Strawman.Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 10:45 amThis is obviously false - and self-refuting, because no description could satisfy the condition of specificity of particulars. That's why the scholastic debate over the existence of so-called universals was ridiculous. A common noun doesn't name an abstraction from all the particulars it supposedly names - it doesn't name a 'universal'. That idea was Plato's mistake - or the mistake of Platonists and their successors ever since.Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 10:30 amIf the thing you call tree isn't an abstraction,Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 9:14 am The thing we call a tree isn't an abstraction - a thing that doesn't exist. It exists physically, just as do the many different things that constitute it - down to the quantum mechanical events that seem to constitute everything that exists. If a tree is an abstraction, then so is everything, including humans and their silly conclusions.
Chomsky was one of many victims of a fashionable delusion.
then you will have to name each every tree with their specific conditions [trunk, leaves, etc.].
You missed my point.
Example,
Say you have two apples of different colors [red and green] in bowl.
If you say, there are two apples, then that is an abstraction because you did not differentiate them as two different things.
To be realistic, you would have to state,
there is one red apple and one green apple.
to be more precise you will have to identify the redness and green_ness.
to be more precise, you will have to identify the actual shape, volume, weight.
to be more precise, you will have to determine the exact chemical compositions, count the number of molecules, atoms, particles and quarks.
If you have hundreds of apples you will have to do the above for each of the apples to claim you are realistic.
That is no way you can determine your supposed fact as state of affairs with realness.
What is fact to you is merely a linguistic thing not any real independent thing existing out there.
Because you are unable to do it, what you call 'apple' or any thing is always an abstraction with a Reality-Gap.
What you call 'fact' within your definition of what is fact is an abstraction i.e. an intelligible object, a noumenon, empty, nothing, meaningless and non-sensical on the other side that is beyond human reach.
Prove to me if otherwise?