Is 'information' physical?
The title basically says it. I am questioning whether information, generally speaking, is physical. I do have an argument as to why it not be considered physical, but I have found there is an influential point of view, from a researcher by the name of Rolf Landauer, that information is physical. The reason he says that, is basically because:
This is taken from this page which aggregates various articles about Landauer.
It seems, on face value, that this is mistaken to me, but then, Landauer was the head of IBM Research Labs, and I'm just an amatuer. But I have nothing to lose, so I'll give it a shot.
My argument for the sense in which information is NOT physical can be illustrated with respect to the following thought-experiment.
It seems to me that whilst the representation is physical, the idea that is being transmitted is not physical, because it is totally separable from the physical form that the transmission takes. One could, after all, encode the same information in any number of languages, engrave it in stone, write it with pencil, etc. In each instance, the physical representation might be totally different, both in terms of linguistics and medium; but the information is the same.
How, then, could the information be physical?
whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind.
This is taken from this page which aggregates various articles about Landauer.
It seems, on face value, that this is mistaken to me, but then, Landauer was the head of IBM Research Labs, and I'm just an amatuer. But I have nothing to lose, so I'll give it a shot.
My argument for the sense in which information is NOT physical can be illustrated with respect to the following thought-experiment.
[i] There is a sentry in a watchtower, looking through a telescope. The watchtower stands on top of a headland which forms the northern entrance to a harbour. The sentry’s job is to keep a lookout.
When the sentry sees a ship on the horizon, he sends a signal about the impending arrival. The signal is sent via a code - a semaphore, comprising a set of flags.
One flag is for the number of masts the ship has, which provides an indication of the class, and size, of the vessel; another indicates its nationality; and the third indicates its expected time of arrival - before or after noon.
When he has made this identification he hoists his flags, and then tugs on a rope which sounds a steam-horn. The horn alerts the shipping clerk who resides in an office on the dockside about a mile away. He comes out of his office and looks at the flags through his telescope. Then he writes down what they tell him - three-masted ship is on the horizon; Greek; arriving this afternoon.
He goes back inside and transmits this piece of information to the harbourmaster’s cottage via Morse code, where it is written in a log-book by another shipping clerk, under ‘Arrivals’.
In this transaction, a single item of information has been relayed by various means. First, by semaphore; second, by Morse code; and finally, in writing. The physical forms and the nature of the symbolic code is completely different in each step: the flags are visual, the morse code auditory, the log book entry written text. But the same information is represented in each step of the sequence.
The question I want to explore is: in such a case, what stays the same, and what changes?[/i]
It seems to me that whilst the representation is physical, the idea that is being transmitted is not physical, because it is totally separable from the physical form that the transmission takes. One could, after all, encode the same information in any number of languages, engrave it in stone, write it with pencil, etc. In each instance, the physical representation might be totally different, both in terms of linguistics and medium; but the information is the same.
How, then, could the information be physical?
Comments (1576)
I'm asking you to think about what viewpoint justifies talking about any absolutes here.
This is the standard problem of a physicist description of material reality. Physics keeps finding that "everything" is only relative. Absolutism keeps melting away and proving only to be an emergent limit. And so I adopt a metaphysics that accounts for that kind of reality.
You keep responding in terms of the predicate logic, the laws of thought, which are designed for reasoning about concrete particulars. And so they take reality to be constituted of parts that are crisp and definite. Things can be absolutely the same, or absolutely different, in the simple-minded fashion you try to demonstrate with set theory. The axiom of choice just applies, no problems.
But the physical facts don't support such a view. The physical facts say that is just the sufficiently coarse-grain approximation. It is a point of view from somewhere in the low energy/large scale middle of things - the classical scale of reality modelling.
You are then falsely extrapolating from a low energy/large scale view to a view universal enough to include the indeterministic quantum foundations of the Cosmos. Congrats by the way if you can do that. You'll get the Nobel for finding the solution to quantum gravity for a start.
So there are two metaphysical views in contention here. I'm pointing out that your logic and its associated classical ontology just don't apply in the final analysis. They are an excellent duo for the middle ground description of what we experience. But we already know a different logic is needed for the actual universalised view of a quantum-based reality.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
It's the other way round. We know from close observation of reality that it doesn't conform to our simplistic logic.
That would be evading the question. I much prefer it when people honestly say "I don't know" or "I don't understand your question".
We need to agree on what causality is. No fruitful discussion can take place if we simply skip this step. In my view, causality is nothing but a form of correlation. So when we say that X causes Y what we're saying, roughly speaking, is that X and Y are correlated, or in other words, that whenever X happens Y follows.
My view is that reality is a mass of particulars (i.e. facts, events, sensations, etc.) If we knew everything there is to be known about the world, we'd describe the world in terms of a mass of particulars. We wouldn't be talking about some underlying mechanism (i.e. a universal) that generates these events (i.e. particulars.) No, what we would do is we would say "this happens, then this happens, then this happens, and so on". There would be no descriptions such as "this happens and then that causes this to happen and than that causes this to happen and so on".
Mechanisms are human inventions. We create them for the purpose of prediction. Prediction implies ignorance. If we weren't ignorant we'd have no reason to make predictions. And we make predictions for the purpose of attaining our goals (whatever they are.)
Except now we are talking about what the Cosmos thinks about the issue. How does it understand the difference between the necessary and the accidental?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If it's all a matter of viewpoint, why do you refuse to generalise your very subjective notion of viewpoint? Why are you so violently opposed to an immanent naturalist metaphysics?
Except for in this case, it wouldn't have been an honest response.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
That is already a well-trodden path, in the form of 'logical atomism', one of the main sources of positivism.
You have yet to show to me how two well-defined portions of reality that are evidently different in all regards are in fact not different in all regards. Your approach so far has been to look for portions of reality that have something in common so that you can create an appearance that I am wrong by tricking me into thinking that these portions of reality that do have something in common are the portions of reality I am talking about. That's sophistry.
Quoting apokrisis
You have yet to show that.
I thought you had to show me two well-defined portions of reality which share nothing in common first. Good luck on that. You've been strangely silent on things like the issue of the collapse of the wavefunction so far.
I've given you the reasons already, in other threads, as well as this one. You employ unintelligible ontological principles. By appealing to naturalism you deny the well respected dichotomy between natural and artificial, opting for a different definition of "natural". Under this naturalism, artificial becomes a sub-category of the natural. I believe this is a mistaken approach.
Good luck with your classical realism then.
The issue that QM made inescapable was that reality could not be that well-defined; when you get down to the nitty-gritty, the uncertainty principle comes into play. So the more minutely you define it, the less certain it becomes.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
His 'sticking to the facts' was nothing like positivism, however. It was more like circumspection about what could be said in respect of the objects of quantum mechanics (or indeed whether they really were 'objects' at all.)
Heisenberg, The Debate between Plato and Democritus, in Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (1958)
Another interesting observation:
That is the work-in-progress we're all undertaking here. :-)
Which means exactly what? What does it mean that reality is "well-defined"?
How is this relevant to what I am saying? Did I ever say that the universe is necessarily predictable? I don't ever remember saying that.
There is an inherent contradiction here, because the argument that what we experience is not reality because it is constructed by the brain/mind depends on the assumption that our understanding of the brain/mind corresponds to how things are (reality). the argument thus refutes itself because it is not only circular but contradictory.
The argument is thus not merely like a snake biting its tail, but a snake consuming itself down to the last, most difficult bite. ;)
Got it, thanks. In other words, it could be there is no such thing as an absolute cartesian coordinate system for space. I am okay with this theory for space, but it cannot work for time. Time is a function of causality, whereby an effect cannot logically exist before its cause, and so at the very least, the "direction" of time is an absolute.
Quoting Akanthinos
I see your point, that the second statement gives more info than the first one. But as you said before, this results in having an infinite amount of negative properties like "A triangle has the property of not being compatible with figures with 4, 5, 6, ... sides"; which is absurd. [Absurd for a philosopher; not for common people who would not give two craps about such a discussion :D ].
How about this solution: Let's differentiate between first and second properties, whereby second properties are deduced from the first. E.g., a triangle has the first properties of "flat surface" and "three straight sides", and then second properties of "not being compatible with circularity, or figures with 4, 5, 6, ... sides", and "the sum of angles equates to 180°" etc, all of which can be deduced from the first properties. As such, first properties are always positive, and second properties can be positive or negative.
Quoting Akanthinos
I think I understand; but these spaces seem merely accidental, and not essential to the process of understanding, like a particular triangle will always have a particular size and location, even though size and location are not essential properties. Even if it is not actual, telepathy as a process of transferring info seems logically possible, and would not require these spaces, although time is still inevitably present.
Do these two sets belong to the set of all sets that have no elements in common?
Sorry, Janus, I overlooked your reply somehow.
It's hard to answer your question because there are so many different forms of naturalism. I've encountered self-proclaimed naturalists who claim to believe in the existence of everything from numbers, to qualia to God. The common thread running through most versions of naturalism is the denial of transcendence, and often the word "natural" is cashed out in reference to the natural sciences. In that case, you end up with claims such as "nothing exists beyond what is posited by the natural sciences". But there's often disagreement regarding even what is and is not to be considered "officially" posited by the sciences.
I suppose that if a naturalist were willing to countenance the existence of sign relations they could attempt to make the case for a naturalistic theory of the intellect. At that point the argument will take its familiar turn into debates about the possibility/impossibility of explaining things such as qualia, semantic content, intentionality, etc. in "naturalistic" terms.
Thanks for your response Aaron. I think the underlined part hits the nail squarely. I don't think naturalism has to be defined in terms of science, but rather in terms of what is immanent to human experience. Science is only one part of human experience, so what is immanent to human experience would also include aesthetics and ethics, religion and the divine. What naturalism properly denies is that there is a truly separate supernatural (transcendent) 'realm'. As I asked Wayfarer earlier, how does considering God to be transcendent and supernatural (meaning radically separate and independent) help with explaining its role in creating and/or sustaining the world?
This view produces the problem of interaction which plagued the Cartesian picture. On the other hand an immanent (indwelling and natural) ideas about God's causal efficacy are easier to understand and elaborate, while remaining in the province of philosophy and metaphysics rather than science.
I really don’t see it. I’m making no assertion of a correspondence between mind and the world. Incidentally, the ‘last bite’ argument was David Stove’s criticism of David Hume, in particular, and positivism, generally, as I’ve mentioned before.
The way in which I say the brain and mind construct the world is consistent with the scientific understanding of cognition and perception. What it challenges is scientific realism, or what I call ‘there anyway’ realism. That is the sense in which the second quotation from this post is relevant.
Quoting Janus
It’s an impossible question, or at least a very difficult one. I think you can only consider such questions in the terms that the various theistic and philosophical traditions which incorporate such ideas do.
Quoting Aaron R
Which often amounts to what Thomas Nagel described as ‘the fear of religion’ in his essay ‘Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion’; Anything But God! That animates an enormous amount of modern philosophy.
Naturalism presumes a world regulated by its fundamental laws. So it is a hierarchical vision where the complex arises from the ultimately simple.
Science embraces that understanding of the natural. It all starts with some bottom-level simplicity.
If you want to argue for some kind of immanent theism, then any notion of the mind, the divine, the spirit, would have to have the same character. It would have to be spoken of as an ultimate simplicity with the potential to become complexly developed.
Human experience is complexly developed. So whatever is "in it" - like a self and its experiences - is already too much.
Quoting Janus
And so all those things would be suspect as they would be the products of an already complex state of organisation. There is no grounds for claiming them to be suitably primal.
By the time anything appears in a human mind, it is long past being connected to a fundamental level of existence.
Science of course is our method for turning our thoughts and observations towards the fundamental. It is how we can hope to drill down towards whatever turns out to be actually primal.
It's been a huge success in this regard.
It was in response to two things, the first being this:
Quoting Magnus Anderson
I took the reference to the ‘concrete particulars’ as a reference to atoms or at least to an atomistic philosophy, i.e. one in which reality can be understood in terms of independently existing and discrete particulars or ‘facts’.
Then you said:
Quoting Magnus Anderson
Which is why I brought in those quotations from Heisenberg.
That is what modern information theory is about - the surprising quantum fact that reality is atomised at base. And atomised not in terms of matter, but in terms of form.
What limits reality at the foundational level is that top-down constraint turns out to be "grainy". There is a fundamental size to differences. So that means reality is composed of the smallest possible broken symmetries, or degrees of freedom, not the smallest possible "uncuttable" fragments of matter, as conventional atomism suggested.
Materiality pretty much drops out of the picture as a result. So far as we need a theory to explain nature's variety, it is a physical fact that it is constraints all the way down. Particles emerge due to contextual causes. And there is a foundational grain where this in-forming reaches its indeterministic limit - the Planck-scale.
This is why particles are fundamentally unstable - any particle could become any other if the Cosmos is small and hot enough. And yet also, some particles can become utterly stable as the Cosmos cools and expands. It is their formal properties, their internal symmetries, that mean they can't be broken down into anything simpler. At the Planck-scale limit, particles are like knots or twists caught in a solidified fabric. They are directions of action that have become crystallised.
So it is form all the way down. Until order reaches the Planck-scale and then you just have quantum vagueness - unbound material fluctuation.
The information theoretic view applies this to spacetime itself, not just its "material contents". Every point in the vacuum dissolves into unbounded fluctuations if you zoom in close enough for it to be hot enough. The particular forms - like electrons or protons - disappear from sight to leave only a sea of virtual particles, a zoo of all possible forms, all possible symmetry-breakings.
This means we can now use information theory to count the Universe in terms of its maximum density of "informational locations" - the volume of degrees of freedom, or entropy, it could possibly contain. We can count every potential atom of form - both the empty locations and the ones filled by some particle - and describe reality as a rule-following pattern of bits.
This informational view of reality bypasses the issue of whether the degrees of freedom are meaningful or meaningless. The semantics is a higher level issue.
Semantics is the further act of making an interpretation - sorting a pattern of bits into the categories of signal vs noise. The information theoretic perspective just grounds our view of reality in terms of the total possible information content of a spatiotemporal volume.
And it is an astonishing fact discovered by physics that the information content of the world does have this strict quantum lower limit. It has been shown that reality is formed by constraints all the way down. At the bottom level, even spacetime is composed of atoms of form. Beyond that, lies only radical indeterminism.
If you say that you are assuming that the scientific picture is correct; i.e. that it gives us real information (or in other words shows us reality), no? It must be showing us something that is "there anyway" mustn't it? Because if all it is showing us is what we perceive and that perception has presented us with nothing beyond itself then the brain/ mind is just an item within perception and understanding, and cannot be the source of perception and understanding.
Quoting Wayfarer
Those who contributed to the various theistic and philosophical traditions considered the question using their imaginations and the terms of logic; using their own brain/minds.You have a brain/mind (presumably) so why can't you do the same? Why the need to rely on authority? That is not what philosophy is all about.
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Scientism runs rampant! There's no point in my attempting to address your arguments because they are based on starting assumptions I don't accept (the most glaring of which is that the axioms of your system are not assumptions at all but are somehow self-evident), and therefore we would just end up talking past one another as usual.
So I said that naturalism presumes hierarchies founded in ultimate simplicity. You are free to challenge that presumption as well as its consequences for your view. But the fact that it is the generic definition of naturalism is rather a problem if you want to claim some variety of immanent explanation here.
And then likewise, I would only believe in the presumptions of naturalism to the degree that they check out. That is what seems reasonable, wouldn't you say. Or do you not even accept an evidence-backed approach to belief?
If your views boil down to your personal faith, then of course - by definition - you seek no common ground here. Or at best, you can only hope that I find that I want to believe them too because of their aesthetic appeal.
Actually I found a quotation on a reference site about ‘objective idealism’ which puts it well:
I think the objective account of the natural sciences is true as far as it goes, but is not able to account for mind or reason or the nature of subjective experience, for the simple reason that at the formulation of the modern scientific method, these attributes were relegated to the domain of secondary qualities. And then later the attempt was made to account for them in terms of Darwinian biology, which is the source of biological reductionism exemplified by Dawkins and Dennett.
Likewise, Kant is ‘transcendental idealist but empirical realist’, i.e. accommodates the facts of natural science, but understands the primacy of the categories of understanding etc in any account of the nature of reality.
The ‘scientific picture’ is correct in the sense of accounting for physical facts and making predictions, but ‘the scientific worldview’ is a different matter altogether.
Yep. Metaphysics which attempt to to make reality objectively dependent on the mind, or the divine, don't pan out. But a metaphysics that makes reality objectively dependent on the sign - the possibility of a semiotic sign relation - are a way to bridge the familiar divide.
Those articles about Peirce’s religious views show how they were influenced by Emerson, who was in turn drawing on his own reading of the Upanisads and the mystics. That is where ‘matter as effete mind’ hails from.
We must be careful, and take the time, to determine whether the "uncertainty" is within the map, or within the territory. So for example, you say "the more minutely you define it, the less certain it becomes". Many people believe that this uncertainty is inherent within the fabric of the universe. I believe that the uncertainty is due to the deficiencies of the minds and the methods being used in the attempt to understand.
Says who?
You mean without interpretance and a world?
And what does interpretance boil down to? I agree that is a tricky issue. But it seems the productive question in opening up a new and interesting avenue for philosophy.
Interpretance starts with having some sort of memory, some sort of encoding machinery, some sort of epistemic cut.
Turing boiled down computation to something mathematically universal. There is hope interpretance would yield to a similar bare bones understanding.
Or have you already decided there is no interpretance without "the feeling of what it is like to be interpreting". :)
How is this a relevant question? Why does it matter whether the two sets belong to some other set or not?
Mostly in that everything that we encounter via sensual experience is finite, changeable and essentially relative. One could say that the very nature of experience necessarily points the intellect in the direction of that which is infinite, immutable and absolute as ultimate ground. In the Thomistic tradition God is both radically immanent and radically transcendent. He is immanent in the sense that our very existence is God's own existence; literally our existence is "on loan" from God. And yet God is radically transcendent in that God's essence is radically different from any essence that we encounter via sense experience, including our own essence.
Quoting Janus
The problem of interaction is an artifact of casting God and nature as mutually exclusive in every way, but as we saw above the Thomistic tradition saw the point of overlap between God and world via the so-called "act of existence" itself. Everything finite is a composite of potency and act. Existence (Being itself) is the purest act. Apart from Being, nothing is. Therefore, apart from God (who is Being), nothing is. As pure act, God is necessarily the ultimate (but not proximate) causal ground of all that is. When cast in these terms, the interaction problem simply dissolves. Or so the story goes...
You don't decide what the universe is. The universe is either ordered in certain aspects or it is not.
Einstein and Bohr had that argument over 35 years, where he tried to persuade Bohr by various thought-experiments that QM must be wrong. This is covered in superb detail in Manjit Kumar's book, Quantum. In any case, all these arguments culminated in the EPR paradox, which was subsequently the subject of the famous 'Bell inequality' experiments, which ultimately came out against Einstein's realist views.
John Stewart Bell (1928-1990), author of "Bell's Theorem" (or "Bell's Inequality"), quoted in Quantum Profiles, by Jeremy Bernstein [Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 84]
Quoting apokrisis
It's nothing to do with 'feeling' - interpretation is always done by a subject. One form of the metaphysics is like this: that subject that does the interpretation is the 'unknown knower' (a.k.a. 'hard problem' and 'neural binding problem') . It is that faculty which attributes or discerns meaning; which means, it is actually rather near in meaning to the 'active intellect' of the classical tradition of Western philosophy. It is also related to what I am trying to get at in the OP.
But we don't know what that 'knower' is, because it's never an object of perception, it's never a 'that' to us; trying to say what it is, is like the hand trying to grasp itself or the eye trying to see itself, which is impossible on account of the 'epistemic cut' you refer to, which is the 'gordian knot' of existence. Contemplative mysticism dissolves that knot through 'union' - in Eastern spiritual traditions, 'union' is conceived not in theistic terms of the 'unio mystica' but in (shall we say) more naturalistic terms, whereby the aspirant realises his/her own being (atma) as to be fundamentally on par with the being of the cosmos (brahman). That is the elaborated in such modern Vedantin texts as the Teachings of Ramana Maharishi.
In Western culture, the matter was understood very differently, perhaps because of the fact that the Church always had to ensure that they were seen as controlling the means of access to this understanding (i.e. 'the politics of ecstasy').
But there is nonetheless a somewhat similar idea that can be found in the Western philosophical tradition, which is mentioned in the SEP entry on Schopenhauer:
Of course, that kind of understanding is generally very unpopular in today's academy, but you can definitely see that general attitude in Peirce's idealist writings.
In some cases, perhaps. In many cases people are legitimately perplexed by non-naturalist claims and genuinely don't see how they could possibly be true given everything they know from experience, science and philosophy.
Cool. ;)
If you want to say that my sets A = {1, 2, 3} and B = {4, 5, 6} are the same, when in reality they are not, you do not have to say that they both belong to some other set (i.e. have "belong to some other set" in common) or that they are both sets (i.e. have "being a set" in common.) You can simply say that they both contain numbers. You can also say that they have the same number of elements. I understand this very well. I think that I have demonstrated that I do in my previous posts. The problem is that you do not understand that this is sophistry. What you're doing here is you are pretending you are comparing sets A and B when in reality you are comparing sets that are not A and B but that are sufficiently similar to A and B. Properly speaking, you are comparing sets {1, 2, 3, belongs to some other set} and {4, 5, 6, belongs to some other set}. These two sets, you are right, are not absolutely different. However, they are not sets A and B. They are sets that are different from but similar to sets A and B.
Yes, I certainly agree with this sense of transcendence and have argued for it myself in relation to understanding Spinoza's philosophy. This view is not to say that there is a radically separate realm of transcendence. God is still natural; in fact God is nature, but he is not nature as we encounter it via the senses. Spinoza makes this distinction between nature as encountered sensibly and nature as primordial condition; which applies whether we think nature is God or particles and forces. Spinoza's terms of distinction are natura naturans and natura naturata. What we encounter is the latter, and what we hypothesize is the former. In that sense causality, matter and energy are all transcendental because they are never encountered as such in experience.
I don't agree with the idea that we encounter our own essence in sensory experience, however.
Quoting Aaron R
That's true because according to that story God cannot be radically separate from creation. He must be affected by his creation or else he is utterly indifferent. If he is affected then he cannot be radically other: changeless, timeless, omnipotent, perfect and so on. These latter troublesome concomitants of the Thomistic understanding were not elaborated by them as far as I know.
Interpretation might be always subjective or a point of view, but isn't it a reification to insist on the existence of a subject who does the interpreting? Is it wrong to say the subjective arises via the process of interpretation?
And then in accepting the primacy of "a point of view", what are we to make of the notion of a maximally generic point of view? What kind of "mindfulness" or "divinity" would be involved in the Universe having "a point of view"?
So as usual, I do seek to take the deflationary path without just simply rejecting the mind, or the divine, out of hand. However, it still is a deflationary story.
Quoting Wayfarer
But that is the complexly developed knower. That is the knower modelling a world in a fashion which in fact creates "a knower" as a transcendent self with a purpose. That is a knower able to impose his will on nature.
So it is that knower which I seek to deconstruct to metaphysical simplicity. That is the pan-semiotic project. The question becomes how is the Cosmos itself a kind of memory structure that is dissipating vagueness and becoming crisply developed due to the accumulation of a weight of constraints.
Quoting Wayfarer
We can't actually put our hands on this self. But it arises as that part of experience which constructs the world as its contrast. So the self is "there" when the world is "there". They both emerge sharply in experience to the degree that reality is being interpreted.
So it seems like the self should be another object of perception. And we pretty much succeed in making it feel like that. It is necessary that this is so for "us" to be aware of "the world".
But yes, in the final analysis - as we drill down to discover the primal division - we discover the self, along with "the world", slipping away. Instead of finding a fundamental duality of mind and world, we just discover a generalised vagueness. The self is revealed as just an emergent construct, along with its co-construct, our notion of "the world" as formed in a system of sharp signs.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree that Eastern metaphysics - especially dependent co-arising - is close to what I mean by pansemiosis. But the key difference is that semiosis accounts for the ratcheting memory mechanism by which complexity does get stabilised and so doesn't simply collapse.
This is the important metaphysical advance.
Yet another tautology. Remember that coherent debates require clear description of positions, and also reasons to back them up. In this case, if you say that your tautology contradicts my claim, you should explain why that is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Finally you explain your position, that words create forms, that "red" creates our concept of redness. You seemed to be against this position earlier, but let's move on. Does your claim apply to particular things, as well as concepts? I.e., is the existence of redness in particular things prior to us calling the thing "red"?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
"Clearly there is"? I understand that complex terms like "angel" or "quasar" are ambiguous terms and demand thorough thinking to remove the ambiguity; but why is it the case for simple terms like "plane", "flat" or "surface"? If you think that all words are ambiguous until they are defined, then this results in infinite regress, because definitions are made of words. Also, the statement "Ambiguity is never removed in an absolute way" is a self-contradiction because the very statement would forever remain ambiguous.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This cannot be. See my previous response above about infinite regress. If my concept of a triangle is not the same as yours, then how could we ever (1) discover this, and (2) correct it to be the same? I could say that "triangle" = "plane" + "three straight sides", but this assumes that the concepts "plane", "three", "straight", and "sides" are the same in both of us, otherwise, we are groundless.
There are other ways to explain the phenomenon of misunderstandings, such as logical fallacies; i.e., we all know the laws of logic innately, but we sometimes make mistakes by cutting corners. Another one is that some concepts have not yet been apprehended (E.g., I don't know what a "quasar" is), and although we can realize this by ourselves, we can make an error by not thinking rationally.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't disagree with what you wrote, but it does not refute my claim. If Plato's intent is to determine the real nature of concepts, then the concept must be the same in all minds. Otherwise, even if successful, each person would come up with a different result according to their own concepts, and the dialogue would be pointless.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is right, I make no distinction between "meaning" and "concept", such that a word pointing to concept x is the same as a word meaning x. That is my position. As such, you cannot disagree that meanings are identical in all minds if the definitions coincide. As for the explanation of their existence, we simply have not got to that topic yet, and I don't remember you arguing that the existence of concepts as I describe is impossible. We can do that next.
Great. You concede the point. We're getting somewhere.
And as you say, this applies all the way up and all the way down.
Now if we are talking about some set of elements - actual baskets of fruit - then how do we know that the apple in one is actually an "apple"? It could be a rather unripe and round pear.
We can set up logical descriptions that account for nature in terms of claimed hard distinctions - the LEM applies. Something is either the same or different in terms of a more generic classification. We can demand binary boundaries that carve nature at its joints. It all works pretty well.
But the act of measurement, the act of propositional "truth-making", is always an informal business. It is a matter of judgement where to draw the line when we come to borderline cases - like the apple that might just as well be a masquerading pear.
That is, the principle of indifference applies. The very fact we can claim to make measurements, satisfy propositions, is based on our always claiming the right to ignore any details we decide not to matter. We grant ourselves as much flexibility about what counts as we think we need.
Pragmatism rules. As it ought.
That's not true. I do not concede that sets A = {1, 2, 3} and B = {4, 5, 6} have an element in common.
Quoting apokrisis
Noone cares whether the fruit is ripe or unripe. In fact, noone cares whether what appears to be a fruit is a real fruit or just a toy that looks like a fruit. That's your problem. You are not focusing your attention on a clearly defined portion of reality.
Quoting apokrisis
I think that obscurantism is a more fitting name for your position.
No. You concede that what the sets have in common is the claim of being elements of the set of all sets that have no elements in common.
So what you concede is the hierarchy of constraints that is the basis of your argument. All elements are really just sets of elements. That is the logical structure to which you appeal.
And that's fine. I'm all for ontic strength structuralism.
But there is then your implied promise of being able to cash out the "elemental" at some ground zero level. And that becomes logical atomism. We already know that to be a busted flush.
The elements of reality have to be cashed out by acts of measurement. If you are really "Heisenbergian" as you briefly claimed, you would get this. The elements of reality boil down to the questions we seem to be able to ask of nature - the ones that return some concrete sign, like a binary yes or no.
That is what the information theoretic perspective is about. Does reality return the sign of a 1 or a 0 when asked some particular question.
And as I say, acts of measurement are themselves informal, not part of the logical structure used to generate good questions.
It might be a good question to ask if that apple in your basket is really a pear. But whether we decide on closer examination to read the reality as "pear" or "apple" remains an epistemic choice.
In the end, we can only satisfy ourselves as to what is the proper symbol - a 1 or 0 - to the degree we choose some end-point to inquiry. To make that translation of reality into information, we have to apply the principle of indifference as a matter of art. It comes down to a judgement that works, not a judgement that is based on some objective "fact of the matter".
Quoting Magnus Anderson
You keep speaking for this mysterious "no-one". But clearly you have a very big problem if you want to claim that these are differences that make no difference.
Not least of all because you immediately contradicted your whole position by admitting that differences can fail to make a difference. Ie: You already concede the principle of indifference as your basis for trying to contest it.
A curious logical move at best.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
I think you confused yourself by trying to maintain a simplicity rife with inherent contradictions.
I mean, what was with that Heisenberg claim?
That every being participates in Being does not imply that Being is identical with the totality of beings, nor that beings are "part of" (in the compositional sense) Being. It simply implies that beings would not be without Being. In other words, God and nature can still be understand as ontologically distinct. The key difference between Aquinas (Monotheism) and Spinoza (Pantheism) is going to be found in their contrasting definitions of substance.
Quoting Janus
Unaffected does not imply indifferent. God can be immutable (unaffected) while also being good and loving, which implies nothing more than that God is always good and loving.
Sure, but the issue is to answer this question of whether or not it is. If something appears to us as disordered, this does not mean that it necessarily is disordered, because it may be the case that we just haven't developed the means for figuring out the order.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
We already discovered that my concept of triangle is not the same as yours. Mine included "three angles", yours did not. We discover these differences, and attempt to correct them through discussion, communication.
But this is where your position proves to be nonsense, because you claim that we could not communicate unless our concepts are the same. See, you have things backward. It is through communication that we establish consistency, and sameness between our concepts, the sameness doesn't exist prior to communication as a prerequisite for communication, it is produced from communication.
Sometimes, as is evident on this forum, we disagree, and do not ever establish this consistency. If I am unwilling change my concept to match yours, and you are unwilling as well, and there is no compromise, we will continue to hold a different understanding of the same word. This is quite common.
Your assertion here, "this cannot be", is nonsense.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Again, this doesn't make any sense. Consider Plato's Symposium. Socrates sits around with a group of people, and they each make a speech as to what "love" means for themselves. Why do you think that "love" must mean the very same thing to each of them or else the dialogue would be pointless? The very opposite of this is what is really the case. If it meant the same thing to each of them, then the dialogue would be pointless. Instead, each person gets to hear every other person's opinion as to what "love" is, and they have the option to adjust their opinions accordingly. Therefore the dialogue is meaningful. "Meaningful" implies much meaning.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The problem is, that definitions do not coincide. We already determined this with our definitions of "triangle", yours is different from mine. Accordingly, "x", which is what is assigned to "what the word means", is different for you from what it is for me. That is what Plato demonstrated.
Now, by the law of identity we cannot assign "x" to what the word means, because there is no such individual, or particular thing as what the word means if it is different for you and me. The word means something different dependent on context, whose mind it's in, under what circumstances, etc., so we can't assign a single identifier "x" to all these different things.
Where does this leave the concept? Either we conclude that there is no such thing as the concept, or we conclude, as I do, that a concept is specific, particular to the individual, and specifically formulated for each instance of the usage of the word. In other words, each time that a word is used, there is a meaning, or definition which is specific to that very instance of usage.
Thanks for sharing. Yep, still perplexed. Now I gotta add 'phantasms' as part of the terms to understand, on top of 'forms', 'concepts', 'matter', 'mind', 'intellect', and 'nous'. It's times like these I want to go back to simpler theories in which reality is made of 'stuff' out of a mould, and call it a day.
I can't see what being could be (apart from being merely our idea) over and above the totality of beings. Being is comprised of beings I would say, just as beings are manifestations of being; I can't think of any other way to make sense of it. It seems to me that God and nature cannot be understood to be ontological distinct unless God is conceived as otherwise than being; as potentiality or creative freedom, or something along those lines. But then potentiality and creative freedom would seem to be inherent in being, and so would not be "otherwise" at all.
You might say that being consists in the act of being, and so it is ontologically distinct from the totality of beings in that sense. But I think of beings as acts of being, so being would equally be the totality of acts of being, that is one great act of being, and again there would be no ontological distinction.
Quoting Aaron R
I still cannot see how you think being unaffected does not imply being indifferent. "Being good and loving" would seem to be meaningless without action, and action implies response, and response just is being affected.
No. I said the opposite. I said that sets A = {1, 2, 3} and B = {4, 5, 6} do not have "belongs to some other set" in common. Rather, it is your sets, let us call them sets X = {1, 2, 3, belongs to some other set} and Y = {1, 2, 3, belongs to some other set}, that have this element in common. What you're doing here is you are saying that A equals to X and that B equals to Y and that because X and Y are not absolutely different that it follows that A and B are also not absolutely different. This is false because your starting premise, that A is equal to X and B is equal to Y, is false. I have to repeat, once again, that your argument is nothing but sophistry.
Quoting apokrisis
They aren't. Some elements are sets of elements. Some elements are not sets of elements. What you're doing here is called reductionism. But I don't think you can see it.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't really think you understand my position. I don't know much about logical atomism but I can't help but have the impression that you do not understand that position either. You are criticizing other people's positions without properly understanding them.
The fact remains that you have yet to demonstrate that there is no such thing as absolute difference or that there are no such things as concrete particulars. You've done nothing so far.
Quoting apokrisis
The principle of indifference is common-sense. It does not state anything groundbreaking. It is well known that whenever we look in front of us we do not see what is behind us.
You go well beyond this. Your claim is that if we are not aware of some portion of reality that whatever portion of reality we are aware of is not reality itself. That's nonsense.
Quoting apokrisis
We look at objective facts in order to figure out a more effective way to attain our subjective goals. We choose what portion of reality we are going to focus on but we do not choose the content of that portion of reality. You are trying to oversimplify this process by reducing it to "it's all about what works".
That's true. Similarly, if we have no evidence that God exists that does not mean that God does not exist. Nonetheless, in the absence of evidence that God exists, we have no choice, if we have some intellectual integrity, but to act as if God does not exist.
Hilarious. If you are going to invoke set theory formalism, then you have to stick to its rules, not just make up any old shit.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
If that was anything like what I said, I agree it would be nonsense.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
So you describe the naive realist position and then accuse me of oversimplifying.
Sounds legit. :)
"Evidence" is a difficult concept. Some people see all sorts of evidence for God, while others will insist that the same things are not evidence at all. What determines whether the things seen are evidence or not? It is the way that the things are looked at. So there might be a group of things, and you point to those things as evidence of X. I just see them as that group of things, and not evidence of any X. You must explain to me how these things are evidence of X in order that I will apprehend them as such. Nevertheless, they are still evidence of X, regardless of how I perceive them, so long as someone else perceives them as evidence of X.
But what criteria is used to determine that one definition is more correct than the other? I answer that the criteria is the concept, which is the same in all of us. Of course I agree that triangle-ness has the property of "three angles", but as I stated earlier, this is a secondary property which can be deduced from the first property of "three straight lines", and so it is redundant. Similarly, we could add the secondary property that "the sum of all angles equates to 180°", which is also deduced from first properties.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are wrong twice. You did not refute my argument that if all words can have different meanings for each individual, then we get infinite regress because all definitions are made of words. It is like speaking completely different languages. My meaning of "yes" could be your meaning of "no", my "flat" could be your "round", etc. Then an agreement could not be attained if there is no common ground or criteria that is shared among all individuals. Therefore, not only could we not communicate, but even if we could, it could not serve to attain an agreement on meanings.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This does not prove that individuals necessarily have different concepts. It could be that some definitions are less correct than others, that is, some definitions less accurately point to the one concept. Do you not agree that if I said my definition of the concept of triangle was "four angles", then it would be incorrect? It is pretty much in the name, that "triangles" have "three angles". And an incorrect definition implies that there exists a correct definition.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your entire argument depends on the premise that meanings are always different for every individual.
For the sake of argument, let's suppose that our definitions are different to start with. As you said yourself here, "we discover these differences, and attempt to correct them through discussion, communication", thereby making it possible to agree on one definition or meaning for words. Once this is achieved, then concepts become one and the same, by the same law of identity.
You still have to demonstrate that there is no such thing as absolute difference.
Quoting apokrisis
You rely too much on "ism"s.
This is very difficult for me to grasp. I have one definition of "triangle", and you have another. We want to determine the correct definition of "triangle". You say that we turn to "the concept" which is already within us, and which is the same within all of us. But I don't see that concept within me, all I see is my inclination to define the term the way I have, and a willingness to make some changes to my definition if necessary. If I believe that I understand the word well, I am only willing to make small changes, accidental changes. But when I recognize that I don't understand the word very well at all, I'm willing to make substantial changes, essential changes. How do I access the concept within me, such that I can determine which changes need to be made?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The meaning of words is not necessarily derived from other words. That is a false premise. We can get the meaning of words from physical demonstration. There is a word for this, it's called "ostensive". So your claim of infinite regress is not justified.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
What Plato gave us is a clear, ostensive, demonstration that different individuals have different concepts for the same word. If you are inclined, as I am, you can go onward to discover that there are differences between all individuals, as to how they understand the same word. Some of the differences are very significant, some of the differences are very insignificant.
Since these differences are seen to exist for all words, we can make the inductive conclusion that individuals have different concepts for the same words. Of course, you can choose the position that inductive reason never proves anything "necessarily", and reject this conclusion if that is what you desire. However, I suggest that if you have the will to understand the nature of reality you should accept this as a fact, and move onward. Failure to do so will just put an unnecessary restriction on your mind.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
We determine that a particular definition is "incorrect", based on the assumption that there is an ideal definition. The ideal is the best, the most perfect, and need not be something existent, it is simply the assumption of a goal, strive for the best. Assuming that there is an ideal inspires us to always seek a better conception, knowing that we've never actually arrived at the ideal.
In common practise we proceed using a concept which is less than ideal, but adequate for our purposes. So despite the fact that you and I have differences between our individual concepts of triangle, we ignore these differences as insignificant, accidental, and allow that these concepts are both correct. They are "correct" in relation to pragmatic principles, meaning that each one is sufficient to serve the purpose. However, any one of us could appeal to "the ideal", and argue that since the concept which I hold, or the concept which you hold, is not the ideal, it is incorrect.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I don't agree with the conclusion here. I think that the ideal is never achieved, and this is what inspires us to always better ourselves in our understanding. We agree because it is pragmatic, and this allows us to proceed with those actions which are dependent on those concepts. Agreement, compromise, and proceeding despite differences, does not necessitate the conclusion that the concepts are "one and the same". If the concepts are one and the same by the law of identity, then the ideal has been achieved. But the nature of the human being, and the imperfections of the material existence of human beings denies the possibility that human beings can achieve the ideal. The fact that we will never reach the ideal need not discourage us, it only encourages us to keep on bettering ourselves.
Simply not true. You might express it one way, and I another, but there is no room for difference. You’ve been arguing this useless distinction for hundreds of posts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Where? Plato was hardly concerned with individuation.
Probably, the current author to study is Ed Feser, as he specialises in Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy. But it’s not as difficult as you’re making it sound. ‘Phantasm’ is simply an archaic term for ‘mental image’. As I understand it, the basics of Aquinas’ epistemology is that the senses receive the corporeal image, the intellect perceives the intelligible form, and the mind creates the image/phantasm by synthesising these.
Actually, Samuel and I compared our definitions of "triangle", and they were obviously different. Samuel used "flat surface" while I used "plane". I mentioned three angles and Samuel did not. Therefore it is quite clear that there is a difference here. And despite your insistence that such a distinction is useless, that's just a matter of opinion. So, in your opinion this difference is useless, and in my opinion it is useful. In my opinion the difference is useful because it may be referred to, to refute the premise of your argument. You do not want to accept the fact that your argument is based on an unsound premise so you claim that the difference is not a difference at all, and cannot be a difference because this would shatter your faith. Your opinion amounts to a self-deception of contradiction, that there is a difference which is not a difference. So be it.
Quoting Wayfarer
My example was "The Symposium". Each individual, each member of the group, gives a different account of what the word "love" means. But this same theme is consistent throughout many of Plato's dialogues. You can find a similar discussion of "just" in The Republic, and of "knowledge" in The Theatetus. It is quite clear that what Plato was demonstrating is that different individuals have different ideas which are associated with the same word. You seem very insistent that there is no room for difference here, when in actuality difference is unavoidable.
IT DOESN”T MATTER. If you were both set an exam, ‘draw a triangle’, then you would both have to do that task. You wouldn’t; draw a square, or play a tin whistle, or bake banana bread. You would draw a figure comprising three lines intersecting in the appropriate way. Otherwise you would fail the test. You have spent thousands of words obfuscating the meaning of ‘the same’.
We would both draw different triangles. I am just clarifying, and adhering to the meaning of "the same" which is stipulated by the law of identity, and which also is necessary to adhere to, in order to produce a sound deductive argument. You are obfuscating the meaning of "the same" appealing to "similar" as if it were "the same", in order to put forth an unsound argument as if it were sound. That's why I accused you of sophistry.
Where is the difficulty in recognising that "the same" is the idealised limit to "the similar"? Why are you obfuscating the matter with your unsound sophistry?
If things are 100% similar, are they the same? And if things are 99% similar, are they nearly the same?
You seem to be striving after a distinction in language that isn't properly there.
Quoting apokrisis
Sophists generally advance arguments which sound plausible. This argument ‘isn’t even sophistry’ ;-)
The "same" and "similar" express two distinct things. One excludes difference while the other includes difference, so the two are logically dichotomous. "The same" is not an idealized limit of "similar", it is a distinct category, the category of no-difference whereas similar refers to things which are different. There are two distinct categories here, different things (similar), and not different (same thing). Notice that the former implies a multitude, more than one thing, while the latter implies one. They are distinct categories.
Quoting apokrisis
I am adhering to sound principles. Those individuals, such as yourself, who would place "the same" in the category of "similar", when "similar" necessarily implies difference, and "same" necessarily excludes difference, are the ones who obfuscate this issue through category mistake, and proceed to produce sophistic arguments based in this category error.
Quoting apokrisis
I really do not know what you mean by "100% similar". Similar implies that there is difference, and same dictates that there is no difference. Therefore whatever you mean by 100% similar, it cannot mean "the same", without contradiction.
Quoting Wayfarer
Your argument, to paraphrase, is that if the same information is conveyed through different physical media, then information is something distinct from the physical medium. So you claim that the same information is conveyed through different physical media, therefore information is distinct from the physical medium.
If it is the case, as I have argued, that similar information, rather than, the same information is conveyed through different physical media, then it follows that your conclusion, that information is distinct from the physical medium, is an unsound conclusion. I believe that I have successfully demonstrated in this thread, that the information is similar, rather than the same. Your response, and apokrisis' response has been that this is an insignificant difference, a difference which doesn't make a difference.
However, it clearly is a difference, and in this case the difference is significant because we must place the thing referred to, information, into the category of things which are "similar" to each other, rather than "the same". Any difference whatsoever necessitates the category of "similar", because "the same" excludes any difference. This is the same category where we place physical particulars similar but not the same. So your argument that information is not physical has been proven to be false. Furthermore, since information is placed in the same category as physical particulars, we should proceed now to consider the probability of information being physical.
So you are presuming that dichotomies are dualities and not in fact dichotomies? I see where you are going wrong.
Dichotomies describe complementary limits on being. Thus they talk about the being that lies in-between two opposing limits of the possible.
You are then treating the limits on the possible as the actuality which has the being. Rookie error.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah. That is a question you will really want to avoid having to answer.
You are trying to squirrel out of it by saying similar implies the existence of some difference. Well of course. There's your dichotomy. The similar is that which is the most lacking in any difference. It is formally reciprocal or inverse to difference in being as far from that "othering" limit to itself. It is the least difference you can have - which means accepting difference as the something that sameness is different too.
So back to the 100% similar. Why are you so reluctant to admit that this is no different than any claim about "the same". A complete lack of difference could only be a complete presence of the same.
But you must avoid admitting this otherwise your sophic house of cards collapses.
No, A dichotomy is a separation between two things. You are the one making the error assuming that a dichotomy is two limits of the same thing.
Anyway, it's likely the word can be used in different ways, but this is all irrelevant. As I said, what is relevant is that "same" expresses an exclusion of difference while "similar" expresses necessarily, difference. They are categorically different and cannot be "complementary limits" of the same thing, that would be contradiction.
Quoting apokrisis
As I told you, I really did not know what you meant by "100% similar". "Similar" implies necessarily, some degree of difference. Therefore 100% similar implies some difference. You only contradict yourself now, when you say that "100% similar" means a complete lack of difference. It is impossible that similarity lacks difference, by way of contradiction. As I suspected, what you mean by 100% similar is nothing but contradictory nonsense. That's why I couldn't answer that question, I was afraid that what you meant was some such contradictory nonsense. Now my fears have been confirmed, what you mean is contradictory nonsense.
Quoting apokrisis
Simply put, if I know something as contradictory I will not accept it. However, I know from experience that you have no qualms about accepting contradiction. You seem to believe that reality is fundamentally contradictory, so you readily accept such contradictions, and spout them out at will. I refuse to follow you.
Bollocks. In metaphysics, the logic of a dichotomy is used to define the complementary limits of any thing-ness or Being.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. It is completely relevant to the matter in hand.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Keep twisting but you won't wriggle off the hook.
Is "100% similar" saying exactly the same as "the same" or not? Likewise is 0% similar saying just the same as "absolutely different" or not?
You know that they do mean the same yet continue to obfuscate.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well now you are just arguing my point about "the same" being an ideal limit. It doesn't exist. It is just the asymptotic limit on the complementary idea of "the different".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So in your extensive readings of Aristotle, you simply ignored his notion of contrariety?
You seem to be missing the point apokrisis. "The same" implies one thing, the same thing, that's the point of the law of identity, to ensure that we are talking about the one and only same thing, the very same thing, when we designate something as "the same". On the other hand, "similar" implies two distinct things. Therefore "same" does not represent an ideal limit to similarity, it is a matter of indicating one thing, the same thing, while "similar" indicates distinct things. In no way can "same" be reduced to a form of similarity without equivocating to a meaning of "same" which is inconsistent with the law of identity. Give it up, you are only arguing nonsense.
Through a socratic dialogue, either with yourself or with others, which serves as a falsification method. Much like the correctness of a scientific theory is tested through particular experiments, we can test the correctness of a definition through particular examples. Say your first attempt to define triangle-ness is "a plane with three angles". I falsify this by pointing out that this shape is a plane with three angles but is not a triangle. So we must add to the definition that the sides must be straight. Then, I might add the property "red" to the definition, and you falsify this by pointing out that some triangles which are not red remain triangles. So we remove "red" from the definition, and the result is "a plane with three angles and straight sides." If it cannot be falsified any more, then we have obtained the perfect definition.
But... notice that we both seem certain about the correctness of the examples used to falsify the definitions. Where does this knowledge come from? It must come from the concept which we already had. As such, the exercise was never to find the concept, but to express it correctly with words. In other words, we all have the implicit knowledge of concepts, and we just try to obtain explicit knowledge from this. This explicit knowledge is useful to deduce universal truths such as "no triangle can fill up a circle", because we now know that all triangles have straight sides where as no circles do.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This sounds more like a method to learn a new language than to obtain a concept; but for the sake of argument, let's suppose you are correct. Well, you and I did not go through this process of physical demonstration before having a discussion; and so according to you, it is possible that, despite using the same language, my words have significantly different meanings than yours. So why would to decide to have a discussion with strangers if there is a possibility that none of the words used have the same meaning?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Actually, inasmuch as a 'better' implies a 'best'; and a 80% mark implies a 100% mark, then a 'more correct' implies a 'fully correct' or 'ideal'. This is necessary. If the ideal does not exist, then neither does the 'more correct' in any objective sense. As such, if you believe that no ideal definition for triangle-ness exist, then it follows that the definition "three angles" is no more correct than "four angles", which is absurd.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This claim sounds ad hoc. Can you back it up? If I obtained a 100% mark on a math exam, then my answers have reached the ideal, and I cannot better myself on that exam.
We are talking about a similarity with a lack of any actual difference. So don't just keep asserting that there remains some difference. You can't wriggle out of it that way.
So, in the case of 'the triangle', you are denying that a triangle is the same for you and Apokrisis - that because your idea of a triangle, is different from his idea of a triangle, that they're not two instances of the same thing? Because that is what you seem to keep saying, again and again and again, so it seems to me that you're the one participant in this debate who is 'arguing nonsense' which you have accused him of doing. The fact that two persons might have different ideas of what a triangle means, or form a different image of it, is immaterial to the fact that 'a triangle is a triangle' - a fact which is central to this whole debate, but which seems to be eluding only yourself at this point.
