, judging from your reply, I think you read "that does not mean you can discard the framework".

I think number is inherent in nature; so number is not merely the product of minds.That much seems obvious to me. And yet you say you are a "physicali...

No, this is wrong. If you see your cat coming in every morning for her food; this is something you have observed. This habit of hers is not 'directly'...

I have not been clear that we have been disagreeing from the beginning. In our initial exchange I had thought that you were suggesting that we should ...

You are employing a very narrow sense of 'observe' here. Natural regularities and patterns are observable, but obviously not in the sense that you can...

You seem to be misunderstnding; it is the incoherence of such a distinction that I have been arguing for both in this thread and the other. The refere...

No I can understand the words and phrases; it is how they are all meant to hang together to support your conclusions that I don't get. In any case it'...

Yes, then we would still say they are not physical as such, according to the ordinary definitions of 'physical', but are also not something beyond or ...

An abstraction is not, by definition, physical; but what it is an abstraction from may be. So gravity is not an abstraction as you previously said it ...

I'm sorry to say none of this makes any sense to me Michael. I've tried a few times to understand your metaphysics and failed every time. Perhaps I'm ...

OK, I certainly agree that abstract concepts do not exist extra-mentally. But the problem seems to be that, for example, numbers are independent of an...

I don't know. Why?

So the whole universe is an abstraction your view? I don't think that standpoint is going to be of much help.

That article deals with the notions of correlation and dependence as they are understood in statistics. They are not relevant to this discussion as fa...

Do you define features of experience as extra-mental then?

If I observe the sun to rise each morning that is an observed invariance. Yes, but I didn't say that the thing is trivial, I said that it is referred ...

No, logically, the description cannot be the thing described. I would tend to imagine there is something real that is being described. But I don't see...

This makes sense to me from one angle. It seems right to say that all things are essentially other from God, in the same kind of way that all things a...

If I depend on someone for food does this not imply that they bring about (cause) the conditions in which I am fed? I can't see what correlation has t...

If numbers, shapes and ideas have no extra-mental existence then what are the "extra-mental things" "we apply those concepts to"?

It seems to me you are conflating explanations with what is being explained.

Thanks, that's a nice exposition of the problem.

I haven't read Quine. Can you summarize his definition of existence?

OK, I thought you were affirming it.

Agree.

What kind of existence do numbers, shapes and ideas have outside our thinking them, and their temporal and spatial instantiations in nature?

You mean in modern English translations of Plato, don't you?

Can you give an example of something which does not conform to this definition?

How could we know it is possible if we "don't know the details yet"?

Yes, they probably would; and I would not agree with them. Whether a comprehensive account of biology may, sometime in the future, be reducible to the...

Yes, apparently 'physical' can mean different things; and in fact that is just what I'm suggesting by saying that if "physical' is defined as that whi...

I don't know; maybe we can; but the question is whether we can know that we can; and I'd have to say 'no' to that.

That's a commonsense definition and I think most people would agree with it. But when people speak of things being non-physical, what often seems to b...

Well, yes, it is the experience of the world in itself; but, by mere definition it cannot be experience of the world as it is in itself. The 'for us' ...

That's true; we do have knowledge of the world in itself: as it appears to us.

That's a very ambiguous question.

What about the question I asked earlier though? If the physical is defined as that which is susceptible to being understood in the terms of physics, t...

I would say there is only one world, which we know, not in itself, but as it appears to us, and that it exists both as it appears and as it is in itse...

In Kant's system appearances (phenomena) are appearances of things in themselves; so, for Kant we do perceive things in themselves, not as they are in...

This highlights the problem for me, though; because on the one hand you say dualism is not implied, and on the other you seem to be assuming there are...

If things which cannot be understood in terms of physics are non-physical, then animals must be non-physical, since biology cannot be reduced to physi...