On objective existence and objectivism

James Lee77 said:I don't get it. I mean, hydrogen and helium both exist, but they aren't different from each other? 🤔

In an abstract sense, no. Abstractly, you could call hydrogen helium and vice versa. Abstraction is one thing, but a distinguishing factor is another. If you answer "yes," your question makes zero sense—unless you meant to say abstraction is what we use to tell one object apart from another.

Mark Torres14 said:In an abstract sense, no. Abstractly, you could call hydrogen helium and vice versa. Abstraction is one thing, but a distinguishing factor is another. If you answer "yes," your question makes zero sense—unless you meant to say abstraction is what we use to tell one object apart from another.

🤔

Let me try saying this more simply. Okay, so there's hydrogen, and there's helium.

Are they actually different from each other even when there isn't some human around to notice the difference?

James Lee77 said:🤔

Let me try saying this more simply. Okay, so there's hydrogen, and there's helium.

Are they actually different from each other even when there isn't some human around to notice the difference?

Sure, but that distinction is pointless. It lacks subjectivity, which means it has zero value.

Even when we start talking about them, what does one even mean by "abstractions"? To me, it doesn't feel any more sophisticated than just admitting, "I haven't got a clue." If someone tries to claim that a number is merely an abstraction, I don't think they can possibly mean what kresho2 is suggesting here:

Abstractions are simply the descriptions we humans use to label or identify things that exist in the world.

Because, let’s be honest, numbers aren't adjectives or descriptive labels—and neither are elements like helium or hydrogen. 🤷

James Lee77 said:It’s pretty obvious what I want to talk about—I want to show you that numbers are just built into nature itself.

Yeah!
[Just to be more exact, because I think you might be tripping over a specific word I used that wasn't quite right—abstractions don't actually exist. Abstractions are just descriptions we humans use to label things that *do* exist. And we can split abstractions into, like, concrete ones and complex ones.]

But I’m asking you about stuff that actually exists. Like hydrogen and helium as physical things that exist (assuming they do). 🤷

1.) abstract or concrete.

I have no idea what that even means. 🤷

The whole point of abstractions is to help us tell things apart.

But do things actually differ on their own? Is hydrogen even different from helium if there isn't a human around to tell them apart?

Alright, let me pipe down for a second and actually listen... so, walk me through it, will ya?
Give me a concrete example of how numbers are just "inherent" in nature... please.

To that specific question, I can only say: "Is hydrogen the same as helium if there isn't a human there to tell them apart?" You gotta realize that there had to be a human to make the distinction in the first place just to even ask the question you're asking now. If there's no human to differentiate, there's no question, so talking about the "content" of the question doesn't even make sense—but I think you're getting at something else, so I'll try putting it this way: a phenomenon happens regardless of whether a person notices it or what they decide to call it. If someone calls a "concentration camp" a "college," it doesn't change what's actually happening in that camp.

Here's another one, hope I don't overcomplicate it: Before Galileo Galilei, people believed in a flat earth. If I'm reading you right, your question is basically: "Was the earth flat before humans noticed it was round?"
Reality doesn't depend on people (who are just abstractions)—it's the other way around.
Hope you catch my drift...

fadedbison17 said:Alright, let me pipe down for a second and actually listen... so, walk me through it, will ya?
Give me a concrete example of how numbers are just "inherent" in nature... please.

To that specific question, I can only say: "Is hydrogen the same as helium if there isn't a human there to tell them apart?" You gotta realize that there had to be a human to make the distinction in the first place just to even ask the question you're asking now. If there's no human to differentiate, there's no question, so talking about the "content" of the question doesn't even make sense—but I think you're getting at something else, so I'll try putting it this way: a phenomenon happens regardless of whether a person notices it or what they decide to call it. If someone calls a "concentration camp" a "college," it doesn't change what's actually happening in that camp.

Here's another one, hope I don't overcomplicate it: Before Galileo Galilei, people believed in a flat earth. If I'm reading you right, your question is basically: "Was the earth flat before humans noticed it was round?"
Reality doesn't depend on people (who are just abstractions)—it's the other way around.
Hope you catch my drift...

