on Nietzsche

[Elok]

Originally posted by Agathon
As I said, the Dodo is just a picturesque example. You could take any real thing (a chemical compound, or a rare subatomic particle) that doesn't exist at present and make the same claim. I don't think I am begging the question, since the Platonist would say, if there were no tokens of the type, what would be the status of the type? Perhaps it would be easier to take a shape again. What if no circles existed? What would circularity be? A concept, or some independent nature.

Since you said that you thought the nature was in the things, I wanted to know where you thought it was when there weren't any of the things.

Nowhere at all. It remains as a concept if there are no things left for it to be a concept of.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Here's an example to show you what I mean. Take two scientists, one is deaf and one is blind. Both understand perfectly the concepts "sound" and "light" as they apply to objective reality. Both can attend scientific conferences on light and sound and have perfectly meaningful discussions with each other (perhaps like Helen Keller did). But each of them would have a different way of thinking about them, because the blind guy couldn't experience light and the deaf guy couldn't experience sound. Here we might want to say that there concept is the same, but what's in their head is different. So the conclusion would be that the meaning of the concept does not depend on their way of accessing the world. Similarly, extraterrestrial scientists who share none of our senses could plausibly discover the same scientific theories as us.

The scientists have learned scientific theories that is all. If their knowledge of the theories is complete then they agree on predictions made from their theoretical concepts. Agreement of Predictions dose not mean their concepts are identical as they obviously have a different amount of direct experience with which to enrich their concepts. So their concepts are different in the same way that ALL peoples concepts of the same phenomenon is different, they had different experiences, but they agree in predicting experimental outcomes indicating the core of the concept is the same. Your trying to then make a leap that such concepts have no dependence on experience and experiment which is plainly false as these concepts were developed through exactly that method.

Our argument in recent posts hasn't been about Forms or transcendence. That comes later. The argument in recent posts has been about realism versus conceptual. Not every realist is a Platonist, but if you want to establish Platonism, you have to establish realism first.

If I'm attacking the ground under Platonism, then by all means establish it. What is the argument for Realism.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok

Nowhere at all. It remains as a concept if there are no things left for it to be a concept of.

Have you changed your mind? Before you said it was in the things. You can't have it both ways.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]

The scientists have learned scientific theories that is all. If their knowledge of the theories is complete then they agree on predictions made from their theoretical concepts. Agreement of Predictions dose not mean their concepts are identical as they obviously have a different amount of direct experience with which to enrich their concepts. So their concepts are different in the same way that ALL peoples concepts of the same phenomenon is different, they had different experiences, but they agree in predicting experimental outcomes indicating the core of the concept is the same. Your trying to then make a leap that such concepts have no dependence on experience and experiment which is plainly false as these concepts were developed through exactly that method.

I don't disagree that they were developed using some method like this, but your position leads to extreme scepticism. You are still assuming that meanings are in the head.

If I'm attacking the ground under Platonism, then by all means establish it. What is the argument for Realism.

The argument that meanings aren't in the head. Take a famous example. In our universe what looks like water is H20. But perhaps in another universe what appears exactly the same as water has the chemical formula XYZ. Two people who talk about water, will have exactly the same way of thinking about it (what's in their heads will be identical), but they will mean different things. Man A will mean H20 by "water" and Man B will mean "XYZ" by water.

What is in my mind is not sufficient to fix the reference of my words. Your theory will leave words that have no determinate reference.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Agathon
Have you changed your mind? Before you said it was in the things. You can't have it both ways.

I assumed "in the things" was a hoity-toity way of saying "are attributes of" as opposed to...actually, I don't know what you're implying it means. That if you cut a circle open a little thing labeled "circularity" would pop out?