Moral: PH; Identity, Abstraction & Concepts
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2024 2:29 am
Following are the views of PH.
Identity, Abstraction and Concepts
Peter Holmes: 2024
Identity
We talk about identity – what a thing is and, therefore, why it is the same as or different from other things. But – as usual – in philosophy, such talk is problematic.
People excepted, features of reality do not identify, name or describe themselves. Rather, we do that when we talk about them. And this fact has some important implications.
First, we need to distinguish between features of reality and what we say about them. (And, in my opinion, mistaking what we say for the way things are is the beginning of philosophical confusion.)
Second, things we call the same by one criterion we can also call different by another criterion. In other words, we can always categorise things differently.
Third, features of reality are not obliged to conform to our ways of identifying, naming and describing them.
And fourth, the rules of classical logic seem insecure. If A can equal both A and not-A, then what price the so-called law of identity?
These considerations can lead to the excitingly subversive conclusion that, outside language, there are no identities – no sameness and differences – in reality.
But this is to mistake what we say about things for the way things are. For example, the things we call cats, dogs and trees are what they are, how ever we identify and name them, and whether we say they are the same as or different from each other.
In other words, it is as mistaken to deny identity in reality as it is to insist on linguistic identity outside language. Both mistakes demonstrate the dazzling power of language.
And a logic does not deal with the reality outside language. Other discourses do that – such as the natural sciences. Instead, a logic deals with language – what can be said consistently, without contradiction – which is ‘speaking against’.
So the so-called laws of classical logic – A equals A (identity) and cannot equal not-A (non-contradiction), and there’s no other possibility (excluded middle) – are simply rules, like those of a game.
There is no necessary or inherent connection between those rules and the reality outside language. Logical identity is a purely linguistic matter.
In real life, there are many real problems to do with identity – among them gender, tribal, national, religious and political identity. But the philosophical so-called problem of identity is not among them, which is why civilians ignore it, along with other invented difficulties.
But we are philosophers, so for us it has been interesting to ask questions such as: what is the nature of identity? And I suggest this question arises – at least partly – from a misunderstanding about what we call abstraction.
Abstraction
It has been argued that language works by means of abstraction, as in the following example.
We use the common noun dog to talk about the many different individual things we call dogs. So the word seems to name something that those individual things have in common, something general – in other words, an abstraction from the real things.
But what is an abstraction or an abstract thing? Here are two representative dictionary definitions:
Abstraction: ‘the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events’.
Abstract: ‘existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence’.
So, though dogs are real things, the noun dog is supposedly the name of an unreal or abstract thing: dogginess, dog-essence, dog-nature, fundamental-dog, or – and here is my point – dog-identity.
I suggest that the so-called problem of identity arises from the delusion that common nouns are names of the abstractions we call identities.
But wait, there’s more.
We call the word dog a concrete noun, to contrast it with what we call an abstract noun, such as truth, knowledge, being, meaning, beauty, justice, goodness, identity, and so on. (Behold: the stuff of philosophy!)
But the expression abstract noun is a misattribution, because a word is not an abstract thing. It is a real, physical thing. So in the phrase abstract noun, the adjective abstract does not refer to the word noun, but rather to the supposed thing that the abstract noun supposedly names.
And the story goes like this. We use nouns to name things. So what we call abstract nouns name abstract things, which exist in thought or as ideas, presumably in the mind – another abstract thing, which, therefore, also exists in thought or as an idea in the mind – and so on, spiralling down the rabbit hole where philosophers furkle. Uselessly.
The silliness of this – what could be called – mentalist nonsense has not prevented its persistence over centuries, and even millennia. Abstract things are remarkably like supernatural things. Both are supposed to exist in some mysterious, non-physical but unexplained way.
And perhaps needless to say, the perennial argument between Platonists and nominalists over the existence of so-called universals has been just another manifestation of the myth of abstract things.
Concepts
As noted, an abstract thing is supposed to exist non-physically as a thought or an idea, presumably in the mind. But more recently – and much more impressively technical-sounding – such things have been called concepts.
There are supposed to be concrete concepts, such as the concept of a dog, which is an abstract thing ‘about’ a real thing. But there are also supposed to be abstract concepts, such as the concept of identity – an abstract thing ‘about’ an abstract thing. To maintain the fiction, we have had to double down on it.
To call identity a concept is to explain nothing at all. Asked then what the concept of identity is, all we can do is explain how we use the word identity, its cognates and related words, in different contexts.
And this is true of all the supposed abstract things that philosophers talk about. They are mysteries invented to explain mysteries of our own invention. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, we have been and are bewitched by a device of our language – that we use nouns to name things.
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1 'Bachelor' is a word, not a concept.
2 There's no evidence for the existence of any concept that the word 'bachelor' names, or to which it corresponds. There's no evidence for the existence of concepts, full stop. They are mentalist fictions designed to pad out the myth of the mind.
3 A description of the supposed concept of bachelor is nothing more than a description of the ways we use the word 'bachelor' in different contexts. There is no residue left over after such a description.
......................