Man, I feel like I've been beating this drum for five posts now with my specific example: what's even the actual difference between hydrogen and helium?

To that specific question, I’d just say: "Is hydrogen even different from helium if there isn't a human around to tell them apart?" I mean, can you really grasp that there had to be a person capable of making that distinction in the first place just for you to even ask the question? If there’s no one there to perceive the difference, then the question itself doesn't exist, so talking about what it actually means feels kind of pointless. But, I guess what you're actually getting at is something else, so let me try explaining it this way—the phenomenon is still gonna happen regardless of whether a person notices it or what they decide to call it.

Exactly. There’s a massive difference between hydrogen and helium, and it doesn't matter what you call them or how you try to distinguish them—the physics stays the same. We know that because once Phoenix burns through all its hydrogen and is left with nothing but helium, the whole star is gonna swell up way bigger.

So, if there actually is a difference between helium and hydrogen—regardless of whether we can even wrap our heads around it or not—then what exactly is that difference?

Reality doesn't actually depend on people—which are basically just abstractions anyway. It’s more like everything works the other way around, I guess.
I hope you get what I'm getting at.

That’s exactly my point, though. Like, what's actually the big difference between hydrogen and helium?

ironmarlin1 said:Even when we start talking about them, what does one even mean by "abstractions"? To me, it doesn't feel any more sophisticated than just admitting, "I haven't got a clue." If someone tries to claim that a number is merely an abstraction, I don't think they can possibly mean what kresho2 is suggesting here:

Abstractions are simply the descriptions we humans use to label or identify things that exist in the world.

Because, let’s be honest, numbers aren't adjectives or descriptive labels—and neither are elements like helium or hydrogen. 🤷

Let me break down how abstractions actually work, then you can draw your own conclusions about what they are.

If humans (like me) didn't have minds, nothing would matter—the word everything and something would mean the exact same thing. There wouldn't be any distinction between, say, a wall, a cabinet, or the sky. You couldn't tell anything apart.
Luckily, my brain "slices" reality into objects. When I look at a cabinet, I see the edge separating it from the wall and the floor—my mind creates that distinction, allowing me to view that object (the cabinet) as something separate from everything else.

Once I mastered those boundaries (the edges), all I have left are objects. A cabinet is an object, a wall is an object, the sky is an object, a table is an object, a chair is an object... but that doesn't tell me much, so I give each one a different label. That’s where abstraction kicks in.

To exaggerate: when I was a kid, I saw something that had a flat surface where people sit. I asked my mom, "What's that?" and she gave me a name for it—a chair. Way to go, me—I made an abstraction! 🙂

What really happened was that I spotted a new object that looked different from anything I'd seen before.

But abstraction isn't just a name. When I saw the chair and Mom told me what it was, I had to link that info together. Basically, I took the most similar trait shared by other objects (a flat surface) and found the biggest difference compared to other flat things (people sit on this). So, I tied the name (the abstraction) to the physical object (the chair).

Hopefully, that clears up what an abstraction is and how it functions.

If that makes sense—which I hope it does—then it's also clear that "chair" is just a word describing the basic traits of an object. The word itself doesn't exist in the wild; it's just an explanation or a label for what I'm seeing.

James Lee77 said:Man, I feel like I've been beating this drum for five posts now with my specific example: what's even the actual difference between hydrogen and helium?

To that specific question, I’d just say: "Is hydrogen even different from helium if there isn't a human around to tell them apart?" I mean, can you really grasp that there had to be a person capable of making that distinction in the first place just for you to even ask the question? If there’s no one there to perceive the difference, then the question itself doesn't exist, so talking about what it actually means feels kind of pointless. But, I guess what you're actually getting at is something else, so let me try explaining it this way—the phenomenon is still gonna happen regardless of whether a person notices it or what they decide to call it.

Exactly. There’s a massive difference between hydrogen and helium, and it doesn't matter what you call them or how you try to distinguish them—the physics stays the same. We know that because once Phoenix burns through all its hydrogen and is left with nothing but helium, the whole star is gonna swell up way bigger.