When I was a kid, I used to snorkle. Every so often I would approach a squid underwater. If you disturb a squid, it shoots off very quickly using its water jet, but it leaves a puff of ink in its place, which looks just like the squid, which, if you're a predator, you will then lunge at.
It's like that. ;-)
@Metaphysician Undercover has already answered your question. Nonetheless, I will proceed to answer it myself, and more or less repeat what MU said, because it appears to be necessary to do so.
"The same" is a relation between two sets where every element that belongs to one set also belongs to the other set. "The similar", on the other hand, is a relation between two sets where most of the elements that belong to one set also belong to the other set. If "same" means "identical" then "similar" means "nearly identical". Thus, it would be incorrect to say that 100% similar = the same. The very concept of "100% similar" makes no sense. Similarity is not a percentage of elements that two sets have in common. However, you can redefine the word to mean precisely that. Defined in this way, you would be right to say that 100% similar = the same. Still, it makes no sense to say that "the same" is the idealized limit to "the similar". The concept of limit, as defined in mathematical analysis, refers to a value that is approached but never reached. Sameness isn't something that is only approached.
Where I might disagree with MU is with his apparent claim that "the same" means "the one". If two things are the same that does not mean they aren't two things. Sameness is a relation and as such it exists "between" two things and not within a single thing. In order to say that two things are same they must first be two things i.e. distinct things.
He's defining similarity to mean "the percentage of elements the two sets have in common". Thus, "100% similarity" means "the percentage of elements the two sets have in common is 100%" or in plain terms "the two sets have all of their elements in common". But that's not the standard definition. The standard definition of similarity, as Google can tell us, is "having a resemblance in appearance, character, or quantity, without being identical". Similarity, in other words, implies difference. But even if we accept his definition, it does not follow that "the same" is "the limit of the similar" or in plain terms "the value similarity can approach but never attain". The problem is created by his inability to fix his attention.
Great. Glad you agree.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
I dunno. Why not check out actual set theory concepts like measure theory, almost surely and negligible sets. You might find out that this is in fact exactly how it works.
Sameness isn't something that can only be approached. It is something that is regularly attained. This is, in fact, why sameness is a perfectly meaningful term. The fact that we can think of infinite series where a value, such as sameness, is approached without ever being attained does not mean that every infinite series is of that kind.
Heh, heh. Almost surely!
The standard definition of sameness is "lack of difference". When you take a look at two different portions of reality and see that there is no difference between their contents then we say that these two portions of reality are the same. (It apparently has to be emphasized that the fact that these two portions of reality are not one portion of reality does not determine whether they are two same or two different portions of reality. Whether they are two same or two different portions of reality is determined entirely by their contents.)
Some people in this thread are trying to argue with a definition.
This seems to be a contradiction. You are saying that they occupy two different portions of reality, therefore they can't be the same.
What you have described here, is us discussing and agreeing on a description. If this is what the concept is, then we have created the concept through this discussion. I don't see how this supports your claim that the concept already exists within us, prior to this discussion. The fact that we are both described as changing what we already thought was part of the concept, indicates that what was already in us was not the concept, but something different which needed to be changed, in order that the concept could exist within us.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Now you have lost me. I cannot follow what you are arguing here. You speak about "examples used to falsify the definitions". I assume that these examples are drawings on a paper or some other medium, or in some cases a verbal description. These examples are constructs, created by the person drawing, doing the demonstration. So when an understanding is produced in this way, why do you conclude that it comes from a concept already within? I see that the person must have the capacity to understand the demonstrations, but this is not the same as saying that the concept already exists within the person. To me it appears like you are referring to the capacity to understand as "the concept within". But the capacity to understand the concept is not the same as having the concept actually existing within.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
It's the same reason why we communicate with anyone, in general. We want something from them, or want to give them something. That is the reason behind communication, we have intentions. So for instance, if I want you to help me with something, and you are a total stranger who speaks a different language, I will try to communicate with you despite the fact that we don't understand each other's words.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Exactly, this is the point I am making. Concepts do not exist in any "objective sense". They are property of subjects and so are subjective. The "more correct" doesn't exist in an objective sense, it is something agreed upon by the various subjects. Some call this inter-subjectivity, but inter-subjectivity doesn't create a true objectivity. But "correctness" is created by inter-subjective agreement, so "three angles" is more correct than "four angles" because it is what is agreed upon by convention. This is what constitutes "correctness", what is agreed upon by convention, not some "objective" concept.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Your example is of one particular math exam. Just because you got 100% on one exam, this does not mean that you have the ideal understanding of mathematics. You have a lot more to learn.
Unless you didn't read my posts, you know I already answered this at least twice. 100% similar does not = the same. It cannot because this would be contradiction. I've made this clear to you already.
Quoting apokrisis
This statement is contradictory. You might just as well ask me a question about a square circle. Just because you can say it, and ask the question doesn't mean that it's a coherent question If there is no difference, then we are not talking about similarity, we are talking about the same. Similar and the same are clearly not equivalent. Similar implies a difference. So, "similarity with a lack of any actual difference" is contradiction, plain and simple. "Similar" implies difference, and "lack of any actual difference" contradicts this.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
I disagree with this. What is expressed by the law of identity, is that a thing is the same as itself. There is no relation here between two distinct things, there is only a relation between a thing and itself. This is the crucial point of the law of identity, any relationship which allows us to say "the same" is necessarily a relationship between a thing and itself.
This is also expressed by Leibniz as the "identity of indiscernibles". If two things are said to have the exact same properties then they are necessarily one and the same thing. Some will disagree with the law of identity, as you may, but disagreement has extensive logical consequences
Quoting Magnus Anderson
Quoting apokrisis
As I told apokrisis already, to define "similar" and "same" in such a way that two sets which are 100% similar are the same, while maintaining that they are two distinct sets and not one and the same set, is to use definitions which are inconsistent with the law of identity.
The problem which occurs with these definitions of "same" and "similar" which apokrisis introduces is that they still leave Wayfarer's argument unsound. Wayfarer's use of "same" cannot be replaced with 100% similar, for the reasons I have already indicated in this thread, so "same" in Wayfarer's argument really means "less than 100% similar". Once we replace "same" in Wayfarer's argument with "less than 100% similar, then the difference in the information value, no matter how slight it is, must be accounted for. The argument does not hold up because these differences may be attributable to physical differences.
Quoting Wayfarer
Correct, that's what I am saying, two distinct instances of a triangle is not two instances of the same thing. Nor are you and I, as two instances of human beings, two instances of the same thing. These are instances of similar things. The purpose of the law of identity, as stated by Aristotle, "a thing is the same as itself", is to prevent the sophistry of logical arguments which proceed by referring to two distinct things as two instances of the same thing.
For instance, a sophistic argument could be derived from the following.. If you and I have the same model of car, and I am allowed to refer to these two cars as two instances of the same thing, then it follows logically that your car is the same thing as my car. Therefore you should give me your car, because it is my car.
Quoting Wayfarer
I am just adhering to the firm ontological principles which form the basis for good epistemology. If you think that's nonsense, that's your opinion. However, the principle which you have stated above, allows that two distinct things can be referred to as "two instances of the same thing", just because they have been judged to be similar. Any reasonable person can see that this is where the nonsense really lies, in such principles as that, which allow for two distinct things to be called two instances of the same thing.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
This is very true. Sameness, as described by the law of identity, allows for the temporal extension of existence. So the computer in front of me is the same computer which was in front of me two minutes ago. That is why "same" is a meaningful term, it is used to signify that one particular object is being referred to whether it is at the same time or not. It has nothing to do with similarity.
Another sense of "same" is derived from "similar", and this is what apokrisis is drawing from. But these are distinct meanings of "same" and equivocation is what is causing the problem here.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's exactly the point, by the law of identity, "same" refers to one thing, and one thing only. The law of identity relates that thing to itself, saying a thing is the same as itself. But there are not two things which are the same as each other, there is one thing, which related to itself, is the same as itself. This is expressed by Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles. If two things are said to have 100% properties the same, then they are necessarily one and the same thing. Calling them two things is a mistake, they were only identified as two distinct things until it was determined that they are one and the same.
This is your mistake. According to you, there are no types.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Two instances of ‘a triangle’ are two instances of the same thing. If you added ‘a square’, then you would have two of the same things, and one different thing. Apparently this simple fact is contradicted by your view.
That's precisely what Epp means.
That's what Leibniz underscored with his principle of the identity of indiscernables.
You guys are refering to relative identity, "x is the same A as y".
There is no absolute sameness, though; it's always a matter of generalization within a context to say that two things are the same.
No you would have two of the same kind of things, not two of the same things; to say the latter is to abuse language.
No two triangles are the same any more than two objects of any kind are the same.
OK then - the same kind of thing - which is what 'two instances of the same kind' means. If you were given a test to categorise groups of objects which have something in common, and there were 5 triangles of completely different shapes, and a circle, and a square, there would be 5 of the same kind. They're not the same in the sense of 'being identical' but in the sense of all being of the same type.
The argument about triangles started with this passage:
Feser, Some Brief Arguments for Dualism
Emphasis added.
Quoting Akanthinos
And what precisely does 'Epp' mean?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
According to this, 'the law of identity' means only 'a particular thing is identical with itself'. So, it's not true that A equal to A - it's only ever true that one particular instance of A is equal to A. This is Metaphysician Undercover's rendering of 'the law of identity'. In other words, it doesn't recognise types, which then undermines the entire discipline of taxonomy.
Yes, but even this is a matter of generalization, because there are also different types of triangle: isosceles, equilateral, scalene, right, acute and obtuse.
To think of perfect triangularity as Feser explains it in that passage is just to specify a set of conditions that must be satisfied.
From the Feser post, above:
So, 'generalisation' is 'abstraction' which is the ability to see what a 'type' is - which is, ultimately, derived from the eidos, the forms. That is what this is all about.
The problem is that others disagree with your position regarding the implications of the phenomenon of generalization. It's not clear to me what could be meant by saying that generalizations are immaterial, when they are in fact about material things and the activities of material things.
If the fact of generalization itself constituted a knock-down argument that it, and hence the mind that generalizes, must be "immaterial" (even assuming that we knew what that even meant) then everyone who thought about it would be convinced by it and no one would be able to deny it.
The problem with wistfully harking back to ancient, Eastern and medieval thinkers is that they were not aware of many things about the world which we moderns take for granted, and cannot, if we wish to be intellectually honest, ignore. The ancients and the medievals were modern in their own times, and would not have contributed anything new if they had not been.
Does that mean that when we say that two balls are the same, in the sense that they have the same color and the same size, that we are wrong because the two balls occupy different positions in space?
I don't think so. I don't think anyone would say so. Except for the philosophers who overthought the problem.
If you think a lot that does not mean you know better than those who think less. Thinking more is not necessarily better than thinking less. He who thinks more usually thinks he knows better than those who think less (whom he considers naive) but it is not as common that he really knows better than those who think less.
You need to stick to the definition. The definition of sameness says that two portions of reality are the same only if their contents are the same. Thus, two balls can be the same even though they occupy different positions in space. This is because the position of a ball is not defined as being a part of the ball itself (in the same way that what surrounds a ball is not defined as being a part of the ball.) You can redefine the concept of ball to include position in space. Doing so, however, would change the portions of reality we are looking at. We would no longer be looking at the same objects.
One and the same thing can be different at different points in time. For example, a man in his 60's can be very different from the man he was in his 20's. We wouldn't say that the young version of that man is an entirely different person than the old version of that man.
Conversely, two different things can be identical at different points in time. For example, a man and his clone are two different persons that are identical. We wouldn't say that they are one and the same person simply because they are identical.
Yep. This is the interesting point. But then that is why Wayfarer would at least be right about the relevance of the information theoretic turn in fundamental scientific ontology. An appropriate form of immateriality is being introduced in the notion of information.
Science used to deal in the "laws of nature". Reality was some mass of atomic particulars. And yet for some reason, that material state of affairs was regulated by universal laws. It was all rather spooky.
But now science is shifting to a more clearly constraints-based view of reality. Laws are emergent from states of information. We have new principles like holography and entropy driving the show. The regulation of nature is now something that arises immanently rather than being imposed transcendently. Newton required a law-giving God to explain the fact of their being universal physical rules. Now we can see how nature's law's might just develop, emerge, evolve.
So this is a big metaphysical shift. But what is really going on?
As I said, information represents the immaterial aspect of reality that always seems philosophically necessary. Matter alone can't cut it. We've known that since Plato hammered it home.
But then neither are mind, or divine, much good as the other half of reality - the bit that does the constraining, or the forming and purposing. The mind is patently complex, not fundamentally simple. It claims to be free and open, not constrained and closed. It is all about a particular lived point of view and not universalised "view from nowhere".
So our concept of mind as the immaterial half of the ontic equation just offers all the wrong properties. The divine is just the mind taken to another level - minding that is even more potentially capricious, unrestrained, the author of material and efficient causes as well as formal and final cause. Talk of God just collapses all the useful distinctions we were trying to build up and so winds up explaining nothing.
Science - as the only place real metaphysics continues to get done - accepted that the maths of form does represent the immaterial part of the reality equation. This was the revolution wrought by Galileo, Keppler, and especially Newton.
It started out as a mechanical notion of form - the computation of the mechanics of moving bodies and rippling waves. Then moved on to become focused on the maths of symmetries and symmetry-breakings. Also probability theory and statistical mechanics became central as descriptions of emergent patterns and the self-organisation of constraints. And of course, conceptions of space and time were expanded to include geometries that were non-Euclidian, conceptions of mechanics were expanded to include behaviours that were non-linear or feedback.
So science was on a journey. It recognised that its metaphysics needed an immaterial aspect to balance the material one. It started out with mathematical forms that were transcendent - Newton style laws, Newton style dimensions - and has steadily worked towards a picture of reality where the maths is describing immanent self-organisation. The laws and dimensionality simply started to appear as regularities - self-organising attractors that governed dynamics quite directly.
It became possible to see how matter could form rules to shape its own behaviour - even perhaps form the forms that actually produced "matter" in the first place. Particles became individuated events, localised excitations, persistent resonances.
Then along comes information theory as the latest improvement on this trip from transcendent cause to immanent self-organisation. Reality still needs its immaterial aspect to explain its material aspect. But now science has a new maths that is suitable for describing and measuring reality in terms of actual "atoms of form".
The materiality of the world is reduced to pretty much a nothing - just the vague hint of an action with a direction, a bare degree of freedom. And at that point where reality approaches its limit of dematerialised nothingness, it can become semiotically united with an immaterial notion of mathematical form coming the other way. The maths proving itself useful for describing reality was becoming steadily less immaterial and transcendent, or "spooky action at a distance". It was becoming steadily more material and immanent in that it talked about symmetry breakings and statistically probable approaches to limits.
Now with information theory, you have the exact point (hopefully) where each of these realms - the dematerialising materiality and the steadily materialising formality - finally converge and become one. They translate. Pan-semiosis is achieved as the material description and the immaterial description are two ways of saying the same thing. The measure of one is the same unit for measuring the other. We can go back and forth across an epistemic cut that formally relates the two realms or aspects of being.
This is a tremendous and historical achievement in metaphysics. It is stupendous that it is happening right now in our own lifetimes.
Science of course is still going off in all directions in the scramble to finalise the details of a final theory of reality. But at the level of metaphysics, we can sit back and be entertained by the spectacular outlines of an understanding that is now coming in to dock.
So we can say that the same thing can exist at two different moments in time, but not that the same thing can be in two different locations at once.
That is, where change is the rule - as in time - you find instead the counterfactual of persistence. And where continuity is the rule - as in spatial locations - you find instead the counterfactual of the discontinuous.
Hmm. See where your own arguments are leading you yet? Hint: metaphysics is always about the dialectics of limits. :)
Actually, it's not. I've had a fair amount of consensus on many points, as can be noted from @Apokrisis' reply to yourself.
Anyway, the point I was clarifying, is Metaphysician Undiscovered's continual obfuscation over the meaning of the fundamental word, 'the same':
Of which he is an undoubted perpetrator in my view. So, you enter the fray, fail to address Metaphysician Undiscovered's continual obfuscation, show no understanding of the basic point at issue ("It's not clear to me....") and then cast aspersions on the basis of the provenance of the arguments.
Quoting apokrisis
This is where I disagree with Apokrisis. The 'triadic relation' of Peirce's semiotics is between sign, thing signified, and interpreter. I will never understand how, in the absence of mind, there can be 'an interpreter'. I think Peirce got around this, because he had a somewhat panentheistic understanding of the nature of mind, which he derived from Emerson, Schelling and other forms of idealist philosophy; in short, he remained a theist. Apokrisis wants to do away with that notion of 'mind' - sounds suspiciously like 'religion' - but still retain some of the related concepts where they are indispensable for simulating a model of how life and mind works.
I don't see why you shouldn't be able to say that the same thing can be in two different locations at once. Concepts are human inventions. You can create any kind of concepts you want. If you say that a thing can only be in one location at a time, then when you say that a thing is in two different locations at the same time you are contradicting yourself. This contradiction can be resolved either by saying that what is at two different locations is not one but two different things or by redefining the concept of thing so that it can be at two different locations at once.
Of course I allow for types, why would you think that I don't? But if two things are members of one type, that does not mean that the two are the same thing, it means that they are of the same type. The latter is a qualified "same", where "same" refers to the type, not the things themselves.
In your argument for information being non-physical, you do not qualify "same" in this way, you say the "same information", not "the same type of information". So you have used "same" in the unqualified way, the same. If, in your argument "same" does not mean the same in the unqualified sense, the argument fails. It fails because if the information is not the same in the unqualified sense, then differences in the information is implied, just like there are differences between two things of the same type. And, these differences may be the result of the physical medium. So the conclusion that information is non-physical cannot be drawn if you use "same" in this way.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's clearly not true. A triangle drawn on one paper, and a triangle drawn on another paper are very obviously not two instances of the same thing, they are very different. If, by "the same thing" you are referring to the concept "triangle", then you must respect the fact that the physical representations on the paper are not instances of the concept itself, they are representations of the concept. This is fundamental to Platonism. So the physical triangles on the paper are not instances of one concept, they are two distinct representations of that concept
Quoting Wayfarer
Calling this falsity a "simple fact" gets you nowhere. You would have done better to say that two distinct instances of "a triangle" are two examples of the same thing, the concept triangle. In this way, you allow that the concept referred to by "triangle" is a thing. But we then need to be careful not to confuse the physical representation, the instances of "a triangle" which are on the paper, with the concept itself.
Quoting Janus
There is absolute sameness, it's described by the law of identity, "a thing is the same as itself". This refers to the thing in relation to itself.
Quoting Wayfarer
To be equal to, and to be the same, is not the same thing. "Equal" refers to an equivalence of value, it is a mathematical term which relates quantity. This is where we have to be careful not to allow the arguments of mathematicians and logicians to mislead us. Some might argue that all qualities are reducible to quantities and therefore we can express "the same" as "equal". The problem though, is that even if this were true, that we could reduce all qualities to quantities and express "same" as "equal", this is not at all how "equal" is used by mathematicians. Mathematics allows that things which are not the same, are equal, we overlook certain differences to claim equality. Two apples is equal to two oranges in the sense of two. However, we know that the differences exist, so if we proceed to argue that "equal" means "same", we engage in self-deception because we already know that the differences exist and equal things are not the same. Clearly, "2+2" is not the same as "4", yet they are equal.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
When you use "same" in this way, you use it in a way which is other than the way prescribed by the law of identity. It is not wrong to use "same" in this way, it is just a different way of using the same term, and that is common with most words. Where it becomes wrong is when someone equivocates to make an argument. That is my charge against Wayfarer's argument of the op, it relies on equivocation. It uses "same" in the sense of "similar", like your example of two balls, but the conclusion to the argument can only be made if "same" means the same in an absolute sense.
Quoting Magnus Anderson
This is why the sense of "same" which is defined by the law of identity is completely different from the other sense of "same" which is developed in relation to similar. The law of identity allows that one and the same thing may undergo changes through time, while continuing to be the same thing so long as the temporal continuity may be identified. Without the law of identity, a single object would necessarily be a different but similar object at each moment of time with each tiny change to it. Instead, we associate "sameness" with temporal continuity rather than similarity. So, we have two very distinct ways of using "same". The most common way, is that of temporal continuity, so that the object is the same object from day to day. Logicians, like apokrisis want to base "sameness" in similarity, so we must recognize that this is a completely different meaning of "same".
Quoting Magnus Anderson
This is what Leibniz disputes with the "identity of indiscernibles". If they are in fact identical, in every aspect, then they are necessarily one and the same thing. To say that two different persons are identical is to overlook some differences which make them different persons, or else they are really one and the same person.
Quoting Wayfarer
Actually, I am clarifying two distinct ways of using "same". And, I've already demonstrated that your argument of the op relies on equivocation between these two different ways, to make the conclusion that you do. You have not yet addressed this charge of equivocation, just continually reasserting that I am obfuscating, without addressing the matter of the two distinct ways of using "same".
That's because it's the same information, represented differently.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is what the whole thread is about from the word dot, you've been too busy wanting to argue to actually notice it. This is definitely my last response to you in this thread.
The point about semiosis is that Peirce worked out a fundamental notion of self-organising relations that could apply both to "the mind" and to "the world". Philosophy had become broken by a duality - realism vs idealism - and he picked it up and put it back together. He showed how the material and the immaterial could be related via the mediation of "a sign".
So it was a deflationary and universalising move. It accepted that reality is formed by becoming fundamentally divided. All our talk about the real vs the ideal, the material vs the immaterial, wasn't simply hot air.
But then Peirce was the one who made sense of it by pointing to the third thing which is the sign that mediates this epistemic cut. The end of one thing could be the beginning of the other. Where materiality left off and found its dimensional limit - the zero entropic dimensions of "a mark" - then that is exactly where immateriality could pick up and get started on its interpretive or modelling game.
So it is like origami perhaps - the point at which twists or folds serve to translate from one realm to the other. A flat piece of paper at some point becomes a swan or fox.
Now you can keep insisting that interpretance = mind. But surely Peirce would have called interpretance the interpreter if he meant to reify the semiotic process in that fashion. Remember, he was trying to fix the subject~object dualism of philosophy with his holistic triadism, not simply perpetuate it in some more obscure and complex way.
Peirce was generalising the notion of interpretance to the point where really you could see how if could be a material or physical process. You could see that even the Comos was a pan-semiotic development.
So it would be ironic if you claim to be arguing for the validity of generalisations - agreeing they are real - and yet denying Peirce's rather absolute metaphysical generalisation of whatever people might mean by "mind"
We don't need to keep definitions if they don't work. I can think of a lot of words that are poorly defined and inconsistent with what we know. Just look at my "Artificial vs. Natural vs. Supernatural" thread.
Cool. We're making progress.
The 100% similar obeys the principle of indifference. The weirdness of the quantum is coming into sight.
It depends on how you define the concept of object. You can define it any way you want. It depends on your needs. Sometimes, we define it to include the coordinates; sometimes, we define it to exclude the coordinates. When we say that two balls are equal, more likely than being wrong, we are defining the concept of ball to exclude the coordinates that someone else would include in the definition of the concept of ball. You can stretch concepts any way you like. You can stretch the concept of ball to include not only the coordinates that you want to include in the concept but also portions of the environment that surrounds objects under your consideration such as for example other objects of the same kind (so that instead of speaking of single balls we are now talking about pairs of balls.) By stretching the definition of concepts, you can prove anything you want.
An object is nothing but a portion of reality. If you want to have a meaningful conversation, then parties must focus their attention on the same portion of reality. This is why definitions are important. We want to make sure we are talking about the same portion of reality.
No problem at all.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, you certainly are making progress in the sense that you are getting closer to understanding my position.
Very interesting and informative post. I will continue to meditate on this idea.
But I think the 'self-organising relations' idea is not from Peirce, but from 20th century organic chemistry - Prigogine, Kauffmann, and the like. And then by analogy, the idea of self-organising substances and the semiotic attributes of organisms are fused to become 'pan-semiosis'. That wouldn't be too far off the mark, would it? (By the way, I don't know if you noticed but Kauffman was one of the authors on the QM paper I mentioned earlier. Their statement:
Is very close in meaning to what I'm getting at with the reality of number, I feel.)
Quoting apokrisis
He rejected Cartesian dualism, to be sure, but I don't think it's equally obvious that he rejected idealist metaphysics tout courte.
Quoting apokrisis
Don't know yet! My only real point of divergence with you, is that you seem to think the whole process is fundamentally physical, still, whereas I think in the overall scheme of things, matter is not causative - in other words, it can't be truly 'self-organising'. It's not 'mind-stuff', either. Perhaps, dual-aspect monism, a reality that appears to us in some perspectives as physical, and in others as mental - meaning that it is neither of those. But I acknowledge it's a very difficult question and I'm simply going on intuition and hunches. I will keep studying it. I do read that Pattee paper, Physics and Metaphysics of biosemiosis, from time to time, still.
"In logic, the law of identity states that each thing is identical with itself. By this it is meant that each thing (be it a universal or a particular) is composed of its own unique set of characteristic qualities or features, which the ancient Greeks called its essence. It is the first of the three classical laws of thought.
In its symbolic representation, "a=a", "Epp", or "For all x: x = x"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_identity
Yes, but why are jumping to conclusions that are unwarranted? I didn't say that all others disagree with you.
Quoting Wayfarer
You are jumping to more unjustified conclusions: that I don't know what 'obfuscation' means and that I don't understand the point at issue. I have noticed many times that you deal with those who disagree by assuming they don't understand what you are arguing, apparently presuming that if they did understand the argument they would necessarily agree with it.
In fact up until a few yesrs ago I used to produce just the same arguments you are offering up now in support of the very same kinds of assertions you are making now, so I am very familiar with the arguments. This you should know, since in the early days we were mostly in agreement on these issues; a fact which you have. acknowledged many times.
Thanks for the explanation. At issue was a what I considered a nonsensical argument about whether two pieces of information were 'the same information'. Or that my idea, and your idea, of what constitutes 'a triangle' were different. This was followed by pages of arguments about whether the basic intention of the 'law of identity' is to establish the difference between individuals.
Notice that the Wiki article says 'whether universals or particulars'. As far as I'm concerned, this thread is mainly about the identity of universals, and in that case, any 'A' is equal to any other 'A'. There's not 'my A', and 'your A', which are subtly different, because you and I think of them in slightly different ways.
You might be surprised. Peirce was Harvard's top of the class for his first degree in chemistry. He was up with the thermodynamics of his time.
So yes, self-organisation has only become real maths since computers showed up to make the calculations tractable, reveal that complex natural patterns really do emerge from simple rules or constraints. But Peirce was already talking about the mysterious self-organising properties of protoplasm. He was looking for a proper account of nature's "vitality". He already could see that Darwinian natural selection could only explain the removal of variety, not its creation. He was already a believer in tychism or productive spontaneity.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, I too am arguing the point that the potential is real. That's Peirce's Firstness or Anaximander's Apeiron.
But the trick is to get the ontic structure right. You can't just have a good old simple duality like the potential and the actual. You need a Peircean triad, or hierarchical relation, where actuality is the hylomorphic meat in the sandwich. It emerges due to the interaction of the potential with the necessary. Or the interaction of material possibility and formal constraints, in other words.
Quoting Wayfarer
In the end, if he was a genuine god-botherer, it doesn't make any difference to the ontic structure that is his legacy. But even the most theistic reading of his writings won't find a traditional theist.
You may get that impression because Peirce clearly puts the ideal at the top of the hierarchy. Physical law is "a habit of interpretance". It is interpretation all the way down as nature does not have atomistically material underpinnings. Drill down and you only get quantum vagueness.
So if anything creates reality, it is some kind of "mind" or interpretive process.
You can see that as affirmation of a theistic worldview if you like, or even another way of talking about Plato's realm of form. But really, it is incredibly more radical than that.
Quoting Wayfarer
But we agree that the material "stuff" drops right out of things. So this is a physicalism in which we see only constraints all the way down. The material bit is just a vague potential that gets shaped or excited in some direction.
So yes, I am fundamentally physicalist in thinking that the connection between formal and material cause must be there. These are the two halves of the equation. We can't just turn one or other side into some monistic ground like realism and idealism want to do.
But that is about as far as my "materialism" goes. I mean I'm even rejecting any notion of "mind" or "divine" which just presumes them to be "other kinds of stuff".
The point though, as I've argued, is that it is not the same information, in the strict sense of the word "same" it is similar information which we call "the same" for practical purposes. That's why there is ambiguity and we can never be absolutely certain that we got the interpretation absolutely correct, because the information is not "the same", it is similar. We can only say that the information is "the same" by discounting the accidentals, and claiming that it is essentially the same. The accidentals are differences which are ignored because they are unimportant. So your use of "same" here is a form of "similar", it is not "same" according to the law of identity.
Now the conclusion of the argument doesn't follow unless "same" here is meant in an absolute sense. Any slight difference, accidental differences, between the representation in one medium and another, such as the fact that different media pose different limitations on the transmission of information, invalidates your conclusion that the information is separate from the physical medium, non-physical. Your conclusion is not valid it is based in an equivocation between two senses of "same". Now we are forced to consider these accidental differences, and the possibility that differences in the information are due to differences in the physical medium, as well as the possibility that information is actually physical.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm the only one whose stayed true to what the thread is about, and you are refusing to talk to me. That's because I've proven your argument to be wrong, and you're to stubborn to change your mind.
But your argument is that information is not the physical 'A' itself, it is what is represented by the 'A'. And what 'A' represents to me is not the same as what 'A' represents to you. What it represents to me is similar to, but not the same as, what it represents to you. Therefore it is not the same information, it is similar information.
To say that a thing is the same as itself is to utter a vacuous tautology. Conceiving of identity merely in this way does not grant identity any metaphysical robustness.
Identity consists in the fact that a thing is; from that it follows tautologously that a thing is itself, and is the same as itself.
This is the same nonsense. If you write a technical specification for a particular model of machine and then turn it out according to those specifications, you get the same machine each time. Same goes for instructions, formulae, recipes, and any number of other things. But you can’t agree that two of the same kind are the same. The same, not similar. Two Fords of the same model are the same model, by definition. (I make a good living as a technical writer, by the way, so my understanding of the matter is not simply a matter of philosophy.)
You haven’t ‘proven my argument to be wrong’, you’ve simply obfuscated for thousands of words.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
More of the same nonsense. Really you ought to desist here, you’re simply embarrassing yourself.
If I tell two people to open the door marked ‘A’, out of all the doors over there, they will both open the same door. They won’t turn around and ask, ‘oh which door did you mean by that?’ You’ve wasted thousands of words arguing about the meaning of the word ‘the same’.
Causal relationships exist between both - as the mental is affected by the physical and vice versa. Information is both "physical" and "mental", as a causal relationships exists between both. This itself should show that there should be no distinction between either the physical or mental. Dualism is pointless.
How do you think that relates to Hume’s criticism of inductive reasoning?
*****
Man: “Hey Im looking to buy a new car, can you show me what you’ve got?’
MU: “Certainly sir. Over here, we have a Ford Meteor, and on the left hand side, we have a Ford Meteor.’
Pause.
Man: ‘But they’re the same car’.
MU: ‘Oh most assuredly not, sir. They’re similar cars, that’s all. But, as you can see, that one is over there, and this one is over here. That makes them different.’
Man: ‘That doesn’t make sense. A Ford Meteor is a Ford Meteor. If you had a Ford Mustang on display, then that wouldn’t be the same car, but it would be similar, being at least a Ford. And if you had a Cadillac, then it would be a completely different car. But these two cars are the same. I don’t understand what you’re saying’.
MU: ‘As you wish, sir. I will let your amateur grasp of Aristotle’s Law of Identity pass. Which of these two cars do you wish to look at? The red one, or the red one?’
This is not true, because there is a difference between "what a thing is", and "that a thing is"; this is the difference between essence and existence. Identity is concerned with what a thing is, it's essence. What you have stated is that a thing's identity, its essence, is that it exists, and that's not true at all, because that a thing exists is common to all things, and this is completely different from what a thing is, which is specific to each thing.
The law of identity, which states that a thing is the same as itself, indicates that a thing's essence (what the thing is), is nothing other than the thing's essence. It is not vacuous because it prevents sophistic arguments which begin with the assumption that a thing's essence (what the thing is), is some abstracted form, in the human mind, which doesn't include the accidentals of the thing.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm sure that you recognize that two cars, the same model, same year, the same colour, are not the same car? This is the use of "same" that I am referring to. I do not deny that you can use "same" in your way, and call them the same car, that is not the point. Clearly there are two very distinct ways of using "same" here. By what you've stated above, the cars are the "same" car. But if you bought one of them, you would know that they are not the same car, one is yours, the others are not yours.
The point is that the law of identity indicates that they are not the same car. It provides the premise to assume that your car is different from other cars, despite the fact that it is one of a number. turned out from the same specifications, and is therefore the "same" according to your description above. So, your use of "same" here is contrary to how "same" is defined by the law of identity. In your usage, all the cars are the same, according to the law of identity they are not the same. My argument is that you only produce the conclusion of your argument in the op, by equivocating between these two, very distinct ways of using "same".
Quoting Wayfarer
If I never demonstrate to you these very distinct ways of using "same", then my words are wasted. But if you accept the difference between these ways, and proceed to analyze the op argument, maintaining this distinction, then the words are not wasted.
Perfect. So the object's coordinates in space-time can be just as important or even more important than it's other properties depending on the arbitrary usefulness of some person at some moment.
How can you even say that two balls are the same (by your definition) when not every stitch in the ball will be the same. Also, this ball is mine, and that one is yours. Each ball has a different history and future.
Using Wayfarer's example of cars, not every car of the same model is the same either. This car will break down at 100,000 miles, while that one will break down at 120,000 miles.
Even the balls and cars histories aren't the same. They probably weren't produced at the same time (have the same birth date), or produced in the same factory, or by the same robots or people. I would challenge you to find any two objects that are 100% the same. And don't go whining that I'm going to deep. 100% means 100%. Can any two objects ever be 100% the same?
I've never seen a problem with inductive reasoning. Just as we have to account for and explain a different effect occurring than what we predicted will happen based on previous experience (why did the sun rise in the west today?), we also need to account for and explain why it was the case for so long prior to this new effect (why did the sun rise in the east for so long prior to today?).
Different effects are the result of different causes. The fact that something different happened than has always happened before simply means that there was a different causal relationship being made. The cause of the sun rising in the west today probably indicates that the sun and/or the earth changed it's movement. If the sun disappeared and didn't rise at all, then that would be the result of a completely different cause (it was sucked into a black hole).
Karl Popper says that science doesn't even use induction. Science is always looking to criticize existing knowledge. You can only arrive at the right answer after making all possible mistakes.
Let's just say you're a retard.
No, I haven't equated essence with existence at all; what I have said is merely that a thing cannot have an essence if it does not exist, because without existence (of some kind; i.e real or imaginary) there would be no thing that could be said to possess an essence.
So, I agree that there is a logical distinction between "what a thing is " and "that a thing is"; but this distinction is not relevant to the argument. A thing must first be ("that it is") before it can be something ("what it is"). To say that is something before it is; would be to speak nonsense. Conversely it cannot be without being something; so strictly speaking there is no priority between being and being something; each entails the other.
I have not stated that a thing's identity, its essence, is that it exists, and what I have said does not entail that either. The identity of an imagined entity, for example, consists in its being imagined (that it is imagined); and its being imagined consists in its being imagined as a particular thing (what it is imagined as).
So, to summarize (in case you still don't get it) a thing cannot be the same as itself, without being itself, and it cannot be itself without being. This applies to both real and imagined entities.
So, if a thing's essence includes its "accidentals", by which I presume you mean all its relations with other things; you would seem to be contradicting yourself, because a thing's relations constitute its particular existence, and in formulating it this way to you seem to be making its essence dependent on its existence; which is the assertion you are supposed to be arguing against.
In any case for me essence and existence are inseparable and co dependent. The problem I have with the formulation " a thing is the same as itself" is that is unnecessary because it necessarily follows from " a thing is"; and also because it is misleading insofar as it suggests that a thing bears a relation to itself. There can be relations in a robust sense (as opposed to a vacuous tautologous sense) only between different things.
I think that if this was submitted in a University assignment on the basics of philosophy, it would fail. The Law of Identity is very simple: A = A. It is one of the basic logical laws elaborated in Aristotelian logic, alongside the law of the excluded middle etc. The fact that something ‘is identical with itself’ is at best a tautology; the efficacy of the law relies on the fact that it applies to abstract judgements, that is, universals, and so has universal applicability. If it applied only to individuals then we wouldn’t even be able to form words.
The highly condensed version of A-T (Aristotelian-Thomist) epistemology was given in this post, (30 days ago), being an excerpt from a textbook called ‘Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man’ by Robert E. Brennan, O.P.; Macmillan Co., 1941.
At risk of labouring the point that has already been thoroughly beaten to death, the key sentence in that excerpt is this:
Here, the Platonist provenance of ‘forms’ is clearly visible, namely, that they are ‘perceived directly by the Intellect’, in the same way that logical principles are grasped, i.e. immediately and intuitively and without recourse to material facts, and that they are universal in that apply to all instances of the perceived particular. That is why logic works, in this philosophy.
To me, this is actually a relatively straightforward philosophical idea - agree with it or not, and nowadays the majority of people probably would not. But Metaphysician Undiscovered is in a muddle about this salient point, and I would discourage anyone who has persisted with this meandering thread not to keep flogging this horse, because it’s dead.
But it's clear that the essence of a thing precedes the thing's material existence. This is the case when we make a plan for something, in advance. So an essence can be independent of the thing which it is the essence of.
Quoting Janus
No, this is not nonsense at all. Aristotle demonstrated logically that "what a thing is", its essence, is necessarily prior to its material existence. The demonstration goes something like this. Material things come into existence, they are not eternal. When a thing comes into existence, it is impossible that it is a thing other than the thing which it is. When the thing comes into existence it is necessarily the thing which it is, and not something else. Therefore what the thing will be is necessarily prior to the material existence of thing, to necessitate that the thing when it comes into being, is what it is, and not something else.
Quoting Janus
What I mean by "accidentals" is properties which are not essential for calling the thing by the name that it is called. So for instance, I am still MU whether I had eggs for breakfast, or cereal for breakfast. What is in my stomach is accidental, so I am still called MU despite these differences, they are accidentals. However, a complete description of me, my complete essence, what I am, would include what is in my stomach.
The description of a thing's relations with other things is not part of the description of the thing itself, it is the description of a larger thing, of which the first thing is a part. To describe a thing, the thing's essence (what the thing is), is to describe everything inherent to the thing, and this includes accidentals which are inherent.
If a thing's relations with other, external, things constitutes a thing's existence, then we must keep this separate from the thing's essence. In defining "existence" this way, a thing having an essence, what it is, does not require that it has existence, relations with other things.
Quoting Janus
When you realize that the thing's essence (what it is) is prior to the thing's material existence, then this objection is seen as unfounded.
Quoting Wayfarer
You obviously do not know the law of identity. This appears to be some logician's symbolic representation. Do some research, I know you're good at it.
Quoting Wayfarer
Still not ready to analyze your argument to see whether you equivocate those two meanings of "same", I see.
The reason this is alien to us, is that we have been brought up in a culture which assumes a naturalist viewpoint. It doesn’t occur to us to question the testimony of sense, and it’s not something we know how to do. The idea that there is some level or domain of reality that is superior to the domain of what we regard as common-sense experience is simply incomprehensible, such is our culturally-instilled understanding of nature. What this is not appreciating, is the ascetic or world-denying characteristic of early philosophy. Its practitioners were much more like religious renunciates than today’s academicians (which is subject of the books of Pierre Hadot, e.g. ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life’.) This provided the means to really question the sense in which the common-sense understanding of the world was radically mistaken. (I suppose this has been preserved in some sense in modern science, but at the expense of eliminating any metaphysic of value.)
Quoting Janus
I am not harking back to ancient and Eastern philosophy out of nostalgia or misplaced idealism. That is not the motive at all. Modern Western liberalism, whilst it has many obvious benefits, also suffers from some major flaws, in my view; it takes for granted many plain falsehoods, which, as they're so familiar to us, we often can't see; we look through them, rather than at them. Basically one of the consequences of living in the modern West, is that normative judgement concerning ethical and metaphysical questions is to all intents subjectivised. I notice you take others to task for ‘scientism’, and yet when challenged on what an alternative to ‘scientism’ means, you’re unable to articulate anything beyond a ‘subjective feeling’ which is apparently so self-evidently true that nothing can or should be said about it (e.g. here, here, here, and here).
What I’m actually doing is attempting to articulate what is scientism, and analyse its origins and causes, partially historically, partially philosophically. An aspect of that is, I believe, retrieving the 'forgotten wisdom' of the Western philosophical tradition. The whole point of Platonist philosophy was articulating a metaphysic of value, identifying what is truly good, independently of anyone's opinion of it. That, I believe, has been lost and forgotten, and that's not 'nostalgia' or 'wistfulness' - it's a hard historical fact, as far as I'm concerned. I am trying to retrieve that insight, without having had the benefit of a education 'in the Classics', as they are described, and without getting too bogged down in meaningless obscurantism and nonsense (of which this thread has suffered an unfortunate surfeit.)
The same quest for a domain of real values is also true of Buddhism albeit via a radically different conception of the Good. But being able to look at such questions from diverse perspectives is, I would have thought, one of the unqualified goods of modern liberal democracies. (And I might add, I went to the lengths of doing an MA in Buddhist Studies at the cost of $20k, for no professional or material end, simply to understand.)
As for your responses to my posts - I have found quite a few of them quite unfriendly, not to mention badly informed, to be blunt. If you really do understand what the arguments are, and then can criticize them constructively, then I'm more than willing to take it on, but I'm not hearing it.
This exercise also applies to concepts. Thus if the properties of a concept described by several subjects coincide, then the concept described is one and the same for all. Some people in this discussion claim that not all properties coincide. Some, including myself, claim they do; and the minor differences in description is explained by a minor difference in expression, not by a difference in the properties observed. E.g. I may describe the dog as brown, and you may describe it as beige.
Note: the statement "Since all concepts are located in different minds, it follows that the concepts must be separate things in all minds" is invalid, because this "location in the mind" is not a property of the object observed, but of the subject. It would be similarly invalid to say "Since the perception of the dog is from different subjects, then it follows that we did not observe the same dog".
The examples I was referring to are these: "This is not a triangle", and "this is a triangle". I assume you agree that these statements are true, as well as virtually everyone else. Now, this knowledge, that these statements are true, must be explained. I explain it by our knowledge of the concept of triangle-ness. In other words, our knowledge of the concept enables us to make true statements of particulars, as above, which in turn enables to come up with its definition, through a socratic dialogue. It is like describing an object observed: the perception of the object enables us to describe it; and not the opposite way around.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If I understand, you claim that the concept of triangle-ness is subjective, and that we all have similar ones by coincidence. Can you back-up this hypothesis of "inter-subjectivity"? It seems to me that if we all observe an object with extremely similar properties, then it is reasonable to assume that we all observe the one and same object, until proven otherwise. As such, the onus of proof is on you to defend a more complicated hypothesis.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are committing the fallacy of moving the goal post. My point is that reaching the ideal is a logical possibility. As such, you have once again the onus to prove that reaching an ideal definition of triangle-ness is impossible.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
And I agree, although, again, it’s important to distinguish a ‘form’ from a ‘mental image’. That is a hard distinction to draw but it’s important.
So in this interpretation, ‘whiteness’ is not an existing thing, but it is a real attribute or quality which is realised (made real, instantiated) by any white thing. I think the problem in the quoted passage is that ‘whiteness’ and ‘things’ are being conceptualised on the same level i.e. both as existing things. So ‘whiteness’ is being reified as a kind of object or entity. But it is not something that exists in the absence of white things (or beings), but anything has the potential to be white (or round or whatever) - which is why it’s a universal.
Note also that the original of the word translated as ‘substance’ is ‘ousia’, which is nearer in meaning to ‘being’; so the phrase ‘kind of being’ might be nearer to the intended meaning than the word ‘substance’. So ‘whiteness’ is a real attribute which is instantiated by white things, but whiteness doesn’t depend on there being white things; whiteness would still be real in the absence of any white things.
Anyway, I also think there’s a recognition of this problem in Russell’s Problems of Philosophy, in the chapter on Universals, where he says:
emphasis added. Note the use of the term ‘subsist’ at the top. That is how I think of universals - they’re not existent things, they’re at a level prior to ‘existence’; hence Russell’s use of ‘subsists’. But universals ‘hem the possibilities’, so to speak; they are the way things must be in order to exist. Think of a wing, for instance: whether it’s a bat, bird, insect, or pterosaur wing, the evolutionary route to the wing being vastly different in each case, the upshot has to be wing-like, ‘something light and flat that can be flapped’ Otherwise, you can’t fly, no matter what. So that is the ‘eidos’ of ‘wing’ - or even of ‘flight’, for that matter. (After all, even aeroplanes have wings).
That is all completely off-the-cuff, and I welcome any objections, but again, thanks for bringing that in, I think it is central to Aristotle’s criticism of the Ideas.
———-
* I am reading through a well-regarded 1920’s British text, J A Stewart, Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas, and although I haven’t made much headway, I do note that straight up he says Aristotle didn’t understand the Ideas at all well, which I find encouraging.
There are faults in this statement. Just like in the case of describing an object, likewise in describing a concept, two people having exact descriptions does not necessitate that we are talking about the same thing. If I say "big and green", and you say "big and green", this does not mean that we are talking about the same thing. It is true, that if all properties coincide, then it is the same thing, (as per the Leibniz principle), but the human being doesn't have the capacity to identify all properties, so your claim that if two people produce the same description they are talking about the same thing, is unsound.
You need to respect the fact that the properties which a thing actually has, and the properties which a thing is said to have are not necessarily the same.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
There are two sides to this procedure, and you are completely neglecting one side. The perception of the object is one factor which allows us to describe it, but knowing the words, and their meanings is another factor. And, the act of using words to describe things is what gives words their meanings. I describe this process of ostensive definition to you already. So the opposite way around is just as important as the one you describe, describing objects in ostensive demonstrations allows one to learn the words, and this is necessary in order that we can proceed to describe other objects.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
It's not coincidence, it comes through effort, and is called learning.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Did you not ever go to school in your life? It is quite clear, that in school we learn the concepts, they are taught to us by our teachers. That's why we happen to have similar concepts in our minds, there is a structured education system which ensures that we are all taught these similar things. The defense of my position is not difficult, because the evidence is everywhere within the institutions of our society. The institutions are set up to ensure that we are all taught very similar things.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
No, I did not "move the goal post", I simply explained that you were working off an incorrect definition of "ideal", which made the ideal into a particular instance of occurrence. If "ideal" is made into a particular instance of occurrence, then any occurrence is the ideal of that particular occurrence, and "ideal" looses all meaningfulness. So I could define the "ideal" as obtaining 40% on my math exam, then if I get 40% on my math exam I have obtained the ideal. But this leaves "ideal" as meaningless. That's what you did, you defined the ideal as obtaining 100% on your exam, and then said that if you get it, you have obtained the ideal. By this procedure we could say that absolutely anything is the ideal, and always be obtaining the ideal. But that leaves "ideal" as meaningless because then the ideal could be anything which you want it to be.
This is a very good point, to consider the differences between the principles of these great philosophers. A very good example is found in the ontological differences which Neo-Platonism, and Aristotelianism expressed. Neo-Platonism with its immaterial Forms was accepted into Christian religion as fundamental teaching, by people like St. Augustine, and became foundational to their ontology. The Aristotelian principle of unmoved movers, eternal circular motions, provides a more materialist description which doesn't require immaterial Forms to account for material existence, because matter is included within the concept, as that which is moving.
In Aquinas we can see an attempt at the very difficult task of creating consistency between the Neo-Platonist traditions within Christianity, and the more recently introduced texts of Aristotle. As I said, this was an extremely difficult task, which required volumes of text, and despite St Thomas' arduous attempts at explaining the usage of different terms, some inconsistency still remains
I would call that an imagined existence preceding a material existence. Particular Imagined existences are always part of general material existence though, and the material (in the sense of 'content') of imagined existences is always the material of material existence.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This argument holds only if determinism is presumed. I don't accept determinism so the argument has no power to persuade.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This seems to be confused. So, what you think of as essence is something which changes constantly along with the conditions of your existence or is it something prior to your existence?
OK. if you have been taking my critiques of your arguments personally then that explains your failure to address what I have actually said. And your claim that some of what I have said is "badly informed", sounds just like what someone who is taking what has been said personally would say.
