Too Spooky???

 

So just how crazy is this idea?  Well, perhaps not as much as you might first assume.

 

Three kinds of things that give every appearance of being abstract objects of the sort Plato is committed to (e.g. entities exist­ing outside time and space and outside the human mind).

 

1.       Universals

 

Over and above this or that particular triangle, we have the universal "trian­gularity."  Over and above this or that particular human being, we have the universal "humanness.”  Over and above this or that partic­ular red thing, we have the universal "redness." 

 

As we shall see, modern philosophy from the time of Locke and Hume has often tried to reject any commitment to universals.  But is has not entirely irradiated it, much to their dismay.  Richard Dawkins laments in 2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?

 

“We are still infected with the plague of Plato’s essentialism. …You can surely think of many other examples of "the dead hand of Plato"—essentialism.   It is scientifically confused and morally pernicious. It needs to be retired.

 

But the “problem of universals” persists, even in modern metaphysics and the reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

 

2.       Numbers

 

Numbers and other mathematical entities are not physical objects nor are num­bers purely mental.  On the face of it at least, these seem to be things we discover with objective natures that we do not create.  They are in some way already "out there" waiting for us to find them, and thus cannot depend for their truth on our thinking about them. They are also necessary truths in a way that no truths about the material world seems to be necessary.  It is true for instance, that there are no unicorns (Sorry.), but this is a contingent fact, not a necessary one.  As far as we can tell, there might have been unicorns; it just so happens that there are not.

 

That is why we cannot determine whether unicorns exist or not a priori. But we can and do determine the truth and falsity about the properties of numbers and other mathematical entities a priori.  Relatedly, to know even a simple mathematical fact like 2 + 2 = 4 is to know a necessary truth, one that could not have been otherwise. But if this mathematical truth is necessary in this way, then the things it is a truth about -numbers -must also exist in a necessary way, outside time and space and independent­ly of any mind.

 

Again many modern thinkers will reject the claims that math can be known a priori and/or that math and logical claims are necessary.  J. S. Mill claimed that math claims are merely highly confirmed empirical hypotheses and W.V.O. Quine claims there are not necessary truths. While these moves free them of a need to endorse Platonic Realism, they bring their own problems.

 

3.       Propositions

 

Many philosopher affirm the existence of propositions.  Propositions are true or false about the world, but are distinct from the sentences that express them. "John is a bachelor." and "John is an unmarried man." are different sentences, but they express the same proposition. "Snow is white" and "Schnee ist weiss" are also differ­ent sentences -indeed, one is a sentence of English, the other a sen­tence of German -but they too express exactly the same proposi­tion, namely the proposition that snow is white.

 

Advocates of propositions claim that when the mind considers the truth of things, entertains a thought, whether true or false, it is ultimately considering a proposition, not a sentence. That is why we can all entertain the very same thoughts despite the fact that we may not be entertaining that same sentences.  Notice even if we were entertaining “the same” sentence, it is not numerically the same.  Indeed it can only be “the same” in virtue of expressing the same proposition.  But if this is the case, the proposition seems to be a transcendent item that sentences share, not unlike Plato’s Forms. 

 

The view that universals, numbers, and/or propositions exist objectively, apart from the human mind and distinct from any mate­rial or physical features of the world, is called (Platonic) Realism, and Plato's Theory of Forms is perhaps the most famous version of the view (though not the only one, as we will see). It’s worth noting that one may be a realist on one or more of these items.  It is not an “all or nothing deal.”  The standard alternative views are nominalism, which denies that universals and the like are real, and conceptualism,[1] which acknowledges that they are real but insists that they exist only in the mind; and like realism, each of these positions comes in several varieties.  In due course, we will be examining the debate between these views.

 

Ideas Have Consequences

 

To the non-philosopher debates about realism may seems an esoteric and dull affair.  In fact, probably the majority of philosophers publishing today may find little of interest or practical consequence here.  But in Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver argues that the abandonment of realism by philosophers and ultimately the broader community lead directly to radical changes in society and morality within modern Western civi­lization.

