Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
I recently posted a thread on Stack Exchange on the relation between physical and logical causation.
The responses I received on Stack Exchange were generally sceptical of there being a direct relationship between these. One was as follows:
another:
and....
It seems to me that the widespread scepticism about this issue all goes back to David Hume's questioning of inductive reason. As one of the comments above notes, Kant attempted to 'save metaphysics from Hume' - I think this is a reference to Kant's Answer to Hume. Me, I'm inclined to side with Kant.
The problem this scepticism presents to me is its glaring inconsistency with scientific practice and technology. Consider how we interact with the world through computers, such as the one you're reading this on. These devices are built around microelectronics, devices comprising millions (even billions) of minute components, unfathomably complex to the untrained (including myself). These generally operate with quite astonishing degrees of precision and predictability through the mediation of sequences of billions of separate logical steps carried out at lightning speed and providing instantaneous results - I touch particular keys and lo! the corresponding character appears on the screen (to take only the most simple of examples). It appears seamless but in reality the appearance of those characters is the result of predictable causal chain which generally operates with extremely high degrees of consistency; I don't press P and get Q, not unless there's a fault or configuration error. And the same can be said for computerised processes across an enormous range of applications nowadays where practically everything we do is mediated by computers, from the James Webb Telescope to you calling your friends on smartphones.
So, I have a deep confusion about why philosophy sees this disconnection between logical necessity and physical causation. It seems to me computer science relies on the connection between the two - microprocessors basically comprise chains of logic gates to effect physical outputs. And more broadly, the link between logical necessity and physical causation seems fundamental to science generally, and even to navigating everday life.
Here's a discussion of this issue by G.E.M. Anscombe: Causality and Determination
The Philosophy Stack Exchange discussion is here.
The responses I received on Stack Exchange were generally sceptical of there being a direct relationship between these. One was as follows:
A Wittgensteinian answer to this question would that there is no such thing as physical causation as is generally understood in modern science, but that physical causation is an a priori intuition, which is useful for hypotheses, but which tells us nothing about the world in-itself or its meaning.
another:
Hume recognized that there are two categories of knowledge: empirical and mathematical/logical. He called the former “Matters of Fact” and the latter “Relations of Ideas.”
They are independent. Cause and effect in science is really a constant juxtaposition of events. We observe A followed by B. If this happens uniformly through Custom we infer causation, but we have no reason to justify this.
That is all we have in the sciences. Kant tried to save metaphysics from Hume but modern science has largely sided with Hume over Kant.
and....
Logic generally belongs to maths department founded upon axiomatic set-theory and symbolic algebra/category theories. Physics has a narrower and more concrete focus on phenomena experienced of this world. Thus their relation is same as math and physics in general. You may define and invent your own logical system, it may not be restricted by any physical laws, but still cannot be arbitrary and shall be self-consistent and useful to other applied areas ultimately. However, this by no means imply that there's no relationship between logic and physics.
It seems to me that the widespread scepticism about this issue all goes back to David Hume's questioning of inductive reason. As one of the comments above notes, Kant attempted to 'save metaphysics from Hume' - I think this is a reference to Kant's Answer to Hume. Me, I'm inclined to side with Kant.
The problem this scepticism presents to me is its glaring inconsistency with scientific practice and technology. Consider how we interact with the world through computers, such as the one you're reading this on. These devices are built around microelectronics, devices comprising millions (even billions) of minute components, unfathomably complex to the untrained (including myself). These generally operate with quite astonishing degrees of precision and predictability through the mediation of sequences of billions of separate logical steps carried out at lightning speed and providing instantaneous results - I touch particular keys and lo! the corresponding character appears on the screen (to take only the most simple of examples). It appears seamless but in reality the appearance of those characters is the result of predictable causal chain which generally operates with extremely high degrees of consistency; I don't press P and get Q, not unless there's a fault or configuration error. And the same can be said for computerised processes across an enormous range of applications nowadays where practically everything we do is mediated by computers, from the James Webb Telescope to you calling your friends on smartphones.
So, I have a deep confusion about why philosophy sees this disconnection between logical necessity and physical causation. It seems to me computer science relies on the connection between the two - microprocessors basically comprise chains of logic gates to effect physical outputs. And more broadly, the link between logical necessity and physical causation seems fundamental to science generally, and even to navigating everday life.
Here's a discussion of this issue by G.E.M. Anscombe: Causality and Determination
The Philosophy Stack Exchange discussion is here.
Comments (996)
Hey man. Nice to be able to talk about something fascinating.
I haven't read the OP in detail, will do so later, but I'd like to see what you make of my argument.
I've been reading the actual Hume and some very, very good commentary on him. He's intoxicated me, can't believe it took me so long to read. Obviously he has errors that cannot be fixed given the theory he works with.
But I've been thinking a bit about Kant's response to Hume. I mean, I think Kant takes the logical step in creating all these categories. But I don't think they solve the issue of causation, nor do I think they solve the issue of the perceived consistency of external object.
In other words, Kant created a space in which to do metaphysics, I agree. But I do think that many of the problems Hume's point out are really, really hard. Maybe insoluble.
Well, you'd better present one! :wink:
Ah.
I argue that Kant does not solve the problem of causation, nor that of object constancy. I think it makes sense to say that causation is something we bring to the world, but we cannot be sure future experience will be the same as past experience. Nor do we know if causation applies to the object themselves, absent us.
You think he does?
I've always seen the two as connected. But also, it is hard to frame that connection precisely.
However, focus on counterfactuality. The laws of thought are organised to arrive at the counterfactuality of the Law of the Excluded Middle. And the idea of physical causation is organised by the principle of sufficient reason.
The LEM states that it is necessarily true that that A is not not-A, and thus that counterfactuality applies.
And the PSR states that an event is by necessity caused by X if the absence of that X results in the non-occurrence of the event. So again, it is the counterfactual that proves the case.
The problem then is that this is a very mechanical view of nature - indeed a reductionist one - where all causality is understood in terms of some countable set of efficient causes. Little atomistic pushes and pulls, or individual happenings, that either do or don't occur within a global Newtonian void - a spacetime frame that is itself a-causal and just a passive place for stuff to happen.
So it seems clear that conventional ideas about logical necessity and physical causality are indeed very alike, but this is also because they come from a shared reductionist perspective which itself needs questioning.
Physical causation has a problem dealing with the contingency and spontaneity found in the world. Logical necessity likewise has a problem dealing with the vagueness of predicates.
In both cases, counterfactuality is only achieved in the ideal limit ... so never in reality achieved, only approximated with some arbitrary precision.
Quoting apokrisis
thanks for chipping in.
Yes - but physical causation doesn't have to be all powerful, does it? I'm the last person who would argue that it is - I accept the reality of karma, for instance, which overflows the horizons of physicalism - but within its range of applicability, physical causation and logical necessity seem to coincide, don't they?
Take a high-school physics example, the second law of motion - f=ma. Given that you know any two of those values, then the third can be deduced because f and m (for example) are such-and-such. So the cause of the acceleration is the result of the force multiplied by the mass. That, I suppose, is a deductive, as opposed to inductive, result. But it also suggests an invariable and causal relationship between cause and effect. And actually I think this is getting close to Kant's answer to Hume. There's a very knotty problem here which I'm getting close to, but haven't quite understood yet.
(Also found the reference to the Bertrand Russell essay on Cause which Anscombe refers to.)
I don't see the connection between the so-called problem of induction and what you are calling logical causation. I don't really know what that means.
In this syllogism:
There is no causation involved. Or did you mean something else?
To me, induction provides the meat that is ground in the machine of deduction.
Beyond that, as we discussed in a recent thread, I think causation is a metaphysical property that is not particularly useful. I assume that is not what you want to talk about and I won't bring it up again.
But what about when it is applied to (for example) computing? Then there is plainly causation involved, as it produces a physical outcome. The fact that such-and-such is the case causes a particular result. I can't see how causation is not involved.
Thanks for the source, I'll add it to my to read-shortly reading list.
Maybe I misunderstood. If I push on the keyboard and a P shows up on the screen, I can see saying that my finger caused the P to show up. But isn't that what you are calling physical causation. Whereas my syllogism is what I assumed you are calling logical causation. That's the situation where I said no causation is involved.
Just a side note, since I am perhaps personally involved in that P getting to the screen. The engineering of those tiny computer components needs to go to substantial lengths to get that P consistently on the screen. It takes what is essentially a random process (say electrons tunneling across a barrier) and walks the tight wire between sufficient dice rolling to get a consistent behavior, and reducing the number of dice rolled to get sufficient performance. It has to work all the time, but not more than that. This is sort of an effort to hammer out hard predictable causal behavior from randomness.
Just saying that the seemingly causal behavior of your machine is not necessarily the result of any fundamental causality, but rather a lot of effort to make it so. Per Wittgenstein quoted in your OP, it is useful for hypothesis.
Quoting T Clark
It's arguably one of the many causes. I mean, the thing probably wouldn't have shown up there just then had your finger not pressed that spot just then. But per my comment above, fundamentally the two are not directly connected. It's just really useful to make that connection.
Kant's position, as I understand it, is that, notwithstanding the intelligibility of the empirical being reliant on causation and the obvious fact that the comprehensibility of the relations between events is couched in terms of causation, these epistemological facts by no means show that causation is a property of "events in themselves" (if this latter term is even coherent).
The effort would be to no avail were there not causal connections there to be made.
Quoting T Clark
Isn't it? Didn't I? It's your intentional action, plus a lot of work by the likes of NoAxioms that has been done in the background, to ensure that it works this way.
Quoting Janus
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52821/52821-0.txt
He goes on:
That's what I think I can be accused of having done - I'm appealing to common sense realism. But at least I'm making progress to understanding what it is I don't understand.
Right, but all that seems to be saying is that intelligible experience itself, and not merely rightness, usefulness and even indispensability for our knowledge of nature, is impossible without thinking in terms of causation, and again I think that Hume might have agreed.
I'm not sure what Kant could mean by "implying a wider application than merely to the objects of experience" unless he is just referring to any possible object of experience as opposed to actual objects of experience.
That's fine for you. But what if one thinks karma is illogical and unphysical? Some other answer is going to have to be found.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, Newtonian mechanics encodes an efficient cause-based metaphysics. That's how it starts. A reduction of nature to atomistic construction.
But then Newtonian mechanics became useful when it was rewritten in Lagrangian form and so came to slyly incorporate the holism, the entropic finality, of the Least Action principle.
Somehow nature - when faced with every possibility - "knows" how to follow the particular path that minimises the overall action.
So holism rules in the bigger picture. And no one wants to talk about.
Yet if you are seeking necessity in Newtonian mechanics - or any physics - it is the principle of Least Action that is the global constraint which is in charge of the show.
Quoting Wayfarer
Kant's answer was that you have to be a holist about causality. But he saw that as an epistemic necessity rather than necessarily the ontic reality.
But since Kant, we've had the quantum and relativity revolutions, not to mention thermodynamics. And in all these, the Least Action principle has proven itself to be more part of physical reality, less simply some epistemic "sense-making" tactic.
Quantum mechanics is rooted in the contextual and non-local. The path integral is the sum over all possible histories.
In relativity, action travels in straight lines by following the curve of a geodesic.
In thermodynamics, the Second Law entrains all action to the finality of entropy maximisation.
So physics relies on holism even to be reductionist. The trick is push that holism into the background so that the reductionism is what is left as the bright-lit foreground.
The holism gets encoded as physical laws that then are placed "in the mind of the creating god" or somewhere equally transcendent. Maybe even "just in the scientist's imagination". It makes no real difference. The point is just to dump the hardest bit of the metaphysical puzzle in some dark corner that no one any longer wants to talk about.
That leaves the simple bit - the application of the mechanical formulae, the differential equations, to a world that is presumed only to operate as a logical, cause-and-effect style, machine.
Bringing Hume and Kant into this is just turning the ontological issue into an epistemic debate.
All society has to know about reductionism is that it works. Only a metaphysician would have to remain concerned with the question: "but is it true?". :grin:
Classical certainty is quantum uncertainty suitably constrained. :up:
The quantum state is described by its exact symmetry. The PNC fails to apply and thus it physically represents a logical vagueness.
Then the classical state describes the exactly broken asymmetry - the counterfactuality that the PNC enshrines as a conception of either a physical state, or a logical state.
So we produce two incompatible conceptions of physical reality, but then find that to be a supremely useful trick, as both are just the descriptions of the limits on being, and thus a suitable basis for describing all the actual states of being which are to be found in-between.
In one direction lies "complete indeterminism". In the other lies "complete determinism". Then in the metaphysical space thus created we find ... the cosmos as a unity of these opposites.
In the case of logical necessity, a set of premisses can necessitate some conclusion. The conclusion will be a 'necessary' consequence in the sense that it would be self-contradictory to assert the premisses and to deny the conclusion. In the case of physical causation, no description of prior states is sufficient to generate a similar self-contradiction. We know the sun will rise tomorrow. But we can never deduce that it will do so from any description of the universe today. That is the 'disconnection.' Why it is considered an important or troublesome disconnection is another very interesting question.
[quote=Stack X link]But it seems to me that materialism or physicalism must presume that logical laws are dependent on physical principles, because, in the physicalist view, everything is dependent on those laws (even if only by supervenience)[/quote]
If the above distinction is coherent, and physicalism cannot accommodate it, then so much the worse for physicalism. That is, the validity of logical inference does not depend upon any particular state of the physical universe. The physical universe works in one kind of a way and logical inference in another. We can say things that are true about the universe and false about logical inference and vice versa. So different things work in different ways as we might expect.
This is a philosophy forum, so it is apt. It's not a physics forum - and if I introduced this thread to Physicsforum it would be deleted because they don't generally much like philosophical threads.
Quoting apokrisis
You may be interested in Kelly Ross' analysis Kantian Quantum Physics. Michel Bitbol has also undertaken similar analyses e.g. here.
Quoting apokrisis
:lol: Swept under the rug, you might say. That's what gives rise to the endless arguments about interpretations of physics.
Quoting Cuthbert
I understand the distinction between inductive and deductive reasoning. Nevertheless scientific principles such as the second law of thermodynamics are presumed to entail necessary consequences, i.e. we will expect them never to be contradicted. If such is to occur, we would seek a further natural causal explanation as to why this could occur.
But it is still confusing epistemology with ontology,
Kant and Hume were talking about what we could know. And that clarified that we only model reality.
Having got that sorted, we can get back to asking the big question. What is reality? And knowing how the modelling works helps us figure that out.
We can see for example that we tend to grant too much concrete reality to the material and efficient causes of being, but also then not enough concrete reality to the formal and final causes of being.
Or at least this is what Peirce and other systems thinkers realised.
Quoting apokrisis
Rather, what are the foundations of knowledge. Kant credits Hume with establishing that causal relationships could not be simply assumed (or known a priori). He says most of Hume's critics failed to understand the cogency of Hume's argument (as I said, that criticism might also apply to my argument.) But nobody here yet (myself included) as really indicated the import of Kant's 'answer to Hume' (I'll try and find time to properly read that SEP article I referred to and then have a shot at it.)
Doesn't that resolve the deep confusion you mentioned?
'Presumed' and 'expect', true. That is, when we get some awkward experimental result we have a policy of not explaining it by saying the second law has broken down. That is because without such a policy we would keep leaping to easy but unjustified conclusions. But sometimes the presumed fundamental laws do break down. There was a policy of not explaining planetary motion by discarding the geocentric universe which was taken as a fundamental and necessary tenet. Every other avenue was tried. Ultimately that 'law' had to be discarded, despite its apparent necessity.
However, a posteriori deductive arguments for causality are the stock-in-trade of science (re the laws of nature and induction).
So, if your PC does something weird, it could mean
1. Your a posteriori deductive argument for causality is an epic fail.
OR
2. The PC is acting up, it's kaput, it's malfunctioning (saving the phenomena)
What woudl such a thing be like? Can you show us one?
Well, from classic definition of induction as an argument from particulars to generalities and back.
Well, if what I said doesn't do the trick, I don't know what will. Maybe if we take induction in a mathematical sense (deductive), it'll help.
Don't think so. The apple can fall to the right or to the left. But it can also stay in balance at the apex of Norton's dome.
That being said, a gas in vacuum expands (forward causation, forward time) or it implodes (reversed causation, backward time).
[math]p\\p \supset q\\\vdash q[/math]
If [math]p[/math] is taken as the circumstances preceding an event, [math]p \supset q[/math] as a causal law and [math]q[/math] as the consequence caused, this might be understood as presenting the general form of physical causation. This presumably implies that the causal law, like modus ponens, is necessary.
So, is [math]p \supset q[/math] an accurate parsing of a causal law? I'll go with Anscombe and say that it isn't.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting apokrisis
In the dark corners of computers are hidden the variable, unpredictable analog signals that are 'treated as' 0s and 1s.
I think the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics is the same problem restated more clearly. And I don't think it is all that intractable. Mathematics is the study of abstract structure of every kind : symmetry and asymmetry, order and chaos, temporal and timeless, etc. So it doesn't actually seem surprising that mathematics can be applied effectively to both electronics and pebbles on a beach There is a pattern in the pebbles but it is statistical; there is randomness as well. Logic had better just shut up here about the law of non-contradiction for a moment. We come to understand the cause of the pattern in terms of prevailing wind and wave angle moving pebbles of different sizes at different speeds along the beach - "on average" over centuries. A simple explanation using 'cause' with a very broad brush indeed and a deal of handwaving at the forces of chaotic waves that no one is going to calculate individually.
Edit: Note that mathematics aways begins with a biblical style commandment of creation: Let there be light. Let x be a number.
It's one aspect of it, but I feel there's a lot more to be said.
Quoting unenlightened
So do I! I was going to include it as one of the refs in the OP. He says
[quote=Eugene Wigner; https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html]The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.[/quote]
Why isn't it understood? And what is it that isn't understood? Isn't it just the convergence between mathematical logic and physical necessity that he's talking about?
Recall Logical Pluralism.
If causality isn't deduction-apt, explain how we land robotic rovers on Mars and how Russian missiles are laying waste to Ukrainian cities.
I believe Wayfarer and unenlightened are on the right track, as suggested by them bringing up mathmematics (The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences). This is an old trick in the rationalist's playbook: I believe Descartes was one of the first to employ it. He tried to reduce or translate the empirical into math. Physical entities, for example, were to be only meaningful in terms of geometry and arithmetic; this is the current trend in science I believe). Once that was accomplished, necessity, mathematically speaking, is a natural corollary.
That's too easy. Through mathematics, a great many things have been discovered which could otherwise never have been known. It's not just a matter of making a nicely-fitted suit.
Quoting Agent Smith
Descartes was nevertheless solidly located in the Western philosophical tradition. It was Platonic epistemology which accorded a high status to dianoia and mathematical analysis.
I don't see that there is more at least with regard to making the distinction between causal and logical necessity. In the case of physical causation, we press P and we get P. We see that it must be so, given the configuration of the computer. We discount all the possible coutervailing factors, faults, power failures etc. We now see that the consequence is in some sense necessary. It simply must happen. No 'but-what-about?' questions, please, because we've already dealt with those. All good. But the necessity in question is not the same necessity as the necessity of logical inference. The difference is simply that there is no self-contradiction in supposing that we press P and all other factors are taken into account and we still don't get P. All that is just Hume with an up to date example.
On the one hand, we press P and we get P by causal necessity.
On the other hand, we press P and it's not the case that we get P by logical necessity.
Two kinds of necessity. Or, if we prefer, let's discard the expression 'causal necessity' precisely because we know we will get confused if we use the same word for two different things.
So what more is there?
Perhaps this. What makes or tempts us to say that the appearance of P after the pressing of P must be so?
Quoting Wayfarer
I think we can establish that the link is an ambiguity in the idea of necessity, as above. Useful, but not profoundly interesting. The deeper question is - what, if anything, is causal 'necessity'?
So much the better.
What am I missing coming late to this discussion?
This seems to remind me of Penrose’s view that there are three main realms, mathematical, consciousness, and physical (physics). They all relate, but all have distinctive features.
Physical cause and logical necessity are distinct, and different.
Because, I suppose the argument is, it cannot be determined a priori, in principle - that is, as a matter of definition.
Quoting Cuthbert
I think that is what interests me about the subject.
One of the responses posted on Stack Exchange was another quote from Wittgenstein, to wit:
That seems a far more radical statement of scepticism than what you have posed, does it not?
I'm going to press on with 'Kant's answer to Hume'. I've just found, for anyone interested, that the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics is very nicely formatted for Kindle on this page. (You can find an app on Amazon to upload it to your Kindle.)
Quoting I like sushi
The distinction that Cuthbert makes above, between logical necessity and physical causation. But the implications are mainly philosophical, not practical - like, they're not going to be of interest to a bench scientist, I imagine.
Quoting Banno
But if it were quite so simple as this, then why does it have so many entries in philosophical textbooks, and why did Kant say that it was Hume's attack on causality that woke him from his dogmatic slumbers?
The ball on Norton’s dome is either resting as it was left or it has fallen off. It is kind of binary like that - and hence why it is used as good test of Newtonian metaphysics. It shouldn’t roll off, but then counterfactually, it always does.
So the question becomes who nudged it? What explains spontaneous symmetry breaking in nature?
Quoting Haglund
Does time ever run in fact backwards? You are coming up with some pretty random comments.
Because philosophy.
We can understand the kettle not heating up while over the flame. Such an occurrence would be problematic for physics, but not for logic. But the kettle not being a kettle - that's a problem for logic.
So back to modus ponens. Modus ponens and other such theorems are logically necessary. If modus ponens is mistaken as showing the structure underpinning physical causation, it makes physical cause look necessary. It's a part of the mistaken picture of the world as necessary and deterministic.
It seems to me that modus ponens is not a good representation of physical causation.
Nevertheless, a nifty move! Of course the problem doesn't go away. Even if F = ma, why should it it be that and not F = [math]\frac{m}{a}[/math]? I suppose I'm seeing things in a manner of speaking. At the end of the day, the exact relationship is beside the point; that there is one is what's mind-blowing.
Coming to logical necessity, as Banno asserted, and I suppose this is the nub of the controversy, why should a billiard ball struck with a certain force, move with a certain velocity (speed + direction)?
Two important metaphysical topics converge in this OP: causality + necessity/possibility.
Questions that seem apposite (The bottom line: Causation is a pattern, synonymous with laws/rules)
1. Why should there be laws?
2. Why are the laws as they are?
Mayhaps, the multiverse is important to the question. There could be universes where causality is nonexistent (chaos or something else) or different (we have equations but they look different).
So much for material implication then.
Apropos of which, there are a couple of passages in the Prolegomena which lay out the problem posed by Hume in pretty succinct terms.
[quote=Kant, Prolegomena]Hume started from a single but important concept in Metaphysics, viz., that of Cause and Effect (including its derivatives force and action, etc.). He challenges reason, which pretends to have given birth to this idea from herself, to answer him by what right she thinks anything to be so constituted, that if that thing be posited, something else also must necessarily be posited; for this is the meaning of the concept of cause. He demonstrated irrefutably that it was perfectly impossible for reason to think a priori and by means of concepts a combination involving necessity. We cannot at all see why, in consequence of the existence of one thing, another must necessarily exist, or how the concept of such a combination can arise a priori. Hence he inferred, that reason was altogether deluded with reference to this concept, which she erroneously considered as one of her children, whereas in reality it was nothing but a bastard of imagination, impregnated by experience, which subsumed certain representations under the Law of Association, and mistook the subjective necessity of habit for an objective necessity arising from insight. Hence he inferred that reason had no power to think such combinations, even generally, because her concepts would then be purely fictitious, and all her pretended a priori cognitions nothing but common experiences marked with a false stamp.[/quote]
(I love the colorful turn of phrase.)
After mentioning the fact that Hume's 'common-sense' critics comprehensively failed to see Hume's point, he then says:
[quote=Kant, Prolegomena]The question was not whether the concept of cause was right, useful, and even indispensable for our knowledge of nature, for this Hume had never doubted; but whether that concept could be thought by reason a priori, and consequently whether it possessed an inner truth, independent of all experience, implying a wider application than merely to the objects of experience. This was Hume's problem. It was a question concerning the origin, not concerning the indispensable need of the concept.[/quote]
That last qualification, part of which I have bolded, is of the utmost importance in understanding what is at issue. Remember, Hume's Treatise was on 'human understanding', and Kant's a 'Critique of Pure Reason'. They're considering the elements of knowledge. Hume is demonstrating that, even though the relation between cause and effect is everywhere assumed to be self-evident, in fact we have no logically necessary (or a priori) grounds to think that it is so. And note that Kant says that Hume is engaged in metaphysics, as he himself is: because metaphysics must rest on apprehension of 'inner truths' directly apprehended by reason.
Kant then goes on to answer this challenge from Hume. I'll come back to that, after I've got a bit more of a handle on it.
Quoting Agent Smith
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/the-multiverse-as-imagination-killer/497417/
The Norton dome shows there is no cause of the rolling down.
The gas example shows that cause and effect are dependent on the direction of time. It either runs forward or backwards. It's either cause preceding effect or effect preceding cause.
Logical Necessity is not Physical Necessity. One deals in the abstract (where causality is of no consequence) and the other deals with, well, physical stuff (ie. Physics). In physics it is quite plain to see that causation plays a part … I am clearly missing something.
I will just read instead
Nope. It shows that Newtonian idealism fails the reality test. The model doesn’t take into account the fact that the world of material objects also has irreducible thermal jitter.
Quoting Haglund
But time doesn’t run backwards. So there is a lack of evidence for your counterfactual of the effect preceding the cause.
The object is a point particle laying at rest in a vacuum on the apex. What thermal jitter?
I just mean time could have run backwards. Effects could have come first.
So is quantum field theory. Abstractions have a point. The Norton dome shows cause and effect aren't that straightforward.
Modern philosophical confusions about the relationship of logic and causality are largely due to the fallacy of 'material implication' - a classically valid mathematical rule of inference adopted by Frege and Russell that is inadmissible for casual reasoning.
According to 'material implication', the hypothesis, rule or law A --> B is equivalent to a data-set of the form NOT A OR B:
A --> B <---> (NOT A OR B) ,
where (NOT A OR B) refers to elements of the set {( A = FALSE, B = FALSE), (A = FALSE, B = TRUE), (A = TRUE, B = TRUE))
Common sense should instantly recognise this rule as unreasonable, made worse by the the fact that (NOT A OR B) OR (NOT B OR A) is a tautology, which if material implication is accepted implies that
A --> B OR B --> A is true, i.e. that for any event types A or B, either A must cause B OR B must cause A.
In Classical logic, material implication is true as a result accepting the law of excluded middle. On the other hand, intuitionistic logic that rejects LOM thereby rejects material implication, whereby only the inference (NOT A OR B) --> (A --> B) is intuitionistically valid.
But if causal theories are supposed to summarise and describe our experimental interventions in the course of nature, then even the intuitionistically valid latter inference rule is inadmissible , considering the fact that even if (NOT A OR B) is observed, this doesn't necessarily imply that manipulating events of type A influences events of type B, since A type events might not be relevant to B type events. This leads us to so-called 'Relevance Logics', which includes linear logic, in which A --> B is interpreted to mean 'One A-type resource transforms into one B-type resource'.
Anyway, thanks for making your points. I think I am getting some idea what this thread is about now.
There seems to be a conflation of physics and mathematics mixed in with conscious experience. Messy, as it appears the OP is driving at a mixed question - conflating mathematics and physical reality - and trying to tackle it philosophically.
I might be wrong. If I am right it is going nowhere fast.
Even if you cooled such a system to near absolute zero, you could only constrain the thermal jitter.
Just as if you could polish the dome to be near frictionless, you wouldn’t actually make it frictionless.
So I’m lost as to what point you are trying to make in making strong causal claims based on over simplified representations of reality.
:up:
That would just mean the flame died or the gas was obstructed. But indeed, water not boiling in a kettle on a flame is no logical impossibility. Logic doesn't contain physics.
A more direct account of the possibility of indeterminacy in classical physics.
It's an ideal dome.
You can save time, fight against it, waste it, kill it, or collect it. You can measure it and it flies, while at other times time crawls. Time seems some thing.
I'm always faintly surprised that when I use a tape measure to measure a gap, divide that figure in two, then cut two bits of wood according to the halved figure, the two bits then fit in the gap. Amazes me every time. Why the hell does reality correspond to maths?
Yep. A mathematical abstraction.
But again, how does it argue against my point - which was that our notions about logical implication and material cause share a reliance on counterfactual reasoning?
Precisely. Logical cause and effect are very different from the physical. Logic contains no physics. It's logical that you fall hard on Earth if you jump off the Moon. It's high.
You said something about the logical law of the excluded middle. Physical reality not excludes the middle.
Yeah. I said that. :yawn:
So you're drawing a line between the way we think and the way the world is.
Once you've done that, there's the problem of how to put them back together.
Time is only a thing for mass.
In game-theoretic fashion, the material implication A --> B is weakly interpreted to refer to some process of interaction between an observer and his environment, a process that in general is vaguely understood and unreliable. For example, 'A' might stand for a message that Alice sends to Bob, and 'B' might stand for a response that Alice expects to receive from Bob in return. Understood this way, logical implication represents an expected or intented dialogue between interacting entities, rather than representing epistemic certainty with respect to a supernaturally infallible process. The role of the modern logician is thus akin to the role of a tennis umpire, who adjudicates and documents the conduct of interacting actors, whilst remaining agnostic with respect to the outcome of the game.
But logical reasoning doesn't necessarily relates to physical cause and effect. A logical cause doesn’t necessarily have a counter weight in the physical world.
Not sure I follow. Only a thing for the mass?
If logic excludes the middle, the physical reality might follow this or not. It depends on the physics involved. Logic can shape physical reality in all forms. Physical reality though can't shape logical reality how it wants. It's an asymmetrical relation. They can be glued together by observation. Physical reality has limits. Logic has no limits.
Everything with mass ‘feels’ time/change. Things without out mass do not - time does not exist for them.
I assume you mean formal logic, taught to children with the "Johnny buys 3 apples, an orange...", "if 40 children in a room are... ...then how many...?" tasks to solve?
Although it's dubious to say we observed something that's impossible. We'll tend to continue trying to make observations fit with logic somehow even if it takes decades as with quantum theories.
Quoting Haglund
I think logic is about the limits of thought. We can think this way, but not that.
Ah, you mean mass! I thought you referred to the mass of people... Yes. Photons don't experience time. They connect stuff instantaneously. Their finite speed causes cause and effect. Without a finite SoL, cause and effect, and hence time, don't exist. A logical cause! :grin:
You can observe something that's impossible but these impossibilities can turn out to be hallucinations, like a fata morgana, or they are just new possibilities. Like quantum mechanical phenomena were thought impossibilities from a classical POV. The mechanisms of QM are still disputed though. There even were infinite many worlds hypothesized to explain it's functioning.
“....The celebrated Locke, for want of due reflection on these points, and because he met with pure conceptions of the understanding in experience, sought also to deduce them from experience, and yet proceeded so inconsequently as to attempt, with their aid, to arrive it cognitions which lie far beyond the limits of all experience. David Hume perceived that, to render this possible, it was necessary that the conceptions should have an a priori origin. But as he could not explain how it was possible that conceptions which are not connected with each other in the understanding must nevertheless be thought as necessarily connected in the object—and it never occurred to him that the understanding itself might, perhaps, by means of these conceptions, be the author of the experience in which its objects were presented to it—he was forced to drive these conceptions from experience, that is, from a subjective necessity arising from repeated association of experiences erroneously considered to be objective—in one word, from habit. But he proceeded with perfect consequence and declared it to be impossible, with such conceptions and the principles arising from them, to overstep the limits of experience. The empirical derivation, however, which both of these philosophers attributed to these conceptions, cannot possibly be reconciled with the fact that we do possess scientific a priori cognitions, namely, those of pure mathematics and general physics. The former of these two celebrated men opened a wide door to extravagance**; the latter gave himself up entirely to scepticism—a natural consequence, after having discovered, as he thought, that the faculty of cognition was not trustworthy.....”
(CPR, B128, in Meiklejohn 1854)
**enthusiasm in Kemp Smith 1929
(My emphasis)
Simply put, Kant’s predecessors agreed humans understand, but no one considered how it is that humans understand. What it means to understand, how is understanding possible and how it works. Transcendental philosophy is nothing but a speculative, albeit logically consistent, exposition of understanding in general, and from it, the possibility and validity of a priori cognitions.
Asking whether or not a finitely bounded universe is deterministic or not is like asking whether J R Tolkien's world of Middle Earth is deterministic or not. The question only makes sense relative to some conception of the transcendental, relative to which the world in question can be regarded as incomplete. In the case of the complete works of Middle Earth, the applicable transcendental concept would be the author J R Tolkien , whom when considered from an external perspective transcedendental to Middle Earth can be said to have determined the events of Middle Earth. But when Tolkien and his books are considered together as a complete joint system, the question is again meaningless.
This is more or less the same observation that Bertrand Russell made when he commented to the effect that the concept of cause and effect adds nothing to the joint description of the motions of the stars and planets.
Causality is really a means of talking about experimental interventions, in which the actions of an experimenter, i.e the 'causes', are considered to be 'transcendental interventions' with respect to the experiment he is performing. Causality is therefore a "metalogical" concept rather than a logical concept, when we consider a logical system to be finite number of axioms with finite proof lengths that are self-contained.
Science therefore doesn't need causality per se, but only the concepts of internal versus external reasoning relative to the theories in question, plus a notion of material implication as provided by relevance logic.
And that's one way to reunite the boundaries of thought to the boundaries of possibility as long as we recalibrate "reality" to the world as we know it, right?
Not sure I understand. Why shouldn't determinism be meaningless in such a universe? I understand that from the outside of such a universe all the events in that universe can be known. If you are part of it, your being in it prohibits knowing all happenings, that's clear. But while in it you can still say there is determinism. Without actually knowing what's determined.
Agreed. That's why I wrote "I can see saying that my finger caused the P to show up." That's intended as a non-committal statement. We've gone back and forth on the forum discussing what constitutes causality. Those are questions I don't intend to get in to here.
We're agreed to call that "physical causation." I'm not sure what logical causation is then, if it's not the syllogism I used previously.
1. The Principle of Plenitude
2. Modal Realism
Both, more or less, claim that possibile worlds, all of 'em, are actual. If it could be shown that possible [math]\to[/math] actual, our job is done, si?
This mathematically and logically specific quantifying of variables of cause (a) to effect (b), and variables equaling themselves and predicates, is of the world of classical physics and classical logic. .
The classical world breaks down at the quantum level, where a different set of logical and mathematical laws are deducible or express-able.
Indeed what causes this distinction, (quantum vs. classic) is a mystery in physics. However, they're both set within them deducible laws of math & logic.
Individualizing specific causes and effects, is the same as making variables logically necessary. That which is already individualized causation makes logic necessary.
I really don't know if that inspires a further understanding for anyone. I think I am just on the cusp of learning the nature of this (even with Aristotle/Hume/Kant and modern logic), and have yet to dive off into the deep end -- where abysmal complexity abounds. Perhaps, chaos theory or multiple-world theory, and its logical consequences are in those waters.
*I'm fascinated by such fringe inquiries. Great discussion, looking forward to more.
*Grabs life-jacket.
First, I would state Hume was unable to prove this separation. Isn't a matter of fact a deduced relation of ideas? I do not hold to this definition.
Here is where I believe Hume made a valid point. The idea of cause and effect is that it will necessarily happen again. I calculate gravity, drop an apple, and record the speed. Then I assume if I drop the apple in the same conditions, it will happen again. Why? Why should it be that the laws of physics will be the same 2 seconds from now?
This cannot be deduced, only inferred by "habit" as Hume notes. We're used to things working consistently, so we assume they will continue to do so. We assume there are laws that will not change, so we make judgements according to those laws.
Of course, what Hume forgot to think about was, "What cause do we have to believe things will NOT be consistent in the future?" And it turns out, that's an inference too! I believe what we do is choose the most reasonable inference. Looking at history, the rules of physics have not really changed. If people stop breathing, they stop living. Until people can stop breathing and continue to live, it seems more reasonable to assume that breathing is necessary to live. This is Hume's "habit" explained. We walk around with what we have concluded until we are shown otherwise.
Science takes the same approach. Science never "proves" anything. What it does is try to disprove something. If after trying to disprove something in every single way we can think of, it still stands, then we have "proven" something. The same applies to causality. You can't disprove the notion of causality, period. They computer example is perfect proof. I would love to see someone come along and prove that you didn't cause the keys to be pressed on your keyboard to type your responses.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think a way to explain this is "abstract logic". 1+1=2. Now we know that 1 represents an identity, and 2 represents the recognition of 2 identities together. But what are those identities? How far spaced apart are they? Its not an object, a location, or a thing with weight. Its simply the concept of identities. Bananas, oranges, people, "things". As a logical necessity, 1 identity added with another make 2 identities. Does that mean we'll be able to add a banana from Honduras to a banana from America by bringing them to the same location? We need cause and effect there.
Now is cause and effect also logical? Yes. But just like all tigers are cats, not all cats are tigers. Cause and effect is not the entirety of logic, but cause and effect is entirely logical.
Doesn't that depend on the interpretation on QM?
Hmmmm...not quite sure. If you’d said, “reunite the boundaries of thought to the boundaries of the world as we know it”, I would have agreed outright, insofar as that’s pretty much what Hume, and his Enlightenment empiricist peers in general, didn’t do. Hume denied both the possibility and the validity of pure a priori conceptions, which are the boundaries of thought, yet granted the empirical certainty of mathematics, which is a reality of the world, an impossibility according to Kant and fellow transcendental idealists, because Hume didn’t first derive the conceptions that can only belong to the faculty of understanding itself, outside and beyond the examples of it in experience.
The philosophical argument is, one cannot even conceive of the predicates of mathematics or the contents of the world, if the pure conception of “quantity” with respect to the former and “reality” with respect to the latter, didn’t already reside in understanding as a natural condition of the human intellect itself. And THAT, is Hume’s problem: the conception of A cause, or THE cause, is impossible if the human intellect didn’t already possess the pure conception of “causality” as a natural precursor. We would never understand that a thing is possible, if we didn’t already possess “possibility”. And this thesis continues with ten more pure conceptions of the understanding, which are called the categories.
If I misunderstood what you meant, and went off on a useless tangent....let me know so I can adjust accordingly.
I think that is exactly Hume, provided 'inferred' means logical inference.
[quote=Wittgenstein]"Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus."[/quote]
I don't think so. Belief in the causal nexus is when you think that walking under a ladder will get you to the other side unless you trip. In other words, it's an underlying belief of our everyday lives and of the possibility of living them. Superstition is belief in a cause where there isn't one.
Now here is what I think about causal necessity.
When you know that pressing P must (all countervailing factors excluded) but must (goddammit) get you P - then something is going on that is not an assertion of a fact or a statement of a belief. What 'something'? I invoke speech act theory and hold that it is a normative statement of scientific policy. You are in effect saying - "If P does not apear when I press P then I refuse to give up until I have found a satisfactory explanation. Further, if someone refuses to give up, then I say they are a lazy investigator, shrugging off events as too difficult or not necessary to explain. Further still, what I will count as a 'satisfactory' explanation is one that accounts for all the other stuff we have managed to explain and one that does not stand out in a 'whoa-that's-a-weird-miracle' kind of way." That is the force of the 'must' of causal necessity. You will see that it does not contain any assertions of fact - only normative and evaluative statements. That is because metaphysics is not about the way the world is. It's about how we choose to live our lives and to think about the world.
Suppose I get a flat tire on my bike. Something must have caused it. 'Must' in the sense that goddamit, I'm not going to shrug this off as just the kind of thing that could happen in a notoriously random and indeterministic universe. So I start looking for a puncture.
:up: Very interesting topic!
Quoting Wayfarer
Confusing "out of this world" and "empty", as often is the case. I really wonder what people see in this highly depressive guy ...
Quoting Wayfarer
Here's my guy! As I often say myself, "My reality is mainly based on experience and logic."
I have thanked you in the past for various things. Thanks once more for bringing this up! :smile:
I will get a closer look to this ref.
Quoting Wayfarer
Here, I would like to clear out something: By "physical causation", I assume you mean cause and effect in the physical universe, i.e. on a material basis. However, the subject of "cause and effect" is much wider than that: it includes non-physical things as well. And since these two "worlds" are different, we can't speak for both of them as one thing. Both "logical necessity" and causality are much more specific and obvious in the physical world than in the non-physical one.
Quoting Wayfarer
Not clear to me, although I am an IT person. Among other things, what are these "two - microprocessors" and what do microprocessors have to do in this discussion? Most probably you refer to electric circuits and more specifically to "logical circuits" ... If this is the case, we have here only rudimental logical principles, quite restricted in scope. So, I wouldn't involve machine logic in the current subject, even if it produced by human thinking.
Quoting Wayfarer
True. But does this resolve the problem of "logical necessity" in general?
So let's grant what Kant argued, that causality is something through which we interpret the world. Fine. Makes good sense. Hume said something similar but called it an "animal instinct", this is the reason why we believe in causality. Nevertheless, it is true that the mechanisms by which Kant and Hume spoke of causality were quite different.
Ok. The issue is, as I see it, that the problem is not solved. How are we guaranteed that future experience will necessarily be like past experience? That we attribute cause to the world because it is a part of the way we view the world, does not solve the problem.
I think you did understand me even though I did t say it very well.
So we end up with two meanings for "world". There's the world we know, which is the world that's available to science.
And there's the world we can't know.
The idea of law is also built into perception, right?
Hmmm.
It looks to me as if it were a sub component of perception. So yes.
Of course, Hume and Kant were heavily influenced by Newton, but now we may have to take into account the new physics, if it be relevant to the discussion, which is not always clear.
Quantum mechanics or relativity?
For Kant, relativity.
Kant spoke of "space" and "time" as forms of sensible intuition, because he thoughts these were absolute.
Now we know they're not. We should speak of "spacetime".
But Relativity emerged from thought experiments, so it indicates that the world does conform to the way we're bound to think.
Sure.
Everything ultimately emerges from our minds. The hard thing is to determine what is innate at birth and how to best phrase and understand these factors.
Maybe under the auspices of something like phenomenology, but not in metaphysical doctrines before that. “World” is a singular conception, defined as “that which contains the objects represented only as phenomena”, which implies there can only be a single word that represents such a thing. And if meaning belongs to words, and words belong to conceptions, then “world” can only have one meaning.
Even if you might be saying there is the world as it is and there is the world as we think it is, we are nonetheless referring to one conceptual representation when we use the word, even if under different conditions.
On the other hand, you might be thinking the world of real things external to reason, and the internal world of objects of reason itself. Which is ok, if one defines “world” to suit. Problem is, everybody’s world of objects of reason is necessarily different depending solely on that which they think about, which is a quality, while everybody’s world of real things is only contingently the same, depending solely on the extent of their experiences, which is a quantity. So we’d have to contend with that categorical distinction somehow. Technically, then, the “world” of objects of reason, is properly termed a manifold, or something similar, leaving “world” to represent empirical objects.
Besides....if there were two meanings, we would need something to inform us which meaning pertains in which case. Seems like over-complicating the issue, that.
Quoting T Clark
The term is 'logical necessity' and the question is the relationship (if any) between logical necessity and physical causation. My (tentative) argument is that scientific laws are where these are united in some sense - that scientific laws are where material causation converges with logical necessity. But I know I'm skating on thin ice.
Quoting Philosophim
Your analysis is essentially the same as the 'common-sense' critics of Hume that Kant mentions - Joseph Priestly, Thomas Reid and others. Kant says that Hume freely acknowledges that of course causal relationships are assumed as a practical matter, in science and in everyday life; so that is not the point at issue. He's not denying that causality operates, but saying that its nature is not at all self-evident, even though we naturally assume it to be. 'The philosopher's task is to wonder at what men think ordinary.'
And the point at issue is in fact very subtle. It has to do with the distinction between a priori (what can be known without any reference to experience), a posteriori (what can only be known by observation) - and the mysterious 'synthetic a priori', a term which he introduced, and which is at the very centre of the Critique of Pure Reason. Hume says that only deductive truths can be known with apodictic certainty (i.e. can't be denied) and purely on the grounds of reason. Kant wants to show that the synthetic a priori is of another kind. But understanding that, requires grasping the central point of the CPR and Kant's 'Copernican Revolution in Philosophy'.
Quoting Mww
I'm interested in the fact that Kant acknowledges 'pure physics'. Pure maths, I can understand (not that I'm any good at maths) but physics always seems to me a combination of logical posits and empirical observations. I'm now reading the Prolegomena, which is a useful re-intro to the CPR, looking for some clarity around that. But from one of the SEP entries on Kant, I read:
So I understand the idea of 'pure maths' but I'm finding the idea of 'pure physics' pretty hard to get my head around as it seems to me physics is always a combination of the analytic with the experiential.
Quoting Mww
Well stated.
Quoting Cuthbert
True, but Kant's aim is to try and present metaphysics as a science - a vain hope, according to most later philosophers. (I'm exploring his idea of normativity through this book.)
Quoting sime
Thereby shelving (or 'bracketing') the prospect for a science of metaphysics as such.
Quoting Manuel
There's a world of difference between habituated responses, which any creatures exhibit, and reasoned inference, which are the sole prerogative of h. sapiens.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Ah, but does it? That is one of the major questions at issue.
Linear logic potentially sorts out the ambiguities in the notion of physical cause, so that these might be contrasted with modus ponens. It's an interesting approach.
But it remains that the answer to the OP is that physical causation is not logical necessity.
There sure is, you're correct.
Just pointing out that Hume was very much an innatist, contrary to popular belief. But his innate mechanisms are very weak, compared to Kant, or even Descartes.
I called it the wrong thing, but I think my position stays the same. I don't see any connection between physical cause and logical necessity. Seems like the premises of a syllogism are where you load the phenomena we observe in the world, e.g.
The conclusion is connected to the premises by logical necessity, but the only role a physical entity like cause can fill is in the premises.
[quote=Kant, Metaphysics, IEP; https://iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/]Kant thought that Berkeley and Hume identified at least part of the mind’s a priori contribution to experience with the list of claims that they said were unsubstantiated on empirical grounds: “Every event must have a cause,” “There are mind-independent objects that persist over time,” and “Identical subjects persist over time.” The empiricist project must be incomplete since these claims are necessarily presupposed in our judgments, a point Berkeley and Hume failed to see. So, Kant argues that a philosophical investigation into the nature of the external world must be as much an inquiry into the features and activity of the mind that knows it.[/quote]
Quoting Banno
What about the claim that scientific law is where logical necessity and physical causation meet? That this is what accounts for the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences?
"Here we have a wide ocean before us, but we must set our sails. Were sense knowledge and understanding [against Hobbes] ,then he that sees light and colours, and feels heat and cold, would understand light and colours, heat and cold, and the like of sensible things... Whereas the mind of man remaineth altogether unsatisfied, concerning the nature of these corporeal things, even after the strongest sensations of them, and is but thereby awakened to a further... inquiry and search about them, what this light and colours, this heat and cold...should be; and whether they be indeed qualities in the objects without us or only phantasms and sensations in ourselves."
- Ralph Cudworth
EDIT:
"The essences of light and colours’, saith Scalinger, ‘are as dark to the understanding as they themselves are to sight’. Nay, undoubtedly so long as we consider these things no otherwise than sense represents them, that is as really existing in the objects without us, they are and must needs be eternally unintelligible. Now when all men naturally enquire what these things are, what is light, and what are colours, the meaning hereof is nothing else but this, that men would fain know or comprehend them by something of their own which is native and domestic, not foreign to them, some active exertion or anticipating of their own minds…"
- Cudworth
I shouldn't keep out Henry More, either:
"That the exact Idea of a Circle or a Triangle is rather hinted to us from those describ'd in Matter then taught us by them, is still true notwithstanding that Objection, that they seem exist to our outward Senses carelessly perusing them, though they be not so. For we plainly afterward correct our selves, not onely by occasion of the figure, which we may ever discern imperfect, but by our Innate knowledge, which tells us that the outward Senses cannot see an exact Triangle, because that an Indivisible point, in which the Angles are to be terminated, is to the outward Sense utterly invisible."
- Henry More
"But now for other Objections, That a Blind man would be able to discourse of Colours, if there were any Innate ideas in his Soul, I say, it does not at all follow; because these Ideas that I contend to be in the Soul, are not Sensible, but Intellectual, such as are those many Logical, Metaphysical, Mathematical, and some Moral Notions. All which we employ as our own Modes of considering sensible Objects, but are not the sensible Objects themselves, of which we have no Idea, but onely a capacity, by reason of the Organs of our Body, to be affected by them. The reason therefore of a blind man's inability of discoursing of Colours, is only that he has no Substratum or Phantasm of the Subject of the discourse, upon which he would use these innate Modes or frame of Notions that are naturally in his Mind, and which he can make use of in the speculation of sundry other sensible Objects.”
- Henry More
EDIT EDIT: No more edits, promise! @Mww, this might pique your interest. These are the people referred to by the great philosophy historian Arthur Lovejoy, as having articulated Kant's philosophy (some important parts of it at least) by several decades, yet these are barely known at all. I learned about it through Chomsky.
In any case Lovejoy, for some unknown reason, was very Anti-German, so, his opinion on German philosophers are to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, he makes a valid point. As I said, maybe this is the type of stuff you find interesting. I don't know.
I think it telling that this conjectured meeting cannot be set out clearly. It's the promise of an explanation for the supposed mystery of the effectiveness of mathematics, not the explanation as such.
Of course. I would not like to rush in where even Einstein feared to tread, but it is at least plausible.
:up:
That makes sense. So a world is always a construction.
An equally trite argument would be that I am not looking, and so refuse to see it.
Neither progresses the discussion.
But it seems to me that the ball is in your court; that what has to be done is for you to set out clearly the supposed relation between logical necessity and physical causation. Because if you cannot do this, there is no case for me to answer.
Now my point about modus ponens is in a sense a hint at a direction in which you might head. Modus ponens is a logical necessity, with a hint of causation about it.
Or you might have your own path in mind.
Either way, without your presenting some case, silence ensues.
Apart from the incessant background rumblings about Kant, of course. And the handwaving quotes.
I'll look into that.
It's not magic, it takes work and re-iteration from pure maths back and forth between the natural sciences. Calculus, complex numbers and chaos theory were developed to cope with the ineffectiveness of current maths to deal with emerging problems in physics. Integers and fractions are ok for most agriculture, then we needed negative numbers and zero for trade, plane geometry for architecture and engineering and spherical geometry for astronomy, set theory for computing etc etc. Also, when I measure and cut wood it never fits.
Yes! The unreasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics....
Your computer always seems to operate, though - as I said, with uncanny degrees of efficiency and precision. Had quantum physics not been discovered, then this could not have happened.
I do have a meta-philosophical aim in mind. It has to do with what Max Horkheimer called 'the eclipse of reason'. In classical cultures, it was assumed that the Universe was in some fundamental sense intelligible - that things happened for a reason, and that the aim of philosophy (including what we now call science) was in discerning it. As Horkheimer and his associates argued, this sense of the objective standing of reason was progressively weakened and ultimately undermined altogether in the modern period. So modern and post-modern philosophy is in some radical sense irrational, in that it proposes that reason only pertains to (for example) syllogistic arguments, or is internal to the minds of humans, and in any case is not discernable in the natural world. Hence Wittgenstein's fulminations that belief in causal connection is 'superstition'. Hence also the subjectivism and relativism which characterises much of modern discourse, arising from the typically modern conviction of a universe governed by chance (as articulated in such texts as Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity).
There's a lot of work involved in articulating that, and despite the claim that the argument is not progressing, many of the comments and objections are informative. It gives me a better idea of what I need to understand, and pieces of it are starting to emerge.
A world in which there's no causality would be chaos manifest. Nothing physical would make sense. To give you an idea of what this would look like, slap on the face would be painful, pleasurable, neither and it'd be impossible to predict what would follow a given action.
Furthermore, events would occur spontaneously e.g. one would feel pain, one would burst out laughing, drop dead, etc. for no reason at all.
In short, a world where causality doesn't exist displays
1. Inconsistency in "effect".
2. Spontaneous/uncaused events.
1 & 2 is a description of chaos.
Some creation myths claim that the universe began as The Void (Chaos). Check Wikipedia out for more. In other words, chaos/The Void (spontaneous randomness) is the primum movens (the uncaused cause, the prime mover). What happened after that is a mysterious transition from acausality to causality...true if and only if cause and effect isn't an illusion.
Not entirely true. Complex numbers arose in the study of roots of polynomial equations, more pure math than physics.
What does it mean when Hume claims that a (billiard) ball could do anything (attain any velocity or even vanish into thin air or transmogrify into Ivanka Trump for all we know) when struck with a cue or another ball? The takeaway being there's no logical necessity to causality
Point of interest: The word "anything". Are contradictions included too? Apparently not. So, our job, to prove causality is logically necessary, is to show acuasality implies one or more antinomies. Can we do that? It's back to square one, I've circled back to Hume's dukkha (dissatisfaction)...or have I? I went through all that for nothing?! :sad:
There's a subtle but profound point at the basis of this. It is Hume's observation that certitude is only possible with respect to propositions that are true by definition. When I studied Hume at university the tired textbook example was always that a bachelor is an unmarried man, by definition. Therefore if you claimed that this particular bachelor was unmarried, you had zero chance of being mistaken. The tired textbook example of an inductive claim was that all swans are white, which is derived not from logic but from the observation of swans. And of course this was completely deflated when Western Australia, the famous abode of the Black Swan, was discovered. So if you want to engage in such excited hyperbole, first of all come to terms with the quotidian arguments around which these debates revolve. At the moment, you sound as if you've been inhaling nitrous oxide.
I had the idea that complex numbers were required for the rather inelegant mathematical technique of 'renormalisation' which is required lest the predictions of quantum physics yield unexpected infinities.
:rofl: I wish...haven't laughed in a while except yesterday when watching They do it with mirrors (Ms. Marple), a TV adapatation of an Agatha Christie murder mystery novel. There's this part where Chief Inspector Slack has a conversation with Dr. Maverick (vide infra).
Dr. Maverick (deadpan): In their subconscious every male wants to kill his father and marry with his mother (a reference to Freud's Oedipus Complex)
Chief Inspector Slack (mortified): I beg your pardon! :lol:
Anyway, where were we......
Good observation, but the whole question of whether such relations can be described as 'logical' is what is at issue in this thread.
1. Mill's 5 Methods
1. Method of agreement
A, B, C correlates with X, Y, Z
A, E F correlates with X, Q, R
X [math]\to[/math] A
Thus,
A is a necessary cause/effect of X
2. Method of difference
A, B, C correlates with X, Y, Z
B, C correlates with Y, Z
~X [math]\to[/math] ~A
Ergo,
A is a sufficient cause/effect of X
3. Joint method of agreement & difference
A, B, C correlates with X, Y, Z
A, E, F correlates with X, Q, R
B, C correlates with Y, Z
X [math]\to[/math] A
~X [math]\to[/math] ~A
So,
A is the cause of X
4. Method of concomitant variation
As A increases/decreases X increases/decreases (direct variation)
As A increases/decreases X decreases/increases (inverse variation)
Hence,
A is the cause of X
5. Method of residue
A, B, C correlates with X, Y, Z
B is a cause of Y
C is a cause of Z
Therefore,
A is the cause of X
2. T is the cause of U
IFF
1. T is correlated with U
2. There is no V such that V causes both T and U (rule out third-party causation; use one's background knowledge)
3. U is not the cause of T (rule out reverse causation; the cause must precede the effect)
4. The correlation between T and U is not coincidental (persists over time; background knowledege will come in handy; mechanism of causation identified)
He does? I don’t recall. Doesn’t seem quite right.
Quoting Wayfarer
“Pure” physics as a self-contained science is a misnomer, I think, at least without reference to a specific text. Math is pure only insofar as reason itself constructs the objects of it, whereas physics has its objects already constructed in and by Nature. Mathematics is entirely pure in its constructs and the relations between them, because the human intellect is responsible for the inception of both, whereas physics is only partially pure, insofar as while the objects of physics are already given in and by Nature, it is only with respect to the relations between them and between them and us that reason constructs its principles. Apparently, nowadays, these different forms of constructs are termed prescriptive regarding mathematics, and descriptive regarding the physical sciences. Altogether superfluous if asked of me.....but it wasn’t, so.....
Quoting Wayfarer
Yep. Just like that. Except synthetic rather than analytic, for a couple reasons. Maybe, depending on how you intend the meaning of the word. First, because you’ve admitted to pursuing the Prolegomena, you’ve found that “analytic” in Kant is not the analytic of common usage, and second, because the context herein is Kantian, “analytic” should be left to pure logic, the truths of which are deductively certain, while the truths of anything empirically grounded, such as all physical sciences, is merely inductively certain, re: fn 6. Properly speaking, then, again with respect to Kant alone, physics is a combination of the synthetic a priori (legislative principles given from reason), with the experiential (objects given from observations to which the principles apply).
So...agreed. Pure physics is unintelligible, ain’t no such thing.
It's only when we propose a sense of "necessity" which is supposed to be independent from the wants and needs of the human beings, that we find a different form of "necessity". This is the sense of "necessity" which is supposed to support the philosophical position of "determinism". Philosophically, it is important to note that this form of "necessity" is not well supported by evidence, as indicated by Hume and others. It's basically just an assumption or assertion which people make for one purpose or another, which has no justification.
This form of "necessity" is a tool which we use for the application of theories, making the theories work for us. But we need to understand that it is completely unsupported, and is only a useful assumption supporting our mundane activities. In times past, this form of "necessity" was supported by "the Will of God". The consistency of God's Will supports the continued truth to inductive conclusions that form the laws of physics. The best example is probably Newton's first law. That a body in motion will persist in its motion in a continuous way, unless being acted on by a force, is a "necessity" which we take for granted in an atheist society. But Newton was religious and said that his first law of motion required the Will of God, to ensure its truth.
What's evident is a difference between the atheist way, and the theist way of understanding causation. The theist way requires that any form of consistency, or temporal continuity of sameness, requires a cause. The cause of this continuity of existence is God. And without God there would be absolute unintelligible randomness from one moment to the next in time, even the idea of one moment to the next would be nonsensical. Absolutely everything would be scattered randomness.
The atheist way takes the fundamental consistency describable by laws like Newton's first law of motion, for granted, i.e. not requiring a cause. This fundamental assumption produces the necessity of determinism, by denying the basic level of causation represented by the Will of God. Then nothing is required to establish consistency in the universe, that consistency simply "is", and it is taken for granted. Therefore the fundamental consistency itself, is understood as "necessary", rather than as caused by the Will of God. Instead of saying that God is necessary, as "required for" the fundamental consistency, we simply say that the fundamental consistency is "necessary". From here, the first level of causation is the cause which is required to change the basic consistency, continuity of existence, which is taken for granted as "necessary" rather than as caused by God. Then the primary form of causation, is the force that changes the inertia of continued existence. But this force must be derived from some other inertial activity, and we get trapped in the circular logic of determinism.
Causation is basically explanation, so in drawing a distinction between "physical" and "logical" causes, are you asking if we're bound to rely on logic for our explanations?
Are you asking if logic is innate?
Yes. “World” is an object in general, comprised of and representing a multiplicity of other objects subsumed under it. All objects in general are objects of reason therefore constructed a priori by it in accordance with rules, which.....for better or worse....it also constructs. Perils of the game, donchaknow.
All that subsumed under such general conception, on the other hand, the constituency of it, as given members of a world, which must necessarily exist of their own accord, that is to say, by means other than reason, and by which we are presented with the material of our empirical cognitions, is not a human construction.
As might concur, the objects as such in a world we can either think or experience, but a world as such we can only think.
Quoting Wayfarer
In asserting that an effect is unpredictable given some cause, are we talking about causation or our knowledge of some causal event? "Random" events only seem random when you don't have all the information about the causes that preceded some effect.
If you are out to describe some causal relation as logical or not I guess you'd need to define "logical" and "causal" as a starting point.
In describing something are you not engaged in both a causal and logical process? The description would be a causal relation with what it is that you are describing and a logical use of language in that you are using words to refer to something that is not necessarily another use of words, or even that the rules of some language cause you to use them in a particular way (the effect), just as your beliefs/knowledge cause you to behave in certain ways (If A then B).
How is Kant not doing the thing he says can't be done?
He's saying there is no mind independent world. There can't be because worlds are always constructions of mind. But what's the setting for this mind that constructs worlds? It's not a world?
Also, would Kant say that when we talk about mind-independence in science, we're talking about non-human causation?
If two natural events always turn up together they have a causal relation or a common cause. So if A and B always, either A causes B (in the case of temporal separation) or C causes A and B (if A and B spatially separated). If someone drinks water from a well, and the effect is always that that someone dies, the drinking of the water can be said to be the cause, though a direct cause of death is difficult to establish exactly.
Causal forks can explain correlations between spatially separated events. Like the entangled electron spins.
I’m not sure I understand the question. What have I said he’s done, that he himself said couldn't be done?
Quoting frank
In a word, the setting is “transcendental logic”, a condition of human reason, albeit quite speculative, needless to say, hence not mind-independent. The mind....or more properly, reason....doesn’t construct worlds; it constructs a world to which all empirical objects are thought to belong.
“....we form to ourselves, by anticipation**, the idea of a science of pure understanding and rational cognition, by means of which we may cogitate objects entirely a priori. A science of this kind, which should determine the origin, the extent, and the objective validity of such cognitions, must be called transcendental logic, because it (...) concerns itself with these only in an a priori relation to objects....”
(The parenthetical denotes an exposition of what transcendental logic can’t do, when we want to know what it can. It can explain how the thought of a world as transcendental object of pure reason is possible, and why it is fitting that we should thereby confine our understanding to it.)
**Anticipation herein reflects the proclivity of pure reason to seek the unconditioned, in this case, to seek the limit for that which contains all empirical objects, just because it’s something we might want to know. Pure understanding (the categories) and rational cognition (synthetic a priori judgements) inform us such a limit can be represented, and transcendental logic informs of the conception (which schema of which category) by which the limit is represented...... “world”. Unconditioned, in its turn, meaning that outside the objectively valid.....not objectively real, mind you.....conception of “world”, there can be thought no objects whatsoever. Or, put another way, it is impossible for “world” to be subsumed under something else, just as it is absolutely necessary for all empirical objects to be subsumed under it.
————
Quoting frank
Damned if I know. Talking about mind-independence in science? Not sure what that means. Isn’t all causation non-human? What does a human cause, just by being a human? I suppose a human causes a certain quantity of space and a certain duration of time to be occupied. Dunno. Help me out?
Nobody said this stuff was easy, which gives the inevitable....why even bother. Maybe it’s just fun to think about, even if it won’t pay the bills or get you laid.
Wouldn't he say it's wrong to think in terms of a noumenal world? Since a world is a construction of the mind?
But if so, where is the mind? Within its own contructed world (I don't think that makes sense) ? Or outside it in the noumenal realm?
Quoting Mww
I should have said supernatural causes. Science is about natural causes. Human causes, or acts of will would be distinct from natural causes. That's built I to the meaning of "natural" right?
