Do Chairs Exist?

[Angrboda]

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There's a similar question in philosophy that you might find more relatable. Philosophers argue about whether morals, rules of right and wrong, are objective, being a feature of the world that would exist even if there weren't any people to think about and having feelings about right or wrong. But then there are moral relativists who think that rules of right and wrong are just things that a group of people -- a society -- hold to be true in common, that it's a shared convention that certain things are immoral. The problem with this is that some people think that if it's just rules that people collectively "made up" out of thin air, those aren't really moral rules. They're rules, but because they are arbitrarily made up by a group of people, they don't count as "real" morals. Vulcan, Nudge, and I had a discussion about this recently which I'll try to link.

The question of chairs and other composite objects is similar. Mereological nihilists are willing to accept that simples exist -- say atoms or quarks, something indivisible. Yet if a composite object like a chair is just something that people as a group "made up" then is it real in the same sense as something for which the boundaries aren't simply a human invention?

To rope Neo in here, Neo suggests, ala Platonism that there are abstract forms that exist, kind of like the laws of physics, when you have two planets near each other, they warp space in such a way that a 'force' of gravity exists between them. In a similar way, a Platonist would say that whenever a bunch of pieces of wood come together in a certain way, they just naturally come to resemble what we would abstractly consider "the chair concept," just as when three lines come together in the right way, it resembles an ideal that we call a triangle. The problem I see with this is that there doesn't appear to be a way to reliably pick out what composite objects resemble some pre-existing ideal and which ones don't. The video presented the example of a "trog" which is an object consisting of a tree and a dog whenever the two are in close proximity to one another. Trogs raise some of the same questions as chairs do. How close does the dog need to be? If it's a larger dog can it be farther away? If the tree has been chopped down and sawed into boards, does a dog in close proximity to that pile of boards form a trog? What if we take some of the boards away, is it still a trog? In addition to the problem of simply identifying a trog, if we can simply come up with an ersatz object like a trog, is there an ideal platonic form for every such object we come up with? Is a cow and a dog a cog? Is a tree and a car a trar? It would seem there are as many of these made up forms as there are combinations of objects and therefore the number of forms would seem to be infinite. But with forms, like the line from the incredible, "When everybody is super, then nobody is." This possibility would seem to make the idea that forms pick out things that are in some sense unique and special problematic. Perhaps we can group forms in a hierarchy with only the truly special forms at the top? But then forms can be part of other forms, and that seems at odds with the idea that forms pick out special or unique features of our reality.

Here's the thread on moral relativism: Any Moral Relativists in the House?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

. . . . .

. . . . .

There's a similar question in philosophy that you might find more relatable.  Philosophers argue about whether morals, rules of right and wrong, are objective, being a feature of the world that would exist even if there weren't any people to think about and having feelings about right or wrong.  But then there are moral relativists who think that rules of right and wrong are just things that a group of people -- a society -- hold to be true in common, that it's a shared convention that certain things are immoral.  The problem with this is that some people think that if it's just rules that people collectively "made up" out of thin air, those aren't really moral rules.  They're rules, but because they are arbitrarily made up by a group of people, they don't count as "real" morals.  Vulcan, Nudge, and I had a discussion about this recently which I'll try to link.

The question of chairs and other composite objects is similar.  Mereological nihilists are willing to accept that simples exist -- say atoms or quarks, something indivisible.  Yet if a composite object like a chair is just something that people as a group "made up" then is it real in the same sense as something for which the boundaries aren't simply a human invention?  