 

 

Weaver analyzed William of Occam's 14th century notions of nominalist philosophy. In broad terms, nominalism is the idea that "universals” are not real, rather only particulars are real.  But Weaver claims Nominalism deprives people of a measure of universal truth, so that each man becomes his own "priest and ethics professor".[2]  Weaver deplored this relativism, and believed that modern men were "moral idiots, ... incapable of distinguishing between better and worse".[3]

 

Weaver viewed America's consumer driven and increasingly immoral/amoral culture as the unwitting consequences of its belief in nominalism. Modern culture no longer subscribes to any universal transcendent values nor had any moral ambition to understand a higher truth outside of man.[4]

 

The result was a "shattered world",[5] according to Weaver, in which truth was unattainable, and freedom only an illusion.  The shift away from classical Scholastic thought began in the late Middle Ages and becomes entrenched during the “Enlightenment.”  The social consequences of this move took a while to fully manifest in the popular mind as shift away from universal truth and transcendental order to individual opinion and industrialism.  According to Weaver and some likeminded supports of realism, these later developments have adversely affected the moral health of Americans.

 

For my money, I think a case can be made for some of this, but it is more complicated than that.  Foes of realism might just as easily point to the social ills resulting from the imposition of normative standard of “normalcy” or “ideal human nature.”  (See Dawkins above.)  Nevertheless, even if it is true that the rejection of realism has had negative social consequences, this in and of itself provides us with no reason to think that realism is true. 

 

So what reasons do in fact recommend Realism?  Your author, along with other modern scholastics and some non-scholastics, claim realism is not only reasonable, but inescapable, even to many thinkers viscerally inclined to reject it.  Nevertheless, many do seek to escape it. This leads us to ask:

 

“Are the escapes attempted by other philosophers -namely nominalism and conceptualism preferable? Defensible?”

 

1.       The "one over many" argument:

 

"Triangularity" "redness," "humanness," etc., are not reducible to any particular triangle, red thing, or human being, nor even to any collection of triangles, red things, or human beings. For any particular triangle, red thing, or human being, or even the whole collection of these things, could go out of existence, and yet triangularity, redness, and humanness could come to be exemplified once again. They also could be, and often are, exemplified even when no human mind is aware of this fact. Hence triangularity, redness, humanness, and other universals are neither material things nor collections of material things, nor dependent on human minds for their existence.

 

2.       The argument from geometry:

 

In geometry we deal with perfect lines, perfect angles, perfect circles, and the like, and discover objective facts about them. Since these facts are objective -we didn't invent them and couldn't change them if we wanted to -they do not depend on our minds. Since they are necessary and unalterable facts (unlike facts about material things), and since no material thing has the perfection that geometrical objects have, they do not depend on the material world either. Hence they are facts about a "third realm" of abstract objects.

 

3.       The argument from mathematics in general:

 

Mathematical truths in general are necessary and unalterable, while the material world and the human mind are contingent and changing. These truths were true before the material world and our minds existed and would remain true if the latter went out of existence. Hence the objects these truths are truths about -numbers and the like -cannot be either material or mental, but abstract.

 

Furthermore, the series of numbers is infinite, but there are only finitely many material things and only finitely many ideas within any human mind or collection of human minds; hence the series of numbers cannot be identified with anything either material or mental.

 

4.       The argument from the nature of propositions:

 

Propositions cannot be identified with anything either material or mental.  For some propo­sitions (e.g. truths of mathematics like 2 + 2 =4) are necessarily true, and thus would remain true if neither the material world nor any human mind existed. Many contingently true propositions would also remain true in such a circumstance: "Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March" would remain true even the entire world and every human mind went out of existence tomorrow.  Even if neither the material world nor any human mind had ever existed in the first place, the proposition "There is neither a material world nor any human mind" would have been true, in which case it would not be something material or mental.

 

5.       The argument from science:

 

Scientific laws and classifications, being general or universal in their application, necessarily make reference to universals; and science is in the business of discovering objective, mind-independent facts. Hence to accept the results of science is to accept that there are mind-independent universals.  Science also makes use of mathematical formulations, and since (as noted above) mathematics concerns a realm of abstract objects, to accept the results of science thus commits one to accept that there are such abstract objects.

 

Indirect Arguments for Realism

 

These above represent direct arguments for realism. There are also indirect arguments, i.e. arguments which seek to demonstrate that the alternatives to real­ism cannot be right.

 

Consider nominalism.

