(February 16, 2018 at 7:28 am)Whateverist Wrote:(February 16, 2018 at 1:35 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: You intentionally conflate ontology with epistemology because it suits you. It is similar to how there are natural laws that govern the universe and there are formulas describing/modeling those laws. Saying that something is descriptive implies some other thing being described.
Interesting point. Do you imagine that the natural laws that govern the universe reflect the universe's intention? Or do such laws just reflect the brute nature of stuff and how it interacts with other stuff?
Both seem like loaded questions (though probably not intentionally so). My only point was that the discussion gets derailed when people fail to distinguish between the description of a thing and the thing itself. In this particular case, I am asserting that some qualities have ontological status.
When someone says that a sensible body is triangular, they are describing that body as having a distinct quality that is shares with other triangular bodies. Saying that something is triangular is an acknowledgement that it shares a certain kind of about-ness with other similar bodies, i.e. triangularity. It's simply not enough to say the word "triangle" is what we call the set of three-sided bodies. You also have to recognize that you are referring something which gives those objects similarity - the quality of triangularity they all share.
If qualities don't exist, then descriptive words do not refer to anything.
