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)
Is this actually the gist of his argument? Clearly, even within this actual sentence, information is distinctly demarcated from physical transmission. I'm a lazy bastard and didn't read through the subsequent link, maybe there's more there? But I trust that you pulled out a quote that gave the main argument?
Ok. I guess we can wait for the oncoming barrage.
One little fact that should give pause for thought. When Shannon discovered the way to quantify the information content of a message, it turned out the equation was the same as the one Boltzmann had discovered for quantifying physical entropy.
Spooky coincidence or....
I'm not exactly sure which one of these two Landauer was referring to. Has he conflated them? The idea of transmission of anything seems physical.
But Shannon's seminal paper was about something specific, namely, the transmission of information between sender and receiver, was it not?
'Seems physical' is a bit vague, isn't it? Read the flag/semaphore example again. When that information is transmitted, it goes through a number of transformations - flag, morse code, written text. All those representations are physical but the actual information is something different to that.
That would be the conceptual component I mentioned wouldn't it?
Physical is being used in the broadest sense to include everything from beating a drum to TV transmissions and telepathy.
I don't think I quite get your point. Can you elaborate a little more?
It seems simple enough; something is being transmitted reliably through various physical mediums. Something is being communicated.
Is an idea physical?
The facticity of the world is the absence of reason for any reality, there is no ultimate ground for the existence of any being. The world is what it is, the structure we discern is not in the world as such, it is only in what we discern about the world.
Works for me.
More like: sharks smelling blood in the water, circling their prey, anticipating a feeding frenzy.
Correct.
John Archibald Wheeler writes:
“It from bit”. Otherwise put, every “it” every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence (even if in some contexts indirectly) from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. “It from bit” symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom a very deep bottom, in most instances an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.
Wheeler, J.A.: Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links, Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. In: Zureck, W.H. (ed.). Addison Wesley, Redwood City (1990).
But instead of worse, even better: information can be physical and/or psychophysical.
>:O Give me a break.
Quoting Galuchat
The religious ecstasy is more than palpable.
The problem with that, is that maths is predictive. See Eugene Wigner's The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.
John Archibald Wheeler was a theoretical physicist. What does religious ecstasy have to do with his quote?
Our understanding nature is not the same as nature, regardless of the predictive successes of any science, what is in-itself is not an obtainable point of view, stronger version it cannot even be thought. The world as it is, it could be otherwise.
Re-read it.
Here's a quote from another religious fanatic you may find amusing:
Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.
Wiener, N.: Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 2nd edn. MIT Press, Cambridge (1961)
Yes, hilarious >:O Thanks for that!
Wait. There's more:
In both cases [Wheeler & Wiener], physics ends up endorsing an information-based description of nature. The universe is fundamentally composed of data, understood as dedomena, patterns or fields of differences, instead of matter or energy, with material objects as a complex secondary manifestation.
Floridi, L. (2010). Information: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
So, now let's have a serious explanation of information from yourself.
So, for clarity, to backtrack: I said to Wayfarer, lets wait for the barrage (presumably of adverse opinions). You volunteered a quip about sharks waiting for blood. I laughed it off. You posted a quote from Archibald without context in which reality is reduced to yes-no questions (if/then); a typical anthropomorphization. The ecstatic language, masked as scientific, was clearly espousing a deeply seated worldview, which I like to call religious, because it gets folks like you all up in arms. The religious impulse never dies, in other words. From there, you posted a few more quotes from your boys about your religious views.
To be clearer: I posted quotes in response to unenlightened's statement regarding the claim of "physicist's these days." Re-read it if you must.
For the record, you have no information regarding my worldview. It's a shame that you feel compelled to denigrate the reputation of the eminent scientists quoted (your reputation is undoubtedly greater than theirs). Are you really that insecure in your beliefs?
I am still awaiting your explanation of information (if you have one), and genuinely hoping that it forms the basis of a worldview which is far superior to the one you suppose folks like me and my boys hold.
But if all you have is ad hominem, you can go sit in the corner.
The question is absurd. First of all, what does "physical" mean and how is it different from the "mental"? You start off on the wrong foot by assuming dualism.
Can we please dispense with the use of these loaded, not clearly defined, terms? It would make it much easier. After all, it is this assumption of dualism that creates the problem you are trying to answer. We can simply talk about causation as we all know that the mind can influence the body or the world and vice versa. To separate these things is to create the problem you are trying to solve.
Now, as for what information is and whether or not it exists independently of minds, I can answer that without using those terms.
In your example, is there an actual ship that is three-masted, Greek and arriving this afternoon? And is this true even if there wasn't a sentry providing information to others that this is the case? The information stays the same because we are talking about the same cause. The form the information takes is what changes as the forms are the effects resulting from the cause - a three-masted Greek ship on the horizon.
Let's use another example. Tree rings in a tree stump carry information about the age of the tree. The tree rings are formed as a result of how the tree grows throughout the year. The tree rings are the effect of the cause and therefore carry information about the cause. The tree rings would represent the age of the tree even if there weren't any minds to look at the tree rings. Information is mind independent. Minds are simply information processors. In a way, we could say that information is the actual relationship between a cause and it's effects. Every subsequent effect can point back to the original cause and be said to carry information about the original cause. This is why each new form the information takes in your example can all refer back to the original cause - a three-masted Greek ship on the horizon.
Landauer certainly gets a mention. But there is something hilarious about this being a librarian's view of the contributions that information services folk could make to this frontier debate.
More religious appeals. You have no info regarding my worldview either.
Quoting Galuchat
Reference my responses to MikeL.
Quoting Galuchat
Is this sentiment genuine?
Sand in the beach is not information, nor are rings of a tree.
However, patterns noticed in the sand or in the rings may be information if the mind can find similarities and differences. A singularity and a multiplicity are transformed into information by differentiated patterns. On their own they are as much information as the symbol 1 and 2, that is meaningless scribbles such as so :;+'"""*"'-&""':::;;;-"""&&.
I think that this is the issue, in a nutshell. The structure of things, the relationships between things, is commonly taken to be the "information". So in Wayfarer's example, the number of masts, the speed of the ship, etc.. These are all properties of the physical world, existing relationships which are observed and interpreted as information.
The problem arises when, as you describe, we assume structure, relationships between things, without those things being there. This is a real problem because we can build structures of relationships, assuming that these structures are somehow real, or even physical, without any proof that any physical objects could actually exist in these relationships. So there are massive informational structures, produced from mathematical theories, which are used to explain physical existence, which are completely imaginary. Yes they do explain certain aspects of physical existence, so they are valid and grounded in that sense, but the informational structures are completely imaginary, and claimed by some, to have real physical existence, simply because they accurately predict certain physical occurrences.
Quoting Galuchat
Yes, this is exactly the point.
- Language isn't reducible to Intuition (contra Intuitionism)
- Intuition isn't reducible to Language (contra Formalism)
- Physics isn't reducible to Language and Intuition (contra Idealism)
- Intuition isn't reducible to Physics and Language (contra Materialism)
- Language isn't reducible to Physics and Intuition (contra Representationalism)
Floridi defines information as well-formed data which is meaningful. Are your viewpoints amenable to this definition?
This is somehow amusing to me. In terms I think even preadolescent kids might understand, it all amount to: who has the metaphysical rights to the ontology portrayed in the movie “The Matrix” (sans the part of being unplugged from the Matrix)? The physicalists or the non-physicalists?
Which to me necessitates the question: What’s the difference!
Yet this latter question is to me more important that it may at first seem. What then are the tacitly maintained differences between neo-physicalism and non-physicalist approaches to the same basic understanding of ontology as information rather than as stuff? It may not be that easy to answer … but I’m currently betting that the physicalists will uphold that death leads to the nonbeing of awareness, whereas the non-physicalists will uphold otherwise. Any other differences?
[BTW, while I can enjoy the movie as a movie, I don’t look upon it as a prophetic body of bits as to what ontology really is. To state the obvious, the movie series is not a thought-out philosophy but only a modern mythos.]
If a concept is a pattern that is transmitted how can the transmission be physical but not the pattern?
This is only understood after the fact. Information to Sherlock Holmes' mind is due to the skill developed to discern. It only becomes information once the mind had grasped something that it had found meaningful. Other minds may differ. Information is not an intrinsic property and well-formed has no meaning outside of an individual mind that perceives.
It is the mind that forms and creates information as memory.
yes, and of course the general question of what meaning is then needs dissolving into its vast family of uses without veering into the rocks of any particular global theory, picture, ism or formalism.
Wittgenstein of course, was in some sense a thorough-going nominalist, finitist and like Quine rejected the analytic-synthetic distinction and the closely related idea that logic could be true by convention. From this perspective it is much easier to see that data, together with rules they are often said to stand for, are merely a finite bunch of signs we use for a purpose, without us possessing a precise definition of what our signs represent, or for that matter what our finite "rules of inference" justify us to conclude.
Once of the central idea of the Philosophical Investigations was that rules are only rough-cut normative principles relating to human culture and understanding, and that they are not hidden and infinitely precise transcendental platonic entities operating at a distance in the background outside of the mind and of human culture.
I believe it was for that reason that Wittgenstein used Chess in the Philosophical Investigations as his example for explaining the normative social dimension of rules, as opposed to the example of computing machines where the temptation towards mind-independent and context-free Platonism about rule-following is much stronger.
As for the latter example, Wittgenstein elsewhere summed up the Church-Turing Thesis as
"Turing machines, these machines are humans who calculate"
For example, it would make sense to attribute conscious rule-following to a robot or a chimpanzee if the robot or chimpanzee could gesture to us a justification of their behaviour in terms of a rule that they give as a normative-principle pertaining to their action, in the same way we would attribute conscious rule-following to a mathematics pupil only if he could explain to us why he continued the series the way he did.
But for Wittgenstein it would be nonsensical to attribute consciousness or rather, "intrinsic meaning" to a simulation of the human brain on belief that the simulation was intrinsically implementing the same rules as the brain, for the same reason as before; that for Wittgenstein rules are an essentially normative notion rather than a mechanical notion. For Human brains aren't really "following rules mechanically" except in the sense of a narrative we conjure up for the descriptive purposes of heuristic and approximate empirical understanding of their behaviour, for computer simulation of them, for causal explanation and so on.
Perhaps we could say: we can judge a system to be mechanically following a rule if we can accurately predict its behaviour on the basis of a rule that we have consciously *invented* which describes it's behaviour. But we cannot say that we *discover* pre-existing rules that are lurking within "essentially mechanical" systems of nature, for that leads to a viciously circular regress about what "mechanically following a rule" means.
Hmm. It is ironic that a lot of you guys are reacting in horror at physicists who might take it literally that reality is just a pattern of information. It is after all just a modern version of idealism. You have physicists who are denying materialism and saying things are pure information. Reality is even observer created if you go to the quantum extreme.
So here we have science prepared to talk openly about a concrete idealist ontology. And everyone gasps in shock. No they must be wrong. Matter is obviously real. The Matrix could only be a simulation hanging off an electrical plug.
No - but there doesn't need to be, for the point to be made, which is that the physical form and the medium in which the information is transmitted can be entirely changed, but the meaning remain the same. How, therefore, could the 'meaning of the information' be physical?
Quoting Bitter Crank
The analogy of letters and their meaning holds here too, doesn't it?
1. Nancy M. Bonini, Quang T. Bui, Gladys L. Gray-Board and John M. Warrick, “The Drosophila eyes absent gene directs ectopic eye formation in a pathway conserved between flies and vertebrates,” Development (1997) 124, 4819-4826; quoted in A Fabulous Evolutionary Defense of Dualism.
This has many interesting implications. It is presented in the context of an 'evolutionary argument for dualism'.
Quoting fdrake
That seems true, but also not exactly the point of the OP.
Quoting Galuchat
I have encountered that quotation previously, but haven't studied cybernetics, and am hesitant to comment on it. But I have a feeling that this kind of understanding has lead to the positing of 'information' as a third category, alongside 'matter' and 'energy', as one of the fundamental constituents of nature. It is hoped thereby to add a further item in the catalog of 'fundamental constituents' which will enable naturalism to proceed on the basis that the objects of its analysis are simple and intelligible.
But it begs the question: 'what 'information'? Whereas 'the atom' has a unitary meaning - an atom being an indivisible material unit; as does energy, being 'the capacity to to work' - I can't see how 'information' can be understood as something which is metaphysically simple. 'Information' is a polyvalent concept - it has many meanings. There are many types of information and it serves different purposes in different contexts.
So to narrow the terms of reference somewhat, the question I'm posing in the OP is, what is it that performs the transformation of meaning between different media and different languages? I presume that the answer to that is that this is a function of rational intelligence. So I am saying, this itself is not something physical. Ergo, I am arguing for some species of dualism, the separation of information from its material representation, which I think has interesting philosophical implications.
Quoting javra
I went to see Matrix with my kids. I got really annoyed at the red pill/blue pill scene - I thought it was frankly sacrilege. Why? Because it is a metaphor for something profoundly important, which, I thought, had been seized upon by pulp-fiction hustlers to make a buck. Although it's interesting that films like Matrix, Inception, etc, are so popular, I think they speak to an intuition we all have about the possibility of the world being a grand illusion.
You appear to confuse humorously sardonic remarks with horror. Hell, bring these new interpretations of information on!
Who knows, given enough information interpretation, maybe that ancient notion of the “the One” might itself come to be interpreted as a core component of physicalism. Why not again? (this gets to that other, non-rhetorical, question I posed in relation to neo-physicalism v. non-physicalism: “what’s the difference?”)
Very true. The two things that got to me most, personally, was their interpretations of Goddess and God and their Hollywood minded favoring of personal love between two beings over and above the preservation of the whole world’s integrity (the I’ll say “to hell with the health of humanity at large” so as to save your individual precious life, dear … not quite what the ideals of selflessness are about, as I so far see things anyway).
Quoting Wayfarer
I too can’t deny the impact the fairytale story has had on the general public consciousness in terms of possible interpretations of reality. (I don’t see a whole lot of philosophical merit to Inception, though.)
Probabaly the best foundational definition of information - from Bateson and cybernetics - is that it is a difference that makes a difference. So meaningfulness in a nutshell.
Then to quantify such a quality, you need to be able to measure that in terms of what it is not. You need a way of also counting the differences that don't make a difference. You need a metric of the meaningless.
Hence the close connection with physical entropy modelling. You need to be able to count the total number of possible material bits - all the differences that could have been signal rather than noise - so as then to be able to give a value to what turns out to be signal, and not noise.
This is what science is so good at. Taking a basic metaphysical intuition and deriving a system of measurement that then makes the ontological commitments exact and testable. A way of thinking becomes fully worked out.
You are very focused on the issue of "where has meaning gone?". You eavesdrop on the scientists - a librarian's account! - and say clearly they are talking about meaningless bits. They are measuring physical noise and not conceptual knowlege or semantic facts.
But what science is doing is defining difference itself as the baseline for then measuring differences that make a difference.
Once you have Boltzmann entropy, then you have a secure basis for more meaningful thermodynamic models - like dissipative structures which are negentropic and serving a purpose.
Once you have Shannon information, you can then build theories of meaning based on more sophisticated metrics like mutual information or free energy reduction.
Science ain't dumb. It knows that information theory isn't a theory of meaning. It is about establishing a secure foundation for that by being able to measure what is instead the meaningless. Once you have cleared the ground, the real work can begin.
As to death and the Matrix, a problem literal informatics would seem to have is that it undermines conservation principles. Physicists would want an it from bit Universe in which the information is a conserved quantity. So the death of a character would have to be a disassembly of bits which could always be rearranged - resurrected in theory.
In the end, informational bits or material bits, the bigger ontological issues remain the same. More evidence of why there is an essential equivalence. Idealism always ends up having to "work" just like physicalism. We see that with panpsychism for instance.
Another irony here.
Namely, that information is the description of the arrangements of particles or 'things'. Meaning is derived from the sum total of the arrangement of 'things' in space, which are facts.
If one wants to take a metaphysical view on the state of affairs of these facts in logical space, then a reference to 'the map is not the territory' is apt. Namely, that information itself is devoid of meaning, and meaning is derived from modeling these states of affairs in logical space giving rise to 'facts' not 'things'.
So it is an ontology of relata rather than things. That is why the talk is of counting degrees of freedom instead of particles or things.
What do you mean by that? Yes, the relation of things in logical space gives rise to facts, which is only made possible by a consciouss observer or even an observer from within the system of relations of things and thus facts.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, on a more fundamental level, the discussion cannot be made without observation of the state of affairs, which is puzzling, and could perhaps elucidate that there is some assumption of metaphysical entailed in interpreting information, facts. Obviously, epiphenomena seem metaphysical (from within the system or state space or logical space itself); but, are rather just emergent properties of the relations between things and not facts. So, in essence, we seem to be talking about epiphenomena.
In other words, traits or things cannot be modeled; but, rather only observed.
Quoting apokrisis
One relevant issue that I find interest in is the ontic possibility of novel information creation and information erasure. As it happens, there are some physicists who uphold the possibility that information itself might be both created and erased within Black Hole gravitational singularities (to be clear, non-allegorically). I know it’s speculative, and for the sake of disclosure my current interest in these branches of physics is solely limited to what I glimpse from documentaries on the topic.
All the same, I have an affinity toward this roundabout interpretation of information: one where it is ontically possible--given the proper events--for information to be created and erased.
Nothing to debate here on my part. Just curious to hear if you’ve taken this possibility of information creation/deletion into account in any way.
Quoting Wayfarer
?
It's the central test case. If you can gather information about the state of a system without spending free energy to record that information (or to reset your sensor/doorkeeper) then you can do work for free, you can have perpetual motion. This leads directly to Landauer's claim.
Quoting Wayfarer
When a squirrel makes that "cat near my tree" sound, I don't think we need to call that rationality. It's involuntary, but it is exactly the kind of transformation we're talking about. (I'd rather talk about thermostats, but everyone will want to talk about the thermostat designer instead.)
The shift is from things to relations. The things drop out of the picture to leave only the relations.
So it is a shift from material cause thinking to formal cause thinking, which reflects the reality that Reality boils down to its organisation, its structure.
Hence ontic structural realism as the new metaphysical bandwagon - the response to the information theoretical turn in physics.
Of course that then makes "things" or "materiality" rather mysterious. The materialists will cry in reply, the existence of relations surely implies the existence of things to be related? The same old, same old.
But really, what we can be sure of is the existence of patterns or structures. The nature of "the material" in fact is ineffable, beyond our reach.
The ironies keep compounding here. Physics is moving towards a more rigorous epistemology and that flushes out the lingering materialism in most folk's thinking. The old habit that can't be broke.
Quoting Posty McPostface
No. The point is that phenomena are the only thing we can talk about. We have to start from experience itself (which is prior even to a mind~world distinction - the debate between the idealists and realists).
Materialism - as reductionist atomism - made all reality a composite of individuated "thingness". Substantial being was made basic. Relations then became accidental. Form and purpose were not real as causes.
As the basis of physics theories. that was great up until quantum mechanics and general relativity. Then it started to get very sticky as the basic holistic contextuality of nature became grimly apparent.
Now physics has switched over to a more idealist mode of description - information. It no longer makes any real presumptions about the nature of matter. Instead it freely speculates about the "fundamental constituents" in terms of pure forms. Particles could be vibrating strings, or excitations in the geometry of a network, or knots in spacetime dimensionality.
In other words, physics now seeks the pure calculus of relata. A particle isn't a material string. It is instead the symmetries that a string can encode which are now the basis of the modelling of reality.
So for a long time, pattern, form, purpose, universals - all these things were treated as epiphenomenal. But now we are explaining reality in terms of these phenomena - patterns we perceive and can understand "directly".
If reality is about knot theory, or string theory, or braid theory, we can see directly the reasons for the patterns we experience. It is the generic form involved that explains things. We no longer have to invoke some mysterious "uncuttable material constituent particle".
The "rot" started with quantum mechanics. Is reality about particles or waves, or even wavicles, or wave packets? Physics says all we can really know is what we see. Sometimes reality has the pattern that we would derive from the idea of a particle, sometimes that derived from the idea of a wave.
So science is treated by Wayfarer especially as guilty of arch-materialism. He is always searching for examples of scientists who can best confirm that opinion.
And yet here with the turn to information theoretic physics, we have science that is actually now more phenomenological, more idealistic. Thermodynamics even endorses teleology now that it has advanced to talk about the Cosmos as a dissipative structure (see Layzer).
Yeah, and that's the point of the Tractatus. Whereof one cannot speak (say epiphenomena, ethics, love, traits, qualities, even qualia) thereof things must be shown or observed. You seem to be describing what phenomena are or what counts as phenomena and epiphenomena if ever a strict definition can be concluded, I'm merely talking about the difference between phenomena and epiphenomena existing and the difference in logical terms between the two which this thread seems to be about.
Landauer was the one who made the information erasure point. Computation is physical because it doesn't have to cost energy to create information. But an entropic price has to be paid to erase it. That is a fundamental constraint which shows information and matter are connected in a deep fashion. Even a Matrix simulation can't be a perpetual motion machine as the laws of thermodynamics apply.
Then black holes are about information loss - so only erasure in being lost over an event horizon. With black holes, we seemed to have a violation of conservation principles. But then the solution was found in the holographic principle. The information can be considered as physically encoded on a surface ... the event horizon. And so it can be recovered ... re-radiated in scrambled fashion, but nevertheless, returned.
Some really crazy ideas turned out to have deeply meaningful consequences. They made predictions which we can observe.
So - so far - conservation of information is proving a powerful principle, just as conservation of matter was.
But then where does that leave spontaneity, creativity, novelty? Is this ontic structural realism the new determinism? Or is material cause - the ineffable thingness that is missing from the formal account - now the pure indeterminacy, the pure uncertainty, the pure notion of "an action", that lurks just out of sight of the phenomenology?
Is material cause now the ghost in physics's formal machinery?
Nevertheless, as to the duality between some X which is interpreting information and the information itself: Is the squirrel here deemed an inanimate interpreter? Is the thermometer deemed an animate interpreter? Or, else, is there somehow deemed to be no meaningful difference between animate givens and inanimate givens?
All three questions at the very least appear to address nonsensical metaphysical positions.
This just touched upon issue gets into the metaphysical issues of causal agency: what can be said to be endowed with it and what cannot. If my memory serves me right, this is similar enough to somebody’s comment about “that which breath’s life into the maths”. (I don’t recall who said this or in what context.)
Point being: To do away with the underlying duality between some X which is interpreting (often termed conscious agency) and the information thus interpreted so far seems to me nonsensical. And it is this metaphysical duality which is meaningfully addressed by the terms “animate” and “inanimate”.
How does one logically do away with the metaphysical need for the just addressed duality?*
*But, please note that mind as information is itself strictly information, and not the agency-endowed X(s) which is engaged in the activity of interpretation: for example, the unconscious mind which brings about memories at proper times might itself be replete with causal agency or agencies, but a memory itself as information will not of itself be a causal agency (rather, it will be information interpreted by some agency X). Hence the duality just mentioned will not be that of a Cartesian dualism between mind and body—both of which are strictly information (when addressed as givens devoid of causal agency).
The hypothesis I learned of is of a polar explosion of information which thereby flattens galactic stars into their common disk shape form. But again, I'm not in a position to debate the matter.
Quoting apokrisis
Right, all this gets into the metaphysics of causation. I don't personally find it an easy issue to delve into.
I did present one causal conundrum in my previous post on this thread. So far, I believe this conundrum touches upon the core source of disagreements in relation to the physicalist / non-physicalist theme.
Worth mentioning that was Mr Blackholes, Stephen Hawking: “Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the question of why there should be a universe for the model to describe.”
See this blog post.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
So does the fact that no such 'perpetual motion' device has ever been made refute that claim?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't think it is the kind of transformation I was talking about in the OP, as that kind of transformation relies on abstraction, which is exactly what squirrels don't do. When a squirrel reacts to a sound, it is a matter of stimulus and response, not 'by gosh, that sounds like an apex predator!'
Quoting apokrisis
But in so doing, it also risks losing any relationship with reality. That is why Jim Baggott's book, referenced in the above blog post, is sub-titled 'Farewell to Reality' (note to self: must read again.)
Actually my point is really rather prosaic. It is simply this: that ideas are not material, but real in their own terms. They are not composed of material units of any kind, and can't be derived from physics, but exist in their own right, and on their own terms.
I start by distinguishing, let's say, "obvious" output and "not obvious": the difference between, say, on the one hand, dominoes falling in sequence, where each does to the next something a whole lot like what was done to it, and, on the other hand, a squirrel seeing a cat and making a particular sound.
There's a similar mechanism at work in a thermostat. A little information comes in and, if everything's working, leads to a large-ish action that consumes free energy. It's easy to imagine the automatic thermostat replacing the guy whose job it was to watch a thermometer and switch the furnace on or off.
Anyway, that's my admittedly simple-minded starting point.
Now there can be something similar without life (or an extension of it like the thermostat), in, say, an avalanche. Little input, big output that spends a lot of free energy. And there's an obvious connection in the way life keeps its "subsystems" balanced at criticality. You can get sensitivity by creating tiny avalanche conditions and then waiting, maintaining those conditions, and then resetting after each tiny event. Like a thermostat.
Certainly there's a difference between a squirrel and an avalanche, or, better, between the squirrel's "early warning" subsystem and an avalanche, in that the latter doesn't reset for new input. But beyond that, I just don't see the avalanche as resulting from information at all in the way the squirrel's warning does. What's the difference? I think it's precisely the transformation of the input. An avalanche is a big output of the same sort as its tiny input.
So yes I lean toward seeing the use of information about your environment, rather than just being shoved about by it, as a hallmark of life. But the information is still obviously physical, just as living things and their environments are. And I don't immediately see the need to describe this use as interpretation.
No, the way I put that sounds backwards, doesn't it? Landauer's theory blocks some imaginable Maxwell's demon type systems by pointing out the cost of recording the state of the system or resetting the sensor. And there's been some experimental confirmation for that.
Quoting Wayfarer
Then I think you're not talking about information but semantic content, propositions, Frege's third realm, etc. Every reason to expect those to be connected, but there are steps in between.
Have you ever encountered the (in)famous 2005 opinion piece, published in Nature, by Richard Conn Henry, called The Mental Universe? What about Bernard D'Espagnat's What we call Reality is Just a State of Mind?
I don't regard these as examples of the kind of scientific materialism that you say I'm always intent on criticising. But I'm also not at all sure that either of these would have a lot of credibility amongst mainstream scientists. What do you think?
Well, in the case of the transmission of information across diverse systems, then indeed that's what I'm talking about, and I think it is connected to Frege's 'third realm'. The point I'm working on, is that I think there is a belief that what does this transformation is understood, but I'm questioning that assumption.
I'm with you there. I don't understand it. I can see how a simple "causal" signal between animals would work, but even though language is similar to that in obvious ways, it's different enough that it puzzles me. What exactly happens when you understand a sentence that may or may not be true? Animal signals, by being involuntary, are inherently trustworthy.
I think of this as the "talk is cheap" problem.
How kind of you to add to my reading list!
Honestly, it seems like what happens is the standard "I've received a signal" response but with language that process is sandboxed most of the time. (Always?) So as the audience I turn your signal into a hypothetical-- if your sound were absolutely trustworthy, this is the signal it would be, that sort of thing.
Of course I agree that an idealistic understanding is just as bad as a materialistic one. I'm just pointing out how many physicists are indeed "going over to the other side" and taking information as the literal basis of being. You have scientists actually saying they believe the Universe actually is a hologram, rather than merely like a hologram.
It is the new Platonism.
But I'm still pushing the middle road metaphysics of semiotics. So it is important to that project that we are seeing matter and information being formally granted equal causal weight. Or even more importantly, that we can actually measure both sides of the epistemic cut in the same coin. We can establish the symmetry relation which connects them ... and thus the symmetry relation which pan-semiosis can break.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. You are concerned with semantics. And from there, with minds, observers, interpretance, spirit, values, etc.
This is hardly a prosaic concern. I agree that even semiotics is not much cop unless in the end it really has something to say about complex lived experience.
But biological life certainly looks well explained by biosemiosis. That is killing the accidentalism of Darwininan reductionism as surely as it is killing the vitalism of spiritualism or theism. Both the brute materialist and the brute idealist has lost out as we come to understand life as a semiotic process.
So now we are seeing physics and cosmology also turning semiotic - or at least building up an information theoretic position to balance the materialistic one. And mind science is also turning semiotic in overt fashion (it always was, but now it has better "physical models" as a result of advances in information theory/thermodynamic theory).
No, I don't think that I agree with this, because "data" implies that the information has already been interpreted, and this would mean that it cannot be information unless it has been interpreted. So why would we say that relationships which have not yet been interpreted are not information?
There is a dual problem here, two extremes. One is the question of whether relationships between things, which have not yet been interpreted by a mind, can be called information. The other extreme, which I already outlined, is the question of whether described relationships, which cannot be demonstrated to be actual relationships between real things, can be called information. The latter is what we find in quantum mechanics, described relationships (field theory for example) in which the things, particles, which are being related, cannot be demonstrated to actually be in those relationships, or even to actually exist. So in this case, we have "well-formed data which is meaningful", but the question is, is this information or imagination?
Suppose that I don't know about the earth's spin, but I observe the sun setting every evening and rising every morning. So I plot a trajectory, which has the sun moving around the back side of the stars which are behind the earth, every night. Then I hand you this "data". Is this so-called data information or imagination?
What has happened is that the cause has triggered a chain of events that results in some physical structure representing the cause in some way. We can say that the information was processed, or changed, in some way, but we can still point to the initial cause as what this new structure refers to.
I don't see how "reality is information" necessarily entails idealism. I don't see information as mind dependent. Minds process information, which has to exist prior to being processed. The causal relationships of the universe exist independent of minds. Minds simply stretch those relationships into time and space.
It doesn't. That is my point. And so it is ironic that some scientist are going overboard with the idealism.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That is where I would disagree. Sure it is the usefully simplistic view of what goes on. But my semiotic approach says mind shapes the signs its treats as "information". Out there in the real material world, there is only radiant energy with some distribution of frequencies. The "mind" or brain then does its processing and understands that in terms of colours. It produces its own meaningful symbol that then stands in a mediating relation with the physics.
The primate mind in particular can see the red fruit that is ripe vividly against the backdrop of the green foliage that is of less interest. Well, there has to be some kind of evolutionary explanation for why our primate ancestors dropped a retinal pigment while living their nocturnal existence and then hastily regrew one once they started wandering about the landscape during the day.
So the mind is a virtual reality - reality as it is meaningful in terms of our interests. We don't just mindlessly process the physical information that is "out there". From the get go, we are symbolising the possibilities of that world in terms that are functional for us.
This means that when physicists talk about information and biologists talk about information, it isn't exactly the same.
But then, if we know how it is not the same, that is how we can know the way it is then the same. A mindless theory of information can be the basis for grounding the higher order mindful one.
There is no point debating philosophy against naive realism.
Quoting apokrisis
Baggott's book is not about idealism, it's about fantastical ideas in modern physics. Idealism doesn't get a look in.
I agree about the applicability of semiosis to biology. And that's because living systems are more language-like than machine-like.
But I think the 'materialism vs idealism' dichotomy, whilst not without some merit, is also not the final word. It really developed in the aftermath of Descartes. The practically-minded - engineers and scientists - sought explanations that could be grounded in the certainty of physics and looked askance at 'res cogitans'. Philosophers and theologians naturally gravitated towards the other pole. This set up the dialectic of 'materialism and idealism' which Western philosophy has since vacillated between.
That is true, as far as it goes, but it is not the final say. I am working towards the idea that the 'domain of meaning' really is independent of the physical world. It's not dependent on it for its reality, and it doesn't arise on account of anything that happens on the physical level; it's not the product of evolution (which everything is supposed to be).