That is precisely the assumption that David Hume calls into question in his 'Treatise on the Human Understanding'. He argues that even though we observe causal relations, there is no epistemological basis for concluding they're connected over and above observation of repeated occurences. In other words, there's no logical reason why someone drinking from said well may not suffer any consequences even though previously others have. There's more to it than meets the eye.
Quoting Mww
Well, there is at least one:
[quote=Prolegomena, Section 4; http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/ref/Kant.html]But it happens fortunately, that though we cannot assume metaphysics to be an actual science, we can say with confidence that certain pure a priori synthetical cognitions, pure Mathematics and pure Physics are actual and given; for both contain propositions, which are thoroughly recognized as apodictically certain, partly by mere reason, partly by general consent arising from experience, and yet as independent of experience. We have therefore some at least uncontested synthetical knowledge a priori, and need not ask whether it be possible, for it is actual, but how it is possible, in order that we may deduce from the principle which makes the given cognitions possible the possibility of all the rest..[/quote]
Quoting frank
The question is about the connection between logical necessity and physical causation. It's trickier than it looks!
Quoting Mww
:up:
'World' - Origin
Old English w(e)oruld, from a Germanic compound meaning ‘age of man’; related to Dutch wereld and German Welt.
Understanding your question is tricky. Causation is explanation. It's the answer to "why?"
Necessity is modality. It's the answer to "could it have been otherwise?“
Where do you see the connection?
I depends on the logic used. If your logic is that if two events A and B appear in conjunction every time they show themselves then they have or a common cause (if the events are spatially separated) or ,(if temporally separated) they are a connected cause and effect, then the logic dictates a causal connection.
Oh. That. Ya know....folks just need to get over this noumenal stuff. To a human, and as far as anything whatsoever concerning human intelligence, they have no standing whatsoever. No human can even THINK a particular noumenal object, much less perceive one, and if neither of those are possible, they do not even enter the cognitive system. They are merely a logical distinction a separation, and the text that describes the notion of them, is very brief, indicating Kant didn’t intent the should ever be included in his philosophy.
But, being Kant, he leaves room for his readers to make something out of it. If you like, I can post the pertinent discourse. Specifically, he says they are not impossible, but doesn’t say they are possible. So to answer...yes, it’s wrong to think in terms of a noumenal world.
————-
Quoting frank
Oh. Yes, acts of will. A definite human causality. My oversight. I’ve been stuck on empiricism the last few pages, so talking about mind-independence in science threw me a curve-ball. Sorry.
Yes, acts of will are distinct from natural causes. Another Kantian logical separation. Another search for the unconditioned. The transcendental conception covering causality by humans is “freedom”, and only applies in moral doctrines, determined by pure practical reason, as opposed to pure speculative or theoretical reason, which covers the empirical doctrines.
One good thing....that book has a whole lot fewer words. Which is kinda odd, in that Kant attributes to pure practical reason, and hence moral philosophy, much more importance that the speculative.
Ok. So the mind is phenomenal. It's a product of itself.
Why not?
Ahhhh.... thanks. I might be inclined to say the pure part of physics, rather than pure physics, but that might be taking unwarranted liberties with The Esteemed Professor’s magnum opus.
Ya know...here we go again...I disfavor “mind” as well. Reason says all we need mind to say.
Mind is a convention of speech; reason is what humans do. That makes it easier to say mind is an object of reason. Not much of an improvement, I suppose, but that every human can justify he thinks much simpler that he can justify he has a mind. Everybody says, “I think.....”; nobody says, “my mind thinks....”
A toss-up. There’s no philosophy of reason in university curriculum, and there’s no critique of pure mind in philosophical literature.
But neither mind nor reason are phenomenal, insofar as these are derivatives of perception.
Kant wanders off into inexplicability.
Ehhhh.....little challenge ain’t nothing to be afraid of.
I don't think that's true.
HA!!!! That’s why I changed it.
:lol:
So....you cryin’ uncle? Tossin’ in the dialectical towel?
What do you mean?
mwwwww!!!!!!!!!
Hey!!! ‘Sup?
You mentioned wandering, so....
Well, it's arguable that Leibnizian Monads could be categorized as such. But we don't know how they would be possible.
Perhaps Cartesian souls too.
Just lookin' for an argument with you. Not much. :cool:
The usual conception of causality is that of mechanical necessity. Some system of interactions is so constrained that its outcomes could never have been otherwise.
And it is this mechanical view - A always leads to B, never to C or D - that unites the everyday notions of causality, logic, and indeed maths.
Since the industrial revolution especially - built on the back of Newtonian mechanics and atomistic metaphysics - we want to think like machines and understand reality as a machine. Even the mind and the cosmos must be machines.
So there is a strong sociological unity of thought. Causality and logic are their "best selves" to the degree they conform to the machine model of reality.
But then actual science, and even pragmatic logic, have to deal with the real world where contingency, chance, indeterminism, vagueness, etc, all seem equally part of the deal. And this is where larger models of causality and logic become needed.
If we take a constraints-based view of reality - one based on structuralism, or the formal/final cause recognised by Aristotle - we can see that the mechanical ideal becomes a special case within a more general story.
To be mechanical becomes to be rigidly constrained. No accidents allowed. All unpredictability engineered out.
That's how we make planes that never fall out of the sky, or computers that never blue screen.
But in the real world, shit always can happen. Constraint - and hence any notions of causality or logic that invoke the mechanical - is merely something that is relative. The ideal is 100% suppression of the unpredictable or the uncertain. But we can only get arbitrarily close to that - which is fine for engineers. They are trained to make the judgement call of when close is good enough for all practical purposes.
So the real world is mostly indeterminate - more lacking in constraint than constrained. The structure of nature is largely fractal or scalefree. It is described by the loosest kind of statistical attractor.
Take any river system or mountain range. There is no particular cause or logic to exactly where some water channel branches or some particular peak suddenly rises to tower over the rest.
Science can certainly model the macro factors that represent the constraints on such geological flows. But that just constrains the branching or erupting to some fractal probability distribution. And that is good enough for building natural landscapes as the accumulation of tectonic and climatic accidents.
But the human world prizes the extreme case of complete constraint as that is the route to mechanical control over the largely indeterminate realm of nature. We can impose our determinations on it by thinking in this particular fashion.
And hence the passion with which folk defend the everyday notions of causality and logic. It is built into modern education, modern culture.
We all know the mindset that pays the bills and keeps the lights on.
Yep. A neuroscientist starts with a methodological confidence that we can come to understand consciousness. There's a nervous system. It has an environment. It organizes its inputs into a model. It tests the model and so on.
I don't really know what Kant is saying. It seems like a bunch of balloons. If you start poking, they just explode.
Logical possibility is just testing for contradiction. We analyze an ideal cube to determine the possibilities associated with tossing dice. That's all logical possibility is: analysis.
So when we say the dice could come up craps, all we mean is that the analysis of the cubes includes craps.
There is no ontological aspect to it.
I’m sure you’re aware of Kant’s destruction of Leibnizian Monads. Seems he didn’t appreciate the idea of putting form before substance, and if that wasn’t bad enough, which is indeed very bad, to have matter be self-representative.
But you’re right. Leibniz did consider monads as noumena.
Ah, but does it. It's still an inference - that there must be a causal connection. The difficulty arises when you say what that causal relationship is. Essentially your positing the common-sense objection to Hume's argument. Have a glance at https://iep.utm.edu/hume-causation/
Quoting frank
Kant himself acknowledges that his magnum opus is 'dry, obscure, opposed to all ordinary notions, and moreover long-winded', but despite all that it adds up to a profound insight. Have a geez at this primer.
I'm familiar. Thanks.
I see the connection when you say, using logic, that 'a' must be the explanation for 'b'. I wrote to a retired professor whose website I often read, his answer was in part:
So I'm tempted to say that where you have a 'scientific law', then you have something in which logical necessity meets physical causation. It's a big claim, I don't know if it's true, or original, but that's what I'm trying to articulate.
Here’s a great big one: science needs something other than itself to prove; metaphysics contains its own proof. Science is never complete; metaphysics is self-contained, thus can be complete.
Me, I favor being both satisfied, and done, at the same time with respect to the same thing.
I don't understand. Why does science need something else to prove?
We can usually imagine multiple explanations for the same event.
Look at this statement, P:
"The ball went through the window because Terry threw it."
P is necessarily true if it's true in all possible worlds. Why would it be? Why couldn't the ball have been shot out of a cannon?
Or we could use old style necessity where a statement about why a ball went somewhere can't be necessary. Only apriori statements are necessarily true.
I'll step into that one. It has to do with the contingent, with dependent conditions. Everything in causal sequences is dependent on something else. Hence the intrinsic logic of the cosmological argument. Not saying I believe it, but it has logical force.
[quote]That reality is intelligible is the presupposition of all scientific endeavours: that the intelligibility science proposes is always subject to empirical verification means that science never actually explains existence itself but must submit itself to a reality check against the empirical data. This existential gap between scientific hypotheses and empirical verified judgment points to, in philosophical terms, the contingency of existence.
Absolutely not. The universe could have been different.
Quoting frank
But it would be true in all possible worlds that the ball went through the window because it was moving. It would be a general statement, not about a specific situation.
Science cannot be done without tools, metaphysics cannot be done with tools.
What??
Ok, fine!!! With/without equipment. For the benefit of those who wish logic and mathematics to be considered as tools.
So you changed P to
Balls that are moving go through windows.
That's not true in all possible worlds.
I still don't understand. Science is dependent on tools, so therefore what?
But necessarily true propositions are those which are 'true in all possible worlds'. People nowadays conjecture that there are universes in which the laws of physics are different, but were not the fundamental constants just as they are, then such a Universe would not be able to exist. In other words, the contingent is dependent on necessary. What is missing in modern Western philosophy is precisely the notion of a domain of necessary being.
Quoting frank
There can't be a world in which things that don't move go anywhere, as 'going somewhere' is dependent on 'moving'.
So P is:
Balls that are moving are going somewhere.
P is necessarily true. :up:
Yes, a die is an example of exact mechanical constraint. To be a fair die, with no side favoured, takes considerable engineering.
And then with all sides distinctively marked, we have a logical situation. A free choice what number the die represents.
We are then supposed to throw the die in an ostentatiously careless way so as to ensure that the choice becomes a random one. We leave it up to the fate of the spin and bounce to determine which number shall be our surprise.
Quoting frank
And who is the cause of that? The folk who had a reason to manufacture a game of chance.
Nature certainly would regard it all as highly artificial and quite illogical.
We do use logic to arrive at explanations. Is that what you mean?
I just meant that an analysis of a cube doesn't imply anything about how the universe works. Could be a block universe. Could be a multiverse. Who knows?
If the angles of triangles didn’t add up to 180 degrees, we would know the universe wasn’t flat.
If knots didn’t stay knotted, we would know the universe has more than just three dimensions.
Of course the ideal cube would tells us something about the kind of cosmos it could be found in.
Never mind. I’m rather past the end of my day, so....more rambling than sensible.
Yea, it just doesn't tell you the mechanics of an event involving cubes. Block universe, holographic universe, many worlds, etc.
:pray: thanks for the discussion
Or are we in a black hole?
The number of degrees in a circle is arbitrary. It could have been a hundred, four hundred, a thousand, or any number. 360 was a convenient number because it's pretty close to the number of days in a year, and the astrological calendar used a circle, so a day was a degree. Maybe 365 1/4 would have been a better number. But then the right angle, and the number of degrees in a triangle, would have been a more difficult number to work with.
I'm lost as to what you think you are arguing about.
You must agree that a cube does a good job of representing the basic geometry of the universe at the spatiotemporal scale with which we are directly familiar. One can see in the cube the fact that space is flat, 3D, and has three rotational degrees of freedom, three translational degrees of freedom.
And that is pretty much the entirety of Newtonian mechanics. The definition of an inertial reference frame. The basis of energy conservation.
But then we observe actual "cubes" more closely and find that we need to loosen the constraints. On the larger view, the ideal cube with its Galilean group of six generators has to give way to special relativity's Poincare group with its 10 generators - the six of rotation and translation, plus the four Lorentzian boosts that allow for changes in relative velocity within a "block" 4D spacetime.
And this is how physical theory goes. We wind up in a succession of other ideal worlds - "Block universe, holographic universe, many worlds, etc." - that seem to become increasingly less constrained ... and yet also, ironically, ever more contrived in their desire to uphold the sacred principle of mechanical determinism.
So all you are doing here is name-checking some well know pathologies of physics speculation - interpretations of useful science that make for useless metaphysics to the degree they want to preserve a deterministic view of reality.
The ideal cube already showed us that the physical reality is less than ideal. And yet interpretations of the equations are always trying to recover that lost certainty - make the world safe again for the rigidities of absolute logical necessity or causal determinism.
In my personal philosophical worldview, Enformationism, Logical Necessity is Causation. But that meta-physical notion does not compute for physicalists. They think that all causes are physical, in the sense of billiard balls smacking into each other, and imparting momentum. So, I think it's the reductive physicalists who are confused. But, Information science, has concluded that energy, force, momentum are ultimately various forms of generic Enformation (the power to cause changes in form).
I have interpreted that novel concept to mean that Information (mind stuff) is at the root of all changes in the world. For example, thermodynamic Energy is often expressed as a ratio between Hot & Cold. And such proportions/ratios are also found in logical relationships as the essence of meaning. In fact, I equate Logic & Math, in the sense that Logic is mathematics with words (concepts) instead of numbers.
However, I am aware that the connection between mental Logic and physical causation is not apparent to those with a Reductive approach to reality. Logical relationships are found in holistic systems, not in the isolated elements. In fact, it's the Logical "glue" that bonds parts into wholes. Logical Necessity is essentially a Tautology in that both sides of the equation are fundamentally the same. But, imbalance in the equation, is like applying a force to a see-saw to make it move. The motion/change is necessary to re-balance the system. :smile:
Momentum is a Ratio :
Momentum is directly proportional to the object's mass and also its velocity.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/physics/chapter/8-1-linear-momentum-and-force/
Information causality :
Information causality is a physical principle suggested in 2009
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_causality
Information and Causality :
What is information? Can information have causal consequences?
https://www.amazon.com/Matter-Life-Information-Causality/dp/1107150531
ADD A FORCE TO CAUSE THE EQUATION TO BALANCE
You are confusing the numbering system with the more fundamental relation.
The flatness of space is defined by the constancy of the ratio between a radius and a circumference. Only in flat space is this ratio a constant - pi. In curved space, it ranges from the 2pi of the sphere to the infinite pi of a hyperbolic geometry.
So only in flat space does some particular angle retain that value over all its scales of extension. And should you choose, instead of degrees, you can talk about angles using a more fundamental pi-based unit like radians.
(this is beside the point of this thread, but are you familiar with Jesper Hoffmeyer's book Signs of Meaning in the Universe? Would you consider it a suitable primer for biosemiosis?)
Yup. I see it as biosemiotics-lite. You will probably like it because it indeed wants to regain a numinous notion of meaning, when Pattee has already rigorously done away with precisely that.
So my go-to source is still Pattee. Yet Hoffmeyer is typical of those who want to reject the mechanical rather than merely place it correctly within the causal frame.
Pattee actually gives you the causal bridge between the information and the entropic sides of the deal for the "organism" - a material system which has life and mind.
The epistemic cut is implemented in the form of a switching mechanism - some bivalent device that can connect logic and causality.
Biosemiotics-lite just sees an organism as some kind of code-using interpreter of reality. The mechanics of this is pretty irrelevant. It is all about how a system of sign can be given its own world-transcending meaning.
But Pattee's biosemiotics stresses that a sign does the work. It actually switches the state of some material process. The meaning of a sign lies in the physical way it stops the world doing this, and thus counterfactually directs it towards doing that.
That is why biology - at its nanoscale basic level - is a system of molecular machinery. An enzyme is both a logical switch and a physical switch in one. It switches on some material process - like cranking out collagen - because the organism, in its wisdom, has realised it needs more collagen at that particular time and place. The enzyme can be switched on or off as an informational whim. And it then switches a material process on or off - remaining on until its told enough is enough.
So it might seem a long way from this physically embedded mechanicalism to brains that can think about .... anything. But that is only if you haven't studied the biology and neuroscience that connects the two.
And it is thus rather missing the point if semiosis is seen as just the encoded genetic and neural information that models the organism's world - some system of signs that can be read ... by a mind.
Pattee is correct. The sign is really a switch. It has its feet straddling the two sides of the divide. It is both informational and physical. It connects the logical necessity to the physical causation in a way that is autopoietic or cybernetic - a working feedback loop.
Biosemiotics-lite just wants to treat the sign as a passive mark - something that is physical in being a mark, but then not physical because it doesn't change the world on which it is written in some directly meaningful way.
But a switch is a logical device that both represents the world - some enzymatic process is either on or off - and regulates that world. Flip the switch and you turn that process back on or off.
Why?
I remember now where I came across Hoffmeyer, there's a sidebar in the Information Philosopher's entry on Pattee which links to his page.
Quoting apokrisis
I can't see that in what I've been reading of him.
What we call 'the real world'. Very Kantian. So I don't think his approach is as cut-and-dried as you're making it out to be - he still maintains a dualism.
Pattee's clarity on these gritty matters always makes my soul sing. It also helps that we talked about them most days for five or six years. :grin:
Concluding...
In other words, biology invented the molecular switch. Suddenly physics could be turned on and off "at will". Nothing like this had ever been seen before in nature. A whole new biosemiotic game had been invented.
Do you think it would be recognised at all in the absence of machines? Does this principles manifest anywhere but in machines and organisms?
Quoting apokrisis
You mean, it provokes the discharge of endorphins?
Quoting apokrisis
Do you think it is sound to attribute agency to biology?
The nature of the causal relation is another question.
I'm not sure what you are looking for. The nature of cause and effect? The physical meaning? The logic we use to determine cause and effect?
:grin:
Quoting Wayfarer
You complaining that I gave you the tl;dr?
To put in another way, I am basically arguing that determinism and non-determinism aren't descriptive of phenomena and therefore shouldn't be considered as being applicable to reality considered in itself. Determinism and non-determinism are descriptive of theories and beliefs concerning the consequences of hypothetical actions, but these concepts are not descriptive of phenomena.
For instance, suppose that if Bob (P)resses a button, then it either results in a (B)lue light or a (R)ed light: P --> B OR R. Then we might say this theory is "non-deterministic". Equivalently, we could drop philosophical nomenclature for logic , and simply state that our hypothesis is a product in a suitable category.
But notice that the above theory is simply stating that if Bob presses a button, then one of two possible outcomes are expected. It isn't describing observations of the actual world:
For suppose that Bob presses the button a potentially infinite number of times, and this results in a potentially infinite sequence of 'random' outcomes, {B, R, B, B, R, R, ...}. The previously observed outcomes can be vaguely summarised as 'possibilities' using the co-product, yet there is no objective test for a random process; for at any time t, the sequence of lights generated so far is always describable by some computable function, and at any time t, any previously assumed computable hypothesis about the generating process of the lights might be falsified. Therefore as far as phenomena are concerned, there is no discernable distinction between a deterministic process and a non-deterministic process.
So we have at most a concept of epistemic uncertainty at play. But I don't see anything in the above that refers to the actual world; .
If the sequence is random, no such function exists. Each outcome (B or R) is not determined by a function. Isn't that the definition of a sequence of random choices? That every choice is based on pure chance? If you assess a finite sequence, BRRBRBRBRRBBRRBRB... (which probably ain't random since I typed it right now) and you find a program leading to this sequence, but can this be done with every sequence? Say that I base my choice on the throwing of a coin. Taking the non-ideal character of the dice into consideration and throwing it randomly (by making random movements). Will there always be a function a pattern, beneath the sequence? Is there non-randomness involved? If the underlying mechanism is deterministic, and we're able in principle, to predict an R or a B, can't we say the initial states of the throws are random?
The OP lays it out pretty clearly. Hume's analysis of causation and Kant's answer to Hume would comprise the basis for a semester. I did do the Hume semester as an undergraduate, but only ever discovered Kant years later. It’s a gap in my education.
Quoting apokrisis
Pattee says there’s no need for an ‘ontological dualism’. And indeed there’s no need to introduce any kind of substance over and above what is already known to physics. But there is a need for concepts which could not be derived from physics by itself. Hence the appeal to organisms and to machines (artifacts). As Ernst Mayr put it, 'The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years.'
Quoting sime
How about the genetic code? That determines outcomes, does it not?
Sure. He is a physicalist just like me.
Can you expand this a bit? ‘Ideas’ ?
Kant didn't know relativity yet. He tried to grasp space and put gloves in it to argue for left-right symmetry. He spoke of relative and movable space which exist relative to, say, a room. By moving the room you can carry space along. Absolute space is empty. Einstein showed that empty space cannot exist. The finite and invariable speed of light gives rise to cause and effect which cannot exist in Kant's conception of space, so time can't exist in it either. The finite constant speed of light causes events to be separated in space and time. Mass, space, time, cause, and effect, simply don't exist, can't exist, in Kantian space.
Major digression, but very well. It's the general consensus today that ideas are a product of the mind, and so of the brain. That the explanatory chain points back to evolution, 'what is useful to survival', therefore intelligence itself can be understood in terms of adaptation, 'the product of' evolutionary (and therefore biological) interactions. What counts for common sense nowadays.
Whereas what I'm contemplating harks back to the Platonic ideas. These are understood to be real. not simply the product of your or my mind. Consider the real numbers. Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: 'thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he said "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it. Thought contents are true and bear their relations to one another (and presumably to what they are about) independently of anyone's thinking these thought contents - "just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets." Here when he says 'thought content' I think he's referring to concepts such as real numbers, not just anything that happen to be passing through one's mind.
He says in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic that 'the laws of truth are authoritative because of their timelessness: "[the laws of truth] are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this, that they authority for our thought if it would attain to truth."
So a generally platonistic view is that ideas are real in their own right - that for example the real numbers will be the same in all possible worlds. But the question invariably follows, in that case, where can they be situated? In some 'ghostly platonic realm'? I think that answer is due to the inherent naturalism of our culture, which can only conceive of what is real in terms of what is 'out there somewhere', what is existent in time and space. Whereas the ideas in that platonistic sense are what precede the formation of any specific particular thing, being the form of possibility for them to exist. They are part of the fabric the Universe, not something which features within it. That is the sense in which they're 'higher' (i.e. nearer to the unconditioned) than are 'the phenomenal' (existent things. One of the essays on my profile, Meaning and the Problem of Universals, addresses this. It's pretty dense read and I don't understand all of it but it makes some sense to me. Kelly Ross is the emeritus I mentioned previously that I've corresponded with about this subject.)
Quoting Haglund
He said nothing of the kind. Have you got a reference? The canonical text is found here and in the next section. The key point that I take from it, is that Kant denies that either space or time are objectively real independently of our awareness of them: 'Space does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves, nor does it represent them in their relations to each other; in other words, space does not represent to us any determination of objects such as attaches to the objects themselves, and would remain, even though all subjective conditions of the intuition were abstracted.'
You appear to be contradicting yourself apokrisis. You reify space, by talking about "flat space" and "curved space", implying that space is a thing with these properties. However, to say that space is both flat and curved is contradictory. Therefore you appear to be contradicting yourself by talking about both, curved space and flat space. Or do you know a way to distinguish between some space which is flat, and some space which is curved? How would we sense the difference between the two?
Otherwise, I'd say that it is a mistake to reify space in the way that you do, implying that it is a thing which may in some cases be flat, and in some cases be curved. And I would say that these are just different measuring techniques. If this is the case, then why the radical difference in measuring techniques?
Quoting apokrisis
This is inconsistent with language as we know it. The sign is an independent, somewhat passive thing, a physical object in the material world, which is interpreted by a mind. That's how we communicate. The sign does not interpret itself. And if this were the case, a fundamental feature of language, ambiguity, and misunderstanding would not be possible. Further, another fundamental feature of language, communication between two distinct entities would also be impossible, because there would no longer be a difference of interpretation between two people. So this would necessitate that you and I, and every other human being who communicate with each other are one entity. But we are not, and that's why there is such a thing as ambiguity in language. Therefore, I do not see the basis for your claim, "Pattee is correct."
Quoting apokrisis
Let me show you the problems here. Placing both "the switch" and "the will" as internal to the sign denies the possibility of "free will". It denies the possibility of doing other than what the sign tells one to do, and this is hard determinism. On the large scale, it denies the possibility of random mutations which are an essential part of evolution. Also, it denies the possibility of ambiguity, as mentioned above, and this is essential to indecisiveness, skepticism, and philosophy in general. So the problems with Pattee's proposal are numerous.
The line 12” long could not have been a line 14” long.
Add 2” to a 12” line there is a 14” line, but there is no longer a 12” line.
Take this universe as it is, change something in it, it is no longer the same universe. It isn’t a universe that is different; it is a different universe that is.
That there could have been a different universe is true; that this universe could have been different is not true.
.....and thank you as well.
Kant starts his book The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)
Matter is the movable in space; space, which is itself movable, is termed material or relative space; that in which all motion must in the last resort be conceived (which is therefore itself absolutely immovable), is termed pure or absolute space.
This is the sort of strawman often used to "refute" free will. The determinist will characterize the free willist as saying "What I did, could be different ", and then ask for a demonstration.
I was thinking about this, just before my internal shut-down kicked in.....did Leibniz actually call out monads as noumenal, or did Kant merely accuse him of it? I know the latter is true, but if Leibniz didn’t, then perhaps Kant was barking up the wrong side of the tree.
What say you, Good Sir?
I've only read half of Leibniz's New Essays before I figured I should read Locke before I finished this, and haven't got back to it.
With what I can recall, I don't think Leibniz speaks of noumena. He would probably be against such concepts, given his intellectual optimism.
I think Kant was arguing that Leibniz' monads were the kind of thing of which we could not have knowledge of, nor know how they could be possible.
So I'm thinking Kant was using monads as an example against the idea of "positive noumena".
Sure. And by this interpretation of the wording, every true statement is necessarily true.
So what is meant by "If Nixon had lost the election, he wouldn't have been disgraced" ?
Is that a meaningless statement?
And he ends it.....
“....From this we can draw two conclusions: (1) All motion or rest must be merely relative; neither can be absolute. That is, matter can be thought of as moving or at rest only in relation to •matter and never in relation to •mere space without matter. It follows that absolute motion—·i.e. motion that doesn’t consist in one portion of matter changing its relation to another portion·—is simply impossible. (2) For this very reason, there can’t be, out of all the ever-wider concepts of motion or rest in relative space, one that is ·so wide as to be· valid for every appearance. ·To have such an all-purpose concept·, we have to make room in our minds for the thought of a space that isn’t nested within any larger space, i.e. an absolute space in which all relative motions are nested. In such a space everything empirical is movable,. . . .but none can be valid as absolute motion or rest. . . . So absolute space is necessary not as a concept of an actual object but as an idea that is to regulate all our thoughts about relative motion. If we want all the appearances of motion and rest to be held together by a determinate empirical concept, we must put them within the framework of the idea of absolute space...”
....in which is found the last resort, absolute space as a mere idea, not a conception, not an empirical reality. If all motion, therefore all space is relative, then absolute motion and space is impossible.
Simple as that, that something can be thought, exhibits Kant’s propensity for complementary dualisms writ large. More familiar to us as e.g., phenomena/noumena.
Agreed. What I did could only have been what I did. That I could have done otherwise is completely irrelevant, with respect to what I actually did.
Thanks. I was sure you’d hepa brutha get his mind right.
I would say, no. I mean....he wasn’t disgraced because he won, which implies a meaning contained by the statement. Rather than meaningless, I’d say....moot. He didn’t lose, so, in the immortal words of the great James Hetfield....nothing else matters.
In juxtaposition to statements about the universe, say, this statement is conditioned by “if/then”, as opposed to “is/is not”, which permits a play of imagination in the former for eventualities with respect to different occurrences, which cannot hold for the latter.
To make the statements logically consistent, for “the universe could have been different.....”, you’d have to say, “Nixon could have lost....”, but then we’re back to the universe statement, insofar as it is the case Nixon couldn’t have lost, because he didn’t.
————-
Meaningless: that proposition in which the conceptions in the predicate and the subject have no relation to each other, re: grass is measured in temperature.
Meaningless: that conception in a subject or predicate of a proposition, that is undefined, re: all speezles are goops, but not all goops are speezles.
I’m Sister Mary Elephant, and.......CLASS DISMISSED!!!!!.....
(Grin)
It's not saying he was disgraced because he won. It's saying that if he had lost, his disgrace couldn't have happened.
If it's not meaningless, it's either true or false.
I already know the answer to the question I asked. :razz:
Agreed. In the case of Nixon, then, it is not true that if he had lost he wouldn’t have been disgraced.
The fact of his disgrace is not determinable by his win or loss; it is possible he could have been disgraced even in losing, albeit under a different set of conditions, but disgraced nonetheless.
———-
DOH!!! I just got it. Meaninglessness due to grammar. What a dope, me.
He wouldn't have been disgraced in the way he was.
The point is, we can imagine Nixon losing without having to say that it wouldn't have been Nixon. It's just a matter of imagination.
Likewise we can say the universe could have been different without insisting that it wouldn't have been our universe.
Your view is along the lines of actualism, which I'm also fond of. It's hard determinism. It's an altered use of "could have" though.
Kripke talks about it in Naming and Necessity.
Actualism > Determinism > “could have-ism” (possiblism). One of these is not like the others.
Physicalists can shrug-off the power of information, only because it seems Idealistic to them. But, in the Enformationism thesis, Generic Information exists in a variety of forms, both Ideal and Real. That's the holistic-monistic-duality of the BothAnd Principle. From a reductionist perspective, reality is Either/Or (real or unreal). But in the holistic view, Reality & Ideality are two sides of the same coin. This unconventional notion is based on the science of Information, which has found that Mind Stuff (the original meaning of Information) is also the essence of Energy & Matter.
If that equation of immaterial Ideas with material Matter is true, then ghostly Ideas are just as "real" as physical objects. That identification of Mind & Matter does not compute in Classical Physics. But Quantum Physics has been forced to include the effects of minds on the behavior of sub-atomic particles. Of course, the interpretation of those experiments is still controversial. Nevertheless, I am assuming that Ideas are "real in their own right, and not because they are derived from . . . matter". In fact, in my theory, ideas have the right of priority, in that the original Singularity could not have been a physical object, but more like a program of ideas & instructions for creating a world from nothing-but the power of EnFormAction. :nerd:
Is information the fifth state of matter? :
In 2019, physicist Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy, existing as a separate state of matter, a conjecture known as the mass-energy-information equivalence principle.
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/information-energy-mass-equivalence/
A quantum case of mind over matter? :
New research proposes a way to test whether quantum entanglement is affected by consciousness.
https://insidetheperimeter.ca/a-quantum-case-of-mind-over-matter/
Generic Information :
Information is Generic in the sense of generating all forms from a formless pool of possibility : the Platonic Forms.
BothAnd Blog, post 33
:cool:
Logical necessity is about abstractly defined relationships between terms. E.g. If A, then B.
Physical causation is about figuring out between which particular physical phenomena which abstractly defined relationship applies. If I put socks in the drawer, they are in the drawer.
It's still like putting socks in a drawer, just on a tiny tiny scale and super superfast.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, because that's how we do physics.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why?
You're being kind of cryptic, but I think you're suggesting that you never think about what might have been and I think you probably do, so...
It's my guess that when matter, particles, are in some nice shape wrt each other, the total mass is someone higher. Or, on a memory chip, if the 1's and 0's show an ordered pattern, the mass of the chip is slightly higher than if they showed randomness. What if the showed total order? Say all 1 or all 0?
To be flat is simply to have zero curvature.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That’s where we started. Draw a triangle and see if it indeed adds up to 180 degrees.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you using the royal “we”?
Plainly language evolved to switch behaviours on and off in a social setting. That is what communication boils down to. Getting folk to act in coordinated fashion.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The problem is that you failed to interpret the words correctly. That shows how human language indeed creates ample scope for ambiguity, disagreement, personal freedom, along with clarity, agreement and communal wisdom.
You can’t be right unless you could have been wrong. And lucky for you, when you are so persistently misunderstanding what is said, the only way is up from here. :up:
I don't think so. When we look back in time, as is the case with "could have been different", it is impossible that things could have been different without altering what is now. "Our universe" refers to what is the case now, so it is impossible that things in the past could have been different without making "our universe" now, a different universe.
When we look toward the future though, instead of toward the past, we see real possibility as to what could be in the future. Because of this, the "our universe", now, which is a necessary product of the past, has numerous possibilities as to what it may lead to as "our universe" at a future time. So the one and the same universe, which is "our universe" right now, has many possibilities as to the universe it will become, at a future time. Therefore there are numerous different universes which "our universe" could become in the future. This is why free will is a valid concept, because the free will can influence which of the numerous possible universes will become "our universe" in the future.
That's one way to look at it. There are others.
Wasn’t intending to be; just pointing out doctrinal and logical oppositions.
—————
Quoting frank
Sure I do, you’re correct. I just like to separate what can be imagined, from what I know.
From the wandering inexplicability file, Kant treats imagination as a full-fledged cognitive faculty, so you know I’d never deny my use of it.
Right, and to have zero curvature is to have no curvature at all, which is a direct contradiction of having curvature, being curved.
Quoting apokrisis
Drawing a triangle won't show me that the angles of the triangle add up to 180 degrees. The angles need to be measured. And my point was, that the numbering system, by which the degrees are measured, is completely arbitrary. A circle could have been assigned 400 degrees, 100, 1000, any number of degrees in the circle. Therefore a triangle might have any number of degrees. So drawing a triangle doesn't produce 180 degrees. Arbitrarily assigning 360 degrees to the circle ensures that a triangle will be measured by that convention, to have 180 degrees. But we could adopt any convention.
Quoting apokrisis
Wow, I'm really surprised that this makes sense to an intelligent person like yourself.
Quoting apokrisis
Look apokrisis, the fact that I can interpret the words incorrectly, is clear evidence that the sign does not do the work, as you represent Pattee's position on the matter. I do the work of interpreting the sign. If it was the sign which did the work, then whenever it appeared like a person misinterpreted a sign, we'd have to say that in reality the person received a different sign. The work done by the sign to have itself understood was different, therefore it must be a different sign because it's doing a different thing. But clearly you and I can read the very same piece of written information, and we can each interpret a different meaning. So the work is not being done by the sign, the agent is an independent reader of the sign.
There’s nothing ‘ghostly’ about mathematical logic applied to physical processes. That enables us to peer into the domain of pure possibility and actualise something we see in material form. That’s how inventions happen!
Kant is not remembered for his work on philosophy of science. I think the relevant comments are in the Critique of Pure Reason.
Do you know what he tried to establish with his gloves in empty space?
It is the bounding limit on curvature.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That point was dealt with.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True that.
I have precisely zero idea of what you're on about. The salient points regarding time and space are laid out in the Transcendental Doctrine of the Elements in the Critique of Pure Reason. It's a very difficult text to understand but regardless I can't see how subsequent scientific discoveries undermine the basic contentions that ' Space does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves' and that 'Time is not an empirical conception'. You can peruse those sections here.
It's not though.
Quoting Mww
Don't we all? 'What can be imagined' is all that's being talked about when we say Nixon might not have been elected or that the universe might have had other laws.
Have you never heard of his left- or right-hand glove in empty space?
Space is just the non aetheral stuff particles move in and reach for each other. It contains the means for interaction. It can be considered to be made of the hidden non-local (space!) variables of QM, constituting the link between gravity and QM.
That's what Kant is denying - space is not any kind of 'stuff' or 'thing' or 'object' so is not 'made of' anything.
But how can particles then interact? Space is not "the nothing".
Kant doesn't say that space and time are 'nothing' but that they are inextricably bound to our consciousness of them, in other words, they constituted in part in and by our awareness of them. There are academic papers around on comparision of Kant and Neils Bohr's epistemology in respect of the nature of atomic phenomena.
True enough, but at the expense of what we know.
————
You don’t consider actuality/determinism and possibility opposites? Is it not true that if a thing is determined, its being other than that determination, is impossible? And if a thing is merely possible, or a thing is possibly this or possibly that, no determination as yet relates to it?
I don't know if the nature of space is a digression from cause and effect. Isn't space a logical a priori for them to exist?
I think you're talking about epistemic possibility.
It's only that once these discussions begin to involve interpretations of quantum mechanics, then they tend to fall into holes from which there is rarely an exit.
Quoting Haglund
As I understand it, those kinds of arguments of Kant's belong to his pre-critical phase. His mature philosophy is represented in the Critique of Pure Reason and subsequent works.
Im not involving QM, insofar the objective existence of space is involved. It's nature. If objects interact doesn't soace have to be an objective medium?
With respect to what we’ve been talking about, yes. I can only converse within the limits of my knowledge and this world as I understand it.
You didn’t answer the question: “you don’t consider.....”
Yes. Was it supposed to be a wiki thing? That’s what came up.
I'm not sure what you meant by "nice shape", but in information theory it's the relationships that make the "form" or "pattern" or "meaning". So, perhaps the degree & kind of inter-relationship (0% to 100%, angular/linear, etc) defines the properties of the particle. But, I'm also just guessing. Along the same lines, I understand that energy at light-speed is massless, but as light energy slows down, it gains weight (mass). In other words, matter (mass) is just heavy light. Of course, physicists may not appreciate such an over-simplified layman's explanation. But it works for my amateur information-based worldview.
Regarding "total order" (100% crystalline), defined as completely non-random, there would be no room for motion or change, So the system would freeze-up like a block of ice. Likewise, zero order would be completely random, with no patterns and no forms or meanings. But the human mind is not equipped to even imagine such things, except in the form of metaphors (block of ice). Human logic only works in the normal range, in the middle of the possibility (Bell) curve. When we conjecture at the extremes, the margin for error approaches infinity. :gasp:
Yes. This started with Wayfarer saying that X is logically necessary if it's happening by natural laws.
That isn't true because we can imagine the counterfactual: our universe with different laws.
Epistemic possibility has nothing to do with that.
Suppose my random number comes from an observation of unpredictable minute changes in atmospheric pressure?
Those changes shouldn't be unpredictable to Laplace's demon.
Gotta move up to the 21st century, buddy.
It was just a metaphor. We can imagine logical relationships, but we can't see or touch them. So, we talk about logical relationships as-if they were physical connections. Those metaphors & analogies allow us to "peer into" un-actualized possibilities. And, by following the implicit Logic, to make some of those not-yet-real concepts/patterns become real physical things (inventions). "Spirit! Reveal yourself!" :joke:
The Experiment at the Institut Metapsychique, Paris :gasp:
PS__For clarity of exposition, I try to keep mental stuff (ideas) and physical stuff (matter) separate. If we refer to Ideals as-if they are Real, confusion ensues. They are not the same thing, but they are related as varieties of Information.
Laplace's demon has been upgraded with the latest software by David Chalmers.
Depends which guage shotgun you shoot it in the head with.
The guy who believes rocks have feelings?
So philosophy's not your cup of tea. Nothing wrong with that. Have a good evening. :eyes:
More a form of entertainment. :cool:
Quoting frank
You too. :smile:
Right, so to actually be at that limit, as in having zero curvature, would be contradictory to having any degree of curvature at all. Kind of like dead is the bounding limit to life, and to actually be at that limit would be contradictory to being alive.
This is where there are some philosophically difficult questions to consider.
With respect to LaPlace's Daemon - the accepted wisdom is that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle forecloses the possibility of absolute determinism, because there's an inbuilt degree of uncertainty at a foundational level of atomic physics. Banno posted an academic paper challenging the accepted wisdom somewhere upthread, but I confess I haven't had time to read it.
@Gnomon - I parse the entire subject of the reality of ideas differently. My view is that proper 'intelligible objects' such as natural numbers, scientific principles, and the like, are real, but they're not existent things - they don't exist in the same way that regular objects do. They are strictly speaking noumenal - meaning 'objects of mind', although the sense in which they are 'objects' is debatable.
Where that presents difficulties, is that there is no provision in most people's minds for things to exist in different ways - in other words, things either exist, or they don't. The number 7 exists, the square root of 7 does not. Horses exist, but unicorns do not. But that doesn't allow for the fact that the sense in which 'the number 7' exists, is not the same sense in which horses exist, as it's a real abstraction, if you like.
Heisenberg says something similar in his lecture on Plato and Democritus. It's important to note that Heisenberg was a lifelong student of Platonism and a defender of proper philosophical idealism.
[quote=Werner Heisenberg, The Debate between Plato and Democritus; https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uCbeHH_ruW-WLBtpFCN3sdAR13n4Mzyi4C9It2clI7o/]This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers.... The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use them of elementary particles....it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.
During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?
I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or — in Plato's sense — Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.[/quote]
(Bolds added.)
You have talked right past the point in your usual fashion. The uncurved line is what neatly separates the lines with positive curvature from those with negative curvature. Kind of like how zero separates the positive and negative integers.
So what is important is that it lacks curvature of both kinds.
If things were not bizarre enough: Rydberg polaritons
Right, but "positive" and "negative" curvature is an arbitrary convention of measurement, just like the number of degrees in a circle. And as I said, to attribute both curved and uncurved to space, is contradiction, unless you can show how space changes from being curved to being uncurved or vise versa. Or perhaps you can show how space changes from being positively curved, to being negatively curved, to justify this convention as other than arbitrary.
What’s arbitrary about it? Parallel lines converge in the one and diverge in the other. An ant traversing a sphere sees a different world from an ant exploring a hyperbolic space. There are concrete differences.
There's no such thing as parallel lines if space is curved. As I keep saying, that would be contradictory. So your reference, parallel lines, has no place here in a curved space. And your supposed concrete differences are just a product of contradictory premises. I suggest that you look at the differences you allude to, as the difference between internal and external, but the boundary between the two cannot be a straight line. What would constitute the difference between inner space and outer space?
Crikey. And yet two lines - as x = 1 and x = 2 - can start off as points in parallel.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Cripes. You mean non-Euclidean geometry is legit?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Jeepers. You mean that one of Euclid's axioms just got violated? And hence all straight lines are really just an especially constrained instance of a curve?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I suggest you read up on intrinsic curvature and stop making a fool of yourself.
The relation between positive and negative curvature is not about a contradiction but our old friend, the dichotomy - the reciprocal relation, the (inverse) unity of opposites.
Hidden variables make everything determined. The electron in an orbital always has a well-defined position and velocity like this. For example, an electron in an s-orbital always has zero velocity, and a position somewhere in the confines of the wavefunction.
As I'm not a physicist, I can't disprove that, but suffice to say that hidden variable theories are held by only a minority of scientists, to my knowledge. I think the majority opinion is that 'the electron' has no position until it is measured. All you have until then is the equation which describes the distribution of possibilities for where it might be when it is measured but it can't be deduced from that, that it is in an unknown position. This implies that 'the electron' is not an objectively real until it is measured (as explained on the third page of this article under the heading 'Phenomenon'.) Because that undermines scientific realism it is rejected by a lot of people, arguably, this is why the 'many-worlds formulation' is popular, because it avoids this anti-realist implication, but at the cost of introducing many worlds.
Yes, but that minority is because in Copenhagen the standard was set. Einstein didn't agree. But it's what the books teach today. A majority is no proof of being right.
That doesn't make them non-random. You can only predict the gas pressure variations if you know the initial state of the gas particles. You can't predict these. The initial momentum distribution is random.
No proof is available in this respect, otherwise there would be no scope for interpretation.
Precisely. There are plans for experiments to discern. Costly and difficult though. But even to imagine this could be discerned 100 years ago!
It could be though that a particle is the noumenon and the wavefunction the phenomenon. The wavefunction being the observable jacket the particle wears. A wavefunction only reveals it's nature by repeated local interactions of the particles in it (say the flashes on a screen behind the two apertures).
Yes, according to the classical understanding of randomness, or rather we should say unlawfulness - in mathematical logic "randomness" tends to refer to algorithmic randomness that refers to the compressibility of a definable sequence such as Chaitin's Constant , whereas we are referring to the common understanding of "randomness" that indicates that the values of a sequence are being produced in an algorithmically unspecified manner -something that the intuitionists call unlawfulness, which includes sequences generated step-wise by repeatedly tossing a coin, or through the 'free willed' choices of the mathematician. For intuitionists, the distinction between lawfulness and lawlessness is practical rather than metaphysical or ontological - if a sequence is generated by using an algorithm, then it is can be said to be "lawful" in pretty much the same way that a good citizen might be said to be "law abiding" - neither of these examples appeals to the metaphysical notions of logical or causal necessity.
What you describe is the classical way of thinking that upholds the traditional philosophical dichotomy between lawfulness versus lawlessness . The classical ontological distinction between a lawless sequence versus a lawful sequence begs the existence of absolute infinity in order to conclude that a 'completed' infinite extension is possible that can be subsequently tested as to whether it corresponds to a definable function. But if the empirically meaningless notion of absolute infinity is rejected for the empirically meaningful weaker notion of potential infinity in which infinite sequences are understood to refer to unfinished sequences of a priori unknown finite length, then the previous conclusion can no longer be considered as meaningful and consequently there is no longer an ontological distinction between unlawful versus lawless processes; all we we can only speak of are similarities between finite observed portions of two or more processes that haven't thus far finished.
Quoting Haglund
When repeatedly tossing a coin ad infinitum, at any given time one has only generated a finite number of outcomes that is always identical to the prefix of some definable function. A classicist is tempted to speculate " this infinite process if continued ad infinitum might eventually contradict every definable binary total function, and hence be lawless", but such speculation isn't testable as it again begs the transcendental idea of a completed infinity of throws only with respect to which lawfulness and lawlessness become ontologically distinguishable.
Quoting Wayfarer
When we say that genotypes 'determine' phenotypes we are implictly referring to a class of situations that we recognize as bringing about this determination via the empirical contingencies of nature that we are unable to fully describe, control or predict. And so we are not appealing to causal or logical necessity when we recognise this determination, and are only appealing to our expectations of nature with respect to this recognisable class of situations. We could have alternatively said that genotypes 'miraculously' produce phenotypes with respect to such situations that bring about the magic of nature.
The ontological distinction between miracles and mechanics begs the principle of sufficient reason, which is but another form of absolute infinity in disguise.
So only in the context of infinite experiments we could say something is truly random? But what, say, about the distribution of momenta of the particles in a gas? If the particles move independently (apart from collisions), isn't the distribution random? Or do they still carry the imprint of someone previous interactions where they had functional interactions or common causes?
But the particle is what appears. The wavefunction never appears but can only be inferred. 'Phenomenon' means 'what appears'.
Quoting sime
Fair enough.
Quoting sime
:chin:
In the double slit experiment, a 2D cross section of the wavefunction seems to show itself directly on the screen. You could even say that the observation of a single flash of light in this experiment is the wavefunction collapsed to one of the eigenstates of the electron (though a dirac delta is not an eigenfunction, but you get the picture).
Now that's philosophy!
Laplace's demon knows the initial states. Obviously the answer to Beanhead's question regarding randomness is: your conclusion will follow from your assumptions.
But the question is, is the initial state random? The initial particle states of the universe seem to be in a low entropy state. Does that make them non-random? Dunno. There doesn't appear to be any patterns in their distribution yet. But time started.
The mathematics is irrelevant, because as I've explained to you numerous times, and you persistently ignore, the measuring system employed (i.e. the mathematics) is arbitrary. The fact that the measuring system is arbitrary allows you to apply contradictory measuring systems, the system for a flat surface together with the system for a curved surface, then you speak of "space" as if it has contradictory properties.
The reality is that the contradictory systems are really incommensurable, and this incommensurability produces the illusion which you suffer from, the illusion that there is a real, substantial difference between negative curvature and positive curvature. That difference only manifests as a result of applying the premise that "zero curvature" is a real possibility, for curved space. Of course it is not, because curved and not curved are contradictory.
Can't parallel lines on a sphere intersect?
I don't think a line has positive or negative curvature. A 2D surface can have positive or negative curvature, like the sphere and saddle. A torus has both, but can be defined to have zero curvature, like a cylinder.
If you are on a sphere you can only walk at the same distance from someone if you walk with different speeds.
I see this as incoherent. A sphere is a 3d curved surface. It requires 3D. Parallel lines require a flat 2D surface, a plane. The two are incompatible, and there cannot in any way, be parallel lines on the surface of a sphere. A two dimensional object is incompatible with a three dimensional object because the one has a premise which the other is lacking, the third dimension.
What is at issue in apokrisis' representation is the claim that the premise of the third dimension might be present within the two dimensional representation as 'the flat plane has "zero" extension in the third dimension'. But that's nothing more than the blatant contradiction of saying that the object is both three dimensional, and not three dimensional (the plane is curved and not curved) at the same time.
Quoting Haglund
This again is incoherent. A 2d surface is a flat plane. To give that plane any type of curvature requires a third dimension. You could give a line (1D) curvature, with a second dimension, but then what you get is a circular plane.
Randomness is just a matter of how a thing is determined, not whether it is.
Yes, but how is randomly determined different from non-randomly determined? How do initial conditions are different in a random and determined process? How can we see the determined motion of gas particles is random?
"Random" usually just means a thing wasn't intentionally selected.
Quoting frank
......rational constructs derived from the principles of universality and absolute necessity.....
Quoting frank
......rational constructs that act as explanatory devices for occurrences of a specific kind in Nature.....
Quoting frank
......that in Nature determinable by that rational construct.....
Quoting frank
.....that as an occurrence of a specific kind in Nature determined by that rational construct....
Quoting frank
....X is an occurrence of a specific kind determined by the principles of universality and absolute necessity, therefore because X occurred, it is necessary that it occurred, iff such occurrence is determinable by law......
Given the above, is not mistaken.
————-
The antithesis:
Quoting frank
.....therefore is mistaken.
————
The theorem:
Even if we imagine different laws, they are still laws, by definition. Otherwise, something must be constructed that doesn’t adhere to universality and absolute necessity, in order to permit happenings that are not necessary merely because they happened, as natural law demands. In which case, it isn’t a law that is constructed, which leaves the truth of the original proposition is unaffected.
(Propositions regulated without universality and absolute necessity shall be deemed as rules, and depending on which predicates are assigned, deemed only convictions, and of ever lesser power, mere persuasions)
The proof:
Counterfactual indicates fact that negates established fact. You’re imagining our universe factually different. Regardless, facts are predicated on law, law is predicated on principles, but imagination is predicated on mere inclination. It is classically irrational to exchange the legislative power of principle, for the indiscriminate power of inclination, which are conditions of conviction or persuasion. It is therefore permissible to imagine anything to which one is inclined, but he has no business immediately addressing it as lawful. It follows that even if one images our universe as explainable by different laws, the universe in itself cannot be explained as being different in itself merely because our explanations relative to it, are.
In effect, there is no epistemologically legislative profit in imagining counterfactuals in opposition to established law, absent the exchange of imagination for law. Our universe as it is but explained by different laws is an empty conjecture until we actually have the different laws with which to explain it, to determine that it is possible to still understand our universe as well as or better than we do now, however different such understanding may be.
The conclusion:
That the universe may be explainable by different laws is not sufficient to falsify the truth of the proposition that X is logically necessary if it happens by natural law.
————-
Quoting frank
How could it not? It is our human epistemology alone, which immediately makes any epistemic relation inescapable. We create the doctrine, we subject ourselves to it, therefore it is us. Nature, on the other hand, has nothing to do with our epistemic possibilities, but is only the occasion for its exercise.
To select implies intent already. I guarantee you that you can't randomly select 10 marbles out of a vase with red and white marbles. Approximately random, maybe... Quasi-random. Even if you take one gas atom at a time out of a gas mixture of oxygen and helium gas (equal amounts of both atoms) it's still tricky.
Nature selects things all the time with no intention; the Omicron variant, for instance.
Philosophy via sentence analysis. Never a good idea.
Philosophy via concept analysis. Always a good idea.
Not sure if that variant is selected by anyone. Or maybe that virus is more intelligent than we know. It could be that information flows both ways. It's still a dogma in biology on which that view on evolution is based...
Maybe
I suppose you are viewing "intelligible objects" from a god-like Rationalist perspective -- from outside the world system. As far as God is concerned, everything in the world is real, and objective. But. from the human point-of-view, we depend on physical senses for most of our knowledge of reality. So, what Epistemologists refer to as a priori knowledge is literally non-sense. We obtain such god-like knowledge via reasoning from specific sensory data to generalized concepts -- which are not real things, but artificial (synthetic) propositions about holistic collections of things & logical relationships. Hence, we can only communicate those intangible ideas in terms of metaphors analogous to physical things.
The Logical Positivists denied that humans are capable of "synthetic" a priori knowledge. So, they dismissed such non-empirical information as mere imaginary fantasies. I'm not a Logical Positivist, but I am aware that most people apply the term "Real" only to what they can see & touch. Any other forms of knowledge are either Un-real or Ideal or spiritual or "ghostly", and consequently their "existence" is debatable. That's why -- although Enformationism includes both aspects (real & ideal) as forms of Generic Information -- for the sake of clarity, I try to make a distinction between those ways of being. Even on this Philosophy Forum. when we discuss noumenal concepts, the debates can become never-ending. So, I am constantly forced to define my definitions to make sure that my Ideal meta-physical metaphors are not interpreted as assertions of real physical things.
Nevertheless, I like to discuss all "intelligible" topics, but those that are "synthetic" (rational) instead of natural (physical) need to be handled with kid-gloves to avoid mis-interpretation. Hence, a ghost is analogous to a human body, but some will take it to be a real entity, that under certain conditions, or with technical instruments, can be rendered sensible to the physical senses (re: shrouded image in previous post). So, I agree that "the sense in which they are 'objects' is debatable". :cool:
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. But the Enformationism thesis is all about the "different ways" (forms) that things can exist. Which is what makes its phenomenal & noumenal topics so hard for some, especially philosophical Realists & Logical Positivists, to conceive. For them, you are either a truth-seeking Realist, or a fantasy-seeking Idealist. Hence, my complementary notion of BothAnd does not compute. :meh:
You are disputing about the most significant step forward in modern geometrical thought. Drop the hysteria.
There is intrinsic curvature and Gaussian curvature. A 2d spherical surface can be curved without a third dimension its in. The inside of a 2d torus, has negative Gaussian curvature, if embedded in 3D. It's intrinsic is zero, like that of a circle or cylinder.
With respect to "the criterion of objectivity": I did some research on the word and found that it only comes into use in the early modern period. And I contend that this is because of an actual shift in consciousness that marks the advent of modernity, which is when humans begin to orient themselves with respect to objects and things, or become aware of themselves as separate subjects in a domain of objects. Prior to this reality was experienced very differently (and so, was actually different.) But you generally won't find direct awareness of this shift or re-orientation in the subject of philosophy, certainly not in analytic philosophy. Hegel might have had an awareness of it, with his emphasis on the historicity of consciousness. Also maybe you find awareness of it in anthropology, philosophical sociology (for instance Max Weber's 'spirit of capitalism') but more markedly in authors such as Owen Barfield and Jean Gebser. *
Quoting Gnomon
Again, that customary attitude, which is practically assumed, grows out of empiricism as a stance or attitude towards the world. Locke and Hume (in particular) are so profoundly influential in our culture, we see the world through the spectacles they fashioned without being aware of it. ('What spectacles?' people will ask.) And I think you're still actually thinking within that mode, while wanting to see beyond it, and sensing something beyond it That's why you revert to the images of 'ghostliness' or 'ethereality' to depict your understanding of anything 'beyond the empirical', because you still are trying to conceive of what is beyond it in quasi-objective terms. Whereas what is needed is a kind of gestalt shift or re-orientation into a different kind of cognitive modality, which of course is a very difficult thing to either accomplish or convey (and I can't claim with certainty that I have done either). But, I think you're heading in the right direction.
Quoting Gnomon
That's an equivocation of the meaning of "synthetic". Synthetic substances are indeed artificial, but that is not what is meant in Kantian philosophy:
source.
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[sup] * Just found those two great blog entries, am going to go back and absorb them after writing this. Ain't the internet amazing. [/sup]
Always knew you had it in you.
Did we agree on this?
I’ve come to the view that what are described as ‘scientific laws’ are where physical causation can be harnessed to logical necessity. That’s what enables the application of logical and mathematical methods to practical and theoretical sciences, to great effect, as evidenced by the progress of science and technology since Galileo. But it never goes ‘all the way down’ due to the fact that empiricism is restricted in scope to contingent facts.
The topic I’m still very interested in studying in greater detail is the significance of Kant’s ‘synthetic a priori’ and the application of all of these ideas to the subject of metaphysics.
Grade? 1 - 10?
If you can get back to us with a good brief summary of this matter, please do. Some years ago I spent time with this but, not being an academic, found it slippery. Silly question perhaps, but if god is understood as a necessary being, is god a putative example of synthetic a priori?
I don't think logical necessity is as simple as might be supposed. 's mention of linear logic and mine of logical pluralism hint as more depth.
Our difference might be that while you suppose "physical causation can be harnessed to logical necessity", I suggest "logical necessity can be harnessed to physical causation". It's not a surprise that the mathematics we choose to talk about the world happens to fit the word, anymore than that a Philips head screw driver fits a Philips head screw, or that a knife happens to be able to cut a tomato.
I am puzzled by folk returning to Kant. Quine's account of the analytic/synthetic division should have put an end to the synthetic a priori.
Being a left-leaning do-gooder, I refuse to grade.
But as mentioned above, I'd gently commend Quine to you, to help you along your path.
Is your appeal to authority supposed to impress me? Did you just meet me yesterday? Are you going to defend your assertions or not? Can you justify your claim that space is the type of thing which can be both curved and not curved at the same time? Will you resolve this contradiction?
Quoting Banno
That’s a lame attitude, it seeks to explain away the ability of reason to make genuine discoveries - to uncover, disclose, intuit, things about the world which were never previously known and could not be known by any other means. It’s a kind of covert neo-Darwinism which reduces everything about humans to an adaptation, it’s what I mean about modern philosophy being basically irrational (or sub-rational).
well, as I’m saying, reading Kant is just hard work but I’ve downloaded a very nicely-formatted edition of his Prologemena for Kindle and am finding it generally approachable. It’s written in a deliberately user-friendly kind of style even with some humour in places. But it’s still very dry.
The whole Hume-Kant argument is basically this. Hume and the other empiricists have the conviction that all knowledge is acquired by experience (in the broadest definition including ‘sensory input’, which the tradition confusingly calls ‘sensible’.) Locke’s conviction was that the mind is tabula rasa, a blank slate, he rejects anything like innate ideas (the historical precendent being Plato’s Meno, where innate knowledge of geometry is elicited from a slave boy.) Empiricism then amounts to the conviction that only what can be validated with reference to sensable data can amount to a valid knowledge claim. A priori truths are an exception because they’re true by definition - the textbook example being that you can say of a bachelor that he’s an unmarried man. Even though it’s a trite example, the principle has broad scope, including (Hume would argue) mathematics and all those things we can know a priori, that is, on the basis of logic not experience.
I think in very simple and high-level terms, the thrust of Kant’s critique is that it’s not possible to reduce everything to the merely sensable. Even to interpret sense-experience to the point of being able to talk rationally about it, requires that the mind calls on the ‘categories of the understanding’ which are not themselves acquired through experience but have to be regarded as innate in some sense (this is where I see the tie in between Kant and Aristotelian hylomorphism, it’s laid out in this book.) This is the basis of his claim that ‘percepts without concepts are blind’. Kant also shows that even logical claims are not simply matters of definition - that we can come to conclusions based on logical grounds that encompass more than simply the terms from which the conclusions are drawn - that is where the synthetic a priori comes in. The mind is all the time organising and managing incoming sensory data in accordance with innate faculties. If that sounds commonplace, it’s because Kant’s philosophy has also had a huge impact on the way we think about thinking. (There’s a scholar called Andrew Brooks who specialises in Kant’s impact on cognitive science.) But Kant hasn’t displaced empirical dogmatism, because, I think, his critique is very hard to understand. Hence the widespread conviction that what is real has to be ‘out there somewhere’, situated in time and space.
Why is this concerned with metaphysics? For Kant, it’s because metaphysics must be based on non-experiential or a priori understanding. However where I think Kant is vulnerable to criticism is that he doesn’t allow for the category of extraordinary cognition corresponding with divine illumination. This is why Jacques Maritain criticises him. So Kant is not the last word. (Sorry for the long post.)
It is meant to inform you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What contradiction? Even in ordinary language, flat and curved would be a pair of dichotomously opposed limits - two extremes of the one spectrum. Something would be flat to the degree it wasn't curved, and curved to the degree it wasn't flat.
The question for maths is how to go about measuring the relative curvature of a smooth manifold once you have got past the naive Euclidean view that space is some kind of absolutely flat backdrop.
You might rant and rave in defence of this antique view. But geometry has just got on with developing the means for modelling spaces where perfect flatness only means an extreme constraint on any intrinsic curvature.
It would help to learn more about this subject before mouthing off further. For this purpose, I would suggest Wildberger's lectures on hyperbolic geometry.
The pertinent bit is how he shows that the Euclidean yardsticks developed for measuring spaces without curvature - distance and angle - must be replaced by the new dichotomy of quadrance and spread when dealing with hyperbolic "flatness".
So there is nothing arbitrary going on as it is all motivate by the rigorousness of dialectical argument.
And Appollonius had already worked out the basics for this approach back in 200 BC.
So even if your knowledge of maths is still rooted in distant antiquity, you ought to know better.
See Wildberger's lecture series - https://youtu.be/EvP8VtyhzXs
I get it and within this hints of idealism.
"Two extremes of one spectrum" is not a proper description. It is not what you told me, nor is it what your Gaussian curvature exemplified. A flat thing has zero curvature. And anything which is not flat has some degree of curvature. They are not two extremes of one spectrum. Being flat (zero curvature) excludes any degree of curvature. And any degree of curvature excludes being flat. So all degrees are degrees of curvature, and flatness has no degrees, flat is zero degrees of curvature
Quoting apokrisis
I agree, that if we are going to work with curvatures, we need to get past the "absolutely flat backdrop".
But it's you who is not willing to let go of the flat backdrop. You insist on a "zero curvature", which I've shown is nothing but contradiction. And from this contradictory premise you produce positive and negative curves, which only have meaning relative to that contradictory premise, "zero curvature", which is nothing but the manifestation of your refusal to get "past the naive Euclidean view that space is some kind of absolutely flat backdrop". If you'd discard that flat backdrop, "zero curvature", then you could get on with a real understanding of curvature, rather than one based in contradiction.
Wittgenstein was a fucking idiot, and he had not one reasonable philosophical thought.
Here he merely regurgitated Hume's tenet, and he makes the categorical mistake of CATEGORICALLY denying that causation can exist. Hume said things could be mere coincidences, but consistent in their appearance, and that gives an impression of causation. But Hume also recommended that causation is possible, and that the coincidence theory is not superior to the causation theory. Fucking idiot stupid cunt-face Wittgenstein carried it too far, making fart out of his thought.
And how are you measuring that degree of curvature exactly? What is your non-arbitrary yardstick? :rofl:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Let me check. So to be flat is to lack curve. And to be curved is to lack flat?
Thus we agree? :up:
All that remains is for you to explain how you measure the difference in some non-arbitrary metric basis.
