Problem of universals

What is it that makes individual things members of the same kind, Yea Forums?

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>tfw you realize 98% of medieval writers simply took aristotelian ontology for granted and their analyses of this problem are self-referential casuistry by necessity

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Universals are merely names.

npc.

its easiest to think of physical categories, rocks, trees, hard, soft, etc. the physical features being discussed have a similar pattern or structure is what makes them the same

the concept is real even the word is social convention. the word describes or refers to the real physical feature similarities

That thing is not in the object, but in the mind.

possessing similar characteristics, such as high concentrations of melanin and a propensity to commit crime

Words, words, words.

>Universals are merely names
If so then there's nothing e.g. two triangles have in common other than that we've chosen to call them 'triangles'. Really?

>not in the object, but in the mind
How did it get there though? The concept 'triangle' doesn't come with a handy list of all the objects that fall under that concept attached. (Does it?) So what is it that triangles have in common in virtue of which we're able to place them in the mental file marked 'triangle'?

And what about properties physicists tell us are basic features of things, like spin and charge or whatever? Are they just 'in the mind' rather than in their objects?

>If so then there's nothing e.g. two triangles have in common other than that we've chosen to call them 'triangles'. Really?
Huh? What is this gobbledygook?

>(1) Universals are properties that individual things have in common
>(2) There are no universals
So
>(3) There are no properties that individual things have in common
>(4) Triangles are individual things
So
>(5) There are no properties that triangles have in common
?

The mind, the prime universal machine, active manufacturer of Nothing as its base operating system created by You to produce Something.

words words words redditfrog.jpg

>(1) If individual things have anything in common, then there are universals
(Definition)
>(2) But there are no universals
(Assumption)
So
>(3) Individual things do not have anything in common
(1, 2 MT)
>(4) Triangles are individual things
(Premiss)
So
>(5) Triangles do not have anything in common
(3, 4 Celarent)
>(6) If triangles are three-sided, then triangles have something in common
(Premiss)
>(7) Triangles are three-sided
(Definition)
So
>(8) Triangles have something in common
(6, 7 MP)
But this is absurd (5 & 8 are contradictory), so our assumption (2) is false and
>(9) There are universals

B-but muh William of Ockham...

Identity of form. The particulars posses and share the same formal cause.

Why do you insist on continuing to send me these strange, meaningless glyphs?

One could also say that if no things have anything in common then they all have “difference” in common. Plato makes that argument in one of his dialogues i think

Christians: Tyre will be brought low as a show of The LORD's ultimate power

Porphyry: Looking out my window. Things seem pretty okay up here

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Me.

Wittgenstein would've so thoroughly rekt Plato. I can imagine it now: Plato reduced to a stuttering, gibbering mess, his self-insert Socrates the same, Wittgenstein bending him over and smoothly sliding his signifier into Plato's referent, pumping away with thoughts of abstract mathematics, Plato crying, "B-but what of the kαλόν!" and Wittgenstein grabbing his hair and whispering in his ear "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen," still thrusting away, Plato's own signifier harding, and then suddenly the jouissance of fruitful dialogue erupting from their designates simultaneously.

is there anything more embarrassing than people who take Wittgenstein seriously?

If we take Plato, then universals are not single objects nor are they reducible to them.

Plato cannot be disproven so easily, because unlike Aristotle, he doesn't have to show you the universal triangle or 2+2 for you to get it. Secondly in Platonism it is not an attribute potentiality or potency in a object which makes it real. In Aristotle you would have to cross reference all categories of being, and then create universal categories. But this isn't the problem for Plato uses the idealized forms to show how we understand objects as greater ideal categories. A perfect straight line is a straight line, yet it doesn't exist in our world, we cannot see it, yet we can understand it.

Plato+Kant solved and ended philosophy basically and anything after that is retracing their steps or reworking the same old tired arguments.

BASED & MAY I SAY REDPILLED

Nice. Or 'similarity'. If two things are 'similar', aren't we saying they have something in common? 'Similar' in what respect? In respect of something they have... in common?

Homologous form, function , internal consistency and properties .

Categorization is a function of human utility. We are able to distinguish between objects because of how we interact with the world. If you use triangles as wheels you won't get far. Universals are just abstractions of this. As things converge on perfect circle-ness, they'll roll more smoothly. Even if there is no perfect circle, we can conceive of one based on what circle-ness converges on. Circle-ness just being derived from objects that perform like functions and are relatively interchangeable in those functions.

People who don't!

exclamation marks are cringe and boomer-tier

All things have something in common. A kind is just a set we define in the universe of all things to practically analyze stuff within the set in contrast to things outside the set. We only keep categories around insofar as they are useful to keep around, which means finding trends we can take advantage of in those sets. In that sense, kinds are a construct despite describing something physically real.

Sad!

How we perceive them and categorise them in our minds.

based & nominalist-pilled

>A perfect straight line is a straight line, yet it doesn't exist in our world, we cannot see it, yet we can understand it.
and what are we observing here beyond some vague piece of epistemological or psychological trivia? a perfect straight line cant exist in the realm of existence so the fact that we can understand it proves that we are capable of extrapolating false models from reality inside our heads and nothing more.

the only you can reason about are what you call 'false models extrapolated from reality', they're the intelligible things. Now Plato gives them a more dignified ontological status and develops a theory of them (what with the sun-analogy, things like that), but you agree with the premise.

philosopher pornography recs?

they aren't things they are just psychologically generated remnants of our inability to process reality in true terms

even if you were right, 'psychologically generated remnants of our inability to process reality in true terms' are things, you dimwit. But you're not right, you're not even making sense.

Did someone ever make that porno with Hegel & Heidegger? I need it

nah bro, everything is just material, we know this because of science and progress, stop believing in superstitions

You either have to argue imperfect lines are more transcendent than straight lines, or you have to argue that a universe that lacks something (straight lines) could cause an effect that doesn't lack straight lines (our minds). Effects are never greater than their cause.

To argue the first is to argue against the ontology that the complex precedes the simple. (Big Bang shows the simple precedes the complex.)

To argue the second is to break thermodynamics.

What was the point of this post? What is it trying to say?

does the fact i can imagine myself taking a shit in your mouth even though it will never happen mean that is more transcendent than reality?

Take every degree of freedom in the physical universe and map each to a dimension. Categories are clusters in that high dimensional space.

You're describing something possible.
Straight lines are impossible.

Come on nominalists, tell me where this argument went wrong

I'm sorry, I didn't understand you

There isn't anything, it's all pragmatic illusion.