Discuss??
Views??
Identity, Abstraction and Concepts
Peter Holmes: 2024
Identity
We talk about identity – what a thing is and, therefore, why it is the same as or different from other things. But – as usual – in philosophy, such talk is problematic.
People excepted, features of reality do not identify, name or describe themselves. Rather, we do that when we talk about them. And this fact has some important implications.
First, we need to distinguish between features of reality and what we say about them. (And, in my opinion, mistaking what we say for the way things are is the beginning of philosophical confusion.)
Second, things we call the same by one criterion we can also call different by another criterion. In other words, we can always categorise things differently.
Third, features of reality are not obliged to conform to our ways of identifying, naming and describing them.
And fourth, the rules of classical logic seem insecure. If A can equal both A and not-A, then what price the so-called law of identity?
These considerations can lead to the excitingly subversive conclusion that, outside language, there are no identities – no sameness and differences – in reality.
But this is to mistake what we say about things for the way things are. For example, the things we call cats, dogs and trees are what they are, how ever we identify and name them, and whether we say they are the same as or different from each other.
In other words, it is as mistaken to deny identity in reality as it is to insist on linguistic identity outside language. Both mistakes demonstrate the dazzling power of language.
And a logic does not deal with the reality outside language. Other discourses do that – such as the natural sciences. Instead, a logic deals with language – what can be said consistently, without contradiction – which is ‘speaking against’.
So the so-called laws of classical logic – A equals A (identity) and cannot equal not-A (non-contradiction), and there’s no other possibility (excluded middle) – are simply rules, like those of a game.
There is no necessary or inherent connection between those rules and the reality outside language. Logical identity is a purely linguistic matter.
In real life, there are many real problems to do with identity – among them gender, tribal, national, religious and political identity. But the philosophical so-called problem of identity is not among them, which is why civilians ignore it, along with other invented difficulties.
But we are philosophers, so for us it has been interesting to ask questions such as: what is the nature of identity? And I suggest this question arises – at least partly – from a misunderstanding about what we call abstraction.
Abstraction
It has been argued that language works by means of abstraction, as in the following example.
We use the common noun dog to talk about the many different individual things we call dogs. So the word seems to name something that those individual things have in common, something general – in other words, an abstraction from the real things.
But what is an abstraction or an abstract thing? Here are two representative dictionary definitions:
Abstraction: ‘the quality of dealing with ideas rather than events’.
Abstract: ‘existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence’.
So, though dogs are real things, the noun dog is supposedly the name of an unreal or abstract thing: dogginess, dog-essence, dog-nature, fundamental-dog, or – and here is my point – dog-identity.
I suggest that the so-called problem of identity arises from the delusion that common nouns are names of the abstractions we call identities.
But wait, there’s more.
We call the word dog a concrete noun, to contrast it with what we call an abstract noun, such as truth, knowledge, being, meaning, beauty, justice, goodness, identity, and so on. (Behold: the stuff of philosophy!)
But the expression abstract noun is a misattribution, because a word is not an abstract thing. It is a real, physical thing. So in the phrase abstract noun, the adjective abstract does not refer to the word noun, but rather to the supposed thing that the abstract noun supposedly names.
And the story goes like this. We use nouns to name things. So what we call abstract nouns name abstract things, which exist in thought or as ideas, presumably in the mind – another abstract thing, which, therefore, also exists in thought or as an idea in the mind – and so on, spiralling down the rabbit hole where philosophers furkle. Uselessly.
The silliness of this – what could be called – mentalist nonsense has not prevented its persistence over centuries, and even millennia. Abstract things are remarkably like supernatural things. Both are supposed to exist in some mysterious, non-physical but unexplained way.
And perhaps needless to say, the perennial argument between Platonists and nominalists over the existence of so-called universals has been just another manifestation of the myth of abstract things.
Concepts
As noted, an abstract thing is supposed to exist non-physically as a thought or an idea, presumably in the mind. But more recently – and much more impressively technical-sounding – such things have been called concepts.
There are supposed to be concrete concepts, such as the concept of a dog, which is an abstract thing ‘about’ a real thing. But there are also supposed to be abstract concepts, such as the concept of identity – an abstract thing ‘about’ an abstract thing. To maintain the fiction, we have had to double down on it.
To call identity a concept is to explain nothing at all. Asked then what the concept of identity is, all we can do is explain how we use the word identity, its cognates and related words, in different contexts.
And this is true of all the supposed abstract things that philosophers talk about. They are mysteries invented to explain mysteries of our own invention. To paraphrase Wittgenstein, we have been and are bewitched by a device of our language – that we use nouns to name things.
..................
1 'Bachelor' is a word, not a concept.
2 There's no evidence for the existence of any concept that the word 'bachelor' names, or to which it corresponds. There's no evidence for the existence of concepts, full stop. They are mentalist fictions designed to pad out the myth of the mind.
3 A description of the supposed concept of bachelor is nothing more than a description of the ways we use the word 'bachelor' in different contexts. There is no residue left over after such a description.
......................
Discuss??
Views??