I await the next bout of bluster and rant. You are never actually going to check out the primers I provide you.
Meh. I think it’s more likely that either people don’t understand it, or don’t want to engage with Quine's work. This line gets us nowhere.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think you could be more wrong. That maths is made by people enhances its beauty. That we can build such a thing, not just to talk about, but to manipulate the world is what invokes awe.
People do maths, not god.
Quoting Banno
Nothing to do with what you said previously, that the effectiveness of math is due to it being ‘fit’. As I said, covert neo-Darwinism.
I see no reason to engage with Quine, and he’s not known outside the parlour-game which passes for philosophy in today’s culture. I know you and I have very different ideas of what constitutes the subject - yours is much more in line with philosophy as it is taught and understood in today’s universities, my original orientation was more counter-cultural in orientation so naturally not disposed towards that.
I think a strong subtext behind this whole conversation is the instinctive dislike of the idea of ‘natural law’ - because it harks back to its theistic origins, ‘the handiwork of God’. That’s reason enough for a lot of folk to flee screaming. It’s why I post Nagel’s essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. (And at least Nagel has broken out of the ivory tower.)
Quoting Tom Storm
Significant that Bishop Berkeley was strictly empiricist. It took me a long while to understand how that could be so, but I came to see that in his interpretation, what we take to be external objects, really are just ideas or sensations in the experiential domain.
That's right. I hate Wittgenstein for 1. He had no original thought and 2. He copied thoughts of others, he claimed the thoughts are his own, and in the process he reinterpreted those thoughts wrongly.
He was a complete fuck-up.
Yeah, that's really about Must, isn't it.
I see no reason to engage with Kant, and he’s not known outside the parlour-game which passes for philosophy in today’s culture. As if out thinking had made no progress over the last two hundred years.
Your need to see "natural laws" as transcendent in the hope that they might somehow lead you beyond yourself to an ultimate understanding. You keep struggling to put into words what cannot be expressed in words. Hence enlightenment always eludes you.
But this is neither here nor there; we can psychologise, stack ad hom on ad hom, even throw in the occasional insult; but it will get nowhere.
In the end, silence.
You say that a lot. :wink:
Not so. He was an officer on the front lines, decorated several times.
(But I kind of agree regarding his wondrous rule-following paradox.)
That was more Kripke.
Thanks. I did not know that.
Yes, the bizarre addition example.
I knew Lester Germer slightly, as a famous physicist (wave/particle duality) but more as a fellow rock climber. My impression of him grew considerably when I found he had been a fighter pilot in WWI. A multi-dimensional person.
Following a rule is not interpreting a rule; it is, rather, an act. Hence the "meaning" of the rule is found in the use to which it is put.
If this were true, truly true, then the entire criminal justice system could be dismantled. Which it is not.
Wittgenstein fail. Again.
You can't follow a rule unless you understand it; and understanding the rule requires the interpretation of the rule.
Since most rules have wording that forces a universal interpretation, at least the good rules, therefore the the paradox is demystified.
Yep.
Quoting god must be atheist
Nuh. Understanding a rule requires that you are able to implement it. A child demonstrates that they understand "2+2 = 4" not by interpreting it as "Two plus two equals four" but by moving blocks around, colouring in squares, and arguing over shared cakes.
False. An adult can easily and obviously understand "You must walk up the stairs to the entrance" but he can't implement the rule if he is wheelchair bound.
This is contentious. Maybe the child does NOT understand the rule but he can implement it. For instance, the rule here is not that 2 and 2 are four, but that the + sign means the two quantities are combined on the other side of the = sign. This is my interpretation. I can therefore say with certainty that 23523+4930 = 28453, but the child you mentioned does NOT interpret the rule, so he can't follow the rule.
2+2=4 is a special case, which helps demonstrate that a completely different rule is followed from how you and I interpret + and =. The child does not interpret these; he does not understand the meaning of them; therefore he can't do 393848+5958= sum. Implementation won't help him.
Ableist pejorative aside, that's a poor example. "You must walk up the stairs to the entrance" is not a rule. But if one understands "You must walk up the stairs to the entrance", then they understand that they must walk up the stairs to the entrance, whether they can or cannot - they understand the actions required, which is something beyond the mere interpretation of the instruction.
Or if you don't like the instruction, then try this:
"You can get to the entrance by walking up the ramp, or else by walking up the stairs. The rule in this game is that you must walk up the stairs, not on the ramp." This is easy enough to understand by a person, even one in a wheelchair, who can't implement it.
If you have a special rule to define what you understand as a rule, please tell me. Like I said, good rules are interpreted by all the same way. If you and I interpret rules differently, please give me your definition. I'll abide by it and show you the same self-contradiction in the claim.
It may seem to you that way, but it is not like that. Addition is a rule; the understanding of a rule is to combine the additives into a sum. That is the RULE. Specific implementations depend on understanding this rule. Not having performed a particular addition, is not an indication that you don't understand the rule. If you understand the rule, you can do additions, and not having performed them does not deny your ability and potential to properly perform them.
Sure, it is an instruction.
Quoting Banno
Sure, interpretation is part of understanding a rule. Wittgenstein's point is that interpretation is insufficient.
Quoting Banno
These two are by you. Which of the two is true? Both can't be at the same time and in the same respect.
Quoting Banno
Here you clearly deny that interpretation is required.
I rest my case. You can continue if you like, but I have made my point, and any more text by me will be superfluous and redundant.
But if you can't do addition, you do not understand the rule. The doing is central.
Quoting god must be atheist
Both. What I am denying is that the whole of understanding a rule lies in interpreting it. One shows that one understands the rule by implementing it. Implementation is more then interpretation.
Quoting god must be atheist
Cool.
It seems you are conflating understanding a rule with showing that you understand a rule. One could understand a rule without ever implementing it. If this were not so, for example any spectator of a sport they never played would be unable to understand its rules; which is obviously an absurd conclusion.
I think that's a different point, but yeah, whatever...
Could one? What would 'understanding' the rule consist in?
Having a belief about what ought (or can) be done next? That would just be to have an opinion about the rule, nor to understand it.
Knowing what ought (or can) be done next? What would distinguish 'knowing' from merely 'having a view on'?
@Banno's point about the proof of the pudding is not merely about the difference between knowing and proving, it's about the fact that a rule is necessarily public and so a merely private understanding of it remains a mere opinion until demonstrated.
So what does 'understanding' a rule consist in?
If it's obvious, then it shouldn't be too hard to write it down. Humour me. What is the obvious state that 'understanding' a rule consists in?
Quoting Janus
How do you know you understand the rules of tennis?
The same way I know I understand anything; I experience a state of comprehension. Perhaps nothing I say could convince you about that; but that's fine, because your conviction that I understand is not necessary to my understanding. Think about it; if I didn't understand the rules of tennis, I would not be able to demonstrate them, by either implementing them or describing them. If I did implement them or describe them to your satisfaction; how would I know that you were a competent judge (which would require that you understood the rules of tennis)?
What? Have you never experienced a state of comprehension but later found you were mistaken? In what way is your personal conviction that you understand the rules of tennis a measure that you do, in fact, understand the rules of tennis?
Quoting Janus
Of course you would. I could well demonstrate following the rules of rugby despite not understanding the rules of rugby. An entire game might go by without my breaking a rule I didn't even know existed.
Quoting Janus
All the while no-one disagrees. Rules are a public affair. We can't all be wrong about them - otherwise there'd have to be some 'truth-bearer' of rules outside of human culture.
Having admitted that it is the agreement of others which determines the rules, how can you then say that your own personal judgement of whether you have understood what the consensus is, is now sufficient?
Let's say, for example, that you watch one hundred games and in each one, every time the ball lands on the line it is declared 'out'. You might think you understand the rule "every time the ball lands on the line, it is declared 'out'". But in the one hundred and first game you watch, you see a ball land on the line and not be declared 'out' because light conditions are low that day and the rules say that a ball on the line is declared 'in' when light levels are low to give the benefit of the doubt*
* I know nothing about tennis, these are example rules I made up.
For causality, what this means is every cause-effect relationship we discover is compatible with all possible such relationships. So, if the sun doesn't rise tomorrow or Russell's chicken is beheaded the coming day, these, in no way, contradict the preceding sunrises or early-morning bird feed.
I'd say it boils down to statistics, specifically the quality of the sample.
Moreover, mathematicians, it's said, don't just stop with finding patterns, they're also in the business of explaining why there is a pattern in the first place.
Signing off...
Convention establishes rules. It also establishes language, which enables me to understand the rules, without having to implement them. If I couldn't be sure that I understood rules, how could I be sure that I understood that there is consensus? I think you like arguing just for the sake of it, and that is against the rules.
Quoting Isaac
Yep.
.Quoting Janus
Too analytic. Understanding the rule and implementing it are coextensive. As if a lecture on bike riding were enough to teach you how to ride a bike.
There's a lot of ambiguity going on in the use of the word "rule". So understanding the rules of tennis does imply being able to participate in a public demonstration of that understanding, involving actual balls and nets and other stuff, and other people. You are sitting in the stand, contemplating the meaning of "Duce", but that is not a private understanding. that understanding is about balls and nets and other stuff; Further, enacting those rules includes talking about them as part of a community.
How does it do that?
Quoting Janus
Consensus is a fact of world. Certainty about consensus is an entirely different process.
One might be wrong about F=ma, but unlike a rule, F=ma is a constraint the external world places on our models of it. We could all be wrong about F=ma, because that's what to be 'wrong' means in the context of a scientific model. But with a rule, we cannot possibly all be wrong. There's no rule-maker we might all consult with and find out we'd all got it wrong, it's just not what 'wrong' means in the context of a rule. 'Wrong' here means something like 'to treat the matter one way and not be understood to have played by the rules'.
So all the while you declare balls in tennis to be 'out' and there's an understanding that you're playing (or otherwise partaking in) tennis, you are following the rule, it's enacted. But the moment you claim - the rule is "all balls hitting the line are declared out", you're no longer demonstrating an understanding of the rule, you're declaring a belief of your about the rule. You're no longer playing tennis, but talking about tennis. You maybe even talking about what the rule ought to be. But it's not what the the rule is.
Quoting Isaac
Irrelevant. I acknowledged that the rules are established by consensus. If can describe the rules then I understand them; I don't have to play tennis, which I would need to do to enact, to implement, them. My question about consensus was not about established convention, but about whether, if I described the rules of tennis, I could be sure that there was universal consensus, or not, that I had understood them. If I can't understand a rule without demonstrating it, then how could I be sure that I had understood consensus without demonstrating it, in other words? You and Isaac are clutching at straws, and you haven't grasped enough to even construct a decent strawman.
An embarrassing load of crap, Isaac; you should be ashamed.
Agreed. So can you?
That's why I provided the example of the ball hitting the line. In it one 'describes' a rule, but it is shown that they don't then understand it. The whole rule following paradox is about the underdetermination of any description of the rule.
Quoting Janus
I tried to expand on what I see as the difference. Understanding how to play chess and understanding how gravity works are two very different states of affairs. Likewise, understanding a rule and understanding that there is a consensus are two very different states of affairs.
Quoting Janus
If that's the quality of reply you're reaching for just a few posts in we'll leave it there.
Ehhhhh.....Quine. Been there, done that, back when cars had fins and penny-loafers were exactly that, finding a near-perfect exhibition of apples (representation) and oranges (meaning), which was, I must say, of great help on my path. I nonetheless appreciate your concern for my well-being.
Ohfercrissakes......all this beating around the proverbial “rule” bush.
Without ever once stating what a rule is, its origin, or its import......
Quoting Banno
....yeah, sorta just like that.
Why, do you not know? Have you been using the word 'rule' thus far in your (I'm going to guess, substantial) lifespan thus far by just winging it?
Anyway, since Quine didn't do it for you, what about Kripke? Those annoying necessary non-a priori statements?
I'd measure in the same way that curvature is normally measured, classically, relative to a central point. That's why I said, replace your "negative and positive" curves, which are completely arbitrary, dependent on the arbitrary placement of a straight line, with something more real, "internal and external". Toward the central point is inward, away from the central point is outward.
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, we agree on this. But you proposed degrees of each, when in reality there is no degrees of straightness because it is ideal, and cannot vary from the ideal, and there is only degrees of curvature, because curvature does not meet the standard of "ideal".
Quoting apokrisis
When you come to accept the fact that straight lines are not at all curved, and are therefore categorically distinct from curved things, (straight lines being purely theoretical, ideal), you might be able to understand that straight lines are used as a tool for measuring curvature. Further, the degree of curvature is measured with straight lines relative to a point determined as the centre. Classically, we'd assume a circle, and assign an arbitrary number of degrees (360) to the circle. Any point on the arc or curve would demonstrate equal distance from a central point, and the degree of curvature would be determined that way.
However, we know that pi is irrational, and perfect circles are unreal, so some small degree of arbitrariness will enter into the act of designating the centre point. But the larger the number of points on the curve which one uses, the more accurate the determination of centre point will be. And since the centre point is an attribute of the curve itself, as a defining feature of a circle, the measurement is non-arbitrary in a fundamental way.
Quoting Wayfarer
Banno is not even willing to consider as relevant, thoughts which are only two hundred years old, that implies no understanding of, or complete rejection of "the test of time".
So we have Kant:
Reason provides categories that inform our expectations of the world. So yes, necessity is in there. (Nobody is paying attention to what "logical" necessity actually is, so we may as well drop the logic part.)
Wittgenstein:
Has nothing to do with the topic as far as I can see. Somebody could explain how if they think otherwise.
Schopenhauer :
Causality is about explanation. We're bound to certain ways of thinking, so yes, we think in terms of necessity when producing our explanations.
Anybody else?
Yep, but irrelevant. Most of the time I’m just as conventional as the next guy. I have to be, in order to get along with them. But in places such as this, no one should be conventional.
Perhaps they are. Beside the point, still, insofar as notions of rules merely presupposes them, and the discussion remains lopsided argument from example, which is....truth be told.....all analytic philosophy in general, and OLP in particular, grants as meaningful.
Which is fine, people can talk about things any way they like, except herein (glancing up at the category title), for the inconsistency with where the discussion is taking place.
Probably. Usually, some definition is subsequently undermined in order to justify that which didn’t belong to the original in the first place. All in the name of mandatory originality.
Quoting frank
I think it plain redundant, so we lose nothing but dropping it. Necessity is a logical condition anyway, right?
Usually. There's logical, metaphysical, epistemic, and physical possibility. Necessity usually has to do with a priori knowledge.
Kripke's aposteriori necessity is interesting, but it's nothing earth shaking. It's kin to epistemic possibility.
And what underpins all of that? And everything else? Without exception?
Then, dare I ask, what should we be?
I think it's just observations about how we think. Is that what you mean?
Critical.
Even observations of how we think presupposes something, is reducible to something.
Rubbish.
(Like that?)
That's an interesting observation. The late emergence of "objectivity", as a formal verbalizable concept , may be explainable in terms similar to Julian Jaynes' theory of the bicameral mind. He proposed that explicit human consciousness was a consequence of complex social interactions, requiring words to distinguish me from you. I don't know if that thesis is provable, but it's certainly suitable for philosophical conjectures.
Another possible connection, that occurred to me, is the Golden Bough postulation, that the distinction between religious (magical) beliefs and scientific (empirical) thought processes may have evolved along with the emergence of technologies, that gave man more control over his environment. Again, It not only became possible to discriminate between objective Nature and subjective Mind, but it became necessary to articulate the difference between the subjective speaker and objective hearer ; between imagination and perception. My understanding of such things is quite superficial, but it may deserve more research. :smile:
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind :
The book addresses the problematic nature of consciousness – “the ability to introspect” – which in Jaynes’ view must be distinguished from sensory awareness and other processes of cognition. Jaynes presents his proposed solution: that consciousness is a “learned behavior” based more on language and culture than on biology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind
The Golden Bough :
. . . . suggested to him that Hegel had anticipated his view of "the nature and historical relations of magic and religion". Frazer saw the resemblance as being that "we both hold that in the mental evolution of humanity an age of magic preceded an age of religion, and that the characteristic difference between magic and religion is that, whereas magic aims at controlling nature directly, religion aims at controlling it indirectly through the mediation of a powerful supernatural being or beings to whom man appeals for help and protection."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough
Note -- Ironically, science has given us the technological power, "indistinguishable from magic", that the previous generations could only imagine, and pretend to do symbolically & metaphorically.
Quoting Wayfarer
Actually, the Enformationism thesis requires that I think beyond the conventional modes of Dualism & Matrerialism, into a more Holistic BothAnd way of thinking. Unfortunately, I came to that crossroad late in life. So, I'm still picking my way along an unfamiliar path. And, in my posts on this forum, I must assume that most of us are still thinking in terms of that "customary attitude". Until we learn how to read minds, and to communicate directly from mind to mind, we'll be forced to discuss "what is beyond" in "quasi-objective terms". :nerd:
HA!!!! Just like that, although any critique needs internal support consistent with it.
Can't we just start in the middle of it all? And be deflationary or anti realist about the rest?
No?
Damn, I knew it wouldn't be so easy.
Let's try... any definition of 'rule' would itself be a rule and so one would have to include an understanding of rule-following to understand how to adhere to the definition?
Did it work?
In my humble opinion it's math following nature and not nature following math, non? Math is a description. Not an explanation. The velocity of a falling stone doesn't increase linearly with time, v=at+c, because that follows from F=ma, but the formula follows because of the way the stone falls.
Sure, one can start in the middle, as usually happens. Then what? Depends on what the objective is, I suppose.
I started out with free will and determinism, trying to understand why they're both correct, but opposing.
Or I started out with potential and actual.
Or beginning and end.
Or top and bottom. That was actually my first one. Which was your first one?
Quoting Isaac
If the ball lands outside the designated lines, it is called out and the player who last hit the ball loses the point. There is nothing more to understand about the rule.
There are two possibilities here; either you are talking crap, or what you say is true but beyond my comprehension. If the discussion was about QM, I would probably concede the latter. In either case, and in different senses, what you have been saying would be, for me, an embarrassing load of crap.
Sure, that will work if you live in a flat world. But the flatness of the world itself is what we want to check here.
Well, that's not quite right.
There's that the ball was shit by a racquet comprised of a handle, a frame, and strings that are bound in a crisscross weaving pattern. A racquet’s frame should not exceed 32 inches in length, with a handle no longer than 12.5 inches in width, and a surface no more than 15.5 inches in overall length or 11.5 inches in width. There can also be no objects or devices on the racquet except for ones that prevent vibration and wear and tear...
And that the tennis ball is white or yellow in colour for tournaments, with measurements of 2-1/2 to 2-5/8 inches in diameter and weighing anywhere from 2 to 2-1/16 ounces. The elasticity of the ball and the uniform outer surface are also determined by approved specifications...
There's that this all takes place in a marked space, as follows:
Baseline – The baselines are the lines on either end of the court that determines the boundaries of play going lengthwise. They are also where a player serves behind.
Center Mark – The center mark determines the two halves of the tennis court. It mainly helps with service to determine where a player should stand prior to serving.
Center Line – The center line divides the two service boxes into a distinct left service box and right service box on either side of the court. Landing a serve on the line is considered good.
Net – The net stands 3 feet and 6 inches high where the posts lie while the middle of the net is 3 feet tall, with the posts 3 feet outside of the court on either side. Hitting a ball into the net is considered an out while any ball that hits the net cord and falls onto the other side is considered good except for a serve, which allows for a re-do, or let.
Service Line – The service line separates the forecourt from the back court, and it also marks the length of the service box.
Singles Sideline – The singles sideline is the innermost line running lengthwise and determines the boundary of play for singles matches as well as the width of the service box.
Doubles Sideline – The doubles sideline is the outermost line running lengthwise and is only used in doubles matches...
Also,
A ball must land within bounds for play to continue; if a player hits the ball outside of bounds, this results in the loss of the point for them.
Players/teams cannot touch the net or posts or cross onto the opponent’s side.
Players/teams cannot carry the ball or catch it with the racquet.
Players cannot hit the ball twice.
Players must wait until the ball passes the net before they can return it.
A player that does not return a live ball before it bounces twice loses the point.
If the ball hits or touches the players, that counts as a penalty.
If the racquet leaves the hand or verbal abuse occurs, a penalty is given.
A serve must bounce first before the receiving player can return it.
And so on. It's a form of life, if you like; and the rule for "out" only has a use within that form of life.
Oh, and oddly, the site I am reading says "Any ball that bounces on the lines of boundary are considered good".
What's the relevance of al this to the OP? Have a read of the Anscombe article mentioned therein. Logical necessity and physical causation are also "forms of life".
For me, sheer interest. Nothing more or less. Simply put.....how do I know stuff. What explains how I know stuff. What is the knowing of stuff? Any fool can learn practically anything, given enough time, which I was already pretty good at, but....what happens between my ears that explains how that happens to me?
Simple, really.
No, that technique I described definitely would not work in a flat world, because the thing being measured is assumed to be curved. The curve is what is being measured. Only the measuring tool, the ideal, is flat or straight, not the curve which is being measured with the use of the straight lines and angles.
And, the flatness of the world is clearly not what we want to check, (unless you give credence to the flat earthers), because we already know that the world is not flat. We've come way beyond this assumption of flatness in the world, so there is no need to check it. We know that flatness is an ideal only. Yet flat, or straight measuring devices, and flat or straight ideals, like vectors, are still very useful. We just need to know the proper techniques of application, to apply straight measurement principles to a curved world, and how to compensate if a real world measurement instrument, turns out to be not as straight as it was thought to be.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yep.
Quoting Wayfarer
Indeed; a brief respite from nonsense.
As it should be.
"quotidian" is a cool word. You've used it a few times recently. Nice.
Perhaps you might comment on the Anscombe article? You listed it, so I presume you found it interesting? I think it shakes the obtuse Kantian notions out of their high perch. But it is in the end, quite literally, a criticism of Davidson, in whom I am well-pleased. I have not been able to reconcile to two.
But such nuance is lost in the background noise from the likes of the bread-maker in this forum.:wink:
It was a forum nickname of mine on some other forums. Always was a word I liked.
I read the Anscombe article before I posted it. I didn't think it really nailed the central issue but she certainly discusses it. I think the relationships between determination and causation are interesting, and also that she at least acknowledges the influence of non-determinism in contemporary physics.
But I should own up to the original impulse behind my interest in this question. I'm interested in the argument from reason - something Anscombe also commented on in her response to C S Lewis. The argument from reason is essentially that reason itself is built on the foundation of valid inferences, and that valid inferences are not susceptible to naturalistic explanations; or rather, if they can be explained in terms of natural causes, then this explanation undermines the sovereignity of reason.
And if indeed physical causation and logical necessity operate for the most part in separate domains then this is an argument against neural reductionism. After all, neural reductionists, of whom there are always plenty on this forum, will always claim that thinking is reducible to or caused by the brain, as if this is a strong argument for physicalism. But if logical necessity is separable from physical causation, then this claim can't be maintained. A logical inference is, in very simple terms, "that if this is the case, than that must be so". And here the 'must' is that of logical necessity. But that has to stand on its own right. It can't be said to be 'caused by or 'dependent on' some configuration of neural matter, because to do so is a conflation between physical causation and logical necessity. It is ascribing to the (presumably physical) causal chains operating in the brain a level of abstraction and generality which properly only pertains to the domain of logic.
I'll dig as deep as necessary, until you recognize your mistakes. And from my experience, that will be very deep.
I like the word "Uzbekistan".
C. S. Lewis?! Ah, another gem of which I was unaware. Now I have to find out more. Thank you. At first blush your account of Anscombe's comments on rationality sounds off - not what I would expect form her.
Let me have a read.
That wasn't my account of what Anscombe said, it is my paraphrase of the import of the argument from reason, followed by a supporting quote from Nagel about the same topic. I would be dissappointed if it went by you.
Well stated. The key here is that logical necessity is about rule-following or syntax. And that puts it in a tricky place regarding semantics. It leaves the business of interpretation in limbo.
And then physical causation might be modelled by us in terms of laws - the syntax of differential equations - yet what we really mean by those laws is that the world is structured by sets of constraints.
Constraints are quite different from rules. A constraint is a limit on uncertainty and hence only a relative thing. It is not a prohibition on uncertainty - which is what logical necessity would want to claim.
So if you are imagining the world as organised by constraints rather than rules, it is easy to see why indeterminism or local degrees of freedom might exist - indeed, must exist. If possibility is merely limited, then anything which is not being restricted is left free to happen. And that is why the Cosmos contains both structure and accident. If someone frames some "rules" then now everyone else knows "how to break them".
Thus there is a mirror confusion created by having these two notions of logical syntax and material constraint.
The logicist begs the question of how rules are interpreted - how the electron knows to follow the Maxwell equation. As an ontology, logical necessity seems to demand a faux agent. And this is where artificial intelligence gets itself in trouble. It is indeed why machines wouldn't seem capable of consciousness.
But material constraint then needs to be reduced to the simpler description that differential equations and the mechanical conception of nature offers.
The cosmos is a material structure that had to evolve its habits through some self-stabilising history of dissipation. It became "lawful" as the result of a complex and holistic process of development. To model such a world, we must break it down into some simple epistemic system of rules and measurements - differential equations that we "bring alive" by plugging in variables.
The world is reduced to a computation. And that is useful. It is the most efficient view - the one which discards the most information by simply ignoring all the messy historical development that made the Cosmos what it is.
So you do have this clash of ontologies - the logicist push rules, the materialist pushing constraints.
And then when you get to talking about organisms - creatures with life and mind - then you have the further thing of them being in fact world modelling systems. They exist by applying a mechanical approach to the holism of a physico-chemical realm that operates purely by material constraints.
Thus the two stories combine in the organism. We get the actual semiosis of a material system being organised by its concept of logical rule following. We get physical systems that interact with their worlds by using syntactic mechanism - codes like genes, neurons, words, numbers - and indeed gaining agency as that semiotic interaction is, holistically, a state of interpretance.
I'm looking at This.
Odd, that I should have been unaware of this discussion. Or did I just forget about it? Memory. SO fickle.
I don't see a source for Anscombe's reply to Miracles, outside her collected writings.
Sounds like a plan. :clap:
:clap: (You should have a look at this week's edition of PBS Spacetime. Excellent presentation on Wheeler's participatory universe. )
Quoting apokrisis
You mean, the 4% of it that we can account for.
There's method to the madness.
Not really if you simply confirm what I argue while denying you confirm what I argue.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. That’s fine up until the point where you fail to deal with how we measure the measuring device.
That is where it all comes back to defining a reciprocal relation between bounding extremes.
The example I suggested you look at was hyperbolic geometry where the dichotomy of angle-line is replaced by the more general non-Euclidean dichotomy of spread-quandrance.
You have to go up a level of abstraction or idealisation to see a world in which line and curve are fixed in mutually relative terms.
We are no longer talking about just this line vs that curve in a flat metric. We are talking about the flatness vs curvature of the embedding metric itself.
This takes us beyond Galilean relativity to General relativity. Beyond first degree idealisation to a higher level of ideality.
So quit digging and start climbing. The view is better.
https://matiane.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/g-e-m-anscombes-reply-to-c-s-lewiss-argument-that-naturalism-is-self-refuting/
The dark matter can be black holes. Dark energy is no matter or energy at all. It's empty spacetime itself that has inherent negative curvature. If matter is confined to three spatial dimensions, and if these three dimensions are embedded in a negatively curved 4d space, the matter in the 3d space will accelerate away from each other. Repulsive gravity.
In my humble opinion, that's a matter of taste. Does the thrown stone follow the parabola or the parabola the stone? What comes first, the parabola or the trajectory?
So Anscombe is not, in criticizing Lewis, defending naturalism. She is questioning the grounds on which he criticizes it, even though she agrees that there is not a sufficiently good reason for maintaining it.
However with respect to the argument itself, I don't know if Anscombe really grasps what Lewis means by 'irrational' (a word which he subsequently changes to non-rational in response to her criticism) causes. She says:
But I don't think that is what Lewis has in mind. I think he has in mind causes such as: the pattern of the exchange of ions across membranes (which is a neurological account); perhaps Darwinian accounts, such as valid reasoning being an instrument of natural selection, such that it is counted as valid because it leads to successfully navigating one's environment.
She says further down:
That is a very big 'if'. And it's also in conflict with much of what she says in the other essay we're discussing, Causality and Determination - specifically, the very last paragraph. Furthermore any 'scientific explanation' must itself draw on the rules of inference, and not simply appeal to observations of data, because all such observations are subject to interpretation - what does the data mean?
In short, not swayed by Anscombe's objections. Overall, I think Victor Reppert's chapter on the subject is superior.
Quoting Haglund
That's been ruled out. There's not nearly enough mass in the calculated total number of black hole material to account for it. But don't ask me for the references and let's not go down that rabbit-hole, better to ask such questions on physicsforum.com.
This has already been referred to but it's always worth another mention, https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html
In what sense does a parabola follow a stone?
Try it the other way round: A stone traces a parabola. It makes complete sense.
:up:
Can you parse Haglund's claim that a parabola "follows" a stone?
It hasn't. It's gaining popularity, in fact. The search for primordial black holes is on. In fact, LIGO measurements support the idea.
"A new study theorizes that primordial black holes formed after the Big Bang (the far left panel) constitute all dark matter in the universe. At early epochs they cluster and seed the formation of early galaxies and then eventually grow by feeding off gas and merging with other black holes to create the supermassive black holes seen at the center of galaxies like our own Milky Way today. (Credit: Yale and ESA)"
See here
Yep, math is/should be subjective!
The parabola form is traced out by the stone. It's not there before.
Time, I believe, is not relevant to the issue. We're describing, loosely speaking, behavior of matter & energy and that, for all intents and purposes, is mathematically defined/constrained. A stone, given the laws of physics, must trace a parabolic path through the air.
AsI understand it, she was a long time critic of naturalism. For the rest, I think reason-explanations are causal-explanations when I read Davidson, but not otherwise. But this is distracting me from other reading, so interesting though it is, it must wait. Although I will say that Anscombe's account of a reason, as seen in Intentionality, is particularly masterly, a classic.
Well, through air, the path is not a parabola actually. But it looks like one. The very concept of a parabola follows from math. There are no parabolas in nature. The water rays shot from fountains resemble parabolas but before we invented them, it was nowhere to be seen. They are imaginaries. Of course some natural phenomena have mathematical shapes, but do they have them because they have to follow it?
Fair enough, I stand corrected. But I don't expect it to be resolved in my lifetime.
Quoting Banno
Shame, it's the real substance of the thread.
You'll live another 10 years... :smile:
I don't think that's correct. But scientists and philosophers both have long noticed the uncanny relationship between maths and the world, going back to the Pythagoreans (and probably before.) I've read a couple of books on it, Mario Livio - Is God a Mathematician? being one.
My view is that in some fundamental sense, number is real. Not that there aren't imaginary numbers and imaginary mathematical systems, as there surely are - but that in grasping mathematical truths, you're grasping something real, not subjective, not a product of the mind. Loosely speaking that is called mathematical platonism and it's a favourite subject of mine, although not being highly proficient at maths is a handicap.
Quoting Haglund
I would be vastly surprised if the dark matter-energy conundrum is solved in the next 10 years, or 10 decades.
Like I said, dark matter is black hole, dark energy is negatively curved 4d space, pushing apart matter on two 3d universes. So what to do now we know that and the basic structure of matter? What is there still to be found at the fundaments? An existential void kicks in...
DE and DM have nothing in common. Apart from being dark.
All I can say, based on my own analysis, for what it's worth, is that maths is a part of reality. Math, unlike a unicorn, the classic example of something unreal, describes how real-world objects like stones, rockets, planets, stars, and galaxies behave. That, in my book, qualifies as real enough!
Intriguingly, consciousness doesn't seem to matter to math. Throw me off the balcony of a 4[sup]th[/sup] floor apartment and I'll follow the laws of gravity just as a stone would if chucked from the same height. My consciousness isn't part of the equation that describes my fall, as if it didn't exist at all! I find that quite disheartening, don't you?
If God were a mathematician, His mathematical laws don't distinguish humans from lumps of rock or from anything else for that matter. Odd that! It makes me wonder about ethics!
To me, the structure of nature is perfect (mathematical) and that, to my reckoning, is (true) beauty.
What we believe is beauty though is, on that view, imperfection.
:lol:
Say that again! Goddamned! I mean... eeehh... what do I mean?
Had to think about that one! What is the structure of nature? Most structures in nature don't have a counterpart in math. What's the mathematical structure of a face? A facoid? What's the mathematical expression for that facoid?
Reached any conclusions about that?
This is where you are wrong, because you are not distinguishing between the ideal and the real. I explained this already. You said a thing is flat to the degree that it's not curved, and a thing is curved to the degree that it's not flat. Clearly this is incorrect, because "flat" accepts no degrees of curvature. You said so yourself, it is zero curvature. And all degrees predicated in this subject are degrees of curvature. There is no such thing as degrees of flatness. There is no reciprocal relation between zero and many.
Therefore this is not a matter of a "reciprocal relation between bounding extremes", it is a categorical separation between two distinct types of things. A two dimensional flat plane is categorically different from a three dimensional curved surface, and it is incorrect to represent the two dimensional as a bounding limit to the three dimensional, or the three dimensional as a bounding limit to the two dimensional. We can see this difference between all levels of dimension, between zero and one, one and two, two and three, as well as between three and four. Each dimension adds a new feature, a new kind of property, that's what a "dimension" is. To describe one dimension as the "bounding extreme" of another dimension, is simply incorrect.
In simpler terms, we can represent a real spatial object, at a supposed moment in time, with three dimensions, but we cannot represent a real spatial object with two dimensions. So the two dimensional figure clearly represents nothing real in the world, there is nothing in the world which occupies space in a two dimensional way. Therefore there is a very substantial difference between what can be done with a two dimensional representation and what can be done with a three dimensional representation. The limitations of the two dimensional figure are completely different from the limitations of the three dimensional figure. They are not bounding restrictions of each other.
Quoting apokrisis
Sorry, but when one's goal is to dispel illusion, digging down is much more productive than climbing higher. I'd rather be digging in the hole of truth, pointing at the extremely unstable grounding of your ladder, than to be at the top of that ladder which is about to fall, enjoying the excellent illusion.
Yeah, pitifully....for my knowledge, I have no choice but to trust an intrinsically circular explanatory system, the very one that tells me to never trust circular explanatory systems.
Do you forget that and rediscover it over and over? Or are you always aware of it?
I have to be aware with respect to what I learn, but I can relax with respect to what I already know. And that from exactly this......
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
....insofar as if one way to dispel illusion is to regulate.....technically, to legislate..... circularity, then logical reductionism to analytic truths.....technically, laws.....serves as ground for trusting the system from which my knowledge is given. The complexities are merely speculative, of course, and themselves circular if over-reduced, re: MU’s digging down too deep, but it does work.
Which gets you your answer: if what I claim as knowledge is predicated on analytic truths, my rational circularity is abated. Conversely, if what I claim as knowledge depends on empirical conditions, for which analytic truths are impossible, such knowledge is always derived from potential circularity, hence, potentially unsupported.
The solution? That which stands in stead of analytic truths, such that potential circularity from empirical conditions can be abated with as great a certainty as analytic truths, in order that I might trust my epistemological system regarding the world in general as much as I trust my own thinking.
You know its name.
Slightly off-topic, but perhaps on point.
A physicist writing about Quantum Theory, clarified her use of the word "information" : "First, what is information? It’s basically the ability to distinguish between alternatives." (Bateson : "the difference that makes a difference", a meaningful distinction in a mind) Her illustration is an if-then proposition, similar to your own. So, the implication is that fundamentally, Information (meaning) is a function of mental Logic, not of material Physics.
Hence, to restate your question : is Logical Necessity caused by some physical force or entity? Or is it a fundamental principle of Reality? Is it a law of Physics, or a law of Meta-Physics? Are natural Laws (physical regularities) necessary (absolute) or contingent (fortuitous)? If they could be otherwise, what was the prior Cause (the "must") of their necessity for the emergence & evolution of the physical world? Are natural laws a logical prerequisite for any functioning physical cosmic machine? Or merely for our local 'verse? Oh, yeah! Who says? :joke:
What is the difference between logical necessity and physical necessity? :
Nomological necessity is necessity according to the laws of physics and logical necessity is necessity according to the laws of logic, while metaphysical necessities are necessary in the sense that the world could not possibly have been otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_necessity
First, what is information? It’s basically the ability to distinguish between alternatives. The basic unit of information is the bit, the amount of information you gain if you have no idea of the answer to a yes-or-no question and then you learn the answer.
https://bigthink.com/13-8/quantum-steampunk/
:lol:
In deep humbleness I dare to give a definition: information is matter being in formation. A gas has no particles in formation. The information content, the entropy, is maximal. If the particles form a rigid solid, they are in tight formation. The information content, the entropy, is minimal. The interesting in formation is in between.
So:
Gas----> 0 in formation ----> max entropy-information
Solid--> max in formation ----> 0 entropy-information
Intermedium state ---->
Interesting, medium in formation---->
Medium entropy-information
It's the intermediate state for which entropy-information equals interesting, medium in formation
From the think big article:
"Quantum steampunk is a blend of quantum information and thermodynamics. It promises to revolutionize our understanding of machines and the future of technology. As a bonus, it may provide new insights into some of the hardest questions in physics, such as the arrow of time, or why we can’t remember the future. Below is a summary of our conversation."
Revolutionizing our understanding of machines and the future of technology? Is this Nietzsche's understanding of the übermensch? Scary!
And then"hardest questions in physics, such as the arrow of time, or why we can’t remember the future." Mind you, but what kind of problem is that? Why we can't remember the future? Because time flows forward. Could have been backwards though. Then our memories would disappear from our minds. So why it doesn't flow backwards then? The present universe could have begun at infinity... But it didn't. Why not?
Theorema egregium.
(Wiki)
I believe the position apokrisis is arguing is contrary to the principles of Gaussian curvature. But apokrisis refers to Gaussian curvature in an attempt to support the argued position. Apokrisis is claiming that flat and curved are two limits, so that all real shapes are somewhere between, being to some degree flat, and to some degree curved. But clearly, anything flat has zero degrees of curvature, and other shapes have varying degrees of curvature, and no degrees of flat. So it is wrong to assert that the same shape is to some degree flat, and to some degree curved. That's just apokrisis attempting to avoid the earlier contradiction in the statements that space is both curved and flat, at the same time.
We do not, and cannot, know if such a physical necessity rules, simply because of the vanishingly small sample of the universe, both temporally and spatially, that we have observed, and will be able to observe.
If such a physical necessity does rule, which is questionable given quantum indeterminacy, then it would follow logically that given exactly the same causal conditions, then exactly the same effects must follow.
But in this case the logical necessity would only obtain in the context of a closed situation entirely subject to the aforesaid physical necessity, and there would still be no universal logical necessity to the same effect.
Even if there were nowhere anywhere free form this strict physical determinacy, it would still be logically (if not physically) possible that there might have been. And of course, in any case, we don't, and can't know the truth about any of this.
Your question prompted me to review a couple of Robert Lawrence Kuhn's interviews with science educators about this question, Martin Rees and Paul Davies. Their answer, in essence, is that science doesn't know what natural laws are. Davies speculates that science might one day arrive at a super-theory from which the undetermined constants might be explained, but that meanwhile there are simply a small number of undetermined constants - like the force of gravity - that are as they are, but without any further apparent explanation (I think this is related to the 'naturalness problem'). But at this time, we don't know if such constants have a further explanation, if there's a meta-theory that explains them - and I think it's important to understand the sense in which this is not a scientific but a metaphysical question (so - metaphysics is not dead after all.)
One of the articles I refer to is a review by Neil Ormerod, a philosophical theologian, of Lawrence Krauss' book A Universe from Nothing. He speaks of the 'anxiety over contingency' that supposedly underlies many books such as Krauss's (Krauss being a kind of ancillary member of the New Atheist clique). The 'contigency' he's referring to is the requirement to validate hypotheses and mathematical models against observation. Speaking of the Higgs boson discovery, he says:
[quote=Neil Ormerod]The...thing this discovery illustrates is the ever present gap between theory and verification. The standard model was enormously successful in its account of the basic particles and the forces through which they interact. It was mathematically satisfying and elegantly based on notions of physical symmetry. Yet no one would ever have suggested that it must be correct regardless of any process of empirical verification. Such a process of verification lies at the heart of the scientific method. Theories are not self-verifying but always remain hypothetical constructs, subject to the next round of possible verification or falsification from the data.
This leads to a significant tension in the whole scientific project. Its drive is to seek intelligibility or patterns in the empirical data, to express these patterns in theoretical constructs, yet in the end it must deal with a brute fact of existence, which either verifies or falsifies these proposed patterns.
That reality is intelligible is the presupposition of all scientific endeavours: that the intelligibility science proposes is always subject to empirical verification means that science never actually explains existence itself but must submit itself to a reality check against the empirical data. This existential gap between scientific hypotheses and empirical verified judgment points to, in philosophical terms, the contingency of existence. There is no automatic leap from hypothesis to reality that can bypass a "reality check."[/quote]
One of the things that occurs to me is how often it is assumed that the phenomenal domain, the vast realm which is subject to investigation by the natural sciences, is, in this sense, the domain of contigent facts. Yet the conviction among many is that this is the only reality. ('Cosmos is all there is'.) So I think what's been lost sight of is precisely the intuition of the domain of unconditional, the realm of necessary truths (arguably, the noumenal realm). It can be argued that this is what is real, but that it is not existent, in that it's not phenomenal reality, which is 'what appears'. So the conviction that the realm of contingency is the only real realm is the basis of the fundamental confusion (dare we say ignorance) of technocratic culture.
(I suppose this can easily be construed as theist apologetics, but it doesn't have to be. I'm agnostic about the reality of a Biblical God. But there's a broader metaphysical conception that subsumes many different, specific cultural forms.)
It depends on what sense of 'knowing'. This writer says that Kant claims that the noumenal is unknowable - but that both Hegel and Schleiermacher then point out that, even though the noumenal might be unknowable in any objective sense, in another sense, it constitutes our own being, that it constitutes us, as subjects of experience.
[quote=Eric Reitan; http://thepietythatliesbetween.blogspot.com/2010/06/what-is-naturalism-part-v-alternative.html] Whatever the noumenal reality is, I’m a part of it. Not the "me" who is an object of experience—that’s the phenomenal me. And the naïve “phenomenal me” that comes from immediate introspection is no less phenomenal than what scientists look at when they study my brain. What bearing it has on the “noumenal me” remains an open question.
But still, I am what I am—and so in being me (as opposed to putting myself at the objective pole of conscious observation and then studying me) I am being part of noumenal reality. And there may be a way to leverage that fact into some kind of understanding of noumenal reality. That’s what Hegel tries to do in The Phenomenology of Spirit.[/quote]
Yes. Although I would say that Matter is generic Information in a particular formation. Energy & Matter are different forms of general Information (E=MC^2). And the "formation" is called a meaningful pattern of information interrelationships. But "Energy" & "Mass" are mathematical concepts, while "Matter" is a conventional linguistic term to denote whatever has Mass & Intertia.
I just noted that Quora tech guru Victor Toth said, "[i]Energy and mass do have consistent definitions."
“Matter” is a somewhat more poetic term, and its meaning often depends on context.[/i]" :smile:
Yes. The Big Bang theory caused cosmologists, such as Einstein, to reconsider their presumption that the physical world was eternal, hence unconditional. So some, including Krauss, began to look beyond the BB -- pre-phenomenal domain -- for a First & Final Cause of our contingent universe. But most of those pre-BB causes -- Many Worlds ; Multiverses ; Inflation -- are still assumed to obey the same physical laws as our Real world. So, the question of the (noumenal??) Lawmaker is still open. :cool:
So, the idea here would be that of intellectual intuition; that in virtue of being the noumenal we can somehow directly know it's nature. The possibility cannot be ruled out, but even if such direct knowing were possible; there could be no discursive "knowing that we know".
Our whole warrant for such direct "knowing" would be its sense of total illumination and complete lack of doubt; there would always remain the possible of being deluded, though.
But then if we actually experienced a sense of total illumination and complete lack of doubt we likely wouldn't care about that possibility in the least. Only one way to find out if such a state is possible, and sustainable, though, and that would be to experience it in a sustained way. How to achieve that is then the problem.
So, it seems that what you are looking for is that experience of illumination and total certainty that would tell you that causation is logically necessary, despite the mundane logical fact that there is no contradiction in, to cite Anscombe's example, thinking that the kettle might not heat up when it's placed on the fire.
Just to be sure,
That's not the argument in the Anscombe article, which explicitly rejects Kant's a priori imaginings.
Her writing works at multiple levels, between recondite jokes. Cause, like induction, is best considered as a part of the game of doing physics. What her article does is to break the picture of a necessary relation between cause and determinism, and point out that determinism is not an essential part of physics.
Now that undermines many of the lines of thought in this thread. And I had assumed you had understood this, from previous discussions. But now it seems I was mistaken.
SO again, once the relation between physical cause and logical necessity is seen as a misapprehension, your fly is shown the way out of the trap.
The standard Model is low energy approximation. I think it's pretty obvious that the basis particles are not basic at all. I asked the question about preons on several physics forums and even a philosophy part of a forum. I asked the question why the model is not more popular. But the questions were deleted and one banned me. It was against the standard. Quarks and leptons ARE fundamental. The preon theory has a different mass mechanism, but still predicts the Higgs particle. But not a Higgs VEV and associated Mexican hat. The weak interaction is not fundamental in the preon model. There's simply to much at stake for the defenders of the status quo. And its runners along. ??? There were no rational arguments against the model given, except the fact that no preons are observed. Which is a ridiculous argument since the collision energies are simply not high enough yet. But dont tellem that... There was another argument to be honest. The mass paradox, which can easily be solved by assuming the preons to be massless, giving massive triplets! So, only advantages. No matter antimatter asymmetry, explanation of particle families and explanation of mass, and only two basic fields! And an explanation of the muon g2 experiment. No preons used to explain that one.
There is the possibility that there inflate two spatially 3d universes into existence around the mouth of a spatially 4d wormhole. If matter is confined to 3d and gravity spreads in full 4d, the two universes, once accelerated to infinity, can cause two new universes (one with lefhanded matter, the other with righthanded antimatter) to inflate from the virtuality into existence again. After which the cycle repeats. Dark energy solved!
Ironically, Kant's unknowable noumena are the very kind of knowledge that philosophers specialize in : speculation & conjecture into the unknown, and objectively unknowable, mysteries that are not amenable to scientific exploration. That's why only "mad-dogs" & philosophers go out into the sun-less mysteries of the Mind : Consciousness & Subjective Knowing. :smile:
Well, there are different metrics involved, but I can see your point. My first grad course in math in 1962 was differential geometry, and it was a puzzling experience, a topic I never found use for in all the intervening years. My view of this issue these days is very superficial: the difference between an ant crawling across the surface of a large sphere and recognizing another dimension above, and an ant somehow embedded and crawling in the same surface and finding it 2-dimensional. Pretty shallow. :roll:
A 2d torus has negative Gaussian curvature on the inside, positive on the outside, and zero in between. Because its embedding in 3d. But in 4d it has zero curvature, like a 2d cylinder.
Just measure angles of triangles. Or the circumference of a circle and it's radius. If you're on a 2d spherical shell, the ratio is less than 2pi because the radius is larger. The difference between the two is a measure of curvature. If the sum of angles is less than pi than curvature is negative, and masses fly apart, repulsive gravity, dark energy. :cool:
In my humble view, the space of an ant walking on a 3d sphere is flat. Ants walking in the shallow domain of a 2s shell will, if they start moving parallel, cross each other's paths.
Or did I say the larger picture sees flatness as poised between the opposing extremes of hyperbolic and hyperspheric curvature? And that is why the value of pi might vary between 2 and infinity, with 3.14… being the special case where the Gaussian world would intersect the Euclidean one? :chin:
But isn’t that what we would say about the running of a computer program?
So it is the other way around. The problem is the need to amend the usual notion of material cause so that it ain’t so robotically determined.
Quoting Janus
Bear in mind that the Cosmos exists to serve the second law and thus its aim is to maximise entropy. So even without the inherent quantum uncertainty, the Cosmos is committed to the production of uncertainty at every turn.
You got it the wrong way round. The cosmos has no aim. A gas doesn't expand in a vacuum because it has an aim, an effect to be caused. You conflate aim with effect. The cosmos doesn't exist to serve the second law. The second law exists to serve the cosmos. To serve us! Living creatures, as part of the cosmos, have aim.
Quoting apokrisis
Again, the cosmos is not committed to anything, let alone production of uncertainty. Unpredictable processes are just part of it. But not because of commitment.
There’ve been a string of past members enthusiastic about rishons and preons here. @Prishon, @MatterGauge, @EugeneW, probably many more. In fact they exactly share almost all your enthusiasms. Shame you can’t catch up with them somewhere.
.
Do they agree with me on preons?
The original preons were considered massive. I asked Harari by email and he was kind enough to answer. Massless preons could do the trick. He wrote me not to follow the "preon path". Dunno. Seems so clear. Like quarks before their discovery. I had a long conversation on physics stack exchange with a defender of the standard but in the end he couldn't offer substantial counters. The best he was left with was asking for the field Lagrangians. Well, yes... eeeh... Anyhow, good to know there is at least one person! :grin:
So I don’t think preons are the answer. Or at least understood as a new deeper level of concrete particles - rather than gauge degrees of freedom - would be just to recreate the old atomistic paradox of why there would be any fundamental grain of matter at all.
But there does seem to be now broad acceptance in particle physics that all fundamental particles are composite in the fashion of a soliton or other examples of topological order in condensed matter physics.
Yes, different neutrinos mix like different quarks can do. But the effect in quarks is much smaller due to their masses. Neutrinos from different generations mix. Quarks from different generations don't. Don't know what you mean by electrons mixing with anti-positrons. Anti positrons are just electrons. In the preon model there are no W3 pre symmetry breaking gauge fields. So the photon is just the photon. The non broken gauge state has never been observed. It's a fantasy to fit the facts, like the value of the VEV, of which the origin is unknown, which is because it's just posited on purpose. The same, but real mechanism is to be seen in condensed matter. Chew's bootstrap applies partially.
Quoting apokrisis
I think the model has only advantages, like I outlined. It explains quark and lepton generations, mass, matter antimatter asymmetry (namely that there is none), etc. And it explains muon g2.
But the standard rules. I guess it has to wait until:smile: higher energies will reveal it. There is still a lot of space between 10exp-22 and 10exp-35. Although tiny. But in comparison with a particle size, 10exp-35, it's a vast distance. Enough for three to form triplets. :wink:
Quoting apokrisis
No solitons or gauge degrees of freedom involved in the preon model. There is no broad acceptance, that's the point. Everyone fears to say they don't believe in the standard. Their careers... :sad:
If you call the mainstream trend of thought a fantasy, then they are right to treat you like a crackpot.
If you made a well motivated case for why it is a blind alley, that would be a different matter.
Quoting Haglund
OK. How?
Quoting Haglund
Sure. They are all roped together like nervous mountaineers on an unclimbed summit. You think the prize belongs to the solo athlete with grit and flair.
But if you are going to sell preons, I would expect to see a better motivation being offered. Gauge and topological order have been working for particle physics for 60 years. You sound as if you are happy to take on K2 in your bare feet and no tent.
https://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/06/19/helicity-chirality-mass-and-the-higgs/
Yes. But then who's the crackpot? They do use an unobserved mechanism. A fantasy. There does exist such a spontaneous symmetry breaking in condensed matter, and from there Higgs took the idea. But for that he had to introduce some weird unexplained vacuum energy. The preon model also predicts mass of particles from massles constitutes and also a Higgs particle, which is just a state of 6 preons, as are the W and the Z. They couldn't offer true counters, except irrational response.
Quoting apokrisis
I mentioned the advantages. Symmetry between particles and anti particles is one of them.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't want no prize but it should belong to the true theory. There is clinging to the standard (quarks and leptons being elementary).
The muon g2 result is explained by considering the muon a triplet of three massless Weyl particles. Each with charge -1/3.
Coming to think about it... How big is that prize? :grin:
Not sure still what you mean by an anti-positron. If an electron meets an anti positron, doesn't it meet an electron? How is helicity involved here?
How does that explain the muon discrepancy? An electron would also have the same structure by your account. So why does the electron conform to Standard Model expectations but the muon hint at other BSM particle contributions?
Well, the exact calculations I don't have. You need to calculate the bound state of three massless preons interacting by a color gauge. For 3 bound quarks thats only done approximately. On discrete space. But you can basically use the Lagrangian of QCD, with modifications. The muon just has a larger spatial extent, because it's an excitation. The electron is on that scale still point like.
Is it actually a point or also a region of excitation?
And either way, that gets us into the issue of how you can pack three degrees of freedom into such a small space and not arrive at a triad of 200 GeV particles due to momentum uncertainty.
Preon theory looks to be all epicycles to me at the moment. But I’m interested if you can offer more motivation.
That's the mass paradox. This is only the case for massive particles. This was given as a counter. But massless particles don't have momentum. Only pure kinetic energy. Explaining the relation between energy and mass.
In a proton, a neutron, electron, and neutrino, there are equal amounts of preons and anti preons. 12 of each. No asymmetry. Only the combination. If there is a mirror universe "on the other side" it can be righthanded. Symmetry again!
In the superstrong field that binds them, the energy is lowered.
It's the lowest energy state of three -1/3 charged preons. If true...
I think that is close to what Jacques Maritain meant by the 'intuition of being'.
Quoting Janus
I'm long past expecting anything like that to happen to me, but I still believe that it is central to metaphysics proper.
Quoting Gnomon
Not at all. The later Kant was completely dismissive of speculative metaphysics. I won't try and explain what is meant by the philosophical term noumenon but it's not a catch-all term for spooky woo-woo.
That's true of me also; but I think it is good to remain open to the possibility. In my view, "metaphysics proper" would not be some set of true propositions, but would consist in metaphors that allude to the experience of illuminated certainty, or if it is preferable because less presumptuous, illuminated lack of doubt..
Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is the way to refer to the absence of something somewhere not nothing nowhere (because that is meaningless drivel much like ‘potato on yellow under the is and but of it one two trousers’)
Etymology - The Greek word nooúmenon is the neuter middle-passive present participle of noeîn "to think, to mean", which in turn originates from the word noûs, an Attic contracted form of ???? nóos[a] "perception, understanding, mind." A rough equivalent in English would be "something that is thought", or "the object of an act of thought".
It is generally opposed in Kant to 'phenomena' meaning 'that which appears'. So a simple explanation would be in terms of the distinction between 'what appears' (phenomenon) and 'what truly is' (noumenon). It is another iteration of the age-old philosophical distinction of reality and appearance.
The bit with ‘negative sense only’. Noumenon in the ‘positive sense’ is … well, to refer to it we can only do ‘negatively’. That is the point.
As I said in my earlier post, the only sense of "necessary" which can be validated is the sense of "needed for...", as a good, for whatever purpose. The sense of "necessary" which many people propose, a necessity which is independent of the wants and needs of human beings, and supports common determinism cannot be validated. The closest we can get to such a "necessity" is the Will of God.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/682932
I think the proper limits to curvature are the infinitely small radius, and the infinitely large radius. The infinitely large radius cannot appear as a two dimensional line because a radius is the property of a circle. Therefore both the maximum curve and the minimum curve, maintain their status as 2 dimensional, and neither gets reduced to a one dimensional figure.
Quoting Haglund
As I explained to apokrisis, you cannot add another dimension without adding another feature. If you add another feature, then the figure is not the same figure. For example, a one dimensional line is not the same as a two dimensional plane, and a two dimensional circle is not the same as a three dimensional sphere. So it doesn't make any sense to talk about the same object in 2d, 3d, and 4d, that's a fundamental category mistake.
Quoting apokrisis
Do you not see the unintelligible (incoherent) result of your category mistake? By giving the the one dimensional plane a presence as a two dimensional figure (or two dimensional plane a presence as a three dimensional object), you produce the possibility that pi could be anything. But pi, by definition, is essentially a statement of the relationship between a one dimensional object, (the diameter), and a two dimensional object, (the circumference). Notice that this is said to be an irrational ratio, and it is irrational because the two distinct dimensions are fundamentally incommensurable. This is verified by taking two lines supposedly equidistant in two distinct dimensions, and attempting to establish a relation between them, the result is a similar irrational ratio, the square root of two.
So when you you take the two dimensional flat plane, and try to give it a presence in a three dimensional geometrical construct (or bring a one dimensional line, into a two dimensional geometry), you incorporate that fundamental incommensurability into your geometrical system. The result is that pi itself, which is by its definition, a mathematical description of the relationship between a one dimensional figure and a two dimensional figure, becomes meaningless, as you describe. So you do not actually get rid of the boundary between the distinct dimensions, which you cannot do because of the basic incommensurability, you simply incorporate that element of unintelligibility deeper into your geometry, by hiding it.
Gaussian curvature is an intrinsic property, which can be measured inside the curved space. For example, on a 2d sphere, initial parallel lines, after parsllel transporting them, can cross. Or triangles have different angle sums.
Come on apokrisis. This statement says that the cosmos was created with the purpose of maximizing entropy. That means that it was created intentionally, with that goal. But if God wanted a universe with maximum entropy, He would have just created it that way. Wouldn't that have been much easier for Him anyway?
As Haglund correctly points out, the second law of thermodynamics is simply a way that we describe things. And, I might add that it is fundamentally mistaken to apply the laws of thermodynamics to the universe (as a whole). This is because these laws are designed to be applicable only to systems, and we have no principles whereby we can conceptualize the universe as a system. Within any system, there is a quantity of energy which is lost to that system, over time. Much of that energy actually escapes the system, as heat loss from friction for example. How would we account for energy which escapes the system, if the universe was a system?
Quoting apokrisis
This issue is due to the fundamental design of how we conceive of a physical object. The problem is a feature of the mathematical definition, one might say. An object is divisible. Because of that it is impossible to get to the bottom of "particles", because they will be divisible. So it is required that we choose something other than "particles" to be at the bottom, if we want a true understanding, and this is where fields are pertinent. The problem though is that fields are only understood through the appearance of "particles", and this is due to the limited observational capacities of the human being. As a result, the only real access we have toward understanding the true fundamentals, is through establishing the correct relationship between the particle and the field. But the field must be constructed on principles other than the appearance of particles, because that construction already presupposes a specific relationship.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, how would we ever find out when the mainstream trend of thought was wrong, if everyone had that attitude? We'd be stuck in the ancient "mainstream" of thousands of years ago, thinking that the sun "comes up", in the morning, and "goes down" in the evening.
For the reasons I explained, "2d sphere" is incoherent.
A 1d sphere is a circle. A 2d sphere is like a 2d shell. If you travel in it you come back where you started. Our universe is a 3d sphere.
I think what is required, is to first remove all reference to dimensions. It is this idea of distinct dimensions which causes the problem. Suppose we start with a non-dimensional point. From that one point, we could make lines, with angular relations to each other, and specified lengths. Connecting all the ends of the lines, would produce the outline of a spatial object (what we now know as a 3d object). The more lines one makes (theoretically an infinity of such lines is possible), the more accurately the spatial object is defined, if the specifications are made correctly.
To transpose a construction like this, into the physical world, to actually represent a real physical object, would require determining the spatial relations between any internal point of an object, and the boundaries of its perimeter. But from this perspective there is no need to assume any dimensions, (you might understand it as infinite dimensions). There is just a relationship between a non-spatial point of reference (point of location), which is somewhat arbitrarily placed in the spatial world, but only arbitrary to the extent that the required relations may be determined.
Apokrisis, I believe prefers vague boundaries, and this assumption would confound any such geometry. And that is a very difficult issue, because as we know, various objects interfere with the boundaries of each other, overlapping, and existing in the same space, at the same time. I believe the idea of "infinitesimals" is what validates vague boundaries, and I think this idea is very counter-productive toward a true understanding of physical reality.
Sounds like affine space, without an origin.
I see what you mean, I think. But what if your space changes it's metric? Your shapes would change. If you draw lines and shapes on a thin piece of stretchable rubber, don't the shapes change form? If they keep their shape, the distances between the shapes will change, like the distance between static galaxies in the universe grows.
Anyone have a suggestion here?
But Wittgenstein would never put it like this. The world-in-itself? This is Husserl talk. Tractatus-Witt would say this is just nonsense. The world is the totality of facts, not of things; and facts are in "logical space" and logic does not permit talk like world in itself.
Quoting Wayfarer
But if you are in Witt's world, causality is going to be understood as a logical concept. An odd idea, if you ask me: Kant on this is apodicticity: I cannot even imagine my cup moving by itself. It is intuitive, not logical; but logic is intuitively received, yes, but it is qualitatively different in the intuition.
“....But there is one advantage, which can be made both comprehensible and interesting to even the dullest and most reluctant student of such transcendental investigations, namely this: That the understanding occupied merely with its empirical use, which does not reflect on the sources of its own cognition, may get along very well, but cannot accomplish one thing, namely, determining for itself the boundaries of its use and knowing what may lie within and what without its whole sphere; for to this end the deep inquiries that we have undertaken are requisite. But if the understanding cannot distinguish whether certain questions lie within its horizon or not, then it is never sure of its claims and its possession, but must always reckon on many embarrassing corrections when it continually oversteps the boundaries of its territory (as is unavoidable) and loses itself in delusion and deceptions.
But right at the outset here there is an ambiguity, which can occasion great misunderstanding: Since the understanding, when it calls an object in a relation mere phenomenon, simultaneously makes for itself, beyond this relation, another representation of an object in itself and hence also represents itself as being able to make concepts of such an object, and since the understanding offers nothing other than the categories through which the object in this latter sense must at least be able to be thought, it is thereby misled into taking the entirely undetermined concept of a being of understanding, as a something in general outside of our sensibility, for a determinate concept of a being that we could cognize through the understanding in some way....”
(CPR A238/B297, in Guyer/Wood)
Noumena: that which comes from understanding while it’s twiddling its cognition-generating thumbs, waiting to do what it was actually meant to do.
Yes. Physicists just take Laws & Constants for granted, without further explanation. For pragmatic purposes, it's not necessary to delve into metaphysics, because they don't need to know "why" in order to know "how". Yet, philosophers, and some Cosmologists, don't limit their focus to practical problems. Instead, they feel free to speculate on impractical imaginary adventures in the Great Beyond : beyond the limits of physics, that is. Hence, such unverifiable conjectures as Many Worlds & Eternal Inflation. And Paul Davies impractical venture : The Goldilocks Enigma : Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life?
Ironically, the physicist's pragmatic ("just the facts ma'am") attitude is similar to the Buddha's reluctance to ask or answer indeterminate questions. It's not that the scientists don't care about the answers to meta-physical questions (e.g. why?), but perhaps because they fear that they won't like the answers. Both Buddha & Physicists were disgusted with the traditional mis-directed answers of popular religions : "invisible spirits/gods did it". So, they tried to avoid any hints of supernatural (meta-physical) forces at play. :cool:
The unanswered questions :
[i]The Buddha always told his disciples not to waste their time and energy in metaphysical speculation. Whenever he was asked a metaphysical question, he remained silent. Instead, he directed his disciples toward practical efforts. . . . .