When the mind evolves to the point where it can grasp meaning, then it begins to get an insight into 'the formal domain', the domain of possibility, forms and rules (including number). But that domain is not 'something that exists', in the way that material phenomena exist. That is why it is regarded as a 'spooky realm' - but that depiction of it is caused by the habitually naturalistic tendency, which is to try and locate everything within the domain of time and space, amongst the objects of perception. Whereas, the elements of meaning (so to speak) are not 'out there somewhere' - they are instead the constituents of reality, but in a radically different way to objects. They are that which enable us to think rationally, but are not themselves the objects of perception; we see the world through them. The are the 'constituents of the world' insofar as they constitute the very mind which is looking at it (per Kant).
Hence Plato's 'objective idealism' - the notion that ideas are real, independently of anyone's opinion. So I think that amounts to a kind of dualism, with the qualification that Descartes' error was to depict 'res cogitans' as something that could be understood objectively. But there is literally no such thing, there is no 'mind-stuff' anywhere to be found. The reason for that is because it is literally prior to any notion of what exists 'out there somewhere'. It is what informs our thought, by providing us with the ability to see meaning and reason, but you can never see it 'from the outside', so to speak. That is the sense in which it is 'the stuff of thought'.
This used to be understood by pre-modern philosophical theology, which said that there are different levels or layers of reality, and what is true on one level, might not be on another. Whereas it is exactly that 'vertical dimension' that has been lost, or 'flattened', in the advent of modernity, via nominalism and then empiricism. Peirce's semiotics is an attempt to overcome that 'flattening'.
—?Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, 276-81.
One important difference between a squirrel and an avalanche is that the first is negentropic while the second is entropic. Otherwise expressed, the squirrel is autopoietic (self-creating) while the avalanche follows strict paths of least resistance toward an end of optimal equilibrium between all given inanimate entities. Or: the squirrel as given does its best to preserve its self-identity while the avalanche as given has no impetus to preserve its self-identity.
Yet these details overshadow the basic metaphysical point I was addressing. The point being that of causal agency: some givens hold causal agency (e.g. it is the squirrel that hides its nuts and remembers where they’ve been stashed so as to maintain its own livelihood) while some givens are devoid of causal agency: e.g., from the first pebble that commences it to the grand finale of optimal entropic equilibrium, the avalanche was all part of a complex causal chain that neither begins nor ends with the avalanche itself—at no point was there an avalanche-agency that commenced the effects of the avalanche of its own impetus.
To make choices—to hold causal agency—is to necessarily be aware of alternatives (otherwise, no choice can exist). Hence, it is to necessarily hold awareness and, thereby, to necessarily interpret (give meaning to) information. This is one type of given: that of agency. On the other hand there is information devoid of causal agency.
Traditionally, at least, physicalism has attempted to reduce all that is to lack of causal agency. Where causal agency is deemed to be ontic, however, there is obtained an irreducible duality between causal agency and non-agency.
It’s a bit of a catch-22 for traditional physicalism. Either causal determinism and all that we experience as in any way being causal agency being strict illusions (a different metaphysical argument, I suppose) or causal agency and an irreducible duality between two different types of entity or structure or process.
So I’ll ask this in a different way: does information in and of itself hold causal agency in your opinion—thereby holding awareness of different alternatives? If so, please justify you’re stance, for this position seems illogical to me. If for no other reason, because awareness of alternatives is an aspect of mind—and not of the physical. (I so far take if for granted that you know yourself to hold such awareness-required causal agency between alternatives -- such that you acknowledge the presence of causal agency.)
Does the squirrel know that it is hiding food? Maybe?! Does it choose to do this after considering the alternatives of perhaps leaving it out in plain sight somewhere? Does it know why it's hiding it food? We don't know much about the inner life of any other sort of animal, but it strikes me as implausible. Does the parasitic wasp know why it does those appalling things to beetles? Does it choose to after weighing the alternatives? It's the one doing those things, that much is certain.
I think we can assign agency absent the sort of rational deliberation you're describing. Even way off on the other end, is it really crazy to say the pebble moving caused the avalanche, just because you can find some other cause behind the pebble moving? If we're going to talk about causes in nature, do we have to always answer "the Big Bang" and call it a day? Why did the river flood? Is "Because there was unusually heavy snow in the mountains this past winter" a worse answer than "the Big Bang"? I'm totally confused here, unless this is a reductio of ever talking in terms of causes at all.
All of which leaves me flummoxed. How does this help understand how an organism uses information? Phototropism makes perfect sense without attributing any sort of mind to the plant, doesn't it? The plant responds to sunlight in a way that's advantageous for it, but it no more chooses to than we choose to use our senses. It's a specific way of interacting with your environment, different from sucking water and minerals out of the soil or jamming your roots into it.
I think something you're missing here is the sense in which DNA encodes information. The difference between squirrels (or organisms generally) and inorganic nature (avalanches or crystals) is that organisms are self-sustaining - they seek homeostasis, grow, heal from injuries, and reproduce. I don't think there's anything analogous to that in landslides and avalanches, is there?
And the thing which enables that in organic nature is DNA. There's nothing corresponding to that in inorganic nature.
But then there's another distinction you're considering, which is that between instinctive behaviour and language - whether animals know what they're doing, in a discursive sense. I think the consensus is that there is a fundamental difference between animal and human communication, because the latter has grammar.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/04/first-words
That is an excerpt of a review of a book by Chomsky, which is about the unique nature of human languages. I think the commonly-held view, practically instinctive nowadays, which believes that animal and human communications function along a kind of linear progression, is not true; there is a radical discontinuity between the two.
All big and meaty questions, no doubt, but they're some of the issues.
@javra - squirrels are not self-creating - they come from mama and papa squirrels. :-)
There are two ways to answer. The first way is just by restating that the pattern is a concept. A book may be translated into a hundred languages and the concept survives regardless of the pattern use to describe it (heiroglyphs, Chinese characters, the English alphabet).
In the second, to use Wayfarer's example, you need to have the interpreter who can:
1. decode the pattern
2. recode the pattern
And you need the end user who understands the concept.
** Oh, and of course encode the initial concept.
Quoting Wayfarer
So, the representations fall into Landauer's category. What about the mental renditions thereof? (Don't they have "physical" dependencies at least?)
We very nearly agree, I think. I see squirrels but not avalanches as information-using, until shown the error of my ways.
On the other hand, despite the fact that we design and make thermostats to serve purposes we choose, the fact that they do function autonomously is interesting. The analogy that suggests itself, to me at least, is not between thermostat and organism, but between thermostat and subsystem of organism. There's a whole lot of stuff (parts of) our bodies do on their own, and some of it is information-related. I don't choose to see, do you?
(The technology we create is generally an extension of some capacity or subsystem of ours, in classic Baconian fashion. We can sense the ambient temperature through our skin and flip switches with our fingers-- why not wrap those functions in a box and hang them on the wall so we can go do something else?)
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I agree. - there are many autonomic processes, typically lower-level ones, that run like 'daemons' in a computer network, that look after all kinds of tasks that are beneath the subliminal threshold. That quote I gave from Eddington, above, says that. (Although, interestingly, there has been research done on yogis which appear to demonstrate that they have abnormally high levels of control over such autonomic processes.)
But anyway, the way in which we're NOT simply response mechanisms, is that the mind actively synthesises all manner of inputs and then makes judgements about it, in a way that no simple mechanism can do. Actually the mind 'generates' what Husserl called the 'umwelt', the lived-meaning-world, which comprises 'our world'. The thing which many (not all!) scientists don't see, is the role their mind plays in doing that; they bracket out 'the observer' so as to observe what they think of as a mind-independent reality, but the mind is still instrumental in synthesising all of the information with the theory etc.
I don’t know if you do this intentionally or not, but you get bogged down in details as regard individual particulars. I’m asking a metaphysical question in relation to general ontological givens. To simplify my question even further:
Is information—in and of itself—endowed with awareness?
If yes, this needs explaining since it currently seems illogical to me.
If no, than I argue you have (at some abstract threshold whose particulars need not be here established) a duality between a) awareness to which information holds meaning and b) awareness-devoid information. Here, all meaning will pertain to awareness, which is an aspect of mind. Hence, if any notion of information or lack thereof is in any way meaningful, it will be so due to the presence of minds which interpret the given information.
I’ll for now drop the issue of causal agency—though to me it is a necessary correlative of informed awareness. So yes, to me even a bacterium holds some minimal degree of causal agency between alternatives given that it is endowed with any degree of awareness of stimuli to which it reacts—otherwise it would be a fully entropic entity. It’s not an easy conclusion to establish, and most certainly not mainstream. And in hindsight, as you say, it does appear irrelevant to the thread’s discussion.
BTW, as to whether information is physical or not, be it via an objective idealism or via a dual-aspect neutral monism, my stance is that some information is physical and some is mental. So, I disagree with the notions that all information is physical.
Funny, kinda. So homeostatic processes are not self-generating/creating … this as defined by the notion of autopoiesis?
I just don't see the need to jump from information-using all the way to Husserl. Plants use information. Insects. I don't see Mind there, I just see a way of interacting with the environment that isn't eating it or whacking it.
Fair enough.
Let's say I find the former more interesting than the latter, and you're the opposite. It's nice.
Quoting javra
No-- but then the foundation for this question has not been established. Is information-- in and of itself-- endowed with color? With a sense of humor? With musicality or elegance?
Quoting javra
Okay.
Are you quite certain that when I try to figure out what I'm looking at and what it might mean to me, that it is information I am interpreting?
Such a view, though, seems vacuous. What have we gained and how can we get a better understanding on the issue through this finding? Perhaps, as your OP suggests, there may be more to information than just physicality and such a view may be more amenable to further analysis.
Right, but I don’t interpret a squirrel (or any individual lifeform) to be an individual species. TMK, it was conceived to be a characteristic of living systems, as in individual lifeforms, including the individual cell.
What would the foundation be? As to your questions, I again uphold it takes awareness to interpret information thus.So, devoid of awareness so interpreting, no.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, in a non-absolute-certainty sense, to be clear. BTW, information holds multiple viable interpretations. My preference is the non-mathematical interpretation of “that which endows form to” … you might think it a bit Platonic. Did you have a different interpretation in mind? If so, I’m curious to see if there would be no overlap.
good point. He was the head of IBM Labs, probably not much into philosophy as such.
space - time
physical - mental
extension - thought
So the essence of the dichotomy between the two is found in space and time.
So could space and time be two attributes of one substance?
I think that "meaningful" implies that the information has already been interpreted.
In my current working definition of information, I removed any reference to "meaning" from Floridi's General Definition of Information (GDI) because I don't agree that "data can have a semantics independently of any informee." (GeN)
My current working definitions include:
1) Data: physical or psychophysical variables.
2) Information: relational data.
3) Physical (Meaningless) Information: relational physical variables.
4) Semantic (Meaningful) Information: relational psychophysical variables and queries.
That would depend on how information is defined. How would you define information in a general sense (i.e., one which takes into account its physical and mental manifestations)?
While I have completed university coursework in Physics, my knowledge of Quantum Mechanics is inadequate. However, I am persuaded that Shannon's Mathematical Theory of (Data) Communication (MTC) quantifies information, hence; provides evidence that information can be physical.
Beyond having a point in common with thermodynamic entropy through probability theory, I currently view the association of MTC with thermodynamic entropy as little more than equivocation. And this may have been the reason for Wieners' comment: "Information is information, not matter or energy."
But the mathematical aspect of data doesn't end with MTC. I find Floridi's comment, "The universe is fundamentally composed of data, understood as dedomena..," intriguing. Is he referring to geometry as a transcendental or abstract universal which constrains that which is physical and that which is psychophysical? Do Aristotelian forms figure into this equation?
That would be misinformation.
I wasn't.
Again, is there an actual three-masted Greek ship on the horizon? If there isn't then how can you even say that any structure (flags, a series of dots on paper, etc.) points to that, or means that, or carries information about that?
How did those flags get situated like that? How did those dots get on a piece of paper? If there isn't an actual three-masted Greek ship on the horizon, then you can only say that the sentry lied when he put up the flags. What is the ultimate cause of the flags being put up in a certain way?
If the sentry lied, the you can't say that the morse code points to, or refers to, a three-masted Greek ship on the horizon. The morse code actually points to, or refers to, the lie the sentry told because there is no three-masted Greek ship on the horizon.
How can something be functional, or useful, if it doesn't have some degree of truth to it?
To say that there is anything out there that our mind represents is to talk about causation. I have said numerous times that information is the relationship between the cause and the effect. The effect carries information about the cause. The contents of our minds is the effect of the interaction of our senses with what is out there. This is why we can point to the colors in our mind as the effect of light interacting with out eyes and brain system. This is why we can use some color to mean something about what is out there, like a particular fruit being ripe to eat. Is the fruit ripe to eat and others aren't, or is it just a mix of radiant energy that our minds create order from what is ultimately chaos? Do our minds simply make up this distinction that doesn't really exist out there? If so, then how can you say that the mind processes information. It would simply make up it's own world (solipsism) and the contents of our minds wouldn't point to anything, including other minds. Does the distinction in color represent a distinction in radiant energy? If so, then what I'm saying holds true - that distinctions in radiant energy cause our distinction in color and is what the color represents.
Are you saying that other minds are radiant energy with some distribution of frequencies? What does that say about your mind? How does radiant energy with some distribution of frequencies process information? How can something be functional, or useful, to radiant energy with some distribution of frequencies?
What is the relationship between the reality and the virtual reality? If there isn't one, then you are arguing for solipsism, as there would be no bearing of the real world on the virtual world. There would be no way for you to even talk about the real world as they would be separate and unable to interact (no relationship). In order for you to say anything about the real world, via your virtual world, would mean that some state-of-affairs in the real world influences the state-of-affairs in the virtual world. If there is no connection between the real world and the virtual world, then how can you even talk about the real world? How can you even say that you are informed about anything in the real world? There would be no causal connection and therefore no flow of information.
So you talk about the information contained in cause and effect. If wavelength energy is cause, why should it look like hue as its effect? Or why should a fragment of an organic molecule smell like a rose? Why should vibrating air sound like tinkling or grating noise?
The way we read information into the world seems pretty arbitrary if we are to take your simple cause and effect view that demands perception is somehow veridical of how the physics really is, rather than as the useful way we interpret it - the way we make the world easy to see in terms of our evolved sets of interest.
(Steve Pinker, How the Mind Works Penguin: London, 1998)
Pinker says 'the symbols are physical states of matter', but what does this mean? Notice he actually uses the term 'incarnated as configurations of symbols'. An 'incarnation' means 'made flesh' - but it is generally understood that what is incarnated is, or was, discarnate prior to being incarnated. If you were to say to someone 'you are the incarnation of beauty', you would be implying that the quality of 'beauty' is 'instantiated' by that person (not a very elegant way of explaining it, but the point stands.)
I also think there is something very wrong with 'If the bits of matter that constitute a symbol are arranged to bump into the bits of matter constituting another symbol in just the right way, the symbols corresponding to one belief can give rise to new symbols corresponding to another belief logically related to it'. First - they are arranged by what? In the case of a computer, they are arranged according to the computer program which is surely the work of a human intelligence. So if the analogy is with a computer, it tends to suggest something very like 'the watchmaker'. If not, they are not 'arranged' at all, or at any rate, the fact of their proximity and relationship can't really be assigned an explanatory role.
And how can a symbol be understood as a 'physical configuration' at all? The whole point about symbols is that they are abstract, which is exactly why meaning can be transferred via symbols so easily. Conflating 'meaning' with 'physical dispositions of parts' seems very question-begging to me.
No, Apo. I get your point, and I know that you are getting mine. I think you are trying to avoid answering hard questions. How can something be functional in the reality "out there" if there isn't some degree of truth associated with it?
Look at your post. It is an explanation of reality itself, not the virtual reality in your head, but the one out there, and it's relationship with the virtual reality in your head, right? If not, which reality are you talking about? How can you say anything about the one out there and how it relates to your VR if you're implying that we can never get to it, or at least know some truth about it? What part of your post is a truth about your VR and which is a truth about reality out there and how both interact? How do you know anything about the reality out there and your relation to it?
Let's say that I associate red apples as being delicious and green apples as disgusting. In this instance, I'm relating a color to one of my subjective experiences. I think this is an example of what you are talking about. The apples aren't really different colors, except in my head, and they are delicious and disgusting only in my head. But the apples do have different properties that cause a different interaction with the same wavelength of light that gets reflected into my eye and processed by the eye-brain system, which results in me seeing different colors, or interacts with my taste buds and nervous system that results in a taste of deliciousness or distaste for me.
While the apples don't have properties of color or taste in themselves prior to or after any interaction with reflected light and an eye-brain system, or taste buds, they do have objective properties that result in them being represented a certain way for any sensory information processor to use in order to accomplish any purpose (goal) it has at any given moment.
Even our own minds don't have properties of color independent of looking at the world. Even closing your eyes, you end up looking at the inside of your eyelids, which is the dark side of your eyelids, which is why it appears black. Color is the effect of the level of light environment interacting with the eye-brain system, and only appears when light interacts with an eye-brain system. You can't see any other color other than black when there is no light at all. In this sense, light is a cause of color as much as the existence of an eye-brain system is. Color is the effect of both causes interacting.
Both causes have their own objective properties that interact and create a new effect. This is what the effect provides information about - the objective properties of the causes. How is it that your mind has a certain quality, structure, attribute, or property that is persistent and follows certain logical rules that allows it to be functional, but everything else doesn't? If everything else is just a function of the mind, then that would include other people, therefore solipsism would be the case.
Quoting apokrisis
I never said that effects and their causes are the same things. That would absurd. Effects are the result of more than one cause interacting over time. This is why effects carry information about ALL their causes. Color carries information about the wavelength of light and the state of your eye-brain system. The question is, which information is it that you want to know right now about the color? What is it that you want to know that some color is representing, or carrying information about - it's wavelength, the state of a particular eye-brain system, the state of the apple (ripe or rotten), the taste of the apple, etc.?
It is your theory that implies that we project our purposes onto reality and would make it pretty arbitrary. I'm not saying that we don't do that. What I'm saying is that there is a two-way street where information flows from the outside to the inside and information flows from the inside (projected by intent) to the outside. This is how we are able to know about the world as well as project our own purposes onto it, which includes making our views known to others and trying to influence them to accept our view.
How else do I or anyone else get the gist of what you or anyone else is saying? The information crosses the boundary between your VR and the real world, back into my VR. If I make your post into what is functional to my purposes, how can you ever expect express yourself at all. How is it that language works at all?
Sign or symbol starts where physics leaves off. A physical mark can "mean anything" only because that mark has zero dynamics. There is, in short, an epistemic cut. The normal physics of dissipative decay are suspended. And so the semiotics of information can then arise. A mark can be used to mean anything you like. The mark becomes the coin of this newly emergent realm.
And when I say mark, in practice we are talking about a switch. A binary mark.
I can scratch a mark on a rock - something tough like granite. It meets the requirement of having zero physics (for all practical purposes). I could go away a million years and come back and find it again (given some weathering). So the effective lack of dissipative physics creates the possibility of memory. The mark is timeless, changeless. It is not even located if I can make that exact same mark anywhere I go.
But also we want to be able to erase marks. And just as easily and physics-free as we can create them. That is really getting into a realm of pure information.
Thus the ideal of a binary switch. We have a reversible mark. Just flip the switch. That takes a little bit of effort each time you do it. But otherwise, it is physics-free. The mark (or marks - 0 or 1) are effectively eternal and placeless. Well, there is a material cost in manufacturing the switch itself. But then it is as outside normal physics as a chisel mark on a lump of granite.
So we can see that information relates fundamentally to a zeroing of physical dynamics. Information exists to the degree we can eliminate the ordinary material dissipation that reality seeks to impose. And yet, by the same token, there is some fundamental scale of connection. A switch has to be made. The switch has to be flipped. Some minimum and constant energetic price must be paid to create this parallel abstract or physics-free world (constant as we can't have the cost of switching switches become a final physical fact impinging on the freedom to create and erase states of memory or sign).
And now note how the fact of going physics free is the cause of a crisp digitality, a binary logic. To be able to create and erase a mark freely, at zero cost, gives rise to on and off, yes and no, either or. Definite counterfactuality is the unphysical possibility that arises. The state of a switch virtually demands an explanation. An intelligible choice is implied.
So you don't need to start with a "meaning-maker". The fact that the mark, and then the erasable mark, stand as the limit on ordinary dissipative physics means that an interpreter is implied by the switch's very existence. It is ready-made for interpretation. It is only going to be an accident or two before interpretance actually gets going ... if that closes a feedback loop with the physical world where the interpretance is functional.
If the use of the switch is something that increases the physical dynamics of the world - such that there is spare physics to build switches and flip their states - then interpretative states of switching are going to evolve.
This is of course the story at the level of biological, neurological and linguistic information. But your question has shifted to that of personal or autonomous meaning. And so I'm challenging your use of "abstract".
Yes, to go from a physics-determined world to a physics-free world involves abstraction. It is physics that must be abstracted away. Yet still, we can see the impossibility of a complete disconnection. There is a minimal energy dissipation requirement to create and run a set of erasable marks or switches. And then more crucially, the evolution of interpretive systems - systems with meanings - can only happen if those systems are increasing the entropy of the worlds they arise in. There is this basic requirement that shapes the interpretive system from the get-go ... if it is to get going.
So while one can marvel at the freedom of the human mind to spin any kind of fiction, or entertain apparently unlimited personalised meanings and abstracted notions, the whole show remains rooted in the real world physics. In the long run or on the microscale, it comes back to paying for this unphysical freedom. You won't get far scientifically or philosophically in pretending it isn't.
No. It means what caused it. The physical mark would be the effect of more than one cause interacting over time, and that is what it can be used to mean.
I think he means that they can interact with each other and establish causal relationships.
Quoting WayfarerI think he means that the information, which is a relationship - one between causes and effects - is converted from an analog signal into a digital signal in order to be useful for a purpose.
Quoting WayfarerThe foundation is arranged by natural selection and then built upon as we experience the world and establish new neural connections.
Quoting WayfarerRead what he says about the tree rings in the tree stump in that same book.
No, I think a switch is different to a mark. A switch does something; a mark means something. Different levels of explanation.
Quoting apokrisis
So here, for instance, a 'mark' might have been made by a hunter in 15,000 BC. Or you could scratch the Pythagorean Theorem into granite. They're both 'marks' but their meaning and what they signify is completely different.
It seems to me you can't avoid the element of intentionality or the requirement for a 'meaning maker', if you like.
You ought not to anthropomorphise natural selection, to make of it an agent that 'does' something. Neither natural selection nor evolution 'does' anything. It is simply a description of how species evolve, but by saying that it 'arranges' something, you are attributing to it something that it doesn't have.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Tree rings mean something to an arborist, but nothing to the tree.
I don't like the term "truth". I would use the pragmatic term, justified belief.
Truth is about an absolute claim of certainty. Pragmatism accepts that knowledge can only make claims about a minimisation of uncertainty.
So sure, you can talk about "some degree of truth" as your way of acknowledging the pragmatic approach to knowledge. Truth is the absolute limit. In practice, we can only approach that state of perfect certainty with arbitrary closeness. In the end, you are saying the same thing.
But I prefer to say that upfront and directly. I don't say a truth is (almost) certain. I say the uncertainty of a belief has been measurably minimised.
I am hardly avoiding any hard question. I am stressing the pragmatically provisional nature of any claims to truth or absolute certainty.
And there is no denial of a "world out there" to be read into this epistemic position. It is pragmatism, not idealism.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You are complaining that I am concealing the very point I have attempted to make. I am talking about the triadic sign relation of pragmatism/semiotics. So yes, it is taken as basic that there are three players in the equation.
But the wrinkle is that this is a more generic level of analysis than just the usual me/sign/world relation of indirect realism or standard issue psychology. Sure, for us humans and other creatures with complex nervous systems, it is all about the "subjective self" and the "objective world". We are just talking about useful reality models mediated by a sign relation. Nothing to scare any realists. The world is actually out there ... just as the self is actually in here. >:O
LOL. That should give the naive realist game away surely? It is always just concealed dualism when it comes to its own theory of truth.
Anyway, the triadic sign relation is more generic than just our functional psychological relationship with an actual, real, material, completely physical, world. It doesn't even need to care about there being a real world as it is paying attention to the prior thing which is the very manufacturing of a state of information division. It is talking about how "selves" and "worlds" arise as the two complementary aspects of a sign relation.
Which is why Peircean epistemology can become a model of ontological being itself. It drills down to the very causality by which self~world could arise as a self-organising symmetry breaking.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Look at how you are having to treat the "self" as real here. You are having to reify this little person in your head doing the looking at the representations, experiencing the qualia. Already an inadequate ontology is going badly wrong, headed off down the path labelled infinite homuncular regress.
It is tough to give up the habit of talking about a reified self at the back of it all. But that is what you need to be able to do.
What is actually going is a process of interpretance where it is the world that is being reified in sign. The world is being rendered as "qualia". And then the "self" doing that is also interpretive reification. The system is taking its own actions as a sign that there must be a homuncular observer sitting in back of it, doing its job.
Of course, "we" never see this "self" who is doing the real experiencing. But we hear people invoking it by name the whole time. People are always talking in terms of I, me, you, we, them, us. People even give each other actual names. So we encounter the signifiers of selfhood constantly. No wonder the self really comes to seem to exist .... like a faux real object. Rocks and selves just become part of reality's collection of objects. If we doubt the existence of "a self", we only have to look in a mirror.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Isn't that what I plainly said? The world is what it is. Then we represent it in a way that is useful. What we want to see is reality as it looks through the eyes of our purposes.
Colour sensation arose as a fast route to object discrimination. As with all other sensory processing, it is about hardwiring for pop-out recognition. If you see the world in black and white - simple luminance contrast - then there is quite an information load in sifting out the million shades of grey. Of course you can do it - there is a lot of black and white hardwired pop-out mechanism, like Mach bands, to draw quick and sharp contrast lines around every boundary, group features in coherently guessed fashion.
And yet still, adding sharp hue contrasts takes object perception to another level of quickfire automatic discrimination. You just look at fruit in a bowl and each different object just leaps out as the colour processing removes a vast amount of borderline ambiguity. No one could confuse green for red, or yellow for blue. I mean it is literally impossible to see greenish red or yellowish blue due to the opponent channel processing principles of our primate visual pathways.
Quoting Harry Hindu
But I don't see black. I see the photic rustle of retinal neurons seeking missing input. I get the vague impression of swirling lights and coloured dots that are my own endogenous baseline brain activity. So actual phenomenology confirms the constructedness of visual experience. Our brains are so hungry to make a visual world that they will restlessly imagine colours and patterns even in the complete dark. That is, unless we stare into the dark and interpret it as black, ignoring this photic rustle that wants to get in the way of our "reality experiencing".
Quoting Harry Hindu
The real world might be the cause of our having a way of modelling it. But there is no direct reason why the phenomenology of colour experience should reflect the reality of wavelength energy the way it does.
The only physical requirement or constraint is that the system works. That the signs we form do an effective job of achieving the basic goal - which is quick and sure acts of discrimination. The cause of colour is that colours are "completely obvious". They do the best job of removing visual scene ambiguity. The information we need is just going to pop out.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You keep wheeling out an argument built to attack idealism against my argument based on pragmatism.
I'm not seeking to deny there is a world.
I'm pointing out the degree to which both self and world are an imaginative co-construction - a semotic interpretive relation. The actual world - the Kantian thing in itself - in fact drops out of the picture for us. We end up having as little do with it as we can .... as that then means we are completely plugged into it only in a way that matters most to "us".
Hence why signs are about the usefulness of information loss. Mastery over the world is demonstrated by the growth of our capacity to ignore it. Signs are how we deal with the world only to the extent "we" need to care.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I thought I was saying that. You only think I can't have being saying that because you have labelled me as an idealist, even a closet solipsist. Your personal system of sign has been imposed on the reality that is the pragmatist me.
Another good illustration of how this works. :)
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yeah. Minds need to be connected by physical symbols. And a lot of energy gets expended in transferring information. Especially because another mind really only wants to see the world in the way to which it has become accustomed. The other mind always wants an easy life where it can pretty much ignore other minds and deal with anything they might say as a labelled, pre-packaged position that can be given a quick tick. Yes for true, no for false. Trip the memory switch flag and move along.
Yeah but, your post isn't made of abstract types, it's made of concrete tokens, which brings us right back to where we started from. Hurray!
You are hoping to get away with ordinary language use definitions in the discussion of information theory. Nice.
Feel free to walk right past the careful argument I just made ... the one you claimed your OP was about in citing Landauer on the very issue of the difference between creating information, and creating and erasing information.
Really. The hypocrisy.
Quoting Wayfarer
I made a careful argument for how a meaning maker is implied by the possibility of there being that next level of meaning. So the physics itself creates the potential for the physics-free in the very fact that dynamism has its limit.
The fact that entropy flows downhill in the Cosmos means that any movement uphill - no matter how accidental it might seem - is negentropic. To the degree that physics is one thing, its "other" is also made counterfactually possible. And if the possible turns out to be the useful - as it is in the case of dissipative structure - then it becomes "Platonically" necessary that it develop as a further habit of nature. Negentropic order must arise if it increases the downhill flow.
Sure, you can just ignore the fact that I made this argument. That is normal human behaviour. I've explained the semiotics of that. But still. Philosophy is about dealing with arguments in systematic fashion. That is suppose to be the special thing about it.
So get back to me when you have something less vague to say than "seems to me that you can't avoid....".
No need to get huffy. The basic argument I made has nothing to do with entropy, or negentropy, for that matter. What I observed was that, the same information can be represented in a limitless variety of forms and media. So given a meaningful sentence or proposition, if the meaning stays the same, and the representation changes, then the meaning and the representation are separate things.
Landuaer's claim seems to come down to 'whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind'. But the fact that the 'physical medium' can be completely changed, while retaining the same information, indicates that the information itself is not physical. That's really a form of dualist argument - that the 'information layer' and the 'physical layer' are different things.
And besides, I am not dismissing the argument: how does 'a mark' constitute 'meaning'? If there is a simple scratch on a piece of granite - that's 'a mark', but it's not necessarily a symbol. It might have been made by a glacial rock, in which case it doesn't refer to anything. But if it was made by a human being, to signify something, then it has meaning. So please explain to me how 'a mark' is 'a switch', because it's something I really don't see.
I also don't see how you can have the 'epistemic cut' without an implied duality between the semantic and the physical level. Is what you're trying to establish, a bridge from the physical to the semantic?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
All human language relies on abstractions, doesn't it?
Also, I really don't want to *ignore* this argument, but as it keeps coming up again and again, I will try and articulate what I don't like about it. I think it's because the 'second law of thermodynamics' - that everything progresses towards maximum entropy over time - is essentially a physicalist argument, is it not? Because it is saying that everything that occurs, does so out of basically physical necessity, as a consequence of thermodynamics. So what bothers me, is that whilst on the one hand, you seem to accept that old-school materialism has been undermined by quantum physics (something we both agree on), yet you retain the overall materialist view of there being nothing intentional, there being no kind of 'telos' or purpose, that the universe remains basically dumb stuff. Living systems are in some sense an inevitable part of the running-down of the Universe towards it's final state of 'maximum entropy', but nothing more than, or other than, that.
Have I paraphrased that correctly? Because, if so, I don't want to ignore it, I would rather try and spell out what I think is wrong with it.
Yes but we don't utter abstractions, which might be part of Landauer's point.
If I sound dead certain about all this, that's an illusion.
We do, though. Almost every sentence you utter relies on generalisations, and they are a form of abstraction.
Just trying to rouse you from your dogmatic slumbers.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes of course. Translation is possible. But information theory is about boiling down to the limits of that possibility. At some ultimate level, information gets grainy. You have to worry about whether "all the information" is being converted. And so you have to be able to count information in some physically rooted fashion.