To rope Neo in here, Neo suggests, ala Platonism that there are abstract forms that exist, kind of like the laws of physics, when you have two planets near each other, they warp space in such a way that a 'force' of gravity exists between them.  In a similar way, a Platonist would say that whenever a bunch of pieces of wood come together in a certain way, they just naturally come to resemble what we would abstractly consider "the chair concept," just as when three lines come together in the right way, it resembles an ideal that we call a triangle.  The problem I see with this is that there doesn't appear to be a way to reliably pick out what composite objects resemble some pre-existing ideal and which ones don't.  The video presented the example of a "trog" which is an object consisting of a tree and a dog whenever the two are in close proximity to one another.  Trogs raise some of the same questions as chairs do.  How close does the dog need to be?  If it's a larger dog can it be farther away?  If the tree has been chopped down and sawed into boards, does a dog in close proximity to that pile of boards form a trog?  What if we take some of the boards away, is it still a trog?  In addition to the problem of simply identifying a trog, if we can simply come up with an ersatz object like a trog, is there an ideal platonic form for every such object we come up with?  Is a cow and a dog a cog?  Is a tree and a car a trar?  It would seem there are as many of these made up forms as there are combinations of objects and therefore the number of forms would seem to be infinite.  But with forms, like the line from the incredible, "When everybody is super, then nobody is."  This possibility would seem to make the idea that forms pick out things that are in some sense unique and special problematic.  Perhaps we can group forms in a hierarchy with only the truly special forms at the top?  But then forms can be part of other forms, and that seems at odds with the idea that forms pick out special or unique features of our reality.

Here's the thread on moral relativism:  Any Moral Relativists in the House?

Nope (meaning I don’t find it relatable, not ‘Nope, I disagree). I sincerely appreciate the effort, though.

Boru

[Neo-Scholastic]

 Mereological nihilism is the position that there are no parts and wholes in the world, that identifying something as a part and something else as a whole is just an arbitrary convention that we adopt which has no basis in the features of reality.

IMO mereological is refuted if there is at least one self-evident example of a whole. And there is: the Totality. And there is, for me anyway, a self-evident example of a part: me. You have to decide for yourself if you are a Self who is in relationship with some external other and therefore a part within the Totality.

Anyways....

The Vsauce video kinda reveals the problem with elevating two types of cause (material and efficient*) fundamental and dismissing two other types of causes (final and formal) as properties contingent on matter and its operations. In classical philosophy, this was a mistake. Perhaps it is the other way around. Perhaps matter and its operations are properties that supervene on a fundamental reality of forms and purposes. After all, just before the 20th Century, idealism was the reigning metaphysics. For an intellectual of the Industrial Revolution it was, like, philosophically obvious, man. So when Vsauce, unfolded the paper and said, "where'd the swan go?" I was kinda like, so you removed the formal cause, that doesn't mean the swan ceased to exist in every sense...it just ceased having material properties.


*I cringe to write this because the Scholastics' concept of efficient cause different from Decartes and everyone after him.

[Angrboda]

My question about trogs inspired a couple other questions. Let's suppose that sometime in the future, our civilization makes a "Dyson Chair" -- being a chair that is basically the size of a planet, made out of interlinked modules, and kept in orbit around the sun by way of the momentum that its enormous mass possesses. Is the Dyson Chair, which nobody could possibly sit on, a chair in the same sense as an ordinary piece of furniture. Let's suppose that said civilizations arrange the asteroids in the Oort cloud so that a group of asteroids together in the shape of a chair orbit the sun as one -- is that a chair in the same sense as your barcalounger? What if they used magnetic fields to force a portion of the plasma at the heart of the sun to assume chair shape and circulate only within the confines of that shape? I suppose that would be the very definition of "the hot seat."

[arewethereyet]

. . . . .

. . . . .

There's a similar question in philosophy that you might find more relatable.  Philosophers argue about whether morals, rules of right and wrong, are objective, being a feature of the world that would exist even if there weren't any people to think about and having feelings about right or wrong.  But then there are moral relativists who think that rules of right and wrong are just things that a group of people -- a society -- hold to be true in common, that it's a shared convention that certain things are immoral.  The problem with this is that some people think that if it's just rules that people collectively "made up" out of thin air, those aren't really moral rules.  They're rules, but because they are arbitrarily made up by a group of people, they don't count as "real" morals.  Vulcan, Nudge, and I had a discussion about this recently which I'll try to link.

The question of chairs and other composite objects is similar.  Mereological nihilists are willing to accept that simples exist -- say atoms or quarks, something indivisible.  Yet if a composite object like a chair is just something that people as a group "made up" then is it real in the same sense as something for which the boundaries aren't simply a human invention?  