The Buddha said that the seeking the answers to these types of questions will not help one on the spiritual path.[/i]
https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/The_unanswered_questions
Quoting Wayfarer
Before the expanding-cosmos evidence convinced scientists that our universe is not eternal, as presumed --- but contingent upon some mysterious pre-bang law-making & energy-creating force --- it was easy to just assume that Reality is an eternal cycle, with inherent (defacto) unquestionable absolute laws & forces & substances. A story without beginning or end.
Now, they are not so sure, but still resistant to any suggestion that a spooky outside force was involved. That's why I view the Enformationism thesis as a bridge between physics & meta-physics, twixt nature & super-nature. The essential "substance" of material reality is also the essence of mental ideality : merely various forms of the same fundamental malleable stuff. Perhaps, in the age of Information technology, the notion of a pre-BB "enformer" is not quite so spooky. :gasp:
Quoting Wayfarer
I too am agnostic about anything outside of the Actual contingent realm we know & love. But, as an amateur philosopher, I enjoy speculating in the realm of Potential meta-physical Ideality. It allows me to ask the questions that the Buddha avoided, without falling back into the traditional doctrinal webs of theism and polytheism. I prefer to fall forward into the unknown realm of Possibilities : what might be. :nerd:
Quoting Wayfarer
Ha! The joke's on him. Kant is now classified as a German Idealist, who trafficked in transcendental notions & a priori concepts. I assume the "metaphysics" he rejected was the same Catholic Scholastic doctrines, that the Logical Positive Realists on this forum ridicule as "spooky woo-woo". His own forays into theoretical reasoning, tried to have it both ways : practical Reason and impractical theorizing. But hay! That's what philosophy is all about. So, the alternative to speculative Metaphysics is empirical Physics. But you have to get your hands dirty doing physical experiments. :wink:
Kant’s Critique of Metaphysics :
Thus, Kant’s criticism of metaphysics simultaneously involves denying the pure use of theoretical reason as an instrument for knowledge of transcendent objects, and defending reason’s ideas as projections or goals that have some significant role to play in the overall project of knowledge acquisition.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-metaphysics/
The Leibnizian metaphysics, the object of Kant's attack, is criticized for assuming that the human mind can arrive by pure thought at truths about entities ...
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Immanuel-Kant/Period-of-the-three-Critiques
There are specific and general problems with preons as far as I can see.
You said that preons explained the g-2 result. But that turns out to be just a curve fitting exercise. If one believes in preons, one can believe in exotic preon composites like W8 and arrange the contributions to fit whatever dipole moment is measured.
Leptoquark folk will be doing the same. And leptoquarks are getting the big push this year to give LHC something plausible to chase. Yet also leptoquarks seem well motivated in the context of the Standard Miodel.
So your enthusiasm for preons already makes you overstate your case here. A more modest argument in favour of them would be more convincing, less of a turn off.
Then you brush off the technical issue that the smaller the region of confinement, the more massive the degrees of freedom become.
There is no clear motivation given for how preons are confined. I'm seeing superstrong EM, gravity, and metagluons being offered as binding mechanisms. And then the cancellation schemes to get rid of mass created by confinement are even more hand-waving as far as I can see ... on a quick skim of the literature I admit.
Finally there is the broad argument to be had that a search for ever smaller atoms of matter is simply an outdated approach.
What I like about preons is that it fits the general S-matrix spirit of drilling down to talk of fundamental degrees of freedom rather than fundamental particles. This makes all fermions a zoo of composites.
But then QFT seems to be telling us that particles are glued together combinations of degrees of freedom. Every possible combo has some probability of being manifested from the "everythingness" of the quantum vacuum. It then becomes a Darwinian contest to find what best survives as the matter that has relevance in the cooling~spreading heat sink that is the Big Bang cosmos.
So protons and electrons are the kind of crud that exist because they are the hardest combinations to dissolve away. Most of the combinations just don't wind up with interesting interactions.
Thus the metaphysics is the opposite of atomism. Rather than searching for the simplest possible elements of matter - some palette of preons to combine - the causality flows in the other direction. Unlimited quantum possibility eventually shakes itself down into a reasonably complex crud of protons, neutrons and electrons. Much else gets produced, but it is too unstable, too simple, too lacking in interactions, too whatever, to count as the basic construction material that is the Standard Model of effective low energy particles.
So preons are appealing in many ways. It is nice they could explain particle generations using the analogy of atomic orbitals. It is fun that they might make U(1) fundamental and present at the Planck scale, while making SU(2) redundant - when Standard Model and leptoquarks make its seem the most central gauge group with its complex number magic.
But that is also a reminder that physics is so much groping in the dark that some kind of maths can be whipped up to justify any intuitive picture. There is an industry of post-grads churning out scenarios that curve fit the available data, and which will get pulled out by Cern or whoever when they want the cash to fund their next generation collider.
That preons might be even half-believable should be held up as a reason to be even more cautious about going overboard with whatever line the experimentalists are pushing in the current year.
Yet still, one wants to pick a line through the maze. At the moment, I more team leptoquarks than team preons. And more team topological order than team tiny atoms. :grin:
It's only you who insists on seeing the embedding dimension that the intrinsic curvature of differential geometry has long done away with.
So you are tilting at windmills as usual.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yep. So another excellent argument against theism?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The Universe is the heat sink. It expands and thus cools. Heat is lost into the space that gets made.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And that "gods" created it all.
No. That can't be done. The combination has to be colorless. And there are two kinds of them.
Every particle process can be explained. Proton decay is easy. The basic group is SU(3)XSU(3)XU(1).
Physics was part of philosophy once... Why not anymore? Especially physics not accepted on other forums. Ain't this the place?
Natural philosophy! :grin:
What is matter? What is a particle? What is space? What is time? Seems philo-talk to me...
Oh! Sorry! It's your thread. Ill leave it...
Accordingly, many who misunderstand both classical metaphysics and German idealism believe it's all the same schtick.
Quoting Gnomon
There's nothing inherently the matter with that. It's only since science popularisers like Krauss and Dawkins started to claim that science somehow 'disproves' God that natural science has itself started to be taken as a metaphysics.
Quoting Gnomon
I know that territory very well, I did a Master's in Buddhist Studies ten years ago. In fact my introduction to Kant was through a 1950's book The Central Philosophy of Buddhism by T R V Murti, which is one of those formative texts you read early in life that forever becomes part of your outlook on life. Murti goes into extensive comparisons of the philosophy of the Buddhist Madhyamika (Middle Way) philosophy with Kant, Hegel, Hume and Bradley. This book is now generally scorned by later generations of Buddhologists as being overly euro-centric, but I found it tremendously helpful. You can read a snippet here.
Quoting Haglund
I think at the very least it ought to be discussed in a different thread. This thread like many is subject to constant digressions, but esoteric and contested concepts in current theoretical physics is perhaps a bridge too far. I'm sure nobody here other than yourself and Apo would know what a 'preon' is (or a Mexican hat, for that matter :roll: )
A wise observation. That Krauss guy is a total creep. Together with Dawkins, Harris, Pinker, etc. he started a new religion.
C'mon. I asked you to substantiate your claim that preons have some advantage is accounting for the g-2 muon result. Just give us the paper that backs that one up.
If not exotic preon combos like W8, then what?
Quoting Haglund
OK. Which actual preon theory are you speaking for here. References please.
That's the point. The preon model isn't even considered. Rishons and braids show similar structures Triplets.
The electron: C/C/C/
Up quark: CCU
Down quark:C/U/U/
Neutrino UUU
/ is anti, C is 1/3 charged, U is uncharged
Color and superstrong colors cause binding and colored quarks.
I'm not clear on what you're saying; can you explain? I wasn't asserting the idea of strict determinism, just outlining it, and pointing out that there is no logical contradiction in the idea that it doesn't obtain.
Quoting apokrisis
How do we know that this is not just the way it appears to us, time-bound creatures that we are? Also why could entropy not also obtain under the dominion of strict determinism wherein the only uncertainty would be epistemic?
Alternatively, particle physics is exactly where concepts of logical necessity and physical causation intersect in practice. It is the frontline of the debate.
Is reality little atomistic lumps of matter in motion or instead a mathematics of structure and relation?
Quoting Haglund
So you were hand-waving. Yet even my quick search found such consideration from 2004 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/0102242.pdf
Quoting Haglund
You tell me. I don't claim to understand what the superstrong force might be, let alone how it could apparently lack the essential strong force feature of asymptotic freedom.
Not sure about the preon, but a Mexican hat? Don't we all know that? But you're right. This thread ain't the place. Though the most fundamental cause could be found...
'Noumenal' is a polemical distinction from 'phenomenal', so I don't know what you are trying to say here, unless it is just the (unquestionable?) truism that all ideas are phenomena. More explanation required.
Quoting I like sushi
Again not sure what your point is. What you say here doesn't seem to relate to anything I've said. I will say though that the idea of there being absolutely nothing is not meaningless, even if it might seem impossible or contradictory. But again this is far from anything I've been addressing.
The problem is, mathematical physics is highly specialised and requires training. Unless you understand what lagrangians and hilbert spaces and vectors are (no need to explain!)
There's a genre of popular science writing which does help cast light on the philosophical implications of physics - I'm thinking Jim Baggott, Manjit Kumar, New Scientist etc - but there's a difference between discussing the philosophical implications of physics, and the kinds of debates going on inside physics, which are pretty well by definition only intelligible to those trained in it.
If charges rotate wider, the magnetic moment changes. The superstrong color force keeps the prekns together, like the quarks in hadrons. So the Lagrangian is QCD like. Charged hadrons have various magnetic moments too.
Where do you see me using math?
Would it be possible, though, to unpack "the philosophical implications of physics", without understanding "the debates going on within physics"? (This of course assuming that there must, or at least could be philosophical implications of physics).
So. Gibbs free energy, Friston blankets, markov blankets... I saw them all here. What's wrong with a Lagrangian? Kant would have liked it!
Not to mention the wavefunction.
It's not a matter of using maths explicitly, but that most of the concepts in mathematical physics require a grasp of the maths in order to understand. The concept of the Hilbert space can't be understood except through the mathematics. So it's not that there's anything 'wrong' with them, only that unless you have that training, then it's not intelligible.
Quoting Janus
To some extent! The books I referred to, like Manjit Kumar's Quantum, David Lindley's Uncertainty, Jim Baggott's Farewell to Reality - and of course Tao of Physics - are accessible to the lay reader. I think I have some drift of 'the debate between Bohr and Einstein', of the basic implications of the Copenhagen interpretation of physics vs 'many worlds', and something about physics from the perspective of the history of ideas.
There are philosophically-inclined physicists - the first generation of physicists were very much so. Heisenberg read Plato, Schrodinger read Schopenhauer and Vedanta, and Bohr's ' Principle of Complementarity' was a philosophically-sophisticated idea. But as physics moved from Europe to the USA and increasingly under the patronage of the military-industrial complex then it became much more a matter of shut up and calculate. See Quantum Mysticism: Gone but not Forgotten.
I was exactly wondering about them. The implications.
It can be very easily laymanified.
But why isn't it a part of philosophy? The love for wisdom.
Besides, it's really not that inside knowledge kind of thing. Math is just about quantities, and space.
I was saying that the physical idea of a constraint works better as it is large enough to include determinism without presuming determinism and thus excluding contingency.
A constraint certainly determines the likelihood of events. That likelihood can be made "almost sure", or effectively a probability of 1, by really piling on the constraints. But even a loose constraint is still some degree of determinancy.
Quoting Janus
But we can see to the start of time and the end of time - if we believe our astronomical instruments and cosmological models. So we are not particularly impoverished in that regard.
Quoting Janus
Determinism doesn't explain the existence of degrees of freedom - the uncertainty that is ontic.
An ideal gas is defined as a system of non-interacting particles that thus are described by their simplest six degrees of freedom - three directions of translation and three directions of rotation.
Each particle is thus free to go at any speed in any direction with the only thing to fear being the uncertainty of some momentum-exchanging collision.
But then being constrained within a box set within a heat bath (a tellingly complex set of constraints!) the collection of particles is thus entrained to the inevitability of arriving at a Gaussian thermal distribution.
So you can choose to focus on all that seems deterministic about the situation - the Newtonian laws governing the particle collisions, the central limit theorem and law of large numbers. Or you can choose to focus on all that seems contingent - the information uncertainty attached to any individual system microstate, the actual momentum of any particular particle.
Or you can do the third thing of adopting the constraints-based view which sees the necessity and the contingency as the two faces of the one causal story - the two metaphysical limits that bound the reality.
Nature is never either completely determined, nor completely contingent. And entropy models are the way to establish the ground state of such a metaphysics - the state of nature as it is when fully thermalised and at its destination of achieving a steady equilibrium.
Philosophy has a curriculum and a history. Certainly it's become very eclectic and synthetic in modern culture which is kind of unavoidable, but there are some core themes and ideas running through it which are specific to that curriculum.
As far as physics and philosophy is concerned, they intersect at points but you don't expect that physicists would necessarily have to know anything about the subject of philosophy, and vice versa, although there are some who do - as I mentioned.
My take on your posts is, you have a curious mind, and are open-minded, you're not trying to push pet theorems, which is a big plus, but on the other hand, your posts don't seem particularly well-informed from a philosophical perspective, if you don't mind me saying.
Yes. But that's exactly what I don't do. For example I asked why the model aint popular while it explains all.
Yes. I read all of Feyerabend and wrote a thesis on forms of reality, from empiricism, logical positivism, to van Fraassen, Radder, Pickering, etc. And one guy I like, experimental metaphysics. Don't remember his name. He wrote Feyerabend wrote 3 different books in 3 editions.
Anyhow, Ill back off from your thread. With these preons, that is. :smile:
This is just babble. The question was about how the charges could rotate wider - in some hand-waving analogy to electron orbits - when you are also relying on (some equally hand-waving) assertion that the charges are bound by an analogous strong force.
As usual, your replies substantiate nothing. They are slogans. When pressed, you can deliver neither specific arguments nor useful references.
Okay.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think the irony is rather that mathematical physics has become an industry of ill-motivated speculation. The academies are pumping out post-grads trained in the art of spinning intricate mathematical tales like preons and leptoquarks. You can claim any kind of "metaphysics" as long as it is presented in the accepted mathematical forms as some kind of "calculation".
And even the lay public ought to have an interest in whether this is a good thing or not, given that is their tax payer money that funds the great particle collider cathedrals, and them that are expected to shower prestige upon the priestly class of researchers.
So to be a critic - someone doing metaphysics in the modern era - demands being able understand the mathematical ideas well enough to call obvious bullshit on branes, cycling cosmologies, or whatever.
I find the philosophical musings of physicists about time and material causality to be interesting. Who's to say for sure what parts are BS
It would be about being able to make a scholarly case either way.
Physicists are often undercover philosophers and they are free to express alternate pictures of reality as long as each thesis is self consistent. Some might seem outlandish but reality might be outlandish
We don't know enough about the universe to verify much of what they write. I've been enjoying the books of Michio Kaku lately. To a medieval thinker those books would certainly be philosophy in large part
Precisely. That's what physics is. Philosophizing about nature. Math is just the quantitave description of ingredients. And a recipe to cook them. Some ingredients have zero nutritious value though. A cake of air follows. I think strings and branes are such ingredients.
Like what wild idea in particular? I’m sure that if you can think of an example, you will find wide discussion of its merits. There will be an informed assessment to be had in terms of the risk/reward of pursuing that line of thought.
That's from 2004! I talk about the recent muon g2 experiment. Divergent from the standard model. If you can find a calculation based on the C and U preons, show it please. There isn't. What's so difficult to understand that the dipole moment is different if the muon is an excited electron?
Well yes. The muon issue was already clear by the conclusion of the Brookhaven experiment in 2001.
Quoting Haglund
I was asking you for a preon based view. When it became clear you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, I googled up an example for myself in about 30 seconds.
Given your belly aching about the lack of love for a preon approach to the muon discrepancy, I thought you might be better pleased to find they exist.
Quoting Haglund
What is easy to understand is hand waving that avoids tackling problems like how is the superstrong force analogous to the strong force, yet apparently without the critical feature of asymptotic freedom.
Again, if you can provide a paper to substantiate your wild claim, go for it.
Okay. Thanks for the link. But that preon model is not the one I have in mind.
The supercolor force is asymptotically free just as the ordinary color. When the three charged preons are exicted they jump to a higher energy state. This causes the charge distribution to become spatially more extended. Like a charged hadron state of three quarks. Causing the magnetic moment to be different from the ground state.
There are difficulties but again, this stems from massive preons. See here
And here
That's exactly the issue, a changing space. Apokrisis claimed space was both flat and curved, which I pointed out is contradictory unless this is a temporal change. If we assume that space actually changes, then we need a relation between space and time which allows for such changes, physical "change" being an attribute of time. This would force us, by logical necessity, to assign logical priority to time rather than space. The conventional conception makes time the fourth dimension, as an attribute of space, rather than making it the zeroth dimension, as prior to space. As the fourth dimension, the properties of time are determined based on observation and analysis of changes to spatial objects. Under this conception, space is not allowed to be a changing thing (aether for example). When time is understood as prior to space, then non-spatial activity (being allowed for by non-spatial time) can be causal in the spatial world.
When the relation between space and time is understood in this way, we can give the non-dimensional point real status, as an active non-spatial point, which has location without occupying space, and is also causal in the surrounding space. The space surrounding the point can be mapped in the way I described, and changes to the physical things in this space observed. The points may be arbitrarily located for the observation purpose, but upon numerous observations of numerous points, a system can be developed to determine the real location of real non-spatial, active causal points, from the way that the surrounding spatial world is affected.
The issue with "expanding space", is that if it expands in all directions from a given point, then the point, around which the space is expanding, must have real existence, and it is most likely causal in the act of expansion.
Quoting apokrisis
You speak of things in terms of "flat" and "curved" which implies necessarily a distinction of dimensions. What you don't seem to grasp is that the "curve" is fundamentally unintelligible in relation to a straight line or flat surface, as demonstrated by the irrational nature of pi. We always fall back on the ideals of straight lines or flat planes in any attempt to understand curves, as your example of Gaussian curvature, and the reference of zero curvature, demonstrates.
If you understood the construct which I described you'll see that there is no curvature whatsoever within the model. There are points related to each other by lines, no flat planes. However, there is always, necessarily, "space" between the points which exist in straight line relations to each other. and curvature is allowed to be a real property of this space, as waves or something like that. Representing the transmission of wave energy with straight lines is, as we know, a faulty representation. Representing the curves of waves as existing relative to flat planes is what I say is a faulty representation, despite the usefulness of this representation. The exact properties of the curves (as waves) will remain unintelligible to us until we determine the nature of the medium (space) which exists between the points.
Quoting apokrisis
What exactly do you propose is the mechanism which creates space? Is that lost heat like a friction to this system, this space creating mechanism? If so, then the heat isn't lost into the space, it is lost into whatever it is which is outside of space. The space creating mechanism implies the real existence of whatever this is, which is outside of space, and is actively creating space.
It hasn't always been like this. Newton for example indicated that the reality, or truth of his first law of motion, what we call inertia, is dependent on the Will of God. Apparently, God might pull out his support for this law at any moment, and perhaps put something else in place which could be quite different, or leave no temporal continuity at all. Since God doesn't seem inclined to change His mind though, and His Will appears to be very stable, and trustworthy, human beings are inclined to take laws like this for granted. God's trustworthiness provides very good reason to take such laws for granted. When these laws are taken for granted however, there is no need to assume God anymore, because the assumption of God is only required for the purpose of accounting for the stability in these laws. And we have very good reason to take these laws for granted, because God is extremely trustworthy. So we can all become atheist.
Not quite. The question still remains who created matter and the laws it obeys to. And you might construct a gigantic string landscape to account for coupling strengths being precisely the tight ones for our current universe to contain life (which is not what I think is a true landscape), but the very existence of this landscape cannot be explained with the theory.
Good point. Until the Greek Revival / Enlightenment gave scientists the courage to abandon the age-old all-purpose explanation --- that the omniscient-omnipotent-god-concept explains all philosophical mysteries --- most sages & scientists were forced by their ignorance of ultimate causes to postulate a hypothetical First Cause, as a catch-all non-explanation.
However, as bits of physical evidence became woven into understandable theories of local causal systems, such as Evolution & Electro-Magnetism & Thermodynamics, the perceived dependence-on & necessity-for an ultimate Final Cause faded away. And Natural Laws were treated as mere consistent "constants" & "regularities" (necessities??), to be taken for granted, and not explained-away with Metaphysical metaphors.
Ironically, the presumptive triumph of reductive science, Quantum Theory, began to reveal new gaps in our understanding of fundamental reality. The search for a foundational Atom, seems to have found no physical bottom to ground our theories on. Instead, "quantum weirdness" appears to be pointing at ethereal "Mind Stuff" as the essential element of reality.
As a result, some secular non-religious scientists are beginning to take seriously such antique notions as Panpsychism, and futuristic sci-fi theories like a Mathematical Universe. But the implication of a Universal Mind to generate & contain the Mind-Stuff (information) is reminiscent of the ancient postulations of Logos and Deus. :cool:
Quantum weirdness goes deeper: It implies that the logical foundations of classical science are violated in the quantum realm; and it opens up a glimpse of an unfamiliar and perhaps older aspect of nature that some call the implicate universe.
https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/WritingScience/Ferris.htm
Note -- "Implicate" means implicit or inferred intentional meaning
Mind-Stuff :
(Originally) supposed particles of mental substance in combinations which are perceived as matter; (in later use also) any rudimentary abstract substance from which ideas, images, etc., can be formed.
https://www.lexico.com/definition/mind-stuff
Note -- that "abstract substance" is what I call Generic Information and EnFormAction.
Natural Laws are not explanations :
"Even William Paley, 17th century author of Natural Theology, “the gospel according to anthropomorphic design”, quibbled over some of the current terminology. “The idea that postulating ‘laws’ of Nature gave explanations of design, he thought to be a form of mysticism, ‘a mere substitution of words for reason, names for causes’ “ Thus, he nailed the weakness of reductive cosmology : it assumes that a random mechanism without Reason or Purpose could magically evolve creatures that are characterized by both. "
BothAnd Blog, post 116
The Problem with Panpsychism :
In his Scientific American magazine article, science writer John Horgan questions an “ambitious” new theory [Integrated information] to explain how human Consciousness evolved from dumb matter, like atoms, to smart stuff, like brains. Or as he put it, “how does stuff become conscious?” His first introduction to the theory made him skeptical. And part of his doubt was due to the implicit Panpsychism (all is mind) of the theory. That sounds more like a religious or mystical notion than a scientific hypothesis. Ironically, as scientists delve deeper into the post-Shannon Information phenomenon, the more they tend to resort to ancient philosophical concepts to explain the ubiquity and power of the non-stuff that used to be imagined as the content of Minds & Souls. Horgan jumped to the conclusion that “This ancient doctrine holds that consciousness is a property not just of brains but of all matter, like my table and coffee mug”. He probably imagined little atoms chatting among themselves about the latest gossip.
BothAnd Blog, post 115
Unfortunately, I get the impression that some aggressive posters raise such arcane technical questions in an effort to intimidate those outside the esoteric cabal of priests of Physics. Like you, I typically ask them to take-it-outside, as irrelevant (immaterial) to the "philosophical implications" of the topic under discussion. Typically though, they chalk-up that evasion as a triumph of enlightened Science over superstitious Philosophy. I for one, am inclined to allow them this little conceit, if it allows them to declare victory and beat a hasty retreat. :joke:
Sophistry :
A sophist was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics, and mathematics. ___Wiki
Note -- perhaps Philosophy Trolls now specialize in esoteric Physics.
The mechanism is the same that binds quarks in a hadron. With color replaced by supercolor, megacolor, hypercolor, or however you wanna call it. And the only combination is /C/C/C, three charged anti C preons (and there are only two kinds if preons exist! How nice is that?). They are massless.
Quoting apokrisis
There is no energy lost to space, in my humble opinion. Energy just disappears.
Quoting apokrisis
SU(2) is redundant. But another SU(3) takes it place.
The mathematics though is not that important. Preons can be found in a way similar as quarks. By crashing two leptons full speed head on. And then... the sound of rattle! Finalky the search can be closed then. What more can there be? One can philosophize about the nature of particles. No topological orders or defects needed.
:grin:
Stop making shit up. I said space would be flat to the degree it ain’t curved and curved to the degree it ain’t flat.
The issue was how to measure the kind of space you might be embedded in. The rest is your hysteria.
If the spaces between all matter particles vary along then curvature can't be measured, obviously. The ruler would stretch along. It's because the galaxies are gravity bound and the stars kept at constant radius, and we don't expand either, that space is seen expanding and light looses energy by expansion. If we consider 3d space expanding on hyperbolic 4d substrate space, dark energy is explained.
It's kind of funny that on physics forums no one has offered such response on preons as you did!
Can't it be that if we know the gods we know the nature of being?
As a matter of interest, what school or department was that thesis submitted to?
It was a thesis I wrote for my masters. I studied physics but was allowed to master in a philosophical part. I had to follow an extra subject of choice though. Or ain't that a thesis. A scription.
Maybe. But if we know the gods and their reason for creation, can't we know the nature if life?
It's not showing. :roll:
Sorry. Couldn't resist. But you're de-railing the thread again.
Bye!
What, they weren't skeptical?
You have to see that you come across as a crackpot, especially where your view builds off crackpots like Randell Mills and a collection of other outsiders and independent scholars.
So preons are already fringe. And your version is predicated on stuff that looks way beyond the fringe.
Your posts on the issue simply state your opinions rather than presenting a proper argument. You treat it as obvious that pretty much all mainstream physical thought is wrong. Which makes it hard to even have the beginnings of a serious discussion.
And see it from my point of view. I'm interested in how a left-field proposition like preons might stack up against the Cern-approved party line of leptoquarks as the "missing physics" behind the muon dipole discrepancy.
And I'm interested in leptoquarks as they would fill in the important gap in the first split second of the Big Bang - the time after reheating and before the Higgs symmetry breaking - when some kind of strong~electroweak gauge unity ruled.
But inflation, Higgs, and SU(2) gauge, are the type of things you just dismiss out of hand - on the basis of sources that are far off the familiar map of reality themselves.
At least I can see why we are not getting far now. :up:
We can't even begin on this question, until we first figure out what is matter.
Quoting Gnomon
It's not really a "non-explanation". The vast majority of human beings never apprehend the logical need for a "First Cause". So there is a massive explanation required, just to get to the point of recognizing the reality behind the philosophical mysteries, and the reasons for assuming the First Cause. It's not a non-explanation at all, it only appears like such to those who don't spend the time and effort to understand the explanation, and think of it as an assumption rather than a logical conclusion..
Quoting Gnomon
This is similar to what I said above. Understanding produces specific implications. When one does not understand, then the implications are not apprehended.
Quoting apokrisis
That was your attempt to justify your earlier claim that space is both curved and flat. Here's a reminder:
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
So I'll ask you again, the question I asked back then. If space changes from being flat to being curved, which is the only way that this sort of "kinds of space" idea you propose makes sense, by what principles do you say that this is X type of space, and that is Y type of space? What you have described is just two different ways of measuring one type of space. That's why the one transposes to the other, by making pi variable.
Where in your confusion do you see that contained in what I said?
Quite clearly I said space - as in a smoothly connected manifold - can be either flat or curved, with flatness in fact being the special case from the more general view of non-Euclidean geometry.
It’s an everyday point. Plenty of others were familiar with it.
So either, not both. Although also both in that one can be used as the basis from which to measure the other.
The natural way would be for the more general to be the basis for measuring the more particular. So flatness would be measured as a lack of curvature.
You keep then trying to add an embedding dimensionality which would allow a flat space to be seen as a curved one. In the flatness of a three dimensional realm, we can then see that the ant is crawling across the surface of the 2-sphere.
Thus the views can be treated reciprocally. However general relativity gives us good motivation to make curvature the more general case, and so go with the maths of intrinsic curvature.
The Cosmos is deemed to be flat because it has the critical mass that leaves it almost exactly poised between positive and negative curvature.
So from the point of view of how reality is, we know that space might have curvature of either kind. And yet somehow it is perfectly poised in a way that must be a fundamental clue.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Did you really ever ask this question? Or are you just papering over your knee jerk misunderstandings?
Anyway, I’ve once more outlined the standard story and added the physical motivation. And I’m sure you will continue to rant and rave about things no one ever said.
Way back, when I first engaged you, and accused you of contradiction, in saying that space was both curved and uncurved, I gave you the option of explaining how it might change from one to the other.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But you went off on a tangent of sophistry, instead of addressing the issue. You said space is curved to the degree that it's not flat, and flat to the degree that it's not curved. So I explained why this is very wrong. All the degrees are within curvature, and flat has no degrees of curvature.
Quoting apokrisis
"The standard story"? You mean your standard story. It's a good bit of fiction, ("The Cosmos is deemed to be flat because it has the critical mass..."), but I'm not too interested in fiction.
Modern physics says that spacetime is mostly flat but not completely. Aristotle didn't know about modern mathematics
You're an idiot.
Hey man, sorry for this brief interruption, but you're exactly the person I want to ask.
I'm trying to find literature on Peirce's reaction to some of Hume's ideas. I know there is a manuscript in which Peirce argues against Hume's argument against miracles, but surely there must be more topics discussed, such as causation, or Hume's general phil of mind.
Currently, I only have Peirce's vol.5 and 6 of his CP on hard copy.
Any idea of where to look for more info? Google isn't being particularly helpful here, or I'm searching badly.
As you can see, I don't much appreciate your fiction.
That hasn't been an interest of mine. But Googling "peirce hume miracles" brings up https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/29194829.pdf as its first hit. And Cathy Legg has written other good papers.
She cites the key Peircean point:
Check out http://www.commens.org/
Yes, I skimmed that one, I suppose I'm more interested in the causation argument, and there is a paper on that, which is OK, but surely there is more to be said. Nevertheless I'll read this carefully. I'll continue my search.
Many thanks.
Quoting Wayfarer
Very cool, will surely check it out, looks quite interesting. Thanks!
//Check out this review. //
So do you mean you are focused on the contrast in epistemologies or on Peirce’s ontic position on causation?
Hume is the big set piece epistemological debate. But if you want more on Peirce’s ontology, Menno Hulswit wrote a book. And there is a summary on Commens - http://www.commens.org/encyclopedia/article/hulswit-menno-peirce-causality-and-causation
And he mentions the other scholarship.
Perice was an extreme genius. And would agree with him (and you) about universals. But as I said, I'm very much into Hume these days, reading a good deal.
And it seems to me that, despite the many flaws in Hume's arguments, one can certainly see why he woke Kant from his slumbers. That's not something that can be said about many people.
It's a very complex topic, and while we can say that, as Schopenhauer pointed out, we have some idea of causation from the inside, attributing to the outside world, is still as problematic as Hume pointed it out to be.
I hope Peirce has stronger arguments than what I've seen, but the literature appears to be scant.
Absolutely, nominalism makes no sense.
More on the contrast in epistemology, but with these sources you've given me (and Wayfarer too), I have some things to look into.
They were. But they could not offer any real ratio against it. You did better. But still not convincing. Because the model I offer is just what sub quark reality is about. The future will tell. Together with a purely geometric model of particles (so they are no points) there is nothing more to know. It's good to be a crackpot. It cracks. The pot.
Leptoquarks? Haha! What a farce. Now they mix them? You see? Sticking to the standard.... Leptons and quarks fundamental. Let's mix them! A leptoquark. Of course...
Yes. But no one actually knew what the model is about. Neither do you, apparently.
My direct quote is a misrepresentation? "The Cosmos is deemed to be flat because it has the critical mass..."
The problem is that the concept of "mass" which is principally a temporal concept, is fundamentally unintelligible under the principles employed in modern physics, relativity theory. The concept of time dilation makes the incoherency of "mass" in modern physics glaringly obvious.
[quote=https://galileoandeinstein.phys.virginia.edu/lectures/mass_increase.html]Actually, there is continuing debate among physicists concerning this concept of relativistic mass. The debate is largely semantic: no-one doubts that the correct expression for the momentum of a particle having a rest mass m moving with velocity v? is p?=m1?v2/c2?v?. But particle physicists especially, many of whom spend their lives measuring particle rest masses to great precision, are not keen on writing this as p?=mrelv?. They don’t like the idea of a variable mass. For one thing, it might give the impression that as it speeds up a particle balloons in size, or at least its internal structure somehow alters. In fact, a relativistic particle just undergoes Lorentz contraction along the direction of motion, like anything else. It goes from a spherical shape towards a disc like shape having the same transverse radius.
So how can this “mass increase” be understood? As usual, Einstein had it right: he remarked that every form of energy possesses inertia. The kinetic energy itself has inertia. Now “inertia” is a defining property of mass. The other fundamental property of mass is that it attracts gravitationally. Does this kinetic energy do that? To see the answer, consider a sphere filled with gas. It will generate a spherically symmetric gravitational field outside itself, of strength proportional to the total mass. If we now heat up the gas, the gas particles will have this increased (relativistic) mass, corresponding to their increased kinetic energy, and the external gravitational field will have increased proportionally. (No-one doubts this either.)
So the “relativistic mass” indeed has the two basic properties of mass: inertia and gravitational attraction. (As will become clear in the following lectures, this relativistic mass is nothing but the total energy, with the rest mass itself now seen as energy.)
On a more trivial level, some teachers object to introducing relativistic mass because they fear students will assume the kinetic energy of a relativistically moving particle is just 12mv?2 using the relativistic mass — it isn’t, as we shall see shortly.
Footnote: For anyone who might go on sometime to a more mathematically sophisticated treatment, it should be added that the rest mass plays an important role as an invariant on going from one frame of reference to another, but the "relativistic mass" used here is really just the first component (the energy) of the four dimensional energy-momentum vector of a particle, and so is not an invariant.[/quote]
Notice where the article says "As usual, Einstein had it right". This is really a mistake. Attributing mass to kinetic energy, instead of providing a true representation of the referred phenomenon, is what leaves "mass" as incoherent. At issue is the relation between gravity and inertia.
Matter consists of tiny Planck-sized spheres, filled with physical charge. If you wrap up three dimensions of a 6d space into Planck-sized circles, you're left with a 3d large space, with 6d micro structure. Like a circle on a thin cylinder. The circle being the particle. Note that you can't construct a singularity like this. How much particles are crammed on each other, it doesn't matter. No point singularity comes to be. No if you consider this 3d space (actually 6d) wrapped around a 4d (actually 7d) wormhole, then because of the negative curvature on the wormhole (like the inside of a torus), a 3d universe can inflate away on each side of that hole, that singularity.
A mass near the speed of light never can form a black hole. Only two in relative motion. If you consider matter to be made of massless particles, the interaction can provide mass, i.e., matter moving slower than light. In the standard model this is done by making massless matter interact with a fictitious matter field, with unbelievable properties (a non-zero value of the vacuum expectation value, for which no reason is given; it's just posited). But the mass can also emerge if massless particles interact amongst themselves. Pure kinetic energy turned massive.
If you only accept the existence of potential infinity then you believe that every process, whether real or mathematical, eventually terminates after a finite amount of time. In which case lawfulness and lawlessness are disrobed of their metaphysical status as distinguishable properties attributable to things in themselves.
E.g we might say that the eventually terminating process {1,2,3, ...} begins 'lawfully' for the first three elements and then continues unlawfully for an unspecified amount of time. Which is only to say that it looks initially similar to another well-known sequence, such as {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10}, before continuing in either an unspecified fashion or in a fashion that is expected to look unfamiliar to the average person, before eventually halting.
To take a physical example, take the 'law' that every electron has the same mass. Obviously one cannot measure every electron and so the law isn't empirically verifiable. Following the positivism of Karl Popper, we might either regard "every electron has the same mass" as being as a norm of linguistic convention that is held true no matter transpires in the future, or we might regard it as being a semi-decidable empirical proposition that is falsifiable but not verifiable. What positivism took for granted is the view that the semantics of logic and language is absolutely knowable a priori without being contigent upon and epistemically restricted by the available empirical evidence, even as the world referred to by language and logic is accepted as being absolutely unknowable and empirically contingent.
But suppose we grant that the meaning of thought and language is as uncertain and as empirically contingent as the world to which it refers and instead treat logic, language and world on the same epistemological and ontological footing. Then not only will we be unable to empirically verify that every electron has the same mass, but we will also be unable to empirically establish the meaning of the word "every" in the proposition "every electron has the same mass" - for the word "every" can only be given a definite empirical interpretation in cases involving explicit enumeration over a finite number of entities, but in the present case we have no idea as to how many electrons there. Therefore the meaning of "every electron" is indefinite unless electrons are said to have the same mass by definition, in which case we have a 'law' of convention rather than of matters of fact.
In summary, if the rules of logic are treated as being empirically contingent and epistemically bound by the same principles of verification as the theories of the world they are used to formulate, then the empirical meaning of "infinite quantification" can only be interpreted as meaning 'indefinite finite quantification' as opposed to meaning 'greater than finite quantification' In which case, the question "does every electron have the same mass?" is equivalent to asking "does an undefined number of electrons have the same mass?" which falls short of describing or being supportive of the metaphysical ideas of lawfulness/lawlessness which become superfluous and cannot gain empirical footing.
On the other hand, if the rules of logic are understood to embody norms of conduct and linguistic representation, as opposed to embodying empirical contingencies, then the rules of logic do express lawfulness, namely the conduct and ethics of the logician.
It is the simultaneous presence of both types of meaning in science and logic that leads to the normative notion of "law" being misconstrued as an empirical matter of fact.
A wise conclusion an apperceptive observation. The laws of logic being contingencies themselves? Like the empirical world being contingent to the logical world? Somehow I hear Plato and his follower, the great Aristotle, speaking through you.
Well, you don’t have an organised approach to explaining. There’s that.
What, you have never heard this before? Standard cosmology.
https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/c/Critical+Density
It depends what you call an organized approach. All is there. The particles (C and U), the charges (three of them), the Lagrangians (excuses for the term used on this forum), a particle shape, which might cause problems for short-range behavior, but at the distances involved should pose no problem. The difficulty lies in assigning coupling strengths for the strong color interaction.
Kinetic energy minus potential energy? Or that functional used in path integrals? The term comes up over and over it seems.
There's a lot of standard cosmology which to anyone who takes any amount of time to think about, will be apprehended as fictional. Look at Haglund's explanation of mass for example:
Quoting Haglund
Your referenced page on critical density offers another very good example:
[quote=https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/c/Critical+Density]The ‘critical density’ is the average density of matter required for the Universe to just halt its expansion, but only after an infinite time. A Universe with the critical density is said to be flat.[/quote]
Notice, critical density is the density required to make the universe halt its expansion, after an infinite time. Does that not seem strange to you? Think about it. They've managed to figure out how much density is required such that the universe will actually halt its expansion, but the actual halting of expansion will only occur after an infinite amount of time has passed.
....said every crackpot ever
Tell me then, how do you make sense of the quote I took from your referenced page? How is "critical density" supposed to make a universe halt its expansion after an infinite amount of time?
So one blows. The other sucks.
The blowing gets ever weaker. The mass-energy content gets colder and colder, and thus less kinetic as time marches on.
But the sucking also gets ever weaker. The mass-energy content gets more and more spread out and so exerts an ever smaller gravitational force.
If the two sides of the equation remain in balance, then the whole shebang can coast along forever - continuously spreading and cooling - to reach its heat death at the end of time.
Note that in the updated picture - the current Lamda-CDM concordance model - the end of time (as the effective end of all discernible change) now arrives at a finite future date.
Dark energy is acting to accelerate the underlying metric expansion - the spreading. And so the cooling will reach a finite cut-off where kinetic energy can't be drained out of the largest cosmic light cone as light can no longer shift fast enough to cross the cosmic event horizon.
In effect, our visible corner of the cosmos will have fallen down a black hole about 36 billion light years across (about double its current size). But it won't be a big deal as all its particle content, and any blackholes, will also be long gone.
The only thing left will be the fizzle of virtual photons with a blackbody radiation to match a temperature of absolute zero.
But hey, why walk before we can run? Let's deal with the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric before we add the wrinkle of the Lamda-CDM concordance model. Let's hear you rant and rave a little more about the vanilla description for a bit.
Tell us again how Einstein got it so wrong and MU gets it so right. :rofl:
Quoting apokrisis
The size of the current universe is about 90 billion jy. Not 36 billion. Small detail...
Virtual photons with a black body radiation? What does that mean? The more I read of you the less I think you understand anything...
Or you talk chocolate about it. MU is at least truly interested...
Chocolate talk. "The end of time happens 5-01-3067000000000." :lol:
:grin:
You're right. The figures given by Lineweaver are that the current distance to our cosmic event horizon is 16 billion light-years, and the eventual maximum distance will be 18 billion light years. So there won't be a doubling. We are just about there.
See figs 2 and 3 of https://www.mso.anu.edu.au/~charley/papers/mepp.pdf for both that and the argument that all that's left is blackbody radiation with a wavelength the size of the entire cosmic event horizon.
The current distance is about 45 billion ly.
Quoting apokrisis
Yes. But the photons ain't virtual.
You’re confusing the particle horizon with the event horizon. But nice try. :wink:
The ones deeply confused are you and Wiki. Think for yourself instead of quoting Wiki! :wink:
Oh, and this. It’s Hawking radiation. So pulled out of the vacuum by the event horizon.
Quoting Haglund
You apparently couldn’t follow Lineweaver’s paper so I tried something that was hopefully more your level.
(I see Wiki was in fact quoting Lineweaver’s SciAm article. This Lineweaver must be a real bum, eh? :razz: )
Just calculate the Schwarzschild radius of the mass in the observable universe...
Hawking radiation is real photons and neutrinos. A black hole takes much longer to evaporate than the expansion takes to go beserk. So it will be the black holes torn apart. Everything in it will stay in it. But since most matter in it consists of preons and their antis, only real anti neutrinos and photons are left which can't react with the neutrinos that are left. They will get lost in space and no energy will be left.
It's not that I cant follow. I dont want. to follow. You maybe need a teacher but I dont need no more... You just say that to show your so-called high intelligence... :wink:
All matter is pulled out of the virtual once. So all matter is a kind if long lived virtual particle. All quarks and leptons will return into the vacuum again, except neutrinos, anti neutrinos and photons. If the anti neutrinos can escape the holes before the rip gets grip (hey! The rip gets grip!) then they will annihilate with the neutrino background. And only real photons will be left. Time will continue infinitely. At the center singularity a new bang can bang happily. :yawn:
:grin:
Quoting Haglund
:up:
As I said, fiction. But regardless of whether it's fiction or not, your explanation is very clearly inconsistent with your referenced article. The article explicitly says "but only after an infinite time". Therefore the article's explanation of "critical density" implies no end of time, yet your explanation states "at the end of time". A very clear contradiction in the two fictions, yet you give yours the same name, "critical density", as the other.
Quoting apokrisis
So, can I conclude 'end of time at a finite future', means no "critical density", which also means no flat universe? The "flat" is just an unrealistic ideal, like I've been trying to tell you. Therefore "flat universe", and "critical density", are simply fictions. How long do you think before the "updated picture" is also recognized as unreliable, is changed, and is also seen as a fiction?
Quoting apokrisis
Since all cosmology produced by Einsteinian theory ends up needing to be "updated" because it's wrong, and the updates involve making further exceptions for the failings of general relativity, I think it's very clear that Einstein got it wrong.
Look at the problem with the concept of "mass" which I mentioned. By Newton's principles, an object's 'resistance to change' is attributed to its momentum, which is a product of mass and velocity. Change to velocity requires acceleration, and this is offset by the mass of the object, so "mass" here represents the resistance to change. But kinetic energy, as the capacity to change an object's momentum, represented as one half the product of the mass with the square of the velocity, already has acceleration factored within it.
The problem with the concept of kinetic energy is that acceleration is not well understood, so any representation of it is just an approximation. Now in relativistic physics we have kinetic energy with no mass, in the form of electromagnetism, light, or photons. If you look, you can see a very clear problem with the concept of 'resistance to change'. In Newtonian physics 'resistance to change' was a property of mass. In the concept of "kinetic energy" an approximation is used to account for this property of mass, such that "resistance to change" is offset by the approximation of "acceleration". An approximation is used because acceleration is not well understood.
That approximation allows that inertia (resistance to change) can be attributed to kinetic energy. But there is an inversion which is not accounted for. Kinetic energy is the capacity to effect change, to cause change, and inertia is the capacity to resist change. The two could be thought to balance each other in a static situation. However, in any act of change, some energy is lost to the system (friction for example), or whatever it is which is supposed to contain the system (it can be expressed as entropy). So there must necessarily be a discrepancy between the "inertia" attributed to kinetic energy, as a potential cause, and the "inertia" attributed to mass, as resistance, because of the reality of entropy. More "inertia" as kinetic energy is required than the amount of "inertia" of mass, to have a balance. And, attempting to produce an equivalence between these two is a mistake, because the equations used to represent acceleration are only approximations, and they cannot account for the reality of the lost energy in real acceleration. The relativity theory does not give the tools to determine how the energy is lost, because equivalence is assumed, under the one name "inertia". Hence the glaring problem in modern physics, that many processes are understood as reversible.
What happened to the topic? I'd conclude that there is substantial disagreement with respect to the meaning of the principal terms "necessity" and "causation".
Good one! :up:
This despite being shown in both the Anscombe article and Del Santo's work that physical causation is not a necessary relation; and both and I pointing out that logical necessity sets out the way things might be spoken about, not the way things are.
In the rush to go all quantum, this thread is looking in the wrong places. It still looks as if your conclusion was reached because it is convenient to your spiritual views.
So it seems.
:point: If a first cause is necessary...
Hats off to you! :up:
:smile:
I agree with this, but I would go further to say that "physical causation", as conceptual, is a form of the broader category, "logical necessity". From here, if we go further in the direction of the wider category, we see that "logical necessity" can be described as a form of "necessary" in the sense of what is required, or needed for a purpose. So it is related directly to intention and free will, as means to an end. In the other direction, if we look at an assumed object which "physical causation" as a subject, is supposed to represent (in the physical world), we find something which is directly opposed to our conceptions of intention and free will.
This I would say, is why there appears to be a problem in reconciling the two. "Logical necessity" is grounded in free will, while the concept of "physical causation" produces ideas of necessity which are directly opposed to concept of free will . And, like I explained earlier, the classical way to resolve the problem, is to make the thing represented by "physical causation" the result of God's Will.
Quoting Banno
I would argue that this proposed resolution of the problem renders "physical causation" as a completely impotent concept, and ultimately useless. To remove the necessity, commonly thought to be implied by the cause/effect relationship, removes the required logical rigour of the rules for application of the concept. Then we do not have adequate rules for applying the term "cause". And, we end up with things like what Bartricks demonstrates in his thread on self-creation: sloppy use of "cause", such that a cause and effect might be coincidental. And that is just one example of how "cause" may be misused, when logical restrictions on definition are removed. Aristotle demonstrate six distinct uses for "cause" current in his time, the four commonly cited, along with luck and chance. Luck and chance he excluded as inappropriate use of the term.
"Logical necessity" in this context implies that for the laws to be different would be a logical contradiction. And yet this is not so. which is why I'm having difficulty following your argument.
Is it logically necessary that spacetime must be always the same?
what I think it means, is simply that you can make reasoned predictions and draw conclusions based on both observation and inference. Something very close to Kant's synthetic a priori.
If you are insisting that the laws of physics are logically necessary you must maintain that the laws of physics could not have been other than they are.
Try this: language uses logic. Logic is a formalisation of grammar, setting out structures and implications in our language use. Science uses language, and hence logic.
Again, physical causation is not a necessary relation; and logical necessity sets out the way things might be spoken about, not the way things are.
That's beyond simplistic. Time and length dilation under high velocities should have no effect on applications of logic in respective settings. But I don't think space really changes, just distances between some objects. But what do I know? Virtually nothing about the subject.
Doesn't allow for the fact that mathematics is predictive, enabling discovery of hitherto unknown facts (e.g. 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences'.) You can't reduce philosophy to 'language games'.
You desire to see something mysterious. It isn't there.
So what was bugging Einstein when he said 'the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible', then?
What I'm questioning is the idea that logical necessity is not related at all to physical causation. Obviously it's possible to consider logic (and math) in the abstract as if they are not connected to any actual state of affairs. But the fact that nature is to some extent predictable, i.e. that logical inference and mathematical concepts can be used to gain insights into and influence over the course of events indicates that the supposed division between them is not absolute. So I would question this sequence of propositions:
Supersition, then, is the belief that things happen for a reason. Is that right? Am I on the right track here?
See PI §324-5. What people accept as a justification is shown by how they think and live.
I don't know. I should do some more reading.
You're not alone!
Yes I agree, you can think inductively and abductively based on accumulated past experience. However, logical necessity is not inductive or abductive but deductive, and that is the part that is missing from empirical inference
Just found a splendid Robert Lawrence Kuhn video on exactly this point. And hey, personal connection - I sold one of the interviewees a Macintosh Computer, once.
Also there is such a thing as empirical inference; it is based on the expectation that comes from invariance of observed correlations. I agree with Hume that we don't actually witness causation, but I think he also neglected to notice that we experience ourselves, feel ourselves, as causal agents, as being able to apply forces to other things, and also as being acted upon by various forces.
So Hume’s claim that you can’t observe causal relationships, simply shows that Hume’s account of what ‘observation’ entails is insufficient. If he was consistent, he would just stop saying anything - perhaps return to the backgammon table, which is where he spent the best part of his later life.
It certainly seems to be the case that the action, the purported actual energy exchange, which is involved in causation is not directly observed, really not observed at all, but is inferred on the basis of the notion of causation. The fact that all observations are already conceptually mediated does not entail that all concepts are observations,and is derived only from understanding what is directly observed and what is involved in something being directly observed. Again, I think it is indisputable that there is no "raw data" which could becomes conscious, simply because any purported "data" would have to be understood as something (in other words conceptualized) in order to become conscious and thus have any influence on judgement.
I believe it is important to understand that logical necessity is a form of need. It is derived from the need to understand. From the need to understand comes the "discovery" of all the principles, or rules of logic, and form this, the judgements of valid and invalid.
The judgement that one described situation is the cause of another, which is the effect of the prior, is based in principles of logic. What is required for that judgement is a definition of what constitutes a "cause".
Quoting Banno
I don't understand how you might propose to remove necessity from physical causation, and still retain prediction as a valuable tool in science. If, in the discipline of physics, we can say that one described situation causes another (in general), or that one described situation caused another ( in particular), and we remove "necessity" from this relation, then how do we validate the usefulness of prediction?
Here's an example of what I'm asking. Suppose that described situation A is proposed as the cause of described situation B. If there is necessity between A and B, I can say "if A occurs then B will occur", and when I create the situation of A, I can make a valid prediction of B. The "necessity" between A and B is what validates my prediction that A will result in B, which I can express with the relation of necessity, "if A then B"..
Now, let's remove "necessity" from this relationship. I create A, and predict that B will be the result. The prediction is true, but B did not necessarily come from A, because we've removed the necessity. We now allow that B could have been the result of something other than A. Nor will B necessarily be the consequence of A, because that necessity has been removed as well. What validates my rule of prediction, "if A then B" now? And, if I'm a scientist, and I want to support a hypothesis with a prediction, through experimentation, how could that hypothesis be supported, if the relation is understood to be one of coincidence rather than necessity?
It might appear, that a reasonable thing to do would be to allow probabilities instead. We could say that if the prediction is good ninety percent of the time, we'll accept the hypothesis. Or, we might say that if the description of the consequent is ninety per cent accurate, ninety per cent of the time, in ninety per cent of the situations, we'll accept the hypothesis. But what happens if in some cases, we allow eighty five per cent as the rule of thumb? If we adhere to one hundred percent, all the time, we support "necessity", and probability is excluded. But if we slip into probabilities, what standards will produce rigidity in the rules, when we allow the probabilities of practise to have supremacy over the necessity of logic?
.....and summed up in five: “...intuitions without concepts are blind...”.
(As I turn the page I see already said it. Gives new meaning to.....you guys need to get on the same page!!!!)
————
Quoting Janus
Not if “.....intuitions without concepts are blind....” is true.
You know the drill: “....understanding cannot intuit, intuition cannot think....”.
I think the rest of your comment supports the drill, but if it does, the first statement contradicts the support, in that an inference cannot be derived from observation alone. An inference is a logical relation......yaddayaddayadda......
The thing is that observations are always already conceptually mediated as the quoted phrase states. We always already observe anything or any event as something. Events are observed to succeed one another, with certain events being constantly correlated with certain other events. None of this involves inference yet. The inferences come when we imagine hidden connections between the correlated events.
An inference is a kind of logical associative relation, but it doesn't follow that it is a necessary logical relation. We can, and humans have, imagined many different kinds of causal forces at work in the world. We might say that some kind of inferred causation is logically necessary....to our ability to be able to associate events intelligibly with one another. But that does not mean we have to think in terms of efficient causation. We could instead think the animal spirits, or God. or whatever, did it.
I’d go so far as to say....objects must relate to one or more categories, cause is a category, therefore inferred causation is logically necessary for human empirical cognitions.
And of course, physical causation in the world is meaningless without an intelligence to apprehend it, which makes logical necessity under such conditions of absence, moot.
That raises an interesting point. Cause and effect are categories of events, but I would say they are not "primary" categories. So, form is a category of objects; insofar as all objects have form and I would say it does count as a "primary" category.
I would say cause is more a category of judgment. I get that all these categories are categories of judgement, but I mean here that cause is more strictly just a category of judgement insofar as it is not an obvious attribute of objects. Think of a stone, for example; a stone is not in itself a cause, but it does in itself have form.
In that Closer to Truth video I linked Richard Swinburne says that causality is a primitive concept, meaning irreducible. I agree with him. If you ask ‘why’, any answer will begin with ‘because….’ - which proves his point!
This all depends on the way you would define your terms. You have three principal terms here, "event", "happen", and "cause". When we define "event" we might allow a distinction between an actual event, and a possible event, such that "happen" is not a necessary, or essential aspect of "event". This means that any described event may have either happened, or not happened. An event might be fact or fiction. Further, we could allow that "event" is not an attribute or property of anything, so that it does not function as a predication of a subject, and assume that "an event" is a type of general, ill-defined, and vague object. Then, "an event" would be an object without a proper identity and we could find that the law of excluded middle, or the law of non-contradiction, would not apply to anything we said about "an event".
As you can see, there are numerous possibilities to how "event" might be defined. And when we position "happen" in relation with our definition of "event", it is possible to define the two such that "happen" is a necessary, or essential aspect of "event". This would mean that we can't call something an "event" unless it has already "happened", i.e., we assume factuality with "event". If we take this step, then we need justification that whatever we want to call "an event", has actually occurred. So we would refer to the present situation, and explain how the present situation is the effect of, or was "caused" by the thing which we want to call "an event" (where it is necessary that the "event" has actually happened to be able to call it "an event").
Therefore, if "event" is defined such that it is necessary that the activity called "an event" has actually already occurred, so that occurrence is an essential aspect of being "an event", then we need to allow that "causation" is also an essential, or necessary, aspect of events. This is because we have no direct access through sensation, to events which have already occurred in the past, therefore no way to identify "an event" (being necessarily in the past by this definition) through sensation, as "an event". The only sensual evidence we have, is what is occurring now, at the present time, but to necessitate, validate, or justify, the claim that a specific event has actually occurred, (therefore fulfills the criteria of "event" under this definition), we have only a relationship of causation to rely on.
Because we need to assume this relationship of causation, to have confidence concerning truth about the past (memory being insufficient), we must approach your proposal, that an event might just happen without a cause, very cautiously, and with healthy skepticism. If we decide that we want to define "event" such that an event might be occurring right now, as we speak, at the present time, and we allow "that events might simply happen without cause or reason", then we deny the necessity of the causal relationship between the present and the past. Then our method for determining the truth about the past, is designated as invalid (by your proposition), and such claims about truth are unjustifiable.
It is good to divide out cause in this way, insofar as attribute implies identity of an existence while cause implies the relation of an existence. In this regard, I would agree cause is not a primary category for what an object is to be known as, but would add...neither is existence.
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Trivial sidebar: existence has to do with representation of each object in general in a time, cause has to do with representation of objects in general in successive times.
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Not-so-trivial sidebar: given the above, cause is not the form, re: .....
Quoting Janus
.....but rather, time is. And we already know this, because time is already stated in the transcendental method as the form of all phenomena, to which every single category subsequently applies.
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Second....and final, promise..... trivial sidebar:
The schemata of the categories of understanding are conceptions or compound conceptions, whereas the schema of the categories of judgement are cognitions.
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Quoting Janus
But can it be said with equal certainty, that a stone is not an effect? If it cannot be said, or it is said but contradicts empirical conditions, therein lay the validity for those categories with complementary, what Kant calls “dynamical”, nature. As opposed to “mathematical”, which do not have complementary conceptions belonging to them.
I think you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying that understanding events in terms of (some kind of) causation is somehow "invalid"; in fact it is the only way we can understand events. Any explanation of the connections between events must posit some hidden forces or powers; whether those are gods, animating spirits or mechanical causes.
Quoting Mww
I would say though, that an object is only known (as such) insofar as it does exist. If this is so, then we must allow for different categories of existence: possible, fictional, actual and so on. So, I agree that objects do not have an "extra" attribute: existence; on the contrary to be an object is to exist.
Quoting Mww
Right, but objects do not exist "in a time" in isolation, either temporally or spatially. We could represents a succession of objects appearing or successive events that have no causal connection, but such a representation would not be an explanation of anything, but would be a mere description.
Quoting Mww
Agreed.
Quoting Mww
We cannot say with "certainty" that a stone is or is not an effect, it seems to me; although of course we feel certain that stones originated somehow. But there is no strictly logical contradiction involved in thinking that a stone could have randomly popped into existence for no reason and caused by nothing at all (as incomprehensible as that might seem). That has been my only point in arguing against the idea that causation is logically necessary.
Then how do you justify your other statement, that causation is not logically necessary?
Quoting Janus
If causation is "the only way we can understand events", how can causation be "not logically necessary"? Is there a way that we understand things (events in this case), in which we do not employ logical necessity? And how does "causation" fit into this mode of understanding?
At first glance, it would appear like if there was any sort of "understanding" which could not be demonstrated and justified through logical necessity, it ought to be dismissed as misunderstanding. What type of "understanding" is valid "understanding", yet it is not given by the means of logical necessity? We'd have to say it's not a "valid" type of understanding, yet it is still a type of understanding. How can we classify this as "understanding" when it's just as easily classified as "misunderstanding"? Or do you base "understanding" in something completely different from logical necessity? What constitutes "understanding" to you?
This is of course, correct given certain premises. As the saying goes, “...I can think whatever I please, provided only I do not contradict myself...”. To think that which exits without a cause is unconditioned by antecedent causes, so.....there ya go. I have not contradicted myself. That is the correct form of transcendentally thinking an unconditioned effect. But you’re stuck right there, you can’t do anything constructive with a mere form.
Another way to look at it is....it is impossible to prove all that exists has a reason for its existence. There may be that which exists that we cannot know anything about, that cannot be called out as “things”, which makes explicit we cannot know anything whatsoever regarding their causality. Thus, logically, we are not authorized to say that which has no cause is impossible.
Neither of these will work for stones, though, or any possible experience of ours. We know stones, so we are restrained by the logic of physical causality because of that knowledge. If we deny logical necessity for that which we claim to know, we jeopardize the very conception of entailment for empirical knowledge itself.
The inescapable dualism of human reason. Can’t live with it, can’t kill it.
For something to be psychologically necessary is not always for something to be logically necessary.Thinking in terms of causation may be necessary for our rational understanding of things; our rationalizations so to speak, but this is not the same as to say that thinking in terms of causation is logically necessary.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Pre-reflective understanding consists in seeing things as having their various significances for us; seeing things under some basic conceptualization/ category or other. Reflective understanding consists in stories we use to explain how things came to be the way we find them.
I agree with what you say except, I would still maintain that it is not logically necessary that a stone could not have just popped into existence. I don't see why we need to think of our empirical notion of causation as logically necessary when we know it works and has worked very well for us. Why must it be apodictic?
Can we agree that what might be thought to be logically necessary for our rational thinking (what is psychologically necessary) can be distinguished from what is logically necessary per se?
I don't understand what you are saying here. I asked, how can you say both, that causation is not logically necessary, i.e. that events can happen without cause, and also that the only way we can understand events is through causation. If some events can happen without causation, then how can causation be the way to understand these events? Do you see what I mean? If the only way that events are understandable is through causation, then the idea of an event without cause is not understandable, because if it was, that would contradict "causation is the only way we can understand events".
So let me go through the problem again. I'll try to be concise and to the point, so maybe you'll understand this time. Suppose I believe both, that events can happen without cause, and, that I can only understand events as being caused. Aren't these contradictory beliefs? Doesn't the proposition "events can happen without cause" present itself as a sort of understanding of "events", which contradicts "we can only understand events by thinking causally"?
This is why I asked, what does "understanding" consist of to you. If "understanding" consists of applying logic, and ensuring that the thing "understood", adheres to logical principles, then the proposition "we can only understand events by thinking causally", contradicts the other, "I understand that events could happen without cause". So the two cannot be a part of one understanding of "events".
This is because "event" is a word we use to refer to things, and you have defined "event" by saying that it is a type of thing which which can only be understood causally. So "event" necessarily refers to a causal type of thing. Then you turn around and say that there is "no logical contradiction involved in thinking that events could happen without cause". But clearly there is contradiction here, because you have defined "event" as the type of thing which is understood causally. This other type of thing, which happens without a cause, cannot be classed as an "event", because it does not fit in that definition of "event" as things understood causally.
You need to either change your definition of "event" to allow that we can understand "events" through means other than causation, or adhere to your definition, and place these things which can happen without cause in a category other than "events", to allow for the truth of this understanding of those things.
Logically necessary per se. In my mind, that translates to....what is logically necessary because it is logically necessary. What is logically necessary just because it is. I honestly don’t know what to do with that.
I can easily enough distinguish what is logically necessary for our rational thinking from logical necessity per se. What is logically necessary for our rational thinking is that which justifies it as such. Logical necessity is merely the rule by which the justification is given. But that’s taking unwarranted liberties with what you said. Unless what you said just makes no sense, which I wouldn’t dare say.
So, we have.....my rational thinking is “stones have physical causation”. The question then becomes, what do I think is logically necessary in order for the thought I had about stones to be a rational cognition. Initially, I might think something like the principle of induction is logically necessary, insofar as I have never thought about any thing that didn’t have physical causation. Next I might think the LNC is logically necessary, insofar as if I think a stone doesn’t have physical causation I contradict my aforethought principle of induction. Then I might think imagination is logically necessary in order to circumvent the LNC because I can imagine what I damn well please. After those, I probably wouldn’t bother with any others.
But these logical necessities I think are sequential, one rather than the other in a series of thoughts, each of which are mutually independent and logically necessary per se, so I haven’t distinguished any particular one from the general, but merely given instances of it.