It was a major discovery of the last century that this can be done in a definite fashion. Information and physics can be two sides of the same coin. They can be defined by the same equation, or system of measurement.
You want to talk about the meaning of information and not its mechanics. Its semantics rather than its syntax.
That's fine. There is that conversation to be had. But you can't then employ that to side-swipe the physics of information in passing. You can't pretend to be talking about Landauer and proving his kind wrong by simply making the argument "hey guys, there is also this".
As I argued, you are just wanting to talk about the issue of semantics or interpretance in unplaced fashion. If you can get away with that, you hope no one will notice you pushing meaning away into Platonia. You can make subjectivity safe from reductionist attack.
But science is laying a necessary foundation for a semiotic approach to the fundamental questions about reality. Ignore that if you choose. However that is what is going on.
Quoting Wayfarer
Computers are literal dualism. They are machines. A dualism of hardware and software is the feature that is designed into them. The divorce between the physics and the information is made as perfect as we can humanly imagine.
Then Landauer comes along to remind where this mechanised dualism encounters its material limits. Hey guys, we can create information at no entropic cost (as entropy itself produces some negentropy "accidentally"). But then to erase that information - reverse an accident with deliberate intent - requires us to pay back on this loan with interest. The whole deal has to wind up producing more frictional heat than useful work.
Quoting Wayfarer
Hell's bells. What do you think the epistemic cut is other than the means to then build a bridge?
To describe something, you have to step off that something. And the epistemic cut is how a division between "self" and "world" is actually established so that "acts of description" become even a thing.
Well that's what the whole thread is about, so just asserting it seems ... unhelpful.
Besides "relies on" ? "is".
Saying the telos of existence is dissipatory is not saying there is no telos. It is just mentioning a telos which you have some personal distaste for.
I could say this a billion more times and you will still pretend that's the first time you've even heard me say it.
Why is that exactly?
It's not a 'personal distaste'. We're discussing a metaphysical principle - how we see the fundamental cause or ground of existence. (But of course in today's world, that can only be 'personal', can't it.) I am making an effort to understand your arguments, I have gone off and read up on Peirce and Pattee and articles on semiotics and the like, specifically because of interactions on these forums.
Quoting apokrisis
If you're referring to Shannon's information theory, that was not a general theory about the nature of information as a constituent of the Universe. It was specifically about transmission of information between a sender and a receiver, data compression, and related issues. The purported equivalence of physics and information is another step altogether.
Quoting apokrisis
What I said - what I spelled out, in plain view, and plain English, was this:
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree with much of that. But you prefaced it with:
Quoting Wayfarer
So the key difference is that I am arguing that all meaningfulness is ultimately grounded in the materiality of the thermodynamic imperative. Thou shalt entropify. Life and mind cannot escape that general constraint (even though there is plenty of freedom to invent within that restriction).
Quoting Wayfarer
It bothers you. You find "dumbness" to be personally distasteful. An imperative to disorder seems a literal waste of time.
I'm in the spirit of facing facts. Let the answers play out as they may. What is it that nature is telling us when we listen closely with an open mind?
This definition is problematic. Space is conceptual. We have concepts of space, and these are developed to help us understand and use physical objects. When you say that "information always has a location in space", you appeal to a concept of space which allows that things have a fixed position in some sort of fixed space. But this is a very naïve concept of space, because things really don't have fixed positions. Furthermore, much information is known to be associated with the activities of space rather than things assumed to be in fixed positions. So this type of definition is rather inadequate.
Quoting Galuchat
This is not really true though. The author of a piece of information puts meaning into that piece. And this act of creating is completely different from the act of interpreting. So it is not true that "meaningful" implies that the thing has been interpreted. There are two distinct, but very related senses of "meaningful", one implies that the object has been created with intent, the other that it has been interpreted. One does not necessarily require the other, such that naturally occurring things, like geological structures, can be interpreted as informational, without assuming an author, and things created by an author can be said to exist as meaningful things, despite not being interpreted.
If we conflate these two distinct senses of "meaningful", one might insist that naturally occurring structures, must have been created by an author to be meaningful, or, that something created by an author must be interpreted to be meaningful.
Quoting Galuchat
I hope that answered this question. I would define "information" in such a way as to separate these two distinct senses. In both cases, information may be physical, meaning the property of physical things, but it is not necessarily physical in each case.
But this is where the difficulty arises. Like any other property, we can abstract the property from the object, and start talking directly about the property without necessarily attributing it to any object, as if the property is an object. In this way, the property becomes an immaterial object, a concept. So for example, we can take the property of being red, and talk about "red" itself, as if it were an object, what does it mean to be red, etc. Now we have made "red" which was a property of some objects, into an object itself. We can't assign physical existence to "red", the concept, but we can assign physical existence to red as the property of an object. The same is the case for "information". We can assign physical existence to information, as the property of an object, but "information", in the conceptual form, without being attributed to a physical object, can't have physical existence.
Quoting Galuchat
If we invert things, we can assume that the immaterial concept, "information" is the object. Then we can claim that the physical universe is a property of that immaterial object. So the physical universe is seen as a property of the immaterial object, the concept of information. I would say that this is imaginary.
Quoting Galuchat
But how would you distinguish information from misinformation? In the example, it's easy because I described it as misinformation. But just like stuff we call "knowledge", sometimes later turns out to be wrong, so stuff we call "information" may later turn out to be misinformation. This is the problem, with associating information with data. If we take a look at some collection of data, we have no way of knowing whether it's information, or misinformation.
Quoting Wayfarer
This argument is very problematic as well. The word "same" here is used in a very unphilosophical way. You are saying that two distinct physical occurrences convey the same information, when this is impossible or else we could not call them distinct occurrences. It's like saying that two cars of the same make and model are the same car. The only reason that the occurrences may be said to be distinct is that they convey different information. Each time the information is represented in a different medium, the information there is not actually "the same". The interpretation will vary depending on the medium. Each time a statement is translated from one language to another, the information conveyed by that statement does not stay the same. Also, when different people interpret the same statement, the meaning which is taken away by each,, is not the same for each. These issues with the notion of "the same", indicate that the information really is a property of the physical structure, and the immaterial aspect, how the information is interpreted, remains within the individual human mind.
Ulanowicz was part of the same biosemiotic crowd - Pattee, Rosen, Salthe. But also a convinced Catholic and so motivated to find a theistic spin where he could.
So he was defining a way of measuring the actual negentropic purpose that an organic system could evolve. A measure of action or information in terms of what was meaningful to an organism, as opposed to the simply entropic waste heat that also has to accompany that.
The key as ever is he did derive an equation so that real systems could actually be measured.
And he claimed results....
This shows scientists do take systems causality seriously and can advance our understanding in terms of actual equations, actual experiments.
Physics provides the base with its foundational work on the equivalence of entropy and information. Biology and neuroscience are now exploiting that by using more complex measures like mutual information or free energy in their new theories.
Do you think that is something that would be subject to confirmation or disconfirmation by any possible empirical discovery? If so, what kind of discovery might that be?
Quoting apokrisis
There is an important place in traditional philosophy for what is beyond measure, although nowadays such ideas are probably regarded as antiquarian.
God.
Of course. A perpetual motion machine for a start. Plenty of inventors have applied for patents. There have been big controversies like cold fusion.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'd dispute that by pointing out all ideas are ultimately based on observation of the world. And then Western philosophy in particular got going due to the inspiration provided by mathematics.
So maths showed a deep rationality at work in nature. A necessity and inevitability about ontic structure. But that arose out of the habit of measurement.
First came the rulers, sundials and tally sticks. The Babylonians and Eqyptians were pretty competent in that regard.
Then came the Pythagorean reverence for the pure and absolute order that this habit of measurement eventually revealed.
So yes, Plato talked about the Good that was beyond measure. A lot of theistic talk resulted from the realisation that counting also implied the infinite or uncountable. A sharp definition of what is natural is always going to produce as its own reaction - the folk now saying the highest rung of the ladder is the next one just beyond reach. The supernatural.
The "important place" is about finding some place to ground claims of authority that transcend ordinary human affairs. If I want to tell you what to do - constrain your behaviour for my benefit - then I have to situate the ultimate power on the other side of the finite, put it beyond your reach.
So what is important about the beyond measure? It can't be challenged. It is not testable. It takes away your ability to argue alternatives.
That's all you've been doing. Spinning a yarn about Thermodynamic Imperative, your God. No different than Whitehead's God. But you like pretending it is "scientific". It's a palor game you like playing.
My socks still aren't dry from laughing so hard the last time.
That has nothing to do with the statement that 'all meaningfulness is ultimately grounded in the materiality of the thermodynamic imperative'. I'm not talking about devices that disprove the Second Law of thermodynamics, but what could disprove that particular statement.
Quoting apokrisis
But that is simply empiricist dogma. The point about the rationalist tradition, was to infer what the ultimate truth was, based on reasoning from observation - as you say, the Pythagorean and Platonic traditions, and on innate ideas. Now of course that also could lead to absurdities - I recall my very first lecture in Philosophy of Science, an anecdote about a bunch of monks arguing about how many teeth a horse had, and scurrying off to find it in Aristotle. When it wasn't there, they basically gave up - until one of their number had the temerity to suggest going and looking at a horse, which was ridiculed. So, I get how old-school philosophical rationalism can become a caricature. But it's also possible that ancient philosophy really did discover something 'beyond the domain of name and form', and which is on that account beyond the purview of science. That would be in the general category of things you consider 'not even wrong'. And I'm OK with that - at least we understand where we differ.
I can just hear someone in the back of the forum yelling, “yours was an awesome post!”, and I agree with them.
Trying my best to figure out something to debate about, what would your take be on the hypothesis that meaning, of itself, is non-phenomenal information?* So, for instance, in the examples of the OP where the same meaning applies to different phenomenal information, the meaning itself is non-phenomenal information (and hypothetically the same) whereas the various means of obtaining it will all be phenomenal information and thereby uniquely different.
A different example in my attempts to keep this simple: “four”, “4”, and “IV” serve as three different bodies of visually phenomenal information yet they all convey the same non-phenomenal information (the same meaning being identical to itself in all three, phenomenally different cases).
So the meaning of “4” has a form different from the meaning of “5”, for instance, but its form as meaning is noumenal: and thereby ontically distinct from the phenomenal information it is conveyed by to those who can so interpret the meaning of the given phenomena. (Alternatively, from the phenomenal information of the imagination one uses to convey the meaning to oneself.)
*As I mentioned to you on a different thread: here phenomenal is defined by anything apprehendable through the physiological senses and anything of the imagination that takes the same forms, e.g. sights, sounds, smells, tactile feels, proprioceptions, etc. (the list is a bit longer, e.g. physiological pain, vestibular sense of balance and acceleration, etc.).
BTW, the aforementioned is a basic premise I hold; wanting to test out the waters with it, so to speak.
Yes, and in today’s world, in large part due to the great modern influence of physicalism, “things that appear” (i.e., phenomena) is deemed fully identical with all possible experiences. Hence the common standard interpretation of “everything that exists is phenomenal” due to the modern intellect’s interpretation that the only experiences (and, thereby, information apprehendable to awareness) that exist are only obtainable via the physiological senses.
I’m intending to maintain otherwise … while I won’t argue a link to Humean empiricism (not quite physicalist empiricism) I do argue that it’s tied into the experiential.
Maths, while important, are to me not as important as meaning, however—since I figure that meaning is a priori to meaningful maths, i.e. maths that can be discerned as such.
Quoting Wayfarer
You should know a bit about me by now, so here it goes: it has been demonstrated that some animals can count--and hence function via recognition of numbers (the first article that popped up in a google search: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121128-animals-that-can-count). And I don’t think you’d feel comfortable categorizing lesser animals as holding any rational intelligence. Other than the greater apes and a few other of the more intelligent lesser animals, neither would I. A different, and very convoluted, topic though. But again, to me it boils down to information and awareness of information, and I'd agree that lesser animals don't have awareness of maths. Numbers is a different issue.
I disagree.
An author encodes the semantic information in their mind into a physical form (e.g., a book) suitable for transmission to others. When that transmission (physical information) is received (read) and decoded (interpreted) it becomes semantic (meaningful) information in another person's mind.
In other words, physical information becomes semantic information through interpretation (semiotic cogitation).
This is the same problem I have with Floridi's GeN (i.e., data can have a semantics independently of any informee). He asserts that Egyptian hieroglyphics had meaning prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone (and its subsequent translation) in spite of the fact that nobody on Earth at that time knew what the hieroglyphs meant.
Whereas, I contend that: because nobody knew what they meant, they had no meaning for anyone alive at that time.
Meaning is located in a person's mind, nowhere else.
That would be a useful exercise (i.e., defining information) in that it might help further this discussion.
I agree that your concept of "meaning" presents this difficulty. However, information is not a property, it is an object which can be physical and/or psychophysical.
In addition to providing a definition of "information", it would be helpful if you could provide a definition of "data", otherwise I have no idea what you mean when using these terms (though I suspect it is substantially different from what I mean).
True, but they were still written in a script, written by people to record meaning. So they are different to the scratches left in a rock by glacial action. Their meaning couldn't be discerned, but it potentially, and eventually, was.
Quoting Galuchat
I don't know about that. Certainly meaning can only be discerned by a mind, but I think there are elements of thought and language that are common to all who think. So I wouldn't like to say that they are peculiar to a specific subject.
Can you elaborate? Thanks.
I wasn't. Mindless, natural processes do something. Natural selection is a mindless process, which means that it has no agency. The theory of evolution by natural selection is a description of the process itself. The process of natural selection is environmental feedback where the environment as a whole interacts with it's constituents and vice versa. An example is coat color where one's coat matches the the color of the environment and makes it more difficult to see as compared to other colors, which allows that animal a greater chance of not being eaten. Jerry Coyne calls natural selection the "engine of evolution" in his book, "Why Evolution is True".
Quoting WayfarerWhat you're saying here is that the tree rings can't be part of a causal relationship with some visual sensory system of the tree, because the tree doesn't have one. An arborist has a visual sensory system to see the tree rings and then follow the causal sequence backwards to know what the tree rings mean, or what information they carry. How is it that all arborists agree what the tree rings mean and they all point to how the tree rings were caused? Are tree rings the result of how the tree grows throughout the year? Isn't that what the tree rings mean? Would that be the case if there were no visual sensory systems to interact with the tree rings to continue a causal sequence?
When the thing we are talking about continues to interact with things and create new effects (like how it appears to a mind), then we can say that the information about the cause continues to flow through time. If no one ever looked at a tree stump, or ever wondered how those rings got there, would the tree rings still have information? Of course because they were caused. Information is all around us that we simply ignore or filter out. Information isn't made simply by looking at something and interpreting it. The information is already there. It just continues to flow forward in time as it interacts with other things to create new effects where the effects carry information about all the causes that led up to the effect we are talking about.
How does the information in your head get in to mine without causation? When you have an idea, you then need to think about how to say it, and then you need to type it, and then you need to proofread it submit it. I then need to read it and interpret it. If you can agree with this then I don't see why you can't agree that information resides in all causal relationships, including the ones out there that we never notice, or bother looking at. It's just the information doesn't continue to flow, or establish new causal relationships with our visual sensory system, but it does continue to interact with other things when we aren't looking. When we decide to notice it, then it is a particular effect in the chain of causation that we notice, not the original cause. We have to follow the causal sequence backwards to find the particular cause/information we are looking for. We could follow the causal sequence of tree ring formation all the way back to the Big Bang if we wanted to - if that was the bit of information we were after.
It makes sense to me that causality should be linked to notions of data and/or information origin and/or history. How would you include it in a definition?
I never said you denied the "world out there". Idealists don't deny a "world out there" either. It is what keeps them from falling off the cliff into solipsism. They just say that everything, including the "world out there", is mental. What you seem to be saying is that there are two distinct realities. The one out there and the VR in your head. Isn't the VR in your head part of the world out there? If not, then how does information flow between your VR and the world out there?
When some causal sequence occurs, can we not say that the effect carries some truth about the cause? The effect doesn't interpret the cause. The effect is a direct result of the cause. Causal relationships are mindless relationships. There is no interpreting happening until it gets into a visual sensory information processor that has a goal. Once it gets into a visual sensory information processing system that has goals, then we can start talking about the truth getting muddled. But is it really getting muddled? If we are then mixing the information with our goals and then pointing to the resulting effect as if it were the original information, or cause, that is where the problem lies. If we were to prevent the information from mingling with our goal, then the information would still be pure, no? We could point to the information before mingling with our goal as the "truth". If we point to the information after it mingles with our goal and talk about the cause as if it never mingled with our goal, that is where we would be making the mistake. I hope that makes sense.
Quoting apokrisisNo. I was complaining that you were being inconsistent. If you say that we can never reach the truth, but only a semblance of it, then your explanation of reality is as irrelevant as anyone else's. How can you go about testing your theory when the outcome of any test will have your purpose imposed on it? It's no different than saying, "We can never know anything.", which is a contradiction. If we can never know anything, then how did you come to know that we can never know anything?
Quoting apokrisisIsn't the self out there as well? How else can my self interact with your self? How else can we transfer information between each other if we aren't connected in some way causally?
When you type your post, your idea changes into a physical form of words on a screen. The words on the screen are not your idea, but a representation of it. If no one ever read your post, would it still contain "truth" in that it accurately represents your idea without any mind coming along and muddling it with their own purpose? If so, then how is it that it doesn't contain "truth" when it continues to flow into another mind, like mine when I read it? I'm not trying to impose MY purpose on it. If I did, I'd never get at what YOU were saying. When communicating, we attempt to get at what the speaker, or writer, is saying. We are attempting to get at the speaker, or writer's purpose, not our own.
Quoting apokrisis
This went over my head. I have no idea what you are saying here. "How selves and worlds arise" seems to me talk about causation and time existing independently of minds. How do selves and worlds arise? Arise from what? How long does it take? What is the causal sequence of events?
How can you make any objective statements about the world when you say that we impose our subjective purposes onto what it is we see and hear all the time?
It seems to me that natural selection would favor organisms that tend to impose their subjectivity on the world less and see the world more as it really is. If what you say is true then that makes makes problems for the theory of natural selection. If what you say is true, then the process of natural selection isn't an objective process out there, but rather a subjective process in here.
Quoting apokrisis
But you used the term "self" yourself in saying that "the self is actually in here". You seem to be the one committing the crime of assuming an infinite homuncular regrees. I'm not because I'm saying that the self isn't in here. The self is out there with everything else. There is no out there and in here. That is the fault of dualism.
If the self isn't real, then how can you give it a location which is relative to the location of the world? If the self isn't real, then how do you explain communication at all? Who, or what, is communicating? How do you explain a difference in opinion in how we interpret the world if it isn't a difference in selves? You are not me, and I am not you. If you're saying I am part of you, or vice versa, then you are talking about solipsism.
I never said that the self resides in my head. The self is my entire body, not just my mind. So there is no little self inside my head looking at the qualia. My body is simply taking in information and reacting to it based on my genetic disposition and previous experiences. Simple cause and effect (information flow). This is why you can look at how I am behaving and not only determine how I interpret my sensory information, but what it is that I'm seeing that is causing me to behave this way. My behavior carries information about not just what is in my mind, but what is out there that I'm reacting to. You may react differently but that isn't to say that the thing out there has different properties for both of us. It is saying that we both produce different effects because we ourselves are part of the causal sequence that mingles with the thing out there. We are different causes ourselves, which is why we produce different outcomes (effects) when interacting with the same thing. It's no different than talking about mixing two different ingredients in water. You get different outcomes even though water was an ingredient in both.
Quoting apokrisisAnd we are part of the world, so we can say that our representations are part of the world as well. They are the outcome of our selves interacting with the world - no different than any other mix of causes leading to other outcomes. To separate our selves from the world as if our selves aren't part of the causal sequence, or information flow, is to make a serious mistake and causes many problems (dualism)
Quoting apokrisisBut swirling lights and coloured dots isn't a world. It is just the firing of "bored" synapses. If we created a world when we close our eyes, then why is there a clear distinction between the world I imagine and the world I experience when I open my eyes. I can imagine any world I want in my head, but that world is less vivid than the world I experience when I open my eyes. As a matter of fact, when I open my eyes, the sensory information is imposing compared to the world I create in my head. It imposes itself on me. It's signals are very strong compared to the world in my head.
Quoting apokrisisThen there would be no direct reason why a world might cause our way of modeling it. It is pointless to wonder about why a particular effect is the result of a particular cause as if it could be any different.
Quoting apokrisis I could see this being the case for non-social organisms, but human beings are highly social. We seek others out for companionship and to share ideas, so I don't see us wanting to ignore each other. That would mean that we aren't a social species. Bees and ants are no different. If ignoring each other is our default disposition, it would falsify that we are a social species.
Our posts are getting long. I'm sorry if I missed something you said. If so, then please point it out.
I'm not sure what it is you are asking for - a definition of causality, or a definition of information. It seems to me that when you define one, you are defining the other. It seems to me that you would also be defining "meaning".
When a U-boat sends a coded message, there is an in-band signal and an out-of-band signal (I may be abusing these terms, but whatever): the in-band signal is the coded message they are intentionally sending which can only be understood by folks that know the code, preferably only the intended recipient(s); the out-of-band signal they send unintentionally simply by using their radio transmitter. This latter signal tells whoever can detect (and triangulate) the signal where the U-boat is.
When a plant grows phototropically, it's using out-of-band signals from the sun and whatever nearby plants block our hero's access to sunlight. In general, senses make sense as out-of-band signal receivers. Things around you, animate and inanimate, radiate some of the sunlight that strikes them, unintentionally, and your eyes pick up that signal.
This is just a way of framing the issue. The question is: how does the in-band signal arise? Senses readily receive both kinds of signals, but then they have to be sorted into the two types and processed differently, etc.
ADDED:
If you look at something like the chemical trail-marking ants do, the distinction would seem to be not that the ants do this "intentionally", in some full-blooded sense, but that there is an "intended" audience, only members of which can decode the signal.
(Austin is looking over my shoulder. Do the ants leave pheromones "accidentally"? "Inadvertently"? "Unthinkingly"?)
It's a good point. But doesn't the distinction give rise to a four way division as we now have two different dimensions to consider?
One is the intentional vs accidental distinction. The other is the sender vs receiver distinction.
So we can have the sender accidentally sending, but the receiver reading intentional meaning into the signs - as with the U-boat leaking news of its position or the plant seeking the light.
Then we have the three other cases. Intentional sender/intentional receiver. Intentional sender/accidental receiver. Accidental sender/accidental receiver.
A rock heated by the sun lacks the intention (the reason, the purpose, the functional benefit, the semantic meaningfulness) just as much as the sun lacks the intention of transmitting that heat to the rock.
A religious crank with a placard might intone his message to the crowd, but for the crowd it is just background noise. A case of intentional sender/accidental receiver.
Then we have the actual case of transmitted meanings which require the co-ordination of intentional sender/intentional receiver. The two sides of the equation have to become co-ordinated in their mental state. They must have understandings that are similarly constrained.
And of course this is where we get to the "beetle in a box" difficulty of private meanings and have to conclude something about how, in practice, this level of semantic meaningfulness can only be demonstrated by the similarity of behaviour that results. Semantics does boil down to effective limits on material spontaneity or behavioural degrees of freedom.
This is in fact an important point, given Wayfarer wants to defend the mental reality of meaning. He wants to grant understanding some kind of res cogitans status separate from the material signs themselves. But maybe the psychological reality just is established habits of behaviour. The mental does reduce to the actions that make sense of signs, or pragmatic interpretance.
Anyway, the OP does focus on the transmission of information. And it is in itself telling that it was just assumed the transmission was between minds with matchable states of intentionality when it should be obvious that the boundary between the deliberate and the accidental is porous here. Any reader can read too much or too little into any signal. The perfect transmission of semantics in fact looks an impossible dream. The sending and receiving of messages is always fraught with uncertainty.
Which should really make one think about what is going on when one talks things through with oneself. :)
When h. sapiens evolve to the point of being able to recognise logic and number, I believe they are discovering something, not creating or inventing something. In other words, on the contested question of whether number is 'discovered or invented', I am advocating the former (which is generally Platonist). I'm arguing that the 'furniture of reason' - such things as grammatical structure, the laws of logic and so on - are not the product of mental activity, but can only be grasped by a rational intelligence. So certainly they're intellectual or mental, but no less real than the phenomenal objects of perception.
I think it was Srap Tasmaner who mentioned Frege's 'Third Realm' - I have a lot of sympathy for that view. 'Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he said "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it. Thought contents are true and bear their relations to one another (and presumably to what they are about) independently of anyone's thinking these thought contents - "just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets." Tyler Burge, Frege and the Third Realm
This is close to the point I was getting at in the OP - that 'intelligible objects' including ideas are real, but intelligible. So, real but not physical - which is why I wanted to qualify the suggestion that meaning being 'in the mind' might imply that it is therefore 'merely subjective'.
I don't want to get into this argument in this thread, but in my view, Jerry Coyne is - let's see - the materialist equivalent of a young-earth creationist. He is a 'darwinian fundamentalist'. His POV reduces everything to Darwinian biology.
Yeah exactly. And once you're aware of the out-of-band signal, you can avoid sending one (for instance, if sinking a ship would indicate you've been reading the enemy's mail) or deliberately send a false one, etc.
I was thinking about Grice's just-so story about how an animal might make what was heretofore an involuntary signal voluntarily, as a step toward language, etc. But this is already an in-band signal.
Ants, for instance, might develop a mechanism for recognizing each other, develop a unique chemical to do the job, like a team jersey, and then once that's in place the next step is marking something else with that chemical. What's the semantic content there? It looks a lot like an out-of-band signal, like a footprint, except it's done with something team-specific. The message is no more than a footprint would carry-- somebody on my team was here-- but it's a footprint only your team members can see. Hopefully.
(And then Ed Wilson comes along with a q-tip dipped in your team pheromone and can write "hello, world" in ants.)
Thanks, but kind of oblique to the point I'm laboring. My original point is simply that it is incorrect to say that information is necessarily physical, as the physical representation can be entirely changed, but the information remain the same. So they're separable. To elaborate on that, this is because the mind is able to represent ideas by symbolic means, but the ideas themselves are distinct from the symbols. Of course the mind is continually imputing or inferring meaning as per the example in the OP. But that is just the illustration of a particular faculty, namely, intelligence, which is derived from a compound word meaning 'to read between', to 'pick out' or 'discern' 1.
I am saying the "reality" is the wholeness of the modelling relation. So it is the co-ordination between the two - the modeller and the world. And then the point that the mechanism of the co-ordination is not some naive realist "veridical representation", but in fact a useful "irreality" in terms of experiential sign.
For a semiotic relation to arise, first the mental side of the equation must be freed from having to be literal.
Imagine we just felt the radiant energy in some more literal fashion. Standing in the field, the tree would heat the surface of your body slightly differently depending on whether it was reflecting light more in the "green" frequency or more in the "red". In fact the difference would be so slight and so diffuse as to be pretty well useless at telling you anything. A vast amount of signal processing would have to be employed to tell you anything about the world.
But because biology is free to form its signs of the world in more logical fashion - as crisp binary signals of what is vs what is not - the irreality of colour discrimination can arise. Two frequencies of radiation that have a vanishingly slight difference from each other can be treated by the brain as the very opposite of each other - as with red and green.
So this is the crucial thing your argument looks to be missing. You want the world to be the cause, the perception the effect. But the mind wants to be disconnected from that kind of directness so it can invent its own more useful system of sign. It wants to already have converted the physical information available in the world into some logically-processed sensory quality.
Thus I'm not talking about a virtual reality, if you are going to take that as just talk about an attempt at a veridical re-presentation of the world within some Cartesean theatre. I'm talking about the virtuality of a semiotic umwelt. The world as we find it most useful to experience it. The signs that best anchor our habits of interpretance.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That is silly. An epistemology that includes the fact that our view of reality is a purpose-soaked model, a semiotic umwelt, is truer than naive idealism or naive realism.
Explaining why and how the goal of "reaching truth" is naive realism is rather the point here.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That is contradicted by the facts of psychology and neuroscience.
Just one example that always struck me. Compared to chimps, humans have a proportionately larger foveal representation in their primary visual cortex, a proportionately smaller peripheral vision one.
So we have evolved less need to process the edges of our visual field as we are more certain about where we need to focus our attention. A larger brain makes us better at predicting the part of the world which is going to be interesting to us.
Think also of colour vision. Why do birds and bees have more cone pigments than we do? We make do with just three. They get four or five. And it would seem trivial for evolution to generate any number. Why is less also more in hue discrimination?
Quoting Harry Hindu
But sensory deprivation experiments (and hypnagogic imagery/REM dreams) show that starved of real world input for long enough, the brain does just completely invent a world of impressions. And we can't distinguish the fictional nature of the experience while that is our state of experience. Even afterwards, hallucinations may never be categorised as unreal.
Peirce covers the intermediate cases by talking about three classes of sign - iconic, indexical and symbolic. One just accidentally indicates, one habitually points, the last is fully intentional as it demands interpretation.
Yeah I get that. The problem people have with Frege's third realm is that it's platonism, which kinda blows.
I'm looking to work my way up from the bottom. There's a phenomenon of two utterances "saying the same thing", yes, but are we forced to say there's a thing, an immaterial, eternal thing, that they both say? No we are not. (Quine attacked synonymy precisely because he wanted to reject "the proposition".) But that leaves us with the burden of explaining what propositions (and all the rest) are posited to explain.*
That's what I'm trying to do. If you're okay with platonism, then yeah what I have to say will be irrelevant.
*ADDED: "explain" is way too strong; "describe" is more like it.
That would be the other reason to approach the issue the way I am.
He's good with lists, that Peirce guy.
Thanks for the explanation. I am in general agreement.
By having a physical presence and not merely a physical representation.
This is the difference between Aristotelian realism (where the abstract is present in the concrete particulars) and Platonic realism (where the physical world is a representation of the forms).
For a physics example, consider the double-slit experiment. If there is information about which slit each photon went through then no interference pattern forms. So information cannot be a purely abstract entity - it has a physical footprint that makes an observable difference.
However, that is an interesting point about the contrast between the Aristotelean and Platonic attitude; as it happens, I have just borrowed Gerson's Aristotle and Other Platonists, which I hope will have some discussion of these points.
Our understanding of nature is indistinguishable from nature.
Per Aristotelian realism, it's not either-or. Observation involves a physical process.
Quoting Wayfarer
Should be interesting. The relevant issue here is Aristotle's solution to the problem of universals.
Everything is real but information is a construct of the mind to convey and share with another mind. There is nothing informative about quantum with the interest of an interested mind.
Here again, we have the issue of "the 'same' meaning" assigned to different phenomenal information. As I explained, I take this to be contradictory. If the two distinct phenomenal occurrences really had the same meaning to you, you would not be able to tell them apart, because it is by virtue of differences in what each of them means to you, that you distinguish one from the other.
Quoting javra
I do not believe that these three really have the same meaning to anyone. What I believe is that we have been trained to focus on the essential points of meaning, while disregarding the accidentals. So it is through this training that we come to assert that all these different symbols have "the same meaning". But really they have no more the same meaning than two human beings are the same by virtue of being human beings.
Quoting javra
The point is, if I describe to you what 4 means to me, and also what IV means to me, these descriptions will not be the same. I will surely refer to the second as a Roman Numeral, and I will not use this to refer to the first. Likewise, "4" means something different to me depending on the context. It could be a person's age (Joe is 4), the time (meet me at 4), etc.. And I think that if you asked a number of different people what four means, they would likely not use the same words to describe this. That is why I think that this premise, that the same meaning is conveyed by different phenomena is not an acceptable premise.
