What is REAL?
Are abstract objects real things?
How do we arrive at different conclusions of what is real and what not?
→ Depend on how they answer this more fundamental question
Rationalists and Empiricists: both agree that we are the reality detectors, we have the capacity to
detect what is real and what is not.
- Rationalist: we have more power than we thought, further ability than being a detector →
we have our “inner sense” or introspection.
- Introspection allows you to be aware of things going on in your own mind
→ There are things that are real that cannot be seen in the physical world
- Example: Numbers
→ Through introspection, we could become aware that we are judging that the
numbers 7 is greater than 4
- Empiricist: based on our “senses”, such as sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste
Nativist, like Plato and Descartes, think that we are born understanding some concepts and forms
- Plato: Justice, Rightness, and Good
- Descartes: Self, Physical body, and Mental Acts like believing, doubting, hoping, and willing
METAPHYSICS FORM AND INNATE CONCEPTS
Plato
We are capable of becoming aware of the existence of a type of mind independent object that
could not be perceived through our senses, and that did not exist in physical space
→ These objects were the Forms (i.e., concepts)
Some of the Forms were mathematical Forms
- Form of Equality
- Form of Straightness
Other Forms were moral Forms
- Form of Justice
- Form of Good
- Form of Evil
- Form of Rightness
- Form of Wrongness
Plato notes that we recognize that equal things are not exactly equal, straight things appear not
perfectly straight, and flat objects appear not perfectly flat.
→ To think of the equality between two things, you have to think of the absolute perfect equality
first, and then arrive at the not perfectly equal between two things, but they are reaching that
perfection that we have in mind → So that it resembles the equal in our mind
In relation to the particular things in this world that we judge to be good, there must also be
perfect goodness, or the Form of Good.
- We judge something to be good because it resembles the Form of good. We judge it to be
not good, because it doesn’t perfectly resemble this form. So, the Form of good must exist
Summarized by Loux in Metaphysic
1. Forms are mind independent, abstract entities that do not occupy space in the physical
world.
2. Since forms are not part of the physical world, they cannot be perceived with our senses
but we can nevertheless think about them. It is hypothesized that we think about them
using our intellect
3. What the above argument suggests is that for Plato, Forms are emulated by resembling
things. WHat common to a group of resembling things is that they all emulate or partake in
a single form. As Loux points out Palto “speaks of things partaking of a Form”
4. A further feature of Forms that Loux stresses is that they are “repeatable”
5. Forms are eternal and unchanging
→ The Form of Equality never becomes unequal and the Form of Good never becomes evil
6. Forms are mind independent and “public accessible”.
Trope Theory (Loux 50-52)
Trope theorists are empiricists, and their empiricism leads them to deny the existence of Forms.
According to Trope Theory,
- Objects have characteristics of features, such as being straight or flat
- Two objects can also have the relation of being equal
- However, their characteristics cannot be possessed by multiple things in the way that
Forms are emulated by different objects.
→ We don’t need a Form of Black to say what it is for something to be black
Anything that has a black trope in virtual that resembles the black trope of another object, then
they are black, without the requirement for the Form of Blackness
Trope theory rejects the existence of shared, universal properties (Forms and perfection), it is a
more explanatory account of objects and their similarities without appealing to abstract
universals.
Concrete particulars have colours, shapes, and the like; but the attributes those particulars have
are every bit as particular or individual as their possessors.
→ A red ball has colour, and its redness is the only thing that only it possesses
For Trope Theory, there are as many straight tropes as there are straight objects and there is no
Form of straightness that exists independently of these straight objects.
Russel’s suggestion (He is a Platonist, and is hypothetically explaining on how the Trope
Theorist will argue)
“If we wish to avoid universals (the Forms) witness and triangularity, we shall choose some
particular patch of white (a particular white trope) or some particular (occurence of) triangle (a
trope of triangularity) and say that anything is white or a triangle if it has the right sort of
resemblance to our chosen particular.”