Dunno if I can agree or not, but I’m leaning towards not. You know.....cuz of what I dare not say. (Grin)
What is logically necessary is simply that which, if its negation were thought, would involve a contradiction. I don't know how to make it any clearer than that.
@Mww - I don't know if you'll recall this discussion of a few weeks back - of whether, and why, Kant regarded physics as an a priori pure science. I've just been reading Dermot Moran on Husserl's Crisis of the Western Sciences and found this passage:
That, I think, is the source of Kant's conviction that physics can be an a priori science - that 'physics, like mathematics, is a body of necessary and universal truth.' Noble sentiment but hardly sustainable in respect of physics since Einstein, I would think.
(although, on the other hand, many of the most far-out theories of physics, strings and the like, a very much conducted on the basis of mathematical idealisations of empirical data......)
Yeah, yeah, I love you too! :grin:
2. If we exist then causality has to exist [we depend on the laws of nature - causal relationships - for our existence]
3. We exist
Ergo,
4. Causality has to exist (causality is necessary)
Yes. The sounds of experiment and theory are produced close to the focal points of an ellipse. Theoretical sounds spread out to get focused at the practical locus from where it spreads out again, modulated, to reflect back into the theoretical focus, and the experimental sounds reach out for the theoretical campus from where it leaves again to adjust experiment. Once in a while, an almost perfect agreement is reached, when the ellipse has turned circular, and an extatic bright central state of coherence and unity is reached. The magic moments in science.
From the Introduction to the CPR:
"V. In all Theoretical Sciences of Reason, Synthetical Judgements “a priori” are contained as Principles.
1. Mathematical judgements are always synthetical [a priori]. Hitherto this fact, though incontestably true and very important in its consequences, seems to have escaped the analysts of the human mind, nay, to be in complete opposition to all their conjectures. ...
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2. The science of natural philosophy (physics) contains in itself synthetical judgements a priori, as principles. I shall adduce two propositions. For instance, the proposition, “In all changes of the material world, the quantity of matter remains unchanged”; or, that, “In all communication of motion, action and reaction must always be equal.” In both of these, not only is the necessity, and therefore their origin a priori clear, but also that they are synthetical propositions. For in the conception of matter, I do not cogitate its permanency, but merely its presence in space, which it fills. I therefore really go out of and beyond the conception of matter, in order to think on to it something a priori, which I did not think in it. The proposition is therefore not analytical, but synthetical, and nevertheless conceived a priori; and so it is with regard to the other propositions of the pure part of natural philosophy."
B14,B15 Boldings, underlines added
And "synthetic" (a priori) means that there is the self consciousness or apperception involved. That is, active combining of appearances into an unified object within the self identical self consciousness. In contrast to this, "analytic" means that thinking happens "merely" according to the "traditional" or "formal" logical forms. Logical thinking is applied "from without" to empirical material (not conceived as constituting the object itself). Subject and object are separate or empirical and accidental (and thus remaining something "subjective") instead of being necessarily unified (into something objective in apperception).
This is not true. Mathematical structures rest in nature, for us to be discovered.
Quoting waarala
True, but after the principles are found. The principles lay buried in nature. No a priori in our minds. The only a priori is the scientific attitude.
:up:
There are "pure" or ideal triangles in nature (as sensible matter)??
Notice that these synthetical a priori principles are called "judgements". This is why skepticism as an approach to fundamental principles is very important, as a tool to find mistakes within these judgements. Without skepticism, these synthetical judgements are simply taken for granted as "discovered" principles like Hilary says, when in reality they are synthetical structures created by judgement. Plato is often misunderstood as promoting a position in which we take these principles for granted as eternal truths, when in reality Plato was a skeptic demonstrating the need to question such principles.
Quoting Wayfarer
When mathematics is "the grammar of science", which formats the way that the structure of nature is revealed to us, then what is understood as "the structure of nature", the phenomenon which bears that name, is literally formed or created by that mathematics.
The issue then becomes the quest to maintain correspondence between "the structure of nature" (as created by the human mind), and intelligibility (as dictated by what the mind can understand). When mathematicians allow the axioms of "pure mathematics" to stray outside the limits of the fundamental laws of logic, identity for example, then there is inconsistency between the grammar of mathematics and the grammar of intelligibility. Since "the structure of nature" is based in mathematics, it is possible that this structure may become completely unintelligible to us, depending on the intelligibility of the axioms employed.
Yes. And cubes, hexagons, parabola, even hyperbolical space. Spheres, sine waves, fields, groups, you name it. Mandelbrot considered his set a discovery.
How these forms are observed to exist?
Just look at them!
But you can look at them only through the pure intuition!
Hey.....
I remember. I generally agree, taking exception only to your referring to “pure physics” in a Kantian context. As brought to light by , it is clear there is a pure part of physics with respect to the a priori principles which make the science possible, but “pure physics” as a general conception, has not the same distinction as....
“...Before all, be it observed, that proper mathematical propositions are always judgements à priori, and not empirical, because they carry along with them the conception of necessity, which cannot be given by experience. If this be demurred to, it matters not; I will then limit my assertion to pure mathematics, the very conception of which implies that it consists of knowledge altogether non-empirical and à priori....”
....in which we see how he wishes “pure” regarding the “theoretical sciences of reason” to be understood.
Minor point to be sure, but.....you know.....in the interest of the straight and narrow.....
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That says more about us than I would ever allow.
[quote=V. In all Theoretical Sciences of Reason....; https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap08]2. The science of natural philosophy (physics) contains in itself synthetical judgements à priori, as principles. I shall adduce two propositions. For instance, the proposition, “In all changes of the material world, the quantity of matter remains unchanged”; or, that, “In all communication of motion, action and reaction must always be equal.” In both of these, not only is the necessity, and therefore their origin à priori clear, but also that they are synthetical propositions.[/quote]
What is the import of 'not only is the necessity...'? Is that not that such propositions are actually both a matter of logical necessity and also of physical principle?
I believe there is no such thing as "pure" a priori. The a priori is always conditioned by the basic intuitions, space and time, which are inherently dependent on experience. Even in mathematical principles, if we attempt "the pure", we remove ourselves from an applicability with the consequence of useless fiction.
The importance of necessity resides in the condition Kant requires for pure a priori manifestations in his transcendental system. Necessity, along with universality, are the conditions determining whether or not some conception/judgement/cognition/knowledge is a priori or empirical.
“....Necessity and strict universality, therefore, are infallible tests for distinguishing pure from empirical knowledge, and are inseparably connected with each other....”
The synthetical part comes from the relation of conceptions in a proposition to each other, but that is beside the point of the grounds for determining what kind of proposition is under consideration.
This is all just groundwork, setting the stage, for the rest of his speculative metaphysics. Ever notice how little time he spends on stuff like this, compared to the non-empirical stuff on which he did elaborate, seemingly to no end, that the empiricists of the day utterly neglected? He writes for 98 pages on the empirical, but writes for 610 pages on the non-empirical. All set up by a mere 14 pages in the introduction, from which all the above is a part.
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Quoting Wayfarer
This has to do with origins, not examples, or proofs. The matter of physical principle in play here is induction, which lessens the importance of “strict universality”, relegating it to “as far as we know”, but leaves necessity to condition the proposition as a priori as opposed to entirely empirical.
Referencing the quote, have to keep in mind “the science of natural philosophy” is merely that which the human does in accordance with certain criteria he himself constructs, in order to make sense of observations. The physical doesn’t contain principles, it abides by them, at least as far as our kind of intelligence decides it does.
They are different categories. Logic consists of correct rules of reasoning. Causation is a physical phenomenon, reflecting a physical relation.
Law realists (e.g. Armstrong, Tooley, and Sosa) solve the problem of induction by proposing that there are laws of nature, not merely relations between objects (as Hume suggested). A law is a physical relation between types of things.
That’s fine, no problem. In effect, you’re dismissing, or at least disputing, the fundamental ground of Kantian metaphysics, which has been done since he published it. Buried in the subtleties, though, is the “first time for everything” qualifier, which, because people know so much about the world these days and science has taken us merrily down the empirical path, we tend to overlook as cognitive prerequisites. It’s like....boiling water. Big deal. Boiled water since I was a kid. That I gotta put water in the pot first just comes with the territory. And turning on the stove. And making sure I got electricity. And making the electricity that runs the stove. And building the dam. And mining the gypsum.
How boring. The real fun starts in going the other way. Everybody thinks; no one knows how thinking happens. So...there ya go, ripe for theoretical musings.
Yes, but that intuition has been shaped by countless encounters with them. Already in the womb your brain is stimulated by concentrically converging circle shapes.
How wonderful the nature is! Full of complicated geometrical figures!
Every mathematical shape has a counterpart in nature or can be created by us. Of course an infinite dimensional vector space has no counter part, and it's the question of path integrals of the Lagrangian truly exist, but it should be possible to physically make one. Like Möbius bands.
'Our kind of intelligence', compared to what?
Note the quotation on my profile from Chris Fuchs, author of ‘quantum Qbism’, ‘Quantum mechanics is a law of thought.’
Quoting Relativist
I believe in the concept of 'laws of nature', but I don't believe they can be described as physical. They precede the physical, they are what first must exist in order for there to be anything physical.
Hmmmm....dunno, really. I don’t think comparisons are possible. I mean, all we have to compare with, is our own, so what we we learn from it, except what ours tells us?
Quoting Wayfarer
I like it!!
Where do laws of nature exist? In the mind of God? Platonic "third realm"? How do these nonphysical laws influence physical things?
In nature. Where else? The laws describe how natural stuff behaves so it's in the behavior of nature where they reside.
To me, that is THE most important question in philosophy. I could write a lot, but I will confine myself to this observation: in relation to these kinds of order, what does it mean to say that they exist?
Consider a number - pick any number, 7 will do. In what sense does '7' exist? Well, you might say, you're looking at it. But what we're looking at is a symbol. It could just as easily be denoted 'VII' or 'seven'. What is denoted by that symbol is a mental operation, a count. It is discernable only to a rational mind, a mind capable of counting. Yet for any such mind, it is invariable; 7 = 7 in all possible worlds.
My view is, all of these primitive or basic intellectual operations such as number and logical principles underpin the process of rational thought and language. We're not conscious of them, as we see through them, and with them, they're the architecture of reason. But as our culture is overwhelmingly empiricist in outlook, then we don't consider them real, as they don't exist 'out there somewhere'. And for empiricism, what is 'out there somewhere' is the touchstone of what is real.
This is a revisionist form of platonism. See the discussion in this article. I'm with James Robert Brown, representing Platonism in that article (so much so, I bought his book, which has not been that useful, regrettably.)
Quoting Mww
That was my point! You said Quoting Mww
What other kind is there?
I'm beginning to see why there is this dogma that logical necessity and physical causation belong to different domains. It's the underlying mind-body dualism that is still at the basis of our modern outlook - post-Cartesian dualism, which operates in our thinking whether we know it or not. I'm reading Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences, and it is all laid out clearly in that book, in the chapters on Galileo and 'the mathematicization of nature'.
Recall Quine’s Alternative?
perhaps has something like that in mind.
But for my part, the answer to Quoting Wayfarer is that it is part of how we talk about the world, not so much part of the world. They are real more in the way of money and property than of rocks and thunder.
Things happened in philosophy after Kant.
Well, I'll qualify my statement then. Instead of saying that there is no such thing as pure a priori, I'll say that if we seek such, we find a big division between the intuition of space, and the intuition of time. And this division manifests itself in the principles of mathematics. Time is fundamentally order, and space is represented by lines. But order is of discrete units, while a line is a continuity.
Space, being an intuition dealing with how we relate to the external, cannot be a priori. This is because it can only be created from the individual seeing oneself as an individual, distinct or independent from one's environment, and this condition is posterior to the most primitive experience of the human being, being born. If we look back to the prior condition, the earlier condition, which is being in the womb, at that time the developing individual is united to, as a part of something larger. So there is no self with an external, as the thing which will be a self, is simply an internal part of something else. This is the condition which some mystics guide us toward, the position in which we are simply united within a grander whole, and there is no proper individual self, and no proper "external".
From this position, there can be no intuition of space, as this the original condition, in which there is no external, therefore no space, and this experience is prior to the intuition of space. And this is why, within the manifestation of mathematics. spatial conceptions lack in necessity. Geometrical principles can be altered as we see fit, so that, for example, parallel lines may meet in a curved spacetime. Our spatial intuitions, which lead us into geometry are contingent on how we conceive of time, which is derived from our temporal intuitions.
This places the intuition of time as deeper than, and prior to, the intuition of space. It manifests as the most basic of mathematical principles, order. The issue which Wayfarer points us to with this thread is the question of necessity in order, which is understood through "causation". But the real question is whether necessity can be removed from order, in a way similar to how I described that necessity can be removed from spatial conceptions.
Modern mathematics uses axioms which deny the necessity of order (a set of objects without an order for example). To validate such an axiom, "order" would have to be contingent on an even deeper intuition. We'd have to intuitively apprehend something deeper which order is dependent on. But I cannot find any deeper intuitions, to say that order is dependent on something else, and validate removing necessity from order. So I find that such axioms which attempt to remove necessity from order, are extremely counter-intuitive. How this intuition of time, manifesting as order, is itself grounded, whether it is grounded in experience, or something more fundamental than experience, as prior to experience, and a condition for the possibility of experience, is probably an issue of how we define the terms.
As many other kinds as there are other kinds of brains? Other kinds of CNS’s? I’m not about to say ours is the only kind of intelligence there is, but it is certainly the only kind that’s of any use to us.
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Quoting Wayfarer
Different domains/mind-body dualism....ok. Nature of the human beast, methinks.
Dogma....ehhh, sorta ok. Dogma with proper criticism, fine; dogmatism, use of dogmatic systems without the built-in mechanisms for proper self-criticism, dangerous.
Depends on how you mean the term to be used, I guess. Most use it with pejorative connotations, and I don’t want to imply that’s what you’re doing.
Are you saying our modern outlook shouldn’t have a basic underlying mind/body dualism?
Where I've encountered that argument is in The Indispensability Argument in the Philosophy of Mathematics. What Quine wants to do is 'naturalise' mathematics - part of the general process of naturalised epistemology. And by 'naturalised', what is meant is 'conformant with standard, neo-darwinian materialism' (although Quine may not say so explicitly) But it's the motivation for that which I am calling into question.
And why do 'our best' epistemic theories seem to debar any such knowledge?
Whereas I reject the assertion that humans are 'physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies'. Instead, I am more inclined to the traditional, rationalist claim that the faculty of reason discerns an order which is not explicable in physical terms. That ties into the the 'argument from reason', which we've discussed previously: the ability to grasp intellectual objects, such as number, is precisely that which sets humans apart from other sentient beings. We have the kind of nous that our simian forbears lack. (Heresy, I know. Somewhere, Hilary Putnam has an essay on the impossibility of naturalising reason, which I must get around to reading. However a large part of Nagel's work is about exactly that point also - see his Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion.)
//aha @Banno - found this essay on Putnam - haven't had time to read it, but it mentions Davidson and Quine.
Oh, probably. But it is not as if he could reduce mathematics to physics!
Quoting Wayfarer
Whereas I would rather play with the actual arguments. A difference in style, I guess. I suspect that the what might be missing from Nagel and Putnam is that rationality is a group enterprise; since it is dependent on language, it is an aspect of our institutional world.
So again, we can understand the kettle not heating up while over the flame, and that such an occurrence would be problematic for physics, but not for logic. But the kettle not being a kettle is a problem for logic. Physical cause is a different thing to logical necessity. The desire is there to apply the supposed certainty of modus ponens to physics, but it's a false use.
But to 'explain reason' is to invariably sell it short! As soon as you account for it in anything other than it's own terms, then you're denying the sovereignty of reason. I'm beginning to suspect that the very existence of reason is actually an inconvenient truth for a lot of analytical philosophy.
Quoting Banno
But they meet all the time. They can be separated by abstracting them, but in practice, everything we do is predicated on the fact that existence has a certain logic. We don't put the kettle on thinking it will turn into an elephant and trample us.
IMO, the touchstone of what is real is the physical world and the physical stuff in it. I'm not inclined to assume non-physical things exist if the relevant phenomena can be adequately accounted for in physicalist terms. That makes it superfluous. Humans are adept at abstract reasoning, rooted in the way of abstraction, whereby we consider properties of things independently of the things. Our ability to discern redness does not imply redness existing independently of red objects. Same with numbers: there exist groups of 3 objects, but this doesn't imply "3" exists independently of the things that exhibit the "threeness" property. There are logical relations between the numeric abstractions (like 2+2=4), but again, this doesn't entail the independent existence of these numbers.
Not only do these abstractions seem superfluous, their independent existence requires accounting for how they relate to the physical world. I have 4 marbles in my hand. Does this fact depend on some obscure relation between an amorphous set of marbles and the number "4"?
That's exactly what I'd expect. But notice that 'phenomena' means 'what appears'. Who it appears too is omitted by this, but I expect you think that 'only phenomena exist'.
Quoting Agent Smith
There's obviously a connection. I think the whole question of what constitutes a synthetic a priori judgement is still wide open.
:up:
Thanks to Kant and his apriori/a posteriori and analytic/synthetic distinctions, we have an opening to prove the logical necessity of causality as a synthetic a priori truth!
The question is how?
No. I was referring to physical phenomena, not to perception. If you choose not to trust your perceptions, that's an entirely different issue.
Maybe not within the objects themselves. Rather in their spatial relation with other objects, or the spatial relations of the parts of which the object is made up (in which case the lay within the object, in a certain sense)). We know nothing about the objects themselves. We call the contents of objects (and the objects they are made of, way down to the fundamental level) physical charge and mass. These contents we only get to know if we literally consume them and they become part of us.
Regardless, 'phenomena' means 'what appears', 'a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen'. That is a matter of definition. The idea that phenomena constitute the totality of experience is commonplace, but mistaken.
That's you want them to underpin the process of rational thought and language.
Quoting Wayfarer
There are more creatures in this world. People are by no means unique.
Without causality, no life. Only if causality exists, life can exist. Life exists. So causality is an a priori logical necessity.
That's how I'd approach the problem. I don't quite like it though. Something about it is off.
Quoting Wayfarer
How odd for you.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, they do not. Physical cause is not logical necessity. It is not modus ponens. You seem to me to continue to insist on something that is blatantly not the case, and yet not address this criticism.
Physical causality is a logical necessity for life to exist. It's not a sufficient logical necessity though. But without it, life can't evolve in the first place.
Yeah, me concurs!
Which you nevertheless have no hesitation in doing:
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
But they meet in places, e.g. ' For instance, (in) the proposition, “In all changes of the material world, the quantity of matter remains unchanged”; or, that, “In all communication of motion, action and reaction must always be equal.'
"The wave flushed over me and physically caused me to fall"
"The wave flushed over me and logically necessitated me to fall"
Draw your conclusion.
These are not necessary truths. There are possible worlds in which the quantity of matter changes, in which action and reaction are not opposites.
The wave flushed over me and yet I succeed. No contradiction in the negation, and hence not a necessary proposition.
Hands up – who actually read Anscombe's article?
:up:
Hand up. At a slight tangent, it is relevant to the use of statistics in public health. Durkheim studied suicide rates and noticed that whilst each suicide is an individual choice made from personal motives the death rates from suicide in a population are remarkably similar from year to year. The cause of an individual event can be seen differently from the cause of a pattern or rate of such events.
https://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/suicide.html
I don't know whether it qualifies as a paradox. Random coin flips result in a predictable result of ever more approximately equal heads and tails.
A different but related idea is the Prevention Paradox. To reduce the rate of heart attacks in a population the interventions need to apply to the whole population, people at low risk as well as at high risk.
[quote=G Rose]‘Why do some individuals have hypertension?’ is a quite different question from ‘Why do some populations have much hypertension, whilst in others it is rare?’[/quote]
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/30/3/427/736897
I award myself beta plus minus for the above. "It is an interesting connection but you did not relate it back to the original article." True. I leave that to others and anyhow I'm supposed to be working.
So much for fine-tuning, then.
Quoting Cuthbert
Slight? :chin: More like, ‘in no way connected, but…’
I did read the Anscombe article, that I posted. Didn’t find it particularly illuminating although full credit to her for at least mentioning indeterminism in physics.
...but posted it anyway.
Now it seems to me to set out in section (I) the "genealogy" of the error of equating cause and logical necessity, then in section (II) to show that determinism does not work in classical physics, that there can be uncaused events in more recent physics and to show that determinism is incompatible with freedom, and showing that determinism is a cultural artefact that is not needed for doing science.
So it seems to me to be shining a light directly on the error of your OP. A puzzle then, that you did not find that light illuminating.
Sure, here's your topic...
Quoting Wayfarer
The Anscombe article shows that they are quite distinct things.
Quoting Wayfarer
Ah, Ok, so to the deeper issue. Isn't this a bit like trying to rationalise rationality? How to put into words the very act of putting things into words? Looks to me like something we show but not say; something at the very edge of language use. Something like that seems to be implicit in the last few paragraphs of Anscombe's article. I suspect that she has some Thomistic solution she is hinting at but not setting out, that might well be more in line with your approach than with mine.
This is why Banno characterizes (defines) "reason" as "a group enterprise", rather than as the activity of an individual mind. Instead of describing reasoning as something which an individual mind does, Banno describes reasoning as having the essential property of "language" (requiring, or needing language). This makes language logically prior to reasoning.
Now, instead of the true description, in which individual reasoning minds use language as a tool, Banno has a group of people involved in an activity called reasoning, and the group are using language as their tool. The obvious problem with Banno's argument is that it is utterly impossible to locate, identify, and understand this group activity, called reasoning. Every time that we try to find and identify the activity of reasoning, we see very clearly that it is the activity of an individual reasoning mind. Therefore Banno's argument is based on a false description; the unsound premise that reasoning is a group enterprise.
The whole comment was pretty good, but it all comes down to this, for which I can find no fault. As great and wonderful as human reason is, each of us has his own and he is at the mercy of it. Hence, you take the red pill in defining terms in one way, I take the blue pill in defining terms another way, while trying to find something in common. Which hardly ever works.
Maybe, the red pill and the blue pill actually consist of the very same thing?
Actually though, I think there is a very real difference, which involves the relationship between space and time. As explained in my post, intuitively, time is logically prior to space. And for any person who takes a few moments to contemplate this question, in meditation or any other mystical practise, this intuition starts to become very clear. But in the science of physics, this order has been reversed, such that space is prior to time. Therefore we can conclude that our true intuitions must be suppressed for the sake of adopting the time/space relationship employed by physics.
When presented with this problem, we can proceed toward resolution by assuming that our basic intuition of time is wrong, or by assuming that the representation of time employed within physics is wrong, (or both). But if we assume that our fundamental (base) intuitions are wrong, then we have nothing left to go on. We must dispose of the most basic principles of logic, such as identity, and non-contradiction, and we are left with zero, nothing as a starting point. Any chosen starting point, for any sort of understanding, would be completely arbitrary and randomly chosen.
This is what "pure mathematics" gives us. It appears like we can choose any arbitrary starting point (axiom), and produce a synthetic conceptual structure based solely on One point. Order is not necessary, we can start at any given point. However, the nature of logic, and it's ground in intuition, really demonstrates to us that this is untrue. In reality we need more than one starting point. And, we need an assumed relationship between the plurality of starting points. If the relationship between the multitude of points is not assumed to be one of necessity, the entire structure has no logical stability.
In turn, this reality show us something about "intuition" itself. It can be neither a priori nor a posteriori, but it must necessarily be a combination of both. That is what produces reliability.
Subjectivism.
You're mistaken. I suggest you go to the [url=https://iep.utm.edu/]
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy [/url] and do a search on "phenomena". Here's a couple examples:
[Url=https://iep.utm.edu/lawofnat/]This IEP article on Laws of Nature[/url]:
[I]"On the other account, the Necessitarian Theory, Laws of Nature are the “principles” which govern the natural phenomena of the world. "[/i]
[Url=https://iep.utm.edu/explanat/] IEP article in explanation[/url]:"Historically, explanation has been associated with causation: to explain an event or phenomenon is to identify its cause."
Yeah....about that. I suppose you’re directing me to this....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We do not intuit time or space; we intuit objects in time and space. To intuit is to follow from sensation, and the sensation proper of time or space is impossible, insofar as both are conceived as infinite and empty.
While I agree space and time have a mutual exclusivity with respect to functionality, I see no reason to grant one with priority over the other under empirical conditions. As a concession, on the other hand, I do grant that time has priority under none-empirical conditions, insofar as thoughts are never represented in space yet are always and only represented by successions in time.
Second, the most basic mathematical principles are subsumed under the schema of quantity, not relation, or, in your terms, order.
————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True enough. But if it is the case we don’t function at all, in any way, shape or form, when we dismiss the basic principles of logic, then it is reasonable to suppose we couldn’t do that in the first place, insofar as we must use them in order to assume their dismissal. It follows that if we cannot assume to dismiss them, we are left with merely getting them as correct as we can.
Gotta be careful here, nonetheless, because to juxtaposition fundamental (base) intuitions to our basic principles of logic involves separate functions of human cognition. This is most apparent iff it is the case that intuition does not involve judgement, while basic logical principles is predicated on it exclusively.
————-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sorry, but the nature of logic is in judgement, not intuition. Think of it this way: you know how when we perceive something, when we are affected by some imprint on the senses, we are never conscious of the information that flows along the nerves? We sense the beginning, we cognize what the beginning was, at the end, in the brain, but all that between, we know nothing about whatsoever. THAT is intuition, in the proper, albeit metaphysical, sense. And because we are never conscious of our intuitions, but we are certainly conscious of the judgements we make on our sensations from which the intuition is given, and logical determinations are the objects of judgements alone, it follows necessarily that intuition cannot stand in any relation to the nature of logic. It may be said intuition is the ground for the possibility of logical determinations, but that is not to say they determine the nature of logic.
Besides....there are those occasions when we employ logical principles even without an intuition, without an object making an impression on the senses. Case in point....the guy that invented the Slinky. Sure, springs and stuff falling are sensuous impressions, but you can’t get a Slinky as such, from those two intuitions. To connect those into an object that doesn’t yet exist requires more than the antecedent intuition of each. In just the same way, you cannot get to 12 if all you have is a 7 and a 5.
So sayeth the blue pill, and I got a whole bucketful of them little devils. Lucky for me, cuz I’ve grown accustomed.....ok, fine.....addicted.....to their intoxication.
.....in all its various and sundry and altogether private iterations.
Space and particles moving in it is time. The emergent thermodynamic time are real particles collectively moving in irreversible processes in an emergent space, the both of which inflated into existence from a TDtime- and macro-spaceless primordial state of virtual particles rotating reversibly in a primordial embryonic space (which can be interpreted as primordial time), embedded in a higher dimensional space with appropriate properties to make the inflation and later accelerated expansion happen.
While I don’t believe this will resolve much here, a possible metaphysical missing link in this thread is the relation between reason and causation. Reason consists of reasons. A reason can consist of a) a cause, b) a motive, or c) an explanation (with this latter including our epistemic understanding of causes and motives). Motives cause motions of psyche, i.e. cause cognitive behaviors. Explanations are commonly understood to be effects caused by psyches. Hence, the occurrence of any possible subcategory of “a reason” is at base dependent on the notion, if not the reality, of causation. Reasoning, the act of engaging in reason, is commonly understood to apply to at least human psyches. Were something like the Peircean idea of physicality as effete mind to take place, then reasoning - again, the activity of engaging in reason (which, again, can consist of causes, motives, or explanations) - would naturally be something which the physical world engages in; this in so far as the physical world engages in the activity of (physical) causation … which is a form of reasoning: i.e., the act of engaging in reason … here, in particular , of engaging in causes, hence causation. Of course, this interpretation harkens back to the Heraclitan and Stoic notion of logos, from which the notion of logic takes its form. And that’s a no-no for all materialist conceptualizations. (For which reasoning ipso facto can pertain only to certain psyches ... often enough, psyches that a fully controlled causally by a fully deterministic physical world ... hmm, something's amiss, me thinks.)
BTW, if it hasn’t yet been mentioned, Hume - despite his various imperfections (who is perfect?) - was a diehard compatibilist; he had no issue against the reality of causation as a metaphysical aspect of reality. His take was only that any particular cause we can identify to any particular effect will not, as a particular instantiation of causation, be logically necessitated by deductive reasoning. Instead, it will be so judged based on repeated like experiences inductively affirming the connection between particular causes and effects. E.g., that I cause the light to turn on when I turn the light switch - an instance of causation that most take for granted - is not a logical necessity … but only a belief habitually formed from repetitions of experience. I walk into a house, push a light switch, and the lights come on, making me believe I caused the lights to turn on … when, maybe, the light switch I pushed might have no wires attached and someone in an adjacent room not seen by me pushed the functional light switch to the light bulb I saw turned on at the same time I did. This only to illustrate the lack of logical necessity to my causing the lights to turn on in this one example. To any concrete instantiation of causation for that matter. But this observation in no way rationally justifies there being a lack of causation in the world. Again, there can be no variant of compatibilism absent the metaphysical reality of causation, and Hume, for starters, was a stanch compatibilist.
:up:
Reasons and causes are indeed closely connected. Reasons can be said teleological causes. Reasons provide clarity about personal causes.
Maybe reason and physical causation meet at the divide between the mental and physical world, at the epistemic cut, i.e., in our bodies.
Here interpreting "reason" in the common modern sense, I rather like your take. So as to emphasize, to me both yet being aspects of the Stoic notion of universal logos.
I'm not too familiar with classical philosophy, so had to look it up. And indeed:
"Stoic philosophy began with Zeno of Citium c. 300 BC, in which the logos was the active reason pervading and animating the Universe. It was conceived as material and is usually identified with God or Nature."
Makes sense! Modern science could learn a lesson about that. Or be taught a lesson! The "hard problem" of consciousness would be "solved" in a couple of lessons!
:grin: Yup. I agree. Like other things though, its something easier said than done. :razz:
Yes, very true and frustrating. If only we had more power! :joke: The word (logos!) can be very powerful though! :smile:
I too noted the relevance of the Stoic 'logos' a little earlier. It seems rather like that other axial-age philosophical motif of the East, dharma. Agree with your remarks on Hume also.
Will be erring on the side of caution here (I'm sure you'll correct me where needed):
The Word? Hmm. Causation isn't made up of words, never mind a word, no?
I'm all for Stoic notions of logos; but do not favor the Abrahamic re-invisioning of it. It's like laws of thought: they cause our abilities to think in the ways we can. Part and parcel of the logos. But to address them as the word of some deity is to run into the contradiction of a psyche that either is itself determined by the same laws of thought we are prior to ever creating them or, else, of some omni-this-and-that deity's mind that is beyond any law of thought and hence logically trivialistic and contradictory all the time and at no time in the same respect, including in the good/evil respect ... not my cup of tea this, to say the least.
Still, I was focusing in on the relation(s) between reason and causation.
I can see your concern for The Word. Not my cup of tea either! I was again referring to the modern version of the word, just the words of the language we speak, not realizing that Logos actually means the "Word of God" ( whatever he might have said). I'm a believer too, but my vision on heaven and gods stands a zillion miles away from the standard inhuman super omnimonster, with his roots in ancient Greece (at least, the western version), and theists probably like me even less than atheists!
So, I was talking about words. I read that Hitler used words like small doses of a lethal poison. Provide them one small dose at the time, and power is yours before noticed... (don't think I'm a fan of the guy!). Words can be powerful and maybe even change lives, though of course it takes more than them aline.
Wanted to more properly back this up with a quote or two from my copy of Heraclitus’ translated fragments … can’t locate the book in my haphazard pile of books I like to call my bookshelves. From memory, to at least Heraclitus, logos is as much natural laws as it is the active causal processes the pervade the world – from which human judgments and speech commence, this while they remain intimately intertwined with the former. In this I find that there’s nothing notably different from Stoic interpretations. Though my knowledge in these fields is far more limited than yours, this to say that to me too it seems to be a different culture’s parallel formulation of the metaphysical principles applicable to dharma; I’d add of karma as well - this despite the divergences when one gets into the details and cultural applications.
Clearly a resemblance to the idea of 'dharma' in that context.
I agree with you that it was unfortunate (to say the least) the way Christian theology appopriated the conception of logos as 'the word of God' and then used it to underwrite the authority of the Church. In fact I think it's one of the reasons for the wholesale rejection of religion and such ideas of 'universal reason' in the Enlightenment.
Or obscurity.
Quoting Hillary
Yea, there's the truism that the pen is mightier than than the sword to further back this up.
Funny thing though, when it comes to "logos" I always get frustrated that in English it translates into the plural of "logo". This missing the point of the term. As can also be said of the term interpreted in an Aristotelian sense. Still, I'm glad that the term "logos" in its Heraclitan and Stoic sense is of value to at least some of us. :up:
Yea, and I have my hunches that it goes hand in hand with the turn to reject teleology as well. When teleology is only understood anthropomorphically, it then can only be interpreted as necessitating a globally governing psyche via which it manifests. So it gets rejected wholesale, baby out with the bathwater and all, and we end up with the meaninglessness of nihilism - which might ring just a bit truer if the very concept were to in fact be meaningless to people as well. :smile:
The strange thing is, I don't understand why I wrote that up and what I meant by it! I think I meant physical causes, as that's what the thread is about. Personal causes can indeed be quite obscure...
I agree, though I think that medicine shows that physiological causes can also be quite obscure.
(In Buddhist Studies, one of the texts I studied was called the Brahmajala Sutta, meaning the 'net of views'. It is a canonical list of all of the forms of mistaken beliefs that aspirants typically fall into. Half were 'eternalist' views - which I interpreted to mean belief in perpetual re-birth in accordance with favourable karma. The other half were nihilistic views - the belief that existence utterly ceases at death with no karmic consequences of actions. One of these kinds of view is the view that life arises purely fortuitously, as a matter of chance. Bhikkhu Bodhi, the translator, remarked in his preface that the majority of modern culture takes this as a scientifically-established fact.)
What's obscure about them? The causes are raging through my brain, pushing and pulling ideas along or resonating with the outside, creating a colorful and noisy world with their mental load, while I between them, on the edge of reason and madness...
Quoting Janus
Purpose is nowadays a fairly fuzzy term. In terms of teleology, though, it is the causal motions toward an end such that the given end propels the movements toward it. Causal agents have goals as various ends they pursue, yes. This signifies teleology/purpose for us, conscious agents. The envisioning of a cosmic teleology/purpose does not however necessitate a cosmic psyche that governs all via its own personal goals ... this, hence, toward who knows what ends that gives this deity purpose (a bit of a logical contradiction to me in relation to cosmic purpose, akin to the contradiction regarding laws of thought I previously mentioned, but this aside).
As to the alternative I at least have in mind, it's a mouthful, but here goes: Cosmic purpose/teleology could be self-consistently upheld - though not in any materialist conceptualization - in what has been termed "the One" or "the Good" as an ultimate state of reality, which is not itself a mind that thinks, wants, perceives, and judges but a non-dual (hence, lacking any dichotomy between self and otherness; hence, perfectly selfless; hence, in an important sense, a perfectly objective and non-quantitative) state of awareness (think of the eastern notion of Nirvana for one possible example: in short, not a mind), one which serves as an Aristotelian final cause as the unmoved mover of all that exists in states of duality/quantity (the "unmoved mover" read as: not a mind that has goals and hence wants, hence ends it itself pursues, but a state of pure and selfless awareness devoid of all otherness and wants ... on which all else is in either direct or indirect manners dependent but which is itself fully unconditioned, instead just being) ... which individual, naturally dualistic minds such as our own can either choose to approach (via earnest love of truth, or goodness, or impartiality, etc.) or to further ourselves from (via attempts at benefiting by means of deception, falsehoods, egotism, etc.).
If one happens to be theistic, the same can then be well argued of incorporeal gods (necessarily plural and non-monotheistic) and angels ... or whatever other faith one happens to theistically uphold: they too can either approach or distance themselves and their contexts from the ideal of the Good. All this without there being such a thing as a monotheistic deity, which would necessarily have will and hence wants, i.e. would necessarily be wanting by sheer fact of willing. Or, one can uphold the same state of "the Good" in a perfectly atheistic manner.
Yes, I get that its a strange conception to most nowadays. But this general notion of "the One" is nothing novel. Nor is the reinterpretation/misinterpretation of "the One" as a human-like psyche that determines and controls everything via its human-like will something novel. I argue that the latter postulation is and can only be bogus. The former, though contradicted by the position of materialism, is however not itself logically inconsistent.
This notion of "the One" then being that which defines what is correct, right, and good in existential, non-biased manners. Signifying an overarching moral objectivity that can yet manifest in context-relative manners. One that is un-created and unconditioned to which we are all willingly or unwillingly subjects of.
Yes, lots of justification would be required to make this position even close to bulletproof - and I think we both know a forum isn't amenable to such.
But as a shorter answer to the same question you ask: by not being egotistic about what is and can be, while yet remaining rational about what is and can be possible.
Quoting Janus
I'll offer that "too vague to be of any use" would only apply to something that has little to no explanatory power. To the extent that value is important to us - inclusive of notions such as right/wrong and good/bad - teleology that is neither pivoted on the of ego-centrism of individual human minds nor on the imagined cosmic presence of such a human-like mind would be of considerable conceptual usefulness.
--------
While I'm defending my credence in a godless cosmic teleology, what defense for nihilism is there ... other than the knee-jerk rejection of some monotheistic deity that controls everything we think and do?
:clap: well said.
[quote=Western Buddhist Review of Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos; https://thebuddhistcentre.com/westernbuddhistreview/universe-waking]Nagel’s starting point is not simply that he finds materialism partial or unconvincing, but that he himself has a metaphysical view or vision of reality that just cannot be accommodated within materialism. This vision is that the appearance of conscious beings in the universe is somehow what it is all for; that ‘Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself’. Nagel’s surrounding argument is something of a sketch, but is entirely compatible with a Buddhist vision of reality as naturalism, including the possibility of insight into reality (under the topic of reason or cognition) and the possibility of apprehension of objective good (under the topic of value). His naturalism does this while fully conceding the explanatory power of physics, Darwinian evolution and neuroscience. Most Buddhists are what one might describe as intuitive non-materialists, but they have no way to integrate their intuition into the predominantly materialistic scientific world view. I see the value of Nagel’s philosophy in Mind and Cosmos as sketching an imaginative vision of reality that integrates the scientific world view into a larger one that includes reason, value and purpose, and simultaneously casts philosophical doubt on the completeness of the predominant materialism of the age.[/quote]
Thanks for that. Though I'm positive there's plenty about here that disagree.
Just saw the Western Buddhist Review quote. To confess, haven't yet read Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, though I've been itching to. This is a good reminder that I should sooner rather than later. Nice quote to read, btw.
Most, I would think. :wink:
I like Nagel, and refer to him a lot, not because he's a hero figure, but because he has a very cool and detached analytical eye, but has discerned many issues that I think are of great significance in current cultural discourse. Mind and Cosmos, I read when it first came out, it's quite a brief book. I've read The Last Word and pinned a copy of one of the essays to my profile page. I've started on the View from Nowhere but couldn't find the motivation to finish it. But I think Mind and Cosmos is an important book - one of those books that many mainstream academics love to hate.
Quoting javra
Quoting javra
Firstly I can't see how the notion of purpose has any purchase without the accompanying idea of conscious planning, and I can't see how we can imagine conscious planning occurring in the absence of an at least sentient, if not sapient, agent.
As to the vague idea of a teleology that is neither that of an individual mind or a "cosmic' mind; I fail to see how it could have any explanatory power when it comes to human values, which I think are readily explained as being formed on account of the significance that things and entities of the world commonly have for us as embodied beings.
I'm very open to having it explained to me.
Quoting Janus
As one example: Do you need to consciously plan on choosing that alternative which you deem optimally beneficial, hence good, relative to your principle, momentary conscious interests in order to so choose? Both purported saints and the vilest of villains will do this at all times regardless of their conscious planning. As will toddlers. I'll opine that, to the extent that lesser animals do in fact choose, the same will apply to lesser animals. Sentience cannot help but choose that which it deems to be optimally beneficial for itself, hence that which it momentarily feels to be optimally good for itself. This affirmation could be questioned (and can easily become complicated by issues such as that of short v. long term benefits), but supposing it's not here questioned: here, all our choices are partly manifested via the pull of the Good as a telos we all invariantly pursue at all times for ourselves - and this without any conscious planning to so pursue. It's instead a predetermined facet of our being we cannot escape: for in deeming it (consciously or unconsciously) good to escape it, we are nevertheless bound by it. Here, then, is telos (final cause) doing its work in the absence of conscious planning. This of course gets complicated, in part, by conscious planning ... but all such is yet existentially bound to the same telos of doing what is deemed best for you regardless of what is concretely planned.
But I grant that - even despite it's many potential points of contention - this example yet requires sentience which does the choosing.
There's also the example of biological evolution as having a telos. Momentarily suppose this to be true. This telos pulls towards itself. It does not push things this way and that - for such pushing would not be teleological. Were there to be a sentient agent (omni-God) in charge of evolution, it would push things this way and that; it would thus not be the telos addressed that teleologically moves evolution along toward itself as end... for ease of argumentation (nonsensical as this may technically be to those with biological knowledge), say for example toward a state of perfect fitness as end. Biological evolution is not sentient and has no conscious plans; in this example, it yet has a telos, hence purpose, that is independent of sentience and its conscious planning.
That offered, can you form an argument for the logical necessity of all final causes being themselves driven by, or else dependent on, sentient agency?
Quoting Janus
Human values include ethics, metaethics, and aesthetics - none of which are to my knowledge satisfactorily explained in such simplistic terms. As to explaining teleology's explanatory power when addressing such values, they all address wants, which can be accounted for teleologically: see, for one example, the aforementioned drive to optimally approach that which is good for oneself.
To be clear, I argued for a teleology that neither pivots on individual minds nor on an omni-God of any sort. This, however, does not imply that such teleology does not apply to all coexistent minds, both sapient and non-sapient ... as I reckon it must if it is to hold. And again, I'm a lot closer to a Peircean objective idealism than I am to any materialism in my overall metaphysics.
As a reminder, I'm not here arguing about proofs, but only about the quite valid possibility that cosmic teleology can operate in the absence of a monotheistic deity. You've overlooked issues regarding the contradictions that unfold when considering such monotheistic deity the arbiter of purpose/telos.
You've also not offered a defense of nihilism.
We in fact can connect particular thoughts and feelings with particular processes. A thought is a collective, coherent, parallel, massive running around of spiked, localized bundles of sodium ions rushing in through small channels on the long neuron axons, wich, coupled to other neurons at the synapses by neurotransmitter releases which are gap width dependent, form an incredibly complex network. Considering that there are hundred billion of these damned neurons, and each can be connected to more than 10 000 other neurons, we shouldn't be surprised that every process in the physical universe can be simulated. A simple and fast back of the envelope calculation shows that about 10exp(10exp20) patterns can run on it. That'll do...
Richard Dawkins will often say that life exhibits 'apparent design'. He obviously does this to defray the age-old cliche of the 'grand designer'. But design in nature is easy to discern and to represent graphically:
Living forms are shot through with designs, and patterns, at every level from the microcellular to the ecological.
But this doesn't necessarily imply a conscious designer, some being or entity that sweats away on designing such patterns (or beetles for that matter). It might simply be conceived of as an inherent drive or tendency in nature to give rise to progressively more elaborate patterns and designs as pure play or sport (Lila of Hindu mythology. However, ideas of ‘inherence’ are usually forbidden on the grounds that they are ‘orthogenetic’.)
Furthermore, if the design in nature is only 'apparent', then does that mean that only human agents can produce real designs? I mean, designing is something that humans obviously do, but do only humans do that? Put another way, are the only actual designs in the Universe of human origin? And if that's not so, then is there really no actual, as distinct from apparent, design anywhere at all in the Universe? It seems an absurd proposition.
If you mean biological evolution as a scientifiç principle, then indeed it is not sentient nor does it consciously plan. In it's ultimate form, based on the, get this, central dogma of molecular biology (!), teleos is incorporated into selfish(!) genes, a most extraordinary theory of life and being.
Considering the actual evolution, sentient beings are actually on the scene, and these beings have actual plans. If these are in service of some higher ideal as dogmatized in evolution theory, is highly questionable, and the new dogma is probably an attempt by lack of better or inability to understand truly.
I'd say "to intuit" is not well defined, and people use "intuition" in various different ways which are pretty much all quite vague. Intuition may refer to immediate apprehension by the mind, or it may refer to immediate sense apprehension, perception. The latter would follow from sensation, but the former not necessarily so.
There's a further problem with the concept of "conception". If conception is understood as something the mind does, to create a concept in one's mind, or if conception is understood as receiving a concept from somewhere else, these two different modes of understanding produce different ways of apprehending "intuition".
Our discussion concerns the apprehension of space and time, and I've already cautioned you about the need to separate these two, i.e. not to place them in the same category as both being apprehended in the same way. We can see that "space" is fundamentally conceived out of necessity, it is necessary that we allow that there is something called "space", the medium within which objects exist, allowing them to move around. The conception of "space" is necessary to allow for the reality of independent objects.
But the issue of how we conceive of "time" is far more difficult. This I believe, is because we already have a sense of before and after, within us, by the time we are born. As we grow it manifests as the difference between memory of the past, and anticipation of the future. But I believe a fundamental respect for a difference between future and past is already inherent within the constitution of living beings. This supports a more specific sense of "intuition" which is based in what we know as "instinct".
So I think we apprehend the difference between future and past in a way which is not the product of a logical necessity like our apprehension of space; the concept of space being something required to make sensation intelligible. It is already deep within our constitution as a base for fundamental disposition, and the problem is that we cannot call this a form of understanding. I can say that I intuit a difference between past and future, but I cannot say that this is derived from sensation, nor can I say that it's a product of any logical reasoning. It's something I've received, or simply have, but I do not understand it, nor can I conceptualize it, or sense it in any real way.
Quoting Mww
I thought the same, but I was corrected in this forum, where there are many participants who are well versed in math. If you look at mathematical axioms you'll see that cardinals are derived from ordinals. And even as far back as Plato there was questioning concerning the relation between quantity and order. Ultimately, we can see that One was understood as first, rather than as a quantity.
When we are very young we learn to count, and counting is first learned as ordering, two comes after one. This is what makes "numbers" so consistent with platonic realism, the number itself is seen as an object with a place in an order. If a number simply signified a quantity, we'd say the numeral signified the quantity, and there would be no need for "the number" as an intermediary between the numeral and the quantity. But since the numerals are used to signify an order, then we have to assume something which occupies that place in the order, hence "the number". Then one comes before two, and two comes before three, etc.. These are not the symbols we are talking about, but the assumed numbers themselves, which have that order, and the symbols, the numerals, represent the numbers.
Quoting Mww
I don't agree with this at all, and I've argued it in many places in this forum. We do not need to assume replacement principles to reject principles which we find unacceptable. This is fundamental to skepticism, we can reject principles without replacing them. And, rejection itself need not be principled. So for example, if I refer to this fundamental instinct, this "feeling" which I have concerning the difference between past and future, I cannot understand this instinct, nor can I formulate it in a principled way. However, I can reject propositions based solely on this "feeling" which I have. So we can reject propositions based on "feelings", and dismiss them, though the rejection is fundamentally unjustified, therefore not properly principled, and others might call this rejection "irrational".
Quoting Mww
That's not what I said though, I said it was grounded in intuition. And the grounding of logic, substantiation, what makes validity work for us, is fundamentally different from logic itself. The grounding has to do with the relationship between logic and our world. "Substance" is what grounds logic, but it is not a part, or characteristic of logic itself.
Quoting Mww
So I think that what you say here about "intuition" is consistent with what I said about intuition grounding logic, if you understand the difference between logic itself, and the grounding of logic. But I obviously do not see the basis for your conclusion "it follows necessarily that intuition cannot stand in any relation to the nature of logic". Remember that standing in relation to something is different from being a part of that thing.
What is at issue is your final phrase here, "but that is not to say they determine the nature of logic", and how we understand "the nature of logic". What is the nature of logic? Where does it come from, and how does it exist? However one answers these questions, and there are different possible answers depending on one's metaphysics, dictates whether this proposition is judged as true or false. If logic is something produced by the conscious mind, for the purpose of understanding all this information you describe as being between the thing perceived, and the perception of it, what you call "intuition", then the exact opposite of what you state is the case. Logic is something created by the conscious mind, shaped and formed for the purpose of understanding intuition, therefore intuition determines the nature of logic.
It is far too common, for people to attempt to associate logic to an external world which is the object of perception. Then they will try to see how logic works to understand this external world. But that is to ignore all which is intermediate, what is between logic and the world, what you call "intuition" here. The problem of course being that we cannot apply logic directly to the external world, all we have is the in between, the information received, the intuitions, to apply logic to. So even if logic is something created by human beings for the purpose of understanding the external world, we are stymied in our attempts to apply it because all we have is intuitions about the external world to apply it to.
Quoting Mww
This is why we need to distinguish internal intuitions from external intuitions. This I think is very important. If we simply say that logic gets applied to intuitions, and if internal intuitions are fundamentally different from external intuitions, then we'd need different logic for internal than we need for external.
Kant, I believe outlined this division, space as the condition for understanding external intuitions, and time as the condition for understanding internal intuitions. The senses are the principal medium in the external intuitions, and emotions, or "feelings" (in that sense) are the principal medium for internal intuitions. The internal intuitions are not well understood, because the observations required for science are difficult. Internal intuitions are often compared to, and even described by the same terms as the external, internal "sensations", and internal "feelings" for example. But we do have a clear division in definition of "intuition", between immediately apprehended by the mind, and immediately apprehended through the senses.
FWIW, I think of Evolution as bottom-up design, by contrast with the Genesis story of top-down design. From that pragmatic perspective, the world is designing itself (self-organizing), just as a computer program begins with a general definition of the desired answer, and then proceeds to calculate & construct a more specific answer. But a bottom-up question must be open-ended, as in "what would happen if . . ." So, it seems as-if the material world is following inherent laws (operating system) to calculate the best possible answer to some ultimate question (unknown to us). Hence, each form produced gives the appearance of being intentionally designed to fit its niche in the ecology. :smile:
In evolutionary computation, the computer creates a population of potential solutions to a problem. These are often random solutions, so they are unlikely to solve the problem being tackled or even come close. But some will be slightly better than others. The computer can discard the worst solutions, retain the better ones and use them to “breed” more potential solutions. Parts of different solutions will be combined (this is often called “crossover”) to create a new generation of solutions that can then be tested and the process begins again.
https://theconversation.com/evolutionary-computation-has-been-promising-self-programming-machines-for-60-years-so-where-are-they-91872
" So simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." ___Darwin
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
These two comments of yours say different things, and the second doesn’t respond to mine.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I understand you said the nature of logic is grounded in intuition. I’m claiming it is not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
....and you’ve done it again. First it was the ground of the nature of logic, now it is the grounding of logic itself in substantiation. Easily reconciled by admitting the nature of logic has to do with its form, substantiation of logic has to do with its content. The form is given in the construction of principles, the content is given in the construction of propositions conditioned by the principles.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Half right. We don’t apply logic directly to the external world, all we have is the in-between, but the in-between consists of more than mere intuitions. We still should consider the role of the cognitive system as a whole, of which intuition is but the initial stage.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If it is the case that we are not conscious of our intuitions, in some strictly metaphysical sense, then it follows we do not apply our logic to them. Nevertheless, we are not stymied, insofar as we do apply logic to something, so even if we do not apply logic to our intuitions, then it must be the case we do apply them to that which arises from them. Under empirical conditions, that is. Again, because we do apply logic to that which is not under empirical conditions, the ground of empirical conditions, which is intuition, does not qualify as a condition of the nature of logic, but merely the employment of it with respect to understanding the external world.
Truth be told, I don’t think it proper to say logic is something human beings create. Logical principles, yes, logical conditions, logical this or that, sure. But logic itself, I think, is just the natural modus operandi of the human being himself. We just are logical creatures, from which we can say the nature of logic just is the nature of human beings.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is true he uses those terms, but in context, I think you’ll find they have much different connotations than you’re attributing to them. The importance disappears if it is the case that all intuitions are internal, which they would be if all they do is represent physical objects, and those only given by a particular cognitive system. And if logic doesn’t apply to intuitions anyway, then we have two instances for canceling the notion we need distinctive logics. Distinctions in that to which logic applies, yes; distinctions in the logic that is applied, not so much, no.
External intuition simply refers to the possibility of an external object representable as a phenomenon, and that internally as a function of the system. There is no external intuition per se; there is just explanatory liberties. Kant presumes the reader already understands and accepts the preliminaries, and if he were to then posit some intuitions to be external to the system from which he already posited they are born, he contradicts himself and immediately destroys his entire thesis.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Technically, Kant speaks of understanding from an external sense or from an internal sense. And in that formula, is found the fundamental differences in how space and time are to be understood, if only with respect to transcendental philosophy. But that stuff is deep and convoluted as hell, and requires a whole bunch of blind head-nodding I’m here ta tell ya, so...best maybe leave all that alone here.
Still, I’d like to say I know where you’re going with this, and if I’m right, it is here:
“...We have now arrived at the proper place for explaining the paradox which must have struck every one in our exposition of the internal sense, namely—how this sense represents us to our own consciousness, only as we appear to ourselves, not as we are in ourselves, because, to wit, we intuite ourselves only as we are inwardly affected. Now this appears to be contradictory, inasmuch as we thus stand in a passive relation to ourselves; and therefore in the systems of psychology, the internal sense is commonly held to be one with the faculty of apperception, while we***, on the contrary, carefully distinguish them....”
(*** “we” being him, of course, informing us of what “we” are actually doing)
After wading through five pages, we arrive at, in a damn footnote, of all things....
“....For this purpose intuition of self is required, and this intuition possesses a form given à priori, namely, time, which is sensuous, and belongs to our receptivity of the determinable. Now, as I do not possess another intuition of self which gives the determining in me (of the spontaneity of which I am conscious), prior to the act of determination, in the same manner as time gives the determinable, it is clear that I am unable to determine my own existence as that of a spontaneous being, but I am only able to represent to myself the spontaneity of my thought...”
...which is supposed to explain the reason why there is no intuition of anything that isn’t first perceived and to which the categories may apply, which is itself, a logical requisite. In other words, there is no intuition of the objects of the system, which includes one’s self. Nowadays, this all has been reduced to the notion that we are our thoughts, the “I think” represents the manifold of thoughts, “I am” represents consciousness of the manifold, and “I” merely represents the spontaneity of it.
Anyway....you have great thoughts and you’re not entirely wrong. Just not quite right. But then....is anybody? And by “right” I just mean we’d agree more often than not.
Yes, indeed. For Dawkins, the implied final cause is immortality, of genes that is. Which in turn makes them selfish.
Dawkins’ Selfish Gene has become very well known and accommodated within fields of neo-Darwinism. (Having read Darwin’s works and his autobiography, I’m confident he would have objected to Dawkins’ theory, whose book I’ve also read.) There however are other, granted so far more fringe, interpretations from scientists in the field. Here is the blurb from a book called "The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness" published in 2009. The book is loaded with data to back up the claims.
Quoting Hillary
Here is what I think is a related take:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology_in_biology#Irreducible_teleology
And yes, sexual selection in animals, as one example, is greatly based on choice regarding which mate(s) to copulate with.
Quoting Hillary
Agreed.
Thanks for pointing me to the Genial Gene! A fresh breeze blowing in! Great!
I'm not clear on what this could mean other than that things have tendencies to go in certain ways. All animals strive to survive, for example.
Quoting javra
For me, final causes consist simply in the ways things have general tendencies to go, so I'm not arguing that such tendencies logically depend on sentient agency.
Quoting javra
I think we are arguing for and/ or from and/ or about different conceptions of 'purpose'. I don't think of the general ways things tend to go as being purposes; I reserve the concept for those things that are either consciously planned. or at least sub-consciously driven by felt needs or wants.
Quoting javra
I'm not arguing for nihilism. I think that existence is replete with meaning, but only insofar as there are percipients.
Quoting Hillary
What you wrote after this claim is a generalized conjecture, not an example of a connection of a particular thought with a particular neural process.
I think you are equivocating somewhat on the meanings of 'design' and 'pattern'. The examples in the images you showed are all biological. Patterns also form in ice crystals, the weather, desert sands, clouds and so on.
I think you're implying something about design similar to what @Javra is implying about purpose. I don't see the concept of design or purpose being meaningful without the inclusion of intention. You speak of "inherent drives or tendencies" and this echoes something of what I said to @Javra above (although I think 'drive' is moving a tad too much towards the anthropomorphic). Your phrase "play or sport" is also anthropomorphic or more properly "animomorphic", since animals also play.
So, I would say the only phenomena we know of in the Universe that we could rightly count as designs (as opposed, of course, to 'mere' patterns) are of animal origin, because only animals have intentions. And humans are obviously far and away the most prolific designers among all the animals.
Right, I can see that when it comes to purpose. As I initially said, to me it's a fairly fuzzy term when it comes to precise meaning. It's why I initially used the term teleology rather than purpose in my reply to Wayfarer. And why I tried to elaborate on purpose being a type (maybe better expressed, a subset) of teleology - maybe all too poorly - in my reply to you.
Teleology is the study of final causes, or teloi, which bring about motion by drawing things toward themselves. You were addressing that that all life strives to survive. Here granting this, and though I know this the issue of teloi is contentious in metaphysical discussions, this to me indicates that one of the teloi of life is the sustaining of life. Such that this non-conscious aim, which can become conscious in some such as us humans, limits the activities of all life such that these activities remain aligned to optimally approaching and/or actualizing this aim ... which, after all, is an ideal when considered in absolute, or complete, or perfect form.
You still refer to these as "aims", though and that is pushing the idea further than I would. It seems the actual concrete tendencies of things do begin to look like aims when we generalize and abstract them as laws. It is easy in thought to reify the notion of a law into something which stands over and above the actual things, the phenomena and processes of nature, directing them, so to speak.
I see that. Thanks. Something to consider. One however cannot reduce all teloi to laws since laws, at least as traditionally interpreted, are invariant - this contrasted, for instance, with the Peircean notion of (for me, personally, at least some) natural laws as ever-evolving global habits. Natural laws are also understood to be global. A consciously held goal (which one has chosen among other alternative goals at some point in the past and now pursues) will itself be a telos, but it is neither global nor invariant. But yes, I agree, "aims" is too cognitive for all instantiations of teloi if one is to go about thing as impartially as possible.
Organisms display characteristics which snowflakes and crystals do not, first and foremost homeostasis.
Quoting Janus
[quote=Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species]It may be metaphorically said that Natural Selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being.[/quote]
My italics.
That seems to be true, but I'm not seeing the relevance to what is being discussed.
The passage you quoted from Darwin is metaphorical, as he acknowledges. and again it's not clear what you intended it to address.
I'm currently into his Of the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding Third Section. I'm aware there is likely more about Hume here, aside from his comments on the Prolegomena.
It seems to me that the move Kant makes is correct, in essence. Nevertheless, causality is a bit harder that merely arguing that it must be an a-priori aspect of our cognition. It undoubtably is, but there is no guarantee that these apply in "ordinary experience", as a necessity, there are exceptions and illusions.
But, even granting that most of the time, we are roughly correct in our causal inferences in everyday life, the problem of causality in the objects outside ourselves remains entirely untouched.
And the concept is rather obscure, in as much as we can only perceive that it is a constant conjunction, though there has to be more than this to causality.
Of course, Kant would say, plausibly, that of these things in themselves we know nothing. Maybe we don't. But Hume's statement of the problem remains rather fierce, as I see it.
You said: "But if it is the case we don’t function at all, in any way, shape or form, when we dismiss the basic principles of logic, then it is reasonable to suppose we couldn’t do that in the first place".
My point was that it is not the case that we wouldn't function at all without the basic principles of logic. Other animals and plants do not use logic and they still function. Young babies do not use logic, and they still function. So there is no reason to believe that without logic we couldn't function. That is my response, I dismiss that proposition as false, and so there is nothing more to say about it in response.
Quoting Mww
Sorry, you misunderstood. I meant the nature of logic, and its grounding, meaning logic's grounding . I did not mean the grounding of the nature, which would be in itself a description. It was a simple case of me expressing myself poorly, so that you misunderstood what I meant, and not a case of me changing what I meant.
Quoting Mww
I don't think it is correct to say that we are not conscious of our intuitions. I think it is more correct to say that we do not necessarily understand them, but we are conscious of them. We might compare intuitions to our emotional feelings, they enter into our conscious mind, and influence the way we think, but we do not necessarily understand them very well. And since they do have some sort of presence to the conscious mind, we can apply logic to them. The difficulty is in producing accurate premises to work from.
Quoting Mww
What I meant is that we are stymied in our attempt to apply logic directly to the features of the external world, because we can only apply logic to our intuitions concerning the world. And, as explained above, we do not necessarily understand our intuitions, so the premises which we work with might not be accurate.
Now, I read this sentence ("Again, because we do apply logic to that which is not under empirical conditions, the ground of empirical conditions, which is intuition, does not qualify as a condition of the nature of logic, but merely the employment of it with respect to understanding the external world.") over and over, because it seems to be the key to understanding what you are claiming, but I can't get it. Can you try to explain this to me?
Quoting Mww
I do not think that this is correct, and this difference between the way you understand "logic" and the way I understand "logic" is probably why I couldn't understand that last sentence. I think that human beings existed before they started using logic, just like babies exist before they start using logic. So children have to learn logic before they become logical, and human beings had to learn logic as well, before they became logical. Therefore, I think that logic is not "the natural modus operandi of the human being", it is something which human beings have learned.
This is why I suggested that human beings use different types of logic to understand different types of things. Internal intuitions require a different type of logic than do the external.
Quoting Mww
But not all intuitions represent physical objects, some represent internal feelings, like emotions. This is the problem. Any particular cognitive system, when directed inward, needs different principles of understanding, from when it is directed outwards. The two types of "objects" to be understood by these two different directions are so vastly different, that I think they require fundamentally different forms of "logic".
Quoting Mww
OK, now if we can say external intuition refers to the possibility of an external object, can we say that "internal intuition" refers to the possibility of an internal object? And if these two types of "objects" are fundamentally different, then the two types of intuitions will be fundamentally different. And if the two types of intuition are fundamentally different, then we need two types of logic.
Quoting Mww
Well, no. The deepest, most convoluted part is the best part. If our goal is to understand, why leave the best part alone?
Quoting Mww
I find that in Kant, the footnotes have the best explanatory information.
Quoting Mww
I think this is similar to what I was saying earlier. When we move from trying to understand space, toward trying to understand time, because what we learn about space forces us to recognize that an understanding of time is logically required in order to understand space, then there is nowhere to turn but to one's own presence in time, to derive that understanding. Then we must apprehend the internal intuitions.
Quoting Mww
Thank you Mww, that makes me feel good, and you seem to be honest. But I would appreciate it if you could refrain from automatically designating the person who doesn't agree with you, as not right.
That other animals don't use logic is an implausible assumption in my view. When I used throw the ball for dog onto the verandah and it went over the edge to drop onto the ground below, he used to look everywhere on the verandah, and when the ball was not to be found would immediately run down to look on the ground below. he didn't run off somewhere else in the garden but only looked where the ball could plausibly be. And he did this from the very first time the ball went over the edge, so it wasn't merely an acquired habit.