Quoting Galuchat
There are many problems with this perspective. First, as I described, it dissolves the distinction between creating meaning, and interpreting meaning. If all instances of meaning are within one's mind, then each instance is a case of creating meaning. So we can proceed to ask, what is it which exists in the physical world which we interpret. And in the case of language, we can answer this by saying that it is something created with the intent of making you create a certain meaning in your mind. Now we have two acts of creation to account for, creating the physical symbols, and creating the meaning in the mind.
From my perspective, the author creates meaning, within the physical world, by rearranging existing things, creating a particular order, which is meaning. The interpreter interprets the meaning, and what exists in the mind is an interpretation, not the meaning itself. There is only one act of creation, and this is when the symbols are given physical existence. The act of interpreting cannot be an act of creating, or else the interpreter is free to create whatever meaning one wants when interpreting.
It's a very extensive argument to go through the different points for and against these two positions, but I can point to some difficulties with yours. You will have difficulty with "correct meaning", or "objective meaning", as the meaning of a statement is dependent on subjective interpretation. You will also have difficulty giving context its appropriate role in meaning.
Quoting Galuchat
From your stated premise, you cannot call this a transmission of meaning, because the meaning is only created within the mind. You might call it "information", that which is transmitted, but this creates an unnecessary divide between information and meaning, when "information" is generally used to refer to a type of meaning, objective, or correct meaning. So you would have to say that the person creates meaning, then converts the meaning into information, which is transmitted to the other, and the other converts the information back into meaning.
But what really happens, is that the person has the words, which are the symbols, right inside one's mind. So there is no transformation between what is in one's mind, and the physical words. The same symbols (words) exist within one's mind as do outside of one's mind. We must not be distracted by that unnecessary division.
If we separate what the words mean, from the words themselves, then we could say that the meaning is in the mind only. But since the words, as well as the meaning exist within the mind, this separation is not easy. We could ask what is meant by a particular statement, and the answer would be more words, so this doesn't help with the separation. Meaning and words are still united. I think that we can only bring into effect such a separation if we point to things outside the mind. Then we have a separation, the words are in the mind, and the meaning, which is the things referred to by the words, is outside the mind. So to uphold that separation we have to say that meaning is outside the mind.
Quoting Galuchat
I do not think that any object can be both physical and psychophysical (though I don't know exactly what you mean by this), because this would be a category error. I understand psychophysical to refer to the relationship between physical and psychological. It appear to me, like you have just made up another category, such that if you cannot determine whether X is a property of the physical, or a property of the psychological, you make another category, saying that X is not a property of either of these, but it's an object in the newly created category of psychophysical.
Quoting Galuchat
I don't like the word "data", and I rarely use it. You were using it, so I tried to reply in a way consistent with your usage. It appears like I don't understand your usage, so l'll refrain from using it and only ask for clarification from you, when necessary.
Good argument. Here is another argument to prove that information is indeed non-physical.
P1: All that is physical abides to the law of conservation of mass and energy. E.g. if I give you a physical thing, I have less of it.
P2: Information does not abide to this law. E.g. if I give you information, I don't have less of it.
C: Therefore information is not physical.
Seriously guys?
The usual model among humans would be that I'm making a copy of a piece of information I have, and then giving you the copy. My copy is instantiated in memory; yours in sound waves or ink or pixels, whatever. On your end, you can copy the copy into your memory, or not.
Every step here will consume free energy.
One two three four
I declare a thumb war
The only thing that 'consumes free energy' is the manufacturing of whatever physical copy you make. Samuel's point was simply that the actual information - it might be a story, for example, or a formula - can be transmitted, but you still retain it. And you do more that 'copy the copy' - you understand it, you learn it. It might, for instance, impart a new skill, a piece of knowledge - how to make something. That's because it's an idea.
What's the difference between a hard drive full of information, and a hard drive with nothing on it? They both weigh the same, they're physically identical - the only difference is that the 'full' drive 'contains' information, which comprises the sequence of zeros and ones on that drive. It's not as if by 'filling' it with information, anything material is added - the existing matter is simply organised a particular way. Is the organisation physical? Well, sure, but as per the OP, the information that it contains can be represented in binary code, or it could all be represented in books. The information is represented physically, but it belongs to a different kind of level than the physical representation.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I wanted to come back to this comment The problem is one of reification. Consider for example, a number - is that 'a thing'? I say not. Now, what number is, is actually a notoriously complex problem - the Wikipedia article on Philosophy of Math is a very large article, with many references. So I'm not proposing a solution to the question of 'what number is'. But I will say that, whatever a number is, it can only be grasped by a mind capable of counting. That is the sense in which it is an 'intelligible object' - but the word 'object' is misleading, or perhaps metaphorical, as there really is no such 'object' (other than the symbol, but the symbol only denotes the value).
I think part of the resistance to the Platonist view of number (i.e. Platonic realism) is because it understands the Platonist view to be that numbers are real, in the same sense that phenomenal objects are real. Hence the common objection that they must exist in 'some ghostly realm' - something for which there is no evidence.
But I think the Platonist view is that there are different levels or kinds of reality - that number (for example) is real in a different way to sensory objects. That, at any rate, is the implication of Platonic epistemology, i.e. that there are different forms of knowledge (pistis, dianoia, noesis) that pertain to different levels of reality ( see the analogy of the divided line.)
The reason why modern philosophy, in particular, won't accommodate that, is because there is no conception of ontological levels in modern philosophy. A modern philosopher will generally say something either exists or it doesn't; so the number 7 exists, but the square root of 2 does not. If numbers are real at all, they are real 'in our heads', i.e. they are grounded in neurology, instantiated by the brain, they're a function of the way the brain works. That effectively means they can be understood to exist in the same way as any other kind of thing.
I think in pre-modern philosophy, there was an understanding of an hierarchy of being, such that number was at a higher level than sensory objects, on account of their timelessness. Being timeless, they're 'higher', or nearer the origin of things. That at any rate was one of the themes of Platonism and NeoPlatonism, but it was that understanding which was lost (or 'flattened') by nominalism and, later, by empiricism in late medieval/early modern times (see What's Wrong with Ockham?)
Looks like we might be addressing different things in reference to meaning.
It seems that by the same arguments you’ve articulated, no two languages could share any meaning whatsoever, since the two languages are utterly different in their phenomenal information—and, as your given argument goes, for them to share the same meaning is for whatever so shares the same meaning to be indistinguishable phenomenally. But this would result in the conclusion that all translations are fully untrue in their correspondence to any meaning conveyed in the original language.
I’ll argue that meaning itself has multiple layers such that, for example, the core meaning to “yes”, “da”, and “si” is identical to itself while there is additional meaning which, for instance, endows recognition of the specific language utilized to express the core referent of meaning. This, then, is noncontradictory to the reality of language translations (granting exceptions where meanings may overlap but will not be the same in different languages).
In my case, since you asked, the main inputs to keep me running are caffeine, nicotine, and peanut butter. I think maintenance of my memories is paid for by the peanut butter.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, you keep your copy, if you're getting enough peanut butter. I think I mentioned that you keep your copy. Or are you suggesting that, peanut butter aside, I can just have the actual information instead, the real thing, and not bother with having a copy?
Quoting Wayfarer
Seriously? "Physically identical"?
A hard drive with the collected works of Peirce on it-- let's say it's a big hard drive-- is physically identical to a hard drive fresh from the factory?
Supposing there were a physical difference, do you think electricity might be required to produce that difference?
All the same stuff, but arranged differently. And indeed, electricity is required to encode the information on the hard drive, as it's an electro-mechanical device.
I read once the Arabs used to play chess, whilst riding camels, with no board.
Information appears to be massless, is perhaps what you wanted to say, and that is interesting.
Blindfold chess is a thing. It takes a ton of energy.
How exactly can you give me information? Say you have some bitstring that you want to give me. You need to input energy into the system to send that bitstring out over a communication network. You don't have less information than you started with, but you did have to expend energy to reproduce that information and transmit it across a distance. The information itself has to be stored somewhere, on a hard drive for example that takes a constant input of energy to keep spinning.
Leave electronics out of it. Take a classical technology like a book. A book sits in a library, in physical form. Someone had to mash up some dead trees and mark up the paper with ink and run it off a printing press and truck it over to the library. These are all physical actions that require an input of energy.
Now I show up at the library or bookstore and I read the book. The information has been transmitted to me. Well that's amazing, except that in order for that to happen, some light had to hit the paper and bounce onto my retina and get transmitted to my brain. All physical processes whose energy content could be calculated by a biophysicist.
And eventually that book will disintegrate into dust from exposure to the air and the light. If instead you seal it up so that no air and no light can ever get to it, you can preserve it forever. But then you can never transmit that information.
So I challenge your assertion that you can duplicate information for free, and that you can send someone information without having less of it yourself. It's a subtle point, you might be able to save or at least sharpen your argument. It may be true that abstract information -- the story told by the book -- is nonphysical. But any representation of the information is physical; and it's the representations that are transmitted, not the abstract information. Abstract information has no physical existence; and therefore you are going to be hardpressed to say that it has any existence at all. When I dream, my neurons and brain processes are working like crazy, and using energy derived from what I ate for lunch. It's all physical.
Now I am not making an argument against Platonism. But I'm asking if you are making an argument FOR Platonism. And if "information" lives out there in the Platonic non-physical realm, what else lives there? The baby Jesus? The flying spaghetti monster? The number 5? Your argument depends on information living somewhere that's not physical. That's a lot of ontological baggage to carry.
You can only transmit physical representations of information. Your argument fails on that point I think. And even the abstraction of information only lives in the mind, and mind (as far as we know) is a function of brain, and brain is a physical process that stops if you don't keep putting in energy from outside the system.
When you have a deliriously cool creamy ice cream cone, where do you think that deliciousness, cool, creamy taste is... in the thing? Do you think something exists in the same way as it is given to you, Aren't these qualities dependent on you, and what the ice cream cone is in it self quite different.
Herein lies the essential difference in our positions on "meaning". I do not conceive of information as semantic only, but also physical. Thanks very much for your comments, but we will have to agree to disagree on this matter.
It's a fair point (as stated).
The operation of the human mind consists of psychophysical (simultaneously mental and physical) processes. Whether I choose to focus on the mental or physical aspect (or both) depends entirely on the conceptual task at hand.
In fact, mental conditions and functions, and their anatomical and physiological correlates, are one of the best (or most complex) examples of the interaction of physical and semantic information.
What the ice cream cone is in itself is an incoherent concept.
This is like the argument for independent Ideas in Plato's Parmenides. The Idea is said to be like the day. It doesn't matter how many different places partake in the day, the day loses nothing of itself. And no matter how many things partake in the Idea, it loses nothing of itself.
Quoting javra
That's right, my argument is that all interpretations are subjective. Because of this, no two interpretations are the same. So even two people interpreting the same statement in the same language get something different from it, they see different meaning in it.
Quoting javra
The problem though, is that the same word has different meanings dependent on the context of usage. So you claim "the core meaning" of a word "is identical to itself". But what do you mean by this? There is no such thing as the core meaning, it is just an assumption that you make to support your claims. Each instance of usage has a particular meaning, and of course there are similarities, but to claim that there is a core meaning is just to claim that you could make some inductive conclusion concerning these similarities. Even if you could actually make such an inductive conclusion, like the authors of a dictionary do, where does that leave you? All you would do is create a descriptive rule about how the word is used. There's a big gap between being able to produce a descriptive rule about how a word is used, and the claim that a word has "a core meaning".
Quoting Galuchat
Now you're showing less disagreement. I conceive of information as physical as well. So we agree here. But I also conceive of meaning as physical, and this is where we disagree. I think that you are attempting to create an unwarranted separation between information and meaning, in order to support your untenable premise that meaning only exists in minds.
Quoting Galuchat
The issue here is related to objects. I think you referred to psychophysical objects. We can identify, as Plato does, sensible objects and intelligible objects. We can also note that there is interaction between the two, and you might call this psychophysical processes. But this doesn't justify "psychophysical objects".
So if we attempt to understand psychophysical processes, we need to distinguish between the activities (as properties) of sensible objects, and the activities (properties) of intelligible objects, in order to develop this understanding. To mix these two together, claiming some type of vague psychophysical objects, when we are really referring to processes, is to invite category error. This conflation, and consequent category error is evident in concepts like "mental state", and "inter-subjective object"
Moods and emotions are mental conditions produced by affect (a mind-body response to sensory stimulation and/or interoception). So, I don't have a problem referring to moods, emotions, and affect as psychophysical objects.
You're not even making an attempt to rebut what I wrote. All you're saying is "I don't like Coyne's point of view". Idealists reduce everything to mind. Materialists reduce everything to the physical. Apo is reducing everything down to a triangular relationship. So, what's your point?
I'm not arguing for naive realism. I'm not saying that we see the world as it really is, or that we could ever see the world as it really is. Seeing is a process of representing the world via the information in visible light. To ask how the world looks independent of looking at it, as if you were trying to compare how it looks to you to how it really looks, is an irrelevant question. The way the world looks is how the local part of it interacts with a visual sensory system.
What I'm saying is that we are informed about the world through the transfer of information by causation.
By reading your post, am I informed of your intent, or am I informed of my own intent? Am I reading your post as you type it? How do you explain it taking time to type your post and for me to read it? You can only explain communication by using causation. I am only informed of your post AFTER you type it and submit it. How do you explain that except by causation?
Quoting apokrisis
How can you go about testing your theory when the outcome of any test will have your purpose imposed on it? All you are saying is your theory is the result of YOUR purposes and your interests, which means that it is only useful to you, not anyone else. I don't see how you don't get that. I think you do, which is why you avoided answering this question from my previous post.
Quoting apokrisis
This can be explained by conservation of energy. Natural selection must make compromises in "designing" sensory systems as the amount of energy available isn't infinite, and it would probably take an infinite amount of energy to be informed of the world in it's completeness. So, we would be limited by the amount of energy, not some self deciding which parts of a sensory system are more useful than another part.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Going back to why you uphold this to be so:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Your core argument again is that for the same meaning to hold presence nondifferentiable phenomenal information must be apprehended.
So I don’t yet understand how your arguments can support the reality of different subjects sometimes sharing the same meaning.
No two subjects will ever experience identical phenomenal information at any given time, this because each will be a unique first person point of view (nor will the same subject ever experience two identical bodies of phenomenal information during the entirety of its lifetime—but I’ll drop this second line of argument for now as regards stable meaning over time).
Then, how does your argument not result in a solipsism regarding the body of meaning that any individual subject holds?
Seems to me this very conversation would then be nonsensical as a conversation since no meaning whatsoever would be common to us (i.e., the same relative to each of us). For starters, we perceive the phenomenal information on what I presume to be our individual screens differently—and our understanding of the phenomenal information’s meaning will furthermore be dependent on vastly different contexts of experiential historicity (which can theoretically impart both vastly different connotations and denotations to the phenomenal information observed).
This seems like the same type/token distinction we've encountered together before.
I suppose the answer depends in part on what we mean by "information". Each of the various token representations comes with more information than the bit that's relevant in the example. For instance, information about the flags or the ink, information about the agent's waving or handwriting, information about the light and atmosphere in which we perceive those signs, information about the state of our eyes.... Is there any information that comes to us by way of perception without some such extraneous features?
What counts as "information" in this conversation, or perhaps especially among information theorists or information scientists? The abstract repeatable type, or the concrete physical instantiation, or perhaps both?
What does it mean to say those outward signs "represent the same fact", or that the inner physiological processes of each relevant perceiver lead him to "grasp the same fact"?
I see no reason to suppose the type is anything but an abstraction, a convenient rule for thought and action, whose real basis lies in the similarity of tokens, not in some putative metaphysical identity of types.
You and I see the same apple, but we don't therefore have the same perception. You and I grasp the same fact, or refer to the same entity by name, but it's only a misleading convention that leads us to say we thus "have the same thought". It seems more fitting to say that the thoughts that run through our heads when we grasp the same fact or refer to the same entity, are about as different as the perceptions that run through our heads when we see the same apple.
When we enjoy adequately similar cognition of the same objects, we might say we have the same "type" of cognition, but to speak accurately and modestly, it seems this only means that we have very similar cognition of the same.
However we choose to tack verbiage upon these appearances, it seems we tend toward harmony, conformity, and agreement in perception, speech, and action, by waving flags, scribbling marks, or uttering noises.
What does it mean to say that something exists but is "not physical"?
Well, I am saying 'not physical', so that's close!
Quoting fishfry
Natural numbers, perhaps. The flying spaghetti monster is a fictional parody. The Baby Jesus is a religious icon.
But another name for the domain of information is the 'formal domain' - the domain of logical and mathematical truths, generally. I suppose philosophical theology would include 'revealed truth' in that domain. But there are usually at least some mathematicians that are Platonists, for instance, Kurt Gödel.
Gödel and the Nature of Mathematical Truth.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Because I think your fundamental premise of 'information being the relationship between cause and effect', and what issues from that, is plainly mistaken, but that this is something I would be unable to persuade you of. Secondly, because, as I said before, it's pointless to debate philosophy against naive or scientific realism. Saying you're a naive or scientific realist, isn't to say you're naive, because you're plainly not, and it's not intended as a pejorative. But I doubt I could say anything to shift that perspective.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
@Apokrisis answered that in terms of it being 'a difference which makes a difference'. I think used as a generality, that is too vague, but look at it in this particular context. Something has to be conveyed to the Harbourmaster, about type of boat, nationality, time of arrival. Without that information, the dock won't be prepared, customs won't be ready, a harbour pilot won't be sent out to meet the ship. So not getting that information makes a difference. Furthermore if the wrong flags are raised, or the right flags read wrongly, then the incorrect preparation will be made - so again, a significant difference.
The crucial point is that information whatever requires a code to convey it. I could spell out the information about the arrival of the ships by using white pebbles on a dark background. But a random pile of pebbles doesn't encode anything, so it doesn't convey anything. There is neither syntax nor semantics involved. It is only when I want to convey information, that a sequence of signs has to be arranged.
Here's an interesting fact. 'Information' in the sense of 'an ordered sequence which conveys a difference' can only be observed, in nature, in two broad instances - in the output of human communications, and in the activity of DNA - in other words, in the activities of life and mind. (I am dubious as to whether there is any point in describing the domain of physics in terms of information.)
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
In which case, you and I would never be able to converse! If you say 'apple' and I think 'banana', then it's game over for communicating. That's why language and reasoning are essentially universalising activities - they rely on our grasp of types, of generalities - when you say 'apple', any English-speaking person should know what you mean. Given that, it is of course true that we will 'see things differently'. But we have to have something in common to begin with, for language to even work - that is the store of language with all of its subtleties and depths.
(Actually I read an interesting comment the other day on the etymological between 'idiosyncratic' and 'idiot'. An 'idiot' wasn't originally someone who was intellectually disabled, but someone who spoke in a language nobody else could understand.)
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
It means bad news for materialism.
So, what you're saying is that you're lazy? That can't be the case because I've seen you engage others and attempt to persuade those that don't want to be persuaded.
I have been persuaded before and have taken a 180 on my worldview before. If have done it before, then I obviously have an open mind to do it again. I think it's more that you don't have an argument against it.
I'll cop to that. Tell you what, start a thread on Jerry Coyne, we'll have it out there.
Also, why make a thread on a single person?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
How can you give information without expending energy?
How close?
There's a physical difference between a dog biting a man and a man biting a dog, although these two possible systems have the same total mass.
Arrangement counts for something.
From a phenomenological perspective we are "informed" twice by impressions. First there is the primordial 'whatever it is" that impresses us,affects us, now, and is the condition for the very possibility of our intentional seeing of things as this or that. In that intentional seeing of things they have always already moved from the now to the 'already passed'.
The primordial given-ness of things is not a determinate, intentional meaning. Given-ness, or phenomenality itself, is first given as non-intentional. This is obviously prior to physicality, since physicality is itself an intentional apprehension, an intentional meaning. This does not mean however that the primordial givenness of phenomenality is something non-physical, because the notion of non-physical is also an intentional meaning, and the first givenness is prior to any intentionality whatsoever.
So, determinate information is always given in physical terms, it is always physical. Indeterminate information, the first givenness, is neither physical nor non-physical, because to speak of it in terms of that intentional dichotomy is to commit an error of reification.
If I wanted to convey information about which of these events had happened, then it would be relevant to the OP. The mere fact that such things happen is not.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Clearly, 'arrangement' - or order - is key to the discussion. In the hypothetical piece, the arrangement of the flags, then the dots and dashes in the morse code, is key - get the arrangement wrong, and the information is transmitted incorrectly. But the information, the message, is what dictates the order. In this case, the order is imposed by conventions governing flags, morse code, and English, respectively - the product of minds. Again, my argument is that what is being conveyed is not describable as 'physical', even if all of the individual components that comprise the messages are physical. What is it that performs all of these transformations between media and symbolic codes? I have said that this is the role of 'intelligence'. As has been observed, there is an implicit, or maybe even explicit, dualism in this argument, by saying that the information must be separable from any form it takes; whereas the view that it is 'only physical' is monistic, the information and the form it takes are essentially the same thing.
Quoting Janus
Hmmm. I *think* you're referring to 'apperception'. But other than, struggling to make sense out of this post. Again, to hark back to mathematics - I am a math student, trying to understand a class in algebra. Teacher writes a problem on the board, and I have to solve the problem. The chalk marks on the board are surely physical, but the algebraic problem that I have to solve, comprises the relationships between ideas, I would have thought. So I don't see any sense in which that is physical.
An algebraic cannot be given or understood except in terms of physical marks and symbols; so I'm not sure what you are getting at here. I mean, how could you present any idea to me except in terms of physical marks or sounds?
Quoting Wayfarer
I am indebted to Michel Henry for his wonderful analyses and critique of Husserl's phenomenology: see Material Phenomenology.
https://www.amazon.com/Material-Phenomenology-Perspectives-Continental-Philosophy/dp/0823229440/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507847278&sr=8-1&keywords=material+phenomenology
My argument was against naive realism and in favour of indirect realism. And indirect realism accepts both the fact that knowledge is grounded in the subjectivity of self-interest, but can then aspire to the objectivity of invariant or self-interest free "truth" by a rational method of theory and test, or abductive reasoning.
So there is available to us a method for minimising the subjectivity of belief. We know how to do that measurably. It's called the scientific method. Pragmatism defines it.
You seem to both accept and reject indirect realism. It sounds as though you want to insist on some naive realism at base in talking about a cause and effect relation between the dynamics of the world and the symbols then generated within the mind.
The thing in itself is actually a pattern of radiation. The experience we have is of seeing red rather than green. Somehow that is veridical and direct as there is a physical chain of events that connects every step of the way.
But even the fact that the world is constituted of patterns of radiation - everything can be explained by the different possible frequencies of a light wave - is simply another level of idea or conception. It is a further level of theory and test.
Naive realism fails. It is indirect realism all the way down. All we can say is that a particular way of looking at the world is proving to be a good habit of interpretation over some larger scale of space and time.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Sure, the availability of energy is some kind of ultimate limit. But you are missing the point - which is how meaning even arises granted no particular limit to information capacity.
Meaning or semantics arises by a symmetry breaking of information. The information must be divided into signal and noise. The greater the contrast - the more information that is discarded as noise - the more meaningful the remaining information which is being treated as the signal.
So that is what the information theoretic approach is about. First establishing a baseline understanding of information in itself - as a physical capacity for variety, as some actual ensemble of possibilities. And then we can get to where we want to go - a principle for extracting the meaning of a message (or the physics of the world).
Semantics can be defined in a measurable fashion as the differences that make a difference ... because they are not a matter of general indifference.
That is why Landauer's principle was one of the important advances in turning attention to information discard or erasure. In the real world, eliminating noise is a big energetic cost.
Of course algebra problems are conveyed by physical (chalk) marks and symbols - I've already acknowledged that in the OP. But I'm saying the substance of the material (irony intended) is the relation of ideas, which are not physical.
Then I don't understand what basis you think there is for thinking of them as "non-physical". You don't seem to have provided any argument for that. All mathematics deals with number and quantity and without physicality there can be no number or quantity, so...
There have been huge efforts to detect life on other planets, under the acronym SETI. That search is looking for the telltale signs of life. So far, other than a few anomalous messages, and the strange behaviour of some distant stellar objects, no such telltale signs have been found anywhere in the vast universe - it would be a huge news story if they had been.
So aren't these searches looking for a particular kind of order, the existence of which indicates a footprint of biological order? And it was in the context of that order, in which the division between 'symbolic' and 'physical' was made, wasn't it? How can that be extended to any old matter?
Quoting Janus
There is mental arithmetic, in fact there are many things in maths which are impossible to realise physically.
Think again: the number '7'. Certainly, the symbol is physical - but what does it refer to? It refers to a concept, a quantity, which can only be grasped by a mind capable of counting, of saying that 'this means that', and also of understanding that 7=7, not 6 or 8. It is an intelligible object (using the word 'object' metaphorically), not a material object. Us humans can understand that; my faithful dog cannot, except for perhaps in the most rudimentary way (although I do note the apparent delight people take nowadays in saying that 'animals count'.)
That's because you choose to ignore that the arrangement of these physical components is also physical.
I don't get how you don't get that you are restating my argument.
Look, here is the unmistakable evidence of intelligent life on Mars...
Is that physical information a deliberate signal or unintentional noise. You decide. Or rather, it is matter of interpretance. Which belief is going to minimise your capacity to make wrong predictions?
The symbol '7' only exists in different physical forms as representations. What it represents is the idea of a quantity; an idea which can only really be grasped insofar as it refers to physical things.
Think about the Wittgenstein's "The world is the totality of facts, not of things". If we take this to refer to in part to the spatial relationships between things; their arrangement in space, that arrangement is not itself a physical thing additional to the things arranged. It is also not a non-physical thing because an arrangement cannot be conceived at all except in terms of things.
To say that a number is an intelligible object is misleading; it leads to the kind of reification that results in Platonism. Number is an intelligible attribute of physical things. In order that there be things at all, there must be number or quantity; it is something we apprehend in the things. But it is misleading to say that it therefore must be some extra non-physical quality that 'exists' or is 'real' somewhere beyond the things themselves.
1 imagined abstraction of some non-physical world (e.g., a heaven or hell) + 1 imagined abstraction of some other non-physical world = 2 non-physical givens consisting of non-physical information. Unless one upholds an epiphenomenal physicalism, there is no physicality involved in this equation—especially since what was counted were abstractions and not concrete particulars. (This will hold even where these abstractions do not correlate with any actual state of affairs—maybe even more so.)
I'm not ignoring it. I'm saying that 'the arrangement' is of a different order to the physical. Semantics is not reducible to physics. Left to its own devices, a pile of pebbles won't convey information; it has to be arranged in order to convey information.
Quoting apokrisis
Unintentional noise.
Quoting Janus
That is an assertion without an argument. Mental arithmetic (for example) is not about the relationship between physical things, but the relationship of ideas.
Quoting Janus
I addressed the problem of reification previously, which I think arises from a misunderstanding of Platonism, and one essential to this thread. One way of putting it is this: numbers don't exist. You will say, of course they do, here's 7, and 5. But they're not numbers, they're symbols. What they are symbolising is something which only exists in a mind capable of counting. But at the same time, numbers are real - get a number wrong in an engineering calculation, and your bridge will fail. (A Mars Lander failed because someone mistook an imperial for a metric unit.)
What I'm saying is that the physical (or phenomenal) is 'what exists'. Numbers, laws, conventions, logic, and the like, don't exist as phenomena. They're instead the 'furniture of reason', what enables us to realise possibilities, design things, and so on. That's why humans live between the realm of the actual and the possible; that's why the West had the scientific revolution and the East didn't; for that, you can thank Plato. ;-)
//ps// mind you, the above is only an heuristic, it is not a formal theory.
Imagined abstractions are always abstracted from, and imagined in forms derived from, the physical world; the experience of the physical world is the source of all our imaginations and abstractions.
And how do you know that except you can read the clear sign of a "mindless physical process"?
The point is that a lack of meaningfulness is as much a matter of interpretation as the presence of meaning. Which blows a big hole in any belief in a "Platonic realm of meaning". Unless that Platonia also contains chaos, friction and entropy as part of its stable of perfect ideas ... all partaking in The Good.
Are some of your good things that are up in Platonia also bad things? Seems problematic.
Whether the dog is biting the man or the man is biting the dog is not a question of semantics.
Quoting Wayfarer
Look again: it is arranged. Or are you suggesting there can be a pile of pebbles that is not arranged in any particular way? And when you look, you capture some of light the pile of pebbles radiates, with no intention whatsoever, and that light also has a particular arrangement.
It's a presumption not yet evidenced to be true in all possible cases. A telos, for example, would be abstract, non-physical information not itself abstracted from the physical world. A different argument to that of this thread, though.
All the same, how is an abstraction physical information? This even when in fact abstracted from physical information.
Certainly number, laws. conventions, logic and the like don't exist as objects of the senses. However they certainly exist as phenomena, and we cannot think of any intelligible way in which they could exist apart from objects of the senses; the idea simply makes no sense.
Your reification consists in thinking that they must "somehow" be real apart from, or independently of, the physical world.
How can an abstraction be communicated or understood except in physical terms? If you think it could then perhaps you could offer an example.
My question isn't about the communication of abstractions, such as we are now engaged in, but in relation to the abstractions themselves: how are abstractions physical?
You're simply assuming that abstractions are something in themselves apart from our communications and understandings of them. It is precisely herein that lies your question-begging reification, I would say.
Abstractions can only be expressed as "concrete particulars of physicality"; what can they be apart from that? Even when you think an abstraction, the thinking of it would, according to current neuroscience, consist in a concrete particular neurological process.
Is something being a "product of mind" somehow different from it being a "product of brain"? If so, what precisely would that difference consist in?
I do not believe that different subjects ever share the same meaning unless the meaning is within the physical object which is shared between them. They share the same physical object. Sometimes there are copies of the same book, and this is as close as we can get to saying that two distinct things have the same meaning. What exists within the different subjects' minds is always interpretations, and interpretations always have differences. So I think that if you want to say that different subjects share the same meaning, you need to allow for meaning to exist outside of the minds of subjects.
Quoting javra
We all have our unique points of view, but this does not mean that we cannot be viewing the same object, or hearing the same spoken words. So when we hear the same spoken words, we share the same meaning, regardless of the fact that we interpret the meaning in different ways depending on one's point of view.
Quoting javra
I think that you have things backward here. Those who claim that meaning is only within a mind are the ones who cannot show how any meaning could be common to us. Once you allow that the meaning which is within words and symbols, is not only within the mind, but outside the mind as well, then you have the grounds for common, shared meaning.
This is a bit of a merry-go-round. Communication of an abstraction via concrete physical particulars is not the abstraction that is being communicated via concrete physical particulars. Else there is no difference between a) abstractions and b) concrete particulars.
As to brain and mind, if you find no difference between the two, we do not have enough common ground to debate with. To entertain your question as poignantly as I currently can, decomposed rot of organic matter can be a product of brains but not of minds; the imagining of this can only be a product of minds but not of mind-devoid brains.
To so much as even entertain a relation between brains and minds is to first acknowledge the reality that there is a difference between the two. Very sardonically stated: I can hardly wait to be explained how hallucinations, too, consist of physical information (this via the exact reasoning you’re just proposed so as to uphold that all abstractions are of physical information) … such conclusion being a literal lack of sense.
Lastly, there in fact being a relation between a mind and a living brain does nothing to establish what ontology of mind is real—physicalism being only one such possible ontology of mind amongst numerous others.
You calling me an idiot?
Quoting Wayfarer
Is this really the case though? Does the algebraic problem deal with the relationships between ideas, or does it deal with the relationship between symbols? I think the latter. There is a process to follow, and the process involves rules concerning the relationships between symbols. What the symbols stand for (i.e. ideas), does not enter into the process, and is something completely different.
This is how formal logic works. There are rules concerning the relationships between symbols, which must be followed in the logical process. What the symbols stand for (what they mean), is irrelevant to the logical process itself.
