Vernacular Cloud

concept: token illusion

concept-key: https://vernacular.cloud/0.0.1/Lr6jp6datV2cB58XejusbjUd/

Definition

This misidentification of token identity with actual identity in time and space powers an insistence that the world is discrete, necessary, computational, deterministic, mathematical.

A = A, A = B. The token illusion is another way of stating the law of identity. Of course, a token is identical to itself, but this is an artifact of verbalization, not of existence.

The rationalist, idealist, materialist mindset is a product of the token illusion. To counter this, learn that the map is not the territory.

The token illusion carries the philosopher from word to the sentence to the proposition to the belief (propositional attitude).

The scientist captured by the token illusion is an idealist who has convinced himself that he is a materialist. A Parmenides devolved into a Swedenborgian.

Perhaps related to Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness"

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