 

Contra Nominalism

 

Nominalism holds that there are no universals, numbers, or propositions.[6]  Common nouns do not refer to abstract objects of “universals,” rather they refer to set of objects.  They are general names, words we apply to many things. Hence, for example, there is the general term "cat' which we apply to various objects, but no such thing as "cat nature/ cat form." My go-to metaphor is this: there is a metaphorical box with the letters C A T on it.  “Cat” is the label on the box, the name of the set of things we find in the box.  When I say things like “This is a cat.” I am saying this thing is one of the things that belongs in the box.  Likewise when I say this is NOT a cat, I am saying this in one of the thinks that does NOT belong in the box.

 

Of course, this raises the question why does that thing “belong” in the box?  It is fairly uncontroversial to say THAT we sort in certain ways.  But why do we apply the term "cat" to just the things we do.  One fairly plausible answer would be "because they all have cat-ness in common," but this course brings us back to affirming the existence of universals.  The nominalist must avoid this.  She might say that the reason we label different things "cat" is that they resemble each other, without specifying the respect in which they resemble each other.  But any two things resemble each other is some respect of another.  So she must further specify in what way these two things resemble each other and that will involve reference to a common set of (essential) properties.  So we’re back to universals. 

 

Alternatively, she might say that it is merely a matter of empirical fact that we sort in such a way and note further that experience has shown that some sorting practices work better for solving certain problems and current cat-sorting practice has worked pretty well for our current needs.  But again a questions arises: why does this sorting practice work better than some alternative?  Is this a ‘brute fact” and why should be accept it as a brute fact when an explanation is available (i.e. that they share a common essence).

 

6.       The vicious regress problem:

 

As Bertrand Russell noted in Problems of Philosophy, the "resem­blance" to which the nominalist appeals is itself a universal.  Let’s say that we call Snowball and Mr. Boots “cats” because they resemble each other in some way.  And we call Fido and Spot “dogs” because they resemble each other in a different way.  Nevertheless, we have are multi­ple instances of one and the same universal, "resemblance." Now the nominalist might seek to avoid this consequence by saying that we only call all of these examples cases of "resemblance" because they resemble each other, without specifying the respect in which they resemble each other. But then the problem just crops up again at a higher level.  These various cases of resemblance resemble other various cases of resemblance, so that we have a higher-order resem­blance, which itself will be a universal. And if the nominalist tries to avoid this universal by once again applying his original strategy, he will be just faced with the same problem again at yet a higher level, ad infinitum. (See Plato’s and Aristotle’s “Third Man Argument.”)

 

7.       The "words are universals too" problem:

 

So according to the nominalist, there are no universals like "Cat Form,” merely general terms that refer to socio/linguistically constructed set of objects.  But the term "cat" is itself a universal. You utter the particular word "cat," I utter the word "cat,"  Your utter the particular work “cat” again, Socrates utters the word "cat," but for nominalism to work, all the particular utterances have to be utterances of the same one word, which exists over and above our various utterances of it.

 

CAT        CAT  CAT  CAT

 

These are all tokens of the same type.  But this implies that there are two things needed for this to work: tokens (particulars) and types (universals).  So we’re back to universals.

 

Nominalists agree that the same one word applies to many things.  But this requires that there be multiple instances of the same word.  We have just the sort of "one over many" situation the nominalist wants to avoid.

 

So we’re back to universals.

 

To evade this result, the nominalist might say that when you, me, and Socrates each say "cat," we are not in fact utter­ing the same word at all, but only words that resemble each other.  But this is a problematic move for several reasons:

 

1.       It is just plain stupid.

2.       It would suggest that genuine communica­tion is impossible, since we would never be using the same words.

3.       It would seem that even we cn know what we are saying from one moment to the next since no one would ever be using the same word more than once even when talking to oneself.

4.       And the appeal to "resemblance" would open the door up again to the vicious regress problem.

 

It is notoriously very difficult to defend nominalism because the very means they employ to exorcise universals depends on universals or other abstract objects, in which case the view is self-undermining.

 

So much so that Scholastics wonder why one would go to such great lengths to avoid anything the smacks of realism.  Is it really that spooky?

 

Contra Conceptualism

 

Unlike Nominalism, Conceptualism does NOT deny that universals exist.  Rather it denies only that universals are objective, extra-mental realities.  They exist only as human concepts.  So it attempts a synthesis between Realism and Nominalism.  But there is a sense in which it combines the worst of both worlds.

