I’m even less clear on what a “meaningful cluster in conceptspace” means than I am on the traditional philosophical formulations of the problem. What would a “meaningless” cluster in conceptspace look like? Is there a single unique conceptspace, and how is it defined?
Good philosophers must beware of equivocation. Universal is an ambiguous term, so taboo it and distinguish several things it’s stood for:
predicate—term that can be applied repeatedly. (If ‘nominalism’ is meant to reduce all universals to predicates, then it’s an ill-conceived project, since it seems to be trying to explain commonality in general by reducing it to commonality between words; but if the latter is left unexplained, then commonality itself is left unexplained.)
common nature—something intrinsically possessed by all the entities that share a property. An abiding ‘essence,’ some kind of ‘quarkhood’ that inheres in all the quarks. Common natures are a posit to explain similarity. They are worldly, thus completely unlike Platonic Forms.
common cause—a single cause that has multiple effects. A Form acts as a common cause, but not a common nature, since on Plato’s view they causally produce the recurrence of nature’s patterns ‘from the outside.’ (In some ways, they’re an anthropocentric precursor to Conway’s Game of Life.) Like common natures, common causes can be posited with the intent of explaining why our universe exhibits similarity. If the question ‘Why do properties recur at all?’ or ‘Why are some characteristics of the world the same as each other?’ is well-formed, then there is nothing mysterious or ill-conceived about these posits, though they may perhaps by theoretically unnecessary, unenlightening, or ad-hoc.
I’m even less clear on what a “meaningful cluster in conceptspace” means than I am on the traditional philosophical formulations of the problem. What would a “meaningless” cluster in conceptspace look like? Is there a single unique conceptspace, and how is it defined?
Good philosophers must beware of equivocation. Universal is an ambiguous term, so taboo it and distinguish several things it’s stood for:
predicate—term that can be applied repeatedly. (If ‘nominalism’ is meant to reduce all universals to predicates, then it’s an ill-conceived project, since it seems to be trying to explain commonality in general by reducing it to commonality between words; but if the latter is left unexplained, then commonality itself is left unexplained.)
common nature—something intrinsically possessed by all the entities that share a property. An abiding ‘essence,’ some kind of ‘quarkhood’ that inheres in all the quarks. Common natures are a posit to explain similarity. They are worldly, thus completely unlike Platonic Forms.
common cause—a single cause that has multiple effects. A Form acts as a common cause, but not a common nature, since on Plato’s view they causally produce the recurrence of nature’s patterns ‘from the outside.’ (In some ways, they’re an anthropocentric precursor to Conway’s Game of Life.) Like common natures, common causes can be posited with the intent of explaining why our universe exhibits similarity. If the question ‘Why do properties recur at all?’ or ‘Why are some characteristics of the world the same as each other?’ is well-formed, then there is nothing mysterious or ill-conceived about these posits, though they may perhaps by theoretically unnecessary, unenlightening, or ad-hoc.