I agree Russell that there is no such an entity as "a man" found in this world as there are certainly men. Plato writes in his "The Republic" that when we talk about a object we are in fact talk about the virtual of all the objects of its kind. In my understanding, it is an idea of all the characters any object can be called "so" has to have.
Unlike Russell, I don't think talking about "unreal" or "nonexistent"objects with logic is any problematic. Maybe due to the fact I'm a dogged agnostic, I don't acknowledge that we "know" anything completely, 100%, and also I believe whatever we think "unreal" or "nonexistent" has a tiny-tiny-tiny-little chance of existence, so while our ancestors were talking about the "flat earth", which they thought real, they were actually talking about something "unreal"; and when we think we are talking about something nonexistent, there is always a chance we are merely talking about something we haven't discovered yet.
I don't think unicorn is a good example to use here, since although unicorns don't exist (let's just agree on this for now, for the sake of our continuous discussion), all characters of unicorns do exist: the unicorn's body is just like the body of a horse, and on top of that there's a horn like one of the horns of many other animals; it would be difficult to imagine a color that doesn't exist though, because there is no way we can imagine a nonexistent color with the characters of other colors. So when it comes to the true "nonexistent" thing, I wonder how Russell will explain that we actually don't have anything word for them.
Unlike Russell, I don't think talking about "unreal" or "nonexistent"objects with logic is any problematic. Maybe due to the fact I'm a dogged agnostic, I don't acknowledge that we "know" anything completely, 100%, and also I believe whatever we think "unreal" or "nonexistent" has a tiny-tiny-tiny-little chance of existence, so while our ancestors were talking about the "flat earth", which they thought real, they were actually talking about something "unreal"; and when we think we are talking about something nonexistent, there is always a chance we are merely talking about something we haven't discovered yet.
I don't think unicorn is a good example to use here, since although unicorns don't exist (let's just agree on this for now, for the sake of our continuous discussion), all characters of unicorns do exist: the unicorn's body is just like the body of a horse, and on top of that there's a horn like one of the horns of many other animals; it would be difficult to imagine a color that doesn't exist though, because there is no way we can imagine a nonexistent color with the characters of other colors. So when it comes to the true "nonexistent" thing, I wonder how Russell will explain that we actually don't have anything word for them.
I thought your disagreement paragraph was really interesting because I wrote about that for my agreement paragraph, but I completely see your point. I am not sure what I believe regarding whether or not we really know anything 100%, but I think it is really interesting and I think I agree with you when you say that even the things we believe are unreal or nonexistent have a tiny-tiny-tiny-little chance of existence. I never really thought about that point, but now that you mention it, it is a very good one to bring up in this discussion. Just the thought of chance.
ReplyDeleteI have a related argument to your flat earth example that, based on your disagreement paragraph, you might find interesting: Based on Russell's assertion, we might have a set of characteristics that we refer to as 'unicorn' or 'pegasis' when taken together, but currently refer to no actual thing at all. If we are able to create such a creature -- think Jurassic park -- in the future, is it now said to exist, and if so does that invalidate the previous assertions? Is it under a different set of rules due to being engineered versus your example of discovery?
ReplyDeleteYour second paragraph is interesting in that you state that we cannot "know" anything 100%, but then later on, you say that the flat earth was proven to be unreal. I don't necessarily disagree with you, but if non-existent things have a tiny chance of existing, because we cannot know anything 100%, then we could also say that existent things, or at least things we think to exist,have a tiny chance of not existing. Unfortunately, this throws any hopes of justifiable, true knowledge out the window, and likely leads to a case solipsism. In fact to say that you "know" something is to make a definitive statement regarding reality, you can't know something less than 100%, for to have knowledge of A requires A to be true.
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