 

CC1: The argument from the commonality of concepts and knowledge:

 

For conceptualism to work, it must maintain that you and I entertain the same concept (of a cat, say, or of redness, or of conceptualism itself for that matter).  But if were are each entertaining one and the same concept; our concepts seem to be tokens of a type, no less than words are for the nominalist.  It is not that you are entertain­ing your private concept of “cat” and I am entertaining mine.  Conceptualism must maintain that our concepts have something in common between them in order to be plausible.

 

So we’re back to Universals.

 

CC2: The argument from the objectivity of concepts and knowledge:

 

Similarly, when we each consid­er various propositions and truths, we are entertaining the same propositions and truths. This must be the case whenever we have objective knowledge.  So, for example, when you think about the Pythagorean theorem and I think about the Pythagorean theorem, we are each thinking about one and the same truth; it is not that you are thinking about your own personal Pythagorean theorem and I am thinking about mine (whatever that would mean). So, even if there are unique individual particular concepts in the minds of individuals, these themselves imply universals.  And propositions do not exist only in the mind, subjectively, but independently of the mind, objectively. Related to this argument is another one:

 

CC3: The argument from the possibility of communication:

 

Suppose that, as conceptualism implies, universals and propositions were not objec­tive, but existed only in our minds. Then it would be impossible for us ever to communicate. For whenever you think something ­like "Snow is white," then the concepts that you entertain would be things that existed only in your own mind, and would thus be inaccessible to anybody else. Your idea of "***snow" would be bear no relation to my idea of "%%%%snow," and since your idea is the only one you'd have any access to, and my idea is the only one I'd have access to, we would never mean the same thing whenever we talked about snow, or about anything else for that matter.

 

But this is absurd: we are able to communicate and grasp the same concepts and propositions. Hence these things are not subjec­tive or mind-dependent, but objective, as realism claims.

 

CC3: The argument from the possibility of enduring concepts:

 

Suppose that, as conceptualism implies, universals and propositions were not objec­tive, but existed only in our minds. Then it would be impossible for an individual ever to have the concept twice.  For when you think something ­"Snow is white." today, say then the concepts would be things that existed only in your own mind at that time.  Your idea of "***snow" would be bear no relation to the idea you have the following day of "%%%%snow," and since your idea of the moment is the only one you have immediate access to you could never mean the same thing twice.

 

But this is absurd: we are able to think the same concept more than once.  Hence these things are not subjec­tive or mind-dependent, but objective, as realism claims.

 

Frege

 

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) offered arguments like these for a kind of Realism.  He felt only such metaphysical commitments could uphold the status of science (with its reliance on the objectivity of logic and mathematics) against the doctrine of "psychologism."  Psychologism is a view that holds that the laws of logic and math­ematics to mere psychological principles governing the operation of the human mind.[7] Psychologism maintains that logic and mathematics don't describe objective mind-independent reality, but merely the structure and template by which our minds structure our experience of the world and leads us to think about reality. One may see here an affinity between conceptualism and thinkers like Immanuel Kant.

 

But this view admits that we cannot have knowledge about mind-independent reality.  This is problematic for scientific realists. But nevertheless, Kant thought his account, while rendering a “knowledge” which is subjective, would nevertheless be universal and necessary.  But it is unclear that even this view can do what it needs to do without appealing to universals such as mind, time and space. 

 

But note, when you add to this (as Kant would not have) the suggestion that the way our minds are struc­tured and thus structure our thought, is determined by contingent and evolving social, historical, and cultural circumstances, the result is a very radical form of relativism.  If this is the case it would seem to follow that all our concepts, as well as logic, mathe­matics, science, etc., are evolutionarily, culturally, or otherwise conditioned and subject to revi­sion, with no necessary connection to objective reality nor are they universal to all humans minds.  Truth/ knowledge becomes as fractured and multivalent as there are cognitive agents.

 

But the problem with this account is not merely the relativism and skepticism it engenders; it seems to be run the danger of being internally incoherent.  To declare that our concepts, standards of logic, etc., are determined not by any necessary match with objec­tive reality, but rather by the effects on our minds of contingent forces of history, culture, and the like, or even by biological evolu­tion requires that we give some (objective) account of exactly how this works.  One must lay out an account of precisely what the evolutionary, biological and/or cultural forces were and how precisely they were responsible for forming our minds, etc.  But these will require (logical) arguments in defense of this account. (You perhaps see where this is going…)

 

Such arguments and accounts will necessarily have to appeal to var­ious logical principles and universals ("Darwinian selective pressures," "class interests," "genetic mutations," "social trends," etc.) and to scientific and mathematical principles governing the relevant processes.  Yet these were the very things the view in question claims have no objective validity, and (since they purportedly depend on our minds for their existence) did not exist before our minds did. So they could not enter into an explanation of forming our minds since before our mind were formed they did not exist.  Remember, they enjoy no extra-mental existence according to conceptualists.