So, if there actually is a difference between helium and hydrogen—regardless of whether we can even wrap our heads around it or not—then what exactly is that difference?

Reality doesn't actually depend on people—which are basically just abstractions anyway. It’s more like everything works the other way around, I guess.
I hope you get what I'm getting at.

That’s exactly my point, though. Like, what's actually the big difference between hydrogen and helium?

Glad we're finally on the same page! 😉

So, what's the deal with the difference between hydrogen and helium?
Honestly, I can't give you an answer because I don't know. Sounds more like a question for a physicist... 😉

fadedbison17 said:Glad we're finally on the same page! 😉

So, what's the deal with the difference between hydrogen and helium?
Honestly, I can't give you an answer because I don't know. Sounds more like a question for a physicist... 😉

Well, just say so. 🤷 I thought that was just common sense, but whatever, no biggie.

Alright, so basically, the massive difference between hydrogen and helium comes down to the number of protons in the atom's nucleus. Everything else just flows from that—if there's one proton in the nucleus, it's hydrogen, and if there are two, then it's helium.

And that difference stays the same whether anyone is actually around to count them or not.

James Lee77 said:Well, just say so. 🤷 I thought that was just common sense, but whatever, no biggie.

Alright, so basically, the massive difference between hydrogen and helium comes down to the number of protons in the atom's nucleus. Everything else just flows from that—if there's one proton in the nucleus, it's hydrogen, and if there are two, then it's helium.

And that difference stays the same whether anyone is actually around to count them or not.

I'm pretty much on board!

Basically, everything just *is*—that's the core of it.
Then we come along, observe stuff, and start drawing conclusions—defining things, measuring, counting, all that...

James Lee77 said:Well, just say so. 🤷 I thought that was just common sense, but whatever, no biggie.

Alright, so basically, the massive difference between hydrogen and helium comes down to the number of protons in the atom's nucleus. Everything else just flows from that—if there's one proton in the nucleus, it's hydrogen, and if there are two, then it's helium.

And that difference stays the same whether anyone is actually around to count them or not.

I didn't realize that's what you were getting at when you asked that. 🤷Now your question sounds even stupider, if you'll excuse my language.😁
We're talking about objective existence and objectivity here, not how many protons are floating around.

Mark Torres14 said:I didn't realize that's what you were getting at when you asked that. 🤷Now your question sounds even stupider, if you'll excuse my language.😁
We're talking about objective existence and objectivity here, not how many protons are floating around.

The whole idea was that numbers—and really, all of math—aren't actually built into nature, but are just something humans project onto the world to describe it.
But look, if there's a real difference between hydrogen and helium out there in the universe, and that difference is nothing more than a difference in the number of something, then that theory totally falls apart.
Basically, numbers exist just as much as crows do.

James Lee77 said:The whole idea was that numbers—and really, all of math—aren't actually built into nature, but are just something humans project onto the world to describe it.
But look, if there's a real difference between hydrogen and helium out there in the universe, and that difference is nothing more than a difference in the number of something, then that theory totally falls apart.
Basically, numbers exist just as much as crows do.

I thought you were gonna keep going to prove a point, but you just wanted to show the thesis was wrong...😕 .. except the thesis isn't wrong.

You're assuming the thesis is wrong by taking for granted that numbers are built into human knowledge rather than nature—which isn't how it works. Numbers are something humans have to learn. Once we learn them, then we can count, or rather, distinguish quantities.

Quick side note—looking back at my old posts, I realized that instead of saying "concrete abstraction" or "complex abstraction"—which I used a few times—the word "concept" probably fits way better. But hey, it is what it is.

But look, the sun doesn't need to learn how to count just to tell the difference between helium and hydrogen. I mean, the whole thing basically boils down to the number of protons anyway.

So, yeah, numbers exist on the sun even if there aren't any people there to "learn" them.

James Lee77 said:But look, the sun doesn't need to learn how to count just to tell the difference between helium and hydrogen. I mean, the whole thing basically boils down to the number of protons anyway.

So, yeah, numbers exist on the sun even if there aren't any people there to "learn" them.

