Objects are one kind of entities. The other entities are conceptual entities and symbolic entities. Of the three entities only objects exist.
This talk of entities is about physical (objects) and conceptual (concepts and words) entities.
Tag: ontology
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Interesting and insightful that Descartes leaves material as the last to be understood in his meditations.
Indeed, there is nothing a priori about experience. We have to go through it (experience it) to reach a conclusion about what thinking is or what does thinking. For Descartes he decided by the second meditation that it was the mind. I also had thought it was the mind. Jeffrey Kaplan thought we have inherited this belief from Descartes and have continued to run with it as common sense. But common sense it is not.
Some time later I have come to believe this is wrong, that I am not a mind, but a body with mind processes (thinking). The thinking thing is not the mind but the body.
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The body causes the mind.
Without the body there is no underlying mind action. The process of thinking is like any bodily process such as walking, sitting, sleeping.
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There are two observations that inform us about the nature of reality.
One is that mind is always experienced within a body, an object of physical reality. If mind is experienced at any time outside of a body then mind can be said to be undoubtedly as another kind of substance. But since mind is always experienced within a body, mind must rely upon the body for it to be somehow emergent.
The other is that matter (objects) are always experienced together with space and time. Matter experienced without space and time would not be matter but something other than object.
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There are so many opinions about what exists and what does not.
I am interested in two aspects of this statement. Firstly, I am in interested in the ontological question posed. But secondly, I am more interested in the way the structure of the above statement, a seemingly unmarked structure that is often used, hides a habit that influences the way we think.
What is the structure I am referring to? Consider the original and its more accurate variation:
- There are so many opinions about what exists and what does not.
- There are so many people with opinions about what exists and what does not.
In my view, the first brings into existence of an entity that does not exist by its structure, and the second correctly states the state of affair that physical beings are the objects which does the action of holding onto opinions. Careful analysis of speech will show that we do this often. Making statements like the first one influences not only one’s own opinions but also other people’s opinions as well.
The second structure is of course less efficient. But also it is more accurate. I will argue that we need to be in the habit of being more accurate about what we say and then ultimately more accurate about how we understand the world. Which comes to the back to the first point I was interested in — what exists and what does not.
To state it plainly, opinions do not exist as their own entities. People with opinion exist to perform the action of forming and holding onto opinions. furthermore, the language habit we have of turning opinions into objects (first by being a object, then by counting them) is the root of many of our problems. True, we cannot escape the need for linguistic efficiency, but also we need to be clear about what is real (ontology) and what is known to be true (epistemology).
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Nothing. Greater or fewer minds do not change the characteristics of reality in any way. This is evidence for the independence of physical reality from minds (perceptions).
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My mind is tethered to the body. I have never had experienced my mind apart from my body. Not have observed minds apart from bodies. The only conclusion I can draw is that all that exists is material, and that I am my body.
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I have observed 1) bodies with minds, 2) bodies without minds, 3) minds with bodies, but 4) never minds without bodies.
The evidence suggests that bodies are prime. Bodies exist without minds, even if it means in state of brain death, vegetative state, or death. Minds are instantiated as body processes. Minds, whatever they are, rely on the biological substrate. Without bodies, there are no minds (again, whatever minds are, if they are anything at all).
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Where do I find triangles in physical reality? I only find triangular things, but not triangles. Without objects, there is no concept of triangle.
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1.
Imagine you are in a reality in which there are no objects. Even you do not exist as an object. Of course, this is impossible. But it is possible to imagine. We have the ability to do this somehow.Imagine now that you are moving through this reality. But how would you know you are moving? You would have no reference points.
Perhaps you are body, the only body in the reality, like a perfect unchanging sphere. Your spinning and turning would not give you reference points. And if say you are not a perfect sphere but you are unchanging then you still would not have reference points. No amount of rotation will tell you which direction you are facing or where you have moved to.
So let us say you are now you are an irregularly shaped object and you are now flexible. Your changing shape has now given you distance and duration. With this you have an understanding of space and time.
What is required of reality are objects, space and time. But space and time can never be observed directly. Space and time are only inferred from the relationships of objects and the change of the relationship of objects in inferred space, respectively.
2.
Objects mark positions in space and in time.A position in space is never simultaneously (at the same time) be occupied by two objects . Nor is it occupied by an object or space at once. I can only guess that a position is not occupied by two spaces at once.
What I can say is, a position is either object or space.
So space must be a special kind of object.
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Time is sequential and equal.An object moving with reference to another object shows this.
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There are no objects without there being space and time. Thingsspacetime is the fundamental characteristic of reality. This is the reality we exist in. This is the reality we should worry about.
theoria 