Had the evidence of life been found on Mars, that would be big news.
The question I had asked was about the fact that SETI is searching for order of a particular kind, namely, that associated with the tell-tale signs of life. I said, it was in relationship to biology that the distinction between 'symbol and matter' has been made. So I don't see any sense in which that distinction can be made, with respect to inorganic matter. It is inorganic precisely because it is not ordered in the way that living things are ordered, and so the distinction between symbol and matter is not evident in it. Which is why, I think, I suspicious of 'pansemiosis'.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. It's called 'a landslide'. Or maybe, a pile of pebbles. But the point is, a pile of pebbles does not convey any information, whereas something spelled out in pebbles might.
We're not discussing the mere fact of physical existence.
Quoting Janus
They don't exist as phenomena. That is the crucial point.
Quoting Janus
Algebra and other abstractions exist as ideas in the mind. The fact that you can't think of them in any other terms doesn't detract from that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It wasn't directed at you ;-) (Actually it was an amusing article about the current US Idiot in Chief.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I can look at the symbols and tell you quite clearly, 'x' is on the left hand side of 'y', and about an inch apart. But ask me what is the value of x, given that y is such and such - then I have to do the math, that is the domain of ideas.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is the whole point of Searle's Chinese Room argument - you can logically execute a series of instructions to translate Chinese, without knowing what they mean. In which case, you haven't grasped the ideas - which illustrates my point.
Computers manipulate symbols, but humans create the computers and interpret the output. The sequence begins with and ends with a mind.
Logic is the relationship of ideas - surely you of all people aren't going to disagree with this. Otherwise I might revise the above opinion. ;-)
You're just restricting the word "information" to mean "something a person thought of", making it a synonym for "semantic content". On your usage, the senses have nothing to do with information and that's patently absurd.
I am not saying it is; I have asked you what the abstraction is apart from the communication and understanding of it, though. What are you suggesting we should think it is?
Quoting javra
Obviously I was referring to living, functional brain: what is the difference between a living, functional brain and a mind?
Quoting javra
The impressions we experience leave memories in our minds; or put another way they form neuronal structures in the brain. An hallucination may be a novel amalgamation of such memories, physically instantiated in the brain as neuronal structures.
Quoting javra
Give an account of an alternative ontology then. Tell us what it could mean for something to exist, or to be real, completely independently of the physical.
This is where I disagree. I think doing math is dealing with relationships between symbols. What the symbols stand for, the ideas, is something which doesn't enter into "doing math". It does enter into understanding the principles of mathematics though. So if the question is 1+1=?, then I must put the symbol 2 there. This is completely the result of the conventions of how to use arithmetical symbols. And this is independent from the ideas which the symbols stand for.
Quoting Wayfarer
Exactly, we can do math without understanding. what the conclusions mean. Grasping the ideas is something different from doing the math, just like translating from Chinese is different from understanding the ideas, and a voice recognition computer is carrying out a process which is different from understanding the ideas. So this illustrates my point, and denies the validity of your claim. Doing math is simply dealing with symbols, it is not understanding the ideas. The computer does math, it carries out the logical processes assigned to it, but it doesn't grasp the ideas.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sorry, but I do disagree. Logic involves the relationships between symbols. What the symbols represent is ideas. So logic isn't directly involved in relating ideas, it is only involved in this in a secondary sense, because the symbols which logic relates to one another, represent ideas. The art, which involves relating symbols to ideas is something other than logic, it's called dialectics. So the relationships between ideas requires more than just logic, first and foremost, it involves dialectics.
So the flow networks of the body, like our vascular system, are fractally organised and so exhibit the pure forms we associate with nature at its inorganic level. It is the kind of pattern we read as "noise" - literally. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise
And I note how carefully you are evading the more important point directed at your position.
Are you willing to grant access to Platonia for these other forms of nature which are just as mathematical - chaos, entropy, and other patterns of nature that you prefer to call bad on the grounds they "lack meaning or purpose".
In the context of the thread, the original post was about the fact that 'information' and 'representation' can be separated, thereby showing that while representation might be physical, the information it encodes is not.
They do exist as phenomena, They don't exist as objects of the senses. They don't exist independently of objects of the senses, either, though. If you think they do, then give an account of what that existence is. If you can't give such an account then you can't meaningfully say that they exist or are real apart from physical reality and existence. It looks to me that you are reifying what is merely a definitional distinction.
Quoting Wayfarer
How is the existence of an idea in a mind a different thing than its neuronal existence in a brain? If you can't answer that then I can't see how you have any argument to support what are merely vague assertions.
This is simply wrong. Information and representation cannot be "separated", but they can be distinguished between, which is not the same thing at all.
To try to avoid a back and forth of endless opinions, I’ll offer a more metaphysical argument.
As per Heraclitus’ flux, we can never be privy to the same phenomenal information twice. Where, then, does the very apprehension of sameness in relation to that perceived fit in?
We can never perceive the same river in terms of the same phenomenal information. Yet we can nevertheless acknowledge that what we perceive and interact with is the same river over time, or that we as multiple subjects do in fact perceive the same river at the same time.
To emphasize: where does the meaningful understanding of “sameness” come from, then? For it certainly cannot be obtained from our raw awareness of phenomenal information; the latter is never the same. On the other hand, to presume reliance on abstract reasoning to explain the presence of this innate meaning of “sameness” by which phenomena is interpreted is foolhardy. One can try to do so if they think they can: this merely through the use of phenomenal information perception devoid of any prejudice of sameness. To keep this brief, you then also deny that toddlers can hold notions of sameness (e.g. the same parents); and that any form of meaningful sameness can be held by animals (e.g., the same caregiver)—and this is to boldly deny reality.
I am not here addressing the linguistic concept of “sameness” which can be analyzed by adults like any other mental object. I’m instead addressing what is the inherent means via which we can perceive sameness (same river, same apple, etc.) in a world in which no phenomenal information ever remains fixed or repeats with identical attributes.
For the record, so far my hypothesis is that sameness is a Kantian-like a priori property of awareness—itself as property being a meaningful understanding regarding what is and what can be, one with which we are birthed with. Be this as erroneous as it may, however, the very awareness of sameness cannot itself be derived strictly from physical information—else one will debate against the very notion that everything phenomenal is in perpetual flux.
To use the currently popular definition of information on this thread, awareness of “sameness” is a difference that makes a difference, and is thereby an awareness of information. Yet sameness, though it can take innumerable phenomenal exemplars, is of itself a meaning that is other than—and a priori to—the phenomenal information which we discriminate as either “the same” or “different from”.
It is also mental information which we all share in common by virtue of being human, and—again—is not an intrinsic aspect of physical information (which is forever changing).
All this being a more metaphysical means of arguing that not all meaning is identical to phenomenal information.
I am but a little tyke, and have big aversions to debating with authoritative nobility. Sorry, yous.
I have no idea what that means, sorry.
The question I asked (also evaded) was that the distinction between the symbolic and the physical that you generally refer to, seems to originate with Von Neumann's idea, as then picked up by Pattee, in the paper, Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis. I am saying, this is distinction that only appears evident in living systems - that is why, in scanning the universe for life, NASA has some idea what to look for. There is a particular order which is characteristic of living systems, is there not? And that is where the symbolic/physical distinction really comes into play.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Very well then, thank you for your comments.
Quoting Janus
Right, then get a camera crew and go out and film some of them. Or, bring some back and exhibit them.
They are nowhere naturally existing. Human laws are the artefacts of human society; natural laws can only be detected by their consequences; numbers can only be grasped by a rational mind. They're not among phenomena, they are on a deeper or higher level - that is a distinction going right back to the origins of philosophy, which I think is valid, but which I think is forgotten.
Quoting Janus
'Exist' is derived from 'ex-' outside or or apart from, and 'ist', to stand. So 'to exist' means 'to be this thing as distinct from that thing', to have a separate identity. And I maintain that 'existence' pertains to phenomena, or denizens of the phenomenal realm. Almost everything in the encyclopedia falls under that heading - what Keith Campbell used to refer to as 'medium size dry goods'
But 'abstract objects' such as number, are not among them. They belong to another domain. This has been expressed in such ways as Frege's Third Realm; actually, even the esteemed Karl Popper was a dualist in that sense.
Russell actually discusses this in the Problems of Philosophy - he notes that the word 'exist' is wrong for universals, that the term should be something more like 'subsist' (I can't remember the exact details).
The issue is this: that philosophical naturalism, by definition, only admits one substance (in the philosophical sense) - as I already said in this thread, nowadays 'existence' can only mean one thing; something either exists or it doesn't. Whereas in pre-modern epistemology, there were different levels of reality. Now I'm not saying this is necessarily correct but I think I am putting a modernist type of case for a sense in which it might be. That's what I'm trying to do, anyway.
Quoting Janus
OK, they can be distinguished.
Emotions and sensations are phenomena; and yet they cannot be filmed; so, this seems like a ill-though out criterion.
Are they? They can only be associated with persons and/or living beings. You can film a person or an animal apparently experiencing a sensation; but you obviously will never find either an emotion or a sensation in the absence of a sentient being.
Numbers "stand apart" from other numbers, and from all other things as well.
Clearly 6 =/=7, and 7 exists, whilst the square root of two does not. So, in the vernacular, yes, numbers exist - but I am saying, if you really consider what number is, they're not existent in the sense that concrete objects and particulars are existent. They're strictly dependent on the mind's ability to count, but at the same time, they're the same for anyone who can count. Ergo, intelligible but real.
That's why I explained, this is an heuristic, it's an interpretive model. That strictly speaking, numbers (etc) are not existent, but they're nevertheless real. But in customary speech, of course numbers exist.
You're correct, they're symbols which represent numbers. But how about these asterixes (*****)?
In this case, the number five is present (or immanent) in those asterixes.
That is the Aristotelian immanent view of universals which is in contrast to the Platonic transcendent view.
Yes, I do seem to remember that distinction between "exist" and "subsist" in Russell. I would still want to say that universals exist, though; for example trees exist. The existence of trees is not the same thing as the existence of any particular tree; but the general existence of trees is not separate from the existence of particular trees, either.
I would say the square root of two exists,but is not precisely determinable. I haven't said that numbers exist in the same way that concrete particulars do, or in the same way that sensations or feelings do; they all have their own different kinds of existence; but I don't see any of them as having an existence which is completely independent of the physical: I don't even know what that could mean; what such a reality could be.
For sure some phenomena are only associated with living beings; digestion or homeostasis, for example.
A note on Plato's and Aristotle's idea of 'intelligibility':
Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism
that point about the distinction between 'the idea', and 'a synaptic state' is related to the point about the distinction between the physical representation and the meaning.
Quoting Janus
Right! Now you're getting it. What I'm saying is, we have an ineluctable tendency to 'concretize, externalise and objectify' - what is real is 'out there'. I think what Platonic realism is about, is not anything 'out there' but the nature of, and the way in which, we know anything.
Quoting Janus
That's because it has been bred out of us! It is about the nature of 'transcendental reals', the baby that was thrown out with the bathwater of scholastic philosophy. But it's a distinction which is still alive in e.g. neo-thomism:
Feser, Some Brief Arguments for Dualism
Quoting Janus
Right - they embody an order. It's a tangential point, but related insofar as the means by which that order exists, namely DNA, is also a type of code.
It seems to me that you are also insisting on some naive realism every time you talk about reality being a triad, as if it were ultimately true. Even saying that it's indirect realism all the way down is an objective statement about reality - independent of any observation of it. It also seems to imply that nothing is real, so it seems contradictory.
How did you come to know about pragmatism and semiotics? Where did you hear about it from? Wasn't is someone else's idea (probably a theory that fit that person's self interest) that you picked up and fit your self-interest, so you ran with it? Either semiotics is simply another level of idea or conception, or it is an accurate and objective (true) explanation (representation) of reality itself. Which is it?
What I'm saying is that the contents of a mind are just as real as everything else. Colors are real. Sounds are real. They exist. They are both effects and causes themselves. They are the cause of me saying, "The apple is red.", or eating the apple because I like red apples. But colors are also an effect - the effect of light interacting with a visual sensory system. If they weren't then how can I say anything about the apple's state (like it being ripe or rotten)?
To say that "there is an experience of the color red" would a truthful statement, no?
If I have a self-interest in eating only ripe apples instead of rotten ones, then isn't my self-interest also a real thing?
Quoting apokrisisAre you making more objective statements about reality or not? Is what you are saying accurate? Why should I believe you? What makes your statements more accurate than mine? How did you come by all this information? Where did it come from if not from "out there"?
A geologist would vehemently disagree.
Bullshit. Plato's Heaven. Plato's realm of perfect ideas. This other place where you claim meaning finds its reality.
So again, are you willing to grant entropy the same Platonic status as negentropy, to summarise the nub of our long standing disagreement?
You argue information is only really information to the degree it is a signal, not noise. But I argue that the erasure of information - the very thing you cited in the OP - is also just as meaningful in being that which is the erased, the ignorable, the definitely meaningless.
An idealist would say that the world is made of the same stuff "in here".
Then aren't they both saying the same thing?
For all practice purposes yes (unless either the materialist or idealist is off his/her rocker and has lost touch which reality). The reason for debate between the two schools of thought, however, isn't about practical issues, but about metaphysical issues, each school of though holding is own spectrum of metaphysical possibilities. As one example, the spectrum of possibilities regarding how existence of awareness ends (if at all). Despite this difference of perspectives, both ought to know darn well that bullets in the brain is not a good thing.
More bullshit. I have agreed umpteen times that the epistemic cut is where life and mind properly kick in. There is actual semiotic machinery involved, like receptors, membranes, pumps, channels, let alone the core stuff of codable memories - genes, neuons, language - that can read/write the information that stands for the purposes and constraints of a biological system.
A non-biological system can still be a dissipative structure. Now the world at large - the thermodynamic context - is the memory structure that represents the purpose and constraints. So there is no located epistemic cut - one internal to the self-describing or self-replicating organism. The cut is now only a distributed pattern of environmental information. This is when we get into the importance of event horizons as encoding the order of nature at a physical level.
So yes, we can also define pansemiosis as this more generalised type of metaphysics. And physics has been doing exactly that too.
But stop pretending that I am not clear about the fundamental difference between biosemiosis and pansemiosis in this regard. It gets really tedious.
Actually, no. Your data is that the same information can be encoded multiple ways; more precisely, that it is possible to translate from one system of encoding to another while preserving information; you have not shown that information ever occurs, or can occur, without in fact being encoded in some physical system.
I am spelling out the ontological commitments of a model. So no, I am stating upfront that this is indirect realism, the proposal of a theory that can be falsified.
Quoting Harry Hindu
And I am pointing out the conceptual confusion that kind of talk produces.
What is "out there" is what has already been determined as some kind of intentional object, I would say. The Henry book I referred to earlier is interesting because there he says that what is "archi-given" is not given intentionally at all but as affectivity. There is nothing objective in this primordial givenness; but on the other hand what is archi-given as affective is determinitive of what is secondarily given as the very particular determinate objects of inter-subjective intentional experience.
Quoting Wayfarer
From a phenomenological perspective the transcendental is what is primordially given. It is not given intentionally but it is the condition of the possibility of intentional givenness. It is thus not either physical or non-physical but is inseparable from the experience of the physical, because it is the real condition of any such experience. It cannot itself be experienced intentionally.
Apparently you have no aversion to false modesty, though.
Confusion is subjective. What is confusing to one doesn't mean that it is confusing to others. Per your own argument, something being confusing is the result of one's own self-interest being imposed on what they hear or read.
Quoting apokrisis
And if it isn't, then what then? How can it be falsified?
Is it true that you actually spelling out the ontological commitments of a model? Are you actually stating upfront that this is indirect realism? Would you still be doing this if no one was reading your posts?
It seems to me that you haven't stopped using words to refer to real, objective states of affairs in this entire thread. It seems to me that you have been saying this entire time that you have a naive realist view of reality as you can't stop talking about how things really are - like you pointing out the conceptual confusion my kind of talk produces and how you are spelling out the ontological commitments of a model and stating upfront that this is indirect realism.
That fact that it can be encoded in multiple ways,without the meaning being changed, shows that the meaning can be distinguished from the representation.
Look at the history of science. How much of that, has been the capturing of ideas of things which did not yet exist, and nobody knew could exist, but some imaginative individual saw a way in which they might exist, and actually made them exist. Where is that realm of possibility? I think it's a related question.
Quoting apokrisis
Are geometric forms, or Euclid's axioms, subject to entropy? Do they degrade over time?
Quoting apokrisis
It's only meaningful to an observer who has in an interest in it. If it doesn't contain any information, then it can't convey any information, other than the fact it 'contains no information'.
(And also, if you could possibly spare the invective. I am trying to conduct a polite conversation, even with those with whom I differ.)
Quoting Janus
Meh. Not what I'm on about. Merleau Ponty and his ilk all hated anything like Thomism or Platonism. I know what I'm interested in is completely out of favour and out of fashion, by the way.
Yeah, well Michel Henry is not Merleau Ponty, he was a Christian and wrote this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Am-Truth-Philosophy-Christianity-Cultural/dp/0804737800/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1507866316&sr=8-1&keywords=michel+henry
Is that why you like it?
Fair enough. There is certainly not enough time to study everything.
No, that's not it. My very first post on forums, was about this very question - the reality of ideas (in the broadly Platonist sense). It was the first and only time I got a favourable response from 180 Proof! Been thinking about these things ever since.
180 must have changed his ideas, then? Maybe he lived up to his moniker and performed a 180! ;)
Silly question. Does the Platonic apple wither? Does the Platonic white horse grow old and grey?
If you want the serious answer, the connection that makes these mathematical forms "real" as physicalist constraints is the symmetries they encode. So triangles and circles are eternal, timeless, necessary, etc, as they capture the basic symmetries of Euclidean dimensionality. And likewise, fractals, chaos, and other dissipative patterns capture the basic scale symmetry of a dimensional existence.
Permutation symmetries then are metaphysical-strength forms in accounting for the fundamental possible local excitations of nature - the standard model particles.
So access to Platonia is through a door marked fundamental symmetries. It is not as if we don't now know why some mathematics is "Platonic" or unreasonably effective.
So here's the thing.
We have the problem of universals. Two things have the same property, being red, say. Gracious, how is this possible? Is there some thing, redness, besides the two red things? Mysteries!
We're not satisfied with the idea that there's this thing redness besides red things. So instead we just say, it's not that redness is separable from red things, not physically, but we can separate it from red things in our minds. We're not sure what this mental separating consists of. Introspection suggests that when you imagine red, you imagine a red thing, however vague, so that's no help.
The very word "separating" starts to look wrong, so we might say "distinguishing" instead. We merely distinguish the property from the objects that possess it. And what is distinguishing?
Now here are some objects with the property of carrying the same information. We distinguish the information from the objects (meaning bearer of a property), just like we always do.
And yet, here, right in front of us, would seem to be exactly what we need to understand what distinguishing amounts to, to finally understand what the deal is with properties and universals. Here's an idea--information! -- that might actually help.
So it seems to me foolish not to look very closely indeed at how information works and instead give it the same tired old hand-waving treatment as we've given universals.
If it doesn't work out, we can always go back to hand-waving.
So I will interpret that to mean that the answer to my question is 'no'.
Quoting apokrisis
In the Platonist view, individual apples and horses die and wither, but not the idea of the horse, or the idea of the apple. it's the form or the idea that is considered imperishable, rather than the individual instance. Of course, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since the original theory was formulated.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That's a rather hackneyed text-book presentation of what 'universals' mean. In their original context, they meant considerably more than that.
Myron Tribus and Edward C. McIrvine. "Energy and Information," p 179-188 v 225, Scientific American, September, 1971.
Seems to work very well around here ;-)
So Information theory has been around 70 years and ignorance remains an excuse? Cool.
What does it mean to say that sweetness exists? The phenomenal makes no sense without me, but the phenomenal is not an hallucination, there is something that is responsible for what I perceive, and it is real or factual. The sensuous is solely the result of my relationship with the world, and it makes no sense to talk about things without me, things in themselves.
Yes, as Gerson says, an idea is not identical with particulars (such as synaptic states), it is instead a formal abstraction of particulars, just as the number five is a formal abstraction of these asterixes (*****).
But this is the crucial point - there is no representation occurring here at all. That is what distinguishes Aristotle's view from Plato's. The asterixes don't represent or refer to the number five (as if the number five were something in addition to or independent of the asterixes). Instead, we just see that there are five asterixes. Or, on Gerson's usage, we mentally see the number five that is present in the asterixes.
The ***** might represent the number five, but only if you tell me that is what it means. And furthermore, only if I can count.
***** doesn't re-present the number five. The number five is present (immanent) in *****. It doesn't matter if you don't know that it is there or don't know how to count. It also wouldn't matter if there were no sentient beings in existence. The number five is there as a consequence of the asterixes being there.
Has information theory really been around for 70 years? It seems to me that you have some way of determining that information theory has been around for 70 years to make that claim. You'd need a naive realist view of reality to make that claim and expect it to actually carry any weight to make that argument as if it really were the case, or accurate, or true. Is it objectively true that information theory has been around for 70 years?
If "sameness" is what is important, then it appears like any difference makes a difference, because any difference negates the possibility of sameness. To speak of "a difference that makes a difference" in relation to sameness, is rather meaningless and somewhat illogical because in relation to sameness, a difference, by definition makes a difference.
In relation to a type, or a concept of generality, we identify what is essential and what is accidental, and in this case it makes sense to talk about a difference which makes a difference. However, any difference is critical to sameness. Therefore a type is determined by criteria other than sameness.
In the case of information now, there is a need to identify two distinct types of information. We need information related to the particular, which will allow for the identification of the same particular, and we also need information concerning types, to identify the type. The latter may consist of differences which make a difference, but the former consists of something completely different.
Quoting javra
So here we have this use of "same". You want to say that the river is the same river despite all of its activities and changes, flux. I suggest that identity in this case consists of a temporal continuity of existence in the same spatial location. We overlook all the differences, created by the changing river, to say that it is the same river because of observed temporal continuity of existence. And even "the same spatial location" is not necessary, because we identify objects as the same object, despite them moving around as well. So we can allow any category of difference, and still designate the identified thing as "the same". What is important to us, in designating the particular as the same particular, is temporal continuity. If we identify the temporal continuity, we can say that it is the same particular. This is the case with "energy", it is a case of identifying the temporal continuity of a particular, it is not a case of identifying a type of thing, or a difference which makes a difference. Differences are irrelevant when something is identified as the same, through temporal continuity.
Quoting javra
The answer to this question is quite simple now. We develop an understanding of sameness from our capacity to recognize the temporal continuity of things. However, there is a certain degree of self-deception which occurs in this process. What is most evident in temporal continuity, and what brings temporal continuity to our attention, is a certain degree of unchangingness in the world. Because of this we are inclined to attribute "same" to "unchanging". But this is the naïve and self-deceptive perspective. What really is referred to when we call a particular object "the same thing", is not its unchangingness, but its temporal continuity.
Quoting javra
From the Kantian perspective, "sameness" is attributable to the internal intuition of time.
Quoting javra
I don't think you've yet provided an argument for this. If the internal intuition of time is what allows us to apprehend, and interpret the world in terms of "sameness", phenomenal information is necessary to make this interpretation. How do you propose to separate this "phenomenal information" from "meaning"?
I mean, you just did it again - making an objective statement about reality - that Wayfarer had just said something and you were referring to something specifically just mentioned. How could you know that Wayfarer had just said anything if you don't have some REAL, ACCURATE, TRUE view of reality? Maybe Wayfarer didn't say anything, or maybe Wayfarer doesn't really exist and you are just projecting your own self-interest onto what you are experiencing. This is the implication of YOUR theory, not mine, so I'm trying to show you how you contradict your own theory every time you make an statement that you believe (and you expect others to believe) as if it were objectively true and is an accurate representation of reality itself.
Every time you make a claim AND expect others to believe you, you are attempting to make an objective claim about reality. You are making a claim that you expect to be true and the basis of your argument for or against something. Every time any philosopher makes a claim about some state of affairs, they are making an objective, naive realist, claim about reality - as if they have some clear perception of how reality actually is, or what is actually going on independent of any self-interest.
You still haven't addressed the question of how you came to know about pragmatism and semiotics. How do you know anything about that? How did you acquire information about these theories? Are they your own? Did you get it from somewhere else? Did someone else's ideas influence your own? How did it happen? And when you explain how it happened, are you saying that is really how it happened independent of yours and anyone else's subjective inclinations?
Is five immanent in ****** ?
My best reply to your post:
In relation to sameness being a property of temporal continuity: A guy builds a toy ship made up of legos. His wife gets upset at his wasting of time with the toy ship and smashes the ship to bits. Many years later he builds himself the same ship out of the same lego pieces. It will be deemed the same ship by its builder despite there having been no temporal continuity between instantiation A and instantiation B. Therefore, temporal continuity is not necessary in order for sameness to hold presence.
In relation to meaning being identical to phenomenal information: There’s a phenomenal object A and a phenomenal object B. Object A is the same relative to itself. So is object B. The relation of sameness remains unaltered in relation to objects A and B, this despite both objects holding different phenomenal properties of information. Hence, the relation of sameness—in this case, as a cognitive abstraction that one can hold awareness of—is not itself identical to any particular phenomenal information that may be discerned as being the same relative to itself.
I’ll be taking a leave of absence, though. It was good debating with you, even where we don’t agree—such as on this issue.
This sounds reasonable, but isn't the surest way to minimize surprise to reduce the information content of your beliefs?
Well, I told you where I disagree, and it would be helpful to me if you told me where you disagree. Do you disagree that there is a distinction between the symbol and the idea which the symbol represents? Or, do you disagree with my claim that we carry out logical procedures with the use of symbols.
Quoting Andrew M
Yes, that's a good demonstration, to show that the idea which the numeral "5" is supposed to represent, is something completely different from the thing which brings it to mind. Now, can you demonstrate to Wayfarer that when we carry out logical proceedings we do so with the use of symbols rather than the use of ideas.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes it is the case that the redness is separable from red things, because the redness actually is separate from the red things, it is in our minds, the thing is not.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You seem to be missing the point. The redness which you are seeing, when you see a red thing, is in your mind, the image is in your mind. So it is not the case that you are distinguishing the property from the object, but you are separating the property from the object. The redness of the object is in the image, within your mind, while the object remains out there, being sensed.
Quoting javra
It is not the same ship. And despite the fact that the builder deems it "the same ship", we know that it is not, by two reasons according to your description. First, the original ship was destroyed, and therefore ceased to be in existence, prior to the second ship coming into existence. And second, the second ship was built, and therefore started its existence after the first ship ceased to exist. Since the two ships existed at completely distinct times, it is impossible that they are the same ship.
Quoting javra
There is no such "relation of sameness". A relation requires two distinct things. "The same" implies only one thing. So object A is object A. There is no "relation of sameness", there is only object A which is the same as itself, and object B which is the same as itself. "Same" implies one thing, not a relation between things.
Any chance there is some relation between the object out there and the image of the object in my mind?
All I can say is that there are some disagreements that are unproductive to debate, and I judged this to be one of them:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I felt that response was so completely mistaken, it would not be worth pursuing the argument.
I suppose one bit of evidence I could produce in support of my contention that it's the relationship of ideas, rather than symbols, would be the fact that mathematics and science has constantly had to develop new symbols to express concepts and ideas, for which the symbol didn't yet exist.
Were what you say to be true, this could never have happened.
Hah. Surprisal, or self-information, is one of those more sophisticated measures of information I've been talking about - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surprisal_analysis and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-information
And the same basic approach underlies the free energy minimising model of the Bayesian brain - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_approaches_to_brain_function
So the argument is that we attempt to predict our future sensory inputs to minimise our need to actually process anything. And then what we fail to predict is where we retrospectively have to put the further attentional effort in.
So overall, a brain with good habits of prediction will be able to get the most work out of the least effort.
Yes. I see that you are making the sly joke that the way to never be surprised is to in fact just be ignorant. That also works of course - to the degree that it has no real life consequences.
That makes good sense.
But I wasn't kidding. I was thinking of the stuff about measuring the information content of a theory-- better, a prediction. If your prediction is that either the sun will rise tomorrow or it won't, you're incapable of being surprised, but that's because "either the sun rose or it didn't" has zero information content. It's just the Popper thing. You want to create the possibility of being surprised by making predictions with high information content. You want to predict things that are unlikely, not things that are dead certain.
Sure there's a relation, but they are not the same thing.
Quoting Wayfarer
Fair enough, that's your opinion, but I think it's a route of inquiry which may lead us to a deeper understanding of the nature of ideas. Many people will acknowledge that there is a difference between the numeral, and the idea which the numeral stands for. But if no one can explain to us exactly what the idea is, which the numeral 5 signifies, then how can anyone argue that 5 means the same thing to every person.
My opinion is that there is a deep psychological division between the symbol, 5, in this case, and the idea which is behind it, so much so that we can go on using the symbol indefinitely without even really understanding the idea.
Quoting Wayfarer
The people who are developing new symbols for new ideas are producing hypotheses and speculations, these I believe fall out of the realm of logical proceedings. I explained this in my post, I called this dialectics. And it is only through this intermediary process, where ideas are related to symbols, that formal logic and mathematics, which deal strictly with symbols, have the power of relating ideas. But dialectics is not mathematics, nor is it a form of logical procedure. We might say that it is a form of reasoning which is not particularly logical. But what does that mean?
Consider Plato's Republic where the participants are asked, what does "just" mean. Each participant has a different answer for this question. Now "just" is the symbol, and we could create a logical argument with the premises of "John did a just act", and " all just acts are good acts", "therefore John did a good act". But since each participant has a different notion as to the idea of "just", this conclusion is rather meaningless. So it is more important to proceed with the dialectics which determines the relationship between the symbols and the ideas, then the logic, or mathematics, which produces conclusions from working with the symbols.
The further issue which occurs to me, is that we might not ever even relate ideas to each other. We might always engage in relating symbols to each other, and symbols to ideas, and never idea to idea. This would indicate that ideas are inherently separated from each other by means of the symbols, which are a medium between them.
I have no time for endless obfuscations.
Well, my understanding of the rubble in the driveway is part of me, the rubble is not.
I guess me being rubble-omniscient might be a different story.
No, not as the quantity of asterixes which is the abstraction I was implying. So only the number six is immanent.
To get to five, a transformation would need to be applied, e.g., by editing your post to remove one of the asterixes.
In other words, you don't care about the relationship between the symbol and the idea. You start a thread "is information physical", but you really don't care about this subject.
You want to maintain a naïve division between things in the mind, such as ideas, which are non-physical, and things outside the mind, like symbols, which are physical. But you refuse to respect the fact that the mind thinks using symbols.
Perhaps you should consider, that when we are talking about things like symbols, meaning, and information, the physical/non-physical division is not applicable. And the attempt to apply it, is itself an obfuscation.
You are making me doubt, and I don't like it. While I am now no longer certain about it, I will nevertheless continue to defend the position that some form of information is non-physical. Let's differentiate between two forms: meaningless and meaningful info. Meaningless info is raw data; noise. I imagine a TV set with visual and audio static. I concede that this form of info is purely physical, for the reasons you have given.
Meaningful info on the other hand, gets meaning by containing concepts. Concepts are not made of physical things, because every physical thing is a particular (at least in their x, y, z, t properties), where as concepts are generals. Therefore meaningful info is, at least in part, non-physical.
Are concepts not objectively real and only man-made? If so, why would Socrates argue with the Sophists about the essence of concepts like 'justice', instead of arbitrarily making up a definition that they can all choose to agree on?
My initial argument, which as far as I am concerned hasn't been rebutted, was simply this: an item of information can be encoded in a variety of different media, and/or a variety of different languages, whilst remaining unchanged. The question I posed was, if the physical representation changes, and the information does not, then how can the information be said to be physical?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not only symbols. Symbols are the means by which ideas are communicated, but there are many other means - art, poetry, drama, music - and there are also visionary states and ecstatic states beyond discursive thought. But all of that is beside the point.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
That might seem a rather simplistic account, but I agree with it in essence.