See, you're assuming the core issue is just about numerical values. But wouldn't it be more likely that Los Angeles perceives things in a completely different way?

fadedbison17 said:Let me break down how abstractions actually work, then you can draw your own conclusions about what they are.

If humans (like me) didn't have minds, nothing would matter—the word everything and something would mean the exact same thing. There wouldn't be any distinction between, say, a wall, a cabinet, or the sky. You couldn't tell anything apart.
Luckily, my brain "slices" reality into objects. When I look at a cabinet, I see the edge separating it from the wall and the floor—my mind creates that distinction, allowing me to view that object (the cabinet) as something separate from everything else.

Once I mastered those boundaries (the edges), all I have left are objects. A cabinet is an object, a wall is an object, the sky is an object, a table is an object, a chair is an object... but that doesn't tell me much, so I give each one a different label. That’s where abstraction kicks in.

To exaggerate: when I was a kid, I saw something that had a flat surface where people sit. I asked my mom, "What's that?" and she gave me a name for it—a chair. Way to go, me—I made an abstraction! 🙂

What really happened was that I spotted a new object that looked different from anything I'd seen before.

But abstraction isn't just a name. When I saw the chair and Mom told me what it was, I had to link that info together. Basically, I took the most similar trait shared by other objects (a flat surface) and found the biggest difference compared to other flat things (people sit on this). So, I tied the name (the abstraction) to the physical object (the chair).

Hopefully, that clears up what an abstraction is and how it functions.

If that makes sense—which I hope it does—then it's also clear that "chair" is just a word describing the basic traits of an object. The word itself doesn't exist in the wild; it's just an explanation or a label for what I'm seeing.

I suspect there is a fundamental error in that reasoning. You suggest that the mind "dissects" reality itself, but it strikes me that you might be conflating our subjective experience with objective reality (please, do correct me if my logic falters here). A human being dissects their *experience*. To conclude that by doing so, we are somehow penetrating the core of reality without any pre-existing conceptual framework seems, to my mind, an entirely unjustified leap.

No, abstraction isn't merely a label. When I see a chair and my mother tells me, "That is a chair," I am forced to synthesize those data points in some way. What actually occurs is that I identify the most salient characteristic shared with other objects—in this case, a flat surface—and then isolate the primary difference between it and other flat surfaces (namely, that people sit on it). In this manner, I bridge the gap between the abstraction (the name) and the concrete object (the chair).

That’s fine, but does it not follow that when you employ such an abstraction in speech, you are attempting to refer to something else? If that is the case, are you referring to the abstraction itself when you speak, or are you referring to the actual chair? If it’s the latter, where do these abstractions reside, and what exactly are they? You’ve provided a relatively straightforward example to illustrate abstraction, but I suspect that once we peel back the layers, your position becomes rather precarious. Consider, for instance, a scenario where someone commits a murder—an anonymous perpetrator—and you declare that the individual was "insane." You have provided a description of the person, but what precisely are you referring to? Is that judgment itself inherently untrue?

If this makes sense (which I hope it does), then it should also be clear that "chair" is simply a word used to describe the fundamental characteristics of a particular object. The word itself doesn't exist in a vacuum; it functions merely as a descriptor or a tag for what I am observing.

Perhaps, though it remains somewhat unclear how you actually manage to refer to things; you've largely just explained the mechanism by which we might grasp the meaning of a word.

James Lee77 said:The whole idea was that numbers—and really, all of math—aren't actually built into nature, but are just something humans project onto the world to describe it.
But look, if there's a real difference between hydrogen and helium out there in the universe, and that difference is nothing more than a difference in the number of something, then that theory totally falls apart.
Basically, numbers exist just as much as crows do.

What exactly do you mean when you claim that numbers are inherent to nature? Are you simply asserting their existence? And honestly, why wouldn't we apply Occam’s razor here to limit ourselves—or perhaps expand our scope, depending on how you look at it—strictly to sets?

James Lee77 said:But look, the sun doesn't need to learn how to count just to tell the difference between helium and hydrogen. I mean, the whole thing basically boils down to the number of protons anyway.