Of course animals don't self-reflectively use logic; that is they are not aware that they are using logic, and they don't have thoughts like "I am using logic"; but logic is everywhere inherent, obviously to greater or lesser degrees, in the perceptions of both humans and animals, if the behavior of the latter is anything to go by.
Again, this is one of those definitional things. It all depends on how you understand "logic". If we have loose definitions, then all sorts of things qualify as "logic". So I don't think you can conclude necessarily that your dog uses logic, just from the description you've provided of his behaviour.
Take the process of 'trial and error' for example. There are ways that people use this process which clearly employ logic, but there are also ways that the named process may be applied which do not use logic. A simple case of not repeating an action because it ended in something unwanted qualifies as 'trial and error' but I would argue that it does not qualify as using 'logic'.
If we do not accurately describe the process which is being applied, and decisively define 'logic'. we can make all sorts of odd claims of where logic must have been applied. The process of evolution can be said to be a sort of trial and error. But if we say that this means that there is an intelligence involved, which is using logic, we run into peculiar difficulties. Then life itself must be some sort of intentional agent which is applying logic, and using trial and error to evolve itself.
And this just brings us to the problem which Banno demonstrated. Instead of attributing 'logic' to the individual beings which utilize it, we attribute it to the collective of beings. But this exposes the requirement for the fundamental difference in logical principles which I've been outlining.
The law of identity applies to a particular, an individual thing,. We can say that a thing necessarily has an identity, and we can proceed from here, to describe that thing. And, when we have a group of things, we can identify a common trait, and say that the things are 'the same' with respect to that aspect. This creates a whole, a set, which is not a true or real whole or thing, because it's artificial, fictional. Its identity is what we say it is. Rather than having its own identity within itself as the law of identity dictates for a true particular, the set has an identity which is assigned to it, therefore distinct from it. Therefore these are two distinct forms of objects.
So in those two instances, we have two distinct types of objects ("wholes"), the particular and the artificial collection of particulars. Now we need a third type, which is the real, or natural collection of individuals, which would would allow attributing properties to a natural group, and justify Banno's claim that reason is "a group enterprise". This object ("whole"), the group, is not a definable set, nor is it a particular with a unique identity. However, it seems to have some sort of real existence. So how do we make it an object which we can represent as a subject for predication, and employ logic? What type of object has no identity, neither that which is true to itself, as dictated by the law of identity, nor that which is assigned to it as an abstraction?
A saw cuts a board, a hammer nails the board to a wall. Can we use the saw to hammer the board? We are, necessarily and without exception, given external objects by the senses. Are we given internal objects by the senses? We are not, so if there are internal objects, they certainly cannot arise from the senses. The external objects we are given are represented as phenomena and are derived from the faculty of receptivity for impressions, which is called intuition. Internal objects not given to us but instead given by us, are represented as conceptions and are derived from the faculty of understanding.
Do you see we don’t need logic for that which is given to us? For anything merely presented to the senses, there is no cognition, there is not yet any understanding, no judgement, and the mere presence of an object to our sensing apparatus is very far from knowledge of it. Remember the scientific equivalent to this metaphysical premise: we are not aware of information transfer on our nerve cells on the one hand, and we have no consciousness of the inception of phenomena from sensations of physical objects, on the other. If the application of logic is a conscious activity by a rational agent, how can logic be applied to that of which he has no conscious awareness?
So we have one type of representation as intuition, another type of representation as conception, and if we synthesize these in a faculty sufficiently enabled to do so......do you see that this is precisely the same modus operandi as imbued in the construction of a logical syllogism? Intuition would be the major premise, just because it is first in the procedural system, a conception would be the minor premise, just because it is after any impression on sensibility, the synthesis of them by the faculty of understanding generates a conclusion, which we call a judgement.
I don’t think anyone doubts that we are imbued with these faculties, the difficulty arises from what they are and what they actually do. Regardless, it is clear logic as a systemic necessity only applies sometime in the overall process after the premises are made available on which it can be applied. While logic can be applied to a single premise, all we will get from it is a tautology, which is not what the system is seeking when presented with an external object. It that were the case, we remain with...there is an object, full stop.... but without the means to determine a knowledge of what the object may be.
Sidebar: the counter argument is, objects tell us what they are, so we know them immediately by the properties by which we are impressed. The nonsense of this should be quite apparent, even to the “most common understanding”.
Anyway, all that to say this: you are correct in saying there are two types of objects, external and internal, but incorrect in saying these are two types of intuitions. The two types of representations corresponding to the two types of objects are united into a single type, which is called cognition, on which only one type of logic is needed in order to determine the validity of it, which is called judgement. As an oversimplification, it is in this way that perception of something with wings, known as such from antecedent experience, is immediately cognized as what it may be, but as yet with insufficient judgement for what it is.
Further affirmations: the senses don’t judge, and understanding doesn’t perceive. Everything in its place, this does this job and that does that job, putting things in the wrong places, subsumed under faculties not equipped to deal with them, defeats the entire system.
Ever notice, that for something you perceive but have no experience of, after you figure it out, you’ve added nothing at all to what you perceived? If you added nothing whatsoever to the perception, but you went from ignorance to knowledge of that very same perception......where did the change occur? It could not possibly occur in any faculty having to do with the perception alone, which is precisely the realm of intuition. For instance....a tool. A specially tool. Guy shows it to you, you have no idea how to use it, or even what to use it on. Hell....even that it could be used for anything, but you merely assume, logically, it can because somebody made it for some reason. But you have no real justification for even that assumption, insofar as he could have just been puttering around the shop and threw together some junk and wanted to see how you react to it, which releases the object from even being a purposeful tool per se, exchanging it for a tool the intent for which belongs to purposeness of the guy alone.
So say it is a tool, and he shows you what it does.....you still perceive the object in exactly the same way as when you didn’t know what it was for. If the object itself didn’t change, then the intuition of it couldn’t have changed, which makes explicit the understanding of it must be the sole factor in whatever judgement you came to for its use.
Now, under the conditions you propose, you are using one type of logic for your ignorance, and a different type of logic for your knowledge. Wouldn’t it be the more parsimonious to suppose ignorance is the inability to use any logic, than to suppose ignorance uses a logic of its own kind?
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because we can’t get past the initial stages. It’s a system, after all, so we should come to accord on the simple parts before moving onto the hard parts. Simplest of all is....we sense things. Problem is, sensing things is the more simple, but it is at the same time the less prevalent. If the goal is to understand, wouldn’t be better to come to an accord on what it means to understand? To do that, best to eliminate what understanding isn’t, which is anything to do with perception, including intuitions. And apparently, you’re not ready to do that, and, perhaps more importantly, you haven’t convinced me we can’t.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not that you disagree with me, it’s that you disagree with my interpretation of Kant, which you brought into the dialectic. Even if I’m wrong in my interpretations, if you were wrong in the same way, I’d say you were right and we’d agree more often than not. I didn’t mean to imply I was right point-blank, and you should agree with me and because you don’t you are not right. Only a fool would insist he gets Kant right, without fault of any kind.
I should have worded it better. Or left it out. My bad. Sorry.
Quoting Janus
While I don't want to derail the thread from the OP more it already has been, for the sake of historical accuracy, Darwin himself was a teleologist. (Disclaimer: I've only skimmed through parts of the linked-to article, but it serves its purpose of providing strong evidence for the claim.)
The metaphorical aspects of Darwin's given quote regards the very conscious intentionality that we've been previously addressing - but not the issue of goal-directedness. Better expressed, as the terms have been so far used by us, Darwin viewed the very process of Natural Selection as telos-guided yet devoid of that notion of purpose which is contingent on a conscious agency (i.e., that of an omnipotent God).
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Intuitions represent the object the feeling is directed toward. I love my car, the car I can intuit because it is an object, but I do not intuit the love of it. In short, love, hate joy, disgust and feelings in general, are not phenomena, those being the objects of intuitions. We can accede to this, because sometimes we have feelings, but either cannot describe them (because the object to which they relate is unknown), or, we simply don’t know why we even have that feeling in the first place (because the object to which it relates contradicts your experience).
The key is the notion that feelings are not cognitions, but are just some condition in which the subject finds himself. You were all fine and dandy one minute, somebody stepped on your toe the next, and POW!!!....your condition.....the condition of yourself....immediately changes, directly proportional to the feeling in your toe and your reaction to it. And you never cognized a single thing in that briefest of instances. That there is something wrong with your foot is far systematically antecedent to the cognition of the cause of it.
———-
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Absolutely, which makes explicit the natural duality of the particular human cognitive system. On the one hand, as you sit there looking out the window, you perceive all that is presented to your senses. But if you shut off your senses, or make it so nothing is given to them, or just not pay any attention to those that get through, you can still think any object you like, those you know from experience and those you might know if you ever do experience them. But you can also sit there and think objects you will never experience, either because they exist but are nonetheless beyond your capability, or they don’t exist at all. But either way, you understand something about each and every one of them, and judge them accordingly, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to explain how they were thought.
With respect to what you said, though, I submit there are two conditions under which the system can be directed inward, one in consideration of the world but without the sense of it, when you sit there and only think about it, and the other is with nothing whatsoever to do with the world. To direct the cognitive system inward without any regard for the world at all, is to employ the faculties of the system on itself. But if that is the case, and all the objects of experience and thought related to experience are eliminated from contention....where does that which we are inwardly directed toward, come from? What do the faculties of the system employ themselves on? Even to say they operate by different principles, principles are meaningless without something to which they apply, so we still need the something.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You went from different principles to different “objects”. But that’s ok; we would have ended up at different “objects” eventually anyway. So....one kind of object is given from sense, the other kind cannot be given from sense, so must be given from within the cognitive system itself. The former will necessarily be imbued with properties in order for it be know as a certain thing, the other can have no properties, but is nonetheless known as something. Hence, “object” as opposed to object.
One of the “vast” differences, then, is that the one object is empirically determined when the cognitive system is directed outward, the other “object” is rationally determinable when the cognitive system is directed inward and examines only itself. It would seem to be the case that for determinable rational objects, principles different from those which ground the propositions containing conceptions longing to objects of experience. But granting the differences in principles is most readily accomplished by granting differences in their source, rather than the form of their logic, in that it is possible for two differing sources can operate under one logic, if both the sources and the logic are all contained in and used by, a single unified cognitive system.
There are differences in objects and principles, but they arise from differences in reason, not differences in logic. These all belong to a far different philosophy, the outer world of sense being epistemological, the inner world of feelings being moral. In the former Nature is the causality of its objects and they belong to it alone, in the latter it is we who are the causality of the objects and they belong to us alone. Just as there is no real physical basketball in our heads, there is no real physical beauty in the world. Reason in the former is pure theoretical, reason in the latter is pure practical. Judgement in the former is discursive, in the latter it is aesthetic. Imagination in the former is productive, in the latter it is re-productive. The former is conditioned by space and time, the latter is conditioned by our innate constitution. The former defines our intellect, the latter defines our character. The former concerns itself with what is, the latter concerns itself with what ought to be.
All without a necessary difference in logic as such.
There’s my take on the topic. I’d be interested in yours, assuming your take is as sufficiently explanatory as mine, the correctness of either being irrelevant. We’re in the realm of speculation here, after all. Although they both should be equally intelligible, I should think.
So.....your turn.
That other animals don't use logic is an implausible assumption in my view. When I used to throw the ball for the dog onto the verandah and it went over the edge to drop onto the ground below, and he didn't see it go over, he used to look everywhere on the verandah, and when the ball was not to be found would immediately run down to look on the ground below. he didn't run off somewhere else in the garden but only looked where the ball could plausibly be, since it could only have gone off the verandah in the direction I was able to throw it. And he did this from the very first time the ball went over the edge, so it wasn't merely an acquired habit.
Of course animals don't self-reflectively use logic; that is they are not aware that they are using logic, and they don't have thoughts like "I am using logic"; but logic is everywhere inherent, obviously to greater or lesser degrees, in the perceptions of both humans and animals, if the behavior of the latter is anything to go by.
Such behaviours can all be explained in terms of stimulus and response, without any requirement to introduce logic. To us, the behaviour can be said to be logical in that we observe the dog looking in the likely places. Maritain addresses this in his essay on the cultural impact of empiricism, where he says
Actually that passage is highly germane to this OP, for fairly obvious reasons. Hume's is a textbook case of 'not seeing', which is then brandished as the establishment of some profound philosophic insight, when it is really more an absence of insight - which Kant correctly diagnoses.
The Powers of Pure Reason: Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy
Alfredo Ferrarin
I don't think so. Perhaps you could explain how you think that might work, because the Maritain passage you quoted certainly doesn't. For me it is absurd to deny intelligence to animals, when the range of species so clearly show very different levels of intelligence..
Thanks, I'll take a look at that article when I find the time. :smile:
Point out specifically where I have done that, or the passage from Maritain does that.
There's a lurking problem here. That post of yours a few pages back makes an important point, I think:
Quoting javra
The lurking problem is, that we can't seem to able to concieve of anything like purpose or intention, without understanding it as conscious purpose or intention - just the kinds of purposes and intentions which we, as conscious agents, are able to entertain.
I think that, deep down, this is a reflection of the individualist nature of our culture. Our culture views nature (the world, the universe) as 'just so', a backdrop for the activities of conscious agents such as ourselves, but as inherently devoid of purpose, intentionality or meaning in itself; just dumb stuff. Divested, as it has become, of any higher intelligence, it has to be seen this way.
I think, perhaps, this is because it is instinctively seen from an egological point of view. (Husserl coined that term - not 'egocentric', but related in meaning. It means 'from the viewpoint of the ego', but without the perjorative overtone of 'egocentrism'.)
From the viewpoint of the ego, aware of itself as apparently autonomous subject in a domain apparently comprising objects (and other beings, who appear as objects to it), we can only conceive of purpose or intention in terms of the kinds of things we ourselves consciously do. (That's also why modern atheism tends to depict God as a kind of 'super-being' - a being like us, albeit with puzzlingly enormous cosmic powers (which of course is an impossible conception).
This is just a vague intuition at the moment, but I'm continuing to contemplate it.
Oh, and regarding the point about teleology, have a glance at Evolution and the Purposes of Life, Steve Talbott (whose one of my favourite writers in this space.)
Quoting Wayfarer
You say that animals do not reason at all but that it is all just "stimulus and response" without explaining how that could work to mimic reasoning, and Maritain says that the "merely sensory psychology of animals imitates intellectual knowledge".
What would you say that intelligence is then if it doesn't consist in any reasoning ability or intellectual knowledge? It's obvious that animals do not possess discursive knowledge since symbolic language is required for that; but I don't believe that basic reasoning requires language; do you?
All of the many capacities exhibited by sentient animals other than humans. in some, such as arachnids and other inverterbrates, it is not as developed as in birds and mammals. But I'm not denying for a moment that animals have intelligence; only that they don't engage in rational inference. I can't see how that is controversial.
Quoting Janus
A lot rides on the extent of 'basic' here. Animals sense danger, engage in all kinds of behaviours in pursuit of prey or mating opportunities. But they don't speak or engage in abstract thought. So, no, they do not reason, in the way that you do when you compose this argument, or reflect on what you want to say.
I think that you think that it's just 'common sense' that man is a kind of primate, and continuous with other species. (It's neo-darwinian dogma after all.) Biologically, that is true, but we have crossed an evolutionary threshold with the development of language, reasoning, tool use and so on, which amounts to an ontological distinction (something which Alfred Russel Wallace also believed, see here). And through that, horizons of meaning are open to humans, that are not open to other sentient beings.
See this review.
However, I think it's possible to defend the ontological difference between humans and other species without appealing to divine intervention, by arguing that one of the capacities that h. sapiens developed was that of 'self-realisation' in the sense understood by the higher philosophical and spiritual traditions. This is the sense in which the human 'realises him/herself' as an embodiment of the same cosmic principle that animates all living beings (Tat Tvam Asi, 'that thou Art', one of the slogans of Advaita). Again as mentioned earlier in this thread, that idea is implicit in many traditional schools of philosophy such as Stoicism, Hermeticism, Advaita, and even Buddhism (where the 'true nature' or Buddha-nature is an allegorical depiction of the idea).
That doesn't directly contradict the Catholic principle, but it attributes it to something other than divine agency (thus, some would say, probably more of a threat to Catholicism than outright atheism! Hence the article on my profile page, The Neural Buddhists.)
Since I don't believe basic rational inference is dependent on possessing language I see no problem in ascribing varying degrees of capacity for it to animals.
You are defining reason only as "abstract thought" so your position assumes its conclusion, since animals obviously don't possess language and if language is required for abstraction then there you go. It should be obvious, though, that I am talking about reasoning abilities which do not rely on language, and if you deny those to any and all non-human animals, then I can only conclude that you don't know much about animals and are stuck in human-centric thinking about them.
Quoting Wayfarer
Thanks for imputing reasons to me which I don't hold to be primary (although they might carry some weight). My reasoning about animals reasoning ability comes from observing the behavior of animals, and most notably dogs. Judging from your comments on this issue over the years I think you have spiritualist or otherworldly-based reasons for wanting to promote human exceptionalism.
I haven't denied that humans have 'crossed a threshold" with the development of linguistic capabilities; I acknowledge that all the time. Like any tool it allows its users to do things which those who do not possess the tool, or the ability to use the tool, cannot; that much is obvious. But if you think all thought, all reasoning whatsoever, is dependent on language use, then I think your view is poverty-stricken and lacking in depth.
Have you ever looked into what happened when behavioural scientists tried to teach chimps - our nearest biological relative - to speak? Ever hear the sad story Nim Chimpsky?
My view is not human-centric, but based on a rational assessment of the nature of reason. Yours appears to be based on nothing more than sentiment.
Quoting Janus
Your concern is touching, but I'm getting along ok.
We have a living philosophy of causality in how the sciences evolve.
Physics for how causes and effects in physics, chemistry for causation in chemistry, biology for causation in biology, medicine for causation in medicine and so on.
That's a kind of categories description to me.
To continue: can psychology cause chemical effects, i.e., you think something in the laboratory doesn't effectuate anything chemical in the laboratory.
Then a "black list" of causation: The Fantastic Phenomena or of Freak Nature as Accounts of Reality.
Like with severe levels of torture to people in how desecrated places are created and so on.
Bottom line: causation is described by the unfolding sciences, the ways in nature.
You haven't answered the question as to what you think intelligence actually consists in. Also the lack of other animals' ability to speak is irrelevant, since we are discussing pre-linguistic reasoning capacities. Other animals lack the physiological structures, i.e. vocal chords, required for speech, in any case.
What evidence do you have that my view is based on sentiment? Maybe I'm just more familiar with and/ or a closer observer of animals than you are, as well as not being blinded by otherworldly wishful thinking.
Perhaps your view would broaden and deepen if you investigated the issue yourself with an open mind. You could make a start here:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=reasoning+in+animals&atb=v216-1&ia=web
This is one of the many papers on the subject:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316890553_Causal_and_inferential_reasoning_in_animals
Without denying the epistemic importance of egos in all of this, nations and cultures can be said to have differing agencies of behavior and different intelligences of comportment. For instance, “does a nation or culture that self-annihilates itself via shortsightedness exhibit intelligence?” makes sense as a question. Nonetheless, no nation or culture is endowed with a conscious agency - and no nation or culture of itself intends. Very roughly expressing at least my own take of it, in the Peircean view, the physical world as effete mind is in some ways akin to the global, or cosmic, manifest culture of all coexistent active minds. I grant that it’s a bit more than this, but still: its intelligence in terms of logos, reason, can well be conceived as present in manners devoid of a governing conscious agency. In parallel, the notion of dharma and karma also are conceived to occur universally - in a manner of speaking, with intelligence - in manners devoid of any cosmically governing ego. So I’m approaching the matter from the viewpoint that the universe - replete with its causal reasoning, i.e. logos - itself does not intend (intentions being something that individual minds/egos do), though the universe does hold global teloi as part of its logos, making it operate, in part, teleologically. Which I find in keeping with both quotes you mention.
As before, I’m shying away form the term “purpose” in all this due to its ambiguities.
The article you link to addresses the teleology of individual life-forms – rather than that of any global telos. Other than that, interesting.
No, you're discussing that. They have some rudimentary capacity to reason, but I'm not particularly interested in it, and furthermore I think it is easily exagerrated.
Quoting javra
:up:
[quote=Steve Talbott, Evolution and the Purposes of Life; https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/evolution-and-the-purposes-of-life]All biological activity, even at the molecular level, can be characterized as purposive and goal-directed. As a cell grows and divides, it marshals its molecular and structural resources with a remarkably skillful “wisdom.” It also demonstrates a well-directed, “willful” persistence in adjusting to disturbances. Everything leads toward fulfillment of the organism’s evident “purposes.”
Teasing out the meaning of these scare quotes may be the most urgent task for biologists today. As the Chilean neuroscientist and philosopher of biology Francisco Varela wrote: “The answer to the question of what status teleology should have in biology decides about the character of our whole theory of animate nature.”
My own sense of the matter is that the question has yet to be fairly taken up within the core disciplines of biology. What appears certain is that as yet we have no secure answer to it.
Even more important is what seems least recognized: to the degree that we lack understanding of the organism’s purposive life we also lack a respectable foundation for evolutionary theory.
There are, in any case, two confusions to be avoided immediately. The first confusion is that the question about teleology in living organisms is often presented as a question about final causes, with conscious human planning as the model. One thinks of an external goal or end, which then must be aimed at. Avoiding any suggestion of such planning is considered urgent when we try to understand biological or organic, as opposed to psychological, activities.
The concern is justified. What may be overlooked, however, is that we can speak of end-directed activity without assuming an external goal to be planned for and aimed at. We can, that is, think of the organism as simply giving expression to the wholeness of its own nature, which comes to an ever fuller realization over the course of its life.
Even more important is what seems least recognized: to the degree that we lack understanding of the organism’s purposive life we also lack a respectable foundation for evolutionary theory.
There are, in any case, two confusions to be avoided immediately. The first confusion is that the question about teleology in living organisms is often presented as a question about final causes, with conscious human planning as the model. One thinks of an external goal or end, which then must be aimed at. Avoiding any suggestion of such planning is considered urgent when we try to understand biological or organic, as opposed to psychological, activities.
The concern is justified. What may be overlooked, however, is that we can speak of end-directed activity without assuming an external goal to be planned for and aimed at. We can, that is, think of the organism as simply giving expression to the wholeness of its own nature, which comes to an ever fuller realization over the course of its life.
The telos or end of teleological behavior, in other words, rather than being a goal “out there,” freely conceived by a reflective organism, may simply be the organism’s own completeness and wholeness — the fullness of its self-expression under all life conditions that present themselves....
The second source of confusion about teleology and inwardness lies in the failure to realize how weak and lamed our conscious human purposiveness and intelligence are in relation to biological activity. We struggle even to follow with our abstract understanding the unsurveyably complex goings-on in our own organs and cells, let alone to animate our material artifacts with the same sort of life. And when we achieve a pinnacle of effective self-expression as pianists or gymnasts, it is by grace of a body whose execution of our intentions is a mystery to our understanding.
We need to reject conscious human performance as a model for organic activity in general, not because it reads too much wisdom and effective striving into the organism, but rather because it reads far too little.[/quote]
The bolded sentence about 'human intention as the model' is similar to what I argued above. In short, this essay pleads for a more holistic perspective on 'purpose'. (Actually, I remember the Whiteheadian process-philosopher Charles Birch's last book, called On Purpose, which expresses a very similar philosophy.)
Well, that's an easy out for you! Probably a good idea to exercise some intellectual modesty, and don't express ill-considered opinions about subjects you are not interested in.
For those who are interested in the question of animal reasoning (which I think is pertinent to the OP because if it exists it would seem to dispel the idea that logic is something more than an adaptive faculty that has evolved through lived animal experience, rather than some transcendental insight that only humans possess) this is another suggestive article.
I don't consider the point about whether animals are rational as relevant to the OP.
(I am listening to audio books about Franz de Waal and Jakob von Uexküll, which are very fascinating but not germane to the point I'm arguing, which I don't believe you have responded to.)
“The world is my idea”, said Schopenhauer - "this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness."
I don't know what point you are referring to.
Now that I agree with, and I think it is solely on account of our unique (as far as we know) ability to use symbolic language that we can achieve such unique reflective recognitions of our condition.
There's one of Kelly Ross' essays pinned to my homepage, 'universals and the problem of meaning'. I'm not asking you to read it, but the point that Ross identifies is that universals are implicated in any cohesive theory of meaning (to know why, you would have to read it :-) ).
But my hunch is that 'universals' refers, at least in part, to 'the ability to grasp abstract likenesses'. This is intrinsic to our thinking - the mind does it without having to consciously reflect on it. The mind is constantly operating in terms of 'is' 'is not' 'is like' 'is not like', and so on, and beyond that, in terms of similarities, resemblances, and differences. And also in terms of concepts, which are the constituents of rational discourse. This is what Kant painstakingly uncovers in his 'Critiques'.
This is why language is not simply an adaption - or rather, that there is much more that has to be considered. The massive explosion of the hominid forebrain from 2.5 mya until h. sapiens around 100k years ago - that development is what it took for language to be possible. The massive h.sapien forebrain is like a 'meaning-detecting organ'. That is where we really grew apart from our simian forebears (something which I can't see as plausibly deniable, the anatomical changes alone in terms of child-bearing capacity and the upright gait and so on, are utterly profound.)
This ability to grasp abstractions is what I think Plato intuits with his 'theory of universals'. He sees that universals or forms or ideas are not real things, 'out there somewhere'. But at the same time, he realises that without the capacity to recognise them reason can't get a foothold, as they are like the organising principles of both thought and things. Of course, Plato was alive in the 4th c BC and his thought was often symbolic or allegorical, there is much that has obviously been discovered since. But I'm convinced his basic intuition was valid (and also one of the reasons why Western culture went on to develop science, although that's another story.)
So the million dollar question is, are universals real? And by that, we mean, do they exist? My response is, they are real, as the constituents of meaning and reason - but no, they don't exist. So they're real, but not existent. And that's why this is a metaphysical question. It differentiates what exists from what is real, and naturalism can't handle that.
Go back to the passage I quoted from Maritain and read it again. Here Maritain is making a crucial point about the nature of reason.
Ed Feser makes a similar point in a blog post, Think, McFly, Think:
So, what do Jacques Maritain and Edward Feser have in common? Why, they're both neo-thomists. So they both get the Aristotelian theory of universals, mediated through Aquinas. And I'm of the view that this remains a valid metaphysic (and that yes, that there is such a thing).
And thanks for reading. :up:
To my faint recollection, Hume never denied the ability to associate observations, and neither did he deny the imperative mood. By my understanding, his remarks are only suggestive of scepticism that causal and logical necessity are objective properties of objects. i.e he would have accepted anti-realistic understandings of logic and causation, especially those that make no commitment to synthetic a priori propositions, such as Hacker's interpretation of Wittgenstein.
Quite. But that implies that we can ascertain what such properties are, independently of our imputation as to their nature. Interesting paper, though, I'm sure it will be right up @Banno's alley. I will try and find time to take it in.
Quoting Manuel
As is also the case for causality within us. Whether we as conscious agents actually cause anything (by which agency is here defined) - rather than our sensations of so doing being an illusion - is tmk yet an open question in philosophy.
Quoting Manuel
I'm in agreement. Though to me Hume's statement on the matter is not the presentation of a "problem" so much as a lucid observation of the way things inherently are.
,,,,and how’s that going for ya?
Quoting Manuel
Then you must have read this by now, although it’s in Sec II not III.
“.....David Hume perceived that, to render this possible, it was necessary that the conceptions should have an à priori origin. But as he could not explain how it was possible that conceptions which are not connected with each other in the understanding must nevertheless be thought as necessarily connected in the object—and it never occurred to him that the understanding itself might, perhaps, by means of these conceptions, be the author of the experience in which its objects were presented to it—he was forced to drive these conceptions from experience, that is, from a subjective necessity arising from repeated association of experiences erroneously considered to be objective—in one word, from habit....”
Have fun!!
I understand that's what Kant says. I'm probably missing something. How do you make sense of it in relation to this:
Quoting https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#CauInfConPha
He found it puzzling that he couldn't find the idea of "necessary connection" in our ideas of causality. I admit that to me, the issue is at times a bit hard to grasp. Sometimes I see the difficulty he is pointing out, other times, I take your attitude and simply say that's just the way things are.
I tend to appreciate Schopenhauer's comments here that "motives are causes experienced from within", but, am not sure it is true.
Thanks for replying.
Not great. :lol:
It's harder than I was expecting and some of the distinctions he draws between inner and outer sense escape me. In fact, many of his distinctions are a bit dubious in exact formulation, but not in general outlook (the big picture, as it were).
I tend to prefer his comments about our ignorance of things themselves and his ideas on the imagination are a step forward from Hume's conception and is quite interesting.
Then again, I've learned the essential points of Kantianism from very reading some excellent philosophers so, I keep that in mind, despite my reservations on some of the precise exposition he makes.
Yes, the parts where he talks about Hume have been the best so far, I like the attitude and the reply in general. I think the problem remains concerning external objects, but the framing of causality as something we bring to the world, was quite lucid and penetrating.
I think language is an evolved semiosis, or system of symbolic signification, that grew out of the much vaster realm of pre-linguistic semiosis; pre-symbolic signification, and that it remains moored to that vaster realm of sense, and in ways that we cannot consciously fully explicate.
Quoting Wayfarer
I favour a more phenomenological approach, whereby it is the body that is directed towards things, "makes sense" of them in a space of common embodiment, and that this is not an 'inner' process at all but comes about primordially in our "being-in-the-world" (per Heidegger and Merleau Ponty). So, to my way of thinking there is no "intellect" (conceived as a kind of hermetically sealed reified faculty) that grasps "universals" (as though they were disembodied entities) as it appears in the Scholastic conception.
Sure. :100: But they're not strictly separate faculties, are they?
Quoting Janus
Thanks. I'm reading some phenomenological texts right now, including Crisis of the European Sciences and Embodied Mind, both of which I've found as .pdfs.
But I still stand by the idea that 'nous' signifies a real faculty, the understanding and appreciation of which has been lost in the transition to modernity. C S Peirce also believed that:
I'm with him on that. It's the belief that universals are 'disembodied entities' which is one of the problems, when in fact they're the guiderails of reasoned cognition, they're structures within consciousness, if you like.
First off, the SEP article reconstructs what Hume’s thesis is, whereas the Kant quote represents how Kant thought the thesis at least incomplete.
Second, Hume was correct in that we should expect one thing to follow from another if only because our experience has never shown us anything else, but Kant criticized him for leaving it at that, which is found in E.C.H.U. 1.5.1.36.....
“....By employing that word**, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity****. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects....”
**custom/habit
***constant conjunction
.....which he made worse by insisting....
“....All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent....”
But he came close, admitting in fn7 that it is always the case in philosophy to separate experience from reason, and even goes so far as to grant that reason acts a priori with respect to Nature, which is the same as with respect to experience. Kant is just saying......well, then why the hell didn’t you go ahead and do that?
“...I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition...”, says ol’ Dave, “....which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of this relation** is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori; but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other...”
(**cause and effect)
And of course, Kant ain’t having none of that, chastising Hume soundly....but nowhere near as soundly as Schopenhauer laid into Hegel....with this.....
“....Against this assertion, destructive to all pure philosophy, he would have been guarded, had he had our problem before his eyes in its universality. For he would then have perceived that, according to his own argument, there likewise could not be any pure mathematical science, which assuredly cannot exist without synthetical propositions à priori—an absurdity from which his good understanding must have saved him....”
Thing is....Hume couldn’t have had “our problem” before his eyes; Kant was the one that brought the “problem” up in the first place. Hume had no notion of synthetic propositions as Kant stipulated them, and most certainly never considered the validity of synthetic a priori propositions given from pure reason, having, as well, not given the faculty of understanding the power it must have, with respect to the categories, one of which is....TA-DAAAA.....cause/effect, at least according to transcendental metaphysics. Which, it is obvious, Hume knew nothing about, because there was not as yet any such cognitive methodology.
This is what woke Kant up: there’s got to be a way to show the relationship between cause and effect doesn’t have to come from experience, that understanding itself can show the relation as universally necessary. So he invented a way to make it so.
That’s how I make sense of it, at a minimum.
As far as I remember Kant acknowledges that synthetic a priori thinking cannot arise prior to any experience, but that once experience has established it (the "synthetic" part) it is no longer dependent on subsequent experience.
For me, Hume's statement that we never see causation is correct, but his excessive focus on the visual faculty blinds him to the fact that we feel the effects of forces; the wind, the sun, the rain and so on, on our bodies, and that we also feel ourselves exerting bodily forces on things; so the idea of causation does not come solely from observed constant correlations of events.
Yep, that’s what I get out of it, too.
Quoting Manuel
Ehhhhh...I just let it go with my sense of “in here” which is permanent, and my sense of “out there”, which comes and goes. Not clearly laid out, though, is it?
Ah. Thanks for that. Much to agree with.
Where I’m still iffy:
Having read Hume a long time ago, but as also affirmed in the SEP quote: Hume terms the principle which determines - hence, causes - us to make causal inference “custom”, or “habit”. This principle is not something that Hume, tmk, ever argues to be of itself acquired via experience but, instead, to be a requisite and innate aspect of our psyche - i.e., to be instinct - which, as an innate driving principle, facilitates our acquired experiential and inductive knowledge of connections between specific effects and causes.
Making use of what you've provided, first looking at this:
Quoting Mww
and then this:
Quoting Mww
To Hume natural instincts, such as that of making causal inferences, are by default not acquired via experience (nor can they be in any way prevented nor produced, but are an innate aspect of our psyche - whatever explanation for their so being there might be). Otherwise stated, the generalized relation between cause and effect is instinctive in us, and hence not acquired via experience; only the particular concrete relations between cause and effect are acquired via experience. And this to me stands in contradiction to what Kant suggests Hume to have affirmed in relation to the drive to make causal inferences.
That's the part that gets me.
Thanks again for the input.
:smile: Hard for me to conceive of any faculty of mind that isn’t in some way interconnected with some other. To take this into the left field a bit, as regards perception and abstraction/generalization, an ameba – being unicellular, having no nervous system to speak of – is known to be able to discern what is relative to it predator from prey. This ability to distinguish categories/generalities/types based on the functionality of that perceptually apprehended is - or at least so I argue - an aptitude of abstraction, however minuscule. I also cannot find how any lifeform can perceive anything in the complete absence of any and all abstraction regarding that apprehended. On the other hand, reasoning is wanting a universally acknowledged definition. But it's commonly understood to be required for forethought. The same lowly ameba, by sheer fact of finding optimal means to evade predators and consume evading prey, exhibits - again, minuscule but present - forethought. Hence some measure of reasoning.
Or so my thoughts go: reasoning and abstraction are very prevalent in life and can be very roughly measured in amplitude on a cline.
So, again, for me existential understanding is built in part upon abstraction and reasoning, yes, and so they are all interconnected - but it yet is miles apart from the mere presence of these latter faculties as a faculty of mind.
Kinda odd, isn’t it? Hume used constant conjunction to reference the future, Kant used it to reference the past. I think you’re right, but maybe only regarding, as you say, the synthetic part of propositions....
“....But now I extend my knowledge, and looking back on experience from which I had derived this conception of body, I find weight at all times connected with the above characteristics, and therefore I synthetically add to my conceptions this as a predicate, and say, “All bodies are heavy.” Thus it is experience upon which rests the possibility of the synthesis of the predicate of weight with the conception of body, because both conceptions, although the one is not contained in the other, still belong to one another (only contingently, however), as parts of a whole, namely, of experience, which is itself a synthesis of intuitions....”
....but Kant wanted to extent those to a priori conditions, which must have nothing to do with experience.
“....But to synthetical judgements à priori, such aid is entirely wanting. If I go out of and beyond the conception A, in order to recognize another B as connected with it, what foundation have I to rest on, whereby to render the synthesis possible? I have here no longer the advantage of looking out in the sphere of experience for what I want...”
Everything that happens has a cause is something I am perfectly justified in thinking, whether or not I actually think it true, but I’ll never find the justification for my thinking in experience. My all time favorite, though, is so simple and oh-so obvious: you just cannot get to twelve, if all you have is a seven and a five. Experience proves the validity of the synthesis, and rote instruction embeds in it me, but I must first do the synthesis before the empirical proof is even possible in the first case, and there isn’t any a priori reason involved at all, in the second.
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Quoting Janus
True enough, but there is a section in E.C.H.U. where he posits feelings as just another kind of experience, which, naturally, Kant denies.
You ok with all that?
The basic drift of the analysis is the identification of William of Ockham as one who 'ushered into the world the first case of a new intellectual disease' (Gilson). It is not an easy read but then the territory that it is covering is large, and the consequences have been profound. It's an essay in the history of ideas.
The reason that it is relevant is that it identifies the loss of the idea of formal causation as the cause of the decline and finally the rejection of metaphysics from Western philosophy (the sub-title of the essay is Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West.) It is of course an ultra-traditionalist essay in many respects (which pains me as I have no wish to identify with conservatism of this kind). But I'm persuaded by the logic of the analysis. Note in particular the connection the author makes between final cause, causality, and reason, and his remark that the loss of the connection between these is reflected in the philosophy of David Hume. So I can't help but feel that the underlying issue, which is the decline and rejection of Platonist-Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, is still at the heart of the question in the OP.
Quoting Joshua Hochschild , What's Wrong with Ockham? Pp 10-11
I think a good example is mathematics. Some say it is analytic a priori, others, including Kant I believe, say it is synthetic a priori. Now you say that you can't get to a twelve if you just have a seven and a five. I presume you are implying that the concept of addition is also required. If so, true enough, I suppose: but if you have seven apples and you have five apples in a separate grouping, then if you put them together you get twelve apples.
I think the basis of mathematics is counting and the basic actions of grouping what is separate (addition) and separating what is together (substraction) are fundamental with division and multiplication being slightly more abstract. Perhaps once we have the symbols to represent numbers and the four basic arithmetical functions the rest of mathematics is analytic, meaning that it just logically follows; but I can't be sure about that since I am no mathematician or philosophy of mathematics buff.
Quoting Mww
Sure, but then so is seeing a tree, or causation (if we could) or anything. Hume seems to be implying that if we could see causation then we would be (rationally, empirically?) justified in believing it is real. Why not then if we feel causation?
I don't think we are disagreeing about anything, but I'm not sure what you think.
No, it's not. :rofl:
Glad it's not only me.
But the effort pays off, in most areas. :up:
I'll state very clearly and concisely the reason why I believe there must be two types of intuition for the two types of objects whose impressions are received into the conscious mind. Let's say that the conscious mind must work, or make effort to understand an impression given to it. From the senses the mind gets an immediate impression, one not yet worked on by the conscious mind. From the memory the mind gets an impression already worked on by the mind. So we have right here, two very distinct forms of impressions, the virgin, and the ones already worked on.
I believe it is necessary to allow for the possibility of virgin impressions, because these are the most immediate, up to date, and present in time. To the conscious mind, the virgin impression appears very real, every sensation is new to the mind, so all seem to the mind, to be unaffected by the mind, therefore virgin. But if we allow "mind" to include subconscious activities of the brain, then the claimed "virgin impression" within the conscious part, is just an unrealistic looking ideal. The impression is presented as virgin to the conscious part, but it's already been worked on by the subconscious part. Even in the case of a sense which seems very immediate, like eyesight, the impression is well worked on by the subconscious brain before it is present to the conscious mind.
By insisting on this division, between the immediately present, and the represented, we can understand that the conscious mind itself is actually not immediately present, it is entirely representative in respect to its relation to empirical phenomena. The conscious mind works with representations, not immediate images. The immediately present is an ideal which the conscious mind attempts as a goal, (it's the goal of scientific observation for example), but necessarily fails in its attempts to obtain immediacy, because this is impossible from the empirical perspective.
Now, even though the reality is that all these sense impressions are to some extent representations, produced through, amongst other things, the application of memory, the ideal which is the immediate present, serves the conscious mind to divide and separate intuitions of the future from intuitions of the past. This is what we haven't really touched on, intuitions directed toward the future. Notice the inversion, in relation to the conscious mind. The mind is directed by intuitions from the past (sensations), yet it directs intuitions toward the future. The ideal. is not the immediate present (eternal and removed from time), but what lies on the other side of the present, in the future, as the goal, or object. This renders the ideal object as more than just fantasy or fiction, but just as real as the empirical object, being validated by the reality of the future, as the empirical object is validated by the reality of the past.
Quoting Mww
So the other type of intuition I am talking about, is of the goal itself, as an object, not an intuition of the tool. The tool may be a material object, understood through intuitions which relate to sense impressions, or the tool may be a concept, understood through its application toward ends, and the intuitions involved with the objects of intention. In reality the two mix together in complex relations
I'm not talking about one type of intuition for knowledge, and another for ignorance, because both the internal and external share in known and unknown.
Quoting Mww
Now, do you accept the reality of "the object" as a goal? And when feelings are directed toward these objects, there must be intuitions involved?
Quoting Mww
You are assuming that the material object is something known, and intuition is of the known. I assume that the object is fundamentally an unknown. Regardless, my point is that there are aspects of the material object which are known, and aspects unknown, likewise with ideal objects. The known and unknown of the material are fundamentally different from the known and unknown of the ideal, and that's why we need a different sort of logic for each.
Quoting Mww
Do you see, that just like there is a material object of sensation which is responsible for a sense intuition, there must also be an intuition involved with the sensation, or feeling of pain in the foot, described in your example? You said "intuitions represent the object the feeling is directed toward". The object in your example is the pain in the foot. The feeling is directed toward this, so there must be an intuition which represents the pain in the foot.
Quoting Mww
All right, I see you have a good understanding of what I was saying here. Now, when you say you can think any object you like, even ones you've never experienced before, place future things in this category. The future thing has a degree of reality which is comparable to the past thing which has been perceived through the senses. In fact, there is no reason to affirm that one is more "real" than the other. But notice how the judgements which we make concerning future things require a completely different type of principles from judgements we make about past things.
Quoting Mww
These are the goals, the objects of intention. In a sense they have "nothing whatsoever to do with the world", because they have to do with what is wanted, and this is completely distinct from what is. The object of intention, the goal, I propose, Is fundamentally outside the world. I cannot answer your question, ;where does it come from', because that is an aspect of the intentional object which is fundamentally unknown. All I can say is that it comes from within. The "something" though, is the object, the goal, so we at least know what the principles need to be applied toward
Quoting Mww
It's not necessarily from within the cognitive system, depending on how you define "cognitive system". I think it's simply within the living system, and that's why other living beings also have goals, or different sorts of intention, or objectives in their activities. So when we turn the cognitive system inward, we see that it has a position sort of medium between the most inward and the most outward.
Our scientifically minded society goes completely outward, then it dissects the external objects in an attempt to get to the inside. However, this technique is fundamentally flawed, because the act of dissecting, or dividing, only brings the inside outward, such that it cannot be apprehended by us as being inside, because we have already brought it outside to be able to see (observe) it. We can only get a true approach to the inside by turning the cognitive system toward the inside of the self of which it is a part of. Then we do not go outward, and try to get back inward, which makes a mess of temporality due to the necessary delay, we turn the cognitive system directly toward the inside, to apprehend what is further inward from it.
Quoting Mww
I do not agree that the same logic can be applied toward the possibilities of the future, as is applied toward the necessities of the past. There is a fundamental difference which one can easily apprehend. When we look to the past, there is a truth, a necessity of what actually happened. If we do not know exactly what happened, we can use a logic of possibility, in an attempt to determine the truth. But we know there is a truth, and all the possibilities are just logical possibilities, and there is a real, actual truth. When we turn to the future however, there may be a number of possibilities, and each one may have an equal chance of becoming true, depending on the choices which are made. So the sense of "possibility" is completely when referring to the past, from what it is when referring to the future.
Quoting Mww
Yes, I suppose this is similar to what I am saying. The empirical object is determined necessarily, but not by the cognitive system, but by the reality of passing time, such that by the time it is observed it is in the past, determinate. The internal object, being based in goals and objectives, is somewhat indeterminate. But I would argue that the difference is not simply a difference of source, but a fundamental difference in the type of object.
Quoting Mww
Yes, this is the difference I'm talking about. But I surely do not see how you draw your conclusion "All without a necessary difference in logic as such". Do you recognize the difference between is and ought? If so, do you think that the same logic which we apply to "what is", will work just as well if we apply it to "what ought to be"?
Quoting Janus
I did reply to this post, the first time you posted it.
I really don't think that we can truthfully say that an individual (dog or whatever animal) uses "logic" without being aware of it. This activity would not fulfill the common definition of "logic" which is a learned activity following a specific method. My OED calls it "the science of reasoning...". The method employed must be identifiable, and categorizable as a specified type of "logic", following the method of that type. Adhering to the method is what makes it science.
So I think this form of intentional activity which is sort of seen as unintentional because we cannot identify the specific intentions involved, or the specific thinking method, is not correctly described by words like "logic" which have a specific corresponding intelligible concept. When you call something which is squarish, "a square", you provide yourself the opportunity to mislead people if they accept your proposition, 'this is a square'. So I will not accept your proposition that a dog uses logic, to protect myself from being misled by you.
Quoting Janus
This is clearly not an example of simple logic, because it is invalid. Out of many possibilities, you cannot conclude that if it's not one it's necessarily a particular one of the others. You are missing a premise here, the premise which states that it must be either this or that. The dog does not grasp this premise, the law of excluded middle, that a proposition must be false if it's not true.
Quoting Janus
This is a very real problem. "Inference" has a very specific, almost technical definition. It means to form a conclusion from premises. Clearly it requires language to make premises. When you do not adhere to accepted definitions, allowing yourself to use words in an ambiguous, or ill-defined way, to make an argument, you engage in sophistry and your intent can only be seen as the intent to deceive. That is a very real problem.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree with this. There is intention, purpose displayed throughout the living world. The problem is with distinguishing intent, as it manifests within the human consciousness, as consisting of specific definable goals, and intent as it exist within the natural world, as an undefinable source of direction. Intent, in its natural form, wells up within us, in the form of primitive desires and wants, but the human mind has developed a method for analyzing those basic feelings, subjecting them to what we call "reason", and resisting those temptations which are designated as unreasonable.
So we as human beings have a very specific type of "intent", layered on top of the natural intent. This is the self-conscious "intent" of the human being which is the most common use of the general term. "Intent" under this definition refers to the goals which the human mind, in its filtering, altering, and specifying, of the natural intent, comes up with. It is rational intent, unless the human being is designated as acting irrationally.
But when we go to define "intention", if we say that this self-consciousness is an essential aspect of intent, we make self-consciousness the broader term, therefore logically prior to, intention. Then self-consciousness would be required for intention. This can be seen as a mistake, because then all the purposeful activities of living beings appear as outside the realm of intentional, and these activities become unintelligible to us. So it is better to define "intention" with reference to "purpose", making self-conscious intention a specific type of the broader, more general "intention". Then "intention" is seen as logically prior to self-consciousness, being essential to self-consciousness, and required for it. The more general term is logically prior to the more specific, as essential to it, like "animal" is logically prior to, as essential to "human being". Definition in this way is what enables deductive reasoning. If an individual is human, one is necessarily animal, as "animal" is logically prior to (essential to) human.
I think Hume wants it understood that the generalized relation between cause and effect is always given by experience. The principle grounding the relation is constant conjunction, and constant conjunction is itself merely an instinctive condition of human nature. If so, then the particular concrete examples merely represent the general principle.
Kant denies that principles can be given from experience, but must be derived from reason and then applied to experience. His rationale being, because principles are the logical ground for law, than all our experiences should conform to law if they are grounded in an empirical principle. If our experiences are grounded in law, every experience must be a necessary replication of that which it is an experience of, rather than a derivative of a mere representation of what we think it to be.
And the putting them together, just is that requirement, which represents the conception of synthesis. Maybe that is a modernized version of a philosophy predicated on intentionality. I suppose a guy putting seven things in series with five other things does it for a reason. But below that intention, is the consciousness of the possibility of actually doing it. Hence, the pure transcendental form of a priori justifications.
I shy away from use of “mind”, preferring to use “reason” instead. But I can work with mind, in order to be on the same page as you.
Two distinct impressions the mind gets, yes. The immediate from perception, the mediate from the mind itself. The impression the mind presents to itself is not immediately sensed, so in that respect, they are not the same type of impression. Technically, then, we can say the impression from sense is an appearance, the impression from the mind on itself, is a recollection of an appearance.
But distinction in impressions on the mind is not the same as distinctions in intuitions given to the mind. Not yet worked on by the mind implies no knowledge; worked on by the mind implies knowledge. Otherwise, why have a working mind? An impression we know must be very different than an impression we don’t know, but that doesn’t qualify intuitions themselves as being of different types, or, there being one type of intuition for this impression and another for that impression.
I grant that, as you said before, intuition is hard to pin down, and linguistic convention has tended to obfuscate the irreducibility of it. Accordingly, in the theory I favor, your hypotheticals just don’t work, but there’s nothing whatsoever to establish my theory as an irrefutable certainty, which means I can never prove your hypotheticals are wrong. So we can just argue the pros and cons of each til Doomsday. Or intellectual boredom, whichever comes first.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Which is a perfect rendition of the intrinsic circularity of the human cognitive system. We use reason to examine ourselves, ourselves being that which reasons. We can never examine the inside of the self. We merely call it self-consciousness, represent it to ourselves as “I”, and reason from it, to everything else, by using a system reason itself invents. Like it or not, we’re stuck with it because we’re human. Or, we need to come up with a better explanatory, albeit speculative, methodology. Which hasn’t happened since 1787.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Place future possible things in this category, yes. I can place existent things in this category just as well, insofar as experience only qualifies my condition, not that of the object. There’s millions of existent things I can think about and never hope to experience.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Agreed, in an off-handed way you may not appreciate, insofar as the object I perceived is “real” in a way the object I haven’t perceived is “real”, because, for me, they are both equally represented by my cognitive system, the past thing “real” as a phenomenon, the future thing just as “real” as a mere conception. Again....differences in source faculties within the system, not differences in logic used by the system.
Now, the actual reality of the thing may be quite different, insofar as the past thing certainly existed, whereas the future thing may not, so it is correct to say I have no reason to affirm one is more REAL....that is to say, more existent....than the other, and I am in fact logically prohibited from claiming such is the case. Logically permitted is exactly the same kind of logic as logically prohibited, the difference being merely the conditions manifest in the premises and not its operation by means of them.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is a fundamental difference in the type of internal object, sure, but why not simply because of the fundamental differences in their respective sources? If the different types of internal objects came from the same source, in what way could we say they are different? All conceptions represent different objects, but all conceptions, as internal objects of the faculty of understanding, are all the same type, just as phenomena represent different objects but are all the same type of object of the faculty of intuition, or maybe we could say the same species, respectively.
Even the goals and objectives are different respecting different types of objects. If the goal is empirical knowledge of the world because it is always objectively conditioned, we require both kinds of internal objects; if the goal is proper moral activity, which is always subjectively conditioned, we have no need of the type of internal object found in intuition. Although, post hoc, we will need intuition to determine whether or not our moral activity is in fact properly moral.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yep, I surely do. The logic is the same; what the logic concerns, doesn’t have to be. It is the difference between the form of logic as such, and the conceptions contained in its propositional architecture.
For that which is, “If A then B” is the form; “All events are in time” is the content of the form. If event then time adheres to the form exactly, hence the soundness of the logical form is served by the content, and we have an analytical, therefore non-contradictory proposition, which is true. Doesn’t matter what A and B are, or even if they’re valid conceptions themselves. As long as they don’t contradict the form into which they are entered, the conclusion is a sound logical inference. When the conceptions conflict, the form of the logic remains exactly as it was, but the soundness of the logic disappears.
For what ought to be, “the will is always and only good and immediately diminishes desires” is the form; “my will is good and my desires ought to be diminished accordingly” is the content. While the content serves the form in truth, it doesn’t always serve it in fact. Nevertheless, the logic by which one does not follow from the other, is just the same as if it did. This shouldn’t be that hard to grasp, if one grants that even irrational conclusions are nonetheless logically derived. Logic improperly employed is still logic.
While the content of logic can be of real-world things, the content can also be of things thought and felt, with equal justice, from which follows that logic itself cannot belong to any faculty of mere perception, which justifies the idea that logic is a purely formal condition of human understanding and reason.
My readings of Hume have been I think more charitable - tending to view the Kantian interpretation of Hume as a misinterpretation of what Hume argued for. So, as I find Hume saying, the principle of constant conjunction is epistemically, not ontically, given by our experience only in the same sense that the basic principles of thought are given to us by experience: we infer them based on what we epistemically realize ourselves able to do and incapable of doing. Just as we learn of our existential limitations, or boundaries, of thought by our experiences wherein we take note of our thinking, so too we learn of our instinctive (unproduced and unchangeable) impetus to associate causes and effects via experiencing our comportments. Again, this innate, active principle of association is not, and cannot, be gained from experience - contra what Kant finds Hume to say. And the particular instantiations of this association between causes and effects are only facilitated, else enabled, by - rather than representations of - the very principle of association in question, which of itself holds no particular content. This just as all the particular instantiations of our thinking in the manners we do are only facilitated/enabled by - but not re-presentations of - our basic principles of thought, which again of themselves hold no specific content. And, in both cases, we infer, hence reason, from our experiences to general principles that facilitate our experiences.
Also related: I fail to understand how conscious reasoning devoid of any content can manifest, nor of how this content can obtain if not from either present or former experience in the broadest sense - to include not only perceptions of the external world but our experience of things such as thoughts, emotions, wants, states of being, and so forth.
Well, I know I’m against to populist flow of things with my belief that Kant misinterpreted Hume - in spite of my respect for Kant. And, though I don’t much want to bicker on the subject - unless there’s reason to - I’m so far not convinced to the contrary. Basically, just wanted to express this for what its worth.
But without those basic principles already in the mind, it would not be possible to make any inferences. They are what allow us to marshall and organise our thoughts with regard to experience.
Incidentally the section on synthetic a priori from the introduction:
[quote=Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, V; https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap08]We might, indeed at first suppose that the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 is a merely analytical proposition, following (according to the principle of contradiction) from the conception of a sum of seven and five. But if we regard it more narrowly, we find that our conception of the sum of seven and five contains nothing more than the uniting of both sums into one, whereby it cannot at all be cogitated what this single number is which embraces both. The conception of twelve is by no means obtained by merely cogitating the union of seven and five; and we may analyse our conception of such a possible sum as long as we will, still we shall never discover in it the notion of twelve. We must go beyond these conceptions, and have recourse to an intuition which corresponds to one of the two—our five fingers, for example, or like Segner in his Arithmetic five points, and so by degrees, add the units contained in the five given in the intuition, to the conception of seven. For I first take the number 7, and, for the conception of 5 calling in the aid of the fingers of my hand as objects of intuition, I add the units, which I before took together to make up the number 5, gradually now by means of the material image my hand, to the number 7, and by this process, I at length see the number 12 arise. That 7 should be added to 5, I have certainly cogitated in my conception of a sum = 7 + 5, but not that this sum was equal to 12. Arithmetical propositions are therefore always synthetical, of which we may become more clearly convinced by trying large numbers. For it will thus become quite evident that, turn and twist our conceptions as we may, it is impossible, without having recourse to intuition, to arrive at the sum total or product by means of the mere analysis of our conceptions. Just as little is any principle of pure geometry analytical. “A straight line between two points is the shortest,” is a synthetical proposition. For my conception of straight contains no notion of quantity, but is merely qualitative. The conception of the shortest is therefore fore wholly an addition, and by no analysis can it be extracted from our conception of a straight line. Intuition must therefore here lend its aid, by means of which, and thus only, our synthesis is possible.[/quote]
Exactly, and Hume classifies these as instincts (as "instinct" was understood back in his times rather than our own, in our times being interpreted as genetically inherited predispositions of behavior ... different issues, though). Instincts being roughly interpreted as "basic principles already in the mind" not acquired via experience.
Nevertheless, we gain insight into these same basic principles, or at the very least justify their so being, via experience-filled reasoning - such as Kant is doing in the quote you reference. And such as Hume likewise did with the principle of association regarding causes and effects:
Quoting javra
Instead of reading "habit" as that which is formed a posteriori, in the context of Hume's arguments regarding causation read it as that which is a priori to all experiences of cause and effect. As it being an/the a priori instinct which causes - or leads us to make - our causal inferences.
Having read Hume - albeit some time back - this so far is the only sensible way I can interpret what Hume said given his arguments. And to me it seems well enough supported by the SEP article just mentioned. Hence my intuition that Kant misinterprets Hume on this important point. To me, one says "instinct" the other "category of understanding" and both refer to the same basic thing: basic principles already in the mind prior to experience.
If I'm wrong, I haven't yet seen anything to evidence that I am.
But instinct is sharply differentiated from reason by most. Describing reason as an instinct was highly controversial in its day and it's hardly elaborated at all by Hume. Animals perform extraordinary feats by dint of instinct, so it is said, but that does not amount to reasoning.
[quote=Kant's Metaphysics, IEP;https://iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/#H4]In the Analytic of Concepts section of the Critique, Kant argues that in order to think about the input from sensibility, sensations must conform to the conceptual structure that the mind has available to it. By applying concepts, the understanding takes the particulars that are given in sensation and identifies what is common and general about them. A concept of “shelter” for instance, allows me to identify what is common in particular representations of a house, a tent, and a cave.
The empiricist might object at this point by insisting that such concepts do arise from experience, raising questions about Kant’s claim that the mind brings an a priori conceptual structure to the world. Indeed, concepts like “shelter” do arise partly from experience. But Kant raises a more fundamental issue. An empirical derivation is not sufficient to explain all of our concepts. As we have seen, Hume argued, and Kant accepts, that we cannot empirically derive our concepts of causation, substance, self, identity, and so forth. What Hume had failed to see, Kant argues, is that even the possibility of making judgments about objects, to which Hume would assent, presupposes the possession of these fundamental concepts. Hume had argued for a sort of associationism to explain how we arrive at causal beliefs. My idea of a moving cue ball, becomes associated with my idea of the eight ball that is struck and falls into the pocket. Under the right circumstances, repeated impressions of the second following the first produces a belief in me that the first causes the second.
The problem that Kant points out is that a Humean association of ideas already presupposes that we can conceive of identical, persistent objects that have regular, predictable, causal behavior. And being able to conceive of objects in this rich sense presupposes that the mind makes several a priori contributions. I must be able to separate the objects from each other in my sensations, and from my sensations of myself. I must be able to attribute properties to the objects. I must be able to conceive of an external world with its own course of events that is separate from the stream of perceptions in my consciousness. [/quote]
I don't see how Hume can be defended against this critique. Hume is failing to account for the way that the understanding creates the entire framework within which his 'customs and impressions' are meaningful. And that framework is transcendental, that is, not given in experience, but necessary for experience.
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here. It seems to me that the "possibility of actually doing it" would have been realized quite early in human evolution, roe example, due to trading practices and planning hunting and gathering groups and other common tribal tasks. I think the realization of the possibility of grouping things together would plausibly have long before any "conception of synthesis" in the evolution of human understanding.
You're conflating deductive with inductive logic. The classic example, given by an ancient Greek thinker whose name escapes me at the moment, describes a dog tracking a rabbit by scent along a path; when the single path forks into three she is observed sniffing down two paths and when no scent is detected on those, immediately continuing pursuit, without bothering to sniff, down the third. This is inferential: we would express it as "if the rabbit didn't go down either of those paths it went down this one". It doesn't matter that the dog could be mistaken and that the rabbit might have gone off into the bushes; not all inferences are correct; and not discounted as inferences if they are shown to be incorrect.
Again, you demonstrate the same problem I already pointed out. You obviously didn't get what I meant. The rabbit didn't necessarily go down a path, logically, it could have gone anywhere, therefore the dog's conclusion was not a logical conclusion. It does matter that the rabbit could have gone anywhere, because the only way we have valid logic is by assuming the unstated premise that the rabbit must have gone down one of the three paths. Only through this premise can you logically conclude the third path, by excluding the first two. So the dog did not use logic, because what it concluded was invalid. It concluded that if it wasn't the first or the second, it must be the third, without considering other logical possibilities. That's illogical, when all other possibilities are not excluded. Therefore the dog did not use logic. And I will not accept your sophistic attempt to define "inference" in such a way which allows an illogical conclusion to be called an "inference".
instinct: A natural or inherent impulse or behavior.
I think that, in a nutshell, what you say here conveys the pivotal issue. And I believe that it is hardly elaborated at all by Hume because it was - as it remains - highly controversial that humans are instinct driven, as is all other life, albeit to far lesser extents then lifeforms of lesser intelligence. The concept of religious heresy was, after all, not foreign in Hume's time, and the concept of biological evolution hadn't even entered the picture.
I'm however far more sympathetic to the idea. Yes, in part from a Darwinian point of view. Far more pertinently though, from a metaphysical one. The principles of thought are not of themselves thoughts nor conscious reasoning nor concepts (general ideas) we produce, hence bring about, by abstraction. We neither think, nor reason, nor abstract the principles of thought into being. Yet they facilitate all the thinking, reasoning, and abstracting we do, including that via which we discern them to be. And these same principles of thought are "natural or inherent impulses or behaviors" in us - which defines instincts.
And neither are instincts in the form of principles of thought thus conceived (for instance, but as can also be said of the instinct to discern causation) given in experience, while yet being necessary for experience.
This in my humble mini-defense of Hume. But I get how controversial it must be, even today.
(As to the maybe Peircean-like metaphysics that I'm contemplating, it's far more complex and probably idiosyncratic, so I won't get into it. But, in synopsis, the basic laws of thought are fully determinate aspects of the cosmos and thus necessarily pivotal to any lifeform's experience.)
Instinct is too blunt an instrument to account for human capabilities.
Already addressed; read more carefully and you might avoid further misunderstandings.
Sure, but we’re not talking human anthropology, we’re talking a method of reason in individual human subjects.
Backtracking a bit...
Quoting Janus
....which relates to how we find the numbers, “cognition” here tacitly understood as merely a number, numbers in general, which we could envision as “what is it that represents some quantity”, from which follows that because there is no such thing to answer the question to be found in Nature, which must be the case otherwise we wouldn’t be looking for it in reason itself, we make up that which is sufficient for the job.
“....Philosophical cognition is the cognition of reason by means of conceptions; mathematical cognition is cognition by means of the construction of conceptions. The construction of a conception is the presentation à priori of the intuition which corresponds to the conception. For this purpose a non-empirical intuition is requisite, which, as an intuition, is an individual object; while, as a general representation, it must be seen to be universally valid for all the possible intuitions which rank under that conception...”
So it is that we construct a symbol, an individual intuition, which then represents every empirical quantity of that measure. One apple, one house, one star; a million of anything all represented by the same constructed representation cognized as a unit of measure.
Quoting Janus
Except the realization of the possibility of grouping things together just is the conception of synthesis.