If you back that claim of ill-informedness up with some examples, and show exactly what I have been badly informed about, why I should have been well-informed about it before commenting on your arguments, and how I could become well-informed about it, then perhaps we can continue; otherwise it would be best to leave it, since I don't want to waste my precious time on someone who refuses to freely and openly engage.
Learning not to take things personally on philosophy forums would be a well-learned lesson, and would help you engage more fully with your interlocutors.
The issue I have with Metaphysician Undiscovered concerns his obfuscation over what it means to say 'two things are the same' or 'two representations have the same meaning'. This lead to the absurd argument that 'A' means something differently for two persons, depending on their interpretation, thus calling into question the law of identity, which then triggered yet more obfuscation. So I think his comments on the question of identity and individuation are muddled. He has consistently argued a nominalist position against Samuel LaCrampe, but when this is pointed out, he doesn't acknowledge it, and instead obfuscates the meaning of 'nominalism'. (I could go back and show numerous examples, but I don't want to waste the time.) As for Janus, I will stand by my earlier reply.
Quoting ?????????????
That's a fair criticism. I know I have a lot more work to do if I want to make the case seriously. I had intended to enrol in an external degree in metaphysics towards this end, although I can't enroll until I resolve my income situation. And I will also admit, the prospect of becoming properly acquainted with Plato and Aristotle is quite a daunting one, I often make an attempt to start, but in the absence of a structure program my reading is desultory.
But as for 'blurring the difference' - I am making a very general point about the ontology of ideas. I generally assume that most readers understand ideas to be ultimately within the individual mind (as MU has stated throughout). If pressed, most will say that ideas are, therefore, the product of the brain, which in turn is the product of evolution. This is the general consensus in modern culture. Of course its true that none of the pre-modern philosophers understood evolutionary science, so none could respond to it. But we generally assume that the pre-modern views on such questions are therefore bound to be false, on the basis that they didn't understand the scientific explanation of the nature of the mind - which is predominantly materialistic. So I am arguing the case on the general principle that the nature of reason, and the faculty of the mind that perceives meaning, is not something which has been explained in biological terms, on the basis of Platonic realism about ideas. I am arguing on a general interpretation of Platonic realism.
And please, I don't 'despise' anything or anyone. My philosophical topic of interest is simply that the widespread and commonly-accepted views of scientific materialism are mistaken. My basic position is very simple: ideas are real, and they're not reducible to the physical.
Quoting Janus
As far as I am concerned, I do try and address your criticisms, but you don't understand my replies, you accuse me of 'slipping away' or 'not answering questions', when I have attempted to do so.
Quoting Janus
That would be good, as whilst I admit my knowledge of this subject is patchy, I don't think you have any interest in it. Although, I rather miss Dawson and his donkey.
Dawson and his donkey both held views which were identical with mine; and they haven't really changed that much since.
I am interested in this topic, though. I just don't think that asking whether information is physical is a fruitful way to approach it. This is because if we say that information is not physical I can't see what could be intended other than either:
or:
The first is compatible with any metaphysical standpoint and the second is dualism; which I don't accept as being coherent.
I haven't been able to discern a claim for any alternative standpoint in your claim that information cannot be physical. Also, your argument that it cannot be physical seems to amount to saying that information consists in generalizations, generalizations cannot be physical and therefore information cannot be physical. What you need is an argument that shows why physicality could not have qualities (eg the ability to constitute generalities) beyond its capacity to be observed and quantified.
In short, I think that potentiality as well as actuality are both physical, but obviously they are not both actual. On this view information would be the 'not yet actual'.
I have already admitted, the topic really ought to be about ideas, not about information. But on the other hand, the example in the OP does rely on the ability of the mind to absorb and translate information that is based on ideas.
But recall that Aaron answered a question from you the other day about the traditional philosophical view of God as ‘being itsellf’, to which your response was:
The fact that ‘you can’t think of any other way to make sense of it’, is not actually an argument against this understanding. It might be something you genuinely don’t understand. Furthermore, as I have said, whilst you acknowledge that there is a reality corresponding to ‘spirit’ - i think we agreed on that? - you say the ‘experience’ of it is essentially subjective, and something about which nothing can be said. Then you take me to task for trying to base arguments on such a reality.
Whereas here I am inexpertly trying to deal with metaphysical arguments that do claim that ‘being as such’ is real, and real in a way that doesn’t require your agreement or buy-in. In other words, there might be something about this school of argument that you’re not seeing. Please don’t take that as a put-down or an ad hominem because it isn’t intended as such, although we have reached this point in previous debates.
As has been said above, my arguments are a mish-mash. Agreed! They’re all over the place. I read bits here, pieces there, snippets from Ed Feser, articles and essays both online and on paper. They all go into the thought processor, get blended up - and you see the results. But, I also think that along the line, I have had a genuine moment of epiphany and that I glimpsed a reality which I have come to think is now lost and forgotten. That is why I have a sense of antagonism towards what a lot of people take for granted. I think it ‘pushes buttons’ because it questions the taken-for-granted nature of reality. That’s how I interpret my own efforts here.
Obviously knowledge has progressed immensely since the time of the ancient Greeks. Yet philosophical disputes remain. Those disputes often find their origin in the fundamental differences between the views of Plato and Aristotle. In particular, whether ideas have a reality apart from the natural world or whether they are grounded in the natural world. In general terms, this is the problem of universals.
I think it is a challenge to the coherence of the idea that being is something over and above the totality of beings. Here, for the sake of not losing context, is the full exchange:
If you think the idea of being is coherent understood otherwise than as either the totality of beings, or the act of being; then all you have to do is give an account of the alternative understanding.
Quoting Wayfarer
Here is an example of what I find frustrating in attempting to discuss with you. You claim that there is "something about this school of argument that you're not seeing" and yet you are unable to tell me what it is. I don't take this personally "as an ad hominem or put-down", but it is either condescending (and all the more unjustifiably so if you cannot back it up with an explanation) or it is an evasive tactic; neither of which belong to philosophical discussion as I see it.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have had such moments also, and intensely so. But I draw no conclusions from those moments; and I don't think the ineffable understanding one feels there has any bearing on metaphysical arguments one way or the other. There is 'something more' to be sure; I have no argument with that; but that lies in the realm of "that whereof we cannot speak", except in allusive language. I think philosophy must consist in more than merely allusion; it must also be rigorously consistent. We don't need to rely on the ancients to do philosophy all that is required is imagination and logic. Of course I am not suggesting that we don't need to be familiar with the historical dialectical unfoldment of ideas; to attempt to do philosophy in a total vacuum would be too laborious and time-wasting.
This doesn't make sense to me. Are you saying that matter has an imagination, and imagines what it will be prior to being that?
Quoting Janus
That's not true. The argument is very consistent with free will, so long as you allow that the human mind with its freely willed decision is the cause of the thing being the thing that it is. No determinism here. All material things can be caused necessarily to be the things which they are, without denying free will. The will is not a material thing, and acts as the cause of material things being the things that they are. It is the assumption that the will is a material thing which denies the possibility of free will.
Quoting Janus
Of course essence is something which changes. "Essence" refers to what the thing is, so if a thing is changing so is its essence. This is well explained by Aristotle under the concept of "form". The form of the thing is "what" the thing is, and that became known as "essence" by the Latin speakers. The form is the actuality of the thing, what is active, while the matter is passive.
Quoting Wayfarer
Your confusion comes from your refusal to acknowledge the two distinct ways in which "same" is used. Not recognizing ambiguity and equivocation in your own use of the term causes you to be confused when someone attempts to point it out to you. My actions of attempting to explain to you these two distinct ways in which "same" is used does not constitute obfuscation. Your attempts to disguise this difference is obfuscation.
Try reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on "Identity", as a starting point. This is from the first paragraph of the introduction:
Have you read Plato's Republic? He makes comparisons to breeding dogs, and choosing for favourable characteristics. At one point he puts forth a proposed system of eugenics. Breeding of human beings within the proposed republic is supposed to be completely controlled, to select for favourable traits. Who gets to breed is supposed to be arranged by a lottery, but the lottery is fixed, such that the rulers can control and breed for favourable characteristics. The controlled breeding is disguised, and hidden from the common people by what is called "the noble lie".
No I was referring to entities that we have imagined, responding to your example of someone making a plan for something.
[quote="Metaphysician Undercover;128727m]That's not true. The argument is very consistent with free will,[/quote]
I wasn't referring to determinism in that connection but to ontological determinism, where the nature of future entities is determined by their present internal conditions. even here it could not be rightly said that what entities will become is exhaustively determined by what they presently are because it is also determined by external conditions affecting them.
So my description of free will holds then. The nature of future entities is not necessarily determined by their present internal conditions, nor by their external conditions, it may be determined by an act of free will. And so you have no argument against the principle that the form of a thing is prior to the material existence of that thing. You reject this principle based on your claim that it is determinist, but it is not. In the case of free will the future of the object is determined neither by the object's internal conditions nor by the object's external conditions, it is determined by an act of free will which is an immaterial cause.
I don't mind the standpoint of nominalism or subjectivism, insofar that the arguments are rational and respectful. If a standpoint is false, then a flaw should exist, and it is a matter of finding it.
Quoting Wayfarer
I am still unclear about this one. Is 'mental image' the same as 'concept', that is, the form once abstracted in the mind? Or else, if by 'mental image' you mean the physical visualization in the mind, then I agree that concepts are not that; because concepts, being universals, cannot have accidentals properties, which are necessary for any physical visualizations.
I don’t want to re-hash all of that again, but Metaphysician Undisovered denied that two propositions that say the same thing are actually saying the same thing. And so on ad nauseum. And if you want to argue that A ‘for you’ means something different than A ‘for me’, then I will likewise say you’re obfuscating.
Quoting ?????????????
Well, that’s the argument in the OP - that the content of an idea can remain unchanged, despite changing every aspect of its physical representation, including the material system it is represented by. If you think this through, it suggests at least a dualist model in which ‘meaning’ (= information) and ‘representation’ are separable. That is the basis for arguing for a form of hylomorphic dualism, as ‘hylo-morphism’ means ‘matter-form’. So by this analogy, the ‘form’ corresponds with the idea being transmitted and the ‘matter’ is the material means of transmission - flags, Morse Code, and written journal entries. So I am claiming that to say that ‘information is physical’ confuses the two; it’s a category mistake (at the very least).
Futhermore, you said nothing about the response I provided to your quoted passage, which included a direct reference to the point at issue, from Bertrand Russell. I think I addressed the objections raised.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I’m perfectly aware of the distinction between ‘the same’ in a numerical sense, i.e. ‘the same object’, and ‘the same’ as in ‘the same kind’. That has never been at issue. You’re changing the subject again.
Quoting Janus
I can’t tell you what it is, because it arises from a gestalt shift in the understanding, it requires a different way of seeing the problem. But then I try to explain, and from my perspective, you don’t understand the explanation, and instead say that I’m evading your questions. So there’s a gap here and I don’t think I can close it.
Quoting Janus
The ‘alternative understanding’ in this case, is the traditional philosophical form of theism that you were discussing at the time. ‘Giving an account’ of that, would be out of scope, short of summarising the whole subject again; my point is that saying ‘you can’t see why such an understanding could be true’, doesn’t amount to an argument. (I think I’ve pointed out an article before, by a Bishop, called ‘God Does Not Exist’, about this very point, but nobody seems to get it.)
Quoting Janus
Whereas I think that this is where metaphysics has to come from.
Quoting Andrew M
Andrew M understands the problem!
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Did you by any chance glance at the article on Feser’s blog from which the original text about ‘the triangle’ was extracted? In any case, here’s another Feser example:
Think, McFly, Think (and I recommend having a read of the whole post.)
And value! Where in that, is the domain of value, some way of anchoring qualitative judgement? Or is it entirely subjective, ‘beyond words’, can’t be spoken about: in which case what role does it play in philosophy?
It’s not specifically about ‘the ancients’. What is preserved in Platonist philosophy - which was also profoundly influential in the Scientific Revolution - was a means of discerning a metaphysic of value. Again, you criticise others for ‘scientism’, and yet when I try to present an argument against scientific materialism you criticise that, too.
I am arguing that there was a specific kind of metaphysic inherent in the Western philosophical tradition, which has been lost. This is what I’m trying to articulate and explain. I get that I’m not doing it well.
Not at all. When Metaphysician Undercover came into this thread, it was to say that two sentences which say the same thing, don’t really say the same thing, but similar things, which devolved into a pointless argument about the difference between ‘similar’ and ‘same’.
Sorry I wasn’t clear about the remaining points, they seem fairly clear to me, but I’m obviously saying far too much, so I will desist. Thanks for your comments.
Quoting ?????????????
There was a very succinct statement from a text book on Thomist psychology given in this post here. It is a clear statement of ‘hylomorphic’ (form and matter) dualism. Actually you might notice that directly above that post, I am in total agreement with Metaphysician Undercover on the key point of the whole thread. The key phrase in this passage is:
That reflects the Aristotelian version of the Platonic forms, which are said to be imperishable and are perceived by ‘the intellect’ directly, in a way comparable to how the grasp of rational truths are apodictic. (Lloyd Gerson gives the example ‘equals less equals are equal’ as a self-evident truth of logic.)
What ‘forms’ are, is of course a huge question, but the way I understand it is that the ability to understand abstract truths relies on the ability of the mind to grasp representations which signify ideas and particularly general ideas, i.e. ideas that operate universally. Within that context, I understand ‘universals’ in the same way they are usually explained in text books i.e. ‘a universal is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, universals are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things.’ But I also think that mathematical entities such as natural numbers are types of universals. So by universals, I mean numbers, natural laws, conventions, grammatical structures - all of which require the activities of a rational mind. We are, as the Greeks said, ‘the rational animal’, and reason works because it perceives universal principles.
So the above passage is saying that the ‘corporeal senses’ perceive the particular qualities of individual things (accidents) while the intellect grasps its type, its essence.
As for substance - that is a bearer of attributes; it is ‘always a subject, never the predicate’. The original term for ‘substance’ was ‘ousia’ which is nearer in meaning to our word ‘being’ than what we think of as ‘substance’ nowadays.
The difference between hylomorphic dualism and Cartesian dualism is that the latter depicts ‘res cogitans’ as something which exists separately from the physical, as a kind of self-existent substance that exists in its own right. The earlier forms of dualism doesn’t depict it in those terms, as they are not conceived of as existing separately. ‘The soul is the form of the body’, I think is one of the doctrinal sayings of Aristotelianism.
The key point I’m trying to elucidate is that the aspect of the mind that sees meaning, and is capable of abstract reasoning, is not something that can be explained in physical terms, because the objects of such judgements, be they mathematical, or be they judgements of kind and type, are not themselves physical. I often use numbers as paradigmatic cases. When we count, we’re performing a rational operation by which we discern a truth which is common to all who are capable of counting, but which can only be grasped by such a mind. That is why logical and mathematical laws mean something - precisely because they have a common meaning, to all who think. You can’t choose what ‘7’ equals, or how many sides a triangle has. That is where I differed strongly with Metaphysician Undiscovered, who keeps insisting that such ideas only exist in individual minds. I say they are independent of individual minds, but are still mental in nature, as they can only be grasped by a rational intelligence. Hence, ‘objective idealism’.
Clearly scientific reasoning relies on mathematical thinking - I think that’s impossible to dispute. But what kinds of things are numbers? How do they exist? That is the exact question that the passage from Aristotle was about and one of the central questions of Platonic realism. Platonists generally say that numbers are real - both Frege, and Godel were Platonic realists. But a number - say, the number 7 - is not an existing thing, as it can only be grasped by a mind capable of counting. So it’s an ‘intelligible object’. That is the point of Platonic realism, as far as I understand it. And if Platonic realism is correct, then the fundamental objects of the Universe are not necessarily material in nature - they might be ‘more like Platonic ideas’, in Heisenberg’s comment.
Augustine on Intelligible Objects
The theory of natural selection, which Aristotle and Plato didn't know about when making their explanations, brings human beings and their ideas fully into the natural world. It seems quite obvious that, if humans are products of the natural world and their ideas are influenced by and in turn influence the natural world, then they are part of the natural world.
The whole idea that humans are apart from the natural world is based on the preliminary explanations of the world and our place in it where we didn't have access to the scientific knowledge we have today. Humans are inherently self-centered and believed they were specially created by a god. They believed in being a separate creation, apart from nature. They believed in souls, which is really just the hard problem of consciousness. All this forms the basis of this original contention between religion and science - between idealism and realism. The division isn't necessary anymore thanks the the theory of natural selection. It brings us all together into one reality - the natural one.
How can you say that the two ways of using "same" has never been at issue? My argument, from the beginning has been that the conclusion of your argument follows from an equivocation of those two distinct ways of using "same", though my way of expression may not be the clearest. I don't deny your right to use "same" in the way you do, I just question what it means. This is the first line from my first post to you: Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So, do you understand the difference between these two ways of using "same"? One way is to say that two things are the same "qualitatively", that by reference to some quality or qualities, they are the same. This is what I call "same" based in similarity. The other way of using "same", what Sanford calls "numerically" the same, is to say that they are one and the same thing, what I call the very same.
At my table I have four chairs, and all four are the same chair, qualitatively, because they are members of the same set. But I sat in a different chair yesterday from today, because they are not the same numerically. I can only say that I sat in the same chair (numerically) if it is the very same chair, even though they are all the same chair, qualitatively.
Quoting Wayfarer
While I was trying to explain to you the two different ways of using "same", and produce my refutation of your argument on the charge that you equivocate, you just kept reasserting "it is the same information", and "you are obfuscating".
Now that you are fully acquainted with, and understand the two distinct ways of using "same", are you ready to analyze the argument, to see in what sense "same" is used in the premise, and to see in what sense "same" must be used to draw the conclusion, and determine whether there is equivocation? Perhaps we may come to an agreement.
So, when you say that two distinct sentences say "the same" thing which way is "same" used? It appears to me, like it must be used in the qualitative sense. The meaning can't be identified as the very same (numerically) because there are slight differences which we ignore as accidental, in order to claim that the meaning is the same. Nor can we produce a temporal continuity from one instance of meaning to another, (as we can with the chair), to say that it is numerically the same. Do you agree that "same" is used here in the way that Sanford calls "qualitative"?
They are used to communicate the same information: ‘three-masted ship, Greek, arrives after noon’. Irrespective of which language is used, or which system of communication, the information remains the same. So, not the numerically the same, but the meaning remains the same.
It doesn’t mean some other type of ship, arriving in the morning. That message would be ‘similar’ insofar as being about the same type of thing, but it would be a different message. And in such a case it would be wrong. (“Schulz! You said Danish[/I]! The ship is [i]Greek!’)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The whole point of the idea is that the obvious differences in the way the information is represented, don’t effect the message which is being transmitted. The argument is that the information content must be separable from the representation in order for this to be the case.
It is ‘the same information’ because no matter how it is represented, it always means the same thing. The meaning is determinate. Because of the kind of example it is, there is not a lot of room for equivocation or mis-translation. Obviously in a much more complex matter, then the information that is translated or transmitted by various means, might not be exactly the same - errors might creep in. But that is still not really germane to the point.
The question asked at the outset was: in such cases, what differs, and what stays the same? It is meant to illustrate a simple but important point. And once the principle is established, it has many implications - it is an argument for a form of dualism, because it illustrates that the meaning-content, which is what the rational mind of the human is able to discern, is separable from the physical form i.e. the representation.
Now, I readily acknowledge that my style of argumentation is idiosyncratic and that I am inclined to large leaps of logic and topic, which have been reasonably criticised by yourself and others. I’m taking that on board and will attempt to express myself in a more disciplined way. However, in this case, I don’t see any need to concede that ‘the information is not the same’.
(Incidentally, the Edward Feser blog article about triangularity was taken from Some Brief Arguments for Dualism, Part IV. His comments on the determinate nature of universals are extremely relevant to this thread.)
So you impute free will to all entities then?
In any case, I would say that even in a case where free will is operating there could be no prior form (independent of the constraining present internal and external existential conditions which you have said constitute an entity's essence) which determines what an entity will become: because if there were then that so-called freedom would be determined by that prior form and not by itself; freedom cannot be freedom if it is determined by something apart from, and prior to, itself; it must be thought as causa sui.
Or are you claiming that this form is free will? If so, the ideas of something formed and something free do not seem to mesh together very well. So, it remains entirely unclear to me as to exactly what you are trying to say here.
Also, why must an act of free will be "an immaterial cause" if the the physical is not deterministic?
If you allude to your experience, I can respond by saying that I have an idea of the kind of experience you are alluding to. I can only do that if I have had the kind of experience you allude to. But this is not the stuff of rigorous philosophical argument which is what metaphysics must be. Nor is it the stuff of science.
It might be in line with a phenomenological approach, but remember the epoché in phenomenology; it is not appropriate to draw conclusions about the metaphysical nature of the world or reality from phenomenological analyses of experiences. The best we can hope for is clarification of what it is that we experience, in the sense of how we experience what we experience or how it seems to us. This is a matter of affection, or feeling, as I have been pointing out. It is the stuff of religion and the arts; not of metaphysical argument. You seem to be trying to dissolve the boundaries between two approaches; which I think will lead to the dissolution of both approaches
If we examine the traditional conceptions of God, then we are faced with logical contradictions. Those contradictions cannot be evaded if you want to remain rigorous. I mean, sure, you can just shrug and say "God is mysterious" and move on, but that is faith ( and I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that, either, but it is not philosophical argument). In any case you have often stated that you do not believe in the traditional theistic conception of God yourself, that you are a Buddhist, so to be honest; I have no idea where you are coming from.
For me to say " I can't see how such a conception it could be true" is, to be sure not an argument, but an avowal that I can't see the philosophical way clear of the aporias which seem to be inherent in the conception in question. It is an invitation to the interlocutor to clear up my concerns, if they can; or to admit that they cannot see past them either, if they cannot.
Quoting Wayfarer
Then you need to explain how metaphysics can proceed from phenomenological analysis. If you do that then you will qualify for the Nobel prize for philosophy (oh, wait there is no Nobel prize for philosophy! :’( )
The closest anyone has come to that I would say is Heidegger, but he subsumed metaphysics to phenomenology; and rejected traditional metaphysics as "onto-theology", so his approach will not help you to realize your aspirations.
And Aristotle had the solution!
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, which was Aristotle's naturalist view as opposed to Plato's dualist view (realm of matter plus realm of forms).
But it is also important to note that Aristotle's position was not that nature is equivalent to matter (which is just to reject one horn of Plato's dualism) but, instead, that nature is hylomorphic. That is, what exists are particulars and they are an inseparable unity of matter and form.
Ethics is not determinate, just like aesthetics and metaphysics are not; but that does not stop philosophers from discussing within these disciplines. They proceed by dialectical reasoning and try to approach some truth through elimination of incoherence, inconsistencies and contradictions. Nothing in philosophy can be "anchored" to some 'final authority' because the very idea of final authority is anathema to philosophy. What you are looking for belongs to theology; where authoritative starting premises are taken on faith, and reason works within those bounds.
Not for want of trying on my part.
You need to try to give a coherent, consistent account, if you want others to understand your standpoint. I don't think you have attempted to address my questions with any such account. if you think there is anything you have said in the way of an actual cohesive argument that I have failed to address then please point to it, otherwise I think wer'e done.
OK, so the meaning is not numerically the same, then I assume you use "same" in the qualitative sense. This means that there is some difference between the two things which are being called the same, they are not one and the same, in the sense of numerically the same. Do you agree?
Quoting Wayfarer
But since there is some difference between the two things which are referred to as "the same", then we need to account for this difference. Why would this difference not be due to the (physical) way which the information is represented?
Quoting Wayfarer
The information, in its various different forms of representation, doesn't mean exactly the same thing, the very same thing, in the sense of numerically the same. It means the same thing in the sense of qualitatively the same. Therefore there are still differences, accidentals. We need to explain the existence of these differences, and how else can we do that without considering the possibility that the differences in the physical medium are responsible for this. If the information were the same in the sense of numerically the same, we wouldn't need to consider the physical existence of the information, the very same information would come through different media. But the information is not the very same, it is qualitatively the same.
So I think that if the information could exist completely independent of any physical medium, it would appear in any physical medium as the very same information, numerically the same. But since the information is in some way dependent on the physical medium for its existence, it cannot switch from one physical form to another without some sort of change in itself.
\
In other words, if it were purely immaterial, like the soul is believed to be, it could change from one physical form to another, maintaining its identity as the very same soul, numerically the same, despite having a completely different body. So take myself for instance, my soul had a different physical body when I was a baby, from what it has now that I am grown. But it's still the very same, numerically the same soul, now, as it was then. "The soul" serves as the underlying actuality, the underlying form, which allows me to say that I am the very same person which I was earlier. But "the soul" is not information. And "same" is used in the other way when referring to information. There is no single actuality which underlies all the different instances of the same information. This is evident from the fact that to be actual, information requires that it be interpreted. The act of interpreting gives the information its actuality, but this is carried out by an intellect which is independent from the information.
Quoting Janus
No, I don't impute free will to all entities. You disagreed with the logical argument that the form of a material object is necessarily prior to the material existence of that object with the claim that it makes things deterministic. I showed how it is not inconsistent, with free will, because the form could come from a freely made decision. This does not mean that the form of every material object is derived from a free will decision. It is possible that the form of every object comes about from a freely willed decision, and that's what those who argue that the universe is created by the will of God say. Still, this does not imply that the entities themselves have free will.
It seems to me, that you are just looking for excuses to avoid the argument I presented, rather than addressing the logic of the argument itself.
Quoting Janus
No, the free choice determines that form, not vise versa. Remember, we are talking about an object coming into being. Prior to it coming into being there are no necessary internal or external conditions, because there is no object. It is only when there is an object, that it is necessary that there is an essence of that object. So by looking at an object we are inclined to describe its essence in those terms, of internal and external conditions, which it necessarily has, but prior to the object's existence, we know these as possibilities. Therefore it is evident that the form of the object which is prior to its material existence, which we know as possibilities, is fundamentally different from the form of the object which we know through its material form.
Quoting Janus
As I said, the logical argument necessitates that the form of the object is prior to its material existence. This form is not the free will, but the free will may determine this form. The human act of producing, or creating something is an instance of this. Prior to the object existing, there is no necessity of it coming into being. At the moment in time when the object comes to be the material object which it is, the moment which we call the present, what it is, is determined. At this moment the free will can act to determine what it will be.
Quoting Janus
The physical is determined, by the forms. That was the original argument. You didn't like the argument because it was contrary to your belief that determinism isn't the case. I demonstrated that this is not inconsistent with free will, so determinism isn't a problem. That the physical world itself is deterministic is not a problem because what we are talking about here is the immaterial forms, which are distinct from the physical world. The physical world consists of all things which have come into being at the present. But what was the present has already become the past, so this is entirely past time. And past time is deterministic.
Quoting ?????????????
I think he's asking, how can you say that attributes exist, in the absence of any particulars in which they're instantiated. How can there be 'whiteness', in the absence of any and all white things?
Again, I think the answer revolves around the sense in which corporeal bodies (the proverbial apples and chairs) and universals (roundness, quantity) exist.
You will notice in the earlier passage you quoted, this statement:
So here I think the argument is, that 'sensible solids' are actual physical objects, like a cube. That cube exists here in front of us. So the question is, where does the 'ideal cube' reside? Where does that exist? Does that mean we have the 'sensible' cube, on the one hand, and the 'ideal' cube, as separate entities? In which case we have a proliferation of entities! That seems very much the objection (and incidentally rather similar to Ockham's much later objection.)
This is why I quoted the passage from Russell on universals. He demonstrates that the attribute of 'being north of', exists 'nowhere and nowhen'. So the same answer can be given in respect of Aristotle's question above. To say there is an 'ideal cube' is not to say that the ideal actually exists. It is a 'noumenal object', that is, an ideal object of the intellect, that exists only in an intelligible sense, as an object of reason. But bear in mind, the term 'object' here is strictly speaking a metaphor, because if you reify it as an actual object, then you fall into the trap of asking 'where is it'. And it's not anywhere, because it's prior to, above, or transcendent to anything in time and space. Nevertheless, to understand the form is to grasp the 'idea of a cube. And that is also why it's real - even if you lived in a world where there were no actual cubes, a square, four-sided solid would always exist as a possible object, while a square circle would not.
This is why I posted the passage from Augustine on Intelligible Objects. Again, I don't know all the details of Augustine's views of universals vs Aristotle vs Plato but I sense that he is much nearer Plato's view, probably because he's a mystic. I don't think Aristotle grasped the sense of the transcendental nature of the intellectual objects, because he was not. Plato was a mystic (literally, because he was an initiate into the Mystery schools, which is what the word 'mystic' means); Aristotle was a pragmatist and an empiricist (although certainly nothing like a materialist in today's sense).
So to try and clarify, again, ask this question: does a number, say the number 7, exist? (This is not sophistry.) You will say - of course, you just wrote it. But that's only a symbol, which denotes a quantity, a numerical value. That is what the number is, and that is something that only can be grasped by a mind capable of counting; hence, an 'intelligible object'.
Here is what Augustine has to say of intelligible objects:
(Source cited previously).
The heuristic method I am working on, is that real numbers and the forms, and so on, are real in the sense of being like a blueprint towards which existing things are inevitably drawn by a kind of tropism. The Aristotelean objection to that arises because it doesn't allow for the fact that there are different levels or modes of existence. There is the mode of existence of corporeal objects, which are compound, mutable, etc (the phenomenal realm); but the mode of existence of mathematical objects and natural laws, is of a different order, in that they transcend corporeal or individual existence; they are of a higher order (the formal realm). This is the gist of Platonic epistemology as laid out in the Analogy of the Divided Line (although I acknowledge my understanding of it is revisionist.)
Now, I acknowledge I haven't dealt with those passages quoted in detail - really there's a lot in them, and it just the kind of material I know I need to study to understand it in detail. But I think the understanding of the intelligible or incorporeal nature of forms and mathematical objects, and the way in which they can be said to exist, is the key to the whole business.
Quoting ?????????????
Biologists certainly may consider man qua animal; the issues arise when biology is taken to over-ride philosophy, which happens when the abilities of h. sapiens are treated as of a piece with those of other animals. Because then it implicitly claims that reason and language and other human attributes serve only the purpose of survival, only the propagation of the genome. (This fact may 'astonish' Richard Dawkins but I find it sisyphean.) This then is regarded as 'progress', or a 'scientific discovery' when really it's nothing of the kind; by historical accident, the 'scientific, biological' account replaced the 'mythological, biblical account', and now is treated with quasi- or pseudo-religious reverence, when it philosophically it just places humans on the level of other animals, and then proclaims that this is a discovery. Anyway, that's beside the point.
Then the theory of natural selection proves that Aristotle was right as opposed to Plato?
Quoting Andrew M
What are "particulars"? Would that be similar to saying that nature is made up of "information"?
This is exactly the question which Plato addresses in The Timaeus, how eternal Ideas may relate to particulars. The question has arisen as at the heart of the critique on Pythagorean Idealism, such Idealism being supported by the theory of participation. The problem with "participation" had been exposed in The Parmenides. This is why the Neo-Platonists invert their understanding of the Forms, such that the true Form is a particular, rather than a universal, it is the One. And, the passive role of the Idea in "participation", as that which is participated in, is replaced with an active role of the One, in "emanation". The One is an active Form which emanates forth reality, rather than a passive Idea which is participated in. This allows that the relationship between the eternal One, and particular entities is a relationship of causation.
"Prove" is not the right term. Instead it is a theory that is consistent with Aristotle's natural philosophy.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Not quite. Particulars are individual things that exist (e.g., an apple, Harry Hindu, a chair). This is contrasted with universals which are common to many particulars (e.g, red things, humans, things with four legs).
Information is a universal. A relevant definition in the context of this thread would be, "What is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things" (Oxford dictionary).
Part of Wayfarer's argument, I think, is that information isn't the sort of thing you can bump into or detect with your senses. Therefore it shouldn't be considered to be part of the material world. Since information is not an illusion and also not reducible to material, it would seem to imply there is an immaterial (Platonic) realm of ideas or forms.
Aristotle would instead say that information is in the particulars (e.g., the flags being waved or the ship log book) and, as a consequence of being intelligent creatures, humans can perceive the information, or form, that is there. This is no different in principle from perceiving that the flag is red or that the ship log book has a rectangular shape, which are also formal aspects of those particulars.
For Aristotle nature is an inseparable unity of matter and form. Whereas for Plato, matter and form (or ideas) constitute separate and distinct natures.
(Y)
It is simple enough to demonstrate that information is not physical (at least certain types). We can use the Test of Imagination, as Chesterton calls it: If a thing x is imaginable without the property y, then y is not essential to x. Thus if a certain type of info is imaginable without any physical properties, then physical properties are not essential to this type of info. And this is precisely what we do when we imagine universal forms such as triangle-ness, whiteness, justice, etc. As universals have no particulars by definition, and all physical properties are particulars, then universal forms are imagined without physical properties. Therefore information regarding universal forms is not physical.
That is not to say that universal forms actually do exist without matter, but only that they can exist without matter, without contradiction.
Your logic is correct; however, we can take a shortcut when it comes to physical things, because of the law of physics that no two physical things can occupy the same space at the same time. As such, the properties of place and time are sufficient to determine if two physical objects observed are the same. And... it is also possible for universal concepts, because they have a limited quantity of essential primary properties (they may have an infinite quantity of essential secondary properties, but these are not critical in defining the concept, as previously explained).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are missing my point, as I was using my statement above merely as an analogy. My point was that we are certain of the truth of particular examples that contain the concept, such as "this is not a triangle". My hypothesis that "we already have implicit knowledge of the concept from observation" explains this phenomenon, and has not yet been refuted.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree that we can learn some concepts in school, but it does not follow that concepts are subjective. We are taught some math concepts, and yet it is clear that these concepts are objective. Besides, what about the fact that people born blind cannot apprehend the concept of redness, despite having gone to school? Remember that the essential property of redness is not "this light frequency range", which is merely its cause (and good luck explaining light), but purely this.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What is your definition of ideal? Mine is "perfection; as good as a thing can possibly be". Note that I don't mean Perfection in everything (this could only be God); only in the thing discussed. Under that definition, it is definitely possible to reach ideals. The ideal answer to 2+2 is 4, because it is as good as it can possibly be. And a 100% score on an exam is the ideal score, because there is nothing to add to reach a better score. I don't understand your example of "40% score on an exam"; what is this ideal of? Not score, because it is possible to obtain a better score.
And I think a Platonist response would be, very simplistically - what put it there? What is the origin or source of the order? Now this is not an 'argument from design', because I’m not proposing a causal sequence originating with an intentional act by a designer; the argument I would invoke is that wherever we look, we find an already-existing order, and in fact we rely on that order to explain or understand anything.
Nowadays I think naturalists believe, mistakenly, that science explains the order. But science doesn't explain that order - it assumes it. However, the question of the ‘nature of order’ is, by its very definition, 'meta-physical'; the order is physical, but the 'cause of the order' is beyond, or prior to, the forms in which the order shows up. Trace all the sequence of material causes back to the year dot, and it is said to begin at 'the singularity' (as if by magic!)
The atom, which was supposed to be the fundamental physical unit, has itself been shown to be mostly empty space, and yet many people, and even many scientists, still continue to believe that atoms are fundamental. But surely the order which precedes and informs the atoms is fundamental. Without that order, nothing could come into existence. So the order is nearer to the cause, and the atoms nearer the result. That's certainly how the various types of Platonism understand it.
How can one imagine triangle-ness without any physical properties? Isn't that exactly what triangle-ness is, a physical property?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The problem here is that space and time are not properties, so neither can place be a property. That's why motion is so difficult to understand, it's not the property of an object, it is a relationship between objects.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
How would you propose to determine the spatial-temporal location of a concept?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
How are you defining "objective" here?
And, with respect to your discussion concerning the concept of redness, all you are doing is defining "redness" in such a way to ensure that a blind person cannot apprehend the concept of redness. I disagree with this type of definition of "concept". I think that if you explain to a blind person, the concept of red, then that person can understand that concept without having to see an example of red, just like a blind person can understand the concept of triangle without having to see an example of a triangle. One needs sight to see the property "red" but not to understand the concept "red".
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Yes, your definition of "ideal" is completely different from mine. Ideal to me means perfect in conception. Therefore a thing cannot be an ideal. You define ideal as the perfect thing.
You can represent it physically, but it's an ideal object in the sense of being a geometric primitive. And surely the triangle I am just now imagining, is not physical, on account of it's a mental image.
And what, pray tell, is a 'physical property'?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
It's more that the answer, '4', is the terminus of explanation.
Remember, again, that 'an ideal form' is only perceivable by reason. It is not an image, although an image may be said to convey something about it. So the reason a physical thing cannot be an ideal, is because it's a thing, and all things are compound, corporeal, subject to decay, mutable, etc. This reflects the ubiquitous prejudice of all ancient philosophy, namely, that the material world is corrupted. In Plato, the 'real world' is the 'ideal world' which we (the hoi polloi, the uneducated, the Many) don't see, trapped, as we are, in the Cave.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How possibly could a blind person understand 'the concept of colour', when colour is a purely visual experience? (On second thoughts, don’t try to explain that.) Surely the blind can understand 'the concept of a triangle' because aside from imagining it, they can handle it, feel it, pick it up - shape is tactile. But a colour is a different matter altogether, being solely visual.
That's a particular triangle you are imagining, not "triangle-ness". I can't imagine triangle-ness without using defining words. And that's the difficulty I had with Samuel's post. Samuel was trying to separate concepts from the words which define them, such that a blind person could not conceive of a triangle because one could not see an example of a triangle. But this is not conception at all, this is imagination. Conception is much more difficulty to understand than imagination because it involves word use convention and inter-subjectivity. One cannot properly conceive of "triangle-ness", without proper word use.
This is what I believe is at the root of the question of "is information physical", word use. I believe definitions are the essence of a concept. Concepts exist as definitions and descriptions. So to understand the nature of a concept we must understand the nature of words. It is the very nature of words, that they cross the boundary between external (physical) and internal (mental), with very little change, we can perceive them clearly. There is very little difference between words imagined within one's mind, when an individual is thinking, and words heard when one is listening. we remember them clearly. What differs is the source of heard words versus words brought up in imagination. So when we consider the significance of words, what is important is the difference between the author and the auditor.
Suppose we remove the physical barrier between these two, the author and the auditor, so that we can represent information as non-physical. Let's say that words pass from your mind to my mind, and back and forth, without the medium. What exactly would the word be then? Words exist within my mind, when I'm thinking of what to say, as representations of the physical entities which I've heard. Without that physical aspect of information, I wouldn't be thinking with words, because they are something which my mind has represented from the physical realm. But what would the concept be then? Right now, concepts exist as descriptions and definitions, but without words, there'd be no such thing. That's why I think it's a mistake to insist on this idea that information is non-physical. The deeper one goes into this analysis, the more it becomes apparent that if information was non-physical it would turn out to be absolutely nothing. So in order that information has any real existence, as anything at all, we must assume that it is physical.
The procedure I prefer then, is not to deny the existence of the non-physical altogether, because we know from other arguments that despite the need to consider that information is physical, the non-physical is very real. We simply accept the reality that information is necessarily physical, and deny the non-physical existence of information. This allows us to approach information for what it really is. It is instances of the non-physical soul, making use of the physical world. We know that the non-physical soul makes use of the physical world already, because that's what the living body is, an instance of the soul making use of the physical world. And we can see that in all human endeavors, they are instances of the soul making use of the physical world.
In this light, Kant's distinction of phenomenal, and noumenal, becomes very intelligible. Kant restricts knowledge to the phenomenal realm, what we receive through our senses, information. Knowledge is phenomenal, it is produced from information, and information is what we get through our senses, it is physical. But in describing things in this way, he necessarily has to posit the noumenal to support the independent existence of what is sensed. The noumenal cannot be physical because it is what we cannot sense. So we arrive at the reality of the non-physical in another way. The non-physical supports the independent existence of the physical. Now we are faced with the task of figuring out how the non-physical soul may apprehend the non-physical noumena directly, without the use of the physical medium, information.
A blind person can understand the concept of colour through definition, description, just like one can understand the concept of triangle in this way. If conception was as you describe here, experience dependent, then we could never understand things which had just been described to us, but we had not seen. The various fields of science demonstrate that the true nature of conception is within definition, as there is much which is described and conceived of, without having been experienced.
It may (or may not) be useful to draw a distinction between Material and Physical. The triangle is certainly not material, but it can be argued that the representation of it in your mind is physical.
Physics has made this distinction for quite a while: The First Law of thermodynamics is a material law, the Second Law is a physical law. One law governs the behaviour of matter, the other the behaviour of arrangements of matter.
All information is intentional, and none of it is physical unless you really believe that Jesus put his face on a tree burl or perhaps its him on the Shroud of Turin, pareidolia.
This is the whole point of the Edward Feser article that has been discussed at great length in this thread. He makes the distinction between the form and the mental image. Once you understand the form - plane figure bounded by three intersecting straight lines - then you don’t need to imagine it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Fair comment. As we discussed about a month ago, in the A-T tradition, the ‘active intellect’ is more or less equivalent to the ‘soul’. It is the ‘rational soul’ that receives the intelligible form.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It just defies common sense that the blind understand colours, any more than the permanently deaf will fathom music.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nowhere in this thread have I denied the existence of the physical. However I will always deny the ultimacy of the physical.
Quoting tom
Although it would be pointless to argue that, because it’s plainly false.
If the representation of the triangle in your brain is not physical, then why does it take energy to create, increase the entropy of your brain, causes visible changes in a brain-scan?
You won't find an image in a brain scan, or by examining someone else's brain. Well, not an image of a triangle; you will see the traces of neural transactions. But neural processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon, are devoid of intrinsic meaning. In themselves they are simply patterns of electrochemical activity. To understand what such phenomena mean, is to impute meaning to them, to interpret them, which is an act that is always internal to the act of thought itself; it is intrinsically first-person. Meaning is imputed, it is not simply given, and it is the intellect that does that imputation. So when you imagine a triangle, your intentional representation actually drives the neural processes, not vice versa; and the way that happens is not understood by science.
(This is because of the 'neural binding problem' concerning the subjective unity of perception, which is one aspect of, or actually is, the 'hard problem of consciousness'. I'm sure this is one of the reasons why serious doubts have emerged about the interpretation of fMRI data.)
Well I literally said that the "representation of it in your mind is physical". You seem to be claiming that representation can be physical, but meaning can't, as if representation is somehow easy and meaning isn't.
Even computer representations of geometric objects must be interpreted by computer programs and given meaning.
Quoting Wayfarer
And I was literally expecting to see an actual triangle in a brain-scan. How disappointing!
That's like what I'm claiming - representation is one thing, and meaning another; it's a form of dualism. And the interpretation done by computers is only meaningful because they are in turn interpreted by humans; data has no intrinsic meaning to computers.
//ps//although now I read your original comment again, I took it to mean that the image is nothing other than the physical representation.//
This is a definition, composed of words. Did you read what I said about the relation between the concept, and words? If understanding the form of triangle, is apprehending this, "plane figure bounded by three intersecting straight lines", then how does one understand the form without imagining the words? And as I explained, the words in our mind are just representations, images, of the physical words.
Quoting Wayfarer
But we're talking about understanding concepts here, not about experiencing sensations. The deaf can understand all the principles of music just as easily as the non-deaf. And even though the deaf person cannot hear music, the deaf person could play music. I'm sure you recognize that there is a difference between understanding a concept, and experiencing various sensations. As you've been saying, sensation is of the particular, while the concept is universal. It's true that when concepts are formed, we may abstract from particulars, but once a concept is formed, and has become common knowledge, it is taught by one individual to another. Learning the concept is what is called understanding.
So understanding is not necessarily a process of abstracting from particulars, it may be a process of being taught an already existent concept. Sensing particular instances, such as being shown examples of triangles, is helpful, but not necessary in order to understand the concept. That's what Plato meant when he said intelligible objects may be apprehended directly by the intellect. However, as I indicated in my last post, there is the matter of the words, which still has to be sorted out.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's not pointless, and here's the point. As you said, the triangle exists in your mind as "plane figure bounded by three intersecting straight lines". These are words, and even in your mind words are simply representations of physical things. So by saying that the triangle is represented by words, rather than a mental image of a triangle, doesn't get us away from a physical representation. We just go to a different type of physical representation, words instead of a figure.
I think there may be a need to draw a finer distinction. What do you think:
Representation - the physical encoding of an idea.
Meaning - the physical encoding of how to interpret the representation.
Quale - the subjective sensation of the act of giving meaning.
If it could be argued that the Quale was not physical, i.e. it was independent of matter, encoding, and interpretation, well, that would be very interesting, unless of course you posit some sort of spirit realm, which seems a very boring idea.
If the Quale (or the Meaning) is not physical, then how do we Represent them?
Meaning isn't physical - the interpretive act is internal to thought. It's first person, although not necessarily 'subjective' in the sense we usually intend that word, 'pertaining only to oneself'. There are shared domains of meaning which are, therefore, 'inter-subjective'. But they comprise conventions and agreements between humans, in other words, they're dependent on the imputations which we agree with.
Mathematics provides a means to arrive at quantifiable, inter-subjective agreements, because by measuring according to agreed units and standards, a result can be derived which is common to all observers; something which is obviously fundamental to modern scientific method.
I don't much care for 'quale' or 'qualia', as I see it as technical jargon. But I will say that interpreting meaning is not a sensation. When you understand a mathematical expression, there is no sensation involved - unless you've just made a new discovery, or are pleased with what you have discovered. But apprehending a rational idea is not a sensation; sensation is largely physical, the exchange of ions across membranes. Reflecting on sensation may not be, as it involves abstraction.
Quoting tom
Can you see the hangover of Cartesian dualism in that comment?
Quoting tom
By the means appropriate to the subject. Science uses scientific and mathematical notation; poets deploy verse; painters use colour and texture; and so on. But always, there's an interpretive act going on; the mind is making something out of what it sees.
How can information be detected if not by means of the senses.? It is true that you cannot "bump into" information; it is not a physical object. You cannot bump into gravity, neither is it a physical object; does it follow from that fact that gravity is not physical?
How can "how to interpret the representation" be anything other than what is in the mind of the interpreter? And this is non-physical.
How do you know that? Is it nothing more than a matter of definition?
But in the world objects engender other objects in various ways, and the forms those engendered objects take seem to be determined by invariances that we call "physical laws". Objects don't just pop into existence out of nothing. Also, we were speaking about the future states of present objects and entities not only about newly created objects and entities .
Even if the forms of entities were exhaustively determined by God's will as in Leibniz's Monadic metaphysics; why would there need to be a determining immaterial form in between God's act of will and the actual, physical forms of the entities?
If that is the case, how can the codes TAA, TAG, and TGA mean STOP in DNA encoding and UAA, UAG, UGA mean STOP in RNA encoding?
Quoting Wayfarer
But "making something out of what it sees" is a physical act requiring energy and an increase in entropy. Computers can do this, otherwise they could not do facial recognition, or win at chess, or drive a car.
Organisms are cases where meaning takes physical form; organisms are not only physical; they embody a level of organisation which is more like language or meaning, than anything describable in purely physical terms; hence the effectiveness of biosemiotics. It’s also the sense in which DNA carries morphic information - it encodes the ‘meaning’ of the organism. (Whether DNA is the functional equivalent of the Aristotelian ‘essence’ is a very interesting question. Also see What do organisms mean?, Steve Talbot, for an extended essay on some of these ideas.)
Computers can do what they’re programmed to do, but it doesn’t mean anything to a computer. A computer will win a chess game - I play computer chess all the time on my iPhone - but it doesn’t have any experience of winning. It’s simply executing an algorithm.
There are ideas that are not at all 'detectable by the senses', i.e. in pure mathematics and many other forms of abstract reasoning and logic.
As far as everyday experience is concerned, of course sensations are received, but the discussion is mainly about the interpretation of meaning. If you see a sign in a language you can't understand, then you receive the same physical sensations as the person standing next to you, who can - but you don't know the meaning, obviously.
Due to the pervasive influence of philosophical empiricism, I think nowadays we're all inclined to accept the Humean notion that 'all knowledge begins with experience'. But interestingly, in the discussion of Thomist theory of knowledge, the relationship of sensation and intellect is interpreted differently:
I am working on the idea that language is implicitly a kind of 'universal' in that symbols represent entire classes of things, and not just this or that thing. That maps against Chomsky's ideas of there being a universal grammar, which is a kind of intellectual structure which humans alone possess, which make the acquisition of language possible. Whereas, if the empiricists were correct, and we literally born as a 'blank slate', then that system wouldn't be there primed and waiting to learn to speak.
Quite!
How do you represent a number to yourself if not by a symbol derived from an auditory or visual representation?
Quoting Wayfarer
The bare "sense datum" might be, in principle, thought to be the same in both cases; but I would say that the body of the person who understands, for example, the written sentence would experience different sensations than the person who does not. I'm not clear what you mean to show by this example in any case.