So, yeah, numbers exist on the sun even if there aren't any people there to "learn" them.

Counting is a human thing—something we learn...
Los Angeles can't count.

ironmarlin1 said:I suspect there is a fundamental error in that reasoning. You suggest that the mind "dissects" reality itself, but it strikes me that you might be conflating our subjective experience with objective reality (please, do correct me if my logic falters here). A human being dissects their *experience*. To conclude that by doing so, we are somehow penetrating the core of reality without any pre-existing conceptual framework seems, to my mind, an entirely unjustified leap.

No, abstraction isn't merely a label. When I see a chair and my mother tells me, "That is a chair," I am forced to synthesize those data points in some way. What actually occurs is that I identify the most salient characteristic shared with other objects—in this case, a flat surface—and then isolate the primary difference between it and other flat surfaces (namely, that people sit on it). In this manner, I bridge the gap between the abstraction (the name) and the concrete object (the chair).

That’s fine, but does it not follow that when you employ such an abstraction in speech, you are attempting to refer to something else? If that is the case, are you referring to the abstraction itself when you speak, or are you referring to the actual chair? If it’s the latter, where do these abstractions reside, and what exactly are they? You’ve provided a relatively straightforward example to illustrate abstraction, but I suspect that once we peel back the layers, your position becomes rather precarious. Consider, for instance, a scenario where someone commits a murder—an anonymous perpetrator—and you declare that the individual was "insane." You have provided a description of the person, but what precisely are you referring to? Is that judgment itself inherently untrue?

If this makes sense (which I hope it does), then it should also be clear that "chair" is simply a word used to describe the fundamental characteristics of a particular object. The word itself doesn't exist in a vacuum; it functions merely as a descriptor or a tag for what I am observing.

Perhaps, though it remains somewhat unclear how you actually manage to refer to things; you've largely just explained the mechanism by which we might grasp the meaning of a word.

Look, it wasn't meant to be a deep dive. I was trying to explain this to someone who doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about, not someone with their own established view. If I recall correctly, you mentioned something along the lines of not knowing what abstractions even are.
Epistemology is an entire branch of philosophy... there's no way I can squeeze all of that into a few posts, nor does it even occur to me to try.

I'd suggest checking out that book I mentioned before (Introduction to Rationalism). Once you've had a chance to read it, I'd be more than happy to hash this out with you.
No offense intended!!! 🙂

fadedbison17 said:Look, it wasn't meant to be a deep dive. I was trying to explain this to someone who doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about, not someone with their own established view. If I recall correctly, you mentioned something along the lines of not knowing what abstractions even are.
Epistemology is an entire branch of philosophy... there's no way I can squeeze all of that into a few posts, nor does it even occur to me to try.

I'd suggest checking out that book I mentioned before (Introduction to Rationalism). Once you've had a chance to read it, I'd be more than happy to hash this out with you.
No offense intended!!! 🙂

Look, I know perfectly well what epistemology is, but nobody actually asked for a freshman survey course on the subject; they wanted answers to specific questions. As for abstractions, my point was simply that within this particular context, we really ought to define what they signify, because it's such a fuzzy, imprecise term—and if you ask me, it acts as a convenient little loophole used to smuggle in all sorts of nonsense under the guise of equivocation ☕).

I’d suggest picking up the book I mentioned earlier (Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology). Once you’ve had a chance to go through it, I would be more than happy to sit down and hash this out with you properly.
No offense intended!!! 🙂

Well, if we follow that logic, I suppose I should start sending you links to various epistemology textbooks so we can just endlessly trade reading lists instead of actually discussing the ideas we’ve gathered from them. 🤷 Though, looking at the reviews for that book on Amazon, I noticed someone citing a passage regarding the split between the analytic and the synthetic, claiming that the distinction "is accepted, in some form, by virtually every influential contemporary philosopher." To me, that seems quite extraordinary, considering the author of that book appears to be largely unacquainted with modern philosophy. 🤷 Not to mention, as far as I can tell, Objectivism is more of a cult-like movement than a serious philosophical system.