“...The mathematical conception I should construct, that is, present à priori in intuition, and in this way attain to rational-synthetical cognition. But when the transcendental conception of reality, or substance, or power is presented to my mind***, I find that it does not relate to or indicate either an empirical or pure intuition, but that it indicates merely the synthesis of empirical intuitions. (...) The synthesis in such a conception cannot proceed à priori to the intuition which corresponds to the conception; and, for this reason, none of these conceptions can produce a determinative synthetical proposition, they can never present more than a principle of the synthesis of possible empirical intuitions. A transcendental proposition is, therefore, a synthetical cognition of reason by means of pure conceptions and the discursive method, and it renders possible all synthetical unity in empirical cognition, though it cannot present us with any intuition à priori....”
This is saying that although we already constructed the conceptions representing quantities, they in themselves have not the capacity to form composite mathematical propositions, which is where your....
Quoting Janus
....comes in, and where the transcendental nature of synthesis itself is required, which is not a cognition as is the mathematical proposition, but rather, merely, as a transcendental principle.....hey, it just there, dunno/don’t care how or why, it just is so deal widdit...... makes that synthesis into a proper mathematical cognition, possible. And what Kant is indicating with my *** in the quote above.
I know all that is sometimes hard to swallow, and most people just even try, even taken with the proverbial grain of salt or perhaps the dumptruck-ful. I mean....we don’t really gain anything whether we actually agreed with it as intellectual magnificence or reject it as unintelligible philosobabble.
Still, if “at least it made me think” has any positive meaning, then there is some significance to be found here.
Screw the populist flow. As my ol’ buddy R. Dubbya said, “to be a man one must be a non-conformist”.
As for Kant misinterpreting Hume, if you think it so, more power to ya. Me....all I’m qualified to do is philosophize regarding either one or the other, but only a Master is qualified to critique another. “Master” being just somebody talked about scholastically centuries after they’re no longer around to appreciate it.
Bickering is pathologically stupid, and, it’s worth whatever you think it is.
Correct. We don’t have to think that math is nothing but this or that. All we need from math is the validity of it as a certain science. But we’re not looking to prove that. What is being asked is, are synthetic a priori propositions and whatnot, valid explanatory devices, and if math is a possible way to show that they are, and subsequently can be used as validations for something else, then we need to know, not that math is this or that, but how math can be a proof of the possibility of synthetic a priori propositions. Because math is already a certain science, if math can ground the possibility of synthetic a priori propositions, then those propositions will necessarily be as certain as the science of mathematics, the validity of them thus obtained.
So no, all those as usual folk don’t have to think of math as anything but a tool. Only the unusual folk, on the other hand.....ehhhh, they’re off in Never-Never-Land anyway, operating in the realm of pure logic, so.....
The point though is that to be in the memory is not the same as to be in the mind (the reasoning process), because things which are being thought about are in the mind, while things in the memory are not necessarily being thought about. So I do not think we can accurately say that this impression which is derived from the memory is derived from the mind itself. We might divide the mind, like Augustine did. He proposed three parts, memory, understanding (or reason), and will. Each is understood as a sort of distinct faculty, but operating together as one trinity.
What is relevant to our discussion is that these impressions derived from memory are more fallible than impressions derived directly from sense. And, we have to account for where they are derived from. They are similar to sense impressions, yet they are produced by an internal system without the necessity of sense input. So we have to assume a different sort of intuition involved int the creation of these impressions which do not utilize immediate sense input, they are created from an internal source. We have a whole category of such things, dreams, creative fantasies, and even mathematical axioms might be placed into this category.
Since I described these things through reference to memory you called them "recollection of an appearance". But this is clearly not accurate because of the fictional aspect. And as evident in dreams, the fiction need not be a product of the conscious mind. So this category of internal intuitions includes a creative element which is other than the creativity of the conscious mind. This nonintentional (or perhaps more properly called undirected intention) is very evident in dreams, and also in certain instances of memory we might call creative memory, which produces a defective recollection with manufactured parts. We must be very wary of this 'behind the scenes' creativity, especially in its epistemological presence, in fields like pure mathematics, because it is often faulty.
Quoting Mww
The problem now, is that if you use "knowledge" in this way, you allow these varying degrees of fallibility into what we are calling "knowledge". Things derived from memory are manufactured by the internal process and presented to the conscious mind in a way similar to the way that things derived from sensation are manufactured and presented to the conscious mind, but the difference is in the raw 'material', content. You are saying that the content of the internal (non-sense) process uses 'knowledge' as the content, but I am saying that this supposed 'knowledge' has a high degree of fallibility and ought not be called 'knowledge'.
If I remember something, I will call this "knowing", in common parlance. But in the stricter, epistemological sense, knowledge requires justification. "I remember it that way" does not qualify as justification, so this content, derived from the internal source is not "knowledge" in the epistemological sense. This is the problem Wittgenstein approaches in the Philosophical Investigations, internal justification is not proper justification. The issue is that "worked on by the mind" as an internal process, does not imply "knowledge", in the stricter sense of the word.
Quoting Mww
I wouldn't characterize the process as circular, because it does make progress, as you say progress occurred in 1787. And small amounts of progress do occur consistently. An inward spiral is not a circle, because it proceeds further and further inward, though it might appear to many who do not observe many revolutions, as circular.
Since "reason" is essentially method, then each advancement involves changes to methodology. Coming up with a better methodology, is exactly what I am proposing that we have a need for. The 'better methodology' is the different type of logic required to understand the internal.
Quoting Mww
To place present existent things into the category of future possible things would be a category error. The exact "present" is fleeting, and indeterminate, because by the time anything is pointed to as present, it is gone into the past. So the judgement of present and existent, is produced from past experience. A continuity of presence is observed over a temporal duration in the past, and extended to the current present, as "now", and the existent at present is determined, judged by us, in this way. So present "existent things" really refers to things of the past, with the assumption of continuity at some indeterminable "now".
So present is a junction between the determinate past, and the indeterminable now. What is existent at the present "now" is indeterminable because the future consists only of "possible things" while the past consist of determinate things, and we do not understand how this changes at "the present. Our conception of "existent things" is a product of past experience, and you can place "possible things" in this category if you want, but I think that would be a category mistake.
Quoting Mww
Consider the difference I described above, concerning the internal manufacturing of the impression derived from memory, relative to the more direct production of the impression derived straight from sensation. If we proceed now to a representation of a future thing, from memory, we need a further level of manufacturing, and a further level implies another opportunity for mistake, therefore more fallibility, in anything produced as a future impression.
This is where I see the biggest failure in our logical systems. We have immediate impressions at the present. And we have two distinct types of less immediate, 1) memories of the past, and 2) anticipations of the future. But when we proceed toward making an impression of a future thing, we employ the empirical method, turn to memories of the thing in the past, and flip this around toward the future, to make the future impression, instead of turning directly toward our anticipations of the future, to produce our impressions of a future thing. So this is where the empirical method totally misleads us. We think that we can turn to the thing in the past, and from this produce a representation of the thing in the future, but all we do here is produce a larger probability of mistake. In reality, to produce a proper representation of a thing in the future, we need to look directly at how the thing in the future appears to us, in anticipation, and use this to produce our representation of the thing in the future. We need to look directly at intention, to understand our intuitions of future things.
Quoting Mww
The different sources for the internal object produce the need for a different type of analysis. Having a different source means that they are different species. So, we have memories which originate from the past, and anticipations which originate from the future. Right away, we can see a logical problem, saying that something originates from the future. This is indicative of our faulty way of looking at the future, through the past, then reflecting the past, onto the future. and using the same descriptive terminology. The terminology does not apply properly. It's evident that we have not adequately developed the proper way to discuss things which have the future as their source.
Quoting Mww
What I'm talking about is a categorical difference, so that the different species are not reducible to being of the same genus. When the different species of objects do not have the same source, i.e. part of the same genus, we need to assume different genera.
Quoting Mww
Perhaps, this is the way that the two types of internal objects are commonly treated, by logicians, as being different content, yet subject to the same form of logic, but what I am saying is that this is a mistake. I'm arguing that the different types of content, are subject to real distinctions, therefore requiring different forms of logic, to be properly understood. The further problem though, is that to distinguish one type of content from another, is to apply formal principles, so we already fall back on a type of logic here. This implies the need for a third type of logic, the type needed to distinguish which things are of one category of content, and which things are of the other. The "form of logic" needs to be structured so as to adequately deal with the type of content. We have one type of content which is an indeterminate future, another type which is a determined past, and a third type which is both.
Quoting Mww
No, it really isn't still logic, unless we can demonstrate the logic which justifies the judgement of "improperly", and show that this is somehow proper, therefore still logic. And this is the mistake made by Janus. If the process is invalid, then it is not logical and cannot be called logic. To be logical is to properly follow the principles. If you say that it is "improperly employed" then you are saying it is illogical, therefore it cannot be logic.
This is the whole point. If you ground "proper" and "improper" in some sort of "ought", which is other than that which is described by the rules of the logic, then we need another type of logic to determine "proper and "improper" in this sense. This would allow that the person is using logic, but the way that the person is using the logic is "improper" by some other rules, therefore some other logic. Then we could make sense of "Logic improperly employed is still logic", because the "improper" is determined by some other type of logic, rather than the logic which is said to be employed. If it is not determined by some type of logic, then the judgements of "improper" or "proper" have no validity, and we would have to turn to the logic itself, which is said to be "improperly employed", and there'd be no justification for the claim that it is "logic".
Quoting Mww
Because of the difference in content, we need a difference in form as well. Different types of content submit to different formal structures. This is fundamental to art. The freedom to create a form is limited by the medium, or content used. We can see that "real-world things", is a medium, or content of past experience, empirical truth, what is and what is not, based in our judgements of past experience. Also, we can understand that future goals, objectives, as "what ought to be", is a medium, or content of future expectations. These two distinct type of content clearly require distinct formal structures of logic to understand them.
As Aristotle showed, the three fundamental laws of logic, identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle, break down, or are inapplicable to future occurrences. This is because the judgement of truth and falsity is inapplicable to future events. He insisted that we maintain the law of non-contradiction, and allow exception to the law of excluded middle. This means that there is neither truth nor falsity to the future event, and that is what he proposed, we cannot speak about future things in those terms because they do not apply. The modern trend following Hegel, dialectical materialism, and dialetheism is to deny the applicability of the law of non-contradiction. This means that contradiction could be acceptable in statements about future things. This perspective is incorporated into modern physics, the energy moves as a particle and as a wave, contradiction. And the particle both is, and is not, at a specific place, because being a wave at the same time allows for this.
What we ought to be able to see, is that the real problem is not with non-contradiction, or excluded middle, it is with with identity. The future thing, not having a material existence as a particular, really cannot have a proper identity. This renders both non-contradiction, and excluded middle as inapplicable. But now we have the problem of producing a form of logic which can deal with this type of content, things without identity.
So, back to the is/ought. What "is", is identifiable things, and this can be dealt with by classical logical principles, truth and falsity. What "ought to be" is not something which can be properly identified, therefore there is no truth and falsity. But we have another choice term, "good". The logic which deals with "good" is not the same as the logic which deals with truth, because the object cannot be properly identified.
Quoting Janus
Sorry Janus, I'm not interested in your manipulation of ill-defined words for the purpose of deceptive sophistry. Your conclusion, "if the rabbit didn't go down either of those paths it went down this one" is not "inferential", because without the premise "the rabbit must have gone down one of the three", it is not valid logic. And if it is not valid we cannot say it is "inferential". If you remove the criteria, that valid logic must be employed to call the conclusion "inferential", then any decision whatsoever, can be said to be inferential. But "inference" under this use does not require logic. So even if the dog made an inference, under this definition, we cannot conclude that the dog used logic.
The dog sniffed a couple places, got tired of the trial and error process, and ran down the nearest path, and you claim that this is "inference". You show absolutely no discipline in your usage of the term.
This is absolute nonsense. You don't seem to understand the distinction between inductive and deductive logic. Validity is a deductive matter concerning the principle that the conclusion must follow from the premises. Validity is irrelevant to inductive logic. Inductive logic concerns plausibility, inductive inferences are plausible explanations, it is not a matter of conclusions following strictly from premises.To say on that account that therefore there are no such things as inductive inferences is ridiculous.
It seems implausible that the dog tired of sniffing; my familiarity with dogs informs me that they don't generally tire of sniffing, and in the story as told the dog had been tracking the rabbit by scent the whole time. So, there I have myself just made an inductive inference which could, I acknowledge, be incorrect (as can any inductive inference) but it seems to me. given my knowledge of dogs, the most plausible explanation.
I look at synthetic a priori knowledge as coming from reflection on the general nature of our experience. So I see it in a phenomenological sense as not being (always at least) apodeictally certain.
[quote=Wikipedia]Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a body of observations is synthesized to come up with a general principle.[1] [/quote]
Your example of the sniffing dog is not an example of a dog deriving a general principle from a body of observations.
In your deceptive definition of terms, Janus, you do not separate out the specific thing being defined, from the general category of which it is a part. So if there is there is a general attitude in a mind, which we could call "expectation based on prior experience", and also there is a much more refined, very specific form of this general attitude, directed and applied in a very specific way, which we call "inductive reasoning". The proposition that inductive reasoning is a form, or specific type, of expectation based on prior experience, if we accept that as a true premise, does not produce the conclusion that all instances of expectation based on prior experience are instances of inductive reasoning.
This seems to be your MO, you define the more specific word as something more general. Then you try to put forward the argument that we ought to accept as reality that the more specifically named thing is occurring everywhere that we see the more general occurring. What's the point to such an argument. Is it your intent to reduce the capacity of deductive reasoning through the use of vague definitions?
After working on this seemingly forever, I find I can’t offer a conclusive response, because I don’t have a clear idea of your meanings of mind. The mind may be conceived to contain a reasoning process, but if it contains it, it cannot be it, so why not remove the reasoning process from “mind” and just let the reasoning process be itself? Then it can have all the constituent parts it needs to be a proper method, and even if things in memory are not being thought about, they wouldn’t be in memory if they weren’t thought about at some time. From which follows to be in memory is the same as being in the mind, in the reasoning process, just at a different time than the other distinct impression the memory merely represents. Besides that, things that are currently thought about may be impressions from memory, which is the very same thing as my recollection of appearance.
Much easier for me to grasp, if we just say every impression ever, are all merely the contents of our consciousness, and were each and every one worked on by the reasoning process, either first, by being put there, which we might call an impression of an object of experience, or subsequently, by being recalled from there, which we might call an object as an impression from memory of the object of experience, or some object as an impression from that which is not an object of experience.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Which type of impressions are not created from an internal source? And don’t say real objects of sense, because they are not impressions. That which makes an impression cannot be the impression it makes.
Using my terms, we have to assume a different sort of faculty involved in the creation for our impressions which do not utilize immediate sense input (because the faculty that creates impressions that do utilize sense input can’t operate unless there is one).
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In your words, my conscious mind gets an impression but the reasoning process can cognize nothing from it, then it is impossible for me to know what that impression represents. I may still be left with an opinion about the impression, but an opinion does not imply correspondence with the actual object the impression represents. To express this I would say, “I think the impression might represent a (____).” No fallibility in knowledge, insofar as I would never rightfully say, “I know the impression represents a (_____)”.
On the other hand, if my conscious mind gets an impression created by me in an internal faculty without any input from sense whatsoever, the certainty of the knowledge derived from that impression is automatic, because I myself am the author of it. This type of impression on the conscious mind given from the reasoning process, is a thought cognized as a singular conception, or a series of united conceptions cognized in the form of a completed proposition. I know with absolute certainty anything I think. It is impossible for me to think something, then turn right around and tell myself I can’t know the thought I just had.
It doesn’t matter if the object my conscious mind gets from the reasoning process is an object in memory, insofar as my knowledge is just as certain that it is an object impressed on me from memory, and I will swear up and down the memory and the original object are perfectly related. What could possibly tell me they were not? Again, no hint of a fallibility in my knowledge.
The fallibility resides in judgement, the only part of the reasoning process susceptible to fallibility. This makes perfect sense in a cognitive system that is itself purely a logical system. Not based on logic, but IS logic. The reason we know things logically is simply because reason is logic.
This reduces to...how can logic make mistakes, which answers how can judgement be fallible. Dunno. We make mistakes but don’t know the irreducible cause of them. Hence.....wait for iiiittttttttt....transcendental metaphysics, which cannot prevent mistakes, but can show how to guard against them.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Whole lot less complicated, whole lot less susceptible to mistakes, if we just don’t bother with understanding the intuitions of future things. We grant possibility, which is always contingent, which makes explicit knowledge from contingency it itself contingent. I can look directly at any intention I wish all day long, and tomorrow may very well thwart every one of them. Nature helps me out here, because I don’t need to directly look at my intention to breathe, for my blood to circulate, and stuff like that. Nature removes control of absolute necessities from my intentions. All the others.....ehhhhh, intend away, and merely hope for the best. Which gets us to reasonable expectations: I expect my legs to work, I expect the sun to still be there in order to intuit it tomorrow exactly as I did today.
Psychology. What a waste of brain cells.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
First, your principle of identity writ large: break down the syllogism into its subject/copula/predicate composition, you get....logic/is/logic. The conception contained in the predicate is exactly the same conception contained in the subject, which makes it an analytical a priori judgement, the same thing as a tautology, which is always a necessarily true statement. And, is exactly what Aristotle indicated with the Law of Identity.
Logic improperly employed merely indicates the conceptions in the premises, or the conceptions in the syllogism itself, don’t belong to each other but are conjoined as if they do, which makes the conclusion drawn from them illogical. The conclusion is illogical, the statements/syllogisms are nonetheless logical constructions.
Second, regarding the validity of the process, “There may be some dogs that have wings” is a perfectly constructed logical syllogism, exactly following the valid logical process. The logical form is correct; the logical content conflicts, so the statement is illogical. I prefer irrational, but....whatever. But the statement illustrates your requirement so can be called logic. Bad logic, but still......
Anyway, sorry for the delay.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Things from memory are not manufactured by the internal process; they are recalled as pre-manufactured impressions of things from the spare parts bin, called consciousness, by the internal process to bridge a gap in some subsequent raw material processing, or just to give the process something to do in the absence of raw material to process.
So, yes, there is a difference in raw material content, in that there isn’t any raw material at all in things from memory. Having already been worked on by the internal process, we may treat things from memory as impressions of resident experiences, which by that token the conscious mind receives those things known to it. But not being received directly from sense impressions, being called up as post hoc impressions to bridge a gap in a current internal ad hoc manufacturing process, the recalled impressions are known a priori to the conscious mind.
The internal process is a chain of events determining an output relating to the input raw material. If a memory is being recalled to fill a gap in a current process, the impression dropped into the gap will either allow the process to continue to its conclusion, or cause the process to stop manufacturing, culminating in no output. Therefore, there must be an authority responsible for which memory to recall from the huge manifold of spare parts in a lifetime’s worth of consciousness.
But the internal process could be just in idle, energized and waiting for the next raw material to process, operating under the condition where there isn’t any. The process doesn’t stop operating in the absence of raw material, for the conscious mind is stil conscious even in idle mode. The process can still recall impressions of things from memory to present to the conscious mind, using that, not as raw material.....because it isn’t raw material, that being the input from sense alone....but as mere impressions as such. In this case, there isn’t any gap to be dropped into, so there isn’t any ceasing of the process because the wrong impression was recalled.
The internal process by which the conscious mind gets its pre-manufactured impression of objects of sense from consciousness, is nothing but pure thought. But what of the authority that determines the validity of the memory to be recalled? If the memory is being recalled to fill a gap in order for there to be a determined relation, the authority must be more strict than in the case where the process is in idle and for which, on the one hand, a determined relation has already been given, re: extant experiences, or, on the other, is not even being sought, re: possible experiences.
In all cases of raw material of sense, discursive judgement calls up memory, reason is the authority, from which is obtained a relative truth. In all other cases, aesthetic judgement calls up memory, imagination is the authority, from which is obtained a relative pleasure.
Intuition can now be the one thing it is, and logic hasn’t even made a functional appearance.
Easy-Peasey......
A priori, self-evident, intuitive, obvious, and common sense knowledge
If a proposition (herein that causality is logically necessary) can't be proven true but feels true, it could be a self-evident truth!
I think it's the other way around - if it feels true but we can't prove it, we call it self-evident. That's my problem with the whole concept of self-evidence. It lets people be lazy with the illusion of knowledge.
I think the issue here is not what "mind" means, but what it means to be in memory. We tend to believe that the mind takes an object, an idea, sense impression, or something like that, and places it somewhere, holding on to it, to be referred to for later use. Under this belief, the thing remembered, the memory would be in the mind somewhere.
That, I think is a mistaken belief. I think, that in reality, the mind must recreate the impression or idea every time it supposedly retrieves it from memory. If this is the case, then we cannot say that things in memory are actually in the mind. The mind must recreate the memory each time it remembers it.
Accordingly, the issue is not a question of what "mind" means, it's more a question of what mind does. If mind puts the object, sense impression, in a storage place, to be pulled out later, then the remembered thing is always in the mind. If it recreates the object (the memory) each time it recalls it, then the object is not in the mind, in the mean time. I believe that the fallibility of the remembering faculty, and the changes which occur to the remembered object, from one time to the next, which I've already referred to, indicate that the latter is the truth. The other, is a sort of naive way of talking about remembering, which facilitates communication ("I have it in my memory"), but it doesn't suffice for a philosophical inquiry into this matter. So you say, "much easier for me to grasp", that way, but sometimes taking what appears to be the easy way, is to be misled.
If the sense impression is not deposited in the memory, as an object, but replicated each time that a person remembers something, then we ought to inquire about this capacity to replicate a sense impression, without the use of the senses, and consider how similar it is, or isn't, to an actual sense impression.
Quoting Mww
If the process is as I propose, that the mind recreates, or replicates a sense impression (consider having a song in your mind) every time that it remembers something, then we have to question what exactly is the content here. You say that memory can provide content to fill gaps in the input raw material, but what is this content which the memory is providing? The mind is not making it up as pure fiction, but it is attempting to replicate something. But how could the mind replicate something which already happened in the past, unless it has that something to look at and copy? But if it has that something to look at, then that something is the real memory. Maybe the mind puts a token, or representation of the thing somewhere, but a token doesn't look like the thing itself, so the token can't produce the memory.
I think it's just a pure process, with no content. The mind learns a process, and it can repeat this process. It's entirely formal, a process free from material content. The process creates the impression, whether or not there is any input from the senses. In its fundamental "pure" form, there is no sense input, no raw material, just a formal process. That process allows itself to be affected by raw material.
Quoting Mww
I see it similar to this, except I see no necessity for raw material. The mind can continually create impressions without any raw material, like in the case of dreams and memories. But then it can also do the same in thinking, manufacturing conceptions, mathematical axioms etc., without any real need for new raw material. The difference between this type of impression, and the ones which use sense input, is that the mind uses the sense input to learn new processes and techniques, because the sense input is stimulus which excites new feelings, and new challenges for the mind. So it's sort of ironic because the process is fundamentally free to do anything, but it won't do anything until provided with the initiative, because it has to first learn how to do something. So novelty comes not from freedom, but from being subjected to new limitations.
Quoting Mww
I don't see how you can validate this idea of a "pre-manufactured impression". How could the mind store an impression?
Quoting Mww
Maybe, but like I said, sometimes taking the easy way is to be misled.
Quoting Mww
Making something from spare parts is still manufacturing. But then you still have to account for where, and how the spare parts are stored.
Quoting Mww
Doesn't this contradict the notion of "spare parts"?
Quoting Mww
But then what is remembering? Surely it's an essential part of the reasoning process. And surely it is fallible. So there is fallibility which is prior to judgement, in the memory process.
I don’t think the mind does anything, except serve as conceptual complement to “body”. Just sayin’.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You know how when you need, say, a dozen boards 12” long, you mark off 12”, cut it off the long board, then lay that 12” piece on the long board, mark and cut that piece, then use that second 12” piece to mark the third? If the first cut was off a little, then using that to mark the second, use the second to mark the third.....each time the cut gets longer by the error in the first cut. If the mind recreates the memory each time it remembers it.....what would prevent each memory being a little different than the object being remembered? If you remember an object often enough, it becomes possible you haven’t remembered the original object at all. And if you haven’t remembered the original, what is it you’re remembering? Now the ground is set for, say, by the time you got to 6th grade, you should have failed to remember at least most of which you learned in first grade. But, of course, you have not. What do we do about that?
Besides....is there anything in memory you don’t know? If there is, you’re gonna have a hellava time explaining how it got there.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure, the remembered thing is always in the mind, the thing remembered remains where it was put. Whether remembered or re-created, there is a representation of a representation, which I agree is susceptible to fallibility of identity, but is not necessarily so.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For empirical conditions, by which a real object becomes an impression of experience subsequently a content of consciousness, the faculty of representation grounded in sensibility is necessary. For the re-creation of an impression recalled from consciousness, in which there is no immediate impression grounded in sensibility, makes explicit the faculty responsible for handling sensibility is not necessary. So it appears there is a difference set of faculties for one method as opposed to the other.
In the case where the impression by an object becomes knowledge of it by the synthesis of intuition and concept into a cognition of that object, post hoc memory recall, then, is merely a judgement made on a pre-conceived representation, and the error in recall of an extant representation the object of which is known, is negligible.
While the degree of identity of the recall is determined by the degree of accuracy in the original, the error in the recall is not impossible, but so vanishingly small as to be disregarded. That is to say, if the one is somewhat wrong, the latter will be exactly the same somewhat wrong, but if the original is correct, so too will be the recalled impression. Usually fault is predicated on fault in the entire system as a disfunction of age in the form of electro-chemical brain disability. But we’re concerned with the rule, not exceptions to it.
In the case of re-creation, with the impression of the object of sense already established, what is being used as the source, if not the impression in consciousness? And more importantly, how does that source make itself usable to the system? In the former case, the impression is right there, the faculty being used in recall knows where to find it, and just goes and gets it. In the re-creation scenario, some faculty constructs, but apparently without being told where to get its construction material. Or at least, you’ve haven’t yet posited such a source.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A posteriori knowledge for objects in the world; a priori knowledge for objects of reason.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If the process allows itself to be affected by raw material, then the affect is the content. For there to be a process makes explicit that which is processed. Otherwise is to claim there are thoughts without that which is thought about, a contradiction. Or experience without that which is experienced.
The process is indeed very formal and entirely free from material content, but is necessarily conditioned by it when such material affects sensibility, from which is given the affective representational content.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nature would have ruined us if making it so we needed a different process every time something new came along. Before learning what the something new is, we’d have to learn the process by which learning something new becomes possible. Rather more efficient to use one process exactly the same way for all instances, while compensating for that which Nature herself doesn’t provide.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It doesn’t. All my representations reside in consciousness. Each and every otherwise rational human agent’s personal spare parts bin. All that of which I am conscious in in one place. Obviously, because for each and every single representation ever of mine, “I” is that which brings it forth. Consciousness, a passive faculty, is not part of the active reasoning process, so not subjected to its rules.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Remembering is, certainly. The distinctions reside in which parts of the process is used under corresponding conditions. Nothing is ever added to the process itself under any conditions whatsoever....it being, as a whole, as our kind of intelligence demands of it....but some parts of it may not be required under some conditions.
The human is a dualistic creature, no matter how such duality is represented. Metaphysics is all about the representation, the explanatory theory, the less complicated and confused the better.
Same as it ever was......
I think that's actually very common. We have to work hard to ensure that a memory doesn't change. This requires constant effort. It takes effort to memorize something, that is a method of repetition, and a similar method of periodic recollection is used to ensure that the memory doesn't change. The longer the duration of time between the acts of recollection, the more substantial the change in the memory is likely to be.
Quoting Mww
That's exactly the point, you are not remembering an object at all, you are learning a process. And what I said is that there is no content, or material aspect of this process at all, so there is no object. Your sub-conscious mind just repeats a process, and the process creates the material or content, as "the memory". So the content is present to your consciousness, but it is created by the process which is not present to your consciousness. We would say that the process is "the same" each time, but since each time is a different time, there are accidentals which are different, and that accounts for differences in remembering the same thing.
Quoting Mww
You do not forget everything you learn in the first grade by the time you get to the sixth, because you have to keep recalling much of it, at every step of the way between first and sixth. However, much is actually forgotten because we do not make the effort of repetition required to hold onto it. I believe the young mind is much more adept than the older mind though. But unless you sit down at the end of the day and recall everything that happened to you that day, the majority will be forgotten. Something could happen the next day, to bring it back to mind, but as time passes it gets harder and harder to bring it back to mind.
Quoting Mww
This is what I dispute, there is really nothing put anywhere, just a process learned and repeated.
Quoting Mww
This makes no sense to me. You must recall first, before you can make a judgement on the thing recalled. How can recollection itself be a judgement? Recollection cannot be "a judgement made on a pre-conceived representation", because judgement is a conscious act, and the pre-conceived representation must be recalled to the conscious mind before a judgement can be made on it. I agree that there is a judgement made to recall a specific representation, but the recollection is not itself a judgement.
Quoting Mww
I don't agree with this at all. In my experience there is a heck of a lot of inaccuracy in recollection. We have to work extremely hard if we wish to try to avoid inaccuracy, and this is called memorizing. But even with extraneous efforts, mistakes abound if the thing being memorized is at all complicated. Try reading a long sentence or two, then turn around and try to reprint that, word for word.
Quoting Mww
The "source" is the process, plain and simple, and it is repeated. You add something extra, the "it" in "the faculty being used in recall knows where to find it". You have the faculty carrying out a process, whereby it goes to find something, gets it, and presents it to the conscious mind. I see no need for the "it". The faculty is not finding anything, it's just doing something, and what it is doing is creating an impression in the conscious mind. And what I've said repeatedly now, is that there is no " construction material". The act which the faculty carries out, is the act which creates the content, the material, which is present in the consciousness.
If it was a sense impression there would be material content involved, from the sense. But material content is responsible for the uniqueness of individual acts of sense impression. In memory and recollection, the goal is to remove all material content, because material content is responsible for uniqueness, and differences, which in memory are accidentals, mistakes. So the pure, perfect memory without mistake must be pure process with no material content.
Quoting Mww
Not quite, thinking is the process which produces thoughts, so thinking is prior to thoughts. Notice "thought" is past tense of thinking. Therefore it is necessary to conclude that there is thinking without thought. There is thinking without that which is thought about, because that which is thought about is produced by, created by, thinking.
Quoting Mww
Ultimately, there must be a process which creates the things to be processed. Otherwise things are designated as first, prior to process, then we have no way to understand the existence of things. If we say that there is a process which creates things, then we have the means for understanding the existence of things. We have to address that process, and try to understand it.
Quoting Mww
This is why the process which deals with sensations, and creates sense impressions within the conscious mind, must be completely different from the process which recollects. The process which creates sense impressions is confined to dealing with the material received by the specific sense, and is directed toward that sense, whereas the process which recollects must be free to recollect anything. The one is restricted by material content, the other is not.
Quoting Mww
But it's true, we need a different process for every new thing that comes along, otherwise we could not remember each one as different. I suppose that's why we have so many neurons.
All Claims are Justifiable
Quoting Agent Smith
In short, we can justify the logical necessity of causation. All we need to do is come up with a set of axioms that can be used to deductively argue the case.
Anyone have any ideas?
This is very difficult without actually involving your body to sing along.
What do you mean? I have music in my mind almost all the time. And, I find it fascinating how I can have a song going on in my mind, while I am thinking of something else at the very same time. It's similar to the way that I can be sensing things while I am thinking at the same time, yet the production of the music in my mind is independent from all sensations. It appears like producing the song in my mind is carried out by a different faculty than that which is thinking, just like receiving sensations is done by a different faculty from that of thinking.
The point being that the song in my mind, though it is a memory of music I heard, is definitely created by my mind, rather than being a repetition of something I sensed, because I can't replicate the melody exactly as I heard it, and I need to ad lib on the lyrics, because I can't remember them properly.
The question between Mww and I is whether 'the memory' is created by selecting from a bin of spare parts (and whether or not the spare parts qualify as 'raw material' is another issue), or whether it is simply a process which creates the internal images, a process which attempts to replicate the original sensing process, without any need for material content.
If, in analysis, we remove the "raw material" provided by sensation, we have an inclination to replace it with some sort of stored material, something stored in the memory to replace the raw material of sensing. But I don't see how this material could be stored in the memory. The raw material received through sensation is always active, activities which affect the senses. How could the mind store activity? It would need to be maintain as 'the same' activity over an extended length of time. And if the mind simply recreates the activity, then it is a process without any stored raw material. However, somehow the information of how to recreate the activity must be maintained (stored).
Well, if I hear a song in my mind, I unconsciously, so I noticed, sing along in my mouth or vocal court or move my body. Only in dreams I can hear sounds, I think, though I can't actually remember. When you hear sound from headphones, you can do a nice play. You can move them away from your ears and take the sound out of your head. Very strange experience.
If you hear a tune inside your head your body is involved. You can get tears in your eyes or move along. Pure hearing seems impossible.
Have you seen a doctor? :lol:
No, the sane dont hear the music. And so are mad!
Not all that common, but occasionally, sure., especially in the case of individual particular objects. I have no idea exactly what I held in my hand at any given time four years ago, but I remember full well a trip I took to Yellowstone four years ago, and most, but not all, of what I did on that trip.
We don’t work on memories. A memory modified is a new memory.
Memorization is a method of repetition, yes, but we don’t memorize memories; we memorize cognitions that become memories.
We don’t recall memories merely to refresh them; we recall them to compare to a current cognition.
The longer between recall of a memory the less it may relate, yes, but that is not a change in the memory. If a memory no longer is accurate recollection, it’s simply because we’ve more with which it no longer compares. At ten y.o. my memory of going fast was 50mph; at 30 y.o. my memory of going fast was 100mph. My memory of 50mph is still an accurate recollection and hasn’t been replaced; it just doesn’t accurately relate to going fast.
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Quoting Mww
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But I don’t know what my sub-conscious mind is doing, so what grants the authority for it to do what you say it is?
And why does it seem like I’m remembering objects?
So the sub-conscious is repeating a learning process, the results of which is a memory. What are the ingredients, the constituency, the composition, of this process? What is learned and what learns it? I can see a comparison being created, maybe, but what is recognizing it as such?
I can see having no material properties, but the content is still an object as “memory”, right? Gotta be a memory of something. I agree my memory of an object is mere convention, insofar as there is no material object being recalled from memory, but there is still a representation of one, which should, for all practical purposes, be a replica of the original material object. So it would seem to have a material aspect.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Did you memorize your favorite birthday present, or do you....you know....just remember what it was? If you don’t remember what it was, then you didn’t work hard enough memorizing, in which case you conventionally say you don’t remember, but in fact the truth is, you just don’t know.
I agree, though, that there are times when you tell yourself something is really important and it is a great benefit for you to remember it. Maybe it is in these cases where continuous recall is the method by which the memory becomes embedded and readily available. But I don’t see a repetitive sub-conscious process at work, if you have to tell yourself to repeat the impression in the reasoning process.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Recall first, yes, but the recollection is not itself the judgement. The recalled memory is in relation to your experience, which is judged. No, this impression doesn’t represent what I got for my birthday; no this is doesn’t.....yes, this does.
No, this impression doesn’t represent how I remember Stephen King’s antagonist in The Shining. No, this doesn’t, yes this does. The object brought up from consciousness meets general criteria first, becoming more particular as the reasoning process examines that which is given to it. Each object is brought up and discarded or not depending on your experience from which the original object became a memory in the first place.
It is usually the case that the reasoning process helps itself by bringing up several objects, all of which were pre-conceived representations related to the past experience.....who was there, what your brother was doing, what kind of cake, and so on. These aid the reasoning process in giving the conscious mind the impression it’s looking for.....your favorite birthday present.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Maybe, dunno how that process works, exactly. In the system I know, sense impressions are given to us, not created by us. The impression I get from an object is determined by that object. I can’t tell an object it is round; it tells me.
I don’t see why the recollections can’t be dealt with by the same system. They’re all representations.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I reject it’s true. If you ca convince me it’s possible, I’ll work with it.
"Quantum mechanics is a law of thought."
— Chris Fuchs
Musicians would like to have a word with you! You're an existential threat to all musicians and music companies.
Just imagine not needing to stream/download music from payfor sites. You're something, man!
:snicker:
This is where we disagree. I think that memory requires effort, this effort is called memorizing. Memorizing consists of repetition within the conscious mind. After something occurs, to remember it well, in detail, I must go over it again and again in my head, to keep all the details straight, order of occurrence, fine details, etc.. Without this repetition, the details get lost and are not remembered properly. Then, when I try to recount the event at a later time, I will get parts of the ordering wrong, or some of the details wrong, or not be able to recount them at all.
Language serves as a memory aid. When something happens which I want to remember, I put it into words in my mind. This gives me far greater capacity to remember the details and order than if I try to remember all the details of an event through imaging. Order of occurrence of the details is what I find to be the most difficult. If I can't establish some relation (causal) between the images within my mind, I cannot connect them fluidly, and the memory becomes a bunch of disjointed images which become difficult to give temporal order to. This is where using words really helps me for some reason (perhaps because I've been trained in giving order to words when I was very young, as counting). When I order the parts of the event in my mind with words, I find it's far easier to remember the details, and the order. Writing the words takes memory to another level altogether, and sometimes people write journals as a memory aid.
I think that we must always work on memories, to keep them established in the memory. To memorize something requires a conscious system of repetition. Once the thing is memorized it has that status as being memorized. But the status of being remembered is temporally limited, and it is not death which limits it. In other words, to have something memorized does not mean that you'll always be able to recall it until your dying day. Things are forgotten. So there is a temporal limitation to memory, such that if the thing is not recalled and repeated again, by the conscious mind, within that duration, it will be forgotten. We can give many examples of memories which haven't been forgotten. And, memories which prove to be useful are the most recalled, therefore the most remembered. But it would be pointless for me to try and give an example of a memory forgotten. I know for sure though, just by looking at how many things I remember in any given day, and how many days there are in a year, that the things forgotten by me vastly outnumber the things which I remember to this day.
Quoting Mww
This seems like contradiction. Repetition requires 'the same thing' (or same type) more than once. If the same thing comes into your mind a second time, then it comes as a memory. In all my experience of memorizing, it is very clear to me, that what is repeated within the mind in the act of memorizing is the memory. Think about it. Suppose you're learning something fundamental, like how to count. What comes after "two"? If every time you get to "two", the teacher shows you "three", and you mimic it, then you never memorize it. What is required is that you recall "three" as being after "two" from your own memory, and this effort is what establishes the memory that three is after two.
Quoting Mww
Yes, we recall memories to use them, but this is what refreshes them, and keeps them well established. This is why it is the useful memories which are maintained. Unless you start refreshing them simply for the purpose of refreshing them, like when you write a journal, it is only the useful memories which end up maintained.
Quoting Mww
When the memory is no longer useful, therefore no longer recalled, it gets forgotten, plain and simple. The vast majority of memories are actually forgotten in this way. Your example is a judgement, as to what constitutes "fast", it's not really a proper example of memory. But how could one give an example of memory which has been forgotten?
Quoting Mww
We can use introspection and logic to figure out what the sub-conscious mind is doing. That is philosophy.
Quoting Mww
As I said, this is a feature of language, to think of yourself as remembering objects is a practise which has come about for the purpose of facilitating communication concerning internal affairs. That it is useful to speak about internal conditions as if they are objects has made such language the norm.
Quoting Mww
These are thoughtful questions, ones which I have no real answer for. Essentially you are asking, how can there be a process without an object, or thing involved in that process (i.e. contnet). What I think we have to do is place the cause of the process as outside the process. "What learns it?", is something outside the process, but is engaged in the process as the cause of it, and this is the person, "the self", as the agent. But what is actually moving, changing, or active in the process, is unknown. The conclusion I make is that the process has no content. Compare this to quantum physics. Remove the particle (as the content), and all we have left is the process, wave pattern. Now ask, what controls the wave pattern if there is no particle, and in our case, it is the self, as the agent. What the "self" is, I cannot answer.
Quoting Mww
Again, this is an example of judgement, not straight memory. To remember your favorite birthday gift requires that you remember all your gifts, and make a judgement, unless you've already made that judgement and memorized the consequent.
Quoting Mww
What I think, is that the process itself is subconscious, but the judgement to repeat is conscious, and that's why it takes conscious effort to have a good memory. It's a type of habit, where the habitual action itself has been subrogated to the subconscious, but still requires a conscious judgement to initiate. So for instance, like walking, is a subconscious action, not requiring conscious decisions about where to put your feet, but it still requires a conscious decision to initiate the action, and it still requires a sort of conscious effort to be aware of what you are doing. Walking is an activity done subconsciously, but requiring a conscious decision to initiate.
Quoting Mww
I think there is a problem with representing the reasoning process in this type of relationship with memory. If you had to bring up an object, and judge it as to whether it is the correct memory, you would have nothing to compare it with to make that judgement, because that would require that you already had the correct object to make the comparison with. So, I think that when the memory (supposed object) is recalled from the memory, it must be taken for granted as the correct memory. The memory (object) comes into relation with the reasoning process if it doesn't fit with other memories, then reasoning is required to sort things out. That we take for granted that the memory (object) which is brought up is correct, is the reason why people with faulty memories, dementia etc., are so hard to deal with. People are always naturally convinced that their memories are correct. So when two different peoples' memories disagree, there is a problem.
Quoting Mww
This I believe is the root of the problem, the faulty materialist way of looking at things. You place the "cause" of the sense impression in the external object, rather than within the human being, and you conclude that the "impression I get from an object is determined by that object". A little experimentation with psychedelics and hallucinations would probably show you otherwise. The human body is very finely tuned, and a slight alteration in the chemical balance will change the sense impressions greatly. This demonstrates that the impressions are really determined by the human body, not by the external object. The human body receives information from the object, but it is this human body which creates, and determines the impression, not the external object.
Once we come to apprehend this reality, that the basic cause is internal, rather than external, then many philosophical issues, like free will, become far more intelligible. Then we can place recollections and sense impressions in "the same system", but the system has an internal cause, and it is not "determined" by the external factors.
Quoting Agent Smith
I am a musician, and I speak to myself all the time. Hilary thinks that means I'm mad. I'm also a composer. How do you think an artist could create a piece of music if they didn't have it in their mind? Do you think it's a matter of trial and error? Or do you think composers simply use mathematical formulas to put the music on paper, then try it out on the instrument?
So, that's what's going on!
[quote=Obelix]These [s]Romans[/s] Musicians are crazy.[/quote]
:snicker: You maniacs!
I would say the rules of valid inference are abstracted from our experience of making inductive inferences (which are not understood in terms of validity, but of plausibility). Some inductive inferences can be formulated in deductive terms, of course. For example:
P: The sun has risen every day since the earth existed
P; There are laws of nature which determine that, absent some unforeseen catastrophic event, the sun will rise tomorrow, and continue to rise for billions of years into the future.
P: No catastrophic event preventing the rising of the Sun will happen between now and tomorrow
C: The sun will rise tomorrow
Of course there is no guarantee the Sun will rise tomorrow. because some of the premises might be unsound, but nonetheless the argument is a valid deductive argument.Notice that the premises themselves are inductive inferences.
The mind could indeed be dependent on physical causes, but that would not entail that the logical content of thought is dependent physical causes.
Logical rules (such as the law of the excluded middle) are known a priori. That's what a priori actually means. The mind is capable of understanding such principles without any reference to experience - that's the point. Actually if you look at the OP again, this very point is the subject of the first post so I'm not going to go into it again.
On a related note, I've found an excellent academic paper, which I've pinned to my profile page, 'Philosophy and Spirituality in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason'. It's a difficult and lengthy read but it's a really important paper. It demolishes the depiction of Kant as the sensible, prudent empiricist philosopher. I might do an OP on it to summarise the details.
Don't think this is the case, in my humble opinion. Logical rules have their base in the material world. A gas in empty expands or implodes. It can't stay in between, if no gravity is present. The excluded middle. A drop of milk in coffee temporarily has a nice shape. But chaos takes over. Only true life maintains dynamic shape. The logical rule associated? Entropy. Cause and effect.
No offense, but your opinion has no bearing, and the examples you cite are not relevant. If you go back and read the first post in the thread you might see why.
No offense, but your opinion has no bearing as well. All logical necessities are based on physical causes and effects. Maybe some logical necessities apply to the laws governing the objects in the causal processes, but your logical necessities will always follow the laws of nature. Your logical necessities have no impact.
Says who? Provide one citation for that.
Says I. Give me one example of a logical necessity. I can point to a natural process corresponding to it.
Kant’s ‘discovery’ of the a priori grounds of empirical cognition was praised because it showed how a spiritualist metaphysics could be confined to the limits of empirical experience. It was acclaimed much more, though, for showing that beyond these limits in which Locke and Newton threatened to immure reason, the mind encountered ‘objects that cannot be conceived but can only be thought through reason’. These transcendental objects or ideas made it possible to defend the presence of a self-acting moral being within the empirical world and a supreme intelligence as
the ground of its intelligibility.
...
These are concepts – the transcendental ideas – that necessarily arise from rational reflection. According to Kant, these ideas of reason, like the categories of the understanding, form an a priori system. Kant does not attempt to derive the transcendental ideas in questionable ways from the forms of rational inferences or the possible relations between subject, object, and representation (even though the text suggests this), but rather considers them, much more plausibly, as concepts we arrive at through rational inferences about specific (psychological, cosmological, and theological) subject matters. The central philosophical point here is that concepts can be the result of what Kant calls ‘necessary inferences of reason.’ A first instance of this is Kant’s derivation of the concept of the unconditioned; the chapter then turns to the three classes of transcendental ideas (psychological, cosmological, theological).
(Cribbed from various sources.)
Have you ever studied philosophy in any formal sense? Read anything about it? I only ask, because your comments appear on almost every thread on this forum, but they seem almost totally devoid of any real philosophical acumen.
Yes.
Haha! No indeed not. Is that bad?
:up: Now that's better. And very close to something I said somewhere earlier in this thread - that scientific principles are a place where logical necessity and physical causation meet.
Quoting Hillary
But the distinction between inner and outer is itself a constructive activity of the mind. That is why I am always working on trying to understand Kant's 'copernican revolution in philosophy' - that things conform to thoughts, not thoughts to things.
Both, for Kant.
Same to you.
Of course it is; couldn’t be otherwise.
Forgive them, for they know not what they say. If they did, no citation would be necessary, it (the “experiment” you mentioned) being the foundation of the entire systemic transcendental enterprise.
(Sigh)
I think Kant means the validity of a priori judgements are demonstrated by experience.
“....The possibility of experience is, then, that which gives objective reality to all our à priori cognitions....”
An a priori judgement is an a priori cognition, insofar as a judgement is the synthesis of representations from which a cognition follows. As such, then, an a priori judgement is valid iff a possible experience may follow from it. All this is intended to show, is that we can synthesize all the representations we want, but if they don’t lead to an experience, or a possible experience, they are generally useless. Or what he calls “without sense or meaning”. Which is the conventional way of describing the ever-dreadful transcendental illusion.
We’ve been here before, and honestly, I can’t find anything to substantiate Kant’s acknowledgement as you’ve posited it. I’d understand if you’ve no wish to pursue this line of disagreement; to each his own, etc, etc.....
A priori means before experience, or a condition of experience.
The foregoing conversation is in reference to Kant, so.....
“....By the term “knowledge à priori,” therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience. (....) If, on the other hand, a judgement carries with it strict and absolute universality, that is, admits of no possible exception, it is not derived from experience, but is valid absolutely à priori....” (...) Not only in judgements, however, but even in conceptions, is an à priori origin manifest....”
(B3-6, A2 says something a little different, but always go with the latest)
....which is not to say there is no other reasonable criteria for the conception, but any such is useless in this transcendental context.
:snicker:
A proposition containing logical necessities whose subject matter does not correspond to any natural processes or entities:
A Chimera (from Greek mythology) can magically teleport itself or it cannot.
The principle of identity stipulates the following logical necessity: “A Chimera that can magically teleport itself” is equivalent to “a Chimera that can magically teleport itself”.
The principle of noncontradiction stipulates the following logical necessity: A Chimera cannot both be capable of magically teleporting itself and incapable of magically teleporting itself at the same time and in the same respect.
The principle of the excluded middle stipulates the following logical necessity: there cannot be a medial state of being in-between those of “can magically teleport itself” and “cannot magically teleport itself”.
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I don't see the epistemic cut between physical causation and logical necessity in the aforementioned.
Then again, some such as myself will claim that these same three laws of thought are natural laws. Such that they govern not only all of thought (some of which has little to nothing to do with natural process and entities) but all of nature.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I hold with materialism with respect to external objects of perception, yes. All external objects are substance, or, material, and the material of the object is that which affects my perceptive apparatus. In conjunction with that, I hold that these sense organs have no cognitive power, they merely relay the presence of material, upon which that part of the reasoning system having to do with sense impressions, functions. Do my eyes qualify as chemically imbalanced upon hallucination, or is it in the brain, where the impressions are received, that the chemical changes occur? If in the brain, and the philosophical equivalent of brain is a theory of cognition, in which comparable manifestations appear, then it is in the reasoning process where judgement is affected, that stands in for chemical changes in the brain.
So no, the sense impression does not change; what the reasoning process makes of it, does. It is the cognition of the object given from the reasoning process, not the impression the object gives me, that tells me I’m stoned.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Agreed, in that the body (actually, the sub-conscious process you favor, which I call intuition) creates a phenomenon that determines how the impression should be represented. In this respect, then, causes are always and only internal, but only regarding the reasoning process itself, having nothing whatsoever to do with causes of objects, or that which objects cause.
We might agree, on the other hand, that objects cause, are the raw unprocessed material for, perceptions, but then, perceptions (raw material) alone are not impressions, which are the purview of sensation (representation of raw material). Again....minutia.
A quantum particle hops non-locally between different position, within the bounds of the wavefunction.
Seems like a bit of a non sequitur ... Can you either cite references of this being "the magical teleportation of quantum particles which they willfully enact" or else independently provide rational evidence for the same?
For instance, why would self-imposed/willed magical teleportation logically need to be bounded by anything physical, wave-functions included? Its magic, after all.
Secondly, your reply doesn't seem to address the logical necessities of identity, of noncontradiction, and of the excluded middle. Last I recall, QM is riddled with what appear to us to be logical inconsistencies. The delayed-choice quantum erasure as just one example which I'm personally astounded by.
The wavefunction can be seen as made uo from hidden variablds. Bohm was called names because of this in his time (foolish Trotskyan, mindless child, etc.). One can even say its the make up of space itself. The wavefunction aids the particle to explore space around it instantaneously. To find other particles. To interact, to love, to hate. Quite a purpose...
The law of the excluded middle stems from physics.
That's not that difficult to understand. It involves backward collapse. The present collapsing the wave in the past. Example: a double slit. If the wave has passed through two slits and arrives at a large distance screen, you can alter the state by closing a slit.
What are those?
Never mind.
Ah! Found it!
"In modal logic, the necessity of identity is the thesis that for every object x and object y, if x and y are the same object, it is necessary that x and y are the same object."
Well, never mind indeed!
To be the same it's necessary that they are the same. Weieieird....
I am sure I remember reading a passage from Kant wherein he says what amounts to saying that a priori judgements are independent of any particular experience, but not independent of experience in general.
Now, isn't that also just what you are saying when you say " I think Kant means the validity of a priori judgements are demonstrated by experience"; that is they are demonstrated by reflecting on experience, but not demonstrated by any particular experience?
Also, it seems unarguably true that no one could make a synthetic a prioiri judgement if they had never experienced anything. Do you find yourself disagreeing with this:
Quoting Janus
for example?
To be the same needs the logic of being the same?
To be the same is the logic of being the same. What else could it be, since it's not a physical relation?
But how can two things be the same logically then?
How can A=B if they are different? What's the logic behind it?
If A is the force, and B is the mass multiplied by the acceleration, how come they are the same?
Folks are generally empiricist and realist by upbringing and cultural inclination. As Bryan Magee comments:
Indeed. No coincidence that my initiation into Kant was via T R V Murti's exposition of Madhyamika in his book The Central Philosophy of Buddhism. I'm still exploring that connection.
"rajse impossibly deep levels", which means the levels don't exist. And if they could be raised, they should be raised to "the level of self-consciousness", which means they are a part of the self, which is the question, "before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions", which means we must have a frame from which we criticize. From where did we get this frame? It resides in the same impossibly deep level.
As to your 'force/ mass x accelaration example" is that a claim of identity or proportionality?
Other examples might be cases of different descriptions of the one thing.
Two electrons are exactly the same.
Quoting Janus
Identity. F=ma.
Quoting Janus
How can different descriptions be the same?
Not if they are at different locations.
Quoting Hillary
I didn't say they could be the same (if they were, they would not be different descriptions); I said two different descriptions could be of the same thing.
I mean in a superposition. Their identities merge.
Quoting Janus
Yes, obviously.
Is the position important? How else can there be two?
If they are not at different locations then logically there cannot be two.
That may have a mathematical meaning in the context of QM, but it has no logical meaning.
That's why their position doesn't make them different.
It does. There are two electrons. In superposition.
If you should happen across it again....
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Quoting Janus
This reflects post of Magee’s position. It seems the norm nowadays, to put the cart before the Kantian horse, which is fine, if one is comfortable with it. The theory goes....and of course it is only theory.... that a human rational agent only understands because the conditions for it are already contained within that agency. Long story short...we understand stuff because we’ve come equipped to do it, and one of the ingredients we come equipped with, is the idea of cause/effect.
(Not technically an idea as commonly thought. We call it that because “transcendental conception of pure reason” is just too far out, and misleading, because that conception is developed by pure reason in order to talk about it, but the idea doesn’t belong to reason at all; it belongs to understanding, which is just makes it.....er......further far out)
In fact, we only have the effect of the experience of objects because those objects are the cause of it. From there, it is a short hop to understanding the effects of objects themselves as having a cause. It is clear, then, we don’t have to conceive causality; it is the natural order of our understanding, and antecedent to any use of it.
Take “possibility” for instance, another intrinsic condition. That idea doesn’t represent our ability for understanding might be possible, which is a non-starter because our understanding is given by the type of intelligence that makes us human, but instead, represents that for a thing to be presented to us, that thing must at least be possible. Obviously, things we perceive must be possible, else we wouldn’t perceive them, but that doesn’t hold for things we merely think. As such, Nature....or sheer evolutionary happenstance if you prefer.....has ensured we don’t waste time thinking about things that are impossible, in our pervasive reach, and sometimes over-reach, for knowledge.
So no, we don’t conceive causality, or the cause/effect dichotomy. We conceive individual representations of it.....because that’s how it’s done, dammit!!!!!
Sorry.....not so short after all.
Yeah, which generally leads to intellectual laissez-faire....let it be, don’t bother me with the details, kinda thing.
Trying out my luck at explaining the law of identity in a manner that might be understood.
That which is (A) is not and cannot be that which it is not (not-A). This being a more long-winded way of saying that “each given is identical with itself”, or “A = A”. Which is what the law of identity stipulates to be an innate and determinate aspect of our awareness and, derivatively, of how we think. Hence being deemed "a law of thought" - since it is deemed to govern all thought without exception.
This can be falsified by some given A being cognized as not-A at the same time and in the same respect.
So, if A = “two electrons in superposition” then A is and can only be “two electrons in superposition” - but not “four electrons in superposition” or else “strawberry cake” etc.
So a thing can only be itself if it's itself. A vase can't change into a fork because then the vase is not the vase anymore, unless the fork is a vase in disguise. The two electrons in a superposition are themselves and not themselves (namely, the other electron) at the same time. A is A and not A. Nature doesn't follow established modes of thought. QM is weird. But fully comprehensible, if we accept non-locallity as a feature of nature. The electrons have split identities. Is itself and the other at the same time. Love operates at fundamental level already! :heart:
Quoting Hillary
... is not what the law of identity states. See my previous post again. A vase can change into a fork ... maybe as can occur in a cartoon. But a vase cannot be a fork at the same time and in the same respect (... unless, of course, one considers the implausibility of a hybrid: something one can use as a vase at one time and as a fork at another. But, then, this hybrid's identity would itself be different from either that of a strict vase or that of a strict fork. The law of identity remains intact.)
One can postulate that QM operates beyond the laws of thought all one pleases, but this does not in any way evidence that we can ourselves think in manners that are not governed by the laws of thought.
How can a vase change into a fork? It truly can't, lemme tellya! In cartoons...yes. But life is no cartoon. Only if a face, eeeh, vase, puts on fork clothes this can be done. I think you over estimate the power of thinking (which is exactly where you excell in, so that's understandable). Which probably is why you think there are laws of thought. Which there are not. QM is prove that we are indeed bound to classical thinking. Which is to say, if you accept the bounds. Which I don't. I think non-local, like an electron! I'm an electron! :wink:
Alright you. Enough said.
Out of curiosity, what do you make of the particle-wave duality? Do you take electrons to be both particles and waves at the same time and in the same respect? (Just remembered that many organic molecules - which are big - exhibit the same particle-wave duality. But that aside.)
Well, being an electron, eeehh, sorry couldn't resist!
Seriously. Okay. I think the wave is real. Ala de Broglie or Bohm. Who both were just put aside without reason (just ordinary powerplay). If you consider the wave made from hidden particles (which could be the make up of space itself!), then the electron hops non-locally and instantaneously within the bounds of the wavefunction, spending most times where the "density of space" is highest. So both the particles as the waves are real. No collapse problems, measurement problems, many worlds interpretations, etc. If only at Copenhagen...
You, as Creator of your World, have a chunk of modelling clay in front of you. You think, I must have a vase, so you carefully mold the clay into a vase, without pulling out chunks. You are pleased as you examine your creation. But then you think, I would like a fork now, the vase has served its purpose. And you carefully mush the clay into a lump and start anew, fashioning a large fork. And you are pleased with your creation, saying, Let there be a fork!
This is all done as an exercise in topology, a mathematical topic that studies continuous transformations from one thing to another, roughly. You are pleased with this tidbit of knowledge. :smile:
In fact, I had that coffee mock in mind! But the vase is not changed in a fork then. The vase is just gone. Something can only change if it keeps its identity. I can change from laughing to crying.
So, is the claim that we have that idea from the moment of birth? When I said "conceive" I was not thinking in terms of linguistic conception; I believe there is evidence that animals also think in terms of causation. My point the whole time , though is that from the moment of birth experience, both extroceptive, introceptive, proprioceptive and agential is happening for both humans and animals. Whether we have a kind of 'hardwired' capacity for thinking in the various categorial terms, analogous to Chomsky's idea about being hardwired to learn language is another question of course. The body has its inherent capacities, no doubt, and we are not born as "blank slates".
Quoting Mww
Are we able to think of anything that is not something we have heard of, or at least a composite of things experienced and/ or heard of?
OK, logically if some one thing could be in two different places at once, then it would be two different manifestations of the one thing, I suppose. But how do we establish that it is in fact the one thing?
Quoting Hillary
Logically, if there are two electrons. then they are not the same. Perhaps you mean that there is only one electron that appears as two electrons in superposition. You can't have it both ways.
There are two electrons in a superposition. That's the object used in quantum computing. There have been made superpositions of 100 of them even. The electron's identities get mixed up totally. There is no logic applicable. Love and hate are completely crazy and illogical. Not to mention irrational.
Epistemic priority is not necessarily temporal priority. It's not as if human infants are born with the ability to reason, but they clearly born with the capacity to acquire that ability very quickly. Meaning it is an innate ability, which torpedoes the basic dogma of empiricists. You can see that the slave-boy of the Meno prefigures this idea, even if by a rather blunt polemical example.
The whole point of the synthetic a priori is to show that 'there are indeed objects of cognition whose form arises from the a priori llaws of the mind and the forms of intuition, independently of all empirical experience' (Ian Hunter). It is the only possible route to knowledge of the unconditioned as all experiential knowledge must by definition be contingent (contingent on experience, which is itself contingent).
What Kant seeks is a literal cognitive shift, a different way of seeing, understanding and being.
Kant was on the cusp of modernity. He correctly diagnosed the plight of modernity, which culminates in the "illusion of otherness" and the Cartesian anxiety:
[quote=Richard Bernstein]Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".[/quote]
The associated form of mentality is ego consciousness, the separated self in a society of others, each in their own private world of feelings and thoughts. It is the default for liberal individualism, the way any of us here are inclined to be. Meaning and purpose is subjective, in an objective realm devoid of inherent meaning or intentionality. But overcoming that anxiety requires more than just thinking, it takes a cognitive shift, a different way of being. This is what Kant's philosophy is intended to impart:
[quote=Ian Hunter, Philosophy and Spirituality in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason; https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:d11e6c7/UQd11e6c7_OA.pdf] The decisive distinguishing feature of Western philosophical spirituality is that it does not regard the truth as something to which the subject has access by right, universally, simply by virtue of the kind of cognitive being that the human subject is. Rather, it views the truth as something to which the subject may accede only through some act of inner self-transformation, some act of attending to the self with a view to determining its present incapacity, thence to transform it into the kind of self that is spiritually qualified to accede to a truth that is by definition not open to the unqualified subject.[/quote]
It's not an innate ability, but an innate potential if anything. And only experience of the required kind will actuate and develop that potential.
[quote=Afrikan Spir, Ontology;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikan_Spir#Ontology]For Spir the principle of identity is not only the fundamental law of knowledge, it is also an ontological principle, expression of the unconditioned essence of reality (Realität=Identität mit sich), which is opposed to the empirical reality (Wirklichkeit), which in turn is evolution (Geschehen). The principle of identity displays the essence of reality: only that which is identical to itself is real, the empirical world is ever-changing, therefore it is not real. Thus the empirical world has an illusory character, because phenomena are ever-changing, and empirical reality is unknowable.[/quote]
(I've found a well-formatted translation of his major work, which I'm going to try and get around to studying.)
If there are two electrons then they're are not one thing; now it may be the case that there only appear to be two or a hundred or whatever electrons, but there is really only one, and that would not contradict anything I've said. I'm getting tired of repeating the same point.
My point all along has been that so-called synthetic a priori judgements come after experience, as a result of "grasping" the general character of experiences, and that is why they do not depend on any particular experience to justify them.
Of course other animals who do not have either the intelligence or the structural potential to learn language cannot learn language, just as we cannot learn to navigate using the Earth's magnetic field.
A baby's cry sounds reasonable to me though.
Janus, you think I dont get tired? Just face the facts. Two or 47 electrons are two or fortyseven electrons. With lost identitities while having identities. Love kills! I wont repeat it again!
A neonato is pooped into the world with a priori knowledge. Aquired in the womb but still.
I don't agree. Rats in empty cages for long time have less evolved brains. Which I could have told without the actual experiment (which actually has been done! :scream: ). Maybe a growing child without other people acquires other modes of expression than language. The scream of loneliness or boredom. Language is a social phenomenon. But making sounds is not.
Yes, well in the womb is already in the world in some sense (not the shared sense, obviously), and I have no doubt that sentience begins in the womb at some point of development. Is there any sense of differentiation in the womb? Interesting question but hard to answer, I'd say.
Well, what I know , is that the visual cortex in the evolving brain is stimulated by the retina. There are moving concentric patterns, moving over the retina, sent to the brain. So formal structures are imparted. But not from the outside world. In preparation for it though. A priori?