All this really says is that what we know via the senses are particulars and what we know in thought are generalities. No one can sensibly deny this, whether they are empiricists or not. A particular cannot be known as a particularly without knowing what it is in general, or in other words what kind of thing it is; and a generality cannot be known as a generality without prior knowledge of particulars; so I would say that knowledge of things and kinds of things is utterly codependent, and neither kind of knowledge is prior. This must even hold for animals because they can obviously distinguish and recognize particular things within their environments.
Quoting Wayfarer
It seems obvious that some animals can recognize classes of things (although they are probably not self-reflectively aware they are doing it), so the ability to 'proto-generalize' must be prior to language, and indeed it would seem to be impossible to learn language without that ability. Animals that cannot learn language probably don't possess the physical or neural requisites. Don't you believe that humans are descended for pre-linguistic hominids? If that is true then it seems most plausible to think that language abilities have evolved.
Right from the beginning of this thread it has been acknowledged that the representation is physical. But number is not - it's a rational operation, a mental act.
Quoting Janus
It was in response to 'the detection of information'. Certainly the senses play a part, but the interpretation of the information is not sensory, but intellectual.
Quoting Janus
It says rather more than that, really. Universals are more than simply 'generalities'. The ability to understand universals is central to the ability to abstract and represent ideas, which in turn is fundamental to language and rational thought generally. And that is something more than what animals are able to do; the communicative and cognitive abilities of animals can be accounted for in terms of stimulus and response. This point was discussed earlier in the thread, with reference to a book by Chomsky, 'Why Only Us', which distinguishes animal and human communications with the former being linear, and the latter being based on hierarchical syntax. An hierarchical syntax is required for speech proper which is able to communicate intentionality, temporality, and for generative grammar.
Quoting Janus
It is really not as simple as that; I don't think the question of 'the problem of universals' is amenable to being disposed of in a single sentence.
It seems the rational act of grasping a number is the mental act of representing it to yourself; what else could it be? How else can you think 'five' other by mentally hearing the sound 'five' or imagining the symbol '5'?
Quoting Wayfarer
It's not clear to me how you know the interpretation is not a physical act, an act of inner, rather than outer, sense? You wouldn't be able to do it if you were brain dead, or even significantly fucked up on drugs, surely?
I believe I understand the issues. I have been trying to address your arguments by asking questions that suggest different hypotheses than yours to explain the data you present in support of them. From my perspective you are not interested in addressing alternative possibilities; which is disappointing because to do so would be the scientific approach. It seems that because I offer alternatives you say I don't understand the topic, or I argue only on the basis of "what I reckon". What "constructive criticisms" of your position have others offered, how have you taken them on board and how has it modified your position?
I don't base my feeling of rapport with others on whether they agree with my philosophical ideas but on what experiences or kinds of experiences we have in common, and how openly and honestly we can speak about them. I don't believe you have been paying much attention or giving much thought to what I have saying to you at all, probably because it is simply not what you want to hear. You do seem to be able to deal better with "argumentativeness' from others. I don't know why exactly this is; perhaps it is because you feel I have betrayed the rapport you used to feel. It is true that at one time, when I first began to participate on philosophy forums I thought pretty much as you seem to think now, and I used to offer very similar arguments (and so I understand how you think and your arguments very well); but I have since altered my standpoint somewhat.
Actually I had decided not to respond to your posts any more since my responses seem to aggravate you, and I believed that you would not respond to mine for the same reason; but you did, and so here we are again. :-}
How would you imagine a universal triangle that is not a particular kind of triangle, namely scalene, isosceles or equilateral?
I think that fails Chesterton's test.
So maybe you're thinking of the definition of a triangle (e.g., a plane figure with three straight sides and three angles). And, yes, we can think coherently about that. But the definition is not separable from particulars either, whether the human being that thinks about it or the books that contain it.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, order (or, in a deeper sense, causality) is necessary to explain anything. But note that those terms are also universals and so are also grounded in observable particulars. There is no view from nowhere.
While classified as metaphysics, Aristotle expected his own cosmological argument to be evaluable on natural and empirical grounds.
Quoting Janus
What we detect with our senses are particulars - we see the flags and the person waving them, the log book, and so on, but we don't literally see information. To detect it requires the capability of abstracting over those particulars.
Quoting Janus
Like information, gravity is a physical abstraction. What we actually feel is the ground beneath us (as it accelerates towards us).
Yes, certainly it's obvious that we don't "see" information, and that we need to be able to generalize ( in fact we need to be able to do that even to see the particulars as anything at all let alone as signs) and I already stated that myself.
Quoting Andrew M
Right, again you are agreeing with what I said, which was that gravity is not directly experienced by the senses.
But you haven't addressed the point of what I said; which is the question as to why we should not therefore think of gravity as 'non-physical". Gravity is considered by physicists to be more than merely "a physical abstraction". There is even a search for 'gravity particles', referred to as gravitons. Neuroscientists believe they have already found 'mind particles'; they refer to them as neurons. (Of course they are not fundamental since they are cells composed of more fundamental particles, but what if there were fundamental mind particles, would we then say that mind is non-physical?).
Surely it's not definitions. I don't interpret according to definitions in my mind. I might consult a dictionary if I have difficulty interpreting, but even the words in the dictionary need to be interpreted, and I do this without consulting definitions.
Quoting Janus
How is a physical law anything other than an immaterial Form?
Quoting Janus
Because this is what the evidence shows us, that there are immaterial Forms between God's act of will and physical objects. They may be what you call physical laws. If material objects must obey physical laws, then there must be a reason for that. The reason is the will of God. We cannot observe God's act of willing, just like we cannot observe a human act of willing, what we observe is things behaving in such a way as to demonstrate that there is an act of will behind the behaviour of those things. When I see a human being walking down the street, I am not observing an act of willing, I am observing a physical thing behaving in a way which demonstrates an act of will behind that behaviour. The act of willing is not itself observable.
OK, when you say something is immaterial, or non-physical, what exactly do you mean? merely that it is not an object of the senses, or something else?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What we refer to as "physical laws" are observed invariances of physical processes. Things seem to reliably behave in certain ways, and we call these ways 'laws of nature'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So, if the 'laws' are observed invariances of action of physical objects and processes, and those invariances are caused by, or reflect, the will of God or the will and/or the nature of the objects and processes themselves what else is required? Why do we need "immaterial forms"?
Yes, I would say that immaterial, and nonphysical, refer to things that are not capable of being sensed, so they don't have what we would call spatial-temporal existence, and are not understood by the laws of physics.
Quoting Janus
So we have inductive conclusions about the way things behave, and they are laws of physics. Do you assume that there is something real behind these laws, corresponding to them? Or are they completely imaginary? Is there a reason why we can describe the behaviour of physical things according to laws? If so wouldn't you agree that whatever this is, it would be non-physical?
Quoting Janus
"Observed invariances" is ambiguous. It could refer to the description made by the observer, and it could refer to the thing being "observed". Of course the use of "observed" means that it really refers to the description made by the observer. So we must posit also, a thing which is being "observed". By positing this other thing, we allow for differences, discrepancies, between the "observed invariances" and the thing being "observed". This allows for the fact that we sometimes have error in our descriptions.
Note, that "observed invariances" in the case of physical laws, refers to the activities of things. It is invariances in activities. So when I say that there must be a corresponding "thing" which is being "observed", it is not the physical things which are active, that I am referring to, it is invariance in that activity which is the "thing" which is being "observed". Invariance in activity must be a real thing which is somehow "observed". This "thing" is immaterial, non-physical. Physicalists seem to have difficulty grasping this. The key to apprehending this might be to realized that "observed" is not the best word to use here. Invariance is concluded from inductive reasoning, it is not directly "observed". So we must posit the existence of a "thing", which is not directly observed, but its existence is necessitated by the conclusions of inductive reasoning which can only be true (in the sense of correspondence) if it exists.
And although information, ideas, concept are material, their essence is not to be understood through the material quality reducted from matter.
You cannot understand the meanings of a famous painting through the chemical constituency of the molecules of pigment that it is made of.
Take two sculptures; Venus De Milo and Da Vinci's David. Bother are made of exactly the same substance; marble. What is different about them is their structural form.
When I read information in a book, me neural matter changes in structure to accommodate that information. The transfer of information is not always perfect but I can often repeat what I have understood. And whilst you can make a fake David, there is only one original.
When I die all that structuration ends, back into its constituent parts.
Sorry for yet another delayed reply.
This is where the real distinction between essence and existence in the order of finite being again comes to the fore. In Thomistic philosophy, God is the one ultimate, unitary act of the existence - indeed, this is His very essence. For every other being, its essence, or its "what-ness", is other than its existence. As such, the very essence of me, you and every other finite being is radically distinct from what God essentially is, even as we would not exist without participating in His very being. All things are essentially other from God, and yet could not exist apart from God. We participate in God's essence via our very existence, but we are essentially distinct from God.
Quoting Janus
I hear what your saying, but the response is going to be that God is the one infinitely and eternally good act of pure love and beauty. He never changes from being exactly that, because he never changes at all.
Given this, what does it mean to say that God could enter into a loving relationship with finite beings such as us? I think the answer here will be something along these lines: God sustains finite/temporal existence as ultimate cause via His unitary act of existence. Everything that unfolds temporally in our experience finds its genesis in that single, unitary act. As such, our experience of God will always manifest temporally/sequentially. On this account, it's as if God has weaved interactive manifestations/representations of Himself into the temporal fabric of finite reality through his unitary act of creation.
Quoting Andrew M
Doesn't "what is represented or conveyed by a particular arrangement or sequence of things" relate to the cause of "what is represented or conveyed by a particular arrangement or sequence of things"?
What is represented or conveyed by the particular arrangement of dark scribbles on a black screen that I'm looking at now when reading your post? Isn't it your ideas in your head, and your intent to communicate them?
Doesn't the red color of the apple convey or represent it's state, as the apple could be black which represents another state (ripe vs rotten)?
Doesn't the red color of the apple not only convey or represent the state of the apple, but also the state of the light and the state of your visual sensory system? Did Aristotle understand how vision works?
Quoting Andrew M
If information isn't the sort of thing you can "bump into, or detect with your senses", then how is that you know anything about the world at all? How is it that the text on this screen got there in the first place for me, or Wayfarer, to read it? How did it go from being an idea in your head, to text on a screen, to the conveying of your ideas to Wayfarer and me? How did your ideas get from your head to ours without using something "physical" to convey it?
Why are the flags being waved? Why is there a log book? The answers are all related to causation. If your information is still there in the log book after everyone living creature is dead, does the log book still contain information?
I finally read this. It was good, and on par with my position; not too surprising as Feser and I are both catholic. And... I once again used the wrong term in my posts when it comes to 'imagination'. I used the term generally to say "thinking about the concept", where as Feser uses it strictly to say 'mental image' or 'physical visualization in the mind'. This may have been one of the sources of confusion throughout the discussion, such as this one.
Particular objects participate in triangle-ness due to their specific physical properties, but the concept triangle-ness itself is not made of physical properties, as demonstrated in my previous argument. Also, see the response below in case of confusion about the term 'imagination'.
Quoting Andrew M
As I read up on this stuff, I see now that I was using the term 'imagination' incorrectly. I indeed meant to say "thinking coherently" about the concept, and not "having a physical visualization in the mind". This may have created some confusions; my bad. So the fact that we can think coherently (without contradiction) about a thing that contains no particular shows that such thing is not essentially made of particulars.
I am not sure what you mean, Andrew, regarding "the definition is not separable from particulars either". Could you clarify?
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think that an image being mental demonstrates that the image is non-physical. For one thing, mental images are particulars. Do you have a reason to believe it to be so?
Great! Well if you have a mental image which is physical, please mail it to me, I'd like to see it.
"whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind."
First, this seems to be a tautology because likely the definition of "finding information" and especially "information existing" is related to something in the physical form. And a stubborn person would stick simply to this. And likely make a whimsical conclusion that information is thus physical.
Yet if we let's say find a thrown away hard-drive having something written on it, the whole piece itself gives us far more information than just what is written on the hard drive. Information like for what kind of Computer basically the hard-drive is for. Just like a historical artifact found by a archeologist can have far more information than just the actual physical object itself has. Where an artifact is found gives a lot of information when we can bind it to other information.
Besides, I have decided that what I'm really arguing for is that 'ideas aren't physical'. But that sounds kind of weak - many will say 'we knew that already', others will say 'maybe, but the brain is physical, so ideas are too'. But my view is, I hope, a bit more radical than that - information of any and all kinds, really isn't physical at all, but is only represented physically. This has lead to quite an interesting digression through the history of philosophy and especially Platonist and Aristotelian ideas about universals.
Quoting ssu
Quite right. That's meta-data - information about the hard drive.
The real question then, concerning the nature of information, is whether "information" refers to the physical representation, or the thing (idea, concept etc.) which is being represented. Common usage indicates that "information" may be used in both ways, each being equally acceptable. Then the entire thread is just an exercise in ambiguity.
This ambiguity manifests as a real problem in metaphysics which assume information is physical, but not a representation.
Agree! It's the ambiguity which makes it interesting.
Well, if unintelligible or meaningless information is nothing but the arrangement of physical parts in a certain way, then I can definitely mail such info from a mental image: Say I have a mental image of this. I transpose this info on paper, and voilà. And the same can be done with the mental image of a particular triangle, so long that it does not serve to symbolize the concept of triangle-ness. I.e., an animal can have the same mental image when observing a picture of a particular triangle, without understanding the concept of triangle-ness.
As far as I can tell, the hypothesis of info being nothing but arrangements of physical parts seems adequate, when concepts are not involved.
There’s an interesting concept of ‘information entropy’ which comes out of information theory. It has to do with how likely a particular string of characters is to occur. If it’s structured in such a way that it contains information, then it’s low entropy; if it’s random, then it’s high entropy, and furthermore it doesn’t make any difference if the order is preserved in transmission, because random is random. So your image, being random, conveys or conforms to no particular form.
So isn’t ‘unintelligible information’ a bit of a misnomer? If it is structured in such a way as to convey or encode meaning, but you don’t understand the code or language, then it’s unintelligible to you, but it might not be unintelligible tout courte. Whereas if it is literally random characters, then it’s not information at all.
Also, I don’t know if animals have mental images nor that it would be possible to find out if they do.
This seems inconsequential, because a relative property is still meaningful, so long as the standard is the same for all things. If I describe the dog I see as being at the intersection of streets A and B at time T, everybody understands the description of the location, so long as streets A and B don't move.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Easy: They have none. My position is that non-physical things don't occupy physical spaces. I thought this was a generally accepted claim. Where would the claim that "all things have a spacial-temporal location" come from?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Part of reality, independent of a subject. As such, math concepts are discovered and unchangeable. We cannot simply decide that "1+1=3", even if everybody agreed to do so.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Alright, but I admit I am not sure what the difference is between "perfect in conception" and simply "perfect". It seems that if a thing is perfect, then its conception cannot be more perfect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A fair point. I reply that it is true, that if we have never experienced basic concepts of shapes, colours, sounds, tastes, and feelings, such as, triangle-ness, redness, a music note, sweetness, and coldness, then we could never understand more complex concepts made from basic concepts, such as house, horse, sun, or law. But if we do apprehend the basic concepts from experience, then I think we can apprehend complex concepts composed of basic concepts, without experiencing them. E.g., I have never observed a chiliagon, but if it is defined as "a polygon with 1000 sides", then I can apprehend it, because I already apprehended the concepts 'polygon', '1000', and 'sides'.
I understand your point.
And of course the physicalists usually tend to go for their classic strawman argument that you are implying that ghosts exist. Which shows how they think about the whole question.
I think one perspective is that it's all about just what kind of questions we ask: we have to have abstract concepts like mathematics, but also the concept of information, in order to answer more complex questions about reality.
If you can only convey the mental imagery in your head to others by converting it into a physical format, like the screen with letters on it that you see before you, for others to then receive, then doesn't that show that information is physical? How do you get the information in your head to others, and before anyone reads your post does your post contain information?
I don't think that is adequate. If information is the arrangement of physical parts, then there must be a reason for that particular arrangement being the particular arrangement which it is in order that we can say that it is "information". It must have the capacity to inform us of something. It is the reason for this arrangement being the arrangement which it is, which allows us to say that the arrangement is information. So "information" means more than just arrangement of physical parts, it means arrangement of physical parts with reason for that arrangement.
That is why I said in my last post to Wayfarer: "This ambiguity manifests as a real problem in metaphysics which assume information is physical, but not a representation."
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I think that this is false. What different symbols represent is not unchangeable, and this is evident in evolving language. So if for some reason the ordering of the symbols which represent numbers gets changed, and this all agreed upon, such that the order is 1,3,2,4, and the symbol 3 starts to mean the same thing as 2 does now, then 1+1 would equal 3.
The point is that there is no necessity between the symbol and what it represents. It doesn't necessarily represent what it does, and this is because what it represents was somehow decided upon. Therefore the relationship between the symbol and what it represents is dependent on the existence of subjects. Since the existence of concepts seems to be dependent on this relationship between symbols and representation, we cannot simply assert that concepts are "objective" if you define objective in this way (independent of subjects).
No, those abstractions are physical whether or not there are explanations in terms of fundamental particles. We are just describing the same world at different levels of abstraction depending on our purposes, whether in intentional, qualitative or mathematical terms.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Seeing flags being waved is necessary but not sufficient to know what information is being conveyed. It also requires the ability to think abstractly.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It did require using physical means to convey it. There is no other way.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes. And that information is, in principle, discoverable by any future creature that has the ability to think abstractly.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Sure, there are the books that contain the definition and the people that know it. The definition, while abstract, is not something ontologically separate from those physical books or people. (It is also implicit in the natural world which means it is discoverable by anyone with the requisite intelligence and skills.)
It seems to me you are conflating explanations with what is being explained.
This makes sense to me from one angle. It seems right to say that all things are essentially other from God, in the same kind of way that all things are essentially other from all other things. There seems to be a function of degree operating though, because, for example, a tiger is more other from a worm than it is from another tiger. God, looked at in this way, is more other from us than all other creatures, if all other creatures are finite and temporal and God is infinite and eternal. On the other hand God is in all creatures and all creatures are in God, and in that sense it would seem that God is less other from all creatures than all creatures are from all other creatures.
For every position of God there seems to be an anti-position; which I suppose is only to be expected; an infinite and eternal being, if it is to be anything at all beyond merely an imaginary figment must in some sense, also be finite and temporal. And likewise if god is to be in us and we in God, then we finite and temporal beings must, [i]in some sense, be infinite and eternal.
[/i]Quoting Aaron R
I like this because it is quite poetic. I do wonder, though, whether our experience of God can really be temporal and sequential. It certainly is in our accounts and descriptions.
No, logically, the description cannot be the thing described.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I would tend to imagine there is something real that is being described. But I don't see why it would need to be thought to be "non-physical" in anything other than the more or less trivial senses that it is either not an object of the senses, or is not something that could be explained by physics, since physics itself presupposes it. Actually I don't think the idea of the physical is clearly definable, and if this is so, then how much less definable would be the idea of the non-physical. The ideas make a degree of sense in certain connections and contexts; but I don't believe there is any general unifying context in which they are coherent.
What I meant is that in the phrase "observed invariances" "invariance" does not refer to a property of anything at all, so it is not a description. There is no whatness of any thing which is being described, so there is no description here. "Observed invariance" refers to an inductive conclusion which is derived from numerous descriptions, it is not a description. If you were to insist on calling it a description, it is necessarily a description of numerous descriptions. So there is no "thing described".
The difference being that there is a statement being made about numerous things, not a statement made about a thing, which is a description. I can look at my lawn and describe it, saying that my lawn is green, or I could make the inductive statement, "grass is green". The latter is not a description because there is no particular thing being described, it is an inductive conclusion.
Quoting Janus
In the field of ontology, or metaphysics, how can you say that this is trivial, that there is something real which cannot be sensed, nor can it be explained by physics? Since this aspect of reality is responsible for the validity of the laws of physics, I think it's very important. How are we going to understand it if we cannot sense it and it cannot be explained by physics?
If I observe the sun to rise each morning that is an observed invariance.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but I didn't say that the thing is trivial, I said that it is referred to as non-physical in a trivial sense; which is a totally different proposition.
Can you be more specific or give an example?
An abstraction is not, by definition, physical; but what it is an abstraction from may be. So gravity is not an abstraction as you previously said it is, but is a phenomenon that may be thought of as physical insofar as its effects are observable even though it is not. My original point was to ask how mind is different than this.
Your missing something which is necessary here. You can watch the sun all you want, and not observe
any invariance. It is your logical conclusion that the sun rises each morning, which is the statement of invariance. The invariance is not observed, it is concluded.
Quoting Janus
I don't understand what you are saying. We agree there is some aspect of reality which cannot be sensed, nor can it be explained by physics, and you say that this is "non-physical" in a trivial sense. I think this is "non-physical" in a very important sense. Why do you think it's trivial, when it says that we cannot understand this aspect of reality through sense nor through physics. That seems to make a very important statement about reality and the limitations of the empirical sciences. I'm sure a physicalist would not think this is trivial, because it would mean that physicalism is wrong.
The mind is not different from this. All that exists are physical particulars and those particulars are identifiable in universal (or abstract) terms. But universals are not something additional to or separate from particulars. (This is Aristotle's immanent realism.)
In the case of mind, the particular is the person that thinks, acts and feels. The effects of a person's intentional activity are observable whether in behavior or brain activity.
So I think the distinction you are trying to draw between physical universals and non-physical universals is not a tenable one.
You seem to be misunderstnding; it is the incoherence of such a distinction that I have been arguing for both in this thread and the other. The reference to incoherence is right there in the OP.
You are employing a very narrow sense of 'observe' here. Natural regularities and patterns are observable, but obviously not in the sense that you can look at one like you might look at a tree.
To address your other objection: if there is some "aspect of reality" that we cannot observe, and that cannot be explained in the language of physics, it can only be daid that it is non-physical in the trivial definitional sense that 'physical' is taken to mean 'unobservable' and/or 'not capable of explanation in terms of physics'.
Any other sense of 'non-physical' implies dualism...or what else?
OK, then I'm not clear on what we would be disagreeing about. Do you agree that information, gravity and mind (as universals) are all physical? Which is to say, aspects of the natural world that we empirically investigate?
We've invented nuclear weapons, and calculated the age and size of the Universe, by such 'sorting and arranging.' On the basis of what is quoted, I don't find Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics at all compelling, it amounts to basically rejection of Platonic realism, without any real account of an alternative.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Again - the representation is physical, but ideas are a different matter. Notice that in physics, computer science, and many other fields, new symbols, codes and languages have been invented specifically to communicate ideas that have been discovered. At the time those insights are first glimpsed, quite often they emerge in quite incommunicable ways, or even ways that can't be articulated, and then first they have to be described, and then communicated. That is what it takes to translate them into physical representations. What does that, is the human intelligence, the mind. I am saying it is the unique ability of the mind to discern meaning - likeness and unlikeness, greater than, less than, equal to - and central to that, is the ability to recognise universals.
How did you even know that flags are being waved if a flow of information (that flags are being waved) didn't happen? It seems to me that you thinking abstractly isn't necessary for information flow. You simply need to have eyes and brain to process sensory information.
Quoting Andrew M
Thank you.
So what if the representation is "physical"?! Ideas can be representations too. You are still caught up in this false dichotomy of "physical" vs. "non-physical". I have said numerous times that this distinction is unnecessary as the "physical" and "non-physical" still interact and are causally influenced by each other. By this same token, information is both "physical" and "non-physical" as information is the relationship between cause and effect (which I have said numerous times as well).
The ability to discern meaning is not unique to the human mind. Do not other animals discern the meaning of what they are smelling - is it predator, food, a female in heat, or the scent markings of a competing male?
It is necessary to employ such a narrow sense of "observe" in order to understand the nature of the things which you call regularities, and invariances. These things are not perceived by the senses, they are produced by inductive reasoning, as conclusions.
Quoting Janus
Doesn't this sense of "non-physical" imply dualism to you? If there is an aspect of reality which cannot be sensed, nor understood by physics, then we ought to conclude that there are two distinct aspects of reality, that which is sensed and understood by physics, and that which is not. Doesn't this seem like dualism to your?
From this premise, of the two distinct aspects of reality, we can proceed using the mind, rather than the senses and the principles of physics, toward understand this other aspect of reality. If you deny the dualist premise, and the premise is in fact true, then you will never have an approach to this non-physical aspect of reality, always falsely believing that it will eventually be understood by empirical science. The non-physical will forever remain obscured to you, because you will deny the premises required to understand it, and you will act like a monist materialist, continually making false assumptions concerning this aspect of reality.
The problem with Wittgenstein's approach is that he misunderstands, and therefore misrepresents the nature of these "behavioral regularities". Behaviour regularities are represented as something which is naturally comes to us from society, rather than as something which comes about as the result of the individual's willingness. He represents it as the institutions of society naturally pass their conventions to the individual in the process of learning, as if the teacher is the agent, and the student is passive, in the process of learning. This is a misrepresentation of what is really the case, and that is that the individual through the means of intention, will, ambition, and effort, is the agent who is actively learning.
This is clearly exposed in his Philosophical Investigations, where he defines "rule-following" as observed activity which is in accordance with some standards set by society. With this definition of "rule-following" he excludes the true nature of rule-following, what really happens in a case of rule-following, which is that an individual holds a principle within one's own mind, and adheres to that principle with one's actions. The exclusion is demonstrated in the so-called private language argument.
The difference between these two representations of "behaviour regularities" has very significant ramifications. The Wittgensteinian way completely misses the role of intention and will in the act of learning. It is as if Wittgenstein gets a glimpse of intention and sees it as a vast and incomprehensible subject to approach, so he defines his terms in such a way as to completely avoid it. But the difference is this. Right and wrong, under Wittgenstein are determined by social conventions. The problem is that sometimes human knowledge is faulty and social conventions are actually wrong. In this case, then individuals need to determine the real truth, and rectify the social conventions. But this is impossible under the Wittgensteinian principles because right and wrong can be nothing other than what is determined by the social conventions. If we allow that the individual can produce a right, or a wrong, which is contrary to those of society, the whole epistemological system is undermined as contradictory.
So in Wittgenstein's system the description of how right and wrong is determined is inherently faulty. There is no way to judge the principle from which an action proceeds, as right or wrong, because we can only judge the action itself as right or wrong, in reference to the principles accepted by convention. Since only the judgement of actions is possible, and there is no way to judge principles, then the principles of convention cannot be judged as right or wrong.
Quoting Harry Hindu
As I've told you already, the fact that two things interact is not reason to deny that there is a useful distinction to be made between those two things. If you want to claim that the distinction between physical and non-physical is unnecessary, you need a much better argument than that.
Stimulus and response are different to language and abstraction.
It has been said that ‘intelligence is the ability to make distinctions’. There are some fundamental distinctions you’re failing to grasp here, although it is habitual nowadays to ignore the distinction between h. Sapiens and other animals (which is ‘sapience’, the Latin equivalent of ‘sophia’, which is wisdom, which is what philosophy is named for.)
I have not been clear that we have been disagreeing from the beginning. In our initial exchange I had thought that you were suggesting that we should think of information as non-physical, and that you were treating gravity as a mere abstraction analogous to information; but perhaps I misunderstood you.
I don't agree, though, that it makes sense to say that information, gravity and mind (as universals) are all physical. We can think of universals as either physical or non-physical, but I think such thinking is poetic, metaphorical rather than propositional. To say that universals are physical or non-physical is like saying the air is green or red. We might say in a poetic context that the air is green or red, but the question of whether it is green or red is meaningless.
In other words I don't think that the idea that universals are physical or non-physical is a proposition that could be correct or incorrect; but merely more or less useful or fruitful in different contexts. This is why I have been criticizing Wayfarer on this; because he seems to think there is some higher, unimpeachable truth of the matter regarding universals; that universals point to some 'higher, supernatural order". I don't believe any of that; I don't think there is anything like an ultimate authority or power beyond nature that could hold sway over us and our investigations.
Also I don't believe that our investigations and judgements are restricted to the merely empirical and/or propositional; I think this would be a very narrow, reductive view of human enquiry.
No, this is wrong. If you see your cat coming in every morning for her food; this is something you have observed. This habit of hers is not 'directly' in-the-moment-observed, like the cat herself is, but it also not an inference; you know she regularly comes in and eats the food you provide for her.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It might imply an inherent dualism in the way we think about things; but I don't think it implies an ontological dualism. Actually I think reality is pluralistic; there are infinitely many aspects to reality, but no two totally distinct types of aspect as you are suggesting; so I don't think as a monist would, but as a non-dualist.
Have you read Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", or "On Certainty". If so you ought to recognize what I'm talking about. Your whole quoted passage completely obscures what Wittgenstein actually wrote, with terminology like "behavioural regularities" and "behavioural agreement". Wiittgenstein wrote about following rules, learning how to follow rules, what constitutes following a rule, and consensus, not about behavioural agreement.
What is "behavioural agreement", supposed to mean, that we can describe numerous people as behaving in a similar way? Wittgenstein proposes a principle for distinguishing correct from incorrect, but "behavioural agreement" implies no judgement of right or wrong. To say "2+2=4" is correct, to say "2+2=5" is incorrect. To say that Wittgenstein represents 2+2=4 as a "behavioral agreement" rather than as "correct", is simply a misrepresentation of Wittgenstein.
It may be the case, that what Wittgenstein calls "correct", (which is derived from how he defines "rule"), is reducible to a form of behavioural agreement, but that is exactly the point I made in my last post. Under Wittgenstein's epistemology correct and incorrect, right and wrong are defined by behavioral agreement. This eliminates the possibility that behavior which everyone is doing, and everyone agrees upon (behavioural agreement), might in fact be wrong. That possibility is eliminated because "right", "correct", is defined by what everyone is doing. So if an accepted behaviour turns out to be, in fact, a bad habit which everyone is doing, it is impossible to rectify this bad habit, because it is by definition, right, correct.
You have noticed that your cat comes for food. That it comes "every morning for food" is an inference. Your sense observations, along with your memory, can only tell you that you have observed your cat coming time and again. That there is some sort of pattern, or regularity to your cat's activities is an inference.
Quoting Janus
Either the dualism is inherent in reality, in which case it is ontological, or it is just a feature of the way that we describe things. Our discussion has been such that we have assumed that it is inherent within reality, therefore it is an ontological dualism. If you want to change your position now, and say that it is just a feature of how we describe things, and that it is all in our heads, imaginary, then that's a different matter completely.
No, you still have it wrong: that there has been a pattern or regularity to your cat's activities is a matter of observation: that there will be such in the future would be an inference.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What have I said that entails that I must think that? I don't agree with any notion that any way we might be able to think is just "all in our heads". Nature (including us) is such that we can think dualistically (among other ways of thinking); and from that it certainly does not follow that nature is, in some purportedly absolute ontological way dualistic (or monistic). I think what follows is that nature is non-dualistic or pluralistic; it has infinite, and infinitely many, aspects.
Consider that every time your cat comes for food you look at your clock, and calendar, and make a note. After some duration you have a lot of notes. You can look over your notes and state specific times that the cat came, but you cannot claim that the cat's appearance is a pattern, or regular, unless you apply some principle of what it means to be regular, and deduce, from your notes that the cat's appearance fulfills these conditions of regularity. Clearly it is a matter of inference.
Quoting Janus
What we have been discussing is the premise that one aspect of reality is physical, and another is non-physical. You claimed that this was a trivial form of dualism. I demonstrated how it is an ontological dualism. Now it appears like you want to reject the premise, saying that it is not the case that one aspect of reality is physical and another non-physical, that this is just one way of thinking about reality, and that there is an infinite number of ways to think about reality, each just as likely to be true as any other.
No, all I have to do is remember seeing the cat come in each morning, or the sun set each evening, to know that those things have happened with an observed regularity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, what I have been discussing is the fact that we call some things physical and others non-physical, for certain reasons and in particular contexts; and whether that fact should lead us to posit ontological dualism or some other (as yet unspecified) position to the effect that there really are things which are real and yet non-physical in the sense of being ontologically independent of nature.
What is in place is the definition of what it means to follow a rule, provided by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations. Acting in a way which is judged to be in accordance with a rule, is to be right, correct. To say that two plus two equals four is to act in a way which is judged as being in accordance with a rule, and therefore is to be right, or correct.
Quoting ?????????????
This resolves nothing. Even if you represent the rule as "emerging" from uniform practise, my criticism is still relevant. Once a rule emerges, if right and wrong are relative to the rule, the rule itself cannot be wrong, because right and wrong are judged relative to the rule. If a further uniform practice emerged which was contrary to the rule, it would necessarily be wrong. So it is impossible that one rule could come to replace another rule, such that rules might evolve. Clearly, the Wittgensteinian description of the relationship between these three things, "rules", "uniform practise", and "right and wrong", does not correspond with reality at all because we observe the evolution of rules.
Quoting ?????????????
My objection is not concerning the relationship between "uniform practice" and "rule" if there is no ambiguity with "rule", and "rule" is understood as a descriptive rule. It is when a descriptive rule, which emerges from uniform practice, is suddenly claimed to be a prescriptive rule, through some sort of equivocation, that I call foul. So I'll reiterate my claim. We have a uniform practice. We have a descriptive rule which emerges from that uniform practise, "things are done this way". There is no principle here by which we can proceed to claim "things ought to be done this way". Therefore, there is no principle by which we can say that acting according to this descriptive rule is "right", or acting in a discordant way is "wrong". This is a false representation of what right and wrong are. Right and wrong are based in acting according to certain principles which have been judged, they are not based in acting according to a description of uniform practise.
It appears like we have been talking about completely different things.
That's true, but I'm not just referring to seeing the flags and that they're being waved (which, as you say, also involves a flow of information). Seeing the flags waving is presumably automatic and instinctual for humans and animals alike.
I'm instead referring to the higher-level information that is being communicated via the flag waving, namely, the ship arrival details.
Now that information is in the world as well. But to interpret and understand it requires the ability to think abstractly, it is not just an automatic sensory process.
Quoting Janus
A different way to state my basic claim is that universals (such as information, gravity and mind) are aspects of the natural world. This distinguishes it from Platonism, which posits a non-natural realm for universals, and Nominalism, which denies that there are universals.
Is that also your view of universals?
Yes I believe universals are more than merely names and I don't believe there is anything over and above the natural.
That could well be so.
Do you think ‘the domain of natural numbers’ is ‘a realm’? Because, I’m inclined to believe that it is a realm or a domain - but that those descriptions are metaphorical, as they are not in a literal place or domain. Nevertheless I think ‘the domain of natural numbers’ is a perfectly intelligible expression, even if it’s not something that exists in a spatial or temporal sense. Some things, like the integers, are included in that domain, and other things, like the square root of -1, are not.
So again, a Platonic realist view, as I would understand it, is not that natural numbers are existing things in an existing place, but that they’re real, insofar as they’re the same for anyone capable of counting. It’s possible to be wrong about maths (as I nearly always was, and failed the subject).
Furthermore, numbers are not ‘aspects of the natural world’, if by that we mean the world that is perceptible by sense, as they are only perceptible by means of reason. Given the ability to count and measure, then numbers have a wide range of application, but they’re not empirical objects. That was why I mentioned the ‘indispensability argument for mathematics’ earlier in this thread, which attempts to justify the sense in which mathematical objects are real, without appealing to traditional rationalism. The very fact that such an argument is deemed to be necessary supports the view that rational objects such as numbers are not empirical but purely intelligible in nature.
Quoting Janus
I don’t think we know enough about nature to know what might be ‘over and above’ it. Some things we take for granted now might once have seemed supernatural. In any case, the Kantian argument from such faculties as mathematical reasoning, is that reason is indispensable for the understanding (otherwise we couldn’t even pose an argument) yet the nature or source of reason is not disclosed in the facts of experience, which is what he means by ‘transcendental’; and to this extent, reason itself can’t necessarily be said to be ‘natural’, in the sense of having a natural explanation. (I do note however that nowadays it is widely assumed that reason can be explained with recourse to evolutionary biology, however I think this is highly dubious.)
I think a good deal of the resistance to that argument, is the fact that anything deemed supernatural is deemed by many out-of-bounds for philosophy. Yet that road only leads to positivism.
Kant, Spinoza and Hegel all reject the supernatural and modern metaphysics in general has no truck with it; so to say that the only alternative to the supernatural is positivism is nonsense.
Nevertheless, we agree that the container of info is physical, even if the info it contains is not. But I think that a mental image is also nothing but a container of information. After all, 'mental image' is synonymous to what I called earlier 'physical visualization', even according to Edward Feser's article.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To clarify, I was referring to information pointing to no concepts, that is, meaningless raw data, like statics from the tv set, perceived by the senses but unintelligible to the mind. Otherwise, I agree that meaningful information must be non-physical, for the reason you pointed out.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are once again confusing the symbol or word, with the concept it points to. Yes, we can change the symbols 1, 2, 3, ..., but we cannot change the concepts I, II, III, ... As such, we can make 1+1=3 if we change the symbols, but cannot make I+I=III <-- As you can see, there is one too many bar on the right side of the equation, which makes it unbalanced.
And as it is with concepts of numbers, so it is with other concepts. E.g., we can change the word "red", but the concept of red-ness will remain unchanged.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with your first three sentences. This is why there are different languages and writing symbols. However, I still disagree with your last sentence, that concepts or universal forms are dependent on that relationship. A rock participates in the form of rock-ness, even before a subject observes it or find a word or symbol for it for the first time.
Not gonna lie, I did not read your quoted paragraphs (tl;dr O:) ), but I read the above. Let's make the distinction between three kinds of reality: (1) potential, that is, not actual and contingent, (2) actual and contingent, and (3) actual and necessary. I claim that math concepts fit into reality (3). We can use Chesterton's Test of Imagination to demonstrate this.
If by definition, you mean quite literally the description of the concept, and not the concept in itself, then I agree with you. (man this topic is hard).
But in this example there's no 'info'. A random squiggle doesn't convey anything, it literally has no information content. So whether you can form a mental image of it or not, it is meaningless. The only context in which it might be meaningful, is if you found it in a place where you were looking for traces of human habitation. But even then, the content would contain no information - only the fact of its existence.
Further to Spinoza - I have been looking into his well-known phrase 'the intellectual love of God' (amor Dei intellectualis ), and it is thoroughly metaphysical, in just the same way as medieval Jewish mysticism was. (And bear in mind, the words 'metaphysical' and 'supernatural' are Greek and Latin terms, respectively, meaning the same thing.)
This is a passage from a comparison of Spinoza and the well-known Moses Maimonides, whose 'Guide for the Perplexed' was a standard text in Spinoza's day:
Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, edited by Steven Nadler, P103.
The phrase 'the intellect is invulnerable', is an exact parallel to the Aristotelian 'active intellect' that was subject of this discussion some weeks (or months!) back (indeed the essay notes that Maimonides' book is overall Aristotelian); the idea is that the 'active intellect' is the faculty which perceives the intelligible form of things; this is to all intents, a reference to 'the soul' i.e. the immortal aspect of the being. So here, 'the mind' which is 'unharmed', i.e. cannot be destroyed by the sword, is to all intents the 'immortal soul'.
I think this is very close to the naturalistic fallacy. And besides, none of the quoted passage does anything to address what has been rightly called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. One of the noticeable achievements of mathematical physics, is to discover hitherto entirely unknown, and even unsuspected, properties of matter, on the basis of mathematical symmetries and reasoning. To reduce mathematics to 'behaviours' seems comically insufficient to account for these achievements. (It's also worth mentioning, again, the considerable influence of Platonism on the development of modern scientific method, via the influence of the Italian Renaissance humanists on Galileo, among others.)
I am not claiming to have a 'theory of number', by the way. The Wikipedia entry on Philosophy of Math is long, and detailed, with many competing theories and a large number of references. I don't have a theory of maths beyond the claim that number is real, but not physical, and that it also can't be wholly understood simply in terms of human mental capacity. So my claim that at least in some respects, mathematics is discovered, even if in other respects it is the product of the imagination. I rather like the saying, God created the integers, all else is the work of Man.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverIsn't that my point - that it ISN'T useful to make such a distinction when talking about causation and information flow?
What exactly IS the distinction being made anyway, and why? If I have said that information is both "physical" and "non-physical", then what use is there to make a distinction between them? If you're wanting to simply make a distinction between different kinds, or forms, of information, then you aren't making an argument against anything I have said, as it is all still information.
Stimulus and response and language and abstraction are simply different forms of information flow. You're simply talking about different levels of causation/information flow. You haven't made an argument against anything I have said.
Quoting Wayfarer
I grasp the distinction you are making, it's just that it doesn't go against anything I have said. You and Andrew M are simply talking about different levels of causation. You are simply saying that humans can get at the deeper causal influences of what it is that they are experiencing at any moment. Humans just get at more information than other animals because we can get at the deeper causes - all the way back to the Big Bang.
You, like Wayfarer, are simply trying to move the goal-posts. I'm talking about information flow and causation. You are simply talking about different degrees, or levels, of causation and information flow.
You agreed that seeing flags is a form of information flow. This just means that the flags, the light and your sensory system are the causes of your experience of seeing flags. Seeing flags provides information about those things - the flags, light and your sensory system.
All you are saying is that there is another cause, a deeper cause, or a cause that is prior to those things. What you are saying is that some human put those flags up because they were caused by the information that some ship will arrive at port at a certain time. Some ship arriving at port at a certain time was the first cause of this sequence. That influenced some human to put a particular pattern of flags up (his education of which flags to put up are also part of this causal sequence), which then caused the experience of seeing those flags up in some one else, who then interprets the information by getting at the causal influences of what it is they are seeing. All we are doing is talking about causation and how information flows from the first cause to the final effect we are talking about at any given moment.
So you do not believe in imaginary numbers? They've become a very important part of modern mathematics, I believe they are integral to quantum equations. Issues such as "imaginary numbers" cast doubt on that "domain" which you speak of. A mathematician can make up a principle, an axiom, simply because it is useful for some purpose. It may then get used and accepted by others. Whether that axiom is a "true" principle and ought to be accepted as part of that domain of mathematical objects is another question. If we cannot distinguish which mathematical objects are part of that domain, and which are not, then what supports the assumption that there is such a domain?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I don't see how it is possible that information could be meaningless. That appears to be contradictory to me. To judge that something is information is to claim that it is not meaningless.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I believe concepts change too. I believe that 1 was originally used to signify the most simple unit. Unlike 2, 4, 6, 8, it could not be divided. As the practise of division developed it was allowed that 1 could be divided, and this gave us fractions. So the concept signified by 1 changed from being the most simple, indivisible unit to being infinitely divisible. Furthermore, I believe that the entire conceptual structure of what the numerals, 1,2,3,4,5, etc., represent changed significantly when the symbol for zero was integrated into the system, allowing for negative numbers. This marked the beginning of a revolution in mathematical reasoning which eventually allowed for the proper development of algebraic equations.
Your claim that concepts do not change is clearly refuted through reference to the evidence which is the evolution of human thought.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
There is a problem with this perspective. That "a rock participates in the form of rock-ness" requires a judgement. The thing itself, and the form of rock-ness are two distinct things. In order that the thing is what is called "a rock", the existence of the thing must be analyzed, and the form, "rock-ness" must be analyzed and a judgement made, that the thing qualifies to be called a rock.
Without that judgement, the particular thing, and the universal form must be inherently united. In the way that I describe, the particular and the universal are distinct, and a judgement relates them. Without the judgement, they must be already related through participation. Furthermore, the thing must be united to each universal which might be used to describe it. Then there is the problem of whether those universals are correct or not. Does the thing only participate in correct universals? What allows us to judge it incorrectly then?
Evidence of human activity indicates to us that we judge things according to their properties, and call them by the applicable name as determined by this judgement. There is no evidence that a thing is actively participating in all sorts of universal forms. The evidence is that we judge it as such. Following Aristotle, we assume that every thing has one particular form, proper to itself, it does not participate in numerous universal forms, it has one form. But, it is judged by human beings according to numerous universal forms, and so it is described by those words.
Quoting Wayfarer
What I was trying to point out to ????????????? is that Wittgenstein offers a strangely backward way of looking at things. He assumes that there are behavioural regularities, consistencies such as word usage, which become descriptive laws, or "rules", then right and wrong, correct and incorrect, are determined according to whether one acts as the descriptive rule indicates.
Clearly this is backward to what is really the case. What is really the case, is that right and wrong, correct and incorrect, are determined by reasoning, logical consistency, etc.. What follows from this are prescriptive rules of how one ought to behave to maintain logical consistency, and rationality. Then behavioural regularities follow from this teaching of how one ought to behave.
The issue is that Wittgenstein saw the human mind with its reasoning, thinking, understanding, will and intention, as a dark and foreboding place, one which could not be approached or understood, incomprehensible because it is internal and secretive, only having the capacity to be judged according to its outward expressions. So he defined his terms, and structured his epistemology such that right and wrong is limited to the judgement of such outward expressions, right and wrong can only be attributed to actions. Right and wrong cannot be attributed to the principles which an individual holds within one's mind, and which form the basis of one's actions.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Of course it's useful to make such a distinction, just like it's useful to distinguish between cause and effect. Following your stated principle, it would be pointless to distinguish between cause and effect, because this is an interaction and there is no point distinguishing between the two parts of an interaction. But we make those distinctions in order to understand.
So if information has both a physical and a non-physical part, it is important to distinguish between these, just like its important to distinguish cause from effect in a causal relation. I would argue that since the physical part of information is always a representation of the non-physical part, the non-physical part is necessarily prior in time to the physical part.
Mysticism is not a supernatural phenomenon, but a natural human one. It consists in imagination, feeling and intuition; what else? I predict you will say that it points to something 'higher'; but you can't say what that "something" is, or in what sense it could be real, apart from your mystical feeling. Now, don't get me wrong; I think those mystical feeling can have great value; they can totally transform lives in ways nothing else can; but this does not entail that they are anything more than feelings. Why can't they be valued as such without demanding that they point to 'something' that cannot ever be anything for us apart from our feelings?
Kant's faith is a feeling; it is based on the necessity of what he thinks must be presupposed in order to warrant our sense of moral freedom and responsibility. I think he is mistaken in this, because our sense of moral freedom and responsibility is sufficient unto itself; it is the feeling of being free and yet responsible to our own kind. There is no morality without moral feeling and intuition. Hegel made this point when he said that if there is a set of rules or imperatives, then morality is already deficient.
Spinoza's "intellectual love of God" comes, for him, from our intuitive intellectual capacity ( which he sees as being the highest function of intellect) to see things sub specie aeternitatis or 'under the aspect of eternity. You need to read Spinoza and understand him; he is one of the first naturalists; he is opposed to all forms of what he terms "superstition" which for him includes any purported "knowledge" that is not based on what can be observed or discovered as a necessity of reason.
See my other response to you on this. 'Metaphysical' and 'supernatural' could be taken, on a tendentious interpretation, to mean the same thing; but remember that the original (Aristotle's) meaning of 'metaphysics' was not anything to do with supernaturalism; but was "after physics" which is taken by scholars to refer to the fact that it was a subsequent discourse to his Physics.
Metaphysics really is part of epistemology; in the sense that it attempts to deal with what we can know apart from the empirical. Kant reduced it from speculative philosophy that postulates God, spiritual entities, monads, substances (in the Cartesian, Spinozistic and other 'essentialist' kinds of senses) and so on. Kant wanted to establish the limits of knowledge to make room for faith; which is essentially feeling, and more akin to ethics and aesthetics, as I have explained. If you don't understand Kant's project as a critical rejection of speculative systems like Platonism, Scholasticism, Cartesianism, Spinozism and Leibnizism, then you simply don't understand Kant. Have you ever read the CPR or any of the major secondary works that deal with it?
Also, to return to Spinoza; there is no significant mention of any afterlife in his philosophy. Have you read his Ethics? The most he suggests is that since we are ideas in God, that is in eternity, in that sense, and in that sense only we may be said to have eternal life. But this would not be anything we could ever experience, because experience requires change, temporality. This would suggest that even God can only experience himself through his creation. For Spinoza God is not transcendent, supernatural but actually is nature: "Deus sive natura".
Again, that is far too sweeping. Kant didn't reject rationalist philosophies altogether. He critiqued both rationalist and empiricist philosophies of his day, as well the dogmatic metaphysics of his predecessors. I am currently reading his Prolegomena, which is in itself a metaphysical text. He adopted the Aristotelian categories of the understanding. I agree, he certainly didn't accept the literal interpretation of 'the forms' as something existing, but then, I'm not sure I'm saying that either, as I am distinguishing between what exists (i.e. the phenomenal domain) and what is real (the formal domain). The formal domain might well be understood as 'structures in consciousness', but that doesn't mean that they're only 'internal to the individual', they are still universal, in the sense of being archetypes, etc.