 

Hence this sort of view runs the danger of undermining itself.

 

Suppose instead that, following Kant, the conceptualist or psy­chologist takes the less radical position that though our concepts and/or standards of logic and mathematics reflect only the opera­tions of our own minds and not objective reality, this is a necessary fact about human cognition, something that could not be changed by either biological or cultural evolution. Thus the concepts and standards we have are necessary for humans.  Would this save the view from collapsing into incoherence?

 

Realists argue not at all.  Again, the advocate of such a view is still going to have to explain to us how he knows all this, and how our minds got that way in the first place, and if he appeals to concepts, logical standards, etc., that he's just got done telling us have no con­nection to objective reality and that depend on our minds for their existence, then he's effectively undermined his own case.

 

On the other hand, insofar as he claims that it is a necessary fact about our minds that we have just the concepts, standards of logic, etc., that we do, then he's thereby claiming to have knowledge of the objective nature of things -specifically, of the objective nature of the workings of our minds of the sort that was supposed to be ruled out by his theory. For to formulate and defend his claim he needs to appeal to certain universals (like "mind"), standards of logic, etc.; and again, his theory claims that these have no objective validity.

 

So he's caught in a dilemma: if he insists, as his theory must lead him to, that our concepts, standards of logic, etc., have no objective validity, then he cannot so much as defend his own position.

 

If he claims that they do have validity, so as to justify his claim to know about the objective nature of our minds, then he's just contradicted his own view in the very act of defending it. Again, the view is sim­ply incoherent.[8]

 

So then we see that, formulating a plausible case for either conceptual­ism or nominalism is, at best, very difficult.  If this is so, one must ask, what is the intellectual motivation for doing so other than trying to avoid realism.  Often the abandonment of realism is said to be motivated by this motivation for the famous principle of “Ockham's Razor.” Ockham's razor cautions us that we must not “postulate entities beyond necessity.”  On this view the simpler theory, one which avoids postulating the existence of something unless we need to is the more reasonable one.  But if the foregoing is correct, with respect to the debate over universals, propositions, numbers and the like is that we do need to "postulate" their existence.  And if that is the case then it would appear that we do indeed need to postulate something like Plato's theory of Forms.  Now "something like" does not mean precisely like.  One can be a realist without going whole hog for Plato's denigration of the senses, doctrine of reminiscences and the bifurcation of reality into two realms.

 

This brings us at last to Aristotle.


[1] It was noted in class that Nominalism and Conceptualism do not, strictly speaking prove the realism is false.  Indeed, either or both could be correct account of some common nouns (say, breakfast cereals) and realism true of others (say, cat).  True enough.  Nominalism and Conceptualism represent challenges to Realism only in that the purport to be more economical accounts of what is going on than Realism.  If we can explain our use of common terms, numbers and sentences without appeal to objective mind-independent abstract objects, then there is no need to posit any such things.  Realism is needlessly spooky and Ockham’s Razor would direct us not to posit these uneconomical entities without necessity.

[2] Scotchie, Joseph, ed., 1995. The Vision of Richard Weaver. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers. p 5

[3] Nash, George H., 1998, "The Influence of Ideas Have Consequences on the Conservative Intellectual Movement in America," in Smith Steps Toward Restoration: The Consequences of Richard Weaver's Ideas. Wilmington DL: Intercollegiate Studies Institute. (1998): p 89.

[4] Nash, 89

[5] Young, Fred Douglas, 1995. Richard Weaver: A Life of the Mind. University of Missouri Press p 113

[6] Theoretically, one might be a nominalist about propositions, say, but a realist about say numbers.  But often the motivations for nominalism is to defend a reductive materialism or “naturalist” metaphysical picture.  So it really do little good to deny some “spooky” things only to allow others.  One of the these types of mind-independent objective immaterial objects is all it takes to undo a materialist ontology.

[7] See “Thought” in The Frege Reader Michael Beaney, ed. (Blackwell 1997)

[8] The interested reader my wish to look at Crawford L. Elder, Real Natures and Familiar Objects (MIT Press, 2004) p 11-17