If the mental representation changes, and the information does not, then how can the information be said to be mental?
I soundly refuted that argument, perhaps you weren't paying attention. The claim that "the same" information is carried by different media is a false premise. The fact that we interpret 5 in a different way from V, and in a different way from ***** is evidence of this. We have been trained to focus on the essential features of the information, ignoring the accidentals. This focus on the essentials induces the idea that "the same" information is being transmitted through different media.
But ignoring the accidentals invalidates the claim of "the same" information, it only allows for "similar" information. The fact that one medium is better than another depending on the information to be transmitted, and that we may forfeit accuracy for the sake of speed, as well as many other factors like this, demonstrates that it is not true that the same information is transmitted in different media.
Here's the final point. If different media conveyed the same information, on what basis could you claim that the media is different? You must refer to some difference in the information received, in order to support the claim that the media is different. The words "same", and "unchanged", imply no difference. If you allow for any change or difference whatsoever, you deny yourself of the right to use these words. Using definitions such as "a difference which makes a difference" already implies essentialism, that accidentals are excluded. The capacity to use "same" or "unchanged", in referring to information has already been negated by that definition. So that, of course, is a faulty definition, because any difference at all, must consist of information, or else we could not discern a difference, and we could not say that there is a difference.
I am late in this discussion so I apologize if this was already addressed, but why do you say we interpret these differently? It seems to me that they all point to the same concept.
What results from 2+3?
(a) five
(b) 5
(c) V
(d) *****
Are these answers not all true? If they are, then this also answers your objection on what basis could we claim that the media is different: Different media may point to the same concept. And the fact that these media can be physically different show that they are separate things from the concept they point to.
“When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.”
? Confucius
If there are different correct answers for the same question, this means that there are different correct ways of interpreting the same question. It doesn't mean that the different answers have the same information. Some of the answers would be the correct answer for other questions, while others would be incorrect for those questions, like "what is the Roman numeral for five?". So it is quite clear that each of these answers does not carry the same information, despite the fact that they might all be the correct answer to some specific questions.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
What I am trying to get at, is what is meant by "the same concept". If I have a conception, within my mind, of what "five" means, and you have a conception within you mind, of what "five" means, then these are distinct conceptions because one is in my mind and one is in your mind. By what principle of identity do you claim that these are the same concept? We can say that we both see the same word "five", but how does this mean that we both have the same concept?
I agree that each thing (a) to (d) do not have all the same properties, because they all look physically different, but they still all have the same property of pointing to the concept of "five-ness". This should clarify why only V is the correct answer to the question "what is the Roman numeral for five?", while all of them are correct answers to the question "What results from 2+3?".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I will indeed use a principle of identity: If things have the exact same properties, then they are one and the same thing; and if not, then not. Two sticks may look identical, but are not one and the same because they have different x, y, z properties. What about the concept of 'triangle'? To me, its essential properties are 'surface' + 'three straight sides'; nothing else. What about for you? If your concept has the exact same essential properties as my concept, then they are one and the same.
There's a presupposition in your question. Does an abstraction (such as information) depend on the existence of concrete particulars?
Aristotle would say "Yes", Plato would say "No".
What do you say?
Well, as you say, there is always some physical representation.
But there must also be rules - syntax - to ensure the proper translation of the message from one physical representation to the next.
Then there must be the third thing of some habit of interpretance that can make sense of the syntactically structured signs. The message must be read, understood, acted upon. So there is semantics too.
But note how syntax itself has irreducible semantics. A rule can permit only the one reading. That is how computers implement Boolean logic. Semantics can begin in a machine like and reflexive fashion. Just like the way the chemoreceptors of a bacterium are set up to permit no other choices in terms of behavioural responses.
So semantics evolves from the first hardware syntactical beginnings. In a complex brain, any message can be misread, distorted, doubted, refuted. A complex brain may have its habits - it will just read a message in the accepted way and respond without question - or it also can find endless ways to question that information it appears to be getting. It can imagine the world as being other than what it has just been told.
So it is not that semantics lacks complexity in the human case. There really is an interpreter at work as the interpretation is not in fact completely constrained by the syntax of the sign. However also we can see how that complexity gets built up due to recursive or hierarchical elaboration.
Your OP example depended on the claim of mechanically faithful transmission of a message. And in fact also the unambiguous creation of the original meaning, and its final interpretation. It only ended up talking about syntax, the rules of the game. That is why more complex metrics of information are needed - like self information - to start to model the semantic plasticity that makes life actually interesting.
Excellent question! I think the answer has to do with the fact that mental representation has an attribute which physical forms do not, namely, plasticity. The mind is able to conjure, compare, shuffle, and re-arrange ideas effortlessly, in a way that is not feasible for physical forms. But in both cases - i.e. either mental or physical forms - the salient ability is the ability to infer or deduce meaning, to equate this symbol or form with that idea. It is the 'grasping of meaning' which is essential to the process - which is, as I said earlier, the precise import of the word 'intelligence'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You didn't 'refute' it, you're obfuscating the meaning of 'the same'! As I said, endless obfuscation. No further comment.
Samuel LaCrampe is essentially making the same point as made by Loyd Gerson in the quotation from Aristotle's De Anima some pages back, which I repeat here for convenience:
Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism
Quoting Andrew M
I don't think it's so clear-cut. Let me ask you this - would the 'law of the excluded middle' be the case, even in the absence of anyone capable of grasping it?
I would think the answer is 'yes'. The same would go for real numbers and other logical laws. This is the meaning of 'objective idealism' i.e. there are ideas that are real and the same for all observers, but they are not phenomenal existents; in Platonic epistemology, they're the object of dianoia rather than pistis or doxa.
I am still in the process of studying Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism, which is his major difference with Plato, but I *think* the difference between the two lies in sense in which number (etc) can be said to exist in the absence of any observer. Much later, Augustine definitively solved this problem, by declaring that the ideas exist eternally in the divine intellect. On that note, see this brief but very interesting passage on intelligible objects.
Quoting apokrisis
I think where I differ is that the ability evolves, but the object of cognition - in this case, ideas - does not evolve. That is the sense in which they're eternal.
I think Peirce has inherited the Platonist notion of 'the ideas', which is evident in such passages as these:
Peirce, Reasoning and the Logic of Things, edited by Kenneth Laine Ketner, (Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 11.
Now I know you might object on the basis of it being 'Platonia'. But nevertheless, I think the Aristotelian concept of the 'final cause', which semiotics apparently recognises, is inseparable from some such idea. It's an inconvenient truth, for us moderns. As Nietzsche was to say, much later, 'I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar'. ;-)
(Right now, I have to go and countersink about 2,000 nails in a pool deck, so will be away for some hours.)
I don't object to Platonia is some sense. And I am specific about that sense.
So yes, mathematical form, and even The Good, captures something essential about nature - its barest level of syntax. There are regularities - symmetries - that are just unavoidable as the deep structure of being. So a very few things qualify for Platonia. There are the ur-forms that become the subject of our metaphysical inquiry.
Semiosis - as a triadic mechanism - was of course the core one uncovered by Peirce. That is what put intelligibility itself - as a meaning making process - at the centre of reality creation. Existence arises as a dissipation of vagueness by hierarchically organised constraints. The Cosmos is rational in that carefully specified sense. It is like a mind in that fashion.
So we can talk about Platonia as the set of forms or ideas that are not merely contingent - accidents of nature, accidents of history - but in fact completely necessary in being completely unavoidable. In trying to do anything and everything, nature would still have to find itself regulated by certain emergent global principles.
Given this stricter definition, Platonia begins to make sense. We don't have to suggest it lies in some unphysical realm of its own or exists in the eternality of a divine intellect. It is just always latent. It is the regularity that simply must always emerge from irregularity itself.
So Platonia is defined by the barest syntax that can be imagined to have historical inevitability. Nature's deep forms. It is about the rules that are immanent in potentiality itself.
Whiteness, horses, men, and a billion other Platonic ideals are simply accidents of history. They are local phenomena that certainly have to express the over-riding deep principles, but also they are the kind of complex developments which freely incorporate accidental elements into their design. They are not the pure syntax that is a Platonic-strength constraint on existence. They are the free variety that can develop within the highly general span of those constraints.
So the usual way to think of Platonic forms is that they completely specify the shape of some entity in informational, point-for-point fashion. Like an architect's blueprint. In other words, the forms are taken to construct material organisation atomistically - a patent contradiction of what forms are really about.
Instead the forms function (pan)semiotically. It only matters that a horse, or a man, or a tree, or a mountain, work as signs of the world that the forms mean to create as an act of regulatory constraint on the irregularity of unformed potential.
Again, information loss. The forms are what arise as the ultimate constraints as they can afford to sweat the least detail. A horse or a man is good enough as an example of an entropy-accelerating agent. All Platonia has to see is this basic box has been ticked - objects A and B are meeting the basic criteria of Being itself, the thermodynamic imperative. They are examples of dissipative structure. Beyond that, Platonia doesn't need to care. Irregularity has been tamed to the degree that makes sense. There is an intelligible material world out there, as can be told from these signs of its being.
Yes. It is also an abstraction that depends on the existence of concrete particulars.
Do you agree?
Quoting Wayfarer
Their difference actually has nothing specifically to do with observers or numbers (as I think your more fundamental example above with the LEM demonstrates). Their difference is simply whether abstractions do or don't have a dependency on the concrete.
You say that semiotics accepts formal and final causes, and top-down causation. So I really don't know if I accept the 'thermodynamic imperative' as if it amounts to a final cause, which is the role it seems to play for you. It seems to me that it's an argument that the ultimate end is non-existence. Whereas the Aristotelean view, on which formal and final causes and ends were originally formed, is the opposite of that. The question I keep asking is, how can you preserve the functionality of formal and final causes and top-down causation, if there is no 'top'? Or, in other words, if the final end is mere non-existence?
That's why I provided that rather cynical quotation the other day - von Neumann's advice to Claude Shannon to include the concept of entropy in his work, because, he said, "no-one knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage"'. ;-)
__
Quoting Andrew M
No, it doesn't depend on it. Concrete particulars are instances, or instantions, of the principles. They depend on the principle, but the principle doesn't depend on them. Were some other planet to form, and life to evolve on it, then they would eventually discover the law of the excluded middle.
It is what it is. I don't think the job of metaphysics or science is to tell us whatever story we find the most reassuring or familiar,
You keep saying you reject a Heat Death as an ultimate goal because you don't like the sound of that conclusion. Your personal preference here ought to be irrelevant.
Besides, my approach does not deny that negentropy is a freedom permitted by the very fact that there is a universal entropy tendency. Indeed, it guarantees the existence of negentropy as the structure required to do any dissipating.
It is just that the top - in terms of negentropic complexity - arises in the middle of time and space.
So again, you should be pleased. Humans are peak negentropy in that regard. We are poised fairly precisely in the middle of creation. We are as far from the Planck scale as we are from the cosmic scale.
The universe revolves around our Being after all. Our existence is as special as it gets. We are the height of creation, at least in the direction labelled peak complexity.
(Is that enough spinning in favour of the thermodynamic imperative yet? ;) )
That’s because, in modern philosophy, ultimate truths can only be matters of preference. But I don’t regard that as a personal flaw on your part, it is simply the times we live in.
It is not the existence of ultimate truths that I am questioning. It is about how we go about identifying them and then accepting whatever answer thus emerges.
First, fascinating issue! Good OP.
I agree that it's indeed not easy to sell information as physical. I think that this information you ask about is synonymous with meaning. So we might ask whether meaning is physical.
I don't think it can be. I don't think we can define "meaning."
[quote=Derrida]
the sign is that ill-named thing, the only one, that escapes the instituting question of philosophy: ‘What is…?’
[/quote]
Meaning is. We can speculate about the emergence of meaning only from within the field of meaning. We can of course plausibly answer questions about the material aspect of the sign. But the sign is a sign only to the degree that it is also intelligible and participates in meaning. This intelligibility is what looks irreducible. It is like the optic nerve, which is a blind spot on the retina that makes the rest of the retina significant.
A last point: the physical as opposed to the non-physical is a distinction that exists "for" or "within" meaning. Meaning is prior to this distinction itself.
You may find this interesting:
http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nosp-2014/files/2014/04/2014-WHAT-AFTER-ALL-WAS-HEIDEGGER-ABOUT-HELSINKI.pdf
Here's part of the abstract and a line from the paper:
[quote= Sheehan]
The premise is that Heidegger remained a phenomenologist from beginning to end and that
phenomenology is exclusively about meaning and its source. The essay presents Heidegger’s interpretation of the being (Sein) of things as their meaningful presence (Anwesen) and his tracing of such meaningful presence back to its source in the clearing, which is thrown-open or appropriated ex-sistence (das ereignete/geworfene Da-sein).
...
It follows, therefore, that the being of things is their intelligibility, their ??????? taken broadly. See, for example, Heidegger’s equation of Sein and intelligibility when he speaks of “the inquiry into the intelligibility of things [Sinn des Seienden], that is, the inquiry into being [Sein].”13 Or when he designates Sein as “the intelligibility [Sinn]” of phenomena.14 Or when he speaks of ontology as “the explicit theoretical question about the intelligibility [Sinn] of things.”
[/quote]
Good point. We always find ourselves already within a meaningful, intelligible, information-rich environment. Afterwards we can imagine "pure sensory input," but this is an abstraction. Before we can participate in theoretical conversation, we've already had to learn the "know-how" of surviving in our culture. We train our bodies to move around furniture. We learn to chew without biting our tongue. We also receive language "like the law." So we start as theorists in this "water" that has often become invisible to us, precisely because we've learned to swim in it.
But the issue is, a pre-commitment to scientific methodology narrows the scope of the kinds of answers that will be considered. Anything that sounds vaguely ‘theistic’ - well that’s knocked right out of the park, before the conversation even starts (which is exactly what Harry Hindu wished to do, also). And that too is a function of the times. The decision has already been made as to what might constitute a scientific analysis, and what doesn’t. Entropy is in, telos is out.
Now, I understand why there is a need to dissociate science from the spiritual implications of Platonism. After all, Christian Platonism and Aristoteleanism are precisely what the Enliightenment sought to differentiate itself from. So admittance of Platonic ideas appears to to let ‘a divine foot in the door’, so to speak; it’s the thin end of the wedge, right? So I think that explains the reflexive hostility towards such ideas. Again, not particular to you - I’m sure the majority would agree, and I’m conscious that I am advocating a position which is contrarian. But again, it’s a question of motivation - my interest in philosophy is Platonic in the sense of it being an existential question, not a way of understanding life from the bioscience perspective. Not that there’s anything the matter with that, but it’s a different quest.
(Hey I saw Blade Runner 2049 last night. Fantastic film. These kinds of questions are central to it. ‘I’ve never killed anything that was born, not made’ ‘What difference does that make?’ ‘If you’re born, you have a soul’ ‘well, you’ve gotten by OK without one’.)
It does seem that both try to abolish a practically necessary distinction or at least to present it as an illusion. If I dream that I won the lottery, I can only spend that money in the dream. So as beings in the world there's a big difference between in-here and out-there. We might say that the out-there is "really" in-here since I have to cognize what's going on out there. On the other hand, we have excellent reasons for thinking that our brain being intact, well-fed by the blood stream, and attached to healthy sense organs makes the in-here possible. It's a Mobius strip.
Any theory that tries to cut or untie this Mobius strip is going to be an abstraction, a mere object of conversation. If we look at German idealism and Marx, we see that idealistic and materialistic theories tend to serve as "foundations" for visions of what humanity ought to be or "really" is. So such theories (seems to me) function as "middle men" or rationalizations for political preferences. That's reductive, but I generally think it's shrewd to look at the "fundamental pose" of a theorist. How does he want others to view themselves in terms of their place/purpose in the world? Where does this place him in the proposed, implicit hierarchy?
To be sure, there are abstract types who probably just relish the intellectual pleasure in playing "chess" with these ideas. They may pick this or that side for esthetic reasons in that regard, utterly detached from political considerations.
Is that the issue? Really?
Or is scientific reasoning (as Peirce carefully defines it) just remarkably effective at pruning away unnecessary speculation and unfounded belief? We stick with it because it actually works.
In the last 100 years, the advances in understanding absolutely everything have been just incredible. Granted popular understanding may also be 100 years behind that.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's certainly a reasonable strategy. If someone is advancing a theory that is "not even wrong", reject it from the get-go on those grounds. Even if feelings might be hurt.
Quoting Wayfarer
But there you are reacting to the atomistic, reductionist, mechanical, deterministic, etc, metaphysics of Newtonian mechanics. The hot news of 500 years ago.
Boltzmann's thermodynamic proof that atoms must exist - his equipartition argument that “if you can heat it, it has micro-structure” - was the last hurrah of classical mechanics really. So the existence of matter was proved as an informational necessity. Entropy came first, particles second. Many physicists of his time were outraged about the claim atoms were real and not fictions. It got heated, if not vicious.
Then of course quantum mechanics came along and - among other things - showed that Boltzmann's constant of entropy, k, was derivative of Plank's constant h. Or rather, there was a fundamental duality of action and particle. Or better yet, missing information and material uncertainty.
So entropy physics or statistical mechanics was both the end of the old and the start of the new.
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, this is fair enough to the degree that invoking divine feet or supernatural/transcendent causes amounts to a claim that is "not even wrong". A belief must have counterfactual consequences to be justifiable.
If this is the position being taken, then it is a reflective hostility, not an unthinking one.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. I can see there is also the personal question of how to live one's life - now that the choice is being increasingly forced upon us by modern culture.
But my reply on that is to seek the answers at the social level where life actually has to be lived, not in metaphysics. And religions have tended to be pretty wise about how to actually function socially.
So religion can be a great guide on one score, a poor guide on the other. Your spiritual dimension may actually say something about how best to organise society, while failing in its claims regarding the world that is society's context.
Religion seeks some kind of absolute authority for its moral and aesthetic codes. It should chill out and leave that job to objective investigative techniques. It is enough if it works as social practice. The Good does not have to have Platonic existence to still be a pragmatic goal that we might have every reason to cherish.
So my objection is conflating two different things - tales of metaphysical origination and tales of healthy social practice. You don't need divine authority to back up intelligent moral arguments.
Which is worshipping science is all about. Those who live in the bubble of science have no idea how little science offers. Practically nothing other than some technology and a constant stream of new stories about stuff it knows nothing about. Too much is made of gadgets and weapons. At the end they are pretty meaningless.
But how does one break out if the Bubble if "science" is all that is permitted? It is like the Dark Ages when religion when religion ruled (it once again rules in a different form). The only way to know something more, something that brings real meaning to life, is to search outside of science, in arts, sports, literature, ancient cultural traditions, and from this learn about life. Lots of benefits will come.
But Rich, first you have to break into it. That's the hard part, eh? :)
It.’works’ with respect to those things that are measurable, things about which we can make hypotheses and then test them. What you generally mean by ‘not even wrong’ is ‘not even scientific’, I think. Religious beliefs were never intended as an hypothesis in the scientific sense, the fact that they are so interpreted is one of the anomalies of European intellectual history. That is actually very clearly analysed by a secular scholar of religion, Karen Armstrong, in her book, Case for God.
Peirce was many things - a multifaceted man if ever there was one. Scientist, philosopher, and logician. I would never cast aspersions on his work, but I would also be careful to distinguish his contributions to scientific method from his idealist philosophy. That is never going to be a matter for science.
Quoting apokrisis
Well and good, but we’re born alone, and we die alone. The ultimate questions have to be faced alone. So there is nothing the matter with what you’re saying, but it’s not sufficient, either.
And I’m not ‘conflating’ anything - there’s a lot we agree on, but nearly everything we don’t agree on, is basically the metaphysics. I actually remain agnostic as to whether there is a God - actually, I don’t believe there is a God - but as I keep saying, the difference between the world being the expression of timeless ideas, and it being the quickest possible route to maximum disorder, is, as you are fond of saying, ‘a difference that makes a difference’.
Quoting apokrisis
It seeks a metaphysic of value.
(Y)
It's interesting to me how - though I'm not quarrelling with the objective of your example - in a sense this is an oddly 'mechanical' example. All the other things the signallers did while apparently signalling have been excluded from the account to focus on this 'byte' of information. Ceteris paribus is running.
I am thinking of two other options: (a) the anarchic account, where the account-teller missed all the serious meanings of life, as expressed through the marvellous things happening to the sentry and sailors and flaggers and coders, which they turned away from momentarily to transmit this piece of information; (b) the truth-questioning account, where each signaller knows the information they are transmitting is a lie, but they know the systematizers at HQ believe their system can only transmit truth, that this is indeed in its very nature; instead the signallers have their own one-to-one secret systems to tell each others it's all bollocks.
:)
That's bleak. And nothing like I see it. Pretty much the opposite.
Quoting Wayfarer
But it's both. And while preferences shouldn't dictate answers, I find the alternative - some state of confusion about a world that is divine yet mechanical - unappealing. It Is pleasant to see the entirety of existence as one organic form.
Is this the difference? How can you feel at home in the world if you think you have wound up in the wrong place, stuck in the mechanical realm of physical being when you believe true being is somewhere else?
And that is the Platonic view that Aristotle disputed. Per Aristotle, the abstract principle depends on the concrete particulars.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes they would, but only because the LEM presents in specific scenarios that they observe.
For example, an alien tosses a coin (or their alien equivalent) multiple times. That a specific coin toss lands either heads or not heads is seen to exhaust all the possible outcomes which, in abstract terms, just is the Law of the Excluded Middle.
The gnostics really did feel that mankind was exiled in an alien world and their gnosis was about finding their path out of that (often through harsh asceticism). I don't think that was the Platonist attitude (and it certainly wasn't the Christian Platonist attitude). But even so, there is a sense in Platonic philosophy of lack or deficiency in human existence - among them, that man alone is cursed with knowledge of his own mortality, where creatures enjoy blissful ignorance; also that knowledge is often uncertain, insofar as it pertains only to the objects of sense, which in themselves are transient and corruptible.
Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament
Quoting mcdoodle
With all due respect, neither do much to help our Harbourmaster.
Quoting Andrew M
I don't think that's correct. I think his view was that forms could only be known through the form of concrete particulars, or that the universals could only be known in the form in which they took. But he was no nominalist, in fact nominalism wasn't thought of for millennia afterwards. So I don't think you can say that the form depends on the particular, it is surely the reverse - in hylomorphic dualism, things consist of form and matter. But still reading up on this.
OK, so your principle of identity involves "exact same properties". How does the concept of "five-ness" which is in my mind, qualify as the same concept of "fiveness" which is in your mind, when they are described by these different properties ("in my mind" and "in your mind"). Clearly they don't have the exact same properties, and are therefore not the same concept.
Quoting Wayfarer
Now that's a load of crap if I've ever seen one. I'm merely pointing out the difference between "similar" and "same", and you call this "obfuscating the meaning of 'the same'". Don't you know that logical process begins with the law of identity, and to say that something which is similar to X is the same as X, is to start with an unsound premise? So it is quite clear that your argument contains an unsound premise. So your argument is refuted on this basis.
Call it obfuscation all that you want, but I am only trying to establish a clear distinction between same and similar, whereas you entire argument relies on an ambiguity between these two. Your argument is nothing but equivocation at best.
Here's a challenge Wayfarer, if you haven't hit the ignore button on me. Reformulate your argument with the proper premise, a true premise, which respects the fact that similar information is transmitted by different media, rather than the same information. I'm interested to see where you can get with that.
Wayfarer, just to prove I am taking your question seriously as well as riffing on it anarchically...
Here's a relevant bit of the Metaphysics, which perhaps helps, although the word 'prior' in the translation does make it more confusing than it needs to be! Obviously 'prior' is not about time in this quote.
If these "ultimate questions have to be faced alone," then this "not sufficient, either" must be a personal matter. IMO, you tend to frame it as a social matter. You often gripe about the plague of individualism. But we die alone, as you say. Some of us (not me, really) face this "dying alone" in terms of a social project (world-fixing as life purpose), but this is optional. "Transcendence" of the world's "imperfections" is obviously a part of the spiritual tradition, as you well know.
You ignored my post, perhaps because it doesn't fit your frame of embattled theism (David) and towering, trendy materialism-scientism( Goliath). To be frank, it reminds me of the antinatalist or pessimist who frames the world in terms of depressed in-the-know people and happy dummies. Any particular entrapping frame (usually some oversimplified dualism) is probably going to open perpendicularly. The problem is the framing itself. We are swimming in meaning and value. This is just my view, but there's something like a scientism in your anti-scientism.
You say that religion isn't science, and yet you seem to resent religion's lack of "respectability" for the scientific method. It's as if you want to have your cake and eat it, too --that you're not happy with the "subjectivity" of religion. In that sense you (in my view) tend to present religion as a victim in some sense. But certainly religion transcends science subjectively. So it's just a matter of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's. If religion is not a set of propositions about public reality, then what has it to do with science at all?
Huh? Check the first line:
It does indeed. As I mentioned to AndrewM, I have a book out of the library on the relation of Aristotle and Plato and am about to get into that in more detail.
That last phrase about 'matter existing potentially' is key - I think it could be phrased thus, that matter is actualised by form. This is the 'prima materia' of Aristotelean hylomorphism, unless I'm mistaken.
Interestingly, there's a current piece of science news, about exactly this idea in relation to quantum physics. It takes the notion of 'potentia' in Aristotle and places it in this context:
Source
Real but not existent. The perplexity arises because in our world, only what is material is existent, there are no 'degrees of reality'.
Quoting t0m
Apologies - I had meant to get to it, but it's like playing chess against multiple opponents. And even now I ought to be doing something else.
Quoting t0m
I do agree with that, but I think you're the only other contributor who has suggested that 'information' and 'meaning' are more or less synonymous in this context. I find that suggestion pregnant with, well, meaning. There is the trend towards saying, hey, maybe information is fundamental in the Universe - maybe it's not too much of a stretch to then say, hey, maybe meaning is fundamental - after all! (After having declared it entirely banished in the aftermath of the Copernican revolution.)
But I'm keeping clear of Derrida and Heidegger. I don't have time to study them in depth, and without studying them in depth, nothing much I say will be relevant.
Quoting t0m
Context: that was a response to this:
Quoting apokrisis
I appreciate the value of 'community' - after all, Buddhists take refuge in the 'three jewels', Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and the Sangha is (literally) the monastic community but more broadly, the 'community of the wise'. But it is not sufficient simply to understand such truths purely through society and culture, they also have to be understood in one's own heart, mind and experience.
One of Plotinus' most famous aphorisms is that the spiritual quest is the 'flight of the alone, to the alone'. That's nearer what I meant.
The 'plague of individualism' is only that of nihil ultra ego, 'nothing beyond self'. When the individual is properly anchored both in truth and in the community of the wise, then that individual is indeed a worthy individual (near the original meaning of the 'arya' in Buddhism, which the Nazis were later to purloin for their depraved ends).
Quoting t0m
'Religion' has many meanings, and some of the connotations of that word are unavoidably negative, even evil, when we consider the chequered history of religion in the world. No question. But what I'm trying to argue is that there are epistemological and metaphysical issues that have become intertwined with religion, in such a way that the social attitude towards religion - the desire NOT to believe - influences our very being. I think that is the meaning of 'unbelief' - it's not that you won't bow to the Pope - I certainly don't - but that there is a kind of pathological hatred of anything that can be construed as religious ('pathological' because the roots are not visible i.e. unconscious.)
Certainly, religious modes of knowledge are 'subjective' but only in the sense that they involve an understanding which must be first-person, i.e. they don't concern matters about which one CAN be objective; they don't concern objects at all, unless those objects are symbolic. Whereas science only concerns objects, and seeks explanations of everything in terms of objects and forces. But you see, to say this tends to provoke the reaction - ah, you're religious, you don't refer to science to sort out the wheat from the chaff - you're 'not even wrong'.
This predicament is not my invention. The 'religion and science' dialogue (or conflict) is a deep and, for now, permanent feature of the intellectual landscape. This goes back to the C P Snow lectures on 'The Two Cultures', and has been revived again more recently in the debates between Steve Pinker and Leon Wieseltier after Pinker's essay 'Science is not the Enemy of the Humanities'. Pinker in that essay gave a rousing account of why 'scientism' is not a bad thing, by showing how comprehensively he didn't understand the term.
Quoting t0m
'Public' is a key word here. It means 'third person', what can be exhibited in the 'public square'. Again, religious or spiritual truths are not 'public' in that sense, because they can only be understood in the first person. But they're not subjective in the sense of idiosyncratic, peculiar to myself - hence the role of the spiritual mentor or 'guru' in validating your integration of spiritual truths.
One of my favourite examples from the social psychology of "higher" emotions is accidie - what it feels like not to be able to believe with the heart. Monks in the middle ages were troubled that the fervour of their belief might be lacking. They might just be going through the motions during their day-long rounds of prayer and contemplation.
These days of course, you can be an Anglican and not have to worry. The outward forms are all that need to be preserved.
So anyway, I think you are completely wrong in burdening yourself with the extra requirement that one has to understand rational truths in some continually beatific and personally uplifting way. It is one of the myths of Romanticism.
Institutionalised religion exists by creating a disconnect between people and their local community. By de-socialising beliefs about origin tales and moral custom, the Church (whether it be Christian, Buddhist, whatever) creates the space in which it can insert itself in people's minds, hearts and experience. The Church gets to take over and run the show.
It is exactly the same as neoliberal globalisation and its exploitation of the romantic myth of the self-made individual. Every person is born an entrepreneur - your sorry standalone story of existence. We have to stand on our own two feet and make something of ourselves economically. When we die, there is only the money to mark our passing.
The name of the game has changed, but institutional religion is institutional religion. You break people apart from their socially-constituted being, their natural fabric of relations, and sign them up to an impossible ideal of self-actualisation which then turns them into puppets being manipulated by a system of interests far beyond their possible control.
That is what gets me here. You are arguing for the very poison that causes the problem. By situating meaning "deep inside the spiritual self", you are just letting yourself get conned by a highly materialistic system. Yesterday it was the Church. Today it is the consumer society.
Never give a sucker an even break, as they say.
I can't see how this says anything more than that truths, if they are to have any value, have to be understood (which includes the living of them); as opposed to merely having lip service paid to them.
This is obviously in reference to a very different kind of truth than the scientific and empirical kinds of truth, though; which cannot really be lived, even though it is obviously possible to organize one's lifestyle according to them. Such truths cannot touch life as it is lived in the primordial sense.
It's the way that you understand that is venomous.
Certainly, I would not defend 'the Church' and I am not talking about religious institutionalism. Baby and bathwater, again. But notice that anything that deviates from what you take to be the correct, scientific approach, is treated with scorn and opprobrium. You can't even discuss it without the spleen rising. My way or the highway, right?
Quoting apokrisis
That's 'not even wrong' ;-)
Quoting Janus
Of course! Just how I see it.
I am familiar with some of the writings on the Church fathers on this. It’s not ‘belief’ that’s lacking, but a heart-opening to the higher truth. You can believe all you like without having that. Acidie is one of the obstacles encountered in the spiritual life which is an obstruction or hindrance. I recall the customary advice for overcoming it is to set goals and work assiiduously on performing them - basically motivational psychology.
It would really be worth your time to look at the OP I mentioned by Karen Armstrong.
Note how you turn a rational and science-backed analysis into venom and spleen. You are trying to read emotions into my words so as to explain their message in your own preferred terms.
If we are not communicating, it is because you are misreading me in a deep way. Sure, I use emotional language - an internet forum is that kind of place. I've also published the same basic argument in an academic journal as it happens. So horses for courses, as they say. And surely you have picked up my ironic use of emotion-talk.