Quoting Janus
Spinoza plainly uses 'intellect' in the same sense of other medievals, i.e. ultimately derived from the neoPlatonist 'nous'; it means nothing like what a modern secular academic means by it. That book I mentioned yesterday, makes the comparison between Spinoza and other Jewish mysticism very plain. He is a religious philosopher, but in a non-orthodox sense , which is probably what got him sanctioned by the Jewish community.
Sure there's a naturalistic reading of Spinoza, but at the centre of it, the 'intellectual love of God' is very much like 'union with the Divine' which is found in many forms of the perennial philosophies that have lived over the ages.
I studied a unit on Spinoza as an undergraduate many decades ago but I never felt a particular affinity with him. I agree he doesn't speak of 'the afterlife' in any kind of literal sense, but the philosophical or mystical understanding of 'the deathless' is nothing like the popular ideas about 'heaven'. The book I was reading yesterday notes that both Spinoza and Maimonides wanted to disabuse people of their anthropomorphic images of God.
But my interpretation, from the passage I quoted, is that the Philosopher/Sage, by dis-identifying with 'the objects of sense' and 'subduing the passions', realises him or herself as the imperishable Mind, Intellect or Soul and this is as much true for Spinoza as for many or all the other pre-moderns.
Quoting Janus
The whole point about mysticism is 'transformation of perception'. It is to 'see with new eyes', to undergo an inner transformation or re-evaluation of the whole of experience. That is why it is impossible to recount through descriptive language. It is not that it's 'vague' or 'subjective' or 'can't be described' - it's a transformation of perception, it is a different way of being.
In Plato, the symbolism of the allegory of the Cave talks of what happens when the philosopher/mystic ascends to the 'light of the sun' and then returns. The prisoners, according to Plato, would infer from the returning man's blindness, caused by his not being able to see in the comparative darkness of the cave, that the journey had harmed him and that they should not undertake a similar journey. Socrates concludes that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who attempted to drag them out.
The reason higher truth can't be described, is because the individual has to understand it for themselves. Where, do you think, in the current curriculum of philosophy, as it is practiced and taught in the Western academic system, such an understanding is imparted? It is actually a highly politically-incorrect thing to believe in today's world, for various complex historical reasons. So I get why it pushes buttons.
Quoting Janus
There's another thread currently quoting a passage from Hegel:
Hegel is not speaking of 'imagination, feeling and intuition'. According to Russell, in History of Western Philosophy, Hegel's 'absolute mind' is identical with the 'first cause' in Aristotle.
As indeed are many things in Hegel.
Quoting Janus
Notice that in this framing, mysticism might be valid, but it is entirely subjective. It is wholly and solely a matter of 'how you feel'. And you can respect that, because individuals have a right to such private and subjective feelings. But when it comes to accepting that it might reveal something that is actually true - well, different story altogether.
Quoting Janus
Think about the etymology of the word 'ecstasy' (and no, I'm not talking party drugs.) It means 'ex-stasis', literally 'standing outside oneself'. That is why there is an emphasis on ecstatic states in mysticism, although, again, that's something that is barely comprehended in current culture.
Yes, the expression is fine as a metaphor. The key point is that number is a universal and so ultimately derives its meaning from observed particulars.
Quoting Wayfarer
Agreed and this is also consistent with Aristotle's realist view.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is the sticking point.
A cat has four legs. It seems to me that the number of legs the cat has is an aspect of the natural world.
It's true that we have to reason in order to know that. But we do so by abstracting from what is perceived via the senses, in this case the cat (and other four-legged animals). Hence why Aristotle characterized humans as the rational animal.
Yes, so the ship arrival details were transmitted via a causal process that resulted in those details being entered into a log book. We agree about that.
Do you also agree that the humans involved in transmitting that message were thinking abstractly in order to understand the message and relay it on?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Yes that's what I mean.
Spinoza did not give ontological primacy over mind or matter; for him both are aspects of substance, which is eternal. So, the eternal is as much matter for Spinoza as it is mind or intellect. He doesn't have an idea of soul as far as I can recall.
It's mistaken to say that Spinoza uses intellect in the same way as "other medievals". Which other medievals? Spinoza was thinking against the scholastic tradition, not with it. What's the point of distorting philosophical ideas to fit your own favored conceptions; especially when you haven't even read, or as you avow, understood them; as is obviously the case with Spinoza.
Quoting Wayfarer
If such a thing were indeed possible; you would only know that if you had realized it; and I don't believe you have.Like me, you may have experienced the feeling that suddenly everything has become clear, and that you can see things as if for the first time; but that yields no discursive knowledge at all; it is an ineffable state. What is known in such a state is more like a feeling than a knowing; because nothing discursive or determinate is known. This is amply attested to by the different metaphysical accounts associated with the various religious traditions. The common thread is the feeling; the kind of experience; which is a commonality of affectivity.
You are distorting those passages form Hegel through a tendentious lens. I have read Hegel's Phenomenology, and many secondary works about it and the Science of Logic. You are not qualified to speak about Hegel because you have read no such works. When you have read and studied Hegel to an adequate degree I will listen to what you have to say about his philosophy.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is more misreading. I haven't anyway said it is totally "subjective" I don't even accept the dichotomy of subjective/objective as it is normally framed, any more than I do the duality of mind/body. To be honest, I've had enough of trying to respond to your constant misunderstandings and tendentious misreadings of philosophers and of what I and others write on here. It's just too much effort trying to correct someone who has no intention of listening to anything which does not fit into his pre-conceived world picture. As I see it, since I have known you on this and the other two older forums, you have been repeating the same themes and mistakes over and over.
The book I was looking at yesterday was the one I mentioned at the time, 'Spinoza and Medieval Jewish philosophy. Not scholastic Catholicism, obviously. The essay I was reading, compared him with Maimonides, who was famous in the ancient and medieval world.
Quoting Janus
I can ask you exactly the same question: you read everything through a specific mindset also.
Quoting Janus
You know that how?
Quoting Janus
They are copied verbatim and speak for themselves, even if that is an inconvenient truth for your interpretation.
Quoting Janus
I did do an honours degree in Comparative Religion, on pretty much exactly this subject.
Quoting Janus
It's subjective, personal, it might convey a truth, but only internally and personally - that is exactly what you said: 'they don't convey anything more than feelings'.
Quoting Janus
I understand why you don't accept my interpretations. I didn't pursue philosophy as a subject, because I don't like the way it is generally understood in the secular west. It is not at all concerned with the kind of enlightenment that I am interested in understanding. Everything nowadays is instinctively read through a naturalistic lens, and that is what I'm arguing against.
Quoting Andrew M
The contrary view is that observed particulars are intelligible insofar as, and only because, they're instantiations of universals.
Sure, but you wouldn't be able to judge whether what was being proposed was on the mark unless you were familiar with Spinoza's and Maimonidies' philosophies.
Quoting Wayfarer
Everyone has to interpret what they read through their own understanding; but tendentious reading is another matter. If you had read Kant, Hegel and Spinoza and the relevant secondary literature to the extent that I have then I would be prepared to listen to any critiques of my interpretations you might have.
Those three thinkers share at least one significant thing in common: they all reject any notion of real transcendent realms. If you agree with that, then all I can say is that you don't agree with most of the scholars who have spent so much time studying those philosophers. If want to argue for an alternative interpretation, you need to provide actual textual evidence for alternative interpretations which are plausible. You can hardly do that if you haven't even read the philosophers in question and the literature about them.
Quoting Wayfarer
I didn't say I know it, I said I believe it, and that is based on my assessment of what you have to say. I am not really convinced that the common idea of spiritual enlightenment is even a sound idea. Are you going to claim that you are self-realized? If you are then why not go out into the world and enlighten people, and help the poor, or whatever, instead of wasting time arguing about inconsequential matters on these forums?
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, if that is your attitude then you are wasting your time on these forums; I would say. Spiritual enlightenment, whatever it is, is not a matter of philosophy, in the sense of something that can be sensibly argued about, but is a matter of lived feeling and the profound transformation it may bring, in my view.
I'm not interested in your academic credentials; what you say speaks for itself.
None of them were atheists.
Quoting Janus
No.
Quoting Janus
How about yours, Janus? How is that going for you? I did take the time and trouble to do two degrees which are actually pretty useless from the viewpoint of making a living, and have often had a hard time doing so. So, yes, I might well be wasting my time here, but no more than anyone else.
Quoting Janus
I have given quite a bit of time as a casual or guest speaker at the Buddhist Library, evening colleges, and other places, and I'm certainly on the lookout for other ways to serve.
That's actually questionable; but irrelevant in any case.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have never mentioned them nor claimed they are important in any case; so what's the point of the question?
So, what do you take 'the allegory of the Cave' to be about, then? Don't you read it as a metaphor for spiritual or noetic illumination?
The allegory could be about that; or it could be about what Plato understood to be a pure, rational intuition of the forms.
I doubt Plato had any conception of enlightenment analogous to the Eastern understandings of the idea.
Wrong. Depending on what we are talking about, the cause can be "physical" and the effect "non-physical", or vice versa. Or it is even possible that they both be "physical" or both be "non-physical". Again you evade the questions we need answered in order to make any sense of what you are saying.
What exactly IS the distinction being made anyway, and why? If I have said that information is both "physical" and "non-physical", then what use is there to make a distinction between them? If you're wanting to simply make a distinction between different kinds, or forms, of information, then you aren't making an argument against anything I have said, as it is all still information.
"Non-physical" does not always precede the "physical". The idea of your mother does not precede her material existence. If it did, you have a great deal more explaining to do - like how it is that you are even here - an effect of physical causes like sex and birth.
I already agreed to that and even explained what abstract thought was in relation to getting at information (the causal relationships between causes and their effects). Thinking abstractly is an effect of prior causes and a cause of subsequent effects (both "physical" and "non-physical").
The difference between humans and other animals is simply the degree in which we can delve into the causal relationships of nature. A smell informs an animal of some state of affairs in their environment. We are talking about a causal relationship between the smell (the effect) and the cause of the smell (a predator). For most animals, this is as far as they go. There is no trying to get at why the predator is chasing them, or what hunger is, or natural selection, or the Big Bang, etc.,.
Humans can go further as a result of the realization that their experience is an effect of the world and that the world, and it's things, continue to exist beyond their experiences of them. This is typically called Object Permanence. This happens usually within a year of being born. We go from thinking that our experience is the world, to thinking that our experience is of a world that is there even when we aren't experiencing it. We go from being solipsists to being realists. We go from thinking concretely to abstractly, which then increases exponentially as when we learn language.
This seems logical because for a solipsist, there would be no such thing as an abstract thought, not even to the degree animals have it in understanding that smells and sounds aren't just real themselves, but refer to other real things that aren't smells and sounds. For a solipsist, there would be no such thing as causal relationships, or information.
What question are you talking about? I am only objecting to your claim that it is not useful to distinguish between physical and non-physical.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If, as you say, information is both physical and non-physical, then it would be useful for us to determine which aspects are physical and which are non-physical, in order to understand the nature of information.
So consider this. We have identified an object, and we have named it, "information". We agree that it is both physical and non-physical, but we still don't have a firm agreement or understanding concerning the nature of this thing. Do you not think that it would be productive to proceed toward analyzing how we distinguish between physical and non-physical within that thing, in order to get an understanding of the nature of that thing? For example, suppose we have identified and object which is both blue and not-blue. Do you not think that it would be productive to analyze how we distinguish between the blue and the not-blue of that object in order to understand the nature of that object.
In other words, if we agree that an object has contrary properties, my claim is that it is useful to determine the way that we distinguish between those contrary properties within that object, in order to understand the object. By the law of non-contradiction, we only allow that the same object has contrary properties at different times. That is why I used a temporal explanation in my last post.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Ok, I agree that in some examples, the physical precedes the non-physical. Perhaps you agree with me though, that the way to approach this issue is through temporality, because that is the only way to accept that contrary properties are attributed to the same object. My argument was in the case of this one specific type of object, which we have identified as "information", the non-physical property precedes the physical because the physical is a representation of the non-physical.
Quoting ?????????????
Yes two plus two equals four is right. It is right because it is consistent with the logical principles of mathematics which ensure that it is right. This is contrary to Wittgenstein's position that the statement "two plus two equals four" is right because it is an action which is consistent with certain descriptions of human behaviour.
Quoting ?????????????
Efficiency and success does not prove that you are right. This is very evident in the fact that one may be very efficient and successful in carrying out wrong, or evil activities.
So you give examples of where efficiency and success have been used to produce things which are taken for granted as being good things, and you conclude, therefore efficiency and success determines what is right. However you fail to account for the instances in which efficiency and success produce evil, and these instances are what demonstrate your position as faulty.
Quoting ?????????????
See, "two plus two equals four", is not right because it allows us "to do stuff out in the world". Right and wrong are how we judge the stuff which we do in the world. If "two plus two equals four" only incited us to do bad things in the world, like "kill your neighbour" only incites us to do bad things, then we would have to judge "two plus two equals four" as wrong, like we judge "kill your neighbour" as wrong, despite the fact that we use it to do stuff in the world.
The fact that "two plus two equals four" allows us to do stuff in the world, is not what makes it right or wrong, because the stuff which is done with it may be either right or wrong. Therefore "two plus two equals four" must exist in relation to other principles of rationality to ensure that it is used properly, and therefore right. That is why I insist that the reason why "two plus two equals four" is right, is because it is consistent with other logical principles of rationality, not because it allows us to do things.
Right and wrong are judgements of the quality of the things done, not a judgement of the capacity to do things. So we must always refer to a further principle, one which distinguishes right from wrong, in general, to determine whether the stuff we are doing is right or wrong. And the fact that a principle allows us to do stuff does not make that principle right, because in reality, it is that principle's relation to the further principle which determines whether it is right.
Notation systems, and even numerical systems, are matters of convention - you could calculate in base 12 but it would be very awkward. But whatever notation or base you used, would have to conform to the fact that half of 4 is 2.
So that's a very big difference, isn't? It's the difference between truth as coherence, and truth as correspondence. I say that 2+2=4 because it is coherent within the logical system of which it is a part of. You say that 2+2=4 because this corresponds to something real. What does it correspond with? People using those symbols that way, and getting the results that they want.
The problem with your perspective, is as I've described, you have no basis for the claim that 2+2=4 is "right". The fact that you can use 2+2=4 to get the results which you want, does not make 2+2=4 "right", because getting what you want is not always what is right. The fact that 2+2=4 is a part of a coherent logical system is what makes it right. That is why your perspective is wrong.
The issue you raise, that "otherwise they would be syntactically right but empty, a literally useless game of signs" is not relevant, because correspondence is established by firm ontological principles. The Wittgensteinian approach is an attempt to avoid the need for ontological principles. As I've demonstrated though, it's a failing attempt because it gives us no realistic approach to the judgement of right and wrong, while firm ontological principles provide us with an approach to that judgement.
I've gone back over some of the points you have raised. One that has been lost in the to and fro is that I acknowledged at the outset that universals don't exist, but that they're real.
Now plainly that seems a contradiction insofar as we generally understand 'what is real', and 'what exists', as essentially the same.
You're right in saying that universals, forms, and so on are not existing or objectively real, and that it was just such an idea that was criticized by Kant. You're also right in saying that such ideas are best expressed metaphorically or through art and other indirect means. But in doing some more reading on the question, specifically of Plato and Kant, I came across some interesting insights on a philosophy blog (here.)
[i]'Socrates knew that the moral ideas in virtue of which alone we are human, which alone give meaning and value to human life, have no source other than the mind. They constitute an intelligible realm fully independent of the sensible world. The instances of justice, reasonableness, courage, that we find in the outside world are only seen as such, adjudged as such, in the light of the ideas. Socrates may have remained solely concerned with moral ideas, but Plato saw that not only are the moral concepts together with the notions of mathematical equality and number purely intelligible but that all things of the sensible world only have meaning for us in virtue of the intelligible forms engendered in the mind.'
'When Plato weaves of the intelligible forms a picture of the world, he is quick to tell us that the account he gives is no more than a ‘likely tale’. The pure intelligible forms, which give us no objective knowledge, and which cannot be embodied in any definitive theoretical formulation are nevertheless the realm in which we have our intelligent being, in which we live intelligently and have our proper life as human beings. ....It is a mode of life, a plane of being, that has to be, and can only be, realized in constant creation of myth, acknowledged as myth, in art, in poetry, in metaphysical systems that declare themselves to be merely ‘likely tales’, and in the ideals of honour, friendship, loyalty, patriotism, which the cynic has no difficulty in showing to be one and all illusory.'
'Kant’s ‘understanding’ corresponds to Plato’s dianoia, where the mind can legislate for the phenomenal world because what it may find in the world of regularity is only the order the mind itself confers on the world through ideas born in the mind. Here the mind finds meaning and order in the world as the world presents itself to the mind, but cannot go beyond the immediate presentations of the world. Yet beyond and above the dianoia, Plato had a place for nous, noêsis, phronêsis.'[/i]
These passages are near to what I had in mind when I started this thread, which as I have already stated, ought to have been about 'ideas' rather than 'information'. And they show what is meant by the notion of 'transcendental truth' in the Western philosophical tradition. The mind is possessed of an innate order, which by virtue of reason is able to 'legislate for the phenomenal world', because there is a correspondence between the operations of the mind, and those of nature herself. The source of that order can't be demonstrated to be in the world itself as it is internal to the activities of the mind. Nor can the idea of the forms be proven - hence Plato saying it's no more than 'a likely tale'. I think that accounts for much of the indirectness of Plato's musings on such matters - exploring the idea from various perspectives, through dialectic, and so on. It is pointedly *not* a dogmatic metaphysics, indeed the term 'metaphysics' wasn't known to Plato (or Aristotle).
So as regards there being a 'higher, unimpeachable order' - my appraisal of your criticism of this is that you identify such ideas with religious authority, and reject it on that account. But my argument is philosophical - it is that the innate ability that the mind has to count, categorise, compare - in short, to reason - is required to even declare what the physical is, what is natural and what is not. So the very abilities we have to determine what is or isn't the case in the objective world are innate to the intelligence, which is able to reflect the order that is found in nature. That is the sense in which it is 'transcendent' - it is the faculty by which we make sense of the world, but the source of which is not itself amongst the objects of analysis (except for nowadays it is widely assumed, falsely in my view, that such abilities have a biological origin.)
But the attempt to make such faculties and powers the 'object of investigation' is to reify them, to treat them as things or objects or forces in an objective sense; in short, to objectify them. They're not existing things, but 'only the order the mind itself confers on the world through ideas born in the mind'. However, those ideas and capabilities are fundamental to our ability to know. That is the sense in which they're 'real but not existent'.
Quoting Janus
How the mind is different to this, or indeed to anything, is that it is the subject of experience. The mind is never an object of experience, we never 'experience the mind', the mind is 'what experiences'*. Yet reason itself, the ability to count, to quantify, analyse, and so on, originate within the mind.
I think nowadays there is a widespread belief that science or naturalism understands how the mind does this, but I doubt such accounts, as the mind, not being an object of analysis, is not part of nature; it is more accurate to say that nature exists in the mind, rather than vice versa. (This is similar to Husserl's critique of naturalism, it is not intended as absolute idealism.)
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*This is a key point that is brought about by Eastern, as distinct from Platonic, philosophy.
That is correct. My point is therefore that an object being mental is not sufficient to demonstrate that it is non-physical. And as it is the case for mental images conveying no information, so it is as well with mental images that do convey information, for they remain mental images. The image remains physical, even though the information it conveys is not.
This is an interesting topic. I think you are making an error with the claim that because 1 can be divided, then it loses its original nature of being the most simple unit or identity. 1 whole can be divided into two halves, but notice that we are forced to change identity, as underlined, in order to speak truly. 1 whole = 2 halves, but 1 whole ? 2 wholes, because 1 ? 2. Similarly, 1 m = 100 cm, but 1 m ? 100 m. In other words, for a given identity, 1 remains the simplest unit; and if it gets divided, then it gets divided into different identities. As such, the nature of 1 remains unchanged.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is indeed my position that the particular thing and the universal form are inherently united. If I understand you correctly, your position is that the particular and the universal are distinct, objectively disconnected, and only related by man-made judgement, is that correct? From this view, does it follow that only particular forms are objective real, where as universal forms are only man-made?
My position is that both types of forms exist objectively. Indeed, particular forms must exist in order for a thing to have its own identity. But then it must also have a universal form in order to be part of the genus or species it belongs to. If this was not the case, then two things made of the same material could in principle behave completely differently. E.g., two rocks composed of the same minerals, when put in contact with fire, could react differently, such that one could be inert, and the other one could blow up. But this would be absurd. We could never know any generalities; only particulars after having done particular tests on each one of them. Furthermore, we could never perform any inductive reasoning, such as "all rocks made of this mineral are inert to fire", or "all fires are hot", or "no human can breath under water", etc.
Yes. And that difference of degree is significant enough to warrant making a distinction between automatic, concrete perceiving (present in humans and animals generally) and reflective, abstract thinking. Which was why Aristotle characterized humans as the rational animal.
I think we are in essential agreement.
Humans aren't the only rational animal. It seems that every animal behaves in certain ways as a result of it's perception of it's environment. Making a distinction whether the perception is concrete or abstract isn't useful here. We're simply talking about information - what it is and how it flows.
1. What exactly is the distinction you are trying to make when using the terms, "non-physical" and "physical"? What exactly does it mean for something to be "non-physical" as opposed to "physical".
2. Can you provide a specific example or two of when it would be useful to make a distinction between "non-physical" and "physical" when talking about cause and effect and information flow?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it wouldn't be useful because there could be instances where the cause and effect sequence we are talking about is all "physical", or all "non-physical".
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverNo. The effect (whatever effect we are talking about) is a representation of it's prior causes. It has nothing to do with whether or not some cause, or some effect is "physical" or not. All effects carry information about their prior causes. All effects are representations of their causes.
Your mind is a representation of some state of your body, as the state of your body influences your mind, just as your mind has the power to influence the world. Any state of the mind relays information about some state of your body because of the causal relationship between them.
I've read, here's some quotes:
See, correct or incorrect in mathematical procedure is determined according to whether we behave in a manner which is consistent with those who have gone before us, not according to some rational principles of what constitutes right and wrong. An "empirical proposition" (descriptive rule) becomes a prescriptive rule (what one ought to do). If this were reality, we could not employ rational principles to demonstrate that what has been common practise in the past, is actually wrong and ought to be changed, because common practise is necessarily right by the definition of what constitutes the right procedure. Therefore knowledge could not evolve. It is extremely faulty (illogical) epistemology.
So if there is no further argument against information being the relationship between causes and their effects, and the only arguments are simply about the kinds of information (the kinds of causal relationships, like between concrete and abstract thinking with the different causal relationships each one has, or between the "physical" and "non-physical" and the different causal relationships each one has), then I think we are done here.
If you'd like to continue the discussions on concrete vs. abstract thinking and physical vs. non-physical you can start a new thread on those topics.
What information is, is a universal. How information flows is dependent on the nature of the particulars (human being, dog, thermostat, rock, particles, and so on) that are the locus of cause-and-effect.
To exist and to be real are generally considered to be coterminous. If you want to say that there is an order that is real beyond being inherent in existent things then you are faced with the problem of incoherence. We could have no idea whatsoever what kind of actuality such an order could enjoy. "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind".
Whatever we might want to say about such a thing could not be anything but empty words. Empty words are fine, even wonderful, if they are filled with poetic meaning; but poetic content cannot become the subject of epistemological argument.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't agree with this kind of idea at all, based as it is on the separation of mind and world. Moral ideas have their source in feeling, in living intuitions, in the living world itself. This kind of dichotomous thinking should have died with Descartes.
Quoting Wayfarer
The thing is, they are either real forces as we conceive them in some sense or they are imaginary. On the other hand every conceivable way of thinking about the world is itself a real force just insofar as we are involved in and changed by it. It seems to me that you are reifying an "order of the mind" as though it is one absolute thing, rather than seeing that there are countless orders of the mind, just as there are countless natural complexes; and that all those orders of the mind are themselves natural complexes with their own capacities to influence and be influenced. We do not merely 'know' but we also feel, act, create, exhibit, judge, believe and imagine.
The mind does not "confer order on the world" but the orders of the mind reflect the orders of natural complexes insofar as we are constantly affected by them; I would say. So, it seems that I just don't see things in the light of the subject/ object dichotomy, as you seem to do.
Quoting Wayfarer
As I see it the mind/body (I don't think of them as separate at all) is also the object of experience insofar as it is affected by it, just as any object is. On the other hand objects are the subject of experience insofar as they are affected. We, and all other objects, are subjected to experience. The terms 'subject' and 'object' are replete with ambiguity.
Platonism holds that the domain of number is a real domain. A quote from the SEP article, Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics:
You may not agree with mathematical Platonism - many don't - but it can't be dismissed so easily.
Quoting Janus
Would you find them in the animal kingdom? It seems to me that they are an essential aspect of the human condition, what it is that makes human life what it is.
Yes, but what does that claim mean? How would its being a real domain differ from its being a merely conceptualized or imagined domain?
Quoting Wayfarer
Are you claiming that animals have no sense of compassion for or fairness towards their fellows?
The point though, was that the concept of one changed, evolved. My proposal was that in the original sense the concept of "one" did not allow that one could be divided. But then someone proposed the principle of fractions, which would require that "one" be redefined such that the one could be divided. There are numerous examples of evolution in mathematical principles. The addition of the numeral 0, and negative integers is one example. More recently we have what is called imaginary numbers. Before imaginary numbers, there was no square root of -1, that was disallowed by the conceptual structure. Now there is a square root of -1, it is allowed.
I think that identity is a different issue. Say that something is identified as "the one". We can say that the one is divisible into halves, quarters, etc.. But to say that it is divisible is to say that it is potentially two, four, etc., it is not actually two or four, because according to its identity it is one. If we actually divide it, say in half, then it no longer has its identity as one, because it is now two. I believe that this is an important ontological issue which is often overlooked.
We commonly say that an object is composed of parts, molecules for instance. So we talk about the object as if it has a dual identity, it is one object, but it is also a bunch of molecules. But this is contradictory. Either we have identified one object, or we have identified a number of objects, but they are clearly not the same identity. What has happened is that we have given mathematical equivalence to the numerous molecules, and the one object, and we think that just because there is a mathematical equivalence, they have the same identity. But they do not. In reality, we identify the object, and say that it is potentially divided into molecules, but the molecules don't really have identity as actual individual things unless the division is carried out. And if the division is carried out, the original object no longer maintains its identity. To have both identities at the same time is contradictory.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Yes, that is my position exactly.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I don't see how you draw your conclusion here. Suppose that two distinct atoms of hydrogen are both very reactive. Why must they be members of a "universal form" in order that they will both react in a similar way? They are similar, that's why they behave in a similar way. Yes, they are members of the universal form, hydrogen, but that's a human designation based in our determination of similarity. The human designation of this universal form, "hydrogen", is how we, as human beings understand the similarity. The reason why there are such similarities is not covered by the human concept, and this is the reason why they behave in a similar way, because they are similar. So the "universal form", does not account for why there are things which behave in a similar way, it just describes the fact that they do. That there are similarities is neither accounted for by the particular form, nor the universal form, it is something different altogether.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
We can make these conclusion because there are real similarities, and real consistencies. But "universal form" refers to the way that we understand these similarities and consistencies. "Universal form" refers to a described similarity. The description of the similarity is not the same as the cause of the similarity, so we can't really say that the "universal form" gives us the reason why inductive reasoning works. The universal form follows from the inductive reasoning, as a description of the similarity, but we have to dig deeper if we are to determine why there are such similarities. and it is answering this question, why are there these similarities, which would tell us why inductive reasoning works. The universal form does not do this for us.
That's pretty straight forward. Generally, things sensed and understood through the laws of physical are physical, and those which aren't are non-physical. In the context of this thread, we are talking about information, so there is the physical signal which is sensed, and the non-physical, what is meant to be signified. In the example of the op there is a flag as the physical signal, and the non-physical idea represented is the number of masts on a ship. There is necessarily a system of interpretation which relates the two.
Quoting Harry Hindu
In all cases of information we need a clear distinction between non-physical (what is signified), and physical (signal) or else the system of interpretation cannot be properly applied and the signal may not be properly interpreted. The interpretation will be corrupt. This is the case in hallucination, there is not a clear distinction between what is physically real, and what is non-physical, the interpretation. All cases of misinterpretation are cases of not properly distinguishing between what is proper to the physical aspect, and what is proper to the non-physical.
Quoting Harry Hindu
When the cause is intention (final cause) we cannot necessarily determine the cause from the effect unless we have the proper system of interpretation. So in the case of the intentional presentation of information, the fact that the effect (the physical sign) is a representation of the cause (what is meant, or intended) is irrelevant to the matter of interpretation. What is relevant is the system of interpretation.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This doesn't make sense. The fact that something could be all physical, or all non-physical is clear evidence of why we need to be able to distinguish between the physical and non-physical in order to produce an accurate interpretation. If something were completely physical, yet you apprehended a non-physical meaning behind it, this would be delusion. If something were completely non-physical, all in your mind, and you thought that it had a physical presence, this would be hallucination.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Do you think misinterpretation, delusion, and hallucination, are arbitrary matters?
Quoting Harry Hindu
That information is a relationship between cause and effect, is what is insignificant. It is insignificant, because in order to determine what is meant (cause), from the physical signal (effect), it is required to know the system for interpretation. So the fact that one is the cause, and the other is the effect is completely irrelevant to the matter at hand, when there exists information, because the matter is to interpret, and knowing that one is cause and the other effect as a fact, does nothing to help us interpret. It's like looking at a physical thing, and saying I know for a fact that this physical object is a sign, while having absolutely no idea how to interpret it. Without having any idea of how to interpret it, how would you know for a fact, that it is a sign?
Would you not agree that our intelligence is widely and correctly assumed to have a biological foundation? When it comes to beliefs concerning origins, I think there is extreme variety out there. I assume you have a certain band of intellectuals in mind. But does anyone listen to philosophers? I think there is a fair amount of not-knowing and not-caring about origins. On the other hand, we deeply care about our biological foundation. A dead man as far as the living man knows does not write love poems. The body is in this sense a vessel. Along these lines, the physical becomes important as what threatens or sustains the body. In my view, the mere theoretical interest in the physical as a source of truth is already 'theological' or ideological or religious in its drive. It's a claim on the sacred, on that which one dies for, one might say.
Such views (god or no-god, mind or no-mind) seem to me like expressions of an energy or libido or status anxiety or god-shaped-hole that is minimally bodily. We can fall in love with ideas. That these ideas are theistic or materialistic may be secondary. Poets are senators.
I think 'foundation' is the wrong word. Obviously we have an organic or animal nature which is the subject of the discipline of biology, but I think the emphasis on biology is exaggerated because of the role evolutionary theory plays in modern culture.
My view (and this is something that I have to develop) is that the 'furniture of reason' - by which I mean the ability for abstract thought, counting, reasoning, language, and so on - are not products of biology. The species evolves to the point where it can develop such abilities, but (for instance) the law of the excluded middle is not a consequence of biology. The ability to grasp it might be a consequence of evolution. But when a being evolves to that point, of being able to ask 'what am I', 'what does this mean', and so on, then at that precise instant, they're no longer simply a biological creature. And I imagined that threshold was crossed by h. sapiens - indeed it is what endows us with sapience. Tremendously unpopular view, I know.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverDid you not read what I wrote. I said that what is signified and what is the signal is what is the effect and what is the cause, and it doesn't matter whether or no one is physical or not, as we could be talking about all physical causes and effects in which case both the signified and the signal are both physical. The fact that you are hallucinating is a effect of some state of your body. Your hallucinating informs me that you are on drugs, mentally unstable, etc. If I have to explain this again, I'm done.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverOf course it makes sense. It's evidence that we don't need those terms, not that we need to make a distinction - a distinction that you still have yet to make clear.
I have no idea what you are talking about in those last few sentences. Again, information/meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. It doesn't matter if there is some mind that is part of the causal chain. There is still meaning/information in causal relationships, of which a mind could be part, but isn't necessary for there to be information/meaning.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverI think they are effects of causes. Does not the fact that one is misinterpreting, deluding, or hallucinating inform you of some state of their body? Doesn't one's misinterpreting, deluding, and hallucinating have some causal effect on the world?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What exactly are you interpreting? What does it mean to interpret? Doesn't it mean that information/meaning is there in all causal relationships that you are trying to get at accurately? To misinterpret something is what it means for there to be a true causal relationship that you didn't get at accurately, right? It means that there is a causal relationship independent of your mind that you either get at (interpret) or don't (misinterpret).
I think you misunderstand the situation. You don't see the masts, you don't see the ship. What you see is the flag. The flag is the only physical thing here. In this instance of occurrence, the number of masts, and the ship, is non-physical. The fact is, that the person hoisting the flag may not even have seen any ship nor any masts, so this aspect is clearly non-physical. In this particular physical occurrence, which is the occurrence of the flag, it is quite clear that the masts and ship are non-physical. If you haven't yet, in 67 pages of this thread, capacitated yourself with the ability to understand this, then maybe you should give it up.
Why do you insistently claim that information is both physical and non-physical, when in reality you haven't apprehended the non-physical aspect?
Quoting Harry Hindu
I very explicitly explained how information/meaning is not the same as cause/effect. Cause/effect implies a direct, necessary relation between two things. Information/meaning implies a system of interpretation as a medium between the two. Therefore there is no necessary relationship between the two, the relationship is contingent on interpretation The two, cause/effect, and information/meaning are clearly not the same at all, and your claim is nonsense.
Quoting Harry Hindu
What the hell are you talking about? What is the case, is that we can interpret correctly, as intended by the author of the sign, or incorrectly in a way not intended. What determines this is whether the person interpreting utilizes the appropriate system of interpretation. How does the fact that a person misunderstands, due to hallucination or any other reason, tell you anything specific or informative about the state of the person's body? What kind of nonsense principles are you appealing to?
Quoting Harry Hindu
As I explained, the causal relationship is irrelevant. When we see a signal created by another person, we know that the person is the cause, and the signal is the effect. That is taken for granted. But it is of no value in helping us to interpret the signal. What allows us to interpret is knowing the proper system of interpretation.
So we cannot look at a signal, and interpret its meaning, by referring to its cause, as you seem to think, that is a dead end method. It leads nowhere. It is a dead end, because all we will see is that a human being created the signal. We cannot see the human being's intent so we cannot know what the human being meant with that signal. Looking for the cause of the signal cannot give us an answer to what is meant by the signal, it's a dead end. We will see that the human being meant something, and so there is a "cause" of the signal, but we'll have no idea of how to determine what the human being meant. Therefore this is useless in determining meaning. The only approach we have, toward interpretation is to determine the proper system of interpretation, and this will allow us to interpret the meaning.
Quoting Harry Hindu
OK, I think you're done, because you keep reverting back to what has been demonstrated to be nonsense.
I hear you, but I am pointing at something far less theoretical. I need to keep this body intact as a vessel for my soul. If a truck runs me over, then I can no longer pray or write love poems (perhaps the same thing). So I mean 'foundation' in the sense of the legs of a tall statue. I want to get behind or beneath all the arguments on the ideological level. This may be impossible, so I'm talking about a direction of thought.
I'm thinking of what we non-theoretically know. When the knife slips from our hands at the kitchen counter we move our feet. We don't want that blade in our feet. Embodiment as experience, not as theory.
Quoting Wayfarer
I pretty much agree. We experience the fact of reasoning. We swim in the fact of language. Within this fact we can indulge in the talk of origin, grinding our ideological ax. What interests me, though, is a wakefulness to the fact of our embodiment and of our swimming in this language. The medium is overlooked in our obsession with the message. That's fine for others. I like the idea of giving a voice to the medium --of simply describing the pre-theoretical situation.
Of course. I've learned quite a bit about 'traditional' dualism in this thread - hylomorphic, meaning 'substance-form' duality. It doesn't see the mind and body as being able to exist separately (although that said, there are very many grey areas surrounding the nature of the 'immortal soul' as a consequence). But then, I do believe that ultimately humans are, as in the traditional understanding, 'betwixt apes and angels', whereas today's dogma is that we're all ape ;-)
I know what you mean by that dogma. It's around. It exists. But would you not agree that it's pretty small in terms of the proportion of humans who embrace it? It's the theoretical vanity of a few philosophers. It's a particular ascetic religious practice that enjoys doing without anything 'iffy.' It's a kind of know-it-all-ism --betrayed in practice by those who espouse it. The woman we love is not an 'ape.' Our best friend is not an 'ape.' Nor do any of us see an ape in the mirror. It's a bogus position. Or it's bogus as an existential position. To see ourselves as mere apes is to negate this seeing. The metaphysical arrogance in such a statement subverts its pseudo-humility and pseudo-skepticism. It's a religious myth, in short, without the guts to understand itself as such. Or that's how I currently see it, for better or worse.
Still disproportionately influential. It was the subject of this discussion about Nagel's book.
I don't think that, if we remove the identity or unit such as 'm' from the number, that anyone thought that 1 could not be divided. As you say yourself later on, one body can be divided into many molecules, and everyone can see that. So I think your claim once again shows the evolution of symbols, not of the concepts they point to.
Otherwise, I agree about your statement regarding how one object is composed of many parts. Physical objects can in theory be divided into an infinite quantity of smaller parts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The principle of sufficient reason demands that there is an objective reason as to why all hydrogen atoms behave the same way every time. The reason is one of two: Either the atoms are connected in some way, or they are not. If they are, then this connection is what is called the universal form, or genus, or species. If they are not, then the phenomenon is a mere coincidence, which, while logically possible, fails the law of parsimony until the first reason is refuted.
Besides, do you not believe in objective species at least when it comes to living beings, such that all humans are part of the human species, all dogs part of the dog species, and all trees part of the tree species? Science could explain this by mere DNA, but this only pushes the problem back a step, and does not explain why the DNA is similar among beings of the same species.
You're exaggerating to say the least. Nobody seriously thinks humans are descended from apes; the accepted thought is that we share a common ancestor. It is universally acknowledged that humans have a far greater range of capability, emotion and intelligence than the apes.
Interesting point, but doesn't this assume that time is like the real number line? What if existential time is deeper than mathematically conceived physics time? For us the future seems to penetrate the so-called present. And the so-called present drags along the past. To read this paragraph requires that you drag along what you've already read in anticipation of the period, for instance.
It's called 'hyperbole'. Daniel Dennett semi-seriously insists that we're 'moist robots' in a similar vein. And many people will insist that we're anything but human.
Quoting Brianna Whitney
Hi Brianna, and welcome to the Forum. Well said! X-)
Really...hyperbole!...I'd never heard of that before....
So, you and Dennett are just indulging in hyperbole on different sides of the fence...some sort of an anthropoid shit-flinging match? Well, I gotta say "moist robot" wins hands the argument down! :s
You're welcome Brianna, hope you enjoy your stay here.
MMDR Bots
I completely agree. For that reason I find 'mechanical' or dry, theoretical approaches to what we ought to do troubling. The individual as such is the possibility of rewriting any such tidy set of rules or concepts. This 'living world itself' is exactly the kind of phrase I like for trying to point out the context in which all our thinking-doing-feeling occurs. The idea of a 'thinking substance' strikes me as a fantasy that rips out language from the body and its context. Even the concept of the body is a ripping-out.
As I read Hegel, this is what the understanding does. It's the awful power that rips things out of their truth in the whole --a necessary evil, if you will. It's the kind of 'error' that makes life as we know it possible. We sew together the limbs and organs metaphysically and call it the living truth, but it's dead. It's not that we 'should' stop 'understanding' things (or that this is about what 'we' should do), but rather only about pointing out to whomever may find it useful that I at least see a jigsaw puzzle corpse where others claim a theology lives and breathes.
Typically one highlights what one is responding to here and a quote button will appear. Then it becomes clear who you are speaking to and they get a notification. Of course you don't have to, but it will probably make the forum more enjoyable.
I hear the phrase as referring to us observing and creating a paradigm as events unfold, not creating new events. Input?
For me it would be both creating new interpretations and new events, by word and deed respectively. Though one might say that speech is a sort of action, that disembodied thought is a useful fiction. I mean the thought as 'meaning' is a sound or a mark set forth or projected from a body, etc.
Also I mean the individual is only an individual in a potent sense as the threat/promise of a new way of saying/doing. Finally, the 'living world itself' is just the mess we're in. It's local, temporary individual life that we all already have before we can come up with theories that apply beyond our local, personal situation. We are thrown into these little lives. We don't choose our faces, our parents, the language(s) we learn as children. We find ourselves hurtling forward in a way we did not choose. Our thinking rips pieces of this flow out of their original context. We strive beyond the idiosyncratic. We strive against the entanglement, ambiguity, the swamping endless context....
Thoughts?
No, it is obviously you who is misunderstanding. Is a ship with three masts a physical thing or no? The fact that you say it isn't shows that it is you that doesn't understand what they are talking about. If the person putting up the flags never saw a ship, then why are they putting up flags? What is the cause, if not seeing a three-masted ship on the horizon? To explain this, all you can ever talk about is causal influences - why the man is putting up flags, and why he's putting them up in that particular pattern. The answers to those questions lie in causation. It's that simple.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverBecause you have yet to give a concise definition of what it means to be "non-physical", and what the distinction you are making between physical and non-physical is.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverAnd I have told you till I'm blue in the face that information/meaning can be independent of minds. There is information everywhere, it's just that we tend to ignore a great deal of it. Information doesn't need a non-physical counterpart to exist. It merely needs causation, or for an effect to represent some series of causes.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverSo, when a person is hallucinating, that doesn't indicate that they are on drugs, or that they are mentally unstable? Does one hallucinate before or after taking drugs? If one hallucinates after taking drugs, then isn't the hallucinations the effect of the drugs, and therefore refers to the drugs in the system, and can provide information about the kinds of drugs they took? You're performing these mental gymnastics in an attempt to hold your feeble arguments together, and all it does is make your position less clear and make you appear as if you don't know what it is you are talking about. This is what happens every time I engage you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is so stupid. We get at each other's intent every time we read each other's words, as the words are an effect of your ideas and your intent to convey them. Misunderstanding your words is misunderstanding your idea and your means of conveying it, which is the cause of me reading your words. If you had no idea, or no intent to convey them, I wouldn't be reading your words. This is so simple and obvious, the fact that you aren't getting it is shows that you are either obtuse, or simply like to argue for the sake of arguing.
What you don't seem to understand is that the "universal form" is the abstraction, a description which we use to describe the objects. We have a description of the hydrogen atom, electrons, neutrons, protons, weight, etc. This is the "universal form" of the hydrogen atom. So indeed, all the hydrogen atoms which are judged to be hydrogen atoms, are connected by this universal form. But this connection is one produced by that human judgement. It's artificial as a connection produced by the judgement that they are the same type. They are thus "connected" to each other, as hydrogen atoms, because they've been judged to be hydrogen atoms.
To make things easier, more straight forward, let's say that we've divided out from the vast reality, these individual things, parts, and each of these parts, though it is different, is also similar, and due to that similarity, we call each by the same name, "hydrogen atom". Notice the first premise, we separate these things out, we individuate them from their environment, which is the whole vast universe in which they exist. The problem is that we can't really completely separate them from everything else, so no matter what we do, they are still fundamentally a part of a larger whole. And, like I explained in the last post, either a thing gets its identity by being a part of a larger whole, or it gets its identity from being an individual, whole itself, but it can't be both because this is contradictory. In reality, a thing is part of the larger whole, and cannot be absolutely separated, so this is its true identity.
There is an assumption that hydrogen atoms have individual, separate existence, as individual things, and this is what gives them their identity, according to the "universal form". But this is not really a true assumption, the true identity of each hydrogen atom is as a part of a larger whole. It is an artificial identity which we have created in this act of individuation. In reality, they always exist in an environment, as part of that environment, so none of these hydrogen atoms ever really have completely independent existence as independent things, in an absolute way. The universal form lacks in truth in this way, and this lacking is known as the accidentals which are proper to each individual.
Now, you say that the fact that these things are similar means that they are connected in some way. And you claim that this connection is the universal form, which is known as the hydrogen atom. In reality, the connection is that they are all a part of one larger whole, one universe, and so they really are connected, just as you say is necessary, in order for them to be similar. But this connection is through the natural environment of their existence, it is not through the universal form. Why they are similar is a function of their position within the whole, not a function of the universal form of the hydrogen atom. The universal form, the form of the hydrogen atom, is the principle by which we individuate these parts, divide them out as separate entities. Therefore, the inverse to what you say is what is really the case. The universal form is not what connects these things, it's what divides them out into separate, but similar entities. This division is artificial. In order for us to know the real connection, how they are all part of one and the same universe, requires that we know the particular form of the particular thing, which is the universe, not the universal form of the hydrogen atom.
So for example, imagine that there was one fundamental particle, like the ancient atomist thought, or what Aristotle called prime matter. Each instance of this particle would be precisely the same as every other, only having a different spatial location. All of reality would consist of different combinations and patterns of this one repeating particle. Such a particle would be like a point with only a location in space because it could not have any spatial form, or else that form would be in principle, divisible itself. In that case, we in theory, divide down the universe to a most fundamental object, and if we followed your principles, we would theorize that if we know the universal form of that fundamental object we have what is required to understand the entire universe. The problem is, that in doing this we have really just flipped the whole problem inside out, and haven't solved anything. That fundamental particle could have absolutely no universal form, in order that it might constitute all material forms, and suddenly, the "form" of all things becomes the relationships which these particles have with one another.
So, when we in theory, we divide down the universe into parts, such that we can identify the parts according to similarities, and classify them according to universal forms, what we do is create less and less different types, and more and more objects of these different types. What this indicates, is that what constitutes "a different type", is principally the difference in the relationships which the parts have to each other, not a difference in the part itself. Therefore when we come to understand the universal form of a particular type of part, say the hydrogen atom, this universal form, which is a human creation, is not a principle of the connectedness of things, which would really be found in the relationships between parts within a larger thing, it is a principle of division.
And what you never seemed to have grasped despite your voluminous posts in this thread, over several months, is that the fundamental claim of Platonic realism is that Universals are real, and don’t simply exist in individual minds.
All of the specifics discussed such as triangles, numbers, and so on, are simply illustrative examples. In this respect, I think Samuel’s understanding of the issue is much nearer the actual Thomist understanding than your own.
I totally understand that. But I disagree with Platonic Realism. Some of the reasons for my disagreement are explained in that last post. Other reasons for that disagreement I have been explaining throughout the thread. It is not the case that I do not grasp the fundamental claim of Platonic Realism. It is the case that I find it to be an untenable position.
Quoting Wayfarer
As far as I know, the Thomistic understanding is not a Platonic Realism, it is more accurate to say that it is a Neo-Platonic Idealism. There is a big difference between Platonic Realism and Neo-Platonic Idealism. The principal difference, as I described earlier in the thread, is that Neo-Platonic Idealism validates the existence of independent Forms, through the existence of particulars, such that real independent Forms are particulars, emanating from the One, while Platonic Realism maintains the untenable position that universal forms have real independent existence.
My view (and I think the Thomists') claims that individuals are true identities as the starting point; and from there, we find genera (genus in plural apparently), that individuals participate in. This view allows for both individual forms and universal forms.
Unless I misunderstood, it sounds like you claim that the whole, the universe, is the one and only true identity as the starting point; and then from there, associate individual things as the divided parts of the whole, like body parts are to one body. Where does the individual form fit in, if individuals do not possess true identities? Also, is your view pantheism?
No, maths should not be an absolute candidate to stand up because it cannot prove itself to be consistent. Please refer Hilbert's second problem on arithmetic. Without proved consistency, anything is merely empirical regardless of how many successful cases it has dealt.
that depends on your understanding of "physical", whether it's matter and energy as it now stands or just part of existence or the whole existence.
The first case gives an absolute NO.
The middle, also a No: found no good definition of information but for the sake of the argument, information is a sequence of data. The sequence can be 1-length or above (not sure any meaning with zero length). Data itself, overall, is existence, including any possible forms, discovered or undiscovered. If physical is just a subset, then information should not be within that. Can intersect probably but I haven't thought of a good example. Finally still a No.
The last assumption, a big YES. As physical identifies with existence then nothing is outside.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I agree, individuals are true identities. The question here though, is where do universals come from. Are they something pre-existing which we discover, or do we create them within our minds? We all want to say that they pre-exist, and we discover them, because this validates as "real", our knowledge. It makes for well-grounded epistemology. The problem is that we make mistakes, we find out later that our universals were not accurate, so we change them. Then our complete system of universals appears like something changing, evolving, such that the pre-existing universals are only ideals which we strive for, but never completely obtain , and the reality of them is hard to justify.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
So we take the whole "the universe", as an individual, one. And as an individual it has true identity as one particular. But as the whole, of everything, it is also a true universal. Now the universal is grounded with true identity, true independent existence, as a particular. When we proceed to validate universals as true and real, now, we must proceed from that "One" to position each universal in relation to the One. So we might proceed to differentiate animate from inanimate for example. If we start from a particular individual, like the individual man, and assign a species "man" to the individual, then assign a genus, "animal", etc., we are proceeding in the opposite direction, creating the universals as we go, for that particular purpose. And the universals created are not necessarily real unless they are properly related to the true universal, the One.
