On objective existence and objectivism
in Philosophy ·
kresho2;15178612 said:The laws of nature—gravity, specifically—didn't just pop into existence because someone finally noticed them. Humans just observe things and expand our collective understanding. Thousands of years ago, nobody had a formal name for the law of gravity, but that didn't stop apples from falling out of trees all the same. I'll get into how Newton actually arrived at his theory a bit later...
We have a specific way of putting this in American English: we "discover" things. So when you talk about something being "created," what exactly are you getting at... how can something just suddenly come into existence? I mean, something can only be created if it didn't exist before—an actual creation out of nothing, which is just absurd. But if it already exists, then you aren't creating it, you're simply discovering it...I feel like you might be missing the distinction between a concrete concept—something you can directly perceive, like a "dog"—and a complex abstraction that’s built from other abstractions, such as "the government." The whole point of an abstraction is to describe something rooted in objective reality. Unfortunately, there are certain abstractions out there that don't actually refer to anything real—the concept of God immediately comes to mind—but it's easy for people to trip up and blur those lines, so it's not the end of the world...
This kind of philosophizing isn't just outdated, it's flat-out wrong. Dialectical materialists used this exact brand of logic to justify their positions, and I actually have a specific quote from Lenin that perfectly illustrates why this line of thinking is such a delusion...
Lenin says...
From observing the living world to engaging in abstract thought, and then bridging that gap back to practical application—that’s the dialectical path toward truth, the only way to truly grasp objective reality...
So, if you actually sit down and dig through these arguments, where does that leave you? You’d end up at one single conclusion, and that is that abstraction itself is a total myth... because everything is just matter, and matter is objective—it's our concrete, physical reality. So, what exactly is there left to abstract from? But then, once you take a look at modern quantum mechanics, it turns out that this whole concept of "reality" just evaporates... It doesn't even exist anymore, whether you're using abstraction or not...
You really ought to start by defining what you actually mean by "abstraction," if only to realize how much your logic is tripping over itself... The whole idea of a "concrete abstraction" is more than a little suspicious, to say the least...It’s really just about how you build up your understanding... You start with the basics, like when your parents first teach you simple words—things like nose, ear, dad, mom, tree, or car. Once you've got those basic abstractions down, you head off to elementary school and start tackling more complex concepts like time or velocity. It’s only after you’ve mastered all that foundational stuff that you can finally wrap your head around something as profound as the law of gravity...
If something exists but isn't made of matter, then we shouldn't just dismiss it as some vague "abstraction." It’s more like a spiritual entity—something that holds its own weight within our consciousness, just as much as a physical object does... Like an apple falling toward the ground, which is material and part of both our inner and outer worlds, yet the non-material stuff is just as real to our experience...You’re asking whether Newton invented that law or discovered it... But look, there had to be a physical reality first—something like an apple falling from a tree—for Newton to actually observe, which I suppose you'd call "discovering"... then comes the second step, where Newton, or really anyone else, just invents the specific word or formula to label what they just witnessed...
This is a textbook example of someone having absolutely no clue what they’re actually talking about.
When we observe nature, we notice periodic patterns, which can then be generalized and described by a mathematical equation as a single law or constant. But in those observations, we aren't inventing anything; we are exclusively discovering. We can take what we’ve discovered through observation and turn it into a spiritual construct, sure, but we can't create something out of nothing...
The only people on this planet who possess even a tiny spark of creativity are those who, mirroring God, can create works of art or music that simply didn't exist before. That's why creativity is a divine attribute, whereas "abstraction" is really just a desperate attempt to flee from reality.
Abstraction isn't creation—though I know that's clearly the impression everyone gets when they read your posts.
So, laws are essentially part of the information inherent to the universe, which means they had to be planted there by an intelligence existing outside the universe itself. If that intelligence were inside the universe, none of this would be possible... much like how it's impossible to claim that we humans created these laws, because if we made that claim, we'd have to claim we created the entire universe too, which is pure absurdity—or, more accurately, your specific brand of "abstraction."Do the laws of physics exist objectively?
No, they don't "exist"; they are definitions describing a portion of reality (acting as complex abstractions), whereas reality itself is objective.
Of course they exist as spiritual entities. And that’s just part of cognition, just like an apple is. Actually, it's even more than that, because if you reduce an apple *ad absurdum*, all you're left with is information—the laws that hold its constituent parts, the quanta, together...What I wanted to point out was the principle behind how we arrive at new concepts, specifically the distinction between concrete abstractions (those relating to direct perception) and complex abstractions (which arise from concrete ones). Basically, I wanted to explain how humans acquire knowledge and how that knowledge connects to (objective) reality. I also wanted to touch upon the futility of asking whether "something" existed before humans invented a word for it (an abstraction).
I’m starting to think he might have been your professor or something... I've honestly never seen anything quite this pathetic. Before you start typing, you really ought to think about the terminology you're using. Your semantics are a mess, and that's why you don't actually know what you're talking about. That’s just the vibe you give off whenever anyone reads your posts...