A Universal Mess (humans, applied)

[Bohemian Enigma]

Sandwiched between a nonstop blitzkrieg of cluttering chaos, fuzzy gestalt, and the roiling waves of sensory overload on the one side and the quixotic landscapes and interior machinations known as the dark recesses of the human mind on the other, the denizens of this third rock from the sun clamber to enlist an enabling device - a sorting mechanism to mark the very margins of human thought and somehow make sense of it all. The study of this ongoing orchestration transcends the laboratory, the lexicographer's den, and the law, for it is the study of a truly surreal cerebral artifact: the study of universals.

A universal is an abstract term or object that encompasses particular things. How is it that humans partition the universe into various categories? More importantly, do these categories exist in reality, or is their existence dependent on the human mind? Indeed, during the Middle Ages Porphry casts a question that notoriously vexes the intelligentsia of that era:Do universals have any existence apart from the human mind?

The inexorable, indomitable 12th century scholastic and eunuch Peter Abelard (rhinoceros indomitus) addresses this very question in his lucid treatise Logica Ingredientibus. Abelard submits an essentially conceptualist viewpoint. Universals are simply general abstract ideas in the human mind, concepts that are the by-products of the process of abstraction. These abstract ideas are constructed on the basis of resemblances or similarities among individual things. The mechanics of abstraction involve "abstracting away" the particularizing features of a thing and retaining only the general features.

Six hundred years later the noble Englishman John Locke reiterates the conceptualist view. Locke maintains that universals do not lodge in any particular objects but that they are images in the human mind. Locke's framework sidesteps the issue of how general words are applied to particular instances.

A short time later the venerable clergyman and empiricist philosopher George Berkley challenges Locke's conceptualist views on universals. Berkeley finds fault with Locke's belief that universals represent mental images in light of the fact that words that are communicated between humans do not always produce the same mental image. Thus the idea of universals is rendered incoherent. In Berkeley's theoretical construct universals are particular ideas which are associated with a general term and which give the general term a more extensive meaning.

Is there any response to Bishop Berkeley's objections? One can echo Berkeley's claim that communicated words do not always produce the same mental image and thrust this claim upon Berkeley's conceptualization (no pun intended) of a "general term" and even "particular ideas" and contend that Berkeley's thesis is incoherent.

A further thought is, if all there is to categories is the idea that humans have of them, can anyone disclose why are those the ideas humans have??? Trying to determine and articulate exacting criteria for particular objects being encompassed by a given universal eventually leads to hyper-pedantic gnat straining. Any practical functions or applications of the concept of universals (if, indeed, such functions or applications exist) can be undertaken without irrefragable knowledge of the elusive "common thread." Alas, the wells of polemical discourse are seemingly bottomless and inexhaustible.

Such are the ways of cerebral artifacts.

[Tricky D]

I don't think I'm a mess, just the other people.