Interesting stuff. I do greatly like the boldfaced part of this quote from the same Wikipedia page:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikan_Spir#Religion_and_morality
While I don’t want to take away from the want to read him …
I myself differ in what I take the quote to be saying (further reinforced by the Wikipedia page) in that I don’t find identity to entail absolute permanence but, instead, relative permanence. This to me touches upon an old conundrum: Flux of what is (akin to a wave or a process) vs. permanency of what is (akin to a particle or an entity) - and, to my mind, taking into account that we and our mental faculties are intrinsic aspects of nature, this imo results in a kind of flux/permanency duality intrinsic to nature at large. To me, somewhat like what I take to be the more traditional version of the Buddhism mantra that neither is there a self (hence, a fixed personal identity) nor is there not a self (hence, lack of personal identity over time). Even if one adopts the more extreme view of process philosophies wherein nothing is absolute, one would still be untruthful if one where to state that one does not immediately apprehend the world in terms of entities - which I’d again say are relatively permanent - and the processes these engage in (like an immediate perceptual observation that the cat (entity) is running up a tree (process)). The identity of the Absolute, to my mind, would be divinely simple/partless and limitless in all ways … hence in my view not being that which we commonly associate with identity (I'm hoping that makes sense). But as “the principle of identity” … I’d need to read the guy to better understand.
On a somewhat related note, as you’ve yourself expressed over the years if I remember right, there can be deemed to be different types and gradations of reality - with “the Real” as their pinnacle, this being the only absolutely permanent reality that there is. The dream I had last night was real (unless I’m lying about having had one); as is the intersubjective culture(s) I pertain to; as is the empirical reality of a solid earth beneath our feet; as is - or so some of us maintain - the Real, i.e. the singular Absolute state of being (of which “the One”, Brahman, Nirvana, and so forth might be different visages of, understandings of the exact same given that emerge through different human and cultural perspectives). And the Absolute might well be neither entity nor process, yet still be being per se. So even in granting that the empirical world is Maya, illusion, this in an ultimate sense when contrasted with “the Real”, I’ll say that it nevertheless constitutes an important type of reality of which we do know a plethora of things about (to be clear, this in non-infallible ways).
I’ve probably rambled, and I get that all this might be overly opinionated. All the same.
A worthwhile mention while I’m at it: Heraclitus, despite his philosophy of cosmic flux - and despite his fragments being open to interpretation - held a belief in a singular, absolute governing force that stands apart from all else - what we could nowadays label a belief in “the Real” or the Absolute.
Quoting https://www.swarthmore.edu/classics/heraclitus-and-divine
It is worth noticing that in it's contemporary incarnation this absolute governing force could be the omnipresent timeless quantum vacuum from which real particles emerged and which is used (by coupling to it) by these real particles to interact
Pretty deep analysis! (I've just started reading Afrikan Spir's PDF, which I downloaded from archive.org, very well-formatted with bookmarks intact. Spir seemed to have been a beautiful person, born into minor nobility he gave all of his estate to his serfs and sadly died young, having not looked after his health. And I noticed his hometown was, very sadly, that Ukrainian city of Kharkiv which has been the site of numerous Russian atrocities in the media currently. His book actually reads quite easily, if you have a bit of background in Kant and the German idealists generally. I intend to persist with it.)
Quoting javra
Not at all, I think you're on exactly the right track. Another idealist (actually, panpsychist) philosopher I've been reading is Federico Faggin, whose book Silicon is about his successful career - inventor of the first microprocessor - and his later in life awakening, which is very much concerned with the underlying substance (in the philosophical, not everyday, sense) as the source of reality.
All of this 'age of aquarius' stuff really is happening, you know. :wink:
Perhaps, but not developed enough to be useful. covered it well enough, I think.
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Quoting Janus
D’accord.
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Quoting Janus
I would say yes, in a logical cognitive system, predicated necessarily on relations. Isn’t this the method of doing science?
I’m a 20th century Swiss patent clerk. I took the train to Berlin a month or so ago, dropped my fork on the floor, obviously landing right at my feet. Went straight down. Bounced once or twice. Couple days later, I was standing on the platform, train went flying by, guy dropped his fork, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t occur to me that fork landed 10 feet further down the track from where it got dropped.
Even us common folk....ever used a butter knife for a screwdriver? Experience with the one has no relation whatsoever with the experience of the other, yet there resides in understanding the possibility of substitution. It must....otherwise, why would the cognition manifest at all? Similarly, while it may not be so conceptually far-fetched to use a butter knife to spread axle grease, it is quite another matter to use a twig.
Furthermore, that someone else has combined red and blue on a paint palette and I have absolutely no knowledge of it, such antecedent experience has no relation to me. If I think of doing it, then I have met the criteria which affirms your query: yes, I can think something that is not an experience nor composite of them. That I should have experience of mixing this paint or that paint, doesn’t in itself give me the thought of mixing together different paints. But here you would be kinda right, in a second-step kinda way; experience tells me merely adding them to each other is not going to cut it, I need to mix them.
I won’t state the theoretical justifications, unless you’re interested.
But I get what you mean. In this day and age, with the world seemingly so small, so many damn people, so much information, so much new stuff all the time.....seems like it’s impossible not to be influenced by it all. Think about it, though......what gets lost in all that noise?
Quoting Mww
which, unfortunately, has nothing at all to do with what I've even talking about. When the strawmen start marching I have a tendency to leave the vicinity.
Anyway, I'm out of energy and/or enthusiasm for this topic so I'm happy to leave it there.
Quoting Mww
The issue here is in what you call "cognitive power". I think that the power to create, i.e. to be a productive system which synthesizes, does not require cognition. So the lower powers of living beings, photosynthesis, self-movement, and even sensation, may be creative powers which are not cognitive powers. However, we see with sensation, that it comes in a multitude of types, and there is a sort of unity which holds the multiple senses together in coherency, and the cognitive power is closely related to this. That's why some ancient philosophers were seeking a sixth sense. Generally "cognitive power" is assigned to the consciousness. But the power which receives information from the senses and presents the sense impression to the conscious mind, in the form of sensation, is a creative power, creating the sensations presented to the consciousness, but it is not properly a "cognitive power".
Quoting Mww
"Cognition" I believe, is an ambiguous term. It can refer to what the conscious mind is doing in conception, and it can refer to what the subconscious is doing in creating sense perceptions to be presented to the conscious mind. If we conflate these two under one sense of "cognition", then we conflate the prior (impressions which are presented to the conscious mind, created by a system deeper in the psyche than consciousness) and the posterior, conceptions created by the conscious mind. We must respect the fact that the sense perception received into the conscious mind, has already been produced by a creative system. This is evident for example, in the way the visual image is made to appear right side up, when it is received upside down. And so it's very clear in the other senses, like tasting sweet, the sweetness which is the taste to the conscious mind, is something created by the deeper system. Hallucinations are a change to this deeper system. And some illnesses can cause things to taste differently.
Quoting Mww
What I am saying is that we need to account for the system which gives the object to the cognitive (conscious) system. This system is intermediate between the object itself, and what appears in the mind as the sense image of the object. This is the sensing system. So it's somewhat inaccurate to say "the impression the object gives me", I have to say that it is 'the impression that the sense system gives me'. Then with the conscious mind, cognition, I can remember the drugs I took, apprehend incoherencies in the sense perceptions, and recognize that I am hallucinating.
Then I can understand that the sense impression in my mind is not "given" by the object sensed, it is given by that deeper system, and it is faults within the system which are causing me to hallucinate.
Quoting Mww
The problem is that we cannot go to this level of saying "how the impression should be represented". All we have is how the object is represented, how it is given to the conscious by the subconscious. We can see when something is outside of the norm (hallucination caused by drugs, or a sudden onset of illness), but we really cannot say that the norm is "real", or even how things "should be represented".
Consider that the representation could be extremely arbitrary, like the way we use symbols and words to represent. The word, or symbol, has no necessity to bear any resemblance to the thing represented, it may be a completely arbitrary assignment, for memory purposes or simple facility. If the conscious mind uses symbols in this arbitrary way, (no real reason why this symbol represents that object), then the subconscious could behave in a very similar way. So, the image presented from the subconscious sensing system, to the conscious mind, might be created in a similar way. Aspects of the object which have been proven to have evolutionary significance are represented in some symbolic way, to the conscious mind, facilitating memory of these significant aspects, but they don't really have any similarity to the object. The sensation of sweet has no similarity to sugar molecules for example.
So we end up in the same place. Good enough for me.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Except the object is never given to the cognitive system, that being merely a representation of it. So yes, we need a sub-system that accounts for the creation of representations.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes....sorta just like that. In my language, that is sensibility, and subsumed under it, is the faculty for the reception of impressions, better known as intuition, the purview of which is the creation of phenomena, which are the intermediate representations between the object itself, which is only perceived, and the conscious system, which only thinks.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To say the impression the sense system gives me, says nothing about the object that caused the sense system to create the impression. Which leaves us with.....impressions of what? At best, an impression given by the sense system merely says which sense, or combination of them, made the impression possible.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Except the sense system has no cognitive power, only creative, the object itself determining the limits of such creative power. It isn’t my eyes that are deceived by hallucinogens or mirage or delusions in general, it is that fault within the conscious system, that is. Sense system does this job but not that; the conscious system does that job, but not this.
The representation in my mind is certainly given by the object, but I understand that representation only by a deeper system. Understanding is the deeper, cognitive, system. Hallucination resides right there, merely a misunderstanding of that which the sense system gives to it. One word: imagination.
Still, I see what you’re getting at. If the sense system creates a faulty impression, and the mind works with that alone, you would be on firm ground. In which case, all you’d have to do is account for how a hallucinogen can change the impression of an object from it’s actually sense. Or, how a hallucinogen manipulates creative powers in the sense system, which requires an account of exactly what creative power entails, such that it can even be manipulated. Which is the advantage from my view, in that the sense system can’t be manipulated by that which is a consequence of it. (Remember...this does this, that does that) In other words, the system as a whole cannot work backwards.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Actually, we can, at least the norm with respect to “should be”, that being experience. Anything that appears as it should not be, contradicts experience. Besides, to see something outside the norm presupposes the norm, which is, again, experience. As for the “real” I suppose that’s more the purview of logic than experience proper. Maybe we can only say the real is so for us, which makes it true we cannot know the real otherwise than as we say it is.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree the sense representation could be extremely arbitrary, but only when under the influence of an object completely unknown to us. In such case, we can say only what the object is not, but cannot say what it is. Otherwise, we’d know it, hence not arbitrary at all.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, not so much to the sense representation, but to the concept representation, the word stands for the conception, and while arbitrarily assigned, in your words, no necessity to bear, initially, Gel-Mann’s “quark” being a prime example, henceforth actually represents exactly how the concept should be represented. Your “simple facility”.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If left to its own devices, possibly, sure. A very good reason why it isn’t; it is utterly dependent for its creative powers, on the object perception gives to it. Nevertheless, without the object, there is still imagination, which does not depend on perception, in which case, we can manufacture any damn thing we want. Even logically contradictory objects.....dogs with wings. But no matter what, we can’t seem to imagine impossible things. Impossible experiences, yes, but not things we cannot think, which is all that makes a thing impossible in the first place.
Still, if the sub-conscious does all this....how would we be made aware of it?
Good stuff. Fun to play with. No right or wrong here, just musings galore, right? Or...musing run completely amok. (Grin)
This depends on how one understands "the object". From the perspective of what I've been arguing, objects are a creation of the sensing system. You call (what I call) the object, a representation, but what it represents you cannot really say, though you assign "object" to that. So there is an appearance in the mind, the appearance of an object, you say it is a representation, I say it's the object, but what it represents, we don't know. This is the Idealism described in Plato's Republic, and Berkeley's Dialogues, the reality of objects is within the mind.
There is a further issue to consider. The object, (I'll call it a symbol), created by the living system, is not necessarily a representation. Symbols have meaning, and some are used as representations, while others are not. So when we look to the tactile senses like taste and touch, the object, (my example sweetness), doesn't really represent any particular thing, it's just a type of sensation. So we have to be careful when we say that the "image" created by sensation, is a representation. It doesn't seem like it really is. "Representation" I believe, is a way of using symbols which evolved from communication, when we assume an external object which we both may apprehend and talk about.
Quoting Mww
I don't agree with this. I think it is the sensing system itself which creates the hallucination. So it is a fault within the sensing system, and this in turn deceives the cognitive power. In severe visual hallucinations even the boundaries of objects may dissolve. We do not exactly know what the "creative power" is, and the extent of its creative capacity. So I do not think we can conclude logically that it is limited by what it is sensing. The creative power has evolved so that it is adapted to the world it is sensing, and the needs of the sensing being, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have developed a completely different sensing capacity.
Quoting Mww
Hallucination is not a misunderstanding at the conscious level, it is a "misunderstanding" (if you could call it that) at a much deeper level. This is why people who suffer mental illness cannot learn to control their hallucinations through learning the proper understanding. The fault is at a deeper level, and the consciousness might not be able to understand it, but that is because whatever is given to the conscious mind is mixed up and confused, unfamiliar to it.
Quoting Mww
The problem I see here is that the sense system is something developed over time, evolved, and it seems to have been built up on earlier layers. So when the basics were laid down, when living beings began sensing, (what you call) the "object" actually was completely unknown. Then as it became more and more known, the sensing system evolved around this. But the living beings cannot remove what's already there deep within the sensing system, developed when the "object" was completely unknown. So this makes the fundamentals of basic sensation very arbitrary. We must bear in mind that knowing comes after not knowing, and senses are used in the process which leads to knowing. So sensing is fundamentally based in a not-knowing system.
Quoting Mww
I don't agree with this obviously, having explained that I believe the sensing system creates the impression of an "object" itself. So I do not see these limitations of the creative power which you propose. And by extension of this principle, for example, this is why mathematics with its axioms freely creates mathematical objects, without any real limitations. The creative powers are not limited in this way, and the idea of infinite, or infinity, shows that this lack of limitation is inherent within the creative power.
Quoting Mww
See, I do not respect this proposed division between imagination and sense perception. I don't think it's real or true. Both of these are acts of the creative power, and each (if we tried to uphold this division) contains aspects of the other. So for me, they are all acts of imagination, and the difference is in the novelty of specific acts of this type, as I described earlier. Perception always adds novelty, and the creative system has to deal with the novelty through means already developed from past experience.
Quoting Mww
If "impossible things" is not defined by some form of "logically impossible", like contradictory, then what would constitute an impossible thing? I know you can't give me an example, but why would you think that there was such a limit? It seems to me, that logic would be the only possible limitation to thought, and if we can think of things which are logically impossible, we can think of anything, without limitation.
Quoting Mww
It's what we are aware of, and all that we are aware of. You call it intuitions, I just describe it without giving it a name, because it has many different components. That's why I suggested a number of different types of intuition earlier.
Quoting Mww
Yeah, speculating, I like to do that. When I come back later, on a different thread, and start talking about objects as if they are the independent external things, because this is customary, the norm, and required for communicative understanding, don't accuse me of contradicting what I said here.
Ok, that’s fine, if you like. I hold that objects are material substance with extension in space and duration in time. With that, objects cannot be created by the sensing system, but exist as physical things independently from it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Actually, I assign “phenomenon” to that, but exactly what it represents I cannot say, is true enough, because there are no cognitive abilities in the sensory sub-system. This is classic Plato “knowledge that” (there is something present to my senses), as opposed to “knowledge of”, which informs as to what the presence is. Or, more accurately I suppose, informs as to how the presence is to be known.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ehhhh....technically I wouldn’t say here appearances are in the mind, insofar as we are not conscious of the creation of these representations as phenomena. This has support in the physical sciences as well, so....all is not hopeless metaphysical handwaving. It is here, also, I find agreement with your sub-conscious system that creates its “object”.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, exactly, but such idealism is rendered obsolete by late-Enlightenment transcendental idealism.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Representation is that, but much more than that. Think scientifically: for any exchange of energy dissimilar systems, there is a loss. If there is a loss, the output of the exchange cannot be equal to the input to it. As such, the output merely represents the input.
Symbols, then, are representations, but not of the kind given from sensibility, which merely determines something about the physical presence of some external object, but are representations given from the next stage, which is the reasoning system proper.
Besides, if, as I maintain, the sense system has no cognitive abilities, it cannot assign symbols, insofar as, on the one hand, there is no faculty or repository from which to withdraw symbols, and on the other, there is no conscious logical system in sensibility which authorizes which symbol to draw in relation to a given perception.
I submit, one must understand what he perceives long before he can talk about it. I mean, if one doesn’t understand.....what could he say about it?
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok, fine. How does a system that receives sense data create something that falsifies what it receives? If this were the case, what prevents us from always being deceived? How does the sensing system distinguish a deception from a valid appearance?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Correct, and a perfect reason to require the actual conscious system to ride herd on it, to regulate it, by synthesizing conceptions to the objects created by the sensing system, in order to make them understandable, and hence, to permit knowledge of them.
But you are correct, in a truly metaphysically undercover way: we have no way of knowing exactly anything at all, except that by which the system itself informs. I am sufficiently informed that the thing I just tripped over was a tree root, but was it really? I have no good reason to ever think it wasn’t, and I do myself no favors by going through the motions of attempting to come up with one.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
“It” understood as creative power of the sensing system, if what you say is the case, then it is possible the creative system can create its objects without anything being perceived. If not logically limited by what it is sensing, it follows it is limited by itself, or it has no limits at all. Which, in effect, if true, makes the creative system a self-contained causality.
While I tacitly agree with the validity of a self-contained causality, I hold that it is not in the creative power of the sensing system, but in the synthetic a priori manifestations of pure reason. So...you are basically on the track, but you’ve got the cart before the horse.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If by sensing capacity you mean the functionality of the sense organs, you’ve invoked a logical question-begging. We have THIS sensing capacity, which makes explicit the creative power couldn’t have developed any other kind, and doesn’t give sufficient ground for allowing that creative power, in and of itself, developed anything except itself, which excludes sensing capacities, which are strictly predicated on physiology. While it is true we would have a completely different experience base if the creative power evolved differently, but.....it didn’t, so what we have is all we’re logically permitted to discuss.
Unless I misunderstand, you’re saying a different creative power could have developed our senses to sense differently, which is a function of natural evolution alone.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You say arbitrary, I say undetermined. It is true humans....the only living beings I care about.....cannot remove what already there deep within the sensing system, such is just an admission that the use of it is inescapable. Extending that necessity, we find that, at this stage of the reasoning system as a whole, anything perceived is as yet undetermined, which is precisely how a thing is completely unknown.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Exactly. Thing is, of course, we’re so used to repetitive perceptions, a.k.a., experience, we just grant we immediately know what we perceive, and don’t need to consider the operation of the whole system. It’s like it’s in automatic, but in fact, the system operates exactly the same way for each and every single thing we perceive. Just does it oh-so-much faster when the conscious system recalls from itself rather than constructs for itself.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well then, you’re reeeaaalllllyyyyy gonna have trouble accepting the notion of aesthetic as opposed to discursive judgement, with productive as opposed to reproductive imagination. Which is to say, there’s a lot more to this “deeper system” than we’ve encountered so far in this dialectical foray into the sublime.
Real metaphysics is in books of hundreds of pages covering everything pertinent; modern metaphysics is in a few peer-reviewed pages covering minor incidentals.
But space and time are conceptual. They are concepts created to help us understand the appearance of objects. We really have no thorough understanding of what it is which is independent of us.
Quoting Mww
Well, what is in the conscious mind then, if it isn't the appearances? When I look around with my eyes, and I have images in my mind, of objects, aren't these images "in my mind"? If not, what is it which is in my mind? Is anything "in" my mind? The sub-conscious system creates these images (objects), but aren't they given to the conscious, so that they are "in" the conscious mind.
Quoting Mww
I wouldn't say "rendered obsolete" unless every aspect of it is conclusively refuted. That's the thing about philosophy, any individual philosophers will have their good parts and bad parts, so we can go through and pick and choose, without accepting anything as a whole, each person accepting what is consistent with what that individual believes, as well as changing one's beliefs when deemed necessary.
Quoting Mww
I don't get this. If there is a loss, then the output cannot accurately represent the input. If it is a representation, it necessarily represents something other than the input, as a value less than the input. What does it represent then? It must represent the input minus the loss. But the loss is an unknown, so there is something unknown which is part of what is represented, if it is supposed be a representation.
Quoting Mww
Ok, but what does the percept consist of, if it is not some type of symbol? I'm looking at my computer screen, so I have an image (in my mind?). This image, which I would like to say is in my mind, I would assume is a symbol which represents what is outside of my mind, what you call the independent object. If this image is not a symbol of some sort, then what is it? And isn't it the case that only a symbol can represent something, so how could we even talk about it as a representation if it is not a symbol of some sort?
Quoting Mww
I don't believe this is the case. We name things without understanding them. I believe that the use of language for a memory aid, and the use of language for communicating have two completely different histories, roots and foundations, as written language and oral language. In communicating we simply name things so that we can identify and talk about the aspect of the external world which has been identified. But when I name something, this requires no understanding on my part, just memory. Then if I tell you the name, and try to get you to understand the aspect of the world which bears this name, understanding is requires on you part.
Quoting Mww
The sensory system doesn't distinguish this, the conscious mind does. I maintain a sort of separation between these two to allow for the real possibility of hallucinations. My distinction is between the conscious and the subconscious, rather than between the imaginative and the perceptive (real and fictitious).
But I think we are "always being deceived" anyway. It is deception because we believe that the sensing system is giving to our conscious minds accurate representations, images, or facsimiles, which are what the world is really like, when the sensing system really is not giving us this. It's just giving us meaningful symbols of representation, not a true facsimile of what is there. Chemistry and physics have shown us, that what is really there is something far different from what the sensory system is presenting to the conscious mind. But the conscious mind has another more powerful tool, logic, and this is how it tries and tests what the sensory system is giving to it.
See, in modern scientism we get things backward. The scientific method, which uses the sensory system to test what speculation gives us, is seen as the end all to knowledge. But the scientific method is really just the beginning, because philosophy shows us that we then have to use logic to test what the scientific method gives us. This is due to our propensity toward being deceived by the bodily senses. Empirical confirmation is extremely fallible.
Quoting Mww
I think you need to go one step further here, and respect the power of logic. It is by the means of logic that the conscious system regulates, and synthesizes conceptions. But logic is also restricted by the premises it employs. This is why analysis of premises is very important. Aristotle wrongly said that logic leads us from the more certain towards the less certain. But this is actually backward. The logical process itself is what gives us great certainty, so the conclusions have a high degree of certainty. The uncertainty is always within the premises, and it's the mistaken premises which lead to faulty conclusions.
Quoting Mww
So this is the big question here, which one of us is actually the one putting the cart before the horse. There's two subjects here in this passage, to consider, "self-contained causality", and "pure reason". And the question is, can pure reason qualify as a self-contained causality.
The self-contained causality is unlimited by anything other than itself. We could say it is the pure source of free will, intentionality. I say "source" because we haven't yet determined whether the free will is the very same thing as the self-contained causality, or if the free will is a sort of manifestation of the deeper self-contained causality. My position would support the latter.
But how would you describe "pure reason"? Doesn't logic necessarily require some sort of premises which are derived from outside the logical system? These would be like the "building blocks" you referred to earlier (which you placed within the sensing system), what I call "content". Mathematical formalists attempt to remove all content from logic, arguing that this will provide a greater degree of certainty. But all they do is disguise the content so that it inheres within the rules they employ, and this makes it extremely difficult to determine the fallible aspects, as the content is not isolated to specific premises, but is spread out throughout the system.
You refer to "the synthetic a priori manifestations". But if they are synthetic, there must be some fundamental building blocks, and we may ask where does the proposed "pure reason" get these fundamental building blocks from? It must get them from some other system, like the sensory system, or an internal system of feelings or emotions. Being dependent on these building blocks of content, the reasoning system cannot be absolutely pure, therefore it cannot be the self-contained causality. Aristotle pointed to this, saying that thinking requires sense images.
To find the proposed self-contained causality we must analyze deeper into the living systems. I suggested the sensing system, but I think if we analyze this we will find a need to go even deeper, to the source of life itself, the soul. I think that all living forms display some sort of purposeful, intentional, activity, and this will demonstrate that the self-contained causality is really at the source of living being.
So you place the self-contained causality as the highest aspect of living existence, "pure reason", the faculty which evolved from all the prior ones, layered on top, to appear as the sovereign of all. I place it at the very bottom, as the cause of existence of all the other faculties, and therefore inherent within each of them. Who really has the cart before the horse? As a form of "causality", the self-contained causality must be prior in time, therefore its existence must be prior to any faculty which it is found to reside within, or else that faculty would be dependent on something else for its capacity to function. The "something else" then would be its cause, and it would not be a self-contained causality.
Quoting Mww
I don't really agree with this. In logic we are able to employ counterfactuals, and they prove to be very useful. We just need to be very careful as to how they are employed, because their use can be deceptive. So it's not true to say "what we have is all we’re logically permitted to discuss", because there is a variety of ways in which "possibility" is dealt with by logic. The problem though is that there are a number of different forms of "possibility", each requiring different rules of logic to properly represent. Allowing "possibility" into the structure of the logical system, I believe, is the way that formalism allows the fallibility of content to inhere within the formal system.
Quoting Mww
No, I really mean arbitrary, so I think you misunderstand. Suppose we assume an object which is completely unknown. Now, we want to set up a sensing system to develop some knowledge about that object. Since we know absolutely nothing about that object, anything we set up would be completely arbitrary. We'd have to set up some sort of trial and error system without any knowledge of where to start.
This is what I say about the sensing systems of living creatures. Prior to evolving any sensing systems, living beings would have had no knowledge of the world to be sensed. When these sensing systems came into existence, the creatures knew nothing about the objects they wanted to learn about. So whatever sensing systems came into existence, they had this feature of trial and error arbitrariness. Now the creatures have learned a lot, and we as human beings sit at the top of the ladder, but at the base of our sensing systems is this sort of trial and error arbitrariness. And this gives us a fundamental fallibility. It's at the very foundation of the living systems. We cannot go into our very being and try to remove this fallibility, because it inheres within every aspect of our being. All we can do is use logic to try and exclude it as much as possible. However, we have to recognize that since logic is itself such a system, there is fallibility which inheres within logic itself. So we need to try to and isolate it (I assign fallibility to the content), as the fallible part, instead of incorporating it into the system, so that we know where the possibility of mistake lies. Of course the possibility of mistake inheres within this process itself. So the system of learning involves repeating what is basically the same thing, but in as many different ways as possible, because of this trial and error feature which is essential to it.
Quoting Mww
That's right, because real metaphysics involves looking at the same thing, over and over again, in as many slightly different ways as possible. It is not a matter of stating assumptions. Good philosophy demonstrates this to us. We cannot remove the fact that we are stuck in a sort of arbitrary trial and error mode of learning. This is very evident in the scientific method.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes we do have a way of thoroughly understanding: we declare what each and every single thing that is existentially independent of us, how it is to be known by us, in direct accordance to the rules by which understanding works. We may fail in our thorough knowledge of what the object actually is, but we do not fail to understand the existential independence of them.
And while space and time are conceptions, they have nothing to do with the ontology of objects themselves, but only with the human method of granting their possibility.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ahhh....conscious mind is your reasoning process. Appearances are merely informative impressions, affects on physiology, hence not yet part of the reasoning process. Appearances tell us that; the reasoning process tells us of. It is not the case I know what a thing is, merely because I perceive it; that thing still has to run the entire gamut of the human reasoning system. Just because we aren’t as aware of it from repetition, as we were from its first occurrence, doesn’t mean it isn’t still the same process. How else to ensure epistemic consistency, then to repeat epistemic methodology?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, the images are in your conscious mind, but they are representations, which are not given by looking around with your eyes. All looking does, and perception in general, is give material to form the representations. Technically, images are the schema of the concepts which understanding synthesizes with the representations called phenomena, which are given antecedently from looking around. We can have images without immediate perception of an existing object (dark side of the moon), and we can have images of a merely logically possible object without any perception whatsoever of that which the image represents (a line consisting of only two points).
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Actually, this is quite impossible. A name is assigned to a thing at a time strictly in accordance to how it is understood at that time. That is not to say such named things are understood correctly, but that has nothing to do with the naming of them.
A name being tacitly understood as a representation of a conception, presupposes the conception. It follows that a guy can represent in speech a conception by any damn word he wants, but it is always the case he has thought the word long before he spoke it.
Now, I suppose I could just throw out a word representing the thing I don’t understand, but doing that is not representing a conception, because I don’t have one, which contradicts the notion of what a name is meant to do.
In the case of extreme abstraction, e.g, quantum mechanics or such like, even if not understood in its entirety, names can still be assigned for conditions necessary for possible understanding. Even for feelings, we discover it is the reasons for the feelings that we don’t understand, while understanding perfectly well that some particular feeling is present in us, and can certainly be named.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There are two major necessary characteristics imbued in the human being, such that he can be so called: morality and reason. In keeping with the topic, reason the condition, is antecedent in time to all that for which it is the condition. Hence, the notion of self-contained causality is logically justified.
It is confusing, though, insofar as reason the human condition is a descriptive noun, but reason the procedural verb is a inferential method. To make matters worse, reason is also the end in a tripartite logical system, and as such, performs the function of conclusion in a syllogistic relation. And it is here that your......
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
......shows up, in that, where reason is the conclusion, understanding is the major and judgement is the minor premises respectively. It is common knowledge our judgements are quite apt to be erroneous, hence the conclusions will be as well. Understanding, on the other hand, the faculty from which all our conceptions arise, cannot be in error, with respect to that part of a synthesis for which it alone is responsible. This requires some exposition which I won’t go into here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Mine as well. Causality for a will operating freely, is the transcendental conception of “freedom”. Freedom has nothing to do with pure reason in matters of a priori propositions regarding empirical matters. The former describes what is, the latter describes what should be. The former legislated by Nature, the latter legislated by us alone.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nahhhh....that ain’t gonna work. Any developed sensing system still needs to go through the one we have, in order to obtain knowledge. Telescopes were such a system, but we still need to look through the eyepiece, or look at the the display which obtains its information directly.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Before sensing systems, what sense does it make to say creatures wanted to learn?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, dealt with logically, by us. What we have.....
Quoting Mww
.....should have been understood as the creative power we have. The number of possibilities is not the same as the variety of ways possibility is dealt with. Possibility is dealt with in one way only, in affirmation or negation, one or the other, not both simultaneously for the same thing.
Anyway, Momma says it’s time to do what we came here for, so, more later.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I understand we can’t remove what’s already there deep within the sensing system. I understand all objects are completely unknown with respect to the sensing system we have, which is that very system we cannot remove. Again.....the senses do not give knowledge; they merely set the stage for the possibility of it.
I don’t understand why the fundamentals of basic sensation are very arbitrary. I guess I’d have to ask.....what are the fundamentals of sensation, such that any sensation can be of any thing? I mean...I cannot see an odor and I cannot hear a twisted ankle. I cannot smell a color, and I cannot taste H2O. It follows that any sensation is only given from the physiology that permits it, which hardly seems arbitrary. I certainly know which sense is being impressed, while at the same time I may not know to what the sensation relates, therefore I am justified in saying the object is undetermined rather than the sensing system being arbitrary.
I agree we would use trial and error to invent a sensing system for that which we know nothing about, but I disagree we have no knowledge of where to start. First, whatever sensing system we set up must possible, which is the same as we won’t set up a system we don’t know how to design. Second, whatever sensing system we set up must be capable of sensing something that will be intelligible to us, for to set up for sensing that which we would never understand, is quite impossible. To get technical, the categories always tell us the absolute bare necessities of anything we sense, but we’ll leave that alone for now.
Nahhhh....I suggest we might very well set up an arbitrary sensing system for objects we know nothing about, but that system must be conditioned by what we already know. Case in point, we really knew nothing about celestial manifestations, and the telescope sensing system for far-away big stuff we set up to find out about, was designed specifically with respect to the sensing system we already have. Going the other direction, we knew absolutely nothing about germs until we set up a sensing system that magnifies close-in little stuff, which also respects our own sensing system.
Yes? No? Maybe?
But we do not have a thorough knowledge of the rules by which understanding works, therefore we cannot come up with the thorough understanding of the independence of things. These are the issues debated in epistemology. If we had a thorough understanding of such rules (if understanding is even based in rules), there would be no need for epistemology and we wouldn't be having this discussion
Quoting Mww
Yes, but that comment I made was in regards to something else you said about space and time. You said objects had extension in space and time, and existed independently from us. Here:
Quoting Mww
You were using space and time to support independent existence of objects. Independent existence of objects is what I disputed.
Quoting Mww
But the issue is, how can you distinguish between an "appearance" (I'll call it an 'image' maybe) which is a direct percept, derived through sensation, and an image which is a creation of the mind, like a dream, or a memory.
I ask this, because I do not know how you can separate out "the reasoning process" as you do. In a dream, my mind will somehow create images, without the requirement of sense input, but I cannot say that this is part of "the reasoning processes". I think that because of this reality of the mind creating such things, and it's not the conscious mind doing the creating, nor the sensing process, we must allow that there is creative activity of "the mind" which is neither sensing nor reasoning. I place this creative activity as intermediate between reasoning and sensing because it can create principles (or rules if you like) for reasoning to follow, but it does not necessarily derive the things that it creates directly from the senses.
So this is how I propose that the mind creates the objects which we believe that we are sensing. It takes some information received through sensation, and creates within this subconscious process, which is not a reasoning process, the appearance of objects (objects being the apparent static aspect of existence in the external ). When the conscious mind has static "objects" to deal with, it can then make up rules, identity etc., for a reasoning process to proceed.
Quoting Mww
Let's assume that this is true, that the images in your conscious mind are representations which are not given by the senses, they are somehow created by the subconscious mind, or maybe "brain" or "nervous system" would be more appropriate here. The point I made earlier, with the nature of a "representation" is that the thing which "represents", I'll call it the symbol, need not be a similitude of the thing represented. Therefore the images within your conscious mind, which are representations of the independent "objects", may not even be similar to what the supposed independent existence is really like. We see that symbols always have some degree of arbitrariness.
Now I need to address the capacity of this subconscious process, which is not a conscious reasoning process, to maintain consistency within its imaging. And here, I mean consistency between the various senses. So when I see something as a solid object, I can touch it, and pick it up as a solid object, so there is consistency between the way that the different senses image things. However, water for example, looks solid, but my hand will plunge right into it. So the consistency my not be as thorough as we might think. We just learn to compensate with the conscious mind, to account for the inconsistency. We learn to distinguish things like water which look to be solid, but really are not.
Quoting Mww
I think you go by a different definition of "understand", or "understood" than I do here. I would say that "understand" implies the use of the conscious reasoning process to derive some sort of meaning. The meaning may be correct or incorrect, according to a separate standard of criteria, as you say. However, "understanding" is a product of the reasoning process.
Now, we have to consider the "objects" given by the subconscious system, which is is not a part of the conscious system, not a part of the the reasoning process. These are the representations. In order for the conscious system to work with them in a reasoning process, a logical process, they must be given names. So we have two layers of representation. The images or representations, received into the conscious mind, and the names, words, which the conscious mind assigns to these representations, to represent them, in order to understand them. From this perspective then, the naming is necessarily prior to the understanding, as a prerequisite for understanding.
We could say that there is some sort of "understanding" inherent within the images that the subconscious gives to the conscious, but I think we ought to maintain this separation, and not call this "understanding". Otherwise we might go to deeper and deeper levels within the living being, by which the being discerns "meaning", and we'd be using words like "understanding" which are really only proper to the conscious discernment of meaning. Then we'd get all sorts of ambiguity and equivocation. We see this in panpsychism for example.
The issue is the arising of a vicious circle, if not an infinite regress. If we say that naming, representing, or using symbols requires understanding, then we have to analyze "understanding". We will find that all sorts of understanding require some kind of symbols or representations. But now you've stipulated that we can't name or use symbols without some sort of prior 'understanding'. The way of Pythagorean idealism, or Platonism, is to give eternal existence to some kind of "understanding", as ideas or forms. But this doesn't solve the problem if we understand knowledge and understanding as things which come into being, or emerge.
So I suggest limiting the definition of "understanding" such that it is a product of the reasoning process. And, naming, symbols, and representations are required as necessary for the reasoning process. Therefore we can conclude that naming must occur without understanding, as a primary step toward understanding. This allows that knowledge and understanding can be emergent. Then we don't have to deal with odd theories like the one referred to as Plato's theory of recollection, in which the knowledge, or understanding of a thing always pre-exists any given instance of that knowledge or understanding.
Quoting Mww
What I am trying to get you to consider is the conditions which are antecedent to reason. As explained above, we can start with the requirement for images, representations, or symbols. Reasoning cannot proceed without some such things. The reasoning mind manipulates these "things" (objects which have associated meaning), so these things (images, symbols, or representations) are prerequisite to reasoning. This means that reasoning cannot be a "self-contained causality".
Quoting Mww
I surely do not understand this at all.
Quoting Mww
No no, you misunderstand. The proposed sensing system would be completely independent, sort of like an AI. It is not proposed as a way for us to gain knowledge, but as a way for the system itself to gain knowledge. This was intended as an analogy of how living beings could evolve to produce sensing systems. Prior to being able to sense, the beings could have no knowledge of the things which were to be sensed. So at the fundamental level, the sensing system is created without any knowledge of the thing to be sensed.
Quoting Mww
Right, this is where that problem with terminology rears its ugly head. However, I think that "wanted to learn" makes more sense then saying that the creature already had some type of "understanding". But this is the question, 'what is prior to understanding and knowledge?'. We cannot say that it is a type of understanding, or knowledge. But, it's something similar to understanding and knowledge, which provides the capacity for learning. What provides the capacity for knowledge and understanding other than the desire to learn?
Quoting Mww
This is not true, possibility is most successfully dealt with through modal logic and probabilities.
Quoting Mww
I don't think you are grasping the necessity for an intermediary between the sensing system, and the conscious mind which is the knower. The intermediary (for simplicity I'll call it the brain) produces the images or representations which the conscious mind works with. These representations are not produced by the sensing system (evidenced by the reality of dreams), nor are they produced by the conscious mind. So we must assume something intermediary.
Quoting Mww
So it's not the sensing system whose assignments are arbitrary, it's the assignments made by the intermediary, the brain, which are arbitrary. So the brain gives to the conscious mind, a representation of something sensed. The representation is just like a symbol, or a word, which 'names' the sensation as representing it. The arbitrariness is the same sort of arbitrariness that exists when we assign a word to an object, as a name for the object. We can make up any sort of word to attach to an object as its name. Likewise, the brain can make up any sort of an image or representation, and give this to the conscious mind as a representation of the sensation. Each sensation gets a different image, like each object gets a different name. Two different instances of sugar both get the same representation (sweet), because the brain cannot distinguish between them (tell them apart).
Quoting Mww
The point is that when the sensing system which we as human beings have, first came into existence (that is to say that when living sensing systems first evolved), the living beings had no knowledge of the things to be sensed. So the system must be based in a trial and error set up. We might argue that plants already had some sort of "knowledge" of the external objects through nutrition etc., but again, we stretch the word "knowledge.
The issue is the type of sensing system which we as human beings currently have. The proposal of inventing a sensing system was to be analogous to the situation in which living beings were in, prior to having developed a sensing system. We cannot say that they had any real knowledge of the things to be sensed, yet they developed a sensing system, which we currently employ, to gain knowledge about the things being sensed. The pivotal point is that the type of sensing system which we, as human beings have and use, was created prior to there being knowledge about the things to be sensed. This is fundamental to the nature of knowledge, as emergent, coming into being from not being, and the question of how is this possible.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True enough, hence speculative metaphysics. It doesn’t matter that the rules for how understanding works are known with certainty or not; all the rules have to do is set the ground for sufficient explanatory power. It follows that any set of rules must accord with how the understanding is thought to work. If it works this way, these rules; if it works that way, those rules, but rules nonetheless.
Consider, as well, that the claim is not that understanding works according to law, which would be to say understanding could not work any other way than as grounded by apodeitically certain principles, which, of course, is impossible to prove. Rules, on the other hand, having less power than law, are merely regulating relations, rather than legislating principles, and therefore stand in no need of proof, when all that’s needed is logical consistency.
So while I agree there is no thorough knowledge of these rules, or any other condition of human reason, I can say I know the rules for how the understanding works from the perspective of my speculative metaphysics.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Is it your position then, that objects do not have independent existence?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I hold “appearance”, not as what a thing may look like, which you’ll call its image....maybe..., but that a thing has initially presented itself, has made its appearance, a euphemism indicating something’s made itself available to sensibility. I don’t need to distinguish anything about appearances; they, in effect are the distinction, between having and not having sensations. As such, I rather think sensations are derived from appearances, not the other way around. Nothing is actually lost by deleting the term, going straight from perception to sensation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Reason the verb is a conscious activity, whereas perception the noun is physiological, hence passive with respect to reason. Remember the physical system in play here, too, with respect to the change in forms of energy between the reception of an object, and the electrochemical manifestations of them in the nerves between the sense organs and the brain. It shouldn’t be an issue as to whether or not there is any reasoning going on during that energy exchange.
Furthermore, such exchange is a perfect iteration of that old stumbling-block, the thing-in-itself. The ding an sich is that which exists, the sensation is the thing that exists after we get ahold of it. Our knowledge of objects is given from the sensation alone, never by the thing. So we say, the sensation represents the appearance of an object. While it is true no knowledge is at all possible without the thing-in-itself, it is not the thing-in-itself that we know. And it is here the difficulty often arises, wherein the change-over between the external object and the internal representation occurs.
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Where was I...oh, yeah, separating out the reasoning process....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Wasn’t it you that said he didn’t give much credence to the faculty of imagination? Odd, then, you should have just described exactly that very faculty. Only, such faculty needs a division, which I mentioned previously, as productive and reproductive. The sub-conscious productive variety synthesizes the matter of an object with its form, to give a phenomenon, an “object” of sensibility. You can say it is “the mind” doing all this, doesn’t hurt anything. Me, I just leave it as part, albeit a sub-conscious part, of the whole cognitive system. The conscious part, the one with which we are familiar, is the reproductive imagination, which fabricates that which will become the representation of the external object as it is actually cognized. Or, simply put....as we think it to be.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, this creative activity is between sensing and reasoning, but it doesn’t create principles. And yes, it does derive the things it creates immediately from the senses and the act of synthesizing, is to intuit, and intuiting in general, is intuition. Don’t forget....we’re still sub-conscious here, insofar as we have not as yet thought about the object given to the senses; we’re still in the process of arranging the matter of the sensed object into a logical form....the job of imagination....such that it can become a phenomenon.
I think when you speak of arbitrary, you might be hinting that it is reasonable to suppose the synthesis of matter with form by imagination could be arbitrary, if there were no regulatory methods, and you’d be correct. Because this is all sub-conscious, there couldn’t be any regulatory methods, and the aforementioned logical form, has not yet been judged to be that. Another chapter in the saga of human knowledge.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All that’s well said, but I would change believe to think, which transposes to, the objects we think we are sensing...which is exactly what is happening, from my perspective. We don’t immediately have knowledge of the things we sense, but is that the same as saying we believe something about them? Dunno, maybe.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, because brain and nervous system are physical realities, but the sub-conscious mind is only metaphysical, and speculative at that. No empirical proofs possible kinda thing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
From my armchair, human cognition is a tripartite system: understanding, judgement and reason. Understanding provides the representations it thinks belong to the object by means of conceptions (the major); judgement relates the manifold of conceptions thought to make up the object to each other (the minor or minors), reason arbitrates the logic of the relation (the conclusion). Then and only then, is there cognition, the end of the reasoning process. Herein, then, understanding isn’t the result of the conscious reasoning process, but a participant in it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Isn’t this what modern analytic philosophy posits? Nevertheless, before there is meaning, there is relation. Or, perhaps the meaning is the relation. To say a representation means something, it must relate to that something. Simplest rendition of this notion, is the dictionary. For any given word (representation), the meaning given for that word relates to only that word. In other words, before the meaning, there is the word which possess it. It follows that understanding is a faculty of relations, those being the relation of phenomena to conceptions. Herein, then, yes, understanding implies the use of the reasoning process, but to foster logically consistent relations rather than to derive meaning.
You know.....maybe we’re looking at the same thing from opposite ends. Everything I’m saying has to do with how knowledge is possible. It almost seems as though you’re operating from a perspective where knowledge is already given, and you’re going backwards to find out how it came about. Could that be the case?
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As far as the reasoning process in and of itself is concerned, why do representations need to be given names? What the reasoning process is actually doing as a reasoning process, doesn’t use names. The reasoning process assigns names post hoc for no other reason than to describe itself. The use of words in your consciousness is mere rehearsal, the method by which what is thought is then going to be objectified in some form of physical action.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Close enough. I offer that there are two kinds of representation, not levels, and, names are assigned to indicate how a thing has been understood because of the logical synthesis of representations. Which puts understanding before the naming, not after. When a word is a foreign language is heard by a person, he will not understand the meaning of it. Or, say, an action indicating a meaning is given to a person who doesn’t understand the act, like....putting a finger orthogonal to the lips to indicate being quiet....if a guy doesn’t know that sign, he won’t understand what is expected of him when he perceives it. Only from experience, then, does meaning antecede understanding.
If you’d said....in order to judge them.....close enough would have become exactly right. From my perspective.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This works for a two-party communication. You naming something must occur before my understanding of what you mean by that name, yes. We see that right here in this dialectic, wherein each of us uses words with their inherent meaning derived by our individual cognitive systems, and that use is not thoroughly understood by the other. “Appearance” is a good example, insofar as a word common to each of our vocabularies carries different understandings with it pursuant to what it is meant to indicate. As we can see, we each misjudged the understanding of the other in his use of a common word. The prime indicator of all that is...we each refrain from calling out the other as wrong in what is said, but rather, we say we do not agree (do not concur from similar judgement) with what was said, or we say we do not understand what was said (cannot afford a judgement at all).
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Half and half. Yes, knowledge is always emergent: in me because of me, or, in me because of you. Understanding is only emergent in me because of you but is intrinsic in me because of me. Understanding here indicates the specific function of a faculty in a systemic whole, not that on which the faculty operates as means to an end.
You probably mean you can get me to understand something, which seems to say understanding emerges, but it is still my understanding that does all the work, such that I may know what you mean. Which is to say, An understanding emerges. The understanding of something emerges.
Please don’t consider this as mere quibbling, when in fact, it is the very reason why decent metaphysics tomes are of so gawd-awful-many pages. Getting things just so, no over-lap, no confusion in terminology.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Careful here, not to conflate reason the human condition, with reason the cognitive faculty. In the first sense, there is nothing antecedent to a necessary condition, but in the second sense....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
......it is true reason-ing, the action of the cognitive faculty, needs these things, but reason the distinguishing human condition is that which makes reason the faculty even possible. When I offer the two conditions for being human and you counter-offer something which seems to reference those conditions but doesn’t belong there, it is technically a categorical error. Nevertheless, you are correct if you mean these things are necessary for reason the cognitive faculty. But you didn’t stipulate it as such. So I did it for you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Agreed.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Agreed. But again, you’re responding to my stipulation of reason the condition, which is not reasoning itself. Reason is a self-contained causality, reasoning is not.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This gets too close to anthropology and empirical psychology for me. I don’t care about wanting to learn, insofar as I’m perfectly capable of learning stuff even if I had no desire for it. And if I want to learn something,I must do it in the exact same way as if I didn’t care if I learned it or not. I’m interested in the how, not so much in the how come.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Possibilities, the possibility of things, is dealt with the modal logic and probabilities. Possibility, in and of itself, as a singular pure category, having no object belonging to it, is not dealt with at all; it is what things are dealt with, by. A thing is possible, or it is not. We understand a thing to be possible or not, only because the conception “possibility” already resides within the system a priori. Logic and probability affirm or deny the validity of the object to which the pure conception “possibility” applies.
Think about it: we can neither think nor perceive an impossible object. It follows that to think or perceive an object, the reality of that object must be possible. In addition, if this object only exists because of that object, that object must exist necessarily. Some conceptions belong to the faculty of understanding simply because it is that kind of understanding, the human kind. Hence....speculative metaphysics.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course I do. My entire private transcendental metaphysics is predicated exclusively on it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I guess you could use the brain. But the brain is physical, and the conscious mind is metaphysical, so you’re making it so the t’wain shall meet. While it is true the brain carries sole responsibility for whatever goes on between the ears, as soon as you bring abstractions into the picture, you’ve removed the brain from doing anything, insofar as the brain functions in concreto according with natural law. I agree the brain creates images, but how the images are made usable by the conscious mind has never been determined, and whether or not there is any conscious mind to make use of them, the physicalist will deny outright.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I vote for consciousness. The conscious mind is a philosophical construct, therefore, to develop a sufficiently explanatory theory, any participant in that construct, must be philosophical as well. In fact, the brain does all that stuff, but we don’t know how, so we are free to hypothesize logically, in order to satisfy ourselves.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok, I can see that. Truth be told, we’re both sailing first class on the ship of ignorance here: you can’t tell me exactly how the brain gives images to the conscious mind, and I can’t tell you how exactly intuition creates phenomena.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah, I kinda figured that was where you were going. This makes it much clearer, and agreeable.
That's right, that's what I've been arguing. The appearance of "an object" is something created by the subconscious system. What this appearance, or "objet" is, is a representation, or a symbol, which signifies something meaningful. Remember, I didn't allow a real, essential difference between an appearance created from memory, imagination, or dreaming, and one created through sensation. The appearance of an object is created by that sub-conscious system, what I called the brain, so I have no reason to believe that there are objects independent of that system. We call the independent "objects" because that's the way it appears to us, and it is convenient for communication.
Quoting Mww
How do you account for the reality of dreams then? How can it appear to a person, like one is having sensations, when the person really is not. The reality of this issue is not as simple as a simple distinction "between having and not having sensations", because in dreams it appears like I am having sensations when I am not. Therefore we have to account for the reality of the "appearance" of sensations. When it appears like I am having sensations, sometimes I am (when I'm awake), and sometimes I'm not (when I'm asleep).
So, having and not having sensations is not a useful dichotomy because it doesn't explain the reality of having the appearance of sensations. And, if the brain can create the appearance of sensations (in dreams), then there is no reason to rule out the possibility that the brain is creating the sensations themselves. And if this is the case, it is better to call this the appearance of sensations. That's why you cannot accurately say "nothing is actually lost by deleting the term", because something actually is lost. What is lost is the possibility that the brain is actually creating what you call "sensations", and if this is the case, it would be better called "the appearance of sensations".
Quoting Mww
This is not the way we describe this. The appearance is in the mind. We might say that the sensation represents an object (assuming the object to be external), but to" appear" is to have been perceived. So the appearance of an object is always said to be in the mind. What I am saying, is that the sensation, in the conscious mind is the appearance of an object. But "sensation" requires the production of that appearance of an object within the mind, and this production is not done by the senses. And the "appearance", which is within the mind, represents whatever it is (having meaningful significance), which is external.
Quoting Mww
This is the division I've denied. I say that they are essentially the same process, except one utilizes more sense input.
Quoting Mww
I don't get this. If the sub-conscious has already synthesized the object of sensibility, isn't that already the representation of the external object (assuming an external object)? All that the conscious mind can do now is recall that object from memory, think about it, and perhaps name it. The only real fabrication that the conscious mind does is in conception. But conception deals with abstractions, universals, or generalizations, and these are not representations of an external object, they are generalizations from many objects. So the division which needs to be made is between the part which deals with particular objects (or representations of the external object), and the part which deals with conceptions, abstractions.
Quoting Mww
I disagree, I think that principles are created by this intuitive, creative part of the mind. It clearly isn't reasoning which creates principles, because many people follow unreasonable principles. Furthermore, if reasoning created principles, we'd have that vicious circle. Reasoning is to think in a principled way. But if principles are created by reasoning, there is no way that the first principle could have come into existence. So we need to allow that principles are derived from something other than reasoning, something like intuition.
Quoting Mww
The problem here is that the senses are physical realities, just like the brain and nervous system. So we have to cross that bridge between the physical reality of sensation, and the metaphysical reality of what's in the mind, some place if we want understand the role which sensation plays in relation to the conscious mind. I place that crossover at the brain and nervous system. If we do not allow the crossover, then we cannot even talk about sensations as having any real external input into the mind.
So the "sub-conscious" serves to bridge that gap. From the perspective of the conscious mind, in the act of introspection, the sub-conscious marks the end, the limit. So we can understand sensations as being derived from the sub-conscious, because we can't get to the senses themselves through introspection. And, from the physical perspective, the brain is the limit, as to how far the physical explanation can proceed toward the conscious. Empirical science can explain sensation up until the brain, but it cannot say how the brain produces a conscious sensation. So I propose that the sub-conscious, and the brain, are essentially the same thing, approached from different perspectives.
Quoting Mww
I think you must have a different idea of what constitutes "reasoning" from what I do. "Reasoning", from what I understand is to proceed with thinking in a logical way. Logic requires symbols, names, for its proceedings. That's what separates us from other animals, we think using symbols (we reason), and when formalized, this is called logic. Therefore assigning names, symbols, or words, is necessarily prior to, as required for, the reasoning process.
I also think that if you tried to describe a "reasoning process" which did not use names, symbols, or words, you would just be describing "thinking". But thinking is much more general than reasoning, as many animals think, but only human beings reason. So reasoning is a very specific type of thinking. In introspection we find reasoning at the very top of consciousness, as the highest form of thinking. When we go deeper we find different types of thinking, which utilize images that are initiated for whatever purpose, and even deeper we find daydreaming where the images are initiated without any real purpose or reason. All these are forms of conscious thinking. If we try to go even deeper in introspection, we find that the mechanism which creates the images is unassailable, as sub-conscious, but we can still conjure up the images, call for them, with the conscious mind.
I propose that we could make an analogy, a comparison. We have access, to some extent, through introspection, to the way that the conscious mind assigns words or symbols in representation. In analogy we could say that the sub-conscious creates images or representations in a similar way. And this is how I come up with the arbitrariness.
Quoting Mww
This is where we differ, as I explained. I see names as necessary for, and therefore prior to a proper (rational) understanding. If you propose a deeper, more fundamental level of "understanding", such as what another type of animal might have, which is prior to naming, than this type of understanding still would require symbols, or representations, which are images.
But I firmly reject your proposal because I think it is very important to understand that representations, as images, symbols, words, or in whatever form, are necessarily prior to thinking, and used by thinking as the required "building blocks". It is important to understand this, because these fundamental building blocks of thinking, having been synthesized at a level prior to the actual thinking which utilizes them, are the weak points of that thinking. This is what I meant when I said that the premises, or axioms, are the most fallible aspect of the logical process.
This is very significant, because this is where the actual meaning, content, or subject matter, of the thinking lies. So our intellectual world might be full of logical formalisms, which amount to meaningless fluff, chaff, because the actual meaning is veiled behind the principles which support the formal structure. And if we dig down to that fundamental meaning, which supports the entire formal structure, we find that it is extremely vague, indefinite, and uncertain.
Quoting Mww
Doesn't this indicate to you, the exact opposite of what you are claiming, and that is what I am claiming, that naming is prior to understanding? We can receive a name, and even use it as a child learning to speak demonstrates, without having an understanding of its significance.
Quoting Mww
So, I request that you carry this one step further, to see that I can use a word without an understanding of how I am using it. This is a sort of trial and error process, as children do when they are learning to speak, and I submit that it is fundamental to the existence of knowledge. It is very evident in cutting edge science like high energy physics. The experimenters will assign names (like the names of various fundamental particles) without any sort of understanding of the thing being named. Naming is the very first step toward understanding, because it allows for logical proceedings.
Quoting Mww
What you say here doesn't completely make sense to me. When you say understanding "is intrinsic in me because of me", I see this as somewhat incoherent. If it is intrinsic in me, then it is an essential aspect of me, and cannot be caused by me, it must be caused by whatever caused me. Otherwise it would be like a thing causing itself, which would mean the thing is temporally prior to itself, and this is incoherent. So if understanding is "because of me" (caused by me), which I agree with, then it is not intrinsic in me, but emerges within me. This is a very important difference because now we need to seek an internal cause of understanding, which is other than understanding itself.
The difficulty is in the ambiguity between the noun, an "understanding", and the verb, "understanding" which is the process that causes an understanding. When we make the act or process of understanding the cause of the noun, the understanding, we seem to neglect the need for a cause of the act, the process. So you say understanding is "intrinsic" within me, but this is not really true because the act of understanding is really caused within you by something else. This makes "understanding" as something emergent within you rather than something intrinsic within you. Evidence of this, is that a baby must learn how to understand, it is not an innate capacity. The baby is not born with the ability to understand. These finer points, what you say is not quibbling, but making terminology clear, are very important in understanding the nature of agency, which is the feature of causation.
It is within this matter of "agency", where you and I are furthest apart. You think that external objects cause the sensations, impressions, or representations of the external world within us, I think that internal agency is the cause. When you neglect the need for a cause of the activity or process which is called "understanding", and take understanding for granted as intrinsic within me, you do not apprehend the need for internal agency in the same way.
Quoting Mww
This I believe is incorrect, there is definitely something antecedent to "reason" as the human condition. This is what defines "being reasonable". Even a "necessary condition" must be defined. These are the conditions which must be met in order to fulfill the human condition of "reason". And the issue is that the human baby is not born with this condition, "reason", reason must be learned. Aristotle approached this question in his ethics, at what age is a person morally responsible for one's own actions. There is a necessity for children to develop a consistency in character before we can accurately say that they are rational, or reasonable. Wittgenstein inquired in a similar way, as to what degree of consistency in behaviour is required before we can say that a person is following a rule. So there is clearly a human condition which is prior to the condition of "reason", or more properly "reasonable", and this is the condition which we find the human baby to be in.
Quoting Mww
By means of the reasons explained above, I conclude that it is you who is making the categorical mistake in assigning "reason" to some sort of faculty, or "human condition". Reasoning is an act, and to reason is also an act. There is no identifiable faculty which can be called faculty of reason. The cognitive faculty is that which thinks, and to reason is a specific form of thinking. Any animal who thinks has the cognitive faculty, but not every animal who thinks has the capacity to reason. The ability to reason is learned through the ability to communicate. It is a special function of the cognitive faculty, not equivalent to it.
Quoting Mww
So here, you proceed from that category mistake, which sees "reason" as some sort of independent faculty, to say that reason is a "self-contained causality", but this is mistaken. Reason cannot be separated from the act of reasoning, as you assume, because all it is is a special type of act of the cognitive faculty, which thinks. There is no separate faculty which reasons, there is only the cognitive faculty which thinks, sometimes using reasoning, sometimes not.
Suppose for example, there are many things which the legs can do, walk, kick, etc.. You want to take one, kicking for example, and say that there is a special faculty which kicks. But in reality it is the same faculty which both walks and kicks, and kicking is only one of the acts of this faculty, so there is no separate faculty which kicks, just like reasoning is only one of the acts of the cognitive faculty, and there is no separate faculty which reasons.
Quoting Mww
I think that this is demonstrably false, but I'll leave it at that because you seem to be disinterested in how the will to learn is imperative to real learning.
Quoting Mww
It appears like our difference in approach renders each one of our comprehensions of "possibility" incoherent to the other one of us. I believe that a "pure category, having no object belonging to it" is itself impossible, because a category can only be exemplified by the objects which belong to it. The pure category with no object, is like the empty set, which is itself impossible. A collection of things which contains no things is not a collection of things. Likewise, a category of things which has no things is not a category of things. And, because we can readily conceive of the impossible (the empty set for example, a group of things without any things), your claim, "we can neither think nor perceive an impossible object" appears completely false from my perspective.
Quoting Mww
The point though, is that it is necessary that the "t’wain shall meet" Otherwise we cannot reconcile the activity of the senses, sensing, which is physical, with the activity of the conscious mind, thinking, which is metaphysical. If we do not allow the two to meet, in the brain (or subconscious) for example, then we will end up with two separate realities, the physical and the metaphysical, which could be completely incompatible.
So we have abstractions in the conscious mind, and this conscious mind might be involved in the act of reasoning, but is is not a "self-contained causality", because the conscious mind, in its act of reasoning, requires the images which are created by the brain, or subconscious.
Quoting Mww
It cannot be consciousness though, which creates the images, because we get them in our sleep, in dreams. That's why I say these images must have a subconscious source. We can hypothesize all we want, but if the hypotheses are not consistent with experience, it's pointless.
Quoting Mww
We are not actually sailing on the same ship of ignorance, because we can each choose the direction one wants to go. This does not necessarily release us from ignorance, but it may put us on different ships. However, once we realize the importance of internal agency, it's easy to understand how we can all be going in different directions in our ignorance. This is why the will to learn is very significant. Without it one might be pushed (persuaded) in any direction, and that is what empowers the deception of sophistry. So there is a very real difference between wanting to know the truth, and just accepting whatever anyone tells us.
Quoting Wayfarer
Alvin Plantinga? :gasp: :grimace: :rage: :mask:
(In fact it would be interesting to compare that argument with Donald Hoffman's Evolutionary Argument against Reality.)
The connection being this: that naturalism (or physicalism) claims that the brain produces or causes mental events. Mental events include rational inferences of the kind 'because X then Y'. However (1) if logical necessity and physical causation are independent, as many contributors argue in this thread, then that is not a valid inference, and (2) if it is true, then the conclusion is the consequence of a physical cause rather than logical necessity, so not a valid inference. This is the gist of the 'argument from reason'.
There is a difference but broadly speaking Aristotle is part of the platonist tradition. (That's why Gerson wrote a book called Aristotle and Other Platonists.) I do understand the distinction between Platonic and Aristotelian realism. But that is beside the point that I was trying to make, so if you could set that particular issue aside, you might consider it on its merits. The metaphysical/ontological issue I'm interested in, is the sense in which numbers, universals, and the like exist.
The (traditional) realist believes that universals are real; nominalists assert that only particulars are real; conceptualists that they exist as concepts in the mind. The latter sounds like a satisfactory compromise, except that it subjectivizes them, makes them the property of the mind. Whereas according to Augustine
Compare what Frege says of arithmetical primitives such as number:
I've been quoting both these passages on here for years but I still think they make a fundamental point regarding the reality of intelligibles. So after completing Pinter's book Mind and the Cosmic Order which is solidly grounded in empirical argument, I think I've found a way to commensurate such ideas with current science. And it's because such basic elements of rational thought are literally structures in our conscious experience and our rational grasp of the world. They're neither 'in' the world nor 'in' the (individual) mind, which is the apparent dichotomy on which every explanation seems to founder, in my view.
Consider what Einstein says here:
[quote=Albert Einstein]I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man. [/quote]
Which I agree with. But it can only be grasped by a human, or at any rate by a rational intelligence. That is the sense in which the Pythagorean theorem is a formal structure within reason. But that doesn't make it subjective, because it is the same for any mind.
Have a look, in this regard, at Schopenhauer's essay "The Four-Fold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason," where he clearly differentiates logical necessity from physical causation and the areas where each may be applied appropriately but considers both to be expressions of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.