To rope Neo in here, Neo suggests, ala Platonism that there are abstract forms that exist, kind of like the laws of physics, when you have two planets near each other, they warp space in such a way that a 'force' of gravity exists between them.  In a similar way, a Platonist would say that whenever a bunch of pieces of wood come together in a certain way, they just naturally come to resemble what we would abstractly consider "the chair concept," just as when three lines come together in the right way, it resembles an ideal that we call a triangle.  The problem I see with this is that there doesn't appear to be a way to reliably pick out what composite objects resemble some pre-existing ideal and which ones don't.  The video presented the example of a "trog" which is an object consisting of a tree and a dog whenever the two are in close proximity to one another.  Trogs raise some of the same questions as chairs do.  How close does the dog need to be?  If it's a larger dog can it be farther away?  If the tree has been chopped down and sawed into boards, does a dog in close proximity to that pile of boards form a trog?  What if we take some of the boards away, is it still a trog?  In addition to the problem of simply identifying a trog, if we can simply come up with an ersatz object like a trog, is there an ideal platonic form for every such object we come up with?  Is a cow and a dog a cog?  Is a tree and a car a trar?  It would seem there are as many of these made up forms as there are combinations of objects and therefore the number of forms would seem to be infinite.  But with forms, like the line from the incredible, "When everybody is super, then nobody is."  This possibility would seem to make the idea that forms pick out things that are in some sense unique and special problematic.  Perhaps we can group forms in a hierarchy with only the truly special forms at the top?  But then forms can be part of other forms, and that seems at odds with the idea that forms pick out special or unique features of our reality.

Here's the thread on moral relativism:  Any Moral Relativists in the House?

Yeah, this bookkeepers brain is more about numbers and balance. I may have to read this a few more times to even begin to grasp any of it.

But if you need your bank account balanced, I'm your gal.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

My question about trogs inspired a couple other questions.  Let's suppose that sometime in the future, our civilization makes a "Dyson Chair" -- being a chair that is basically the size of a planet, made out of interlinked modules, and kept in orbit around the sun by way of the momentum that its enormous mass possesses.  Is the Dyson Chair, which nobody could possibly sit on, a chair in the same sense as an ordinary piece of furniture.  Let's suppose that said civilizations arrange the asteroids in the Oort cloud so that a group of asteroids together in the shape of a chair orbit the sun as one -- is that a chair in the same sense as your barcalounger?  What if they used magnetic fields to force a portion of the plasma at the heart of the sun to assume chair shape and circulate only within the confines of that shape?  I suppose that would be the very definition of "the hot seat."

I find it difficult to accept that we could have the technology to build a Dyson chair and not figure out a way that someone could sit on it. Ditto the Oort chair. If it looks like a chair and functions like a chair, how can it not be a chair?

Boru

[Ranjr]

A limestone bluff endures hot sun, thick ice, heavy rain, and carbon acid from the nearby forest floor for thousands of years.  After six months of tremors, the New Madrid fault makes an epic slip.  Shock waves flow across north Arkansas to the Boston Mountains.  Pieces of the bluff break free and fall.  Some lodge on the hillside.  Some eventually find the bed of Adkins Creek, where they endure floods, rolling and sliding downstream over the centuries.

I'm already tired.  Not as spry these days under a full pack.  I didn't expect a boulder garden and 80 ft. cliffs between Leaning Tree and Adkins falls.  It was challenging enough making the way down the cowberry lined drop to the creek.  A bit early, but time for a breather and lunch.  There are no chairs, just rocks.  I sit on one, dented with hints of brachiopods, and watch crawdads menace each other in the calm pool.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The problem I see with this is that there doesn't appear to be a way to reliably pick out what composite objects resemble some pre-existing ideal and which ones don't. The video presented the example of a "trog" which is an object consisting of a tree and a dog whenever the two are in close proximity to one another. Trogs raise some of the same questions as chairs do...It would seem there are as many of these made up forms as there are combinations of objects and therefore the number of forms would seem to be infinite. But with forms, like the line from the incredible, "When everybody is super, then nobody is." This possibility would seem to make the idea that forms pick out things that are in some sense unique and special problematic.

Perhaps making reliable binary determinations using a single metric for existence (form) is not a good epistemic goal. Some things could exist by degrees according to multiple factors and not in a binary way? In the video, that would be Pegasus whose existence is caused formally, finally, and efficiently, but not materially. Why elevate material cause as a necessary condition (the only valid metric) for “real” existence?

Formal relationships between things are indeed infinite, but I see nothing wrong about ignoring relationships that are accidental and those that are essential based on intangible virtues like utility, value, or significance. Take for example, the Center of Gravity. The center of gravity is just one of innumerable points within an object and yet, we are able to tease out its approximate location and rely on it because of its value in various types of analysis, such as structural calculations. Is the center of gravity a “convenient fiction” or the identification of a real location, i.e. one that is the one best models significant physical relationships in calculations. In your words, finding the center of gravity would be “picking out things that are in some sense unique and special” Indeed! I don’t see that as irredeemably problematic…difficult and uncertain, yes, but not problematic.

---

My question about trogs inspired a couple other questions.  Let's suppose that sometime in the future, our civilization makes a "Dyson Chair" -- being a chair that is basically the size of a planet, made out of interlinked modules, and kept in orbit around the sun by way of the momentum that its enormous mass possesses.  Is the Dyson Chair, which nobody could possibly sit on, a chair in the same sense as an ordinary piece of furniture.  

No. It fails to achieve the desired aim (final cause) essential to being a chair, of providing seating. The Dyson chair may still have formal, material, and efficient causes that allow us to consider it a chair...albeit a deficient one on account of it being unusable.

[vulcanlogician]

I liked mereological nihilism too. One of the reasons it seems so appealing is that, otherwise, there would have to be a Platonic form of the chair "out there" somewhere. And I have trouble believing that. But if that isn't true at all, then mereological nihilism must be true.

That Platonic forms, if they exist, must be "out there" is the misguided notion based on folk experiences of time and space. Another way to think of them are as telelogical laws and limiting principles embedded within reality, not out there, but latent.

I've done a lot of thinking about them, Neo. What you say is true. It could be that Plato isn't pointing at the sky, but also to the ground (like Aristotle). It might be better to see the forms as foundational things to whatever takes part in them.

For instance, triangle-shaped things in nature have the triangle as "foundational" to them. The principles inherent in the triangle are inherent in all things triangle-shaped. And you CANNOT mute the principles of the triangle. They are eternal.

What bothers me about the forms is a problem I reach when I contemplate them. Take for example, the fly wing. There is a such thing as a good fly wing and a bad fly wing. So there is an idealized form of the fly wing in existence (according to Plato). A form of the fly wing in which all physical fly wings take part.

Now, imagine a fly lands on a tree branch and a bird tries to eat it. The bird misses the fly but manages to take a bite out of its wing. The fly manages to get away and discovers its wing, though it has a bite taken out of it is still functional. We can compare this "wing with a bite out of it" against the original form of the fly wing (which we are prone to do). The wing with a bite taken out partakes less in the idealized form of the fly wing. So far so good.

But we can also infer a new form. The "form of a fly wing with a bite taken out of it." And since some fly wings with bites taken out of them are better than other fly wings with bites taken out of them, we can infer an idealized form of a fly wing with a bite taken out of it. That's absurd. And we can parse up idealized forms of objects like this until the forms themselves become meaningless. 

Now, that being said, I don't think Plato's forms get a fair shake in the minds of many. After all, concepts like goodness, truth, accuracy infer ideal forms to make any sense at all. And we must agree that some things (like statements) can be more accurate than others. So, I think Plato said something important with his notion of forms. But absurdity ensues when you try to accept the theory of forms as Plato presents it.

[Jehanne]

The philosopher Zeno claimed that motion was an illusion; it was said Diogenes disproved this by getting up out of his chair and walking across the room.