Hey MU. My turn to apologize; I will be busy and likely not as responsive on the Forum, possibly until the beginning of next year. I hope to resume this conversation at that point, and get to the bottom of this reality thing.
Cheers.
It is still predictive - you wouldn't be responding on a computer if it wasn't. In that post I was responding to subjectivism, that numbers are 'only in the mind' or 'purely conventional'; which doesn't account for the effectiveness of mathematical reasoning in making predictions and discoveries. This doesn't rely on maths being absolute, whatever that means.
I don't see any reason why Thomists would say that. After all the Bible states that 'God is no respecter of persons'; and 'He who loses his life for My sake, will be saved'. Christians are 'saved' not because of their personalities, but in spite of them. Of course that is bound to be a contentious claim, but in any case, I think you far overestimate the importance of the notion of 'the individual' to ancient and medieval philosophy, where it was hardly a matter of consideration for them; that only comes about with much later democratic humanism.
No problem. It's a busy time of year. Cheers!
Quoting Wayfarer
This was Samuel's point, which I didn't disagree with.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
It is an Aristotelian principle, the law of identity, a thing is the same as itself. This hands identity to the thing itself, as a particular, such that the identity of a thing is not the description of the thing, the description employing universals, because identity is particular to the individual.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't quite see how your reference to the Bible is relevant to the issue of "true identity". It is argued strongly by Paul, in the New Testament, that in relation to resurrection, the eternal, immortality of the soul, it is the individual person whose existence persists. And if you think about it, these concepts loose their meaningfulness when removed from the individual.
The "individual" is of extreme importance to Aristotelian logic, as is evident from his law of identity discussed above. It forms the basis for the concept of "substance", and substance is the grounding of all logic. Here's the first line of Ch.5 of Aristotle's "The Categories":
But maths is NOT empirical. That's the whole point. There is no empirical proof required of [insert mathematical theorem here] - it's purely intelligible, it comprises truths of reason alone. But - and this is the amazing thing - even despite that, it makes entirely novel predictions about nature, that otherwise would never have been discovered. Which is what makes the notion of the 'synthetic a priori' so interesting. If you haven't encountered Eugene Wigner's The Unreasonable Efficiency of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, it's worth a read (even though it's badly written).
Quoting Wayfarer
I have just read some of its reviews, there are pro and against. Have you read both sides? And your opinion for the against (e.g http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Hamming.html)? I think they are much to my side.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Actually, the very fact that we can determine that our description of universals are inaccurate proves that we have knowledge of the real universal; because if we did not, then we could never judge our description to be inaccurate. You might reply that if we knew the universal, then we could always accurately describe it. This is very much the Meno's Paradox: "If we know what we're looking for, inquiry is unnecessary. If we don't know what we're looking for, inquiry is impossible. Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible."
To solve the paradox, we need to make the distinction between implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge. As per Aristotle, we have implicit knowledge of universals, obtained through the process of abstraction, and we are searching for the explicit knowledge. The ability to describe the universal accurately is the explicit knowledge, and the ability to judge if our description is accurate is the implicit knowledge. This is how the socratic method works. This also explains why we can all use the concept of 'justice' correctly and meaningfully in a sentence (e.g. "the holocaust was unjust"), but have trouble coming up with the perfect definition of 'justice'.
Regarding the universe as the One: I will put this topic on hold for now to focus on the one above.
I agree that in seeking knowledge we assume that there is such a thing as what you call "the real universal". The point I made earlier in the thread, is that this perfect universal is "the ideal", and as the ideal, it is no longer a universal, it has the characteristics of a particular. This is what Plato recognized in "The Republic" when he saw "the good". Suddenly "the real universal" is no longer a universal, it is a particular. Now it is necessary that the inquiry take a whole new course. We have been seeking the real universal, but we have been looking in the completely wrong place because there is no such thing as "the real universal", what we would call "the real universal" is actually a particular. When we determine what is required of the universal to be "real", we describe a particular. This opens a whole new perspective onto the nature of ideas and forms, the reality of the particular form.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
So this distinction between explicit and implicit requires an assumption of the ideal, a perfection of the universal, and this ideal is necessarily a particular. Therefore such judgements always involve, within the implicit, the assumed reality of the particular. As much as we explicitly judge the universal, i.e. the universal is what is being judged for level of accuracy, this indicates a privation in the reality of universal, in reference to the assumed real perfection which is a particular.
I am trying to understand what you mean by this. Each universal form or concept is "particular" in the sense that it is unique relative to other concepts. If it was not, then they would fail the principle of indiscernible; and to this, I agree. But if you mean that concepts are particulars in the same sense that this rock is a particular, then this cannot be. As per Aquinas, matter is what gives universal forms their particularity. Therefore universal forms without matter cannot be particulars.
If you still mean the latter, then what reason do you have to support the claim that the ideal is necessarily a particular?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Yeah I said that. I did not mean it in the sense that individual persons must have individual ontological value, or do not share a common human nature. I meant it in the sense that I am me and not you, and you are you and not me. From this, we conclude that we have separate identities or individual forms (called soul in this case), although we both participate in the same universal form or species of human.
You agreed with me that our descriptions of the universals are imperfect. You have your description, I have my description, and there are differences between the two. But we assume that there is what you called "the real universal", the correct conception of any concept, and this is what I called the perfect conception, or the ideal. Do you agree that the perfect conception, or ideal, must be a particular? This means that it must be unique in its existence. If you had one tiny aspect of the conception wrong, then you wouldn't have the perfect conception, And so the conceptions that each of us have are riddled with these minor deficiencies and are not the "real universal".
So the "real universal", due to this perfection, is necessarily a particular. As you say, a rock is also a particular. But your suggestion is that a rock is a particular in a different way from the way that the "real universal" is a particular. How can this be? A particular is a particular. What defines the particular is that it is a unique, one of a kind ,individual. In the sense of being a particular I see no difference between an immaterial particular and a material particular. Your claim appears to be that an immaterial particular is different from a material particular. I'll agree with you on that difference between immaterial and material,.but as a particular there appears to be no reason to believe that there is any difference, one is a material particular, the other an immaterial particular.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
There appears to be something confused in this statement. The universal form, without matter, is the ideal, the perfect, and is therefore necessarily a particular. Human minds, and their conceptions are corrupted by the material nature of the human body, and so human conceptions do not obtain the level of the ideal, they are imperfect. So the difference in conception, of the same concept, between you and I, and others, is due to our material nature, and this is why we do not achieve the perfect conception, the ideal. However, if we are to assume that there are such perfect forms, without matter, then by the very assumption that they are perfect, ideal, then they are necessarily individual.
It is just a misunderstanding on how the term "particular" is defined. The way you use it for the universal forms, I now understand it to mean that each universal form is unique; and I agree.
According to the dictionary here, particular is defined as "used to single out an individual member of a specified group or class." In this strict sense, universal forms cannot be particulars because they are synonymous to "specified group" or "class" in the definition, and this would not make sense. In this strict sense, only things like individual rocks can be particulars because they are individual members of the universal form of rock-ness.
That is exactly why I deny that universal forms have any real independent existence, it becomes contradictory in the way that you describe here. The independent universal must be a unique individual, as I described, and this makes it a particular. But as you explain, it doesn't make sense to say that the universal is a particular. So it becomes necessary to dismiss the notion that universal forms have existence independent from the human minds which conceive of them. That is why the Neo-Platonists, and Christian theologians moved on to describe the independent Forms as individuals. The Neo-Platonists described a procession of individual forms emanating from the One, and Aquinas described God and the angels as independent Forms.
But, all of our concepts are mental images formed from our experience with sensible realities.
The underlying question should be:
Do ideas and concepts exist apart from the sensible images of which they are composed?
I would say yes, because one idea can exist under various images and examples.
Is THAT concept, stripped from images, when communicated via a sensible medium- sensible or insensible?
Let's consider again the two statements below.
(1) Each universal form is particular because if it was not so, then they would fail the principle of Identity of Indiscernibles.
(2) A universal form cannot be a particular because a particular is defined as "used to single out an individual member of a specified group or class."
I don't see a contradiction in the statements; only an ambiguity in the term "particular". The term in statement (1) means "unique only". The term in statement (2) means "unique yet belonging to the same genus as other particulars".
If it is true that all humans are humans, and all rocks are rocks, then the universal forms of human genus and rock genus exist. It is possible that these genera cease to exist if all humans and rocks cease to exist; but nevertheless, the human genus is a different thing from the individual humans it comprises.
Quoting Daniel Smith
The concept itself must be insensible; because if it was sensible, then we would have no use to communicate the concept through a second layer of sensible images and examples, which are numerous, as you said.
Quoting Daniel Smith
I would also say yes, by pointing to the concept of "justice". We all understand the concept, and yet have no clear sensible image of it. The image of a scale is merely a symbol of it, not the real thing.
Let me see if I understand what you're saying. The universal becomes a particular, as per my arguments, and is represented as (1). Now this particular, may be a member of a class (which itself is a universal), and therefore also a particular. So you say that there is no contradiction in claiming that the universal is really a particular, as the particular may be unique, distinct, yet also the member of a class(2).
The issue though is whether the universal, as universal, has any real existence. What I've argued is that it has real existence only as a particular. I don't deny its real existence absolutely, only its real existence as anything other than a particular. You seem to want to insist that it still has real existence as a universal as well. The problem I see is that "universal" refers to what you call "class" or "genus" in (2). And, that a particular is a member of a class or genus, requires a judgement. So in (2), you assume that a class has real existence, as group of particulars, from which individuals may be singled out. But we do not have the premise to give real existence to this group, or class. The premise is that the universal is necessarily a particular, and there is no premise that the particular might consist of a number of other particulars.
The issue is how to validate this "class". The class is what we call the universal form, and if it has real existence, it exists as a particular. You want to assume that this particular, has numerous members, other particulars within it. How do you validate that this is real? It appears to me like this is only a matter of an assumption, and if so, it is simply judgement. And if it's just a judgement, how can it be real?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
That a particular object is a rock, or that one is a human being, is a matter of judgement. So I would say that these categories, these classifications, the genus of rock, and the genus of human come into existence as a result of such judgements. I agree that the human genus is different from the individual human beings, because the genus, as the universal, comes into existence through human judgement. The existence of the universal, the genus is dependent on human judgement. The question is how do we assign real existence to something which is dependent on human judgement.
If we assume that the universal has real existence independent from human judgement, then we are right back around the circle, stating that the universal is a particular. If you wish to say that some particulars are members of other particulars (these are the particulars which we call universals), then we still have the problem that this is a matter of judgement. So it appears to me, that this relationship which makes something a member of a class, or genus, is a matter of judgement. In order to make the universal something real, we need to make the judgement something real.
You are correct. This was not what I was saying, but I was mistaken because I forgot that universals may be a members of higher universals, like the human genus is a member of the genus of living beings.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I disagree that concepts or universal forms are dependant on human judgement. The reason is that judgements can be either true or false: if the judgement points to reality, then it is true; and if not, then it is false. Thus the reality or existence of the concepts in the judgement precedes the judgement. If concepts or universal forms were dependant on human judgement, then no judgement could be either true or false; which is absurd.
Consider that we have two things, the particular, and the universal form, which is the class, or genus. The particular has a unique form, what it is, and the universal is also a case of what something is. Yet the two are not the same, because the universal must allow that many of the particulars are of the same class. So there are two distinct forms, the form of the particular, and the universal form.
The issue is how does a particular become a member of any class (universal form). My claim is that this can only occur by judgement because a certain type of relationship between the particular form and the universal form is required, and this relationship is established by a judgement. A mind compares the two forms and passes judgement. It is clear that the human mind through judgement does make this type of relationship, so I don't think that I am wrong there. But perhaps the human mind is not the only way that such a relationship can be made.
You argue that there is truth and falsity to this type of judgement therefore the relationship which is being judged must be something real. But this argument will turn out to be circular. The truth or falsity of whether any particular is a member of a specified class, depends on how that class is defined. But the definition is commonly produced by a human judgement.
So if we assume that the universal form is defined independently from human judgement, we have no way of knowing whether our definition matches the independently existing definition, whether our understanding of the universal form matches the real universal form. Then how would we ever know whether or not it is true that any particular is a member of any class? Since we couldn't know whether our definition matches the independent definition because all we have is the definitions we produce anyway, then truth and falsity, to us, are just a matter of judgement anyway. Then whether the particular was "really" and "truly" a member of any class, would require a judgement by God.
So we still do not avoid the need for a judgement, unless you can say how one form could have that specific relationship with another form, without being judged to have it. Suppose it's a relationship of similarity for example. All particular forms are by their nature distinct, unique, so they are essentially different. What could unite them within the same class, as "the same", except a judgement?
We already covered this issue here. It is solved by making the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge of the universal form or concept. The implicit knowledge is obtained through abstraction from observing particulars; and then if our explicit definition agrees with the implicit knowledge, then it is the true definition. This explains why we all sense that the definition of justice for humans, "equality in treatment", is a more accurate definition than "don't steal".
If the definition of concepts is only produced by a human judgement, even if agreed upon by all men without dispute, then the definitions would not point to anything objectively real, and thus no judgement could ever be true or false, that is, point to reality or not; which is absurd.
Furthermore, even the particular form of individual things is defined by its properties which are all universal forms or concepts, aside perhaps from the x, y, z, t properties. E.g. The particular form of this individual chair is: A chair (concept), made of wood (concept), red in colour (concept), located at position x, y, z, (not a concept I think). If it was not so, then we could never know any general knowledge like "chairs made of wood can burn", without testing every individual wooden chair.
We're pretty much going around in circles but we are at a slightly different point, because now you mention truth. I don't believe that the implicit/explicit description can be used to explain truth. Truth itself is an ideal, thus to know the truth would require having explicit knowledge of the universal form. Truth, which is a complete exclusion of mistake from our belief, cannot be obtained through what you call implicit knowledge.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
You slightly misrepresent this, and when properly represented, it is not absurd at all. Definitions can point to something real without obtaining "truth", because truth must be a complete lack of mistake in such pointing. If you use "true" or "truth" in a less strict sense, then we can say that if human beings agree, that this is an indication that we are pointing toward reality. If you release "true" from its strict sense which renders it an ideal, complete lack of mistake, in order that it be grasped by implicit knowledge, then there is nothing to prevent us from saying that truth is what human beings agree on.
What is the case is that a judgement concerning the relation between a particular and a universal, cannot ever be known with certainty to be true or false. And this is not absurd because we must always allow that each, our understanding of the particular, and our understanding of the universal are not necessarily without mistake, even though we might believe that they are without mistake. So "truth" as the ideal cannot be obtained, but "truth" in the lesser sense, of pointing to reality, is implied by human agreement.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I think that this is not at all true. Our knowledge of particulars is known to be incomplete, and that is precisely because we can only know the particular through universals. So no matter how we describe any particular, the fact that we describe it in terms of universals, will always leave our knowledge of the particular, incomplete. It is very evident that our knowledge of particulars is always incomplete. And regarding your comment about "general knowledge", this is exactly what is expressed by the commonly cited "problem of induction". The conclusions we make through inductive reasoning are never absolutely certain, as they are based in probability.
If I understand you correctly, your position is that our concepts are not completely true, but are consistent among all humans, and this indicates that we are close to truth. I see a few flaws with this view.
(1) There is a self-contradiction in the assertion that "the complete truth cannot be obtained but truth in the lesser sense, of pointing to reality, is implied by human agreement". If complete truth can never be obtained, then this statement can never be validated to be completely true.
(2) It fails the principle of parsimony: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Thus if everyone perceives the same concept, it is reasonable to assume the concept is pointing to the real thing; until it is invalidated. But it cannot be invalidated, for the same reason that your position cannot be validated, as shown in (1).
(3) You wish to escape the absurdity that no judgement can ever be determined as true or false, by arguing that we can have mutual agreements among everyone, and claim "this is an indication that we are pointing toward reality". I agree that we can have mutual agreement among everyone, but why is this an indication that we are pointing toward reality? If the concept of a single individual is not true, then why would the whole group, which is nothing but the sum of all individuals, be any more true?
I will once again opt out of the "problem of induction" discussion, for the purpose of focusing on the one above.
I don't see any problem with this, no self-contradiction. It's like the statement "any statement may be doubted". That statement may be doubted too. But there is no self-contradiction unless I state that it is undoubtable that any statement may be doubted.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The principle of parsimony is very weak as a proof. It suffers in the same way as the problem of induction. To conclude "it probably is", does not give us what is needed to state, beyond a doubt, that it is. We can't avoid that degree of uncertainty, that it still may not be a duck.
So this doesn't get us any closer to proving that there are real, independent universal forms. The point I've been making throughout this thread is that we do not all apprehend "the same" concept. "The same" implies one unique individual. When we say that we have "the same" concept in each of our minds, what we really mean is similar, due to personal peculiarities, idiosyncrasies. We dismiss the differences as accidental (a difference which doesn't make a difference), such that the concept which we each have is essentially the same. But when we adhere to a solid principle of identity to define "the same", then any difference makes a difference..
It appears to me, like you are arguing that these similarities "point to", a real concept, a real universal form which is independent. I say that the differences, the peculiarities, which we each have, "point to" the lack of a real universal form. I support my claim by pointing to differences, and saying that there are no examples of human concepts which are "the same" between individuals. So the assumption of "the same" is faulty. How do you support your claim?
Take your example. We see an object as a duck. and call it a duck. We call another thing a duck, and another, and another, and so on. You say that we call each one a duck because it looks and acts like a duck. This implies that there are some criteria whereby a thing is a duck. What is that criteria, other than what we say it is? You say that because we all agree, this indicates that there is a real form, or defining criteria. The problem though is that we do not all agree, we have our personal peculiarities. We overlook the personal differences for the sake of agreement, but how does this validate the real existence of the ideal?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I agree with you here. It is that very principle of probability discussed above. Agreement indicates that we are probably pointing toward reality, but not necessarily. However, my reality is a reality of difference. Agreement is a function of difference, it is made necessary because of difference. The fact that we must obtain agreement to proceed in communion indicates that difference is fundamental. Agreement is necessitated by differences. It is not a function of any real sameness or similarity, it is derived from the desire to overlook our differences, and this is a desire for sameness. Desire for something indicates a lacking, a wanting, of that thing. Now sameness, like the ideal, is what is desired, what is lacking, or non-existent, and this drives agreement in the form of intent. Desire relates to the future, what is not yet existing, what is lacking, and that's where the sameness of the ideal is categorized. And that's why the ideal doesn't have real existence.
This objection (3), would only create a difficulty for my position, if your objection (1) above was a valid objection. But as it stands, it is exactly what validates my claim that universal forms have no real independent existence.
Hey MU. Sorry for not being as responsive as last year. Obligations are getting in the way. This trend may continue for a while, but I do plan to answer all the objections above at some point.
Hello MU. I am back; at least temporarily. Though it has been a while, I hope you are okay to resume this conversation. I will resume it in the next post below.
You are correct that there is no self-contradiction in the sense that the statement "the complete truth cannot be obtained but truth in the lesser sense, of pointing toward reality, is implied by human agreement" must be necessarily false. However, there is a self-contradiction in the assertion of the statement, as in "it is completely true that we cannot obtain complete truths". To escape the contradiction, the statement must remain in the state of hypothesis. Now on the other hand, there is also a flaw in saying "it is completely true that we can obtain some truths completely", because it creates circular reasoning. Indeed, the very nature of the topic is such that we will forever remain in the state of hypotheses regardless what position we take, and never be able to rise to a higher level of certainty. And this brings me to the point on the principle of parsimony.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree, but given the nature of the topic as shown in the previous paragraph, this principle is unfortunately the best method we have left. As such, if I perceive some thing, it is more reasonable to assume that the thing perceived is the real thing, than not, until a flaw is found in the hypothesis. And you claim to have found one, as follows:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This depends on the degree of difference. Let's take a common-sense example: You and I both observe the same duck, and we describe it to a third person. I say "it has a beak, two wings and is brown". If you say "it has a trunk, leaves, and is green", then I agree that this type of difference is significant enough to debunk the 'sameness' conclusion, and by extension refute the 'complete truth' hypothesis. But if you say "it has wings, a beak, and is beige", then even though there are differences in the description (different words in different order), this type of difference is not significant enough to debunk the conclusion that we are describing the same thing, by common sense. As such, your demand for complete sameness is unreasonable. Then I claim the differences are for the most part insignificant, as demonstrated in the example of 'triangle' way back then, where I described it as "a flat surface with 3 straight sides", and you described it as "a plane with 3 sides and 3 angles". Surely you understand that I don't disagree with your description, and that the differences can simply be attributed to differences in expressions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That does not sound right. You and I surely agree that the sum of 2 and 2 is 4 and nothing else. Here is an example of agreement with no difference. Are you perhaps mixing the concept of 'agreement' with 'tolerance' or 'compromise'? Regardless, I think the first two points above are more decisive to the topic.
Hi Samuel, nice to hear from you. I'm going to have to refresh my memory on the issue here, it's been a while. I'll be back soon.
But I wouldn't make that statement as an assertion, because it would be obvious that it was self-contradicting. It is made as a proposition, a proposal which you might either accept or reject. You simply misrepresented it as an assertion so that you could dismiss it as self-contradictory. That's a classic straw man.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Isn't that the state which knowledge is always in? Consider science. We do not insist that the body of scientific knowledge consists of facts and truths, absolute certainties, we say that it consists of theories which have been verified by empirical observation. So it really is the case that we remain in the state of hypotheses, but we gain confidence that the hypotheses have been proven, such that they are taken as theories, and certainty increases by degrees.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I am actually opposed to the principle of parsimony, because it promotes lazy, simplistic descriptions of complicated things. This is not conducive to good understanding and advancements in knowledge. Consider as an example, that you and I live side by side, and we see something on the far horizon that looks like a dark spot on the ground. So we call it the dark spot. Every day we meet each other out in front of our houses and say "there's the dark spot, it's still there". By the principle of parsimony, that's exactly what it is, "the dark spot". We have no inclination to investigate, and describe it in more detail, because we're completely satisfied that that's what the thing really is, the dark spot.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
In your example, we both have different descriptions, and you are assuming that we are describing the same thing. That assumption is not sufficient. It might be the case that we are talking about the same thing, it might not be the case. To support your argument, you need more than the assumption that we are talking about the same thing, you need to demonstrate that we actually are talking about the same thing. This is what you are arguing about concepts, that my concept of triangle, and your concept of triangle actually is the same concept, not that it may be the same, or that you are assuming that it is the same.
So, let's see how we really determine whether or not we are actually speaking about the same thing. Since we can use different words to describe the same thing, as you demonstrated, then to be certain, without a doubt, that we are describing the same thing, we must somehow point to the thing. In the case of the concept, I point to the idea in my mind, and you point to the idea in your mind, and we are pointing to different things. Your claim that this would be an insignificant difference really doesn't make sense. It's clearly a big difference. If we were trying to determine whether or not we were talking about the same physical object, say, "the chair", and I pointed to an object in my house and you pointed to an object in your house, then clearly we are not talking about the same object, despite the fact that we might use similar words to describe these objects.
Furthermore, the claim of "insignificant difference", does not suffice to prove that similar things are actually the same. You are simply trying to reduce "same" to "similar", but this is not a reduction which can be made in any sound way. It's like what apokrisis and wayfarer tried to argue earlier in the thread, that if there are differences which don't make a difference, then we can say that two things are the same. However, the whole point of my argument is that there is a distinction to be made, between "similar" and "same". If you agree that there is a distinction between similar and same, then in making this distinction there can be no such thing as a difference which does not make a difference, because this would allow that two similar things are the same. And that would negate the distinction between similar and same which we would have agreed to uphold.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
If there are differences between two things, then they are similar and not the same. Do you agree?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The point I was making is that there is only a need for us to agree if there are differences between us. If there were no differences in what we believed, it would be the same, and there would be no need for agreement, the same is one and the same. It is only because there are differences between us, that we need to negotiate those differences, and come to an agreement.
Just to clarify, I was not accusing you of self-contradiction, but rather pointing out the limitations of such a topic as whether truth can be attained. Yes, scientific topics also start with hypotheses, but do not end there, because these hypotheses can be validated empirically. This topic on truth however can never be validated, by its very content. This is why we are reduced to rely on the principle of parsimony. There is simply no better approach here. But it's not as bad as what you make it sound. The principle states that it is more reasonable to retain the simplest hypothesis that explains all the data. Your "dark spot" example is not a correct one, because it gives no explanation, and so does not satisfy the principle. But a simple explanation would be adequate, and would still leave the inclination to investigate further for validation (if possible).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
My point was that even when we are describing the same thing like a duck (and we know this by pointing to the same object), then it still happens that we can give different descriptions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am not sure what you mean by "pointing to the idea in my mind". Concepts or ideas are like signs that point to something else. If I have the idea of a specific chair in mind, I would not "point to the idea in my mind", but point to the specific chair in reality, which the idea is about.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are making an error. Yes, you are correct that it is impossible for similar things to be one and the same thing. However, it is possible for similar descriptions of a thing to be about one and the same thing. And as shown previously, it is very probable that our description of the same duck will have insignificant differences in words and order of words.
I accept your clarification about "coming to an agreement" on things that were not previously agreed upon.
So your argument is that we each describe the same thing with different words. But this does not necessitate that the thing we are each describing with different words is the same thing. So your argument just creates a possibility, it doesn't produce anything conclusive.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
We are discussing whether "chair", or "triangle", or any other word, refers to the same concept when you interpret the word and when I interpret the word. Do you agree that we determine conclusively that we are talking about the very same thing, by pointing to the thing we are talking about, or in some other way determining it's spatial-temporal location? This is how we determine that the thing we are each talking about is actually the same thing.
Now, in the case of a concept, how are we going to point to it to determine whether it's the same thing which we are each talking about? I could point to the idea in my mind and you could point to the idea in your mind, but then we are clearly pointing to different things. You could argue that because we call it by the same name, "triangle", then it is the same thing, but the reality is that "triangle" refers to a universal idea, and therefore many particular things go by that name. So if we use different words to describe the conditions by which something qualifies as a "triangle", then clearly we do not have the same concept of "triangle".
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I agree that it is possible for similar descriptions to refer to one and the same thing. But the type of thing we are talking about here is a concept. And I do not believe that different description can refer to the same concept because I believe that the concept is the description itself. If the description is the concept, then it is impossible that a different description could be the same concept.
Let's assume a description, "big and red". My claim is that the concept is inherently tied to these descriptive words, such that there cannot be any separation between the description and the concept. If you tried to remove the concept from "big", or the concept from "red", you would be left with nothing because those words determine the concept. Without the description, "red", there is no concept of red. You seem to believe that the concept is separable from the words, such that different words can be used to refer to the same concept. So for instance, "huge and magenta" might refer to the same concept as "big and red". But clearly these two are different descriptions. Being different descriptions, I think they must be different concepts.
Consider two descriptions which are completely equivalent, 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and 0 degrees Celsius. They are derived from different measurement systems, so clearly they are different concepts. "2+2", and "4", despite being equivalent, are distinct concepts.
So I don't see any examples of instances where different descriptive words describe the same concept. You and the others just assert, without justification, that they do. You say that we each describe a "triangle" differently, but this difference is insignificant, a difference which doesn't make a difference, we are still talking about the same thing. So you make an unjustified assumption that we are talking about the same thing, despite these differences. I say the description is the concept, so any difference in description indicates that it is not the same concept. I am pointing to the concept, showing you the concept, it is the description, expressed in words, and in this way I show you that different descriptive words express different concepts. If you want to support your position, in which the concept is something other than the description, something referred to by the description, or described, you need to point to the concept, show it to me. How is the concept "triangle" something other than what is described as a triangle.
Indeed, it does not make it necessary but possible; and this possibility is sufficient to refute your argument that, since we give different descriptions of concepts, then the concepts must be different. We are therefore back to the starting point obtained from the principle of parsimony, namely that concepts coincide with real things, because it is the simplest hypothesis.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree that for particular physical beings, we can validate that we are talking about the same thing by pointing to its spatial-temporal properties. Also, this cannot be done for universal concepts because I argue that they are not physical beings. However, we can get close to certainty by testing numerous particular physical beings that have the universal concept as its genus. For example, we can test if my judgement of the shapes here, here, and here match with your judgement that they have 'triangle' as their genus. Since our judgement is based on our respective concept, then the more objects we test, the closer we get to certainty that our concept is the same. Another way is to see if we agree with each other's description, despite their minor differences. I personally believe this way is also legit, but I know you don't because you demand complete sameness in descriptions. So on to the next section below.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I find that position surprising. Recall that if the concept is not connected a being in reality, then the consequence is that no proposition ever spoken can be true, that is, reflect reality. Up to now, I thought your position was that our concepts are connected to real beings, and although they may fail to accurately match the real beings, they nevertheless come close to it. I was willing to take that position seriously. But now, it seems your new position is that a concept is nothing but the description itself, not referring to another thing, thereby completely severing its connection to any real being. Consequently, no truth can ever be spoken. I hope I am misunderstanding something, because as it stands, your new position leads to absurdity. It forces you to give up on metaphysics (which is ironic given your name), and by extension, truth, and by extension, philosophy, which is the search for truth.
You've lost me now. I don't see how "concepts coincide with real things" supports your argument. If I remember correctly, you were arguing that concepts, as universals, have real existence. If they coincide with real things, then they are particulars. That is what I was arguing, if we want to give concepts real existence, we must reduce them to particulars, either as the form of a particular thing, or as an ideal universal.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
All this demonstrates is that we judge these few things in a similar way. It doesn't demonstrate that we have the same concept. However, the fact that we each described our concept of "triangle" in a different way does demonstrate that we each have a different concept of "triangle".
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I think we've been away from this discussion for too long, and we've both lost track of what each other has been arguing. perhaps we ought to give it up. Why must a concept be connected to a "real being"? A concept may be completely artificial. An architect designs a building. The concept is completely in the architect's mind, then on the paper. it is not connected to a "real being". Or do I misunderstand you?
You presuppose that all beings are particulars. Why is that necessary? I would agree that all physical beings are particulars, due to having particular spacial-temporal properties. But this would not apply to non-physical beings.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It can also mean that we judge these things in the same way. I thought we previously agreed that different descriptions can still refer to the same thing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I understand that it has been a while. It is unfortunate, but it's reality. Yes, we can leave it at that. This was fun. I think I will post a new discussion at some point, to start fresh with the things I have learned here. I have still answered below your questions for completeness, but I don't expect a response afterwards.
Concepts must be connected to real beings, because if not, then no proposition ever spoken can be said to be true, because truth means reflective of reality. Thus if I say "the apple is red", there must exist a real being for the apple, and a real being for the property red, in order for the proposition to be true.
Yes, concepts may also be artificial, as is the case for man-made things like a house or guitar. In this case, the concept precedes the being that is built from the concept. But for non man-made things like 'apple' and 'red', the being precedes our concept of them. E.g., we would not grasp the concept 'red' if red things did not exist.
It's not a presupposition, it's a conclusion from inductive reasoning. All examples of beings, that I know of are particulars. If someone showed me examples of beings which are not particulars, I would have to reconsider. This does not deny the reality of non-physical being. As I argued earlier in the thread, each particular physical being has a unique form which necessarily precedes its material existence. This form must be non-physical, but it is particular.
Also, I argued that if the type of form which we call a universal, has real existence, independent from human minds, these universal forms must be "Ideals", implying perfection in their conception. This perfection implies that they can be in no way other than what they are, so this indicates that they must also be particulars. Despite the fact that we call them universals, if they have real existence independent from human minds, they must actual exist as particulars. So I conclude that any real being, must be a particular.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Again, your just arguing from possibility. My conclusions are inductive, so I accept the possibility that I am wrong. But, as I explain above, I believe my inductive conclusions to be quite strong, so you'll have to bring something more to my attention, than the possibility that I could be wrong, in order to get me to reconsider.
So is information physical?
I find it helpful sometimes to dumb things down. The simplest example of information that comes to mind is a wave. Do you think a wave is physical? Me ... yes.
Do I think wave is matter? No so much. Rather, it seems best described as a pattern of matter (although I defer to the quantum mechanics amongst us).
So there you have it: Information is physical but not matter.
Moderators close this thread!
What about light waves, what do you think they are a pattern of?
Quoting Kym
I don't think the moderators just randomly close threads like that.
As a physicalist, I'd say every thing that exists is physical. In your thought-experiment, it seems that, generally, "information" is being characterised as subjective experience of phenomena that is communicated via various means to other people. Every person who receives that "information" experiences it in its various forms in which it has been communicated, and also experiences "information" in different ways. "Information" in this sense, and ontologically then, is not a static thing or object, but a whole set of processes involving intention, interpretation, judgement, etc., and methods of communication regarding specific subjective experiences of phenomena.
Quoting Wayfarer
As a nominalist, I'd say nothing literally stays the same. The initial experience of the ship by the sentry will be communicated via particular instruments. But that experience cannot literally be communicated from a first-person perspective, only from a third-person perspective can others try to understand what the sentry is attempting to communicate. So it's not as if the "information" the sentry has of the ship in the first instance is a static or un-changing thing that gets tainted or reduced via methods of communication. Rather, "information" is just the sentry's experience of the ship in that system/context; and then the communication of the information that is received by another person occurs in another system/context. The shipping clerk, for example, is experiencing phenomena (the sea-horn) and interprets that as a communication from the sentry. This is because the clerk has already established what the sounding of a sea-horn within that context might mean. And the process continues from there.
By the way, I believe that "ideas" are physical as mental states/brain states.
Well, you’d be mistaken. The information could be transmitted wrongly, or correctly. If it’s transmitted correctly, then it stays the same. The rest is not germane.
Well if you disagree with nominalism then that might make sense. Again, I don't think "information" is some static, object-like thing to get "right" or "wrong". That's because, under nominalism, "information" ontologically is just conscious experience of phenomena that is interpreted/judged in particular ways, which could involve truth-statements. What the "information" is about regarding truth-statements can be true or false, of course.
Numberjohnny claims to be both physicalist and nominalist. That ought to play out nicely. I would think that there is no room for meaning in such an ontology. Ideas are reduced to mental states and mental states are reduced physical brain states.
Where's meaning?
So you're describing information as a (meaningful) judgement about phenomena (I'd include any experience of events or objects, including recipes or equations, as phenomena, btw), is that right? A formula, recipe, or equation is (or can be) a meaningful (set of) statement/claim(s) presented in particular ways/forms. People can "understand" the meaning of such statements and attempt to relay them to others via various forms of communication, or as you say, representation. In that sense, trying to guarantee that "information" (statements/claims) remains consistent is what you mean about "information" staying the "same" (barring nominalism re same/identical). Is that right?
That would depend on what you think meaning is ontologically.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Correct. Although I don't often invite notions of reduction as part of my view; reductionism is rather imposed upon my view by others. (Not that it can't be helpful to use "reduction", especially as part of the received/standard views in philosophy or other intellectual milieu's.) That's mainly becuase I think there's often a stigma when employing "reduction" in these debates (probably from those who aren't identity theorists and dualists, which makes sense), at least in my experience, and I think that can sometimes be a red-herring about views like mine. I'd rather frame your statement I quoted as: particular ways of organising reality that are identical to particular properties and processes. So in other words, I'd merely say "ideas are identical to mind states/brain states."
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Located in minds/brains
I have no problem "reduction", I think it's a useful tool. I've been accused of being reductionist but generally speaking I don't see how that's bad. Anyway, I'll try to refrain form using it in conversation with you.
Quoting numberjohnny5
I don't think that this is consistent with nominalism. Generally a nominalist will claim that meaning is the property of a community of language users, as the result of conventions, agreements, or rules of language use. Without these communal rules, how could one brain interpret a piece of language in a similar way to another brain? And without that consistency between individual language users, how could there be meaning? Or, do you think that meaning is completely subjective, entirely within each brain? Do you think that any brain can interpret a piece of writing in any way that it wants, and each way would be an equally valid interpretation?
Yes.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'd say that "any brain can interpret a piece of writing in any way that it wants," (there's no objective rule saying everyone must interpret anything in any particular way whatsoever); and that those interpretations that the brain is trying to match (by speculation) with what they believe the intention of the writer was/is can be relatively similar or dissimilar to the writer's intentions. In other words, the brain's interpretation cannot be identical with the writer's intentions (since those are, necessarily, two numerically distinct brain states). On the other hand, if the brain wasn't trying to match the writer's intention(s) with their interpretation, then they can't be "right" or "wrong" with how they interpret the writing.
If any brain can interpret a piece of writing in any way that it wants, then on what basis would you say that there is any "information" in any writing? If there is nothing objective, and any mind can determine the meaning as whatever it wants, then we cannot say that the writing gives us any information because any meaning derived is completely fabricated by the interpreting mind.
But to say that the interpreter must try to match the intention of the writer, is to contradict this (any way that the brain wants). So which is it, that you believe? Can the writing be interpreted in any way that one wants, or do we assume that there is a correct way, the way intended by the writer? If we assume that there is a correct way, then don't we have to turn to conventions and such to support an interpretation?
My definition of "information" is a combination of the phenomena perceived that is then cognitively organised, and communicated via various means if the individual so chooses. (I'd say "information" is similar to (nominalistic) conceptualism for me.) That means that there is no objective meaning, if that's what you mean.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not saying the interpreter must try to do anything, btw. I'm saying the interpreter has a choice to match the writer's intention through the writing. They don't have to choose that though. They can choose to interpret the writing any way they want. That's what I meant by these earlier statements:
"(there's no objective rule saying everyone must interpret anything in any particular way whatsoever)"
"On the other hand, if the brain wasn't trying to match the writer's intention(s) with their interpretation, then they can't be "right" or "wrong" with how they interpret the writing."
And to be clear, I'm not saying that the interpreter is trying to match their intention with the writer's intention. I'm saying the interpreter can try to match in the form of a guess/speculation what they believe the writer's intention was/is.
This thread was opened over 6 months ago, and all of these issues have been canvassed in depth. However, and I'm not going to argue the point beyond this post, if there was 'no objective meaning', then nobody could ever be correct, or incorrect, about anything. You couldn't write down instructions for how to build a computer, or specify how TCP/IP works, or how information is routed across the internet. All of these things work, because there are successful ways of making them work, which can be communicated via specifications and instructions, which are accurate. And if they were not accurate, and the technological solutions they refer to did not actually exist, then there would be no computers nor an internet. So the fact that you're able to participate in a debate, on the internet, using a computer, contradicts the point you're making - which, incidentally, is not a point at all, but simply a very long-winded way of saying that 'meaning is whatever you want it to be'. Or, in short - whatever.
OK, so what you are saying is that anything written can have absolutely any meaning whatsoever, depending entirely on the interpretation. What the written thing means is whatever any individual who interprets it thinks it means.
Do you recognize that this means that the written material cannot communicate any information from one individual to another? The interpreting individual gives the written material any meaning whatsoever.
Well, since meaning is mental events, then anything that is not mental events has no meaning or cannot produce meaning. This is because ontologically, meaning, as mental events, is not materially non-mental events. So a piece of writing, say, on a white piece of paper in black ink, is not ontologically the "same kind" of stuff as the 'intention' of the writer who wrote on that paper, intentions being mental events. In other words, the properties of brain/mind states are not the "same kind" of properties as ink on paper. Interpretations are also mental events.
If you had learned the conventional uses of the words and phrases in the piece of writing and were also assigning those conventional uses to the writing, then you or others could "accurately" interpret what the writer intended with the writing (assuming the writer wasn't lying, pretending, etc.). If you were using unconventional uses of the words/phrases in the piece of writing and assigning those unconventional uses to the writing, then you or others wouldn't be as "accurate" re the writer's intentions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not sure how literal you're being there. Do you recognise that "written material" doesn't actually "do" anything like an intentional mind does?
In a nutshell, communication, in my view, is person A expressing their mental events via various mediums or "representational forms" (as Wayfarer put it) (e.g. symbols, sounds) to person B, where person B interpret's person A's mental events via the various forms. This communication is possible if both persons have learned (i.e. they have learned the conventional uses of the language they're using, and therefore assign those conventional meanings onto "representational forms") how to assign meanings onto "representational forms", and how to interpret another person's intentions/beliefs from those representational forms. The more conventional both person's assigned meanings onto said forms, the more likely they are to accurately interpret their intentions/mental events.
Again, it all depends on whether the individual is attempting to accurately interpret another individual's intentions via language and behaviour. I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying an individual just arbitrarily gives the "written material any meaning whatsoever" when trying to interpret the writer's intentions. An individual can interpret any meaning about the writing without caring about what the writer's intention was/is. The writer's intentions might not be valued by the individual interpreter. They might not care what the writer was trying to communicate. That's up to the individual. They can't be right or wrong about that if that's what they want to do. It's their free choice. But if they're trying to interpret the writer's intention as accurately as possible, they can make well-reasoned guesses; and it would be possible for these guesses to be confirmed as accurate or not by the writer.
What if you spun the situation around? That instead, it was you who posted on this thread after it began 6 months ago, and you disagreed with the OP and some other posters. Would you be persuaded that just because "the issues have been canvassed in depth" that either, say, (a) your views must be mistaken, and/or (b) that it wasn't worth trying to argue your views?
Quoting Wayfarer
There's no need to be objectively correct/incorrect (not that it's possible with meaning). All that's sufficient is instrumental utility. Guesses/speculations/assumptions/agreements/etc. demonstrate that they are good-enough for communication to be effective. It's not an either-or issue, and that's where your problematic thinking lies.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree, they are successful methods of communication. This is because language is (very often) a successful means of communication. Language-users are generally aware of the conventional uses of their language, and when language-users employ those conventions, communication can be very accurate (in the sense of "matching" what language-users intend with their methods of communication) and useful.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm sorry that you fail to understand my stance on this. Maybe that's my fault. But your representation of my stance isn't accurate. I never said "meaning is whatever you want it to be". That's not the definition I use. Rather, I think that if a person wants to interpret any piece of writing/sounds/etc. in any way they prefer, then that's their prerogative if they're not interested in trying to "understand" what the intentions are that produced a piece of writing/sounds/etc. If the interpreter is not trying to be "correct" with matching the intention of the writer, then they can't be "correct/incorrect" with their interpretation. They have chosen to assign the meaning they have for whatever reason they have.
On the other hand, if a person is attempting to "understand" what the intention behind a piece of writing was/is, then they might assume the writer/speaker is using language conventions, and then assign language conventions to what the writer/speaker is expressing. In the latter case, though, because meaning is not a non-mental event/thing, there's not any objective (as in, non-mental) thing to try to match. So it's a category error to assume you can actually be objectively "correct/incorrect" with regards to getting meanings right/wrong. All you can do is try to make well-reasoned guesses via the writing/sounds/etc. re the writer's/speaker's intentions. And it helps if both writer and interpreter are using language conventions (that's the utility of conventions in general).
I hope what I've written there is clear in helping you "understand" my views a bit better, even though I am aware you're not interested in continuing this convo with me.
This is what I was trying to bring to your attention, the existence of conventions. I don't think it's the case that the meaning you derive "wouldn't be as accurate" without the use of conventions in interpreting, I don't thjink you could get any meaning at all without the use of conventions, because the interpretation would be completely random.
In any case, you recognize the importance of such conventions in relation to meaning. What type of existence do you think conventions have? They are not in an individual's brain, because they are shared by many brains. Where are they?
If your aim is to align with conventional practice, then those practices themselves provide the objective grounds for whether you succeed or not.
Btw, in my view, what makes something meaningful to a person is that it is a coherent set of beliefs (mental associations) that are assigned/imposed upon things.
I'm considering the cases of "feral children" and how they were able to assign meaning without having any human contact. In these cases, there were no conventions per human communication, and yet, under my definition of "meaning", I believe they were able to assign (non-random) meaning onto things. This is probably because they learned the predictability/consistency of the environment and non-lingual "conventions" of the non-human animals they were interacting with. So I would agree that some kind of "conventionality" is important for coherence re beliefs and meaning.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'd use the entry from Wikipedia as a starting point:
"A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated, or generally accepted standards, norms, social norms, or criteria, often taking the form of a custom."
So conventions are comprised of (a) mental events in the form of agreements, stipulations, standards, etc., (i.e. involving more than one brain) and (b) the manner/method in which those forms of mental events are consistently replicated (i.e. "representational forms", e.g., written language, speech-sounds, non-verbal behaviours, and the organised construction of materials/objects). People learn what these norms are within a community, and then try to imitate these norms. But conventions are a combination of non-mental things (the actual conventional patterns of behaviour and methods of conventional reinforcement) and mental things (conventions are essentially based on intentionality, and how people consistently think about and do/reinforce particular things).
There are no case of feral children. The few cases which have sparked the myth are about rejected youth afflicted by developmental and mental problems, which managed to survive on the outskirts of society thanks to scavenging and occasional charity.
OK, so to get to the point, I think conventions are essentially non-physical things. As you say, they are based in intentionality. Intentionality is a view toward what is wanted, and what is wanted is a state apprehended which has no physical existence. How do you reconcile this with physicalism?
My aim wasn't to say that one can't observe behaviours/forms of communicating as objective to try and determine what the intentions of a person are. My aim is to say that one can't observe people's actual intentions (their mental events) to determine what their intentions are. We can only make observations of an individual in the third-person; we cannot have first-person experiences of others' first-person experiences.
Thanks for clarifying/correcting.
Sure, but I'd also like to know from you how non-physical things exist if they have no properties, and therefore no spatio-temporal location? I can't make sense out of non-physical things having properties and no location.
Intentionality is a mental state in my view, and mental states are brain states. Brain states are physical states. Brain states are comprised of properties and therefore, have location. If that's not enough, obviously ask me for more...
Ask yourself what is a property, and maybe you would realize that a property is itself a non-physical thing.
Quoting numberjohnny5
Intentionality is a view toward the future, and future things do not have physical existence. So let's consider a simple choice. I am deciding whether or not to shut down my laptop now. How is it that a physical sate, my brain state, can choose to bring about the existence either one of these two possible physical states, my laptop being shut down, or my laptop remaining on? How does a physical state have a choice concerning which physical states will follow from the present physical state?
It doesn't make sense to me to suppose that, literally, "intentions lie behind" anything, apart from skulls, since intentions are mental phenomena. Intentions as mental states/events are not the same kind of thing as non-mental states/events, like behaviours, language formalisms, etc. Intentions can't be displayed because mental events are first-person experiences. We can only express intentions via observable methods of communication or action, but those methods are not intentions.
Sure. Behaviour involves the (autonomic and voluntary) motor movements (exhibition/inhibition of muscles via efferent pathways) as processed by nonconscious and conscious phenomena. Mentality refers just specifically to the conscious phenomena. There is a relationship between voluntary motor movements and mentality, of course, but they ain't the same. One major distinction is that motor movements occur in multiple sites in the body e.g. limbs, hands, feet etc., whereas mentality only occurs in the brain.
And I'm strictly a physicalist.
Three thoughts came to mind when reading that sentence:
(1) Why you're deflecting the question back to me?
(2) It seems you're implying that I haven't done enough philosophising because if I had, I would share the same conclusions re properties being non-physical as you do.
(3) Why is it that in the handful of times I've asked anyone how to try and explain to me that non-physical existents obtain, they never actually try to accomodate me or give me a straight answer in terms of ontology? (That's rhetorical, but I'd be open to an answer.)
Quoting numberjohnny5
It's not clear to me in what capacity you'd like an explanation of a physical brain state making a choice. I'll make a first attempt though. (Btw, when I refer to anything that exists, even when I mention "state", I do not presume they are static things. They are constantly changing/happening.)
The kind of physical state that can make a choice is a mental state that has will and makes choices within particular contexts. For example, the physical state of thinking "I want to shut down my laptop" can (it doesn't have to) result in other conscious processes causing particular motor (efferent) pathways to move (exhibit/inhibit) particular body parts to shut down the laptop.
Perhaps I'm not sure what you mean by physicalist - it's an unclear label for a wide variety of views. Do you mean that mental things simply are physical things, we just don't know it yet? Or do you mean that mental things are caused by physical things, but are distinct kinds of things nevertheless? Or something else? I can only really get to grips with the rest of your response once this is cleared up.
I mean that mental things are identical to physical things, namely, "types" of brain states. Physicalism is pretty much the same as materialism for me. Everything that exists is physical or is made of matter.
So, the big question is how does a nominalistic materialis account for the distinction between truth and falsity without introducing non-material, non-particular things?
