2006-08-09 03:41:43 · 7 answers · asked by pot 1 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
Depends on your definition of existence.
Ideas should have some kind of existance, or else we could not say anything about them.
One philosophical way to categorize the ens is:
Things that exists with matter but are not think with matter.
Things that exists without matter and are not think with matter.
2006-08-09 04:47:11 · answer #1 · answered by dr_kant 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This question comes up a lot. I can only respond to it with a few questions of my own:
'Abstract' suggests that the thing (object) has been 'pulled out,' doesn't it? And from what is it pulled out? If you answer that 'It is pulled out of reality,' isn't its degree of reality somewhat diminished?
Does George Washington really exist?
Isn't it obvious that any reality that holds human beings in it can produce any number of idealities? You don't need to go outside reality to find the ideal-generators. Any human can make metaphysics; and all of us make at least one. N. B!: the abstract objects and ideas we create do not have to make sense! Dedicatedly rational people often forget this very important truth.
If your question is taken as, 'Are there observables that are necessarily associated with the entertainment of ideas and abstract objects?' the answer is yes, as some previous answers show. Does this truly answer your question? Surely the tortuous path from phenomena observed to certain conclusion about objects that are by definition not directly observable would leave me itchy all over.
2006-08-09 05:39:30 · answer #2 · answered by skumpfsklub 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
sarcastically sufficient, there isn't any purpose definition of 'purpose'. what's the techniques, what's self sufficient of it, what's got here across and what's invented are all matters with some volume of room for communicate. I even seem to bear in mind a contemporary e book grappling with the belief of whilst a sequence grow to be relatively one component and whilst it wasn't (Is a swarm relatively a single component? isn't a chair relatively in basic terms a swarm of atoms?). As such, I doubt you will get distinctive settlement with regards to the objectivity of a few thing that isn't even empirical. you need to do a sprint greater effectual with mathematical relationships which will constantly carry real. for example, in a 2-dimensional airplane the ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle is often pi, no remember who's doing it, what numbering gadget they are utilising or something. That dating only must be... and consequently it in all likelihood must be argued as a discovery and not an invention. some thing it incredibly is objectively real. i think of a physicalist might argue, in spite of the incontrovertible fact that, that such relationships are contemporary in a latent state interior the actual universe. provided that there are around issues contemporary, it incredibly is equipped into the actual shape of the universe, no remember if it relatively is declared or no longer. so which you finally end up enormously plenty lower back the place you began. yet then if there have been an elementary answer, the subject might have been resolved before.
2016-12-11 05:42:39 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can make life as simple or abstract as you want. Just don't get it confused with reality.
2006-08-09 03:47:09 · answer #4 · answered by Sick Puppy 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
LEAVE THE ABSTRACT ONES, do you really exist? how can you prove your existence.
2006-08-09 07:59:12 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
In so far as they get coded into our brain as neuro-chemical signals, then yes, we can say that they "really" exist.
2006-08-09 04:10:18 · answer #6 · answered by James P 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
yes, at least in programming.
2006-08-09 03:51:42 · answer #7 · answered by Solveiga 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