I am always laughing when I speak of the "thermodynamic imperative". There may be a serious rational point that I'm making, but where is the fun in putting it dryly? And everyone complains about any use of more technical language anyway.
So I appreciate that this might seem to strike at you personally. It is indeed what makes us "persons" that I am talking about here. My position is that it is our pragmatic webs of social relations, not some supernatural guiding spirit that hides in the shadow of material being.
I actually find it unbelievable that you might believe that you were born alone, will die alone, and must discover any meaning to your existence alone. I never thought of you as that kind of nihilist. So yeah, I will call you out on that. Just as I will be very sorry if I learn that this is in fact how you see things. It is a very self-destructive point of view.
In return, if you want to consider my feelings, you could stop just labelling me as your ideal enemy, the reductionist materialist. The insult itself is water off a duck's back. But I'm somewhat irritated by the way you keep wheeling it out to prove that whatever I say has to be wrong because I'm a signed-up member of Scientism.
But you're not! I said yesterday, we have, I think, one disagreement - but it is a big one, and it's in metaphysics. Now that post you responded to this morning (my time) that was addressed to tOm. And if you read your response, it was pretty venomous, right? When you say:
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
So, you don't mean that what I am arguing for is a 'poisonous myth' and 'social parasitism'? Is that part what I'm not understanding or mis-reading? Perhaps you might clarify, then.
really I don't at all consider you an enemy- an adversary, yes, and a tough one. But these issues often push buttons.
Quoting apokrisis
I am sorry if that struck you as nihilistic, it certainly wasn't the intention. It's more the understanding that 'the world', the web of culture and relationships, whilst crucial in a person's life, is also that which is lost at death. And also there is a 'consensus reality' that encloses one in its shared beliefs. All this is why the Buddha often referred to himself as 'the recluse, Gotama'. One has to realise truth for oneself, and in oneself, irrespective of what others' think or say. I'm not making any claims to have realised an exalted spiritual truth at all, I'm just pointing this out.
The spiritual quest is the quest to realise 'an identity which is not subject to death' (see Alan Watts' The Supreme Identity. That is nowadays spoken of as 'going to Heaven', but I think that is simply an allegorical concession to the popular imagination. This also goes for Plato, by the way - in the passages where he speaks of the philosopher as 'practising for death'. And also it's implicit in his whole theory of anamnesis. All of the Platonic dialogues presume the immortality of the soul. (Buddhists don't speak in those terms.) But, in the time since Plato, all of that was incorporated into theology, and then largely rejected - well, by secular culture, obviously.
I am trying to distinguish the epistemological and metaphysical aspects of Platonism, from the religious culture in which it became embodied - you could say, which hijacked it. Don't forget it was the Christians who closed down the Academy. Then they took many of the Platonists most profound ideas, and locked them in the Vatican vaults - 'you can only read these on our terms'. But anyway, that's another topic.
(MUST go an do this big household chore that I was supposed to have started an hour ago.)
Romanticism is certainly a mythology. And I agree it can be quite poisonous. At first it entertains, or even improves. But if taken seriously as a metaphysics ... well you mentioned Nazism first. As well as making the nihilist statements.
Then yes. Parasitism is your word. And not really technically correct as parasites are little critters sucking your blood, not corporations that own your soul. But I am happy to talk about institutional religion in the same terms as any other globalising entity that exerts an unhealthy degree of control over individual lives by decoupling that life from its natural local context.
How can it be sane to live your life according to actual abstractions? Surely you see the inherent madness in wishing you were already dead and at one with your maker, or better yet, never born?
So as I said, I am not against religion as a social institution. At the community level, belief can encode a highly functional way of life. That's the nice thing about a Chinese temple. They have room for everyone's gods, just like the way Roman's used to worship, or everyone use to worship, before corporate brain-washing religion came along and smashed all the rival "false idols".
It is just like Trump and his "respect the flag". We know it is abhorrent when the elite cement their power by removing the right of community expression by waving about some abstract symbol.
There can be perfectly healthy religion - to the degree it doesn't insist on the absoluteness of its metaphysical abstractions, and doesn't in turn achieve that domination by symbols by turning the individual inwards, setting themselves at war within their own "hearts". The place that reason can't then win.
See flag. Feel patriotic. It's called operant conditioning. Message transmitted. Thought short-circuited. Job done.
Right, so I would maintain a strict division between questions concerning information (as per the OP) and questions concerning life (in the transcendental lived sense). Information is always already divorced from life in the sense I understand religion to be concerned with. This means that metaphysical questions are likewise always already divorced from life in that sense; and thus I would say they can have nothing to do with religious faith at all.
So I see the attempt to speak about " forms of knowledge the ancients possessed that we have lost" as being mired in the inevitable difficulty that what we could be speaking about could be nothing other than the simple revelation of life itself that happens to the individual, that we, in our modern scientistic obsession with inter-subjective corroboration (in this case as applied to metaphysical ideas) have simply become generally blinded to. No knowledge of any inter-subjective character could fit that bill at all. The very subject of "lost knowledge" always seems to continually fall back into that category error.
[b]"At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children."
Matthew 11:25[/b]
Saith he, quoting scripture! As it happens this is a philosophy forum, the subject of the discussion is the incorporeal nature of ideas in the Platonic tradition.
Quoting apokrisis
There is a lot to be gained by looking at your spectacles, instead of just through them, although I agree this is a very difficult thing to do.
A very disappointing response; although not a surprise. I certainly didn't merely quote scripture. I outlined my standpoint; which you haven't really attempted to respond to at all, other than to needlessly pontificate about "this being a philosophy forum". I am well aware that the subject of the discussion is "the incorporeal nature of ideas" and I believe I have given good reasons why I think the notion of "incorporeal ideas" is not a genuinely coherent one at all.
Anyway, I'm happy enough to leave it at that. It was probably a mistake to attempt to engage you in discussion, since you don't seem to be open to alternative ways of looking at things at all and it always seems to end up this way. No need to worry; I won't ever trouble you again.
Heavens' sake. Your first response was: hey you're talking about 'existential truths', the kinds of truths you live, rather than scientific, objective facts'. 'Yes', I said, 'that is what I was getting at'. But then, you dismiss any possibility of discussion, quoting The Bible in bold face, as if that settles the matter. As it happens, I am trying to present a rational argument for the fact that information is not physical. I think that this is true, but that one of the reasons it is such a controversial argument is because it goes against the grain of much modern philosophy. So now I'm being criticized both for being 'not scientific enough' and now 'not heeding the bible'. Maybe it's me who should be giving up. ;-(
No, you misunderstood. Yes, I said they are existential truths; the kinds of truths that have been extensively forgotten. But I was asserting that there is no other knowledge that has been forgotten than the kind of living revelation that is available to "little children"; not any kind of inter-subjective knowledge, in other words.
The bible quote was not intended to "settle the matter" but merely to offer an instance of the same idea; that the kind of "living knowledge" under discussion has nothing to do with sophisticated information and/or the corporeality or incorporeality of information. You don't have to agree with that of course; but I have offered my reasons for thinking that; and if you really wanted to engage in open discussion, then you should proffer your reasons for disagreeing with it. It is your apparent unwillingness to do that which "dismisses any possibility of discussion" as I see it.
I am willing to discuss it, but I think that quoting Biblical scripture in support of an argument kicks the ball into the long grass. (I will sometimes refer to a Christian aphorism, as there is a lot of wisdom in them, but scripture is another matter,)
I have noticed that you tend to draw a pretty sharp boundary when it comes to what you regard as the subject of mystical experience. Anything beyond that boundary - can't say anything about it. There's the quotidian, and the mystical.
But the actual Christian mystical tradition - speaking here of the tradition of Eckhardt and Pseudo-Dionysius - are both Platonic *and* mystical, and often rely on reasoned argument - indeed often to point towards something which is beyond reasoned argument.
Back to the point about existential truths - the epistemological issue is that the modern mind, modern naturalism, is characterised by a fundamental orientation, that of being separate from the Universe. Man, the scientist, the observer, there, nature before his gaze. Now there has been a shift in the nature of our understanding, in that the pre-moderns didn't live in this sense of otherness or separation. But we live in that sense, 'modernity is a state of consciousness', so we are not aware of it. (Owen Barfield has a lot to say about this point; there's also an echo of it in Julian James' 'bicameral mind'.)
But because of that attitude, 'scientific fact' is by definition centred around measurement; as I said before, spiritual philosophy (I used the term 'religion') is concerned with a metaphysic of value. (Actually I think I got that idea from Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance.) So Plato's philosophy is both concerned with objective facts, proto- or early science, AND ALSO a metphysic of vallue. Where, notice the constant tension between those two in these discussions.
So, no hard feelings, really do appreciate your input, would not want to go without it.
Alas, a concept is a peculiar thing, which by definition is composed only of essential properties, and contains no accidental properties. Using again the triangle example: A particular triangle may have accidental properties such as a size, colour, and location. But the concept "triangle-ness" may not have any accidental properties, or else it is not a concept, by definition. Consequently, the accidental property of 'being in my mind' or 'being in your mind' cannot be attributed to concepts. Instead, when we say "the concept in my mind is the same as the concept in your mind", this is just an informal way of saying "The concept I speak of is the same concept you speak of".
Not even a mathematician can draw a generic triangle, nor can you think of one. Every geometry or trigonometry textbook you will ever see has illustrations in it that are specific triangles. In working a problem using such an illustration, you simply (!) follow a rule not to rely on features of the triangle that, while they are present in the triangle you have drawn or are given, are not specified in the problem.
This procedure might be what Grice refers to as "deeming".
OK, but I wasn't quoting that in support of an argument, as I already said; I was quoting it as an example of a scriptural expression which embodies the same idea I have argued for, but gives it in poetic or literary language.
Also I wonder what your criterion for thinking aphorism are OK to quote whereas scripture is not. Neither aphorisms nor scripture are substitutes for argument, as I see it; but if arguments have also been given then I see no reason to proscribe the use of scripture for rhetorical purposes.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is not quite right, either. I think lived experience, whether quotidian or mystical, is, as it is lived, prior to any interpretation of it, or any ideas which are developed out of it. You can say as much as you want about it, but what you say will never be living in the sense that living itself is. The closest we can get to that livingness is the kind of evocation which is possible through the arts; through poetic and religious or mystical expression and so on. This is not the same as philosophy although philosophy can be given in this kind of language, and as such is more of an art than a science. I find the way you talk about "lost knowledge" seems to conflate philosophy with some kind of science. Philosophy will always lose if you try to pit it against science on science's own terms.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't believe that reasoned argument, per se, can support anything beyond itself. In other words discursive reasoning cannot support anything but discursive conclusions; and conclusions cannot ever be better, or more, than the presuppositions (which cannot be supported discursively) that underpin them. People are never convinced in their religious faith by reasoned arguments; although they may certainly be led by reasoned argument to see the inaptness and weakness of some commonly held taken-for-granted ideas that might erroneously be thought to stand in the way of religious faith.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't quite see it this way, or at least I wouldn't put it in those terms. I would say the universe just is the external world where everything is always already separated from everything else and from life as lived. It is for just this reason, being separated from life, that what cannot be revealed to the "wise" may be revealed to babes.
I have read most of Barfield's books, and I think he makes the same mistake as his master Steiner, whom I have also read and listened to (via Steiner audio) extensively, in thinking that spirituality is a science. Having said that I also think there are some great insights in both Barfield and Steiner; but I do think there is this fundamental mistake.
Anyway, likewise, I hold no hard feelings. We do seem agree on many things, and I enjoy your posts, too. As long as we can engage and thrash out our differences, then I am satisfied. I mean I'm perfectly happy to disagree as long as we are both clear exactly how and why we disagree, wherever we do.
Aristotle's view was that universals are immanent in concrete particulars not transcendent to them (per Plato). So, for example, there is no universal redness apart from concrete particulars such as apples.
Quoting Metaphysics Book VII Part 16
Aristotle's dispute with Plato here was not about epistemology, i.e., how one could know about universals; it was about ontology, i.e., whether or not universals were independent of particulars.
Interesting. I wonder why bother persisting with universals at all. Need to read up!
I don't think I can agree with this. If being within a mind is not an essential property of a concept, then we must consider concepts which are not within a mind. So the concept which you speak of "fiveness", is not necessarily in a mind. What identifies it as a concept then?
To me, what identifies something as a concept is that it is an idea, a notion in the mind, so being in a mind is an essential aspect of a concept. If it's not within a mind, it's something other than a concept. Now you've denied me of that identifying feature. So ideas and notions within your mind are not necessarily concepts either, they could be something else. I have a notion in my mind of "fiveness". I cannot assume that it is the concept of fiveness. Where can I find the concept of fiveness in order that I can confirm that my idea of fiveness corresponds with the concept of fiveness.
All this is is more naive realism, Apo (you refering to some real thing that is happening with scribbles on a screen, as if you have a clear, unimpeded view of what is really happening in reality). Its what everyone in this thread is doing, everytime they post anything.
I can't help it if you don't get my point in questioning the distinction when it comes to causation and information flow.
The cause is NOT the effect. That is an inherent aspect of causation. So, how do you expect to have a "direct" view when what you are is the effect, not the cause? How else could you have a "direct view" other than "being" the thing itself? Views are always third person, and our language is third person whenever we talk about how reality is.
This is how information is carried. The effect carries information about the cause. The mind is about the world and our perceived place in it.
I keep asking you how you came to know semiotics and pragmatism. How did that information get from "out here" to "in there"? Did it take time? Was causation involved?
@mcdoodle noted the mechanical nature of the translations in your example. So mechanical in fact that a machine could clearly perform these translations and send these signals. I think your argument really only cares about the first and last steps: seeing something and symbolizing it; seeing a symbol and interpreting it. These functions you attributes to intelligent minds, therefore these functions are mental, therefore they are not physical. I don't think the translation has anything to do with it.
If programmed to do so by humans.
'Machine - an apparatus using mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task.'
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
As my argument is only concerned with establishing that information is not physical, the fact that it can be described as 'mental' is neither here nor there.
But what the machine actually does is physical, right? Just because a human designs a machine to serve a human purpose, doesn't mean the machine itself is doing something non-physical, does it? We use shovels to move physical dirt, physically, don't we?
But I never denied that 'representation is physical'. And again, what is different about moving dirt, and using dirt to spell something out, is that the latter embodies information. The 'arrangement of dirt' in the latter case is intrinsic to the idea that is being communicated. To push the metaphor, you could use dirt to spell out the message - Greek ship, 3 masts, arrives after noon - in ten different languages, in which case, they would all be different structures. But get one point wrong, and the information is lost.
To the extent that anything we perceive is "physical", ultimately a machine is only transferring and transforming. It is fundamentally without "meaning" until the mind gets involved, and the mind begins the process of pattern discernment from which it may or may not find information. Individual minds will find different or no information within the patterns. The thought itself just sits there and is not tangible or measurable in a "physical" sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_constancy
This skips too fast over the fact that the machine is operating syntactically - according to rules the physics can't see.
This is especially obvious with a computer - an information processing device after all. It is explicit in Turing universal computation that physics falls out of the picture. There is a designed in divorce of hardware and software. And even the hardware is divorced from the physics in being a material structure with no inherent dynamics. You have to plug the computer into the wall to make it go.
So it is missing the point to argue that a computer is "just physics". The essence of computation is the syntax that regulates it. And it is the origins of that syntax which then becomes the larger issue.
It is pretty easy to why the physical structure has been given no choice but to act in a way that has been mechanically determined by some program being executed according to a constraining hierarchy of rules.
So a machine is regular physics silenced and controlled. That creates a space of symbolic freedom. Rules can be freely invented to make the machine "do things".
The loop is then semiotically complete when the whole of this relation is constrained by the general requirement that it pragmatically works. The machine does "useful things". Or indeed "semantically meaningful things".
Suppose I'm an earlyish hominin, and a wild dog is biting me. I involuntarily make a sound of pain. Members of my group who hear my cry will take this to mean I'm in trouble and come to help.
Now suppose I'm a slightly later hominin and I can make the same sound voluntarily when a wild dog is about to bite me but hasn't yet. This rocks. Members of my group who hear my cry will take this to mean I'm in trouble and come to help without my having to get bit.
Now suppose I'm a slightly later hominin and I can voluntarily make a sound that to members of my group means "wild dog", rather than a generic "pain/fear/trouble".
Is there mind involved in some of these but not others? Do some of these hominin sounds carry meaning or information but not others?
I'm sure there's a lot of research on this, which probably Apokrisis is better versed in than myself, but I have a philosophical answer I would like to consider.
There's a recent book co-authored by Chomsky, which is about exactly this question, called Why Only Us? Language and Evolution. The central point that it makes is that there is a radical (I would say ontological) difference between animal and human speech, on the grounds that the latter embodies an hierarchical syntax.
The book provides a lot of information from evolutionary biology, linguistics and so on, but that particular snippet conveys one of the important points.
Review by Stephen M. Barr.
So what I would like to believe, putting my Platonic hat back on, is that at a certain point the human (not homonym) mind is able to perceive these hierarchically-ordered sequences of meaning - at which point they are no longer biologically determined in the way that animals are. Whereas, to the ultra-Darwinists, everything is biologically determined, and speech and abstract thought are no different in essence from a peacock's mating display - they only serve to 'propagate the genome', no matter how elaborate the output.
I hope you don't think I was claiming there's no difference between animal signaling and human language.
The question is whether language has a monopoly on meaning or on information or both. And if there is a sort of meaning unique to human language, does it have nothing at all to do with animal signaling? (I believe Chomsky's position is nearby. As I recall, he postulates a single huge leap to language rather than a gradual development.)
Clearly my answer is that it doesn't. And I also pointed out that semiosis recognises grades of "communication" here, like your shift from indexical shrieks to iconic social signalling to symbolic speech acts.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
What do you mean by "mind"? Is there a useful distinction in operation here?
That question wasn't for you.
I thought was that you were positing a pretty straightforward explanation in terms of natural selection, which I'm sure is part of the picture but not the whole picture. (It's the last bit which is controversial.)
My understanding of mind is that all sentient beings (sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively) have minds - even very simple organisms. But in h. sapiens it has evolved to the point of language use, abstraction and rationality. I am inclined towards some form of dualism, whereby what is described as 'mind' in sentient beings, has no counterpart in inorganic nature.
And yet the question was quite clearly addressed to me. So what's the game here?
Sorry. Trying to address you and Wayfarer simultaneously, and that's bound to be confusing!
Instead of responding directly to your last post about computing, I thought I'd take another shot at explaining my general approach to both of you at once.
I'm still mulling over your specific points. (I wasn't actually arguing that machines are just physics, but I did deliberately let the implication hang there in hopes of eliciting the sort of response you gave, which is helpfully specific.)
Yeah, sorry. Should've been clearer.
Thanks for the polite and well-written reply.
Yes, I thought information-as-meaning was quite relevant here. I was probably a little frustrated that you consider scientism to dominate Western philosophy when many consider Heidegger, arguably one of scientism's destroyers, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. If being is meaning is intelligibility, then it is blatantly what constitutes the universe-for-us. The universe-apart-from-us is of course a "piece" of the universe-for-us, namely the "scientific image."
It's a damned shame that Heidegger wore the swastika and (so far as I can tell) peaked early, before he was sucked into and arguably ruined by politics. I thought you might especially appreciate Sheehan's interpretation, since Sheehan has great respect for the positive aspect of religion. In any case, I think your missing out on what's of great value in Heidegger, just as I did for quite awhile, put off by the ugly translations and the indulgence of the later work.
Quoting Wayfarer
I certainly agree that there is a desire not to believe in traditional religion, but the desire to believe in general is (as I see it) alive and well in politics. Within this "real" battle of politics, religion tends to function as a token. So I would read this pathological hatred for religion as religion. The religion of the left-leaning is this or that strain of humanism. The religion of the right is a blend of traditional religion with patriotism and a reverence for (possibly fictional) tradition.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree, but this "only" is pretty much subjectivity itself. And, as I see it, this "not even wrong" critique only has an edge against objectifications of religion. Is the world 6000 years old? Of course not. But that belief is still out there. Are we commanded by an infinite being to keep multiplying? Stone homosexuals? I know that you don't think so. But there are voices out there who do. As long as unsophisticated religion remains a "threat," I think we'll continue to see a distrust of any hint of objectivity in religion, at least until it possibly wins and burns all the books.
Quoting Wayfarer
For me this necessity of external validation is off-putting. As I understand/experience "spirituality," it's a self-justifying experience. But that's just me being subjective. For me "spirituality" involves a "transcendence" of the assumption that there is one, universal, "proper" spirituality. Within my solution there is no need for a one-size-fits-all solution. It is revealed in retrospect to have been an assumption, a questionable inheritance from more objective understandings of the spiritual. I was wearing colored lenses without realizing it, in other words.
I must confess that I think there is a profound reading of "nothing beyond self" that isn't plague-like. It can suggest a bestial, thoughtless mind or a mind that has so transcended alienation that it is one with "God." As you likely know, Kant was accused of nihilism. Indeed, his view implies something akin to nihil ego ultra. The self arguably has to participate in God (become God) to understand/enjoy God. The question is then: what kind of self are we talking about here?
I like the idea of the "community of the wise." As you mention via the Nazi example, it's easy for a community to decide that it is wise and switch on the death machine for the unwise. As I see it, "true religion" should ideally transcend but include community. In other words, it will or is "social" or "decent" within an existing community but does not essentially depend on community. (Of course we need some community to become adults in the first place.) I have a soft spot for the sage who lives on the mountain, away from the usual noise and folly.
So was your answer that once hominins are language users, from then on information is not physical for them? Was it physical before? Or did they just not traffic in the kind of information you're talking about before language use evolves?
Have you looked into After Finitude by chance? The author radicalizes this "could be otherwise" while trying to break through to the in-itself (get around Kant).
As you were totally unimpressed with my argument, I've found a completely different way to describe the problem. Please take a few minutes to read this and let me know what you think.
I think you will agree with me that there are different types of information. If there wasn't different types, then all information would be the same. So information about one thing is different from information about another thing. These are the different subjects of knowledge. For example, information about how to drive a car is one subject, and information about how to grow corn is another subject. The different subjects are different types of information, and this describes one sense, or one way of using "different types of information".
The second sense of "different types of information" refers to the different physical forms in which we find information, what you call the medium. In this sense, radio waves are a different type of information from sound waves, which is different from a book. According to this sense, we can say that our eyes receive a different type of information than our ears do, which is a different type from what our nose receives.
These are two distinct ways of using "different types of information", and although they are obviously distinct, we still must be careful not to equivocate. The first refers to differences in the subject matter, while the other refers to differences in the physical form. You will find that this distinction manifests itself in certain circles of criticism as the distinction between content and form. Content is the subject matter, the idea, while the form is the means by which the content is presented, the physical attributes of the presentation.
When you argue, as you do, that the same information can be conveyed through different media, you say that the same content (subject matter) can come in all different types of physical forms. I'll disregard my dispute over the use of "same" here, and accept this principle along with your use of "same", for the sake of argument. From this position, your claim is that what is essential to information is the subject matter, and the physical form is accidental. When the same subject matter has different physical forms, you call this "the same information". So you conclude that the physical form plays no part in the information itself, as "the same content" is equal to "the same information". .
Here's the problem. If this were the case, then we ought to be able, in principle, to remove the physical form from any piece of information, and be left with pure content, pure subject matter, and this would be pure information. Now imagine if there were such a thing as pure content, pure subject matter, a pure idea, this would be pure information with absolutely no physical form. If we distinguish information from non-information, by apprehending an order or structure of the physical form, then pure content, or pure subject matter, would be unrecognizable as information. So if somehow, we were able to apprehend pure content, or pure subject matter, we would not be able to distinguish whether it is information or not, because it would have no physical form by which we could make such a distinction..
(By the way, this is essentially the same argument you used against me, when you said that we cannot know God, when I said that God is the most highly intelligible of all intelligible objects).
Now we turn the table on the question of what is the essential aspect of information. Since we can only distinguish information from non-information, by apprehending the physical form, then having a physical form must also be an essential aspect of information. The physical form is what distinguishes information as information, rather than non-information, though it may have nothing to do with the content, what the information is. Without a physical form there is only random nonsense, like apokrisis' apeiron, and this cannot be said to be information. So this is the first and most evident essential aspect of information, that it has a physical form. If it has no physical form it is indistinguishable from non-information. The physical form allows us to identify something as information. Once we identify something as information, rather than non-information, by apprehending the physical form, then we move to the other essential aspect of information. We assume that since it is information, it must contain material content, subject matter. Then we act to determine that content.
So in you example of the op, that there is information, is somewhat taken for granted. The horn is synonymous with "there is information". But the op asks us what is information. So this example doesn't serve us because it already designates that the horn signifies "information", then the clerk seeks the content. We must include the horn, the system of alert, "that there is information", as part of the information. Now let's remove the horn. How is the clerk ever going to know "there is information", in order to seek content, unless there is a physical signal? Without a physical signal, there is no differentiation between information and non-information. So the physical signal is just as essential to the nature of information as the content is.
This umwelt is crucial for me. Any linguistic "reductions" of this umvelt occur within this lifeworld or meaningworld. Concepts of the physical and of information have their function and relevance only within our lived world. The conjectures of theologians and physicists alike are encountered by individuals as abstractions, possibly of great value. But any particular abstraction is just one among many that frame this lifeworld conceptually.
We can say that this world is "really" matter or "really" God's plan, but this "really" does not erase the lifeworld it hopes to dominate. I like Husserl & Heidegger for pointing out or unveiling this lifeworld as the basis, background, or horizon for the theoretical mind. One might joke that only a certain kind of hyper-theoretical personality would need such a reminder. But perhaps these lifeworld reducing theories are motivated after all by non-theoretical concern. Such reductions justify transformations of the lifeworld, either personally or politically. They also clarify the grand "meaning" of the life world, which we arguably interpret in terms of fundamental poses. Who should I be? Offering an interpretation-for-all of the shared umwelt is usually an implicit and often enough an explicit answer to this question, however tentative.
What I'm saying is that language and abstract thought rely on an ability which I don't think can meaningfully described as 'physical'. Essentially it's the ability to grasp meaning, to say 'this means that'. Now you can say that even animals see meaning - fire means danger, and so on. I do know with bee-dances this can be quite refined. But I still think that is something that can be described behaviourally, i.e. as stimulus and response, without any reference to mind. (In this, I am, as you can probably see, defending the Greek definition of man as 'the rational animal'.)
But as to whether it was physical 'before' - well, the way I put that is, does the 'furniture of reason' - logical laws and the like - come into existence with humans? I would say obviously not. A=A is the case whether there is anyone around to notice it. But when it is noticed, it is noticed by a rational mind - a mind that knows what A=A means. That is of the essence of rational intelligence - that it understands meaning in that abstract sense.
This is where I am drawn to 'objective idealism' - which is the notion that there are real ideas, that can only be grasped by a mind, that are however not dependent on this or that mind. It's as if the world has an intelligible structure which is discoverable through reason, the discovery of which is the unique ability of a rational creature (and that is very much in the mainstream of at least pre-modern Western philosophy). So even though such a creature is indeed the 'product of evolution' in a biological sense, once that ability begins to arise, then that creature is no longer completely determined by biology - it's transcended the biological.
(I will get to the other long posts in due course, household duties call.)
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
You didn't like that, and responded:
Quoting Wayfarer
But every time I ask something specific about information and how critters like us share it, you tell me your views on mind:
Quoting Wayfarer
That sounds ever so much like what I said.
I'm not convinced that such a view of mind as non-physical compels you to conclude that information is not physical. Information could be something else we embodied minds traffic in just as we do other physical stuff.
And I don't see the argument from translatability as establishing that something not physical is being passed around. I still think in your version of the argument, meaning is non-physical from the outset.
I think I'm seeing a gap where you don't, and that either you'll make it clear to me that there is no gap or I'll make it clear to you that there is, and maybe then you'll fill it, or not.
I dislike doing these quote cum recap posts, but there's a disconnect here that has me flummoxed.
I have read through it a couple of times, and I like his ideas about Corelationalism and what he calls Facticity
The only problem is that I keep losing the damn book,it's a great size for carrying around, Just lost it while on vacation, left it in a plane. I found a copy on line, now all I have to do is re-find it, but I like physical books better than their virtual equivalents.
Without universals we couldn't make statements about particulars (e.g., I have two hands).
For Aristotle, there is only one world - the world of everyday experience - and it includes both particulars and universals.
So twoness is real (in the world) as an abstraction of particulars (e.g., my left hand and my right hand).
From The Law of the Mind
"Consistently with the doctrine laid down in the beginning of this paper, I am bound to
maintain that an idea can only be affected by an idea in continuous connection with it. By anything but an idea, it cannot be affected at all. This obliges me to say, as I do say, on other
grounds, that what we call matter is not completely dead, but is merely mind hidebound with
habits. It still retains the element of diversification; and in that diversification there is life."
Mind is preeminent in Peirce's philosophy (as in Bergson's), and any presentation to the contrary does not represent his works fully. Mind has to be there. It's always there, even if it is denying its own existence.
I spilled coffee on a library copy (the same convenient paperback), so I guess it's mine now.
It strikes me as truly original. I don't entirely "believe" or agree, but the creativity is undeniable. I just ordered Harman's book on Meillassoux, which looks pretty great.
I have decided, with some regret, that I simply can't overlook Heidegger's politics. Agree that he and European philosophers are powerful critics of scientism, though.
Quoting t0m
Not at all what I meant.
Quoting t0m
That's pretty close to what Janus was saying, and I see the point. But the situation in current Western culture is distorted by the role of science as 'arbiter of reality'. That's not just me kvetching about scientism again, either.
One thing I DO know about Heidegger - his work was existential, not in the sense of being of a piece with other existentialists, but because it was concerned with a radically different way of being in the world. (I had a friend who went through a major transformation after reading Being and Time many decades ago). That's nearer to what I'm talking about - 'first person' in the sense of a philosophy that changes your lived experience. Science is not concerned with that - and to say that, is no slight against science. It's just not what it does. But for many that IS knowledge, and the only knowledge worth pursuing.
These points are tangential to this thread but may discuss it elsewhere .
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What is essential to information is what it specifies. For instance you have a complex formula and method for combining the ingredients to create an explosive. It contains instructions and methods which have to be replicated exactly for the result to be synthesised. Again, that formula could be represented in any number of media. We have standard ways of representing chemical names and so on, but conceivably you might have a world in which there were even different chemical symbols etc. All the text could be in different languages, one in metric numbers, another in imperial. The point is, there could be huge variation in the written or printed or electronic form of the information, but the meaning, the output, has to be exactly the same - otherwise, no 'bang'. It's very precise.
Now as to whether that information can exist without physical form - probably not something like a formula. But it still doesn't really affect the basic principle - that the information is absolutely determinate, but the form it can take is highly variable.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, there is the whole domain of pure mathematics. The 'physical form' that it takes is only the symbols in which it is notated, but the domain itself comprises purely the relationship of ideas. Now I don't want to get into 'what are ideas' as that is a very difficult question in its own right. And also I'm not really talking about what 'information' is in a general sense - as you say, it's a word with many meanings, and it's used in many ways. (By the way, I'm bad at maths.)
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The subtle mistake there is what that by nominating 'something being passed around', the question arises, what could that be? But that is a reification. If that 'something' is nothing other than the meaning of the sentence, then it's not actually anything - nothing is being passed around. Hence the basically incorporeal nature of ideas!
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
My reaction was: well, if you mean 'mental' as distinct from physical, then no argument from me on that score. I said, I do subscribe to some form of dualism (although I'm vague on the details; but so too does David Chalmers (for instance).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Thus negating everything that's been said thus far.