You nailed it.
[quote=Ed Feser]Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning – that’s how they are able to impart it to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes.[/quote]
Actually earlier in this thread - it’s been a very long thread - we got into long debates about the reality of universals and Platonic reals. Through this, and reading Feser, I’ve discovered what is now called ‘hylomorphic dualism’ - from ‘hyle’ [matter] ‘morphe’[form]. The basic idea of the ‘form’ of a thing is descended from the Platonic ‘eidos’, modified by Aristotelian realism. The ‘form’ is what ‘nous’ [the active intellect] comprehends due to its ability to recognise intelligible ideas. [See this post which contains a succinct summary].
But actually, there’s a straight line from your argument, to the premise of the OP - have another look at the first post, and see if you agree that there’s a connection.
Yes, nominalistic materialism is true, in my view. "Truth" is a property of propositions/claims, and propositions are assertions (made by individuals/minds) about what is the case. Nominalistic materialism (NM) is an ontological claim (being an empirical claim) that asserts that for any thing to exist, that thing is physical/material; and that no two numerically distinct existents/things/occurrences are identical. So yes, propositions feature truth-values (in which minds judge propositions to be true in relation to what they're referring to, in the case of correspondence theory, for example), which occur in brains (specifically, via mental states), which are material things undergoing processes (no thing is static, in my view); and no two numerical brain/mental states are identical. For example, my brain state at T1 is A, and my brain state at T2 is B, and so on.
Propositions are also first-person experiences that refer to things. That is, propositions or truth-claims are always from someone's perspective. It's also important to make a distinction between brain states and mental states, the latter being a "type" (in an anti-realist sense) of the former. That is, mind states are identical to brain states in being a particular "type" of brain state. So it's not that brain states/mind states are in and of themselves true or false, it's rather that brain states/mind states make true or false assertions about stuff.
In lieu of nominalism, then, "types" are ways we organise and classify experience. It's a mental process of abstration. But abstractions are physical processes in the mind/brain. That is, abstractions are thoughts, and thoughts are mental states.
There are (at least) two different "types" of "relations": (i) objective relations as the way materials/properties ontologically interact with other materials/properties (on both the macro or mico scales); and (ii) subjective relations, as the way individuals/minds organise experience and make claims/comments about how objective (and/or subjective) things relate with/to each other. So (ii) is a "type" of mental event/state.
Quoting ProcastinationTomorrow
There is no non-material, non-particular thing in my ontology, which I'm hoping you'll recognise in my response.
Two major problems with this argument are:
Firstly, brain processes aren't anything like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, or an electrical current. Different objects are made of different properties in different relations. So to lump all that stuff together and assume it's all the same is a straw-man re physicalist/materialist views.
Secondly, it's false that thought processes aren't brain processes. Thoughts are identical with brain processes, namely, a "type" of mental process. It's important to realise that mental processes are the meaning-makers, not non-conscious processes.
It's also important to remember that meaning-making (i.e. mental associations) is a first-person experience. A lot of externalists don't recognise this fact, and couch their arguments as if meaning is only perceived in the third-person. What I'd love to know is, if meaning was objective, what the hell is meaning ontologically? Is it "ink marks"? What properties of the ink marks makes it have inherent meaning?
And then you ramble on about propositions being ultimately brain states or whatever. Fine, ProcrastinationTommorow seems to be ceding the point that it might make sense to equate propositions with brain states, but what he is challenging you with is to come up with an account of truth that doesn't surreptitiously or explicitly imply the existence of non-particular, not-material things. Even your definition of objective relations just introduces another term that looks like a non-particular : i.e. ways of interaction.
You'd have to explain how "particular things interacting in particular ways" looks like a non-particular event. It seems coherent to me, obviously. But I don't know what's preventing you or influencing you to interpret "ways of interaction" as a non-particular.
But insofar as they're physical processes then they're not different in principle. When you examine brain-scans, you're interpreting graphical images, which are physical in nature - you're examining the trace left by blood-flows in millions of neurons, which is surely a physical process. But it's the nature of interpretation which is at issue - interpreting what the data means is what is at issue in all of this. And you indeed then go on to concede this very point, by saying that 'mental processes are meaning makers' and 'meaning-making is first person'. So your second two paragraphs take back what the first is trying to assert.
Quoting numberjohnny5
That's what this thread is about! What you're giving voice to, is the very widespread view that meaning is wholly in the mind or subjective, or alternatively that it can be understood in physical terms. What this whole thread is arguing, is that it is neither. But in today's worldview, there's no way to accommodate this.
That is why the role of number, logic, and language are significant in this context. Numbers are objectively constant for anyone capable of counting, but at the same time, they're not material objects - they're purely intellectual in nature. The same can be said for logical operators such as 'equals' 'greater than' and so on.
I expected that you'd recognize that the question was a rhetorical question. You asked me how do non-physical things exist if they have no properties and my answer (by way of rhetorical question) is that properties are non-physical things. So it doesn't really make sense to ask about the properties of properties.
Quoting numberjohnny5
So, Ill now ask you the question. Do you or do you not apprehend properties as non-physical things? Take the property "large" for example. Many physical things are large, so it is impossible that large is any particular physical thing.
Quoting numberjohnny5
It appears to me, like you do not adequately understand what "ontology" is. Ontology consists of the assumptions which we make about existence, and we always have our own reasons for the assumptions which we make. So my ontological assumption is that non-physical things have existence no less than physical things.
As to "how" they exist, non-physical things exist as non-physical things, just like physical things exist as physical things. Physical things, are apprehended through the senses, they are called sensible objects, like particular entities, rocks and trees, etc.. Non-physical things are apprehended by the mind, they are called intelligible objects like universal ideas, concepts like "large", "red", etc..
Quoting numberjohnny5
How can you say this without contradiction? If a so-called "brain state" is constantly changing, then it is not a state, it is as you say, a "happening", which is a changing. So let's not call it a "brain state" any more, because that's misleading, let's call it brain activity. However, there are ideas which remain unchanged within a person's mind, things like numbers and words. How do you think that the numeral "2" stays the same, as the numeral "2", within my mind, if all there is in my mind is brain activity? How does the numeral "2" stay in my mind as a static object, if my "mind" is only accounted for by brain activity?
Quoting numberjohnny5
So let's readdress this question. There is brain activity which corresponds to me thinking should I or should I not shut down my computer. Then I make a choice and proceed with the appropriate activity. What, other than the non-physical mind, causes the actual choice? It cannot be the brain activity which is the cause of the decision, because the brain activity is considering the options, weighing the possibilities, and the choice causes the end of this brain activity, to be replaced with a different activity, the movement of the body parts. The brain activity cannot cause the activity of the bodily parts directly, because a choice is required. Nor is it something external, which is the cause, because the choice comes from within me.
Quoting numberjohnny5
As a physicalist, I assume that a proposition, for you, exists as a bunch of physical. words. In order for those words to be true or false, don't you think that they need to be interpreted?
As I understand it, the basis of your original argument is that one and same piece of information can be born by numerically distinct material states/processes/events. So, whatever it is that we are counting when we are counting items of information cannot be those material states/processes/events. My argument is, in the nutshell provided by @jkg20, even if particular material things are bearers of truth, since numerically distinct material things can share one and the same feature of being true, whatever we are counting when we count the feature of truth cannot be those material things.
Your argument is a finer grained than mine - but the structure is essentially the same, I agree, and since information and truth are clearly related concepts, there probably is a closer link to be made between them. However, do either of our arguments prove (or can they be used to prove) that information is not material? They might prove that information is not to be identified with any specific material thing, but that's not quite the same thing as proving that information is not material itself. After all, I cannot identify mass with any specific material thing, since it is a feature shared by many (well, let's face it, all) material things, but mass is a material property. So, even if information cannot be identified with any specific material bearer, perhaps there could remain a sense in which it is material insofar as it is something that must be born by material things. I think in order to prove that information is definitively not material you would have to argue that information could exist in the absence of any material bearer, and that strikes me as a pretty tough thing to prove directly.
It's not entirely clear to me what you mean. Anyway, I'll try to guess and make a stab at it!
Firstly, in my ontology, all existents are constantly changing. There are no "static-instants", for example. That means that both (objective) facts/events/states of affairs and mental events (which are subjective facts/events/states of affairs) are constantly changing/in motion. Any existent at time T1 is non-identical with itself at any other time in the past or future.
So for example, when an individual (X) makes a truth claim (P) about some event (E) at time T1, X, P, and E are constantly changing/in motion. When the "same" X makes a P about E at time T2, the X, P, and E are not identical with what they were at T1. And so on, over time.
So "objective relations," as the ways in which particular things/properties interact with other things/properties, are constantly changing, through time T1, T2, T3, and so on. So an individual can make truth-claims (in the form of subjective events i.e. truth-claim P1, P2, P3, and so on) about such objective relations at time T1, T2, and T3, etc. That seems consistent and coherent to me, obviously. The truth-claims refer to actual states of affairs. In other words, the subjective events refer to the objective events.
Does that help answer your question?
Feser's argument is making a positive claim about different "types" of material processes having some commonality, namely, that they don't posses inherent meaning. That's false though because brain processes don't have the same "kinds" of properties and don't "behave" in the "same" kinds of ways as the other non-brain processes examples he gave. That all the examples are, "in principle", material/physical processes is beside the point he's making.
He then goes on to make another positive claim that thoughts have inherent meaning. The problem is thoughts are identical with brain processes.
Another problem is Feser says things like brain processes don't "seem" to have inherent meaning. But that's a claim from a third-person perspective. One can't actually perceive others' first-person experiences of meaning-making.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't really understand. How is this the issue: "the nature of interpretation which is at issue - interpreting what the data means is what is at issue in all of this"?
Quoting Wayfarer
I disagree. "Numbers", "equals" etc., are concepts that occur in minds. They are abstract ways minds organise and try to make quantitative relationships.
And it’s not an attribute of numbers, or ideas. Hence, the thread.
Some here are saying that these are simply ‘in the mind’ - as if this amounts to an explanation.
Anyway, this thread has run its course as far as I’m concerned.
If everything is constantly changing, then there is no such thing as a state of affairs. To assume that everything is changing, and that there are states of affairs is contradictory. So in your claimed ontology, facts or truths cannot be expressed as states of affairs.
Quoting numberjohnny5
Further, T1, T2, and T3, cannot refer to anything real in such an ontology. Things are always changing, time is always passing. So such designations correspond to nothing real, and the claims of truth you refer to cannot be true either because T1 etc., cannot refer to anything real. There is no such thing as the points in time indicated by T1, T2, T3, etc., according to that ontology, so to premise such is to make a false premise. And you will not make any true conclusions when you start from false premises.
You are missing the point. Just because the relata of a relation are constantly changing does not entail that the relation itself is constantly changing. Counting relata and counting relations are to count two different kinds of things.
I think you're missing my point. I didn't say that the changing things ("relata") being referred to entail that the mental relations are constantly changing.
I said "Firstly, in my ontology, all existents are constantly changing. There are no "static-instants", for example. That means that both (objective) facts/events/states of affairs and mental events (which are subjective facts/events/states of affairs) are constantly changing/in motion. Any existent at time T1 is non-identical with itself at any other time in the past or future." That's because to exist is to change. Existents change/are in motion.
There's no entailment there between the changing relata and the changing mental relations that refer to relata. The first "premise" is that the mental and non-mental are constantly changing. And while "relations" and "relata" are two kinds of things, they both are material, and they both constantly change.
I think you give yourself (and Plato) too much credit. It's not that because everything is always in flux that there is no general stability to things. That's a false dichotomy: either everything is in constant flux and has no stability, or that nothing is in constant flux and there is stability.
It also seems as though people are assuming that continuous flux or constant change precludes anyone from saying anything true (or false), i.e. making truth-claims or having ontological commitments. That's not the case. We observe flux happening around us, and we refer to it. There is a regularity to change/flux when we observe it. It's not like by things being in continual flux things are only just randomly/acausally doing all sorts of strange, unpredictable things. But it's not that "stability" means "static-non-change" either. That's a very black-and-white, simplistic way of describing those terms in lieu of change/non-change. Further, many things appear not to change on particular levels of scale, and we observe that change is occurring on micro-scales, or over longer and longer periods of change/time.
Only if you parse that as a false dichotomy between "constant change" as not having a regularity to it, and "non-constant change" as being only or permanently static. It's more nuanced than that. Think of it as two dancers dancing together. One dancer represents a person/mind, and the other dancer represents what the mind refers to. Maybe the dancers are waltzing incredibly slowly, so you can't very easily perceive that they're moving/constantly changing. But at any time that one dancer refers to the other dancer re a truth-claim, the other dancer obtains and "makes" the truth-claim "true".
I didn't realise, no. It's difficult for me to grasp how non-physical things exist (even if you say that properties are non-physical), and at the time, I was hoping you'd clarify that for me. That's why I asked you a direct (non-rhetorical) question.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It depends how we use "large" -- whether it's a mental property of our minds assigning things as "large" (the concept "large" is a thought) in terms of relative scales, or whether we're referring to non-mental properties of things that actually take up more space than other things, say. There are no "comparisons/measurements" that are non-mental though.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's how I use ontology too, except I'd add claims and commitments to that criteria as well as assumptions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure, I guessed that you'd believe something like that. It just isn't coherent to me.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The numeral "2" doesn't stay the same when I visualise it. If I visualise the number "2" now, I notice it isn't this stable image; it fluctuates and changes. It's relatively "stable" in that as long as I try to visualise it, it remains there in some form. But it's in no way an actually non-changing, static thing in my mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's not that it's not like a sequence of brain activity that involves perceiving the situation, weighing up possibilities, making a choice, and making sense of the consequences of that choice. That's all (conscious) brain activity; and it's constantly doing/juggling multiple things sequentially; and this is all happening while nonconscious brain activity is working too.
Brain activity causes the actual choice. It's not like the brain activity only amounts to "considering the options, weighing the possibilities". Whatever gave you that idea? And I'd say "the choice is the end of that particular sequence of brain activities." The brain activity sends projections from the motor regions to the muscle sites in the body. So it is directly responsible (along with other nonconscious processes) for causing movement of body parts. Also, making choices is the mental aspect of brain activity, and it can only be mental activity if non-mental activity (autonomic processes) is functional.
This is utter nonesense. To say that everything is always in flux is precisely to say that there is no general stability to things.
It depends what you mean by "general stability", which I mean as a general regularity to how things occur/are.
It's not that because everything is always in flux that there is no general stability to things.
You should have more accurately stated;
It's not that because everything is always in flux that there is no general regularities to how things occur/are.
I repeat; this is utter nonsense - to say that everything is always in flux is precisely to deny that there are general regularities to how things occur/are, since if there were such general regularities they would be things exonerated from being in flux.
It's not about being more accurate. "General stability" is synonymous with "general regularity" for me in this context. Maybe you would have preferred me to have stated one thing over the other, but both statements mean the same thing for me.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Again, it depends on what you mean by "general regularities/stability". You'd have to explain/define those terms for me to understand how you're supporting that claim. In other words, you haven't actually given any good reasons for me to buy the claim you're making. You've just said, A wouldn't happen because B. Well, what does A mean and what does B mean for you? I personally find it coherent for "constant flux" and "general regularities" to be ontologically compatible. Show me how that's incoherent.
I wonder whether you'll repeat "this is utter nonsense" again.
As it is difficult for you to grasp that non-physical things exist, it is equally difficult for me to grasp that physical things exist. I have extreme difficulty grasping what it means to exist. When I started to understand what "exists" means, I started to realize that it's more logical to assume that non-physical things exist than it is to assume that physical things exist. This is expressed by Descartes' "I think therefore I am". However, I see the need to assume that physical things exist as well, therefore I lean toward a dualism.
Quoting numberjohnny5
My point is that it is impossible that there is such a thing as a "non-mental property". If something takes up more space than another thing, this is a judgement made by a mind.
Quoting numberjohnny5
Let's say that a brain is "weighing up possibilities" as you describe. What is a "possibility" other than a non-physical thing?
Do you see why I hit your questions with other questions? Your way of speaking has inherent within it, the assumption of non-physical things. You claim that your ontology allows for no such non-physical things, but you're always referring to them in your speech. So I ask you, how can you talk about these non-physical things, "properties", and "possibilities", as if the brain is doing something with these non-physical things, while you deny that these things have any reality? This is why wayfarer says your ontology leaves you in a position of meaningless nonsense. You insist that the brain is doing something, but all the material which it is working with, when it is doing this, is non-existent nothing. But you, in order to make it appear like what you are saying is somehow intelligible, speak of this non-existent nothing, as if it were something. So all you do is contradict yourself, or behave in an extremely hypocritical way at best, talking about all these non-physical things as if they exist, but then denying that they exist, as an ontological principle.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
"Loquaciousness", that's a new word for me, I'll have to remember that. Numberjohnny goes on and on, talking about how the brain is using non-physical things like properties and possibilities, in mental processes, then denies all reality to these non-physical things. If these things are not real, then the brain is doing nothing, working away with no material to work with, therefore doing nothing.
Numberjohnny gives us a similar problem in relation to the physical world when saying everything is in flux. In talking about "changing relations", it is implied that there are static things which are being related to each other in this expression of change. Numberjohnny keeps referring to these static things and in the same breath denies that they are real. It's an ontology of denial, denying the reality of what is being talked about, and this renders the talk as nothing more than loquacious nonsense.
Definition of the claim "Everything is in constant flux": Every single existent thing alters from one moment to the next.
Definition: "General regularity" = An unaltering pattern, such as a natural law (e.g the force felt by a falling object is proportional to its gravitational mass).
Are there such things as general regularities?
Response 1: "No" - then since there are no such things as general regularities, they cannot be appealed to in any way shape or form to explain anything at all.
Response 2: "Yes" - then the claim "Everything is in constant flux" is false, since there exists something, i.e. at least one general regularity, and possibly many more, which does not alter from one moment to the next.
Your responses are utter nonsense because you seem to think you can give both responses at one and the same time, which you cannot, since by doing so you would be violating the law of non-contradiction. Please don't respond "paraconsistent logic", because that really is utter nonsense.
@Metaphysician Undercover I've done the best I can, I wish you luck if you continue to struggle on with numberjohnny5.
Yes, this brings something up I often think about, actually. The idea that we all have a "network of beliefs" that cohere with one another, and which keep our general perspectives relatively stable. And I also think that people are, in general, relatively resistant to change or changing their ideas because of this stable network. I never expect nor assume anyone will change their mind when I discuss/debate philosophy with them. Nor do I assume or expect my mind to be changed, at least not immediately. But I am generally curious about others' views, especially when they are radically different to mine.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We are necessarily bound by statements that refer when referring to things. But this doesn't constrain us from being able to use statements to refer to things we believe are actually external-to-minds. So when I use a statement in the form of an ontological claim, for instance, I am referring to what obtains ontologically, not to the actual ontological statement that refers. And that is supported by other beliefs, of course.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A brain weighing up possibilities is a brain experiencing a situation with perceived options that they care enough about in order to make a decision re which options to choose. It's a process. If you're talking about "possibility" in a logical or metaphysical sense, that's different; the former being any claim that is not contradictory, and the latter being anything that is possible based on past and present actuals.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm afraid not, and it's interesting that you believe that's the case. Which makes me think that's because your ontology re this stuff is so ingrained that it's difficult for you to imagine or make sense of physical existents, as you noted already. That's not a criticism, really; merely an observation. On the other hand, one reason why I don't buy the notion of non-physical existents is because no one has been able to clarify the ontological nature of non-physical existents, except to offer some vague examples like objects of the intellect or universals. In my opinion, the problem with those answers/explanations is the fact that the reason they're intangible is precisely why I think no one can offer a tangible/graspable explanation. It's a self-defeating problem that can't be resolved because of the fuzzy/vague/intangibility of what non-physical existents are for people. And also, I believe that "explanations" are subjective, which means that some people are satisfied with the explanations they have for their beliefs, while others aren't so satisfied.
Anyway...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That you believe I'm referring to non-physical existents in my speech is only because you can't imagine how to refer to physical existents in your speech.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, you just keep putting words in my mouth. I don't believe anything is actually static/non-changing. I've repeatedly claimed the opposite. It's just that you can't (and I don't think you care to) understand my perspective on this, so you just make this stuff up so you can wrap me up in a box and label me as "the guy who thinks there exists physical things but is confused and talks nonsense." That's fine, but all you're doing is showing how dogmatic and close-minded you are.
All that shows, so far, is that we don't share the same views regarding "general regularity" there, which is one reason why I wanted you to reveal your definitions.
It depends how you're using "alter" and "unalter" too. I'm guessing you mean change or non-change, respectively. If so, then that's not how I use them, at least not when I'm talking about this ontologically.
I define "general regularity" as a consistent, recurring or reiterative pattern of particulars (as in, particular properties) in particular relations interacting. That's compatible with "constant flux" or "existent altering from one moment to the next."
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Rather than impulsively assuming you're right, why don't you first try to understand and check what others are claiming? Your comments and attitude reek of "utter" arrogance and condescension. There really is no need for that. It'd be nice if we could have friendly debates/discussion without all the pomposity.
"consistent, recurring or reiterative" are you supposing those terms are synonymous? Pick up a dictionary, they are not. Nevertheless, leaving your mastery of the English language aside, let's focus in on "recurring" shall we?
If a P pattern recurs, then P occurs at at least two distinct times, T1 and T2. Since P at T1 is the same pattern as P at T2 then P has not changed between the times T1 and T2, consequently P has not altered between T1 and T2. Hence a recurring pattern is an unaltering pattern, and despite your word play our definitions are ontologically equivalent.
Is that how you speak to people face to face?
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
I'm using them in a similar sense, yes. Whether that's conventional per dicitionary definitions I don't know. But I'm willing to bet you'll throw that in my face.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
As a nominalist, I don't buy that two things/events are numerically identical. So P occurring at two distinct times involve two non-identical ocurrences of P. Ontologically, things/events are relatively similar or disimilar in terms of "degrees of similarity." So P at time T1 is relatively similar to P at T2 but not identical. The degree of similarity of P at T1 and T2 entails a "general regularity" of P, where "general regularity" does not mean identical occurrences or re-occurences of some thing/event, but rather siimilar occurrences or re-occurences of some thing/event.
the force applied to a falling object is proportional to its gravitational mass.
Let's say event1 is me dropping a stone from a tall building at a given time. Let event2 be me dropping a banana from a bridge at some other given time. Event1 and event2 have similarities and differences, they are certainly not identical. If you like, even the me involved in event1 is not identical with the me involved in event2. None of that matters. The issue is that both event1 and event2 conform to the pattern P. Pattern P does not change in all of this, it does not alter.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Patterns are, ontologically, identical to properties (re-)occurring, which include things and events, and where things are comprised of properties, and events are collections of things interacting. (I use "events" as "facts" or "states of affairs" too, btw.)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43154157?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Why would you do that?
So there are "options" which are perceived. These options are non-physical things. If these non-physical things, the options that is, are not real, then it is nonsense for the brain to consider them as possibilities; because if there are not any real options, determinism is what is the case, so there is no reason for the brain to consider options which have no reality.
I suppose you believe that options are somehow real, and therefore physical? Perhaps you could explain how an option is physical?
Quoting numberjohnny5
Clearly it is the case that your talk refers to non-physical things. You have talked about properties, possibilities, and now "options". All of these are non-physical things.
Quoting numberjohnny5
You haven't addressed any of my criticism of your ontology, principally, that you deny that non-physical things are real, but you support your physicalist argument by referring to non-physical things. Now you are denying that you are referring to non-physical things. Unless you can show me an option or a possibility which has physical existence, then surely you are referring to non-physical things.
You appear to have a "humpty dumpty" view of language that allows you to pick and choose at will the meanings you give to words. It is impossible to reason with someone of that nature. Goodbye.
For example, sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me.
If I throw a stick or stone at you; physical, this will cause pain. If I throw information at you, like name calling, the impact can vary from person to person, due to the subjectivity of information. There is no universal or consistent action and reaction when it comes to name calling. Physical is consistent.
Information, like name calling, can trigger different levels of response and different levels of emotional and physical energy output. Picture is lighting a match with the result different reaction each time or for each person. The impact of the rock is not different each time, unless the person extrapolates the cause and affect of the rock, through information; overreaction or under reaction.
The difference has to do with the connection between language and information. Language is subjective. There are roughly 6500 languages in the world. The sounds, noises and characters for language are arbitrary with no consistent reason why any sound is chosen. The medium used to process information is subjective.
The hydrogen atom, which is physical, is not arbitrary. It can become so, as information. As information the hydrogen atom can be like a planet orbiting the sun, or as a wave function. We can have more than one theory for any given phenomena. This is not a function of physical reality, but rather it is a function of human subjectivity; information.
This forum demonstrates how the same evidence; information, can impact each of us differently; different written output. Physical does not work that way, except when massaged by information.
All that the claim "information is physical" means is that it's either matter or energy or both, in and of themselves, or changes in them. So, either information is matter (has mass & occupies space) or energy (can do work) or are changes in mass/volume/energy.
It's unlikely that information has mass or occupies space - what they're stored on might but not the information itself. We could, for instance, record & transmit the exact same information online, via radio, or TV, or print - the mass and volume equivalent of a given piece of information varies from 0 to some finite amount. This generates a contradiction and so, information can't be matter ergo, impossible too that changes in matter can account for it.
Is information energy? Well, can we convert information into heat or other forms of energy or can we do work with it? "O" can be understood as both the number zero and the letter "O" with the same shape. Since the same amount of energy is being used to display the letter "O" or the number O but the information differs, information can't be energy. If information can't be energy, how can change in energy be information.
In conclusion, information isn't physical!
But, Harry, the information and the cause are distinct entities; the reality of the latter need not impart reality to the former. I would define "information" as "any mental abstraction of data from the perception of a phenomenological object or occurrence which contributes to the evaluation of an entity". What if the entity being evaluated is itself not real? If I were to research, in a dictionary of the supernatural, about the supposed ghost of Dylan Thomas haunting the old Chelsea Hotel in New York City, I would gather much information about this haunting. Even so, I think that we can all agree that there is no ghost of Dylan Thomas haunting the Chelsea...if the object of the information is not real to begin with, then how can the information itself based upon said unreality be real?
The key is, that the creation of information involves abstracting data from phenomena, be that phenomena real or imagined. The process of abstraction creates an imaginary data set based upon phenomena which may result from a real entity, a natural object, or from an imagined entity, like the ghost of Dylan Thomas. We see Desmond Doss performing acts of extreme valor during the Battle of Okinawa in WW2, and we say that Doss "has courage", and "displays courageousness". Does this "courageousness" really exist? We have gathered information from our observation of Doss's actions during that military operation. Looking at the data thus compiled, we make the evaluation that "Desmond Doss is endowed with courageousness". But, what is said "courageousness" other than a label for a historical pattern of behavior...a series of past real occurrences? Is this "courageousness" something evidence of which might be found upon a dissection of Desmond Doss? Desmond Doss is a real object, and the actions of that object during the Battle of Okinawa were real occurrences, but the bits of data ("there is an act of courage...oh! there is one more act of courage...etc.") which we gain from observing those real actions exist only within our minds, and not in the universe of reality, and that unreal data leads us to attribute to Desmond Doss an equally unreal abstraction: courageousness. Mental abstractions always result in unrealities. The data sets, composed of bits of information, which are derived from the perception of real objects and occurrences, could only be said to be real themselves if they could exist independently of the objects and occurrences from which they are derived, without those objects and occurrences having ever been...they cannot. The point is, that information gained mentally from the perception of real objects and occurrences has no reality in and of itself.
Which data?
The perception of phenomena yields information within the mind, and said data is compiled from that information.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think this pretty much says it all. From what I've seen, computer scientists tend to view information as physical. What they do is called information technology.
The computing analogy is useful here. Bits and bytes of information are stored on a computer hard drive or other storage device as bipolar charges which can encoded information which can be translated by the software into human languages. The silicon and other media composing the memory chip, and the electrons forming the polarized charges themselves are real things, but the "information" which results from the translation of those strings of charges into human language has no reality outside of the human mind. Facts and ideas only have reality within the mind, and those "mental realities" (for lack of a better term) more-or-less reflect actual, objective reality out in "the universe".
What information?
No. Its not.
Here you are wrong. There are no memories stored in the brain. I saw in a children show in TV a "brainstorm-fact" given. The memory storage in the brain should be 20 000 Gb. It's not.
https://news.mit.edu/2017/neuroscientists-identify-brain-circuit-necessary-memory-formation-0406
https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain-basics/memory/where-are-memories-stored
https://theconversation.com/amp/were-capable-of-infinite-memory-but-where-in-the-brain-is-it-stored-and-what-parts-help-retrieve-it-63386
Last link: infinite memory. The only information in the brain is that of connection strengths between neurons. EVERY process in the universe can be whirl around as a process in the brain. A chess board can be really seen as a chessboard fform in the brain when imagining it. On the same neurons a bird can fly.
Your references are a bit out of date. The most sophisticated current models of memory dont make use of a computer storage metaphor anymore. Those were all the rage 40 years ago. Instead, memory is a reconstructive process.
Yes, and boy does it play around with the construction work. Often it isn't even up to code...
I frequently hear the claim "thought isn't physical. Why? Because thought is immaterial." That's not an argument. Putting thoughts aside now, information, however it exists, is a physical phenomena consisting of physical events in the world.
By physical I mean the stuff I'm touching now, which is "mostly empty" and the stuff that's coming out of my head. I don't think someone would say that the table isn't physical nor my head. I think it's a truism, though no less astonishing because of this.
I simply take it that physical stuff is truly baffling.
How so...how is that thought to work? I am unfamiliar with such a theory.
Quoting Michael Zwingli
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1059712318772778
Brain state interacting with the physical environment can drive your car to work.
Brain state interacting with the physical environment can do all the science we have done.
Brain state of person 1 can be transfered to person 2 by encoding and decoding physical matter.
If brain state is information then you have a coherent theory of everything.
Brain state is physical.
Brain state by expansion is BRAIN(mental content) and BRAIN(specific mental content).
Or in reverse order; BRAIN(specific mental content) = specific brain state.
Monism and dualism should be dropped in favor of this expansion method.
The relationship between symbolic meaning and form is one of the issues. That was discussed in the other thread 'what is information'. Remember the Norbert Weiner quote, 'information is information, not matter or energy'? Information can't be reduced to the laws of physics, simpliciter. It is one of the many nails in the coffin of physical reductionism.
Of course, in terms of IT, then information has a physical meaning, because it is stored physically, in the form of binary code. But the philosophical implication of what information is, is a different thing again. One of the papers Apokrisis referred me to, The Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiotics by Howard Pattee, is very useful on that (although Pattee's material is a tough read.)
[quote=Pattee]All signs, symbols, and codes, all languages including formal mathematics are embodied as material physical structures and therefore must obey all the inexorable laws of physics. At the same time, the symbol vehicles like the bases in DNA, voltages representing bits in a computer, the text on this page, and the neuron firings in the brain do not appear to be limited by, or clearly related to, the very laws they must obey. Even the mathematical symbols that express these inexorable physical laws seem to be entirely free of these same laws.[/quote]
So, they operate on a different level to physical laws. The relationships expressed by basic logic, for example, operate completely independently of physical laws, even though you can devise physical systems to instantiate them.
Killer argument for dualism, in my view.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
There's no such thing as a 'brain state'. It is an empty rhetorical device pretending to be a theory.
Quoting 180 Proof
Hah. I just spent the morning on this point.
DNA is necessarily physical, but also as little involved in the physics of the world as possible. Every cell has 2m of genetic sequence - several billion nucleotide pairs - packed into space about 6 microns across. A compression ratio of 333,333 to 1.
So from the dynamical perspective of physics - real-time interactions in 4D - DNA barely registers as a dot of material. It has basically no dimensions to speak of. It is physical - but in a way that negates what we normally mean by physical.
However is that a killer argument for a dualism that is any way unphysical ... in the manner this is normally understood by idealists and others?
Well the whole point of Pattee is about the epistemic cut, the modelling relation. Genetic information is meaningful only insofar it regulates entropy dissipation. It is information doing work by running down environmental gradients. It is thus a response to the constraints of the laws of thermodynamics. It is local creativity harnessed to the same old general cosmic project of achieving the equilibrium of a heat death.
How does this statement make any sense to you? You have a classification of things predicated with "physical". Then you claim that anything which affects a thing of this type, the physical type, must itself be a physical thing. Where's your missing premise? Anything which affects something else must be the same type of thing as the thing affected?
Sure there is. If you back engineered your brains exact physical states in the moments you composed these quoted sentences, you would have a progression of brain states. The quote is direct evidence that your brain has the ability to hold content by using brain states.
Dualism has always recognised that. 'Partly physical' is a long way from physicalism per se.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
Do you believe in God, or is that a Software Glitch?
Quoting apokrisis
I think so, but I don't want to try and express that here, besides, a lot of it was discussed at the start of this thread a couple of years ago now.
I think the problem with dualism generally is the inveterate tendency to attempt to objectify the non-physical. Because of science's exclusive concentration on what can be quantified and measured objectively, when talk turns to the nature of mind or consciousness, then there is an overwhelming tendency to try and objectify that or imagine what it must be. But it can't be done, because the mind cannot make an object of itself. That the subject of e.g. Michel Bitbol's paper It is never known but it is the knower. (.pdf file. Bitbol is one of the great discoveries I've made through this forum, via @Pierre-Normand.)
Also, as you well know, there is a world of difference between hylomorphic dualism, the duality of matter and form, and Cartesian dualism, the duality of matter and mind.
Yep. But then also, hylomorphism is essentially triadic. The actuality of substantial being arises out of formal constraint on material uncertainty.
So what Pattee argues is this triadic story. Life and mind have substantial being as a result of the biological interaction between information and dynamics.
I have read about some studies that were carried out in the so-called ‘decade of the brain’ in the late 90’s in which researchers tried to identify the neural pathways associated with very simple learning tasks, such as learning a new word. But the patterns of activity were so diverse and unpredictable that the never came close to establishing any kind of true correlation. This was also subject of a recent article I read about representational drift.
So I’m very dubious about the suggestion that ‘brain-states’ provide the kind of explanation you’re talking about. In philosophical terms, all you’re saying amounts to ‘brain-mind identity theory’ which is not highly popular in philosophical circles nowadays.
Quoting apokrisis
What I’m tempted to believe, is that those ‘formal constraints’ can be conceived as being latent possibilities that become actualised by evolutionary processes. I remember my Indian Philosophy lecturer, Arvind Sharma saying ‘what is latent becomes patent’.
Yep. That is structuralism. It is why maths of that ilk - the maths of symmetry - has proved so unreasonably effective in physical theory.
So plenty of different traditions of thought get it.
Can you give an example of a formal constraint on material uncertainty in the animal kingdom?
So in your view, the states of a computer are determined by its physics rather than its information? Complete measurement of its hardware state would let you back engineer whatever software routine it was handling?
Never heard of it. I mean, can you give an example? Who is selecting?
Nature. :razz:
Who is Nature?
No, I said what I said. If you want to make another point then make it and take credit for it. Don't take it personally. It's common around here.
But carry on with your efforts to champion nominalism. It must be at least 5 minutes since someone tried that.
If you agree it doesn’t do so in a computer, then why are you so apparently sure it does in a brain?
I don't understand. I just asked you if you could give me an example of "formal constraints" and you end up not knowing an answer to the simple question who Nature is.
What's ungrammatical about asking if you can give an example of "formal constraints on material uncertainty" and who's Nature? DO YOU UNDERSTAND ENGLISH (it could be off course that you're American...)?
I mean, I understand your view on information (non-entropic, ie, not equal to S=k lnN) but it's too abstract.
I don't view it as completely analogous to computers and I don't go back far enough to know your view of brain information on this thread. I view brain information as embedded in brain state and you need to think of it as existing only in a physical present(time).
What information? Your brain state contains the same amount of information as mine. But they are completely different states.
I'm inclined to agree with what you said if only because the same symbol e.g. C can represent the chemical carbon, a test grade, the first note in an octave without undergoing any physical transformation which, to me, should be impossible if information is physical. Reminds me of Wittgenstein's claim, meaning (information) is use. @Banno.
Well enough to know that questions of who-ness relate to the logically particular rather than the logically general.
So you may wish to presume your answer by framing it nominalistically from the get-go. As a realist on generality, I simply reply your question is mal-formed.
Quoting VincePee
Too abstract for whom?
As if entropy or information were concrete simples.
Well, abstraction is nice. But sometimes it takes away too much. All organisms posses more or kess the same relative entropy (a number), but boy, how different they all are. I agree with your view on information! :smile:
My view is neurosemiotic. So it is more about the way an organism is embedded in its world via a modelling relation.
An organism develops stable habits of interpretance which stand the test of time. So as a computer architecture, it is more along the lines of a Bayesian prediction engine. Like a neural network, there isn’t a clear hardware-software distinction. Or rather, the cut between the physics and the information runs through every level of analysis. It is interaction across all scales in a nested hierarchical fashion.
That is why, for example, I think it quite misleading to talk of states and progressions of states. The brain is “processing” it’s understanding of the world over all its available scales. The older you are, the wiser you get. You have a larger weight of experience to apply to any passing moment.
And the brain defies simple state description by being also a prediction-based system. It tries to guess the state of the world so it doesn’t then need to react to the world. This is another way that the state of the brain at any given moment isn’t the whole story. Or if we happen to be running on automatic pilot in a very predictable situation, even a significantly large part of the story.
Furthermore, a piano and a pianist will fall at the same rate if dropped from a height. That’s the sense in which ‘physical laws’ are applicable, in the context.
Quoting apokrisis
Ever run across https://neuroanthropology.net/ ? It’s a fascinating site, I’ve dropped in there from time to time for years.
The living brain in a living pianist falls lndeed like a piano. The brain processes (if artificially separated from body and external world) proceed according to the laws of non-perturbative QFT. But that doesn't explain the fact that you see thoughts or hear sounds (hard problem of consciousness).
The point is that your logic is sorely deficient. Whether or not I can give you an answer of something non-physical which affects the physical (which is easily done, ideas, as evidenced by the existence of artificial things) is not what is at issue here. What is at issue is the logical basis of your principle, "whatever affects the physical is, at least in part, physical".
What I have issue with, is your proposed annihilation of the separation between things which makes them distinct things.. You seem to be saying that if one thing affects another thing, it is to some degree, that other thing. This I believe annihilates the separation between distinct things, saying that if they interact they are in some sense conjoined, But this is clearly not the way that we currently understand the reality of the universe. We allow that things which do not appear to be conjoined can interact with each other.
So the moon interacts with the earth for example, through gravity, though the two are understood as distinct objects. Now physics can represent the "affects" of gravity, but they have no representation of gravity itself. So to answer your question, with a more sophisticated answer, gravity causes changes in physical systems, and it is itself, non-physical. And once you come to understand this, you'll see that all forces talked about by physicists are non-physical, and that's the way that physicists represent the interactions between physical bodies, as occurring through a medium which is non-physical. So physicists understand distinct physical bodies as interacting with each other through non-physical mediums, such as potential energy, and fields. The physical body causes a change to the non-physical, then the non-physical causes a change to another physical body, and that's how physicists understand distinct physical things to interact.
My point in mentioning the physical present is that there can be no off board activity. Everything has to happen on the physical playing field in a present moment. As you model it mentally you should have no off board place holders.
If you want to make modeling easy, define information as brain state. That is how information is held, manipulated, originated and terminated. Communication takes place by encoding and decoding matter.
The medical profession uses some different definitions of brain state but if you follow the context as
I described it you should understand my useage.
I think I understand your view and agree with most of it.
I never claimed or implied this categorical statement; instead I referred specifically to physical systems, etc. Take issue with my "logic" all you like but that's trivial so long as you don't / can't answer my question about 'non-physical causes'.
Huh? You didn't read my post? I gave you a whole slew of examples of non-physical things which cause changes in physical systems. Let me go back and see if I can name them all, in the order they appear in my post: "ideas", "gravity", "forces" "potential energy", "fields". Do you simply ignore anything which is inconsistent with your metaphysics?
What do you think "causal relation to facts" means? I can't figure it out. Did you ever take lessons on how to use the English language, 180?
Quoting 180 Proof
What are you suggesting, that all terms used in a physics textbook refer to something physical because they are in a physics textbook? That's another stellar example of an extremely deprived faculty of logically reasoning.
I think I've figured out what you're saying here. You're saying that ideas are abstract, non-physical, therefore they can't have any causal relation to the physical. Isn't that just begging the question?
If ideas cannot have any causal relation with the physical, how do you account for the relationship between ideas and artificial things which are physical?. How can there not be a causal relation between the ideas and the artificial thing which comes into existence when someone puts the ideas into action?
When you grasp a scientific principle, such as the law of motion, you are grasping an idea that is universally applicable and which can be exploited for physical ends. There are countless such examples in the history of science. According to a Platonist view, this is because humans alone are able to 'peer into the domain of the possible' and to retrieve from it things and ideas which have not existed previously. That is very close to the meaning of 'discovery'.
'if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.' From Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P.
Meaning is association. Use is established by habitual association. It's "chicken and egg" though, since habitual association is also established by use.
If a physical system can process abstract ideas, then there must be a causal relationship between the abstract ideas and the physical system which processes them. Agree?
So encoding onto a physical system gives you encoded matter and that can be decoded and played back as music. Can you explain the necessity of the matter in its encoded state to become information? And how does that work or is it your perception?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-physical-origin-of-universal-computing-20151027/
You moved on to the second step too soon. You may understand it, but could you offer a little more so I could too.
I wouldn’t describe it as “the materialist delusion”. But rather an ideology which doesn’t (from its own perspective) require a sentient being as the knower of abstract ideas. Take that knower out of the system and nothing has been lost.
I don’t think we as people who attribute a more fundamental role to the knower in this can dismiss this view. We are simply on the other side of the intellectual division between idealism and materialism. The other side of the same coin.
It's more like stress testing and you should welcome it. Anyway, I'll read what you write from now on.
“ you can’t become what you can’t see”
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The view that abstract ideas can exist unsupported and can affect physical matter...?
So the ideas are changed by a physical system. How is this not a casual relation between ideas and a physical system?
Quoting Mark Nyquist
Do you see that blueprints are expressed ideas, which are causes in relation to the physical things which come into existence from the blueprints? Here's an example to demonstrate what I mean. Suppose I'm building a shed or some other small building, and I use the Pythagorean theorem to lay out my right angles. Do you see that this idea is the cause of that aspect of the shape of the building?
Quoting Mark Nyquist
I agree with wayfarer, that "brain states" is an incoherent idea. The brain is always active so there is no such thing as the "state" which the brain is in. And if the brain was in a "state", then it would be inactive, and your talk of it being in a causal relation would not make any sense.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
I didn't say anything about being unsupported. Read the following.
Quoting Punshhh
Perhaps this ontology is better described as you do, but there is something incoherent about discussing abstract ideas which do not require a being for their existence. Most forms of idealism, like Berkeley's for example, propose the existence of Ideas independent from human minds, but as far as I know all such ideologies maintain a God of some sort to support the existence of those ideas. So they do not have an ideology which holds abstract ideas without the requirement of a knower.
The materialist will seize hold of this notion of independent Ideas or Forms, with complete disrespect for the support given by the knower, "God", and insist that such Ideas cannot interact with the physical world. But this is nothing but a total misrepresentation, a strawman, because the independent Ideas or Forms of the I\idealist are understood to interact with the physical world through the means of God, just like we understand human ideas to interact with the physical world through the means of human beings.
Quoting Punshhh
I think that any view which proposes a dichotomy between material (or physical) objects, and immaterial (or non-physical) objects, without the possibility of any interaction between the two, ought to be dismissed as completely unrealistic. And, it is really only the deluded materialists who propose such a view, as a strawman representation of dualism. They can easily demonstrate that such a view is untenable, therefore they dismiss dualism. The so-called "problem of interaction" is often touted by materialists as a conclusive argument against dualism. But these same materialist appear to be completely unaware that this "problem" was resolved long ago by Plato, in the same work which demonstrates that dualism provides the only rational approach toward understanding the nature of reality.
So I don't accept your "other side of the same coin" analogy. These materialists who deny interaction haven't got a knower at all, because the knower provides the medium of interaction. They haven't got "a coin" in the analogy. They propose two sides, the physical and the non-physical, without any coin which the two sides are properties of. Then they demonstrate that such a position is untenable. Now, instead of realizing that what they've missed is the coin itself, (true reality), they propose one side of the coin as the correct representation of the coin. Of course that is a misrepresentation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sorry, I can't always read endless threads to know everyone's positionn so sometimes I just ask. Thanks for your effort in explaining.
I've used the term brain state as both static and dynamic. Physical brains will always be in a dynamic state and information linked with brains will always be in a dynamic state. I agree, any theory of information that uses a static state is suspect.
Try this:
A dynamic brain holding mental content is physically equal to a dynamic brain state, as a definition.
Or; BRAIN(mental content) = brain state
And this, brain state = information, also BRAIN(mental content) = information
Equivalent states are BRAIN(specific mental content) = BRAIN(mental content) = brain state
The idea is to map observed specific mental content to a specific brain state. Static or dynamic.
If you define information in this way you have defined information as physical and the answer to 'Is "information" physical?' is 'Yes'.
So an observation is that how you answer the question depends on how you define information.
I really think that "dynamic state" is oxymoronic. So any type of theory which talks about a state as anything other than static would seem incoherent to me. I'll see if I can explain this to you. Suppose something like a brain is dynamic, actively changing. You might describe its condition at one time as state #1 and its condition at a following time as state #2, and we could conclude that there was active change between #1 and #2. But we cannot combine state #1 with state #2 to say that these are actually one "dynamic state" because we've already made the premise of two distinct states. And we cannot describe the activity between #1 and #2 as a state because we've already designated it as the change between state #1and #2, therefore not definable as a "state".
Quoting Mark Nyquist
So this definition is clearly unacceptable, as incoherent.
A static state is not a dynamic state and a dynamic state is not a static state. Both exist and both are states. What would be incoherent?
Going from state 1 to state 2 is a stepped approach and lacks continuity. It's a calculus thing.
Obviously, "ideas" do not cause themselves to be encoded. :roll:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-physical-origin-of-universal-computing-20151027/
Right, the second physical system you referred to ("being changed accordingly by another physical system") causes the ideas to be encoded. So there is a causal relation between this physical system, and the non-physical ideas.
It's a causal relation between the physical and the non-physical, contrary to what you were saying. Look:
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
After telling me to read a physics textbook, you are familiar with Newton's third law aren't you? It's the law of interaction. If a physical system is causing changes to something non-physical, then the non-physical must be causing changes to the physical. Don't you think so?
So which is it that you actually believe, what you first stated, that non-physical, abstract ideas have no causal relations with physical systems, or what you later demonstrated with your words, that non-physical, abstract ideas have causal relations with physical systems?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/592581
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your posts just don't make any sense.
Information is an abstract concept , a value we project on available claims with specific instrumental value. Those claims describe facts of our world.
So the question doesn't really makes much sense. Does information has an empirical foundation?..sure it does like any other similar concept (Logic, Calculation, Freedom,Knowledge, consciousness Etc).
Information "doesn't exist" in nature as an ultimate "entity" or whatever ontology one might prefer.
We as observers value claims that are based on facts and they can be used to inform our thoughts and actions.
Information can be appied to a physical sysstem. It is a number (the entropy) that we can calculate. It's an inherent property though it can be argues it's just a subjective number, as all numbers are. It's a measure of the ways a system can be in formation. The highest value allows only one formation (chaos), while the lowest, zero, allows only one too: total order.
The in-between value corresponds to the nicest kind of being in formation. These formations allow life.
-"Information can be appied to a physical sysstem. It is a number (the entropy) that we can calculate".
-This is what we usually do with "information" either when they are numbers or a statement of fact, we apply them on physical systems and thus produce further knowledge.
-" It's an inherent property though it can be argues it's just a subjective number, as all numbers are."
-Information can describe inherent properties by using subjective numbers which we have agreed to projected on them an objective meaning.
You might notice that the question was put in respect of a claim by a computer scientist that information is physical.
Sure ! This scientist argues about a specific aspect of the concept. Claims that convey data about facts of the physical world are valued as information. Since science can only investigate physical phenomena.....information can only "be physical". So he is arguing on the physical nature of the content of an "information".
This thread addresses the nature of "information" from a different aspect...as if the abstract concept of information has some kind of an idealistic ontology(whatever that means).
So this is a begging the question fallacy. The empirical way is the only way we can collect information and the objective standard is the only way we can verify it. Even our reasoning in order to be logical(thus to be used as information) it needs to be based or tested empirically.
This is going to start with some explanation about information theoretic concepts, which may seem unrelated at first, but the purpose of their introduction will become clearer later.
