From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: On unjustified assumptions of "existent" entities
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 11:11:57 EDT
I asserted that so-called "relations" are entirely notional figments, that
there are no external-to-the-mind entities that we think we're citing when
we
use the word 'relation'.
I'm both encouraged and discouraged to see my position is so unheard-of, so
contrary to what all of us have always assumed, that people cannot attack
it
without assuming the very point in question.
They can't go back to square one, start with the possibility that
"relations"
don't exist extra-mentally, and go from there to prove they do.
Geoff writes:
" Assume the existence of a) cheerskep's head, b) a falling anvil about to
land on a). I submit that cheerskep will observe a relation between less
pain and more pain dependent on the anvil a) falling and b) landing."
No -- all I'll "observe" is my head and the anvil. I'll "imagine" all sorts
of notion. Again: I will never "observe" a "relation" "out there". Never.
Imago cites "the web of associations your mind
connects to prepositions" and he writes:
"'the sack of barley is ON the mat' is true if and only if a sack actually
stands on a mat. . . It seems difficult to
claim that there _is no_ relationship between the sack
of barley and the mat."
It honestly is not difficult for me. I see the sack, and I see the mat. My
mind can conjure all sorts of comparisons and other considerations about
these
images in my mind. The idea that that each of these notional considerations
entails either the creation of, or the discovery of, an entity "out there"
called
a 'relation" -- that certainly gives me difficulty.
Recall that I started this thread with a confession of my astonishment that
we all have assumed the "existence" of utterly fundamental objects and
events
-- such as "relations" and "facts" and "signifying/denoting/naming etc" --
without ever thinking the implications through to their exposure as
absurdities.
For an example, I pointed out that the assumption of just a single
"relation
entity" entails that we must then concede an effectively infinite number of
further relations. This is so because if a relation is an entity, then it
must
have a unique relation to every other entity out there -- including each of
the
other relations. (This skips the additional absurdities that we notice when
we consider that, if a notion is an entity -- albeit a notional one -- it
too
must be related in some way to every other entity in the material and
notional
world.)
I want to believe that any intelligent person who can rinse his mind of all
prejudices and assumptions about "relations", and start at square one, will
eventually come to the view that it is utterly zany to think of the
non-mental
world as being packed with infinities of objects like relations, facts,
sets,
etc.
Imago says further:
"To claim there _is no_ relationship between the sack
of barley and the mat expresses a dogmatism,
rather than a skepticism."
No -- just the opposite. Anyone who asserts the existence of an entity has
the burden of proof on them. We all feel this in the case of ghosts,
angels,
gremlins, etc. Because none of us is a solipsist, we tend to accept sense
data as
"evidence" of the non-mental existence of material objects. There are no
sense data of relations. Therefore, say I, unless he can come up with a
persuasive
form of evidence other than sense data, the person who asserts that
non-mental objects such as relations "exist out there" is the dogmatist.
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