If you were a medical examiner presented with the corpse of a recently deceased person, you could ascertain their stomach contents without too much trouble. How would you, however, determine what was in their minds? Even given the most fantastically advanced scanning equipment? You see, I don't think you could infer what the subject's brain was thinking, because I don't think it's 'in there' - any more than the characters of House of Cards can be found in your flatscreen television.
Quoting Andrew M
Hmmm. I wouldn't modernise him too much, he still believed that everything has a final purpose. But I have to get into this book I've taken out about him. (Incidentally, there is a nice article on Aristotelean philosophy of maths on Aeon, if you haven't seen it: The mathematical world, Jim Franklin.)
Amusingly:
Sure - I could give you a false treasure map, you would have no way of knowing from the map itself. You would have to go and dig.
DO forms carry qualitative information? What kind of ‘forms’ do you have in mind?
There being no treasure where the map marks makes it clearly discoverable.
All forms. This is the question, are forms entirely reflexive, telling you only about the physical qualities of the interpreter, the only objective information being present in the medium of formation, or do they themselves carry qualitative information that is not only reflexive? Normally there is a distinction drawn between content and form, form being logical, and not able to introduce new information, but being a process of truth retention, only making explicit implicit information one already contains. All content, or facts, coming from the physical world.
Yes and purpose (a universal) is also immanent in the world, not transcendent to it.
Quoting Physics by Aristotle - Book II, Part 8
Quoting Wayfarer
I hadn't - thanks for linking. As the author says:
Back to your OP, this same principle applies to information. It's not itself a physical thing (since it's a universal) but is realized in physical things and so can be known by perception. Which is why physicists are interested in it.
That is what I called the subject matter, or content. But since information cannot exist without a physical form, physical form is just as essential as content. The physical form is what makes the information, information, and not something random.
Quoting Wayfarer
The content may remain the same, in many different forms, but that does not prove that the content can exist without a form. And if the content cannot exist without a physical form, then that it has a physical form is just as essential to the nature of information as is the particular content.
Quoting Wayfarer
You may believe that there is a real, ontological realm of pure mathematics, in which mathematical objects exist independently of any physical symbols, you have much company here. But this is Pythagorean Idealism, and it was refuted by both Plato and Aristotle. As I explained, it really doesn't make sense, because without the physical form, we have nothing to posit as the means for distinguishing one mathematical object from another, and we get sucked into the vagueness of Peirce's pure, infinite generality, apokrisis' apeiron.
The resolution of this problem is offered in Plato's Timaeus, which became "The Bible" of Neo-Platonists. The independent Forms are given the existence of particulars. Each particular physical object has a Form which is necessarily prior to it in time, therefore necessarily independent from the physical object. The "particularity" of the independent Form is essential to it. This allows that one Form is distinguishable from another Form, through the Form itself, rather than through the form of a physical object. However, the fact that the independent Forms are necessarily particular forms, creates a categorical separation between these Forms and human ideas such as mathematical objects, which exist as universals or generalities.
Any description of Peirce's metaphysics is woefully incomplete if it does not include that everything, in Peirce's description, is derived from the mind. ... even his own description of nature.
You're right. We have been through this before, thanks to you not reading and not paying attention to my posts and avoiding the difficult questions.
You are asking an impossible question. You are attempting to compare what a wavelength looks like (being red), to what it looks like independent of looking at it. I've already been over this with you. How do you know what a wavelength looks like (is not red) independent of looking at it? How do you know anything about the wavelength at all and that it actually exists, or that there is a relationship between red and wavelengths? How did you get to know any of that, along with semiotics and pragmatism for that matter?
Is not the statement, " ...we still see red when the wavelength is not "red" ", a statement about reality independent of looking at it - as if you had a "direct" view of reality itself? If you say "no", then you end up discrediting the statement itself. If you say "yes", then you have finally seen the light and would be agreeing with me.
How do you know that the wavelength is not red if you don't have some "direct" knowledge that that is the case?
Sign signification, in being a rule, likewise only makes sense when considered as a human reaction that connects sign to signified. And that is true for both mathematical rules and physical laws. For in both of these cases if we entirely ignored how humans use equations, we would lose the ability to show that the equations represent or imply anything.
And we cannot eliminate ourselves as the meaning-mediators of rules via simply introducing additional rules to describe our meaning-making, since we immediately arrive at a similar problem as before, namely we would need to demonstrate our rules of 'self' description for them to signify anything. .
A trivial corollary of this is that the "free will vs determinism" debate is utterly nonsensical.
Now i have never read any Peirce except for his SEP entry, and I don't have a good grasp of his notion of an interpretant, particularly in my recollection of his earlier problem of an endless of chain of signification, but my reasoning tells me that his semiotic philosophy can only make sense if it reduces to a pre-theoretic foundation of meaning grounded in human perception or action that cannot be stated but can only be shown.
Similarly, I would strongly argue that Berkeley's notion of an 'idea' wasn't a theoretical concept of the mind, but a gesture towards a pre-theoretical basis of relating to the world that also can only be shown, since it is only by interpreting Berkeley in this way that his subjective-idealism can defeat his intended target of epistemological scepticism that results from representational materialism.
So basically I am led by the force of logic to conclude, at least on the basis of my possibly incorrect understanding of these two philosophers, that Berkeley and Peirce must share the same idealism. Indeed i cannot even see how idealism can be theoretical without being self-refuting, and hence i cannot see room for more than one idealism.
Can you support your bold claim that we must "have the same thought" in order to communicate, instead of merely "similar thoughts" as I suggested?
Must we also "make the same utterances" in order to communicate in language, or merely understand the same utterances; and do we have identical, or merely similar understanding of the utterances we use? Do we also need to have the same intentions, or is it enough to understand each other's intentions; and do we have identical or merely similar understanding of our intentions when we communicate? It seems to me that similarity is all we need, and by and large all we can get.
The reason you and I have quite similar thoughts associated with the English word, apple, is that we have similar bodies and live in the same world and have had similar experiences of things called apples. The similarity in the ordinary meaning and use of the word is grounded in the similarity of ordinary experience.
I'm sure you'll agree, the further we get from ordinary experience, the more divergence there is in the use of words and in opinions about the meaning of words or the truth of assertions. The power of communication doesn't flow from the universality of the word, it flows from the commonality of experience that informs our use of words. The farther we stray from that common ground, the more room for confusion, and the less basis for agreement and understanding, until at last it seems there's nothing but a spray of speech associated with vague thoughts and emotions.
The word itself is a typical or generic pattern of linguistic action that emerges and changes in history. I'm not sure what it adds, apart from confusion, to speak of "universality" in this context.
When two competent dancers dance freely together, there's a sense in which they understand each other, and a sense in which they understand each other's dancing. When they dance "the same dance", say a minuet or twist, they don't make identical movements, but similar or complementary movements that conform to a generic pattern, an abstract rule or type.
Quoting Wayfarer
Same old song and dance.
I remind you I count myself a wholehearted epistemological skeptic. So far as I can see, metaphysical materialism and idealism are equally futile doctrines, like every other pretense to metaphysical knowledge.
I have a phenomenologically grounded conception of the natural, physical world. To all appearances, minds belong to bodies, and mental activity is an activity of physical things; and what we might call products of mind (including concepts, abstractions, types, words, numbers, possibilities) are products of the physical things that engage in mental activity. To all appearances, it seems the mental emerges from and remains grounded in the physical.
Of course it's possible to imagine any number of "metaphysical" scenarios in which minds and their abstractions exist in some nonphysical world independent of the physical world we seem in fact to inhabit. But it's not clear to me why we should take any of these divergent and often conflicting fantasies more seriously than the others, and I'm not sure there's any basis on which to select among them. It seems more reasonable to avoid such indefinite speculation.
Quoting Wayfarer
I've heard a different story: http://www.etymonline.com/word/idiot
As much reason to take the fantasy of mind emerging from "physical" seriously. I have no idea what you mean by physical things doing mental things. Are they little humanoids?
Precisely. Direct needs to said in scare quotes. Indirect is admitting that it is only “as if”.
But there is a structure-preserving map from the actors on set to the digitally encoded signal that is transmitted to my TV. That signal carries information about what the actors were doing. Whether the actors are "only physical" or not, it is only information about their physical characteristics that is captured, encoded, and transmitted: how they looked, how they moved, what sounds they made, and so on. Television just extends the reach of my senses of sight and hearing, and it does so by each step between me and the source of the sounds and images translating in a structure-preserving way.
Quoting sime
I agree. I still think it's reasonable to investigate the relationship of what we call information and what we call the physical, but you make an important point.
In math we can get a "formal enough" or syntax-driven dialogue going. We can do information theory objectively enough. But away from math we are dealing with interpretation. We are exploring how concepts are entangled.
I'm no Derrida expert, but I recall that he examined the complicated relationship between the materiality and ideality of the sign. This "ideality" is an abstraction. It's hard to imagine thinking without language, though perhaps some kind of thinking is purely spatial. And of course the materiality only exists in contrast to the ideality.
As I understand him, he's comparing the scientific-mathematical aspect of the wave to its sensual aspect. True, what is implied is that the same wave is involved. So the wave itself (as the unity of its aspects) is red. But its mathematical description is not red.
The object-in-itself (perhaps a red apple) is theoretically complicated/questionable but practically almost common sense. It makes sense that our experience of the object is mediated by human nature. Our eye catches reflected photons, etc.
Is the direct realism versus indirect realism debate about anything more than a differing preference for how the same process is described?
I generally share this phen. grounded approach. But I think it's fair to add that the physical is also grounded in the mind. The world disappears when we sleep dreamlessly. We might speculate that this inspired the whole problem to begin with. Privately mind grounds matter, but publicly matter grounds mind. We experience the world after the deaths of others but seemingly not after our own.
Begs the question.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But this is not so - Plato inherited mathematical idealism from the Pythagoreans; he was frequently referred to by Aristotle as being of 'the Italians', i.e. Pythagoreans. Certainly he adapted it. But it was the sense in which the Forms truly existed that was the point of difference between Aristotle and Plato. Plato held they exist eternally in the 'realm of ideas'; it was the literal existence of that abstract realm which Aristotle took issue with.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You haven't explained it, you've made an assertion which I have taken issue with, by referring to pure mathematics, which is by definition a matter of the relationship between ideas, which (physical) symbols are used to denote. And ideas are mental, not physical, by definition. As you don't accept this, then we're back at square one.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Communication relies on the fact that language has common meanings. I can't see how that is contentious. Of course, the fact that we both understand 'apple' to mean the same thing, is culturally determined, and arguably biologically determined, but I don't understand how that supports the point I took issue with, namely, that:
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
I can't see how whether our thoughts are the same aside from what can be communicated symbolically is even relevant to the argument. It is about the communication of ideas.
From another perspective I understand the relative nature of perception - that you and I will see things differently, due to all kinds of factors. So if you're saying that, then I wouldn't disagree, but I don't see how it has a bearing on the OP.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
The idealist response: that 'the physical' is itself a matter of judgement, a way of categorising the data of experience. A certain range or kind of experience is categorised as 'physical' and then this is posited to comprise the fundamental, what truly exists, what is real, etc. As you yourself say: 'to all appearance'; but appearances are always interpreted by a mind.
I do know, in saying this, I'm skating over a huge topic, but it's a forum, and time is limited. But I'll try and spit it out regardless - our conception of 'the physical' is underwritten by the theories of stellar formation and biological evolution, which we suppose provides an account of how we got here, what our capabilities and attributes are, in physical terms, as understood by modern science. That is what 'physicalism' means. In this picture, 'the mind' is the product of this process, and to all intents, only appears in the last micro-seconds of terrestrial history. There's even arguments about 'why it exists', nowadays.
So the whole point of this OP is to try and show that if information is not physical, then there is something central to the entire physicalist account which is not, itself, physical. It is the argument that ideas are not merely 'something that brains do' ('as the liver secretes bile'.) In other words, this is an argument that ideas/information/meaning is real in its own right, and not as the product of a material process. So indeed it is an idealist argument. When people complain that 'naive idealism' is the same as 'naive materialism', I am pretty sure they don't grasp the import of idealism.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That's true. But recall the point of yours that I was taking issue with:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It's that 'structure-preserving map' I'm interested in. What is the analogy for the 'structure-preserving map' in reality? That is the activities of the mind. Television, as you say, extends the physical scope of the mind, but the mind is what continually (and generally subliminally) performs all of these transformations.
Quoting sime
That's my feeling also. As an inheritor of the Western idealist tradition, I think he assumed something very like a 'universal mind' which to all intents is something very like 'the mind of God'. However, his modern interpreters don't wish to incorporate this idealistic strand of his thought.
Quoting sime
As I understand it, Peirce broadly agreed with Berkeley, but fiercely criticized Berkeley's nominalism:
Review, Paul Forster, Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism.
(I'm very interested by the remark that Peirce 'distinguished reality from existence', as this is about the only instance of that distinction I've encountered in recent philosophy.)
Incidentally, by way of footnote, I have noticed there's a philosophical argument about the very topic of the 'indispensability of mathematics'. Why, you might ask, is it necessary to make such an argument at all? Because, says the IETP article on the topic:
This is because 'our best' epistemic theories always assume that the objects of knowledge are somehow reducible to the physical. However, awkwardly, it then goes on to say:
So the point of the 'indispensability argument' is
Emphasis added.
Source
?
The way an object absorbs or reflects light is determined by its structure and composition, no mind needed.
When that tree falls in that forest, a wave is propagated through the air whether there's any minds, or indeed any ears, around.
The structure of the object is mapped to the structure of the light, sound, etc. it broadcasts without intention. Living things notice, is all.
You're assuming 'transcendental realism' - that there is a world out there, independent of anyone's apprehension of it. I take a generally Kantian view, that our knowledge is of phenomena, and that what the world is 'in itself', outside those cognitive capacities, is unknown to us. I know it's a can of worms; on Online Philosophy Club, the thread on 'if a tree falls' is in about it's 11th year, but there it is.
Plato did a deep analysis of Pythagorean Idealism, exposing the weaknesses. Since he spent so much time discussing this position many think that he adopted it. However, there is no doubt that in his dialogues he did expose the weaknesses, and some argue that he effectively refuted Pythagorean Idealism prior to Aristotle's conclusive refutation, in The Parmenides. In my memory, Aristotle refers to "some Platonists" as following Pythagorean Idealism.
Are you familiar with Plato's Timaeus? If not, you should read it. This is where Plato's beliefs concerning independent Forms are revealed. The independent Forms are particulars, each individual existing thing has a Form which is responsible for, as the cause of, that thing's existence. Aristotle is consistent with this, in his Metaphysics. He says that the question of why there is something rather than nothing is one which is meaningless to ask because it has no approach. Instead, he suggested that the important question concerning "being", is the question of why there is what there is, instead of something else.
The argument he produces, is that whenever something (a material object) comes into existence, it must necessarily be the thing that it is, otherwise it would be something other than itself, and that is impossible by contradiction. If the "whatness" of the thing were not prior to the physical existence of the thing, the thing would be something completely random, nothing. But this is not what is the case according to observation, things are particular things. Therefore the whatness (form) of the thing must be prior in time to the existence of the material thing. This allows for immaterial forms.
Notice that both Aristotle and Plato are consistent in arguing for a Form, or "whatness", of a thing, which is prior to the material existence of the thing, and therefore independent from material existence. But these Forms are the forms of particulars, they are not universal forms. Rejection of the notion that forms, as universals, or generalities, which was held by the Pythagoreans is implied by Plato's writings, and firmly refuted by Aristotle with the cosmological argument.
Quoting Wayfarer
Actually, I explained it, perhaps the explanation was deficient. Imagine pure information, in the sense of pure content, without any physical form. There could be nothing to distinguish one mathematical object from another. Consider the numbers 1,2,3. On the page, they are distinguished by the form of the symbol. So let's go to the ideas behind the symbols. Without referring to something physical, how can you distinguish the idea of one unity from two unities. "Two" implies some sort of separation, and this separation is necessarily physical. There is no way to conceive of separation which is not a physical separation. Without this separation, all the numbers, 1,2,3..., are all united as one idea. To separate 1 from 2 from 3, requires an appeal to something physical, space or time. It is the same with all the mathematical ideas, they only have meaning in relation to some physical reference. Remove the physical reference, and they are all meaningless, random nonsense, one cannot be distinguished from two or three or four. Without the physical reference there would be no meaning to one, two, three, four, so they would not exist as ideas.
That's not really what Aristotle meant by potential. What the authors (and Heisenberg before them) are doing is replacing Descartes' res cogitans with res potentia. But res is a Latin phrase meaning an "object or thing; matter". A universal (whether it be mind or potential or color or number) is not a kind of thing. It's an abstraction of things. So res potentia is just a modern variant of the Platonism that Aristotle was rejecting.
The kind of information that physicists are interested in, at least in a quantum context, include which-way particle information and correlation information between entangled particle pairs.
So the Aristotelian approach would be to look for the concrete particulars that that information is an abstraction of.
I don't think this is right. The form of a tree, say an oak, might be prior to the existence of any one particular tree, but the form of an oak is not prior to the existence of oaks in general. The unique form of a particular oak might be thought to be inherent in the acorn and thus prior to the existence of the oak as tree, but it would not be not prior to the existence of the acorn. This would be so, even if the unique form of the particular oak were entirely determined by the acorn. But this is not so, either, the form of the tree will depend on its environment with all its conditions as well.
Those phenomena, and those cognitive capacities-- it's all about information.
It was fun, Wayfarer! Let's do this again sometime.
Indeed, if we could draw concepts or visualize them physically in our imagination, then that would make concepts physical. The fact that we can't, supports the claim that they are non-physical.
... Unless your point was that if we cannot physically visualize them, then concepts are not real? This would presuppose the maxim that what cannot be physically visualized is not real. But this is a self-contradiction, because maxims cannot be physically visualized.
It was meant as a gesture toward what a theory of concepts might look like.
Suppose instead of some ideal abstract triangle, you had instead a rule about how to treat a particular triangle "as" a conceptual one. So you ignore its actual proportions, the measure of its actual angles. It still has those, just like any triangle, but you don't use them.
I can understand how that would work. I can see a procedure. I would like such a thing because I don't know what concepts are supposed to be, how we interact with them, etc. My little procedure gives concrete form to the idea of abstraction: it's a rule about what to ignore.
I don't know if you're correct, although I'm probably not well equipped to argue. However, there is a essay I know from Heisenberg, which is relevant:
The Debate between Plato vs Democritus
That was a speech given by Heisenberg, which foreshadowed many of the ideas that he developed more fully in his book Physics and Philosophy; however his tendency to favour idealist over materialist interpretations of physics is clear from this essay.
I also suggest your reading of Aristotle is too modernist - Aristotle doesn't believe that 'concrete particulars' have the kind of reality that I think you're imbuing them with. I think you're reading Aristotle as a modern realist, not as an ancient or medieval realist; his 'hylomorphic dualism' posited that particulars are composed of matter and form, where 'the forms' are indeed the Platonic ideas. He mainly differed with Plato concerning whether the Forms could be said to exist apart from concrete particulars; but the way you're reading it, it seems that they derive their reality from the particulars. Whereas, I think for Aristotle, as for all Platonists, objects themselves are only intelligible insofar as the conform to their originative ideas.
Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism was different to Descartes' substance dualism, to be sure because he didn't conceive of the mind as capable of existing in its own right. But it was still a dualism.
Regarding Heisenberg, Ed Feser has this to say:
My underline, from this post
Now my basic argument is that this sense of there being 'different kinds (or degrees) of reality' is generally rejected by modern philosophy; that now there is only one 'kind of reality', and that is matter (strictly speaking, the matter-energy-space-time manifold).
Whereas the article I cited above says:
So there are real possibilities.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
suggested article....
I got halfway through it. It's ignorant horse hockey.
Each material object is a unique physical thing, that is what is expressed by Aristotle's law of identity, a thing is the same as itself. In The Timaeus, Plato argues that the Form of every object is given to every object in the manner of creation. In The Republic, he could not escape the idea that an independent Idea (in the sense of a general idea) required a divine mind to support its existence. But under "the good", the divine idea is necessarily "the Ideal", and the Ideal, being the absolute, the best, is necessarily a particular. So "the good" puts Plato on a whole new path which is inconsistent with Pythaqoreanism, in which Ideas are universals. Plato develops this new path. In The Parmenides he starts to grasp the nature of time, and realizes that every particular material object requires an independent Form to account for its existence.
The argument which Aristotle makes, which I described above, indicates that the Form of each material object is prior in time to the material existence of that object. Any object is necessarily the object which it is, or else it would be other than itself, and this is contradiction. So, when the material object comes into existence in time, it must be predetermined, in some manner, what it will be, because if it were not, there would be no objects whatsoever, simply randomness. The material object could not come into existence as an object other than itself, and that it is the object which it is requires that its Form determines this prior to its existence.
So the argument is not that the form of the particular oak is determined by the acorn, it is determined by the independent Form of that particular oak tree. The acorn itself is a material object, and its existence is determined by its Form. There is a need here to distinguish between the potential for something, and the actuality of that thing, and this is provided by an understanding of the nature of time. The acorn provides the potential for an oak, in general. The independent Form actualizes this particular oak tree.
No. I didn't use the word, "indirect" in my post. If I did, then that word would be in quotes as well because I put "direct" in quotes to refer to it's arbitrariness. "Indirect" is even more arbitrary as it refers to your little boxes that you've put everything in, as if everything isn't interconnected.
The point is, how is it "indirect" or "direct" when you end up getting at what reality is really like? What is the point in using these terms, "indirect" and "direct", when you end up getting at what reality is really like? They become meaningless, just like "physical" vs. "mental" and "inside" vs. "outside", when explaining how we know (are informed of) things.
If you can admit that you are getting at reality as it really is (and it seems that you've admitting that much) in order to make all these objective statements about reality, as if you had a direct line to how it really is, then what is the point in making a distinction between "direct" and "indirect", when you are getting directly at how reality really is in order to make any statement about how reality really is? Or are you saying that your statements aren't how reality really is? If the latter is the case, then what is the point in reading anything you say, as you what you say wouldn't be meaningful or informative.
To say that I got at it indirectly vs. directly is to say that you got to it in a certain amount of causal steps, your arbitrary boxes and categories that you've placed everything in to separate causes from their effects, as if everything is separate and not interconnected.
To even say that it is "indirect" is to admit causation, no? It is admitting that information flows by causal relationships - that you know (you have information about) what reality is really like by looking at an effect and following the "steps" back in time to the cause. I'm trying to get you to admit that you acquired the knowledge you have causally, but you refuse to answer the question. Instead you've resorted to cherry-picking and (purposely?) misinterpret my use of quotes. Your posts are losing their substance.
I think the mistake Apo made was making the distinction that a wave is not red. Apples are red or not red. Anyone who knows what they are talking about should know that waves are not red. Apples are.
The apple is what is red and it is red because it is ripe. It is black because it is rotten. Sure, knowing that the apple is ripe vs rotten is useful to human goals, but would the apple still be ripe or rotten if eyes, and the brains with goals that the eyes are attached to, never evolved? Of course it would. It just wouldn't be red or black.
My point is that we are getting at what reality is like (the apple being either ripe or rotten) independent of our goals. It is our goals that simply determine which information is currently relevant, not whether the information is actually accurate or not. Isn't survival the greatest catalyst for seeking knowledge - for being informed about how the world really works and how your body works and how it is all related? To be better informed about the world (how it works, it's current state, etc.) is to be better able to survive in it.
But not your direct cause and effect. Instead my indirect causation which is the modelling relation.
Quoting Harry Hindu
But my argument is indeed that we don’t get at what reality really is. The modelling relation is about regulation, not knowledge. What we want is the most efficient and useful image of reality.
You then want to claim there is a problem in that because now I’m making a claim about how things “really are”.
Well, partly we can know what is real about our own epistemic strategies. Science is about accepting the pragmatism of the modelling relation. But then also it is only you who is concerned about some absolute veridical knowledge of reality in the first place. The high bar you set doesn’t apply to me if my claim to know that this is how the mind works is itself just another testable pragmatic hypothesis.
So how does colour constancy fit in here? You haven’t explained.
And this talk of apples is just misdirection. A laser beam could be tuned to the same hue as the apple as seen under white light. So trying to treat colour as some material property of an apple is nonsense when we can see red just from the pure shining of a light.
An effect is a model of prior causes, as it carries information about the cause. Does your model carry information? If not, then how can you even call it a model? If it is, then what is it that you are informed of when the model appears, or takes shape?
Quoting apokrisisWell, you are. You just did it again by stating, "The modeling relation is about regulation, not knowledge. What we want is the most efficient and useful image of reality." Is this statement an accurate statement, or is it what is pragmatic and useful? Is it really how reality, or some part of it, is? If not, then you aren't saying anything informative. I just find it amazing that you keep making these kinds of statements without understanding what it is that you are doing. Every time you make your case for how you think things are, you are attempting to get at and inform me of how things really are.
Quoting apokrisis
It applies every time you make those kinds of statements, like, "The high bar you set doesn’t apply to me if my claim to know that this is how the mind works is itself just another testable pragmatic hypothesis." It seems to me that you are concerned about some absolute veridical knowledge every time you state how things are, as in the previous statement and in "The modeling relation is about regulation, not knowledge. What we want is the most efficient and useful image of reality." Science is about seeking what is accurate, not pragmatic. We get what is pragmatic by it being accurate. It simply wouldn't be pragmatic or useful if there wasn't some semblance of accuracy to it.
Then talk of light and laser beams are just misdirection. I thought we were talking about waves, not apples, lasers or light. Again, do waves really exist, or are waves simply some pragmatic model that we use, and only exist in our minds? If you say that they are simply another model, then you are using models to explain models, which then makes the term, "model" meaningless.
If you say that it is indirect, or models, all the way down, while at the same time saying, "all we are able to get at is the model", or "all we can do is get at it indirectly", then you are saying that we are actually getting at the truth, as everything is indirect, or just models, then us having models is us having the truth! Your whole argument defeats itself AND relegates the terms, "model" and "indirect" into meaninglessness!
I didn't say color was a material property of an apple. I said it's ripeness and rottenness are. Colors are a material property of the mind. Colors are merely the effect of the state of the apple interacting with light and your visual processing system. If saying that the apple is red is the same as saying it is ripe and what kind of apple it is, then what am I missing? What is the point in saying the apple is red if it isn't to refer to some material property or some state of the apple? When you say the apple is red, are you talking about the apple in your head, or the apple on the table, and what would be your intent in informing me that the apple is red, if not to inform me of the kind of apple it is and what state of ripeness it is in?
I’m telling you what I find to be a justified belief. I’m not pretending to have transcendent access to absolute truth.
Why do you find that so hard to follow?
Love the “merely”.
Anyway, you are still successfully dodging the question of how an apple can still look red to us even when the light it reflects is not in the normal red frequency range. It can’t be then a simple cause and effect relationship in terms of the actual light entering our eye and the way we construe the hue of what we see. What we imagine we should see, given our model of the lighting conditions, takes over.
The point here is that the indirect perceptual route is more accurate in that it sees the apple as it would be understood in ideal lighting conditions. It is the interpretation that can make allowances because the modelling isn’t simply driven in causal fashion by physical inputs.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes. And why not?
Of course they are also models at completely different levels of semiosis. Colour experience is biological-level perceptual modelling of “the world”. Talk about electromagnetic radiation and wavelength is socially constructed knowledge of the world.
One model can only change over eons of evolutionary time. The other we could reinvent tomorrow.
Thanks for the reference to color constancy. Don't know if I had ever seen this stuff before and it is way cool.
Actually that claim is ‘transcendental realism’, in philosophy speak. [sup][url=https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/kant-and-empirical-realism/] 1 [/sup] Despite the fancy title, it’s what most folks believe. It’s the belief in the ‘there anyway’ world which persists in the absence of any observer, the vast universe in which, today, we see ourselves as ‘mere blips’.
What that form of realism doesn’t come to terms with is the role of the brain in constructing that ‘there anyway’ world. This is not to say that there isn’t a world ‘there anyway’, but the realist depiction of that world always overlooks the pivotal role of the brain in ‘constructing’ that ‘there anyway’ world. (There are quotes around ‘constructing’ because we’re not talking of literal construction, but of the generation of a world-picture within which we make sense of everything and orientate ourselves.)
That world, which is the world we inhabit, is a meaning-world; which is another reason why semiotics helps make sense of it.
You touch on a very interesting point. One of our goals is the goal-independent truth. This seems impossible in its purest manifestation. The scientist is a human who wants to make discoveries. But there is a relative goal-indenpendence. The knowledge sought is re-purposable, durable. So I look at the scientific image of reality that way, as a tool that we have come to value and trust. To sharpen this tool requires a kind of discipline. We don't want "local" goals (bias) to get in the way the grand goal, which is the increase in durable knowledge about what's durable in human experience. We assume the uniformity of nature. We ignore Hume's problem because we are just wired in a way that keeps us from taking it seriously.
Indeed, and this statement above is itself an efficient and useful image of inquiry. Pragmatism, which understands theories as tools, is itself a meta tool-theory.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I think I understand your frustration, but isn't this a problem with philosophy generally? As we try to think our own cognition we inevitably get tangled up. Can we really present any philosophy as a consistent system in a single moment with all of the meanings of each of its terms fixed? I don't think so. Instead we have systems of related maxims. We pull out the one we need for a particular context. No doubt we want these maxims to fit together as much as possible, but that's where efficiency and utility slip back in. A coherent system is economical and runs smoothly.
We definitely have an image of the true world, but it's a transcendental background. So I agree that it's hard if not impossible to make avoid making assertions about the model-independent truth. We have to be modelling something, right? I think we self-consciously fallibly act as if reality was X. Then the modelness of this X is only our consciousness of its fragility and imperfection.
I suggest that our own birth and the deaths of others are a big part of our belief in the "there anyway." We seem to arrive in a world after many, many generations have come and gone. We are told of human events that happened thousands of years ago. More vividly, we can see pictures of our parents before they met one another. So belief in others more or less demands a belief in a "there anyway" world.
It was here before us, and we seem to have our foundation in it. It is strange indeed that "mind" has "matter" for a vehicle. Yet "matter" only appears for us through or for our mind.
I suppose many see us as mere blips, but I look up at the stars and see an ocean of stupidity. That's an intentionally perverse way of putting it. What I mean is that the fascinating complexity IMO is concentrated down here. The stars are cute, but I think of them as stupid machines.
There is a 'there anyway' world, but the reflexive and uncritical acceptance of its reality signifies the absence of philosophical reflection[sup] 1[/sup]. The non-philosopher begins with the accepted reality of what s/he thinks of as 'normal perception' and then demands that philosophy provide an account of itself in those terms; a challenge which I declined.
Respectfully, this is tautologous. But, yes, philosophy tries to make sense of the complexity that is "invisible" (because "useless") to the non-philosophical practical mind. These days it seems like much of philosophy tries to properly place the scientific image in the context of life as a whole. For me this scientific image is a "mere" tool that exist within a far more "primordial" whole. The table is not "really" atoms. This is simply one useful way that I can look at it, in the context of ultimately earthbound and mortal purposes. I employ "inhuman" science for very human reasons. Some connect it to their spirituality. The pursuit of objective there-anyway knowledge can function as a primary heroic task. I suppose I'm interested in revealing the here-always-with-us structure of revelation/philosophy itself.
I still prefer to call it naive realism in this case. Transcendental realism would surely be only a position that makes sense as a conscious opposition to Kant. So it would count as at least not being folk metaphysics. :)
Yep. Knowledge has to bootstrap itself from axioms. We have to risk making a hypothesis that seems "reasonable". But hey, it seems to work pretty well.
This comes to mind.
[quote= Engels]
With all philosophers it is precisely the “system” which is perishable; and for the simple reason that it springs from an imperishable desire of the human mind — the desire to overcome all contradictions.
It seems contradictory to say that an ideal or an absolute is a particular, Can you support this contention?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The form of material objects is not fixed, but is something which evolves over time. It is hