Introduction[]
Some people may ask "Executor why are you writing this?". Well if you do not know I can not currently help with the requests and analysis of calculations because I have no internet at home. For some reason since Friday I am without internet and possibly this can stay for a few more days. As I am without internet I can not be downloading and uploading images or videos, so I am not making calculations or explanatory blogs, for now.
But I'm on the internet from my cell phone, but it's very slow where I live (As I'm very far from the city center the internet signal here is very low). However it is enough for me to be able to read wikipedia and other explanatory sites.
Well, I promised that I would make an explanation about the last thing I was able to analyze about Digimon, but to understand that I would have to explain Platonic concepts. At the same time I started to get very annoyed that Conceptual Manipulation has become something overly overrated in facebook and G + groups and there is a way to explain why exactly ‘‘‘Conceptual’’’ Manipulation is not all it seems. And the explanation for this may have to be with Platonic theories so I joined the useful to pleasant and decided to make this blog talking about the Universals and I will take advantage to talk about Plato.
Universals[]
The universal is a metaphysical concept that characterizes a property or a relationship that can be exemplified by a number of different particular things. It is an idea or essence common to all things that we group under the same linguistic sign. Thus all things that are red have the redness in common, so the redness would be the universal and red things would be the particular.
Problem of universals[]
Do you understand what universals are now? It sounds simple, but that was, and still is, a reason for much discussion because of something known as the "Problem of universals". This is basically the questioning of what the universals really are. Although we all know that it is possible to talk about universals, there is a discussion about whether universals exist in reality or whether they are just something originated from thought and used in speech. That is to say, it is discussed whether universals are things or merely words.
To solve this problem there are two lines of thought: Realism and nominalism. The realists proposed that universals really exist while the nominalists propose that universals are only names originating from the thought of rational beings.
Realism[]
Realists are those who try to prove that universals exist in reality and to a certain extent are distinct from the particular ones that universals represent.
Platonic realism[]
Theory of forms[]
This is the basis of the Platonic realism and has as historical representation the Allegory of the Cave (Or Myth of the Cave). According to this idea, the reality we know, the Sensitive World, is actually a representation of the true form of reality.
In this case there would be two worlds, the Sensitive World (Also called the Physical World or Material World) and the Intelligible World (Also called the Realm of Forms or World of Ideas).
In the Intelligible World there would be the true form of everything, the immutable perfection. These forms were called Forms. Meanwhile in the Sensitive World there would only be imperfect simulations of what actually existed. For example a bird, birds of our world evolve, grow old, die, etc. They change over time. But in the Intelligent World there would be the Bird Form that would never change.
In this case Forms would exist beyond the limitations of our Physical World. A Form is aspatial (transcendent to space) and atemporal (transcendent to time). Atemporal means that it does not exist within any time period, rather it provides the formal basis for time. It therefore formally grounds beginning, persisting and ending. It is neither eternal in the sense of existing forever, nor mortal, of limited duration. It exists transcendent to time altogether. Forms are aspatial in that they have no spatial dimensions, and thus no orientation in space, nor do they even (like the point) have a location.
Thus the universals according to Plato would be the Forms (also called Ideas). There are cats, dogs, humans, birds, etc. in our world and although everyone is different they must also share characteristics in common. These characteristics would be unique (In this case, in its simplest sense, there are not many Red things but only one Form of Redness), in this case Universal, and they would exist in a world that is superior to ours. Everything has a Form even that which limits our existence would have a Form. In this case the Form of Space and the Form of Time would be atemporal and aspatial.
Confused do not you think? Well, it really is to be because it is impossible for us to understand the true nature of the Intelligent World.
This is important to know because there are principles presented in Theory of Forms that is used in many franchises. For example, "Physical World", although many people immediately think that this would represent only what has matter, in fact the term "Physical World" represents everything that is part of our Sensitive World even the dimensions of time and space.
To read more about it, read the Timaeus Dialogue.
Conclusion[]
For Plato there was a deity, many consider for this Demiurge, who would have created our Sensitive World. He would have relied on the Forms of the Realm of Forms to create what exists in the physical world, but the world remains imperfect, however, because the Demiurge created the world out of a chaotic, indeterminate non-being.
So the many things that exist in our world would be attempts by the benevolent Demiurge to create something that resembles the perfection of the Forms. Thus the Forms would be the universals.
This is the highest level of a Universal. It is transcendent to all our material limitations, even of time and space, and although they are not physical they are also not of mental source.
In this case the physical would depend on the universal (Basically the Universal> Physical).
Aristotelian realism[]
In Aristotle's view, universals exist only where they are instantiated; they exist only in things. It is said they exist in re, which means "in things", never apart from things. Furthermore, Aristotle said that a universal is identical in each of its instances. So all red things are similar in that there is the same universal, redness, in each thing. There is no Platonic Form of Redness, standing apart from all red things; instead, each red thing has a copy of the same property, redness.
Yes, this is the Wikipedia description. And it's basically that, in Aristotle's view universals would actually exist, but they would be just the joining of parts of all things that share a property. In this case the physical and the universal would be one, there would be no relation of superiority or inferiority (In this case Universal = Physical).
Nominalism[]
For a long time nominalism was unknown, do you know why? In the thirteenth century, as Aristotle's writings about soul and metaphysics became known, nominalism practically disappeared. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus elaborated various sophisticated forms of realism, recognizing universals as truly existing. But in the fourteenth century nominalism was restored, and William of Ockham was the most prominent of the medieval nominalists. Yes, William of Ockham the creator of Occam's Razor and according to him, universals are just words/names that only exist in the mind and have no real place in the external world.
For the nominalists the universals simply did not exist (neither in the sensible world nor in the intelligible world), for them the universal is purely a name, a simple phonetic utterance, a flatus vocis. In other words, it is nothing more than a mere sound coming out of the mouth of a speaker and that humans gave meaning to describe things.
Conceptualism[]
You must have realized that there are two extremes. Platonic Realism says that universals exist and are superior to the physical world, but Nominalism says that universals do not exist and are simply names. In the midst of this Aristotelian Realism says that universals exist, but are only the set of all that is physical, it can be said that it is a moderate form of Platonic Realism, so there must also be a moderate form of Nominalism and this is the Conceptualism.
Conceptualists says that universals exist only within the mind and have no external or substantial reality. Thus we come out of "universals do not exist, are only words" to "universals exist in our thoughts", but in both cases the universals have no influence in our world (It could be said that the relation would be Physical > Universal).
What if[]
Universals are interesting do not you think? So how would it be if there was a power called Manipulation of Universals? Let's check it out.
- Form Manipulation: Manipulation of the basic principles of reality, everything that exists in the sensible world would be affected by this manipulation of universals. Likewise to affect the sensible world would be unable to attain the Forms.
- in re Manipulation: Since universals are the set of all that share the same trait then the manipulation of this would only be manipulating something that has the characteristic, but on a universal scale. For example "matter", this would be all that has mass and takes place in space, manipulating the Universal of matter would be to manipulate everything that has mass and takes place in space. The result is the same as before, the difference is that affecting the sensitive world also affects the universal.
- Conceptual Manipulation: The universals would be just something of a mental origin. So manipulating a universal based on that idea would be ... just manipulating something in the mind. Basically this time affecting the universal does not affect, at least directly, the sensitive world.
- Name Manipulation: This is a problem because in this case the universals do not even exist. At most would that be Linguistics Manipulation I think (Tanks Kevyn).
The problem[]
Can you see the problem? Conceptual Manipulation really does have an explanation, but in reality Conceptual Manipulation is one of the lowest levels of Manipulation of Universals. People who said that concepts are just something in our minds were really right, at least from the philosophical point of view.
For our "Conceptual Manipulation" page, realism would be a better idea for it.
There is a problem in generalizing Conceptual Manipulation (Or Manipulation of Universals... This isn’t a good name OvO), especially considering that this name is wrong, and it is: It is not something consensual.
None of the answers to "The Problem of Universals" is impossible, so all that can be disputed about this would be to know what the true answer is to our world. As you do not have a right answer about this ... how do we have a basis for telling the correct standard?
I will compare in a simple way using souls. There are ideas that souls are actually our mind, another is something that is neither physical nor mental, and actually is something superior that exists outside the confines of our world (Yes, this has to do with Platonic ideas and the idea of immortal soul used in the future by some theologians actually has philosophical origin), in others the idea of soul does not exist or is simply something physical. Yes to some philosophies the soul is simply the set of mechanisms of our body that allows us to be alive.
There is no absolute explanation as to what a soul is, all are possible explanations, but we do not know what the truth is for our world. So how to manipulate a soul from the Platonic point of view would affect someone who does not share the same principle about souls? The same works with Universals.
And there is another factor about this, most people should agree that in case there is not a fully correct explanation the Occam Razor should be used right?
There is a reason why people like William of Occam were Nominalists, is the simplest explanation with the fewest terms. So since there is no concrete proof, the simplest one should be used.
Final notes[]
One thing, I AM NOT SUGGESTED CHANGES. Although I agree that a more accurate analysis of what should be done by taking the principle of universals, I believe that this can be left to another time.
As I said my main motivation here would be to explain some Platonic concepts to later use in my next blog about Digimon, and I ended up leaving some out as the concept of souls, but this can be explained in the new blog itself. I just took some time to dig deeper into the idea of universals because this could be of use in the future.
Also I am preparing another text that can also be useful, it will explain some principles that will be useful when analyzing fiction.
Many snippets of this text I relied on pages from Wikipedia or from some informative sites, especially in the part about talking about Plato. If you would like to know more about this, I suggest you read these texts because they are very informative.