Most concepts in information theory are described in terms of degrees of non-determinism. They have nothing to do with semantics of physical expressions. I don't mean necessarily ontological non-determinism, but variation of quantities under the scope of whatever conditions apply. This, of course raises questions about the nature of the context of those conditions and what is non-determinism actually in practice, but I will defer till later.
A key concept, entropy, quantifies non-determinism. Captures the idea, metaphorically, that for some quantities, no matter how much we tried to hedge our bets on all possibilities, the outcomes will remain uninsurable. But this intuition seems to imply a subject, whereas the mathematical definition simply ascribes a relationship between a degree of freedom with which something can behave and degree of precision with which it can be quantified, whether a conscious predictor exists or not.
Another concept, mutual information, intuitively quantifies how much better "hedging" on one variable becomes when the non-determinism of another is eliminated by inclusion in the context. Again, this is just intuition. The mathematical definition simply relates the various outcomes or measurements of one variable to the other. The remaining non-determinism is the conditional entropy of one variable with respect to another. So, in information theory, you do not have object and subject per-se, but connection between the non-determinism of different quantities in the outcome, which is symmetric relation.
The above explanation applies to kinds of fields of application, which are not pertinent here. I am now going to focus to what I consider the notion of information to be in the physical sense, because it pertains to your inquiry. Even though this will not cover all the manners in which the theory is applied in general, the practical and fundamental sense end up being intertwined.
According to our present day natural science, or at least my best understanding, physical stuff is related to physical stuff through interactions that travel with the speed of light. Those interactions are impeded, first, by the propagation delay in the sense that it restricts the rate of roundtrip influence between separated entities, second, by the decay of the probability of interaction at greater distances, and third, by the subsumption of the field excitations after interaction, which means that stuff acts like a shield to other matter in its shadow, at least in the direction of the signal. Gravity is the exception to the last.
So, physical entities are "mutually informed". As long as one entity is close enough to another and not obscured by matter, we can constrain how those two entities coevolve together in a manner that we cannot constrain one entity by itself. This implies mutual information. They are more informed about immediate surroundings and less informed about distant and obscured surroundings. What happens to one particle of given type is generally much loosely specified, but physically restricted systems carry a lot of mutual information between their constituents.
Usually we refer by information to ascription of encoded meaning in the structure of some physical stuff which pertains to the structure of other physical stuff. I will argue that the dissemination of such information follows the same principle as the signaling of physical particles and if we have evolved under the natural law, without scientific self-contradiction, we could hypothesize that we have learned to interpret information by being first exposed to it in the fundamental physical sense and then have learned to encode information by knowing how to interpret it in the first place. Encoding with degree of abstraction, which is rather specific to intelligent life, is where symbolic and abstract representational encoding come into play. Those are not tied to information theory fundamentally, albeit being a particular object of interest for its application. Symbolic encoding requires higher cognitive abilities which are recent in our evolution and are a matter of investigation even more recently. But I don't want to digress yet.
Let us assume that interpretative skills exist for a moment. If we characterize as true being positively ascertainable by compelling impersonal factors, then if some sentence is encoding a true proposition, its expression under the naturalist doctrine must have structure which when interpreted by our brain should result in resonance between our cognitive faculty and certain spatio-temporal physical facts. At least in the sense that our brain's decisions will become more qualified. Those facts may be impossible to articulate through empirical measurements in practice, for social, aesthetic, ethical, etc. concerns, but such sentences have structure which makes the interpreter aware of the disposition of whatever aspects of the physical reality are necessary in order to avoid self-harm and achieve satisfaction, or collaborate to the collective attainment of the same in which it has a part.
The whole point is that encodings convey mutual information in the same sense in which physical interactions do, but even for obscured and distant physical aspects, abstract as they may be. As a simpler example, I know what a koala looks like, if not for any other reason, because I can google it. A camera used the interaction between its sensor array and the light reflected from the koala's outer surface, then carried this image to electronics and memory in the camera by electricity, then used electrical charge to record the image to flash storage or transfer it to some online storage of the media outlet. Nature restricts matter which makes one piece indicative of another, such that we can create chains of interactions that carry informedness from one entity to a much distant one and eventually convey it to a human being's senses.
You may rightfully ask, what makes my brain interpret information and regard it as such. The screen is in mostly literal state (even though it is flat and pixelated), but the assignment of the taxonomy of the image relies on the interpretation of text. The information in the form of a digital image is directly representational of the actual koala, not very abstract, and the symbolic information in the text which supplements it is. My brain itself encodes information, and it has differing degrees of abstraction, depending on which part of the brain is considered. Some encode highly abstract states of thinking and recollection, whereas other, such as parts of the visual cortex, are comparatively literal. In any case, because of the high degree of interconnectedness, the neural networks are very compact and either represent small aspects a of sensory stimulus, or amalgamate many such aspects.
I can only speculate how the interpretation skill has evolved, but you wouldn't expect more then speculation on this topic anyway. The earth absorbs solar radiation like most planets in the universe, but in our solar system the radiation intensity reach us is of the right amount, and the chemical diversity on our cosmic rock is of the right kind, such that various compounds absorb the electromagnetic into enough chemical energy and resist the residual thermodynamic entropy. As a result, stable conditions are present for the appearance of smaller and then larger systems, whose mutual information gradually permeates way past the normal effective range of immediate physical interactions. Evolution allows retention of state which reflects precedents in order to become responsive to recurrences in a manner that increases sustenance. This begins trivially, with simple polymers, whose very occurrence and statistical reproducibility conveys the conditions that fostered their structure, through protocells and simple bacteria which respond to the proliferation in more complex biomes and the appearance of biotic competition, and then all sorts of tissue specializations. This is all information retention. Not cerebral one, but retention nonetheless. The whole planet is like a memory bank and a processor.
The environment have already taken on interpretative mechanisms with the first reactive single-cellular life. They interpret stimuli, such as indirect food awareness, threat awareness, etc. The question is, how complex, dynamic, and deeply interpretative they could naturally evolve. We cannot say for certain. Too much data is erased and we are not such smart cookies to reconstruct nature's mechanism which had so much to experiment with plausibility to refine. If the evolution hypothesis is right, which to our best knowledge could be in principle, the physical order on our planet spawned interrelation engines, because they are able to retain information about what is distant in time and space. If you don't retain information with the environment, you become probable subject to its entropy and consequently could be subject to special assimilation.
The problem is, it has been shown by quantum physics that entities can be entangled at arbitrarily great distances from each other.
Quoting simeonz
The physical order doesn't 'spawn' anything. Spawn is a biological term and how biological functionality arises in the first place is an unsolved question. To assume that it occurs as a consequence of chemical necessity is reductionist. See What is information? by Marcello Barbieri, discusses the emerging perspective of code biology.
[quote=Barbieri]The idea that life evolved naturally on the primitive Earth suggests that the first cells came into being by spontaneous chemical reactions, and this is equivalent to saying that there is no fundamental divide between life and matter. This is the chemical paradigm, a view that is very popular today and that is often considered in agreement with the Darwinian paradigm, but this is not the case. The reason is that natural selection, the cornerstone of Darwinian evolution, does not exist in inanimate matter. In the 1950s and 1960s, furthermore, molecular biology uncovered two fundamental components of life—biological information and the genetic code—that are totally absent in the inorganic world, which means that information is present only in living systems, that chemistry alone is not enough and that a deep divide does exist between life and matter. This is the information paradigm, the idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’.
Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern synthesis, has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the view that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. In The growth of Biological Thought [15], p. 124, he made this point in no uncertain terms: ‘… 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!’[/quote]
-- Landauer
That's the reason he gave for why information is physical.
Quoting Wayfarer
Rule number one: Do not be intimidated by titles. Please. You lose the wow! factor.
So, on with my comment -- you are correct and MikeL here, below, is correct. Conflating what's being transmitted with mode of transmission.
Quoting MikeL
He took the pen. There was He in the tank.
The information has changed (man to gas) but nothing physical has (He is still He). Clearly this is in violation of some physical law IF information is physical?
There is a tendency to say, then, 'well ideas exist in brains, and brains are physical', to ground them in the physical domain. But I question that too. Some fundamental principles, such as the law of the excluded middle or the primitive constituents of arithemetic, must be true in all possible worlds - true a priori - so they don't come into existence as a result of neural architecture. Rather, we evolve to the point of being able to understand them. Certainly we need the evolved brain to understand them but they're not a product of that, they're a discovery made by it. (Which harks back to the ancient 'is maths invented or discovered?' question.)
Interesting fact: the derivation of the word 'intelligence' is early 16th century: from Latin intelligent- ‘understanding’, from the verb intelligere, variant of intellegere ‘understand’, from inter ‘between’ + legere ‘choose’. Something like 'reading between the lines', or 'interpretation'. That is what we (h. sapiens) do with each exercise of thought - make judgements based on inference of what something means. That is precisely what cannot be accounted for in physical terms, not least because we have to exercise it to even begin to know what 'physical' means.
No objection here.
I had to quickly do a mental inventory of what I said back in the phenomenology thread when I went crazy over the idealism versus physical/materialism narrative. In that thread, I maintained that perception is physical, therefore, materialism is true. So to bring my claim to here, perception is our mode of information transmission. [Just to cover my base. lol. :grin: ]
In quantum superposition, an individual wavelength is composed of multiple wavelengths, which can also be expressed conversely, so 1+1+1=1, law of noncontradiction and the excluded middle denied! The One of Parmenides may be approaching this concept from a philosophical angle.
As Heraclitus observed of raw perception, you can never step into the same river twice. A type of perception lacking the form or selection pressure for abstract concepts may completely exclude the generalization of unity or "1", with everything being an intrinsic multiplicity. I think this may be true of awareness in some spiritual beings that humans have not yet epistemically characterized.
It doesn't matter how much you want to anthrocentrize it, use some imagination and it becomes apparent that both the a priori and a posteriori are conditional.
Good links!
I agree with the both of them. I never agreed with the rationalism versus empiricism discourse anyway. There's something unsettling about the pure empiricist's view of perception. Interpretation of sensory input is rationalistic, and cannot be attributed mainly on the material nature of sensory input.
I think that the mutual information established between the entangled entities is acquired at the expense of new information theoretic entropy. Entanglement can establish correlation after quantum event which involves randomness in the outcome, which as a side effect severs the entities relations to their past. The entanglement depends on additional non-determinism, which is partially subsumed in the relationship established between the entangled entities. Thus it cannot increase our knowledge about remote configurations of matter, unless we deconstruct them first through randomness, so to speak, which is not the subject here. What physicists say is that entanglement cannot be used to communicate - because communication carries information about the historically conditioned outcome somewhere to somewhere else. Mutual information through quantum entanglement destroys the historical connection in both places.
Quoting Wayfarer
The hypothesis is indeed not proven. It is the currently best known explanation under naturalism, but one can reject naturalism. If you question the evolutionary hypothesis, which is ok, the problem becomes not how information can be physical in the naturalist framework, but how can information be without evolutionary origin of the central nervous system, or alternatively how can the central nervous system have evolutionary origin. But I am not sure if this was the point of the inquiry. If the critique is that the evolutionary hypothesis is not elaborated precisely yet and thus the appearance of information dissemination faculties is not guaranteed to be explained by it, you are right. It might not be.
But at least, I hope that you will concede in light of my arguments in the preceding post, that given some plausible evolutionary explanation of organic life from prebiotic chemistry under natural law, information could be plausibly physical. It seems that pretty much every question about the metaphysics of the abstract cerebral concepts ends up in questions about human genesis. But this is still important to conclude, in my opinion, if nothing else. That most issues about the abstract notions have answers that rest on the explanation of our genesis, one way or the other.
What hypothesis would you rather discuss? Do you reject the evolutionary hypothesis in the sense that you believe it to be inconsistent with its supporting framework, naturalism, or do you reject it methodologically due to the making of conjecture of this hypothesis while omitting crucial details in its explanation? Do you object necessarily that such explanation can be found, or that alternative naturalistic hypothesis of human genesis can be found, but shouldn't be assumed presently, or you reject methodologically that the naturalistic assumptions can be used for inferring the plausibility of any hypothesis, because they are themselves unproven? Do you seek discussion of the nature of information in a different framework? Ask yourself however, is it better defended to the same objections that you lay at naturalism's door? For example, is its hypothesis of human genesis better substantiated by equally compelling experience of any kind then the evolutionary hypothesis?
I actually am under the impression that abiogenesis is more concentrated around the idea of the first self-replicating polymers, believed to be precursor to the first form of life, and most likely formed at first in fresh water, near steam vents, possibly on the surface of clay minerals, or other catalytic materials, or inside the pores of rocks. The "lightning struck" hypothesis is one of many, and I don't think it garners that much attention as you may think.
Self-replicating polymer chains can exists and evolve without any other signs of life, and this I believe is proven in laboratory conditions, with environmental factors resembling what we believe to have been at the time. These are just natural formation, and did not contain biological information in the sense in which we understand it. They were organic chains more resistant to their surrounding conditions, and more easily formed from the available organic and inorganic materials. Note that this organic chains still did carry informational value about "what works", but not how to be living. A hypothesized precursor to life, the polymers are suggested to have adapted to proto-cell enclosure later, which may have formed by infiltration of the polymers in some naturally occurring vesicles in bodies of water and transmitted between the vesicles through either contact, or through polymer escaping as viroids. That would have provided some kind of natural selection and organic reproduction at first, although we cannot explain how the metabolic cycle appeared, such that the polymers became capable of reproducing not only themselves, but also the cell membrane along with the polymer inside it. There is no known contradiction/refutation of which I am aware, but neither do we have explanation. The polymer may have started to produce various hydrophilic compounds by secondary reactions in the water and thus form micelles in colloidal suspension.
Edit:
to the first form of life, most likely formed -> to the first form of life, and most likely formed
(the chains, not the cellular life formed)
known contradiction, but we don't have explanation -> known contradiction/refutation of which I am aware, but neither do we have explanation
More that they're not applicable on that scale. There are things beyond logic, but we need to know logic in order to understand that.
Quoting Caldwell
:up:
Quoting simeonz
It's an hypothesis based on a metaphysical presupposition, namely, physicalism, that only the physical is real. However I think there are ample grounds for saying that 20th century science has demonstrated that we don't even know what 'the physical' is. That style of thinking grew out of post-Cartesian dualism, which divided 'the world' into the two poles, material and mental. Then scientists and engineers, who couldn't make any sense out of the idea of the mental, tried to dispense with it so as to arrive at the concept of what is only or purely physical. But it is a completely incoherent idea, as evidenced by the vast conceptual conundrums which plague physics.
Quoting simeonz
If they can evolve, then they must be able to maintain homeostasis and identity over time, in which case they must contain biological information. Conversely if they contain no biological information, then they can't evolve, as there is nothing which will maintain continuity through change. And no, I don't believe that science has created an artificial living form de novo. I know they have engineered simple organisms into novel forms, but that's nothing like creating an actual organism from the elements of the periodic table.
Quoting simeonz
Not a ghost of a chance :wink:
Not sure which particular metaphysical concerns you refer to, but I have stated before, that a variation on the pantheistic or panpsychic theme, in my opinion, can explain mental experiences in a physical world, while maintaining that the world is also entirely physical. In such scheme, the deity is physical and coextent with the entire universe, the mind is entirely physical and represents self-awareness of organized intelligent matter. However, no assumption is made, at least on my part, that such deity is antropomorphically and antropocentrically ethical, benevolent, relatable, or that the mental state is morally transcendent and superior in a fundamental sense to the surrounding nature. This is just a hypothesis, or conjecture if you will. It rests on the mandatory inclusion of external experience in the internal worldview, which I mostly agree with, and is thus compatible with naturalism. But overall, I am possibilian, as long as the hypothesis does not contradict the experience available to me personally.
Quoting Wayfarer
But do you challenge the logical and internal consistency of my arguments and their consequence from the presuppositions made. I thought that the framework we agree upon when making the original inquiry was naturalism, because there is no point in raising objections to the claims made by naturalism and denying whatever metaphysical presuppositions it makes at the same time, as long as they are consistent.
Otherwise, I have always stated that belief is a valid personal argument, and most of science rests on it. But since there has to be some kind of consensus between people in society to discuss something polemically, to some practical degree at least, and since science has rather prevailing support due to the compelling nature of physical experience, that makes it consensual and in that sense impersonally validated. In contrast, other beliefs are personally validated, but they are not supported by the same degree of consensus. Empiricism also lays objections to such beliefs when they are sustained along the belief in science, because it critiques methodologically the application of different standards when validating different beliefs. It is not infallible critique, but it is food for thought for each individual on their own.
I'm late to the party, and I may have replied a year or so ago. But FWIW, I'll add my two-cents worth to the Reification of Information question. My Enformationism thesis is based on the concept that Information is both Physical and Meta-physical ; both Material and Mental. To see both sides of the Information coin though, you have to look through two different Frames with different assumptions : Scientific and Philosophical.
Basically, Information is physical in the sense that Energy is physical : it's the power to cause change of form (E=MC^2). But Information is also meta-physical in that it is the abstract knowledge content of a Mind (i.e. meaning). The link below is my personal answer to some what-and-how Consciousness questions on this very forum. :smile:
What is Information? :
Is Information Physical or Metaphysical? . . . or both
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page16.html
When you use the term 'entirely physical', what does that really mean? Does it mean 'explicable in terms of physics'? The problem is that concept of what actually constitutes 'the physical', or what 'physical' really means, is subject to constant revision. And this means that using the term in that way, as a kind of sweeping claim as to the real nature of things is subject to Hempel's dilemma:
---
Quoting simeonz
That's a very interesting observation. The prevailing wisdom since the Enlightenment is typically assumed to originate with and be validated by science. But there are many conflicts within post-Enlightenment philosophy, which its most ardent proponents never seem to be able to perceive due to their underlying assumptions. Fundamentally these problems revolve around the fact-value dichotomy, also known as the is/ought distinction. Another way of framing that is in terms of the distinction between what can be objectively measured and known, and what can be intuited to be so. But there's a lot of deep philosophical problems in that issue, to really analyse them would take a lot of of writing. But suffice to say:
Quoting simeonz
I myself don't assume a naturalist framework. I think I understand what that is, but I've never felt obliged to confine myself to it. It's the natural assumption for the natural sciences, but I'm of the view that the problems of life and mind cannot be understood in wholly naturalist terms.
Quoting Gnomon
I like your thinking, and I read those pages on your blog. (Wonder what happened to Galuchat, he hasn't posted for a few years.) There's something nagging at the back of my mind about it, but I'm going to leave it for now. I had intended to log out for a few weeks until this thread got re-animated.
I don't believe that natural selection requires invariable homeostasis, at least for its explanation to work technically. It requires sustainability of the entire ecosystem and its internal interactions, which does not only allow for, but also requires coevolution. Identity, just like in our lives, follows a thread of events that remove from the original form and alter it. The maintenance of identity and its ascription to some physical does require some quasi-consistency and interoperation technically, but isn't a matter of homeostatic invariance (as we ourselves transition through many stages in our life cycle), but is more so a matter of necessity and behavioral programming.
Quoting Wayfarer
I then think that you are essentially asking that scientists "make a baby". Maybe they will, maybe they wont, eventually. I was referring to self-replicating organic polymers and explaining how they relate to our exploration of the abiogenetic hypothesis. You want complete answer, but science doesn't work like that. Empirical research is commitment to incremental threading through oceans of ignorance. We don't have the capacity to answer questions on demand, just because they can be raised.
First, there is a lot of dynamic state that we have to intellectually reflect on, with minute processing power in comparison to nature's, in large space of hypothetical possibilities, and second, a lot of the data cannot be reliably retrodicted due to entropy. We rely entirely on nature's redundancy (statistical repetitiveness and predictability) when compared to our cognitive apparatus. This is not argument for why someone has to reject non-empirical stances, but it is an explanation of why there is no progress guarantee for empirical comprehension, but people are trying. It is continuously evolving understanding, not a method of immediate inquiry.
Quoting Wayfarer
Here, I do actually mean entirely physical, in the matarialistic sense. But note that I claim that pantheism and panpsychism are consistent with scientific empricism, I don't claim that they are necessitated by it. Indeed, I claim that pantheism and panpsychism are logically consistent with methodological naturalism, and compatible with metaphysical naturalism and physicalism. And although thus not actually proven, their admissibility is at least philosophically important, at least to me, because it addresses the primary concerns with physicalism, the issue of hard problem of consciousness (because matter is consciousness itself) and the issue of human genesis (because nature is hermetic in sense that it is divine, not needing creator). This doesn't prove physicalism, materialism, neither pantheism, panpsychism. Only reflects on their internal consistency.
Any degree of personal faith that I may actually have is a separate and rather small matter, but generally, as I said, I am open to the evaluation of all theistic and metaphysical suggestions, while guided by my intuitions and experience. Like everyone else. I have very little commitment to any particular theistic hypothesis, just preferences for various reasons. I am not devout or reverent.
Quoting Wayfarer
I understand. I have concurred before that intuition/belief is a valid private/personal argument by its very existence. And science does rely on intuitions, which is why their private validity. But science is consistent to employ them, because they have captured (according to science) the necessarily utilitarian outcome of natural selection.
The problem with private intuitions is that you cannot polemicize them, except for methodological and logical consistency. For anything else (and some may argue to a lesser degree even for that), you have the practical necessity of groundwork on which human interaction to proceed. You have to rely on consensus, which while not a measure of metaphysical truth, just like, say, democracy is not a guarantee of ethical correctness, is necessary for social constructivism. But if our intuitions disagree, we could demonstrate methodological or logical inconsistency, and even then, adapt in incompatible ways.
I prefer to discuss consistency anyways, rather then validity. Validity discussions are ultimately a majority voting tactic, which I believe is of limited use in philosophy. Only in philosophy. Demonstration of consistency does not entice resonance within the group, which is why some people may object to its social usefulness, but I prefer that philosophy is not pursued with direct social aims, but rather pursued logically, where differing intuitions are logically debated and contrasted, rather then shunned by majority consensus. Then again, there is some contradiction in my very intent.
For transparency, I favor compelling (as opposed to voluntary) experience, recognize existence-awareness, and believe in order, which I believe necessitates philosophical explanation that might require concessions for intelligent large scale organization. But pantheism and panpsychism are sufficient philosophical groundwork for explanation to me. I am prepared to discuss the internal consistency of other intuitions, contrast them, theistically, logically, etc. I don't want to oppress anyone, but in everyday decision making, I contend with decisions that are effectively based on different intuitions. That is how society works.
It was in response to the question of the plausibility of abiogenesis. It seems obvious to many people that abiogenesis must have occured, by process of the elimination of the alternative explanations, that being 'divine creation', which of course naturalism must abjur. But in the absence of such a creative principle or spark as a higher intelligence, then it is incumbent on those proposing such an alternative to demonstrate how it occured on the basis of what is understood as natural laws, but this they cannot do. So I'm simply challenging a widely-accepted belief, that life somehow bootstraps itself into existence on the basis of physical causes. Which is, after all, what you proposed with your remark about how physical systems 'spawn'. Insofar as babies are also a kind of spawn, then indeed, science has been unable to replicate that (although I should add that science has greatly assisted many persons who have had trouble with the natural means of so doing, which is the just kind of thing where medical science really does excel).
Incidentally, in that article I quoted, this point is mentioned:
[quote=What is Information? Marcello Barbieri; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2015.0060]The idea that ‘life is chemistry plus information’ implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry, but can we prove it? Perhaps the strongest argument in support of this claim has come from Hubert Yockey, one of the organizers of the first congress dedicated to the introduction of Shannon's information in biology [16]. In a long series of articles and books, Yockey [17–19] has underlined that heredity is transmitted by factors that are ‘segregated, linear and digital’ whereas the compounds of chemistry are ‘blended, three-dimensional and analogue’.
Yockey underlined that: ‘Chemical reactions in non-living systems are not controlled by a message … There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences’ [18], p. 105.
Yockey has tirelessly pointed out that no amount of chemical evolution can cross the barrier that divides the analogue world of chemistry from the digital world of life, and concluded from this that the origin of life cannot have been the result of chemical evolution. This is therefore, according to Yockey, what divides life from matter: information is ontologically different from chemistry because linear and digital sequences cannot be generated by the analogue reactions of chemistry.
At this point, one would expect to hear from Yockey how linear and digital sequences did appear on Earth, but he did not face that issue. He claimed instead that the origin of life is unknowable, in the same sense that there are propositions of logic that are undecidable. This amounts to saying that we do not know how linear and digital entities came into being; all we can say is that they were not the result of spontaneous chemical reactions. [/quote]
Predictably, ID types have seized upon this to create an argument for their beliefs, but I think it's only required to recognise that it's at least an open question and one which has not been foreclosed by the dogmatic atheism of Dawkins et al.
Quoting simeonz
Well, I see your point, but again we're engaged in a rather metaphysical discussion of 'the meaning of meaning', which perhaps is nearer in spirit to philosophy proper than to the social sciences.
Have not done is more proper then they cannot do.
You may argue that natural evolution is so complex that it is obviously naive hypothesis. It seems that stages of the evolutionary chain that were previously confounding become explained over time. I am on the fence about it. The main problems currently are the appearance of metabolism and morphogenesis. At the moment, those can be hypothesized to have involved transitions beyond the natural law, which then could be called miracles. They may have also involved improbable events that are within the scope of the natural law, which may be argued to indicate intelligent design of the universe, but not miraculous intervention. The evolution of the central nervous system, which actually is pertinent to your question, isn't that much of a problem (comparatively).
While if creationism is true, it would indeed suggest that our intelligence may be endowed by its creator with possible non-physical component, it would not necessitate it. First, miracles in our origin do not imply that the creator lies outside of the physical reality. Its creative intelligence might be embedded in the physical world itself. But even if we constrain the meaning of physicality to natural behavior without anomalous creative occurrences, or discover that the creator is not ontologically incident with universe, information could still be physical in its present operation. Our genesis may have relied on divine intervention at some point, but that still does not offer compelling practical reason to believe that intelligence and information are not presently entirely physical. While they could be transcendent, this conclusion cannot be made on the basis of our externally shared experience, private intuition aside.
Quoting Wayfarer
I will again return to the nature of your original inquiry. If you reject naturalism/physicalism to begin with, due to abiogenesis or any other reason, why ask about the arguments behind the physicality of information. At least in terms of our use of information, you might have as well asked why we believe in abiogenesis, or why physicalism. Information basically seems to sidetrack the centerstage of the discussion.
Earlier I suggested that I have vaguely demonstrated, as much as the space, time, and my competence permits, that the information would be at least physical after the inclusion of the abiogenesis as a presupposition. You did not seem to concur, or you didn't find concurring relevant in light of your objections?
Quoting Wayfarer
Science never can obtain exhaustive hermetic justification. It is methodological and logically consistent evaluation of experience in continuous progress. Beliefs that lie in the zone of our scientific ignorance can consider themselves admitted by science until it broadens its horizons. But the truth is that such admission does not make them validated by science.
You are suggesting that scientists must discover chain of evolutionary events that is regular under natural law, in order to prove natural selection. First, scientists cannot demonstrate evolution as one continuous process in laboratory conditions, considering that it has taken a couple of billion years to form organisms from organic mud, according to our estimates. Scientists can try to demonstrate stages in isolation. Which they try, but indeed not all stages thus far.
I could counter your insistence for direct proof by arguing that you have to demonstrate the necessity of creative spark by pointing to me where in history the inconsistency with natural law has occurred. Not simply that it is implausible not to be, but demonstrate it in laboratory conditions.
I would say that extrapolating from our experience, it seems questionable to default to creationism due to our present ignorance, but even if we did, such divine creator should not necessarily be benevolent and external to the universe. Note that there is nothing to imply with reasonable certainty, objectively, that the creator is morally purposeful.
Edit:
, but it does necessitate it -> , but it doesn't necessitate it
(the part about dualism and information)
I also have rewritten some paragraphs to make them readable. My writing style still needs work.
The chemistry that we refer to usually, that we use for artificial synthetic purposes doesn't act in this way with respect to the main reactants, but I am pretty sure that you could make catalysts produce digital effects depending on their kind and concentration. I presume, what is criticized is the plausibility of rendering such effects with the degree of material sophistication in human beings, using self-catalytic and self-reproducing substances. Again, I understand the skepticism, but the argument using "digitalization" of matter seems indirect to me, using intuitively perceivable quality, instead of some concrete measurable characteristic.
Only insofar as 'natural law' is concieved in a very narrow and physicalist way. Physical reductionism of course wishes to reduce everything to physics - that's what it means! - but I think the emerging disciplines of biosemiotics, systems theory, environmental sciences, and so on, are not reductionist in that sense, but are still seeking to be naturalistic (e.g. here).
Quoting simeonz
I don't have any expert knowledge of biology, but it would seem to me that without homeostasis, which is one of the key attributes of living organisms, there would be nothing able to be selected. The point seems to be that living things have an ability to maintain identity through change, which is not characteristic of inorganic matter.
Quoting simeonz
But again, DNA encodes and conveys information. That's what Yockey's book is about. Do you know his book Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life? I borrowed it from the library, but it really takes expert knowledge of biology and probably also information theory to understand. In any case, Barbieri's comment is:
Now, of course the ID exponents will say that the 'manufacturing' is done by God, but I don't think it is necessary to leap to that conclusion. I simply observe that there's an ontological distinction between living and non-living nature. I think that is both perceivable and conceptually defensible, although of course physicalism cannot admit of such an ontological distinction, as there is only one kind of being or substance in physicalism.
You are right, that we could potentially find laws which produce more accurate description of the universe at larger scales. Albeit not focused on living organisms, the second law of thermodynamics is of the variety. Indeed, we haven't found behavior which escapes the constraints of the local physical laws in isolated interactions, but the second law provides probabilistic description extending beyond them, and is time asymmetric, thus it is not expressible through time symmetric laws. It is believed to be dependent on the initial conditions of the cosmos, whose description is irreducible.
On the other hand, this does not mean that any quality of organization is a fundamental law. Some studies pertaining to social organization are considered fundamentally non-explanative, because they are valid only on this planet, in our span of time. Humanities, as such, are too subject particular to be sciences.
Science looks for restrictions imposed fundamentally, explanative mechanisms that apply everywhere, with the power to justify our affairs through high or at least moderately probable outcomes. Anything else implies dependence on low-probability miracle in conventional terms, or organization in particular spatio-temporal regions with some kind of non-entropic design. This is possible, but based on prior experience, it had not been the case so far. Such oddity would not validate all of the conventional theism, but it would suggest origin that cannot be explained by mundane physicalism.
I skimmed through the paper you provided, but I will have to read it in more detail. Even though I concur that it may be possible that the restrictions in sciences are incomplete and we need rectify or expand their repertoire, including levels of organization that apply exclusively at larger scales, this would not merely require a philosophical paradigm shift, but laws that need to be specified in a way qualifying their preconditions and the constraints they impose. They would have to be either demonstrable in controlled manner, or observable with sufficient variation naturally, that the judgement of the precision of the relationship they hypothesize can be ascertained.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think that identity is much more then a useful instrument for sentient decision making, trying to obtain sustainable symbiotic relationship, while needing to understand and evaluate the confinement of its agency. Prebiotic chemistry simply does not have the expressiveness of material organization necessary in order to exhibit constant behavioral agency under change.
What I meant when I said that organisms do not possess invariable homeostasis was that the biological processes through the lifecycle of an individual, or the hereditation of traits and culture through the generations of the species, do not actually maintain complete structural balance. An embryo, infant, and elderly person differ significantly from each other, physiologically, mechanically. Likewise, societies experience social imbalances, organizational shifts. In fact, abstractly speaking, every organism, biological or social, is dying from the moment of its conception. Living admits the failure of equilibrium in order to produce fundamental change over time.
Unfortunately, I have not read the book, but for my part, I would need the following clarification to justify this conclusion. Some hypothetical, even fictional examples, of the simplest artefact-making processes that the author conceives, biological or not, that could be bootstrapped by synthetic means and remain henceforth autonomous in their operation. I would then wonder of some examples of the closest sustainable autonomous chemical processes that are not sophisticated enough to qualify as artefact-making, produced synthetically or naturally occurring, and whether the gap from the latter to the former can conceivably be bridged through mundane physical occurrence. Rinse and repeat, until a process with no natural precursors can be found.
It is difficult to assert confidently the conclusion, without knowing what must have occurred in basic original form to qualify for the criteria, and what could have occurred mundanely. The importance of defining such ideas precisely is that we need to express the conclusion in stages that we can evaluate non-intuitively. Obviously contemporary organisms are unlike prebiotic chemistry, but what about viroids, viruses, cyanobacteria, etc. You may claim that viruses and viroids need a host, but originally, it may not have been a cellular host in the sense it is today. That is why when evaluating an idea I try to seek what programmers call "minimum working example", the most elementary hypothetical illustration possible.
...
I will conclude on a friendlier note. Science ultimately relies on unproven and impossible to prove convictions. There is a lot to be said about the circularity of scientific thinking, because inductive and statistical inference, objectivity of empiricism, logical deduction, are all in the final analysis behavioral habits. These habits, insofar as their proponents are still here, can be considered to be effective, but the people who object to the exclusiveness of the scientific method are present as well. This is why we base social action on more practical rules, such as dominance, voting, consensus, etc. Philosophically, I know that I am oversimplifying issues that affect what we consider miraculous and intelligent, and what we consider orderly and mundane. It would conflate the original inquiry even further if I delved into them, and I am being reminded of Socrates's "I believe that I know nothing" and Heraclitus's "no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
But they nevertheless retain their identity. Creatures don't change their species, notwithstanding some of the astounding transformations that occur in some insects and fish in which the juveniles are radically different to the mature forms. I guess that's the 'ship of Theseus' problem, in a way, but nevertheless I'm sure you would agree that one of the main characteristics of any living organism is to maintain an identity through time even in spite of many changes. The characteristic of any living cell is memory and anticipation.
Coming to think of it, this was probably behind the attempt in Aristotle's metaphysics to differentiate essence and accident - what is essential to the organism is what makes it the kind of species it is, while it's individual parrticulars might vary hugely. (I've heard it said that DNA is a modern iteration of Aristotle's essence.)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3654247
Quoting simeonz
Well, that's what abiogenesis research has been attempting for some decades but with no conclusive results, as I understand it. I believe Ilya Prigogine is a pioneer in that area.
Personally, ever since I read Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe's book Intelligent Universe, I've always been rather drawn to the panspermia theory - that the planet is like a celestial ovum and a comet the stellar sperm, and that given the appropriate conditions, life-bearing cells arriving in this form can evolve and flourish wherever suitable environments have developed. It still doesn't solve the original problem of the origin of life, which as Yockey insists, may be insoluble. I also like the old Stoic dictum 'life comes from life'.
Quoting simeonz
Your posts are always very courteous. I don't want to disparage science but to explore the sense in which such questions can be explored through perspectives other than the scientific. Just recall that modern scientific method, as I think you've acknowledge already, always starts with exclusion, with the narrowing-down of the scope the questions it deals with so as to identify precise causal relations and the most general principles. Certainly through this methodology we've discovered many things that earlier ages never could have but science still does operate in the domain of the contingent, so to speak.
? Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
I think you can probably change a few terms in this quote to say something like ‘information’ is ‘empty’ without ‘the physical’ and ‘the physical’ is ‘blind’ without ‘information’.
A brief comment regarding abiogenesis.
It has been discovered that single-tailed phospholipids can easily be synthesized from a cocktail of constituent molecules in the lab. They then assemble into spherical bubbles about the size of a typical cell membrane on their own. Double-tailed phospholipids, the main molecule of modern membranes, however they initially formed, automatically integrate into these primitive cells when introduced to the same solution.
This is the primary precondition for life since phospholipid membranes would have stabilized emergent biochemical pathways as they became studded with almost any type of organic molecule while providing the mechanism for primordial speciation of inanimate chemistry in differentiating cellular environments, and it is rather spontaneous.
All the basic ingredients of life can be found in deep sea hydrothermal vents: fundamental organic molecules such as amino acids emitted from beneath the ocean's surface, networks of microscopic pores in rock that effectively function as cell walls, catalytic metal surfaces created by the erosion of rock in these pores, the cyclical flow of extremely hot water to distribute nutrients, hydrogen atoms stripped of electrons to form proton gradients as the most important component of cellular respiration.
Ribozymes exist in modern cells, hybrids of RNA and enzymatic structure that catalyze some of their own reactions, a possible evolutionary link between metabolism and genetic systems.
Stromatolites are primitive colonies of somewhat specialized cell types found in ocean rock, possibly the link between the first cells and macroscopic bodies.
All the prerequisites and missing links of transition from the inorganic to organic currently exist in Earth ecosystems. The barrier to definitively modeling this evolutionary process is the inability to replicate these conditions in an experiment, but indirect evidence seems to suggest that the move to organic chemistry is the most inevitable evolutionary step. Fossil records reveal the earliest cells arose 4 billion years ago, and it wasn't until 600 million years ago that the leap was made to macroscopic organisms.
Simulation of the evolutionary process by science may prove impossible for the near future, but spontaneous life from nonlife with no miracles (as in disruptions of the natural order) is a probable explanation.
It only encodes for proteins only. The ribosome is used to read it and deliver proteins. But the ribosomes are made from proteins too. Which came first? It must have been proteins, "creating" the economical means to evolve. One can even imagine that the same kinds of building blocks are used to construct vastly different living structures. Once they came in existence, they stayed in form along the line. Inserting riceplant genes in a fertilized dog egg cell might give a riceplant (here I'm talking nonsense, but I wonder what would happen). Riceplants contain more or less the same number of genes as dog cells. Maybe they are smaller. But the overall structure of the dogcell can shape the proteins from the riceplant genes into a dog, more or less. This won't happen of course, but the structure the proteins form determines holistically what happens to the building blocks. Intelligence isn't contained in the genes. Nor are feet and noses.
I read the section of Simon Conway Morris' book on the 'protein hyperspace' - some years ago, I admit, and my recollection is hazy. But the gist as I recall it is that the possible configurations of protein folds comprise a number of enormous magnitude - 2 the power of some large number. Very few of these configurations give rise to the kinds of proteins that are actually useful for propogating life. The upshot is that if it were purely a matter of chance - the 'million monkeys' kind of idea - then the Universe is not nearly old enough to have provided enough time for all of the possibilities to have been realised. Conway Morris is not however proposing intelligent design - more that there are necessary constraints on the way such processes play out, which he analyses under the heading of 'convergence'.
My philosophical take on the question is to avoid both the neo-darwinian view, that life somehow springs into existence as a kind of chemical reaction that then evolves through the Darwinian algorithm (e.g. Darwin's Dangerous Idea), on the one hand, and any form of ID on the other. I'm drawn to the idea that the world 'knows itself through us' which is found in various mainly esoteric philosophical traditions. So the emergence of living organisms just is the manifestation of intelligence - not a cosmic designer with an inordinate fondness for beetles, but an inherent tendency towards higher levels of intelligence and awareness. Within that metaphorical framework, enlightenment (both scientific and spiritual) represents the culminating stages of that awareness becoming self-aware.
That's nice, but I don't think human intelligence is the crown on evolution. All life can be seen as culmination. With different degrees of knowledge, awareness, and self awarenes. Science and spirituality are just forms of knowledge and awareness.
Yes, I know it's a very non PC idea.
A non PC idea? Non personal computer idea? Apart from Darwinian evolution there is also Lamarckian evolution. Not genes are central or heritage al la Mendel, but organisms, giving protein life a context.
That depends on the knowledge which proteins can form life. How does he know that most forms can't give life? It's collections of proteins that form life. Later on additional stuff joined the scene.
A quantum hypothesis proposes that atoms of molecules are in superposition with themselves and their immediate surroundings, meaning they are in multiple wave-phase states simultaneously, so an individual molecule can be in hundreds if not thousands of different configurations at once. This is currently being researched in relationship to DNA mutation. It means that evolution would be selecting from a vast array of structural forms almost instantaneously, greatly reducing the time necessary to adapt and coevolve. Once biochemistry was buffered in favorable, differentiating cellular environments, microscale evolution may have been extremely rapid, with dynamics of superposition accommodating the need for huge quantities of intermediate stages and counterbalancing the improbability of a successful lineage.
From my very limited knowledge of physics and chemistry, I'm sure this is nonsense. For if it were so, how could any physical substance retain its properties?
Quoting Cartuna
It's a matter of fact. 'The number of possible protein sequences is astronomically large. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that there are 20[sup]150[/sup] or the order of 10[sup]195[/sup] possible proteins with 150 amino acids length alone. Only a very small percentage of them exists, or ever existed, in nature.' And also, he's a professor of paleobiology.
Quoting Cartuna
No - a non-politically-correct idea. I'm referring to a philosophical tendency called 'orthogenetic' which is generally frowned upon by mainstream science. But you will find it in such thinkers as Henri Bergson, Pierre Tielhard du Chardin, Thomas Berry, and Brian Swimme. And even in Julian Huxley:
[quote=Julian Huxley; https://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/02/24/evolutionary-biology-and-the-meaning-of-life/]Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately.[/quote]
.The point is, there is a limited amount involved. But why should the ones not involved would not be able to support life? Pointing out that they are not used is no proof. They are obviously not, but what if? Stating that with 150 amino acids 20exp150 forms are possible is actually not exactly true. It's half that number, which is still rather big though...Nature could have chosen a lot of proteins! All of them could have started an evolution ("viva la evolution!").
Quoting Julian Huxley
What needs to be fulfilled? Animals are part of that reality too. Consciousness has not developed to become aware of the process it is based on and it's certainly not man's supreme task task to increase that comprehension (science) and to apply it as fully as possible to genetically modify the course of the process on which his becoming conscious is based, in order for some divine destiny. That thought is one of the about 10exp(exp100) possible patterns of thought, but if he wants to think that... I don't think man is obliged to conform though. It's no evolutionary imperative.
That IS its property! New science though, not everyone knows about it yet, and a ways to go before we've figured out exactly how it works.
The idea is that a relatively large biomolecule is composed of a complex coherence/decoherence pattern that can evolve in thousands of differing directions almost instantaneously as different portions of the molecule decohere, greatly reducing the time necessary to achieve a particularly adaptive form.
I've also had luck following its citations and those citing it.
At first the classification looks like a basic semiotic triangle, but it goes into the numerous methodologies for classifying concepts, defining synonymity, etc. via different epistemologies.
I'm not exactly sure how you would model this purely mathematically, perhaps you can't. However, I have a pretty good idea how this could be networked in a SQL database and how one might connect it via DAX or something similar.
You could have, for each word, connected tables with lists of intension and extension, then you'd also need the words grouped into hierarchies in something like the arrangement you tend build for an OLAP analysis server. But of course, you'd need to do second and third order pairing because "three sided shape," would be equivalent to "triangle." Then you'd also want AND and OR relations logged in different tables.
Producing such a database, and getting it to run well with millions of text lookups and many to many relationships would be another matter. My guess is I don't understand the right tools here. You'd probably want to incorporate machine learning and include probability values for words following one another somehow, as well as a database of known contradictions (e.g., "a four sided triangle).
For the original example, you can think of the brain as just such a database, relating different sensory inputs and internal permutations of thought to each other.
I'm not sure if your example contradicts information being physical however. I think the large distances and variations in type might be confusing things.
I could have a computer database that lets me upload pictures to it. I can't speak the language of the person I need to talk to, so I upload a picture of a helicopter. Visual recognition software is already good at this sort of things, it recognizes "helicopter," from my photo and send it along. However, my interlocutor is blind, and speaks Arabic, so the database has to flip the visual representation over to one in sound, in the appropriate language, something computers can already do. If we need to transmit the message back into text, a visual medium, we can do so as well, all within a single computer system.
If information is some sort of non-physical being, how is it that every step of the transformation can be written out as code enacting physical changes in transistors? Brains aren't well understood and make things confusing, but microprocessors are well understood and can do the same things being done in your example. Or are they working with concepts as some sort of Chinese Room? Perhaps. Obviously they don't have subjective experience of the concepts, but that is the only difference apparent in the transformations of information through various mediums of storage that I can see.
Information science tends to focus more on electronic communications. I think there is something to the fact that the entropy of a message in terms of how many meanings it can have is less than the total Shannon Entropy due to synonyms (just made a thread on this point in this same section). Concepts aren't easy to define so they get ignored.
I use a Borges story as a point of reference there and I think another works here, "Funtes and His Memory." The basic plot point is a guy with perfect memory. He can spend 24 hours remembering a day exactly as it happened, fully reliving it. He grows frustrated with decimal systems and just wants to refer to whole numbers by random names, so for example, 7,891 is "Napoleon Bonaparte." The idea being, once he gives a number a name, he never forgets it. He has the ability for perfect extension in definitions. Why talk of dogs when you can refer perfectly to THAT dog, or THAT dog of THAT specific moment?
Unfortunately, Borges doesn't get into the role of universals in compressing information for communication or for predicting the future from imperfect information, where even for Funtes, universals would be useful.
Concepts are necissarily wide nets for groupings of different objects, that is from whence they derive their usefulness. Their ability to be sent via numerous different codes has to do with the fact that they reduce all the information about a particular, to a bite sized amount of information that can easily be coded and transmitted.
The role of concepts in cognition is a bit more interesting, since they help construct subjective experience, but that is neither here nor there.
As to mathematics being known a priori, I would follow Quine on being skeptical on this. The definition of natural numbers requires a circular definition of zero. Parallel lines never met, an a priori fact, until non-euclidean geometries emerged. It seems just as likely that natural selection primes us to understand mathematical relations that reflect the physical world well (indeed, our brains would be based of these same mathematical relations), then that these relations are somehow existent outside their instantiation. Abstract mathematics has developed all sorts of mathematics that don't correspond to physical reality.
Many mathematicians seem to support this view. The things they’ve discovered over the centuries—that there is no highest prime number; that the square root of two is an irrational number; that the number pi, when expressed as a decimal, goes on forever—seem to be eternal truths, independent of the minds that found them. If we were to one day encounter intelligent aliens from another galaxy, they would not share our language or culture, but, the Platonist would argue, they might very well have made these same mathematical discoveries.
“I believe that the only way to make sense of mathematics is to believe that there are objective mathematical facts, and that they are discovered by mathematicians,” says James Robert Brown, a philosopher of science recently retired from the University of Toronto. “Working mathematicians overwhelmingly are Platonists. They don't always call themselves Platonists, but if you ask them relevant questions, it’s always the Platonistic answer that they give you.”[/quote]
The Platonist answer is that humans have a foot in both worlds - physically embodied beings who can by virtue of intellect peer into the realm of ideas. That is how we've been able to devise such amazing inventions.
And microprocessors don't build and program themselves. They're simply an extension - a very powerful extension to be sure - of human capabilities.
It sounds a bit like obsessing over ideals leads to the thought that there's a place they come from? Maybe there is, but the ideas I know of seem to rattle around in this world. And there's communication among animals about their physical environment. So, plenty of examples of ideas existing within the physical realm. I'm in no place to judge Penrose's interpretation of mathematics, but hesitant to suppose another realm of existence just to fill in the space my ignorance occupies.
There's a certain circularity at work here. Concepts are grounded in abstraction. And abstraction is dependent on sophisticated intellectual operations - 'like', 'unlike', 'same as', 'different from', and so on. It's easy to take these operations for granted as they're the very constituents of thought, and we perform them automatically; but they're the elements which make it possible to speak and reason.
So such objects of thought - abstractions, if you like - are universal and invariant; the same for any mind capable of grasping them, but only graspable by a mind. They're not physically existent. But without them, what concepts could you form?
In a similar vein, Kant argued that the structures of logic which organize, interpret and abstract observations were innate and were true and valid a priori. Mill, on the contrary, said that we believe them to be true because we have experienced enough individual instances of their truth to generalize: in his words, "From instances we have observed, we feel warranted in concluding that what we found true in those instances holds in all similar ones, past, present and future, however numerous they may be." But ironically his explanation still nonetheless manages to demonstrate that there is no way around Kant’s a priori logic. To recap Mill's idea in an empiricist twist: “Indeed, the very principles of logical deduction are true because we observe that using them leads to true conclusions” - but that itself an a priori pressuposition, in that in order to know a true conclusion, we need to appeal to reason.
And it's because we as rational beings have that ability that we can encode information into bits and bytes and transmit it. But the recognition of what is valid information is always prior to that.
The past (observed) is the physical. The future (unobservable) is the realm of ideas. Human beings live at the present. However, it has become evident that the present, which the being occupies, is not a clean and precise, non-temporal point of division. In Peirce's words, it is a vague boundary, described by the ancient Greeks as the medium of "becoming", matter. This necessitates the conclusion that the human being, as composed of matter, has "a foot in both worlds", the past and the future, occupying a vague boundary between the two.
Instantaneous communication occurs between entangled particles. Nothing physical can do that! Vide Albert Einstein (speed of light).
Information has to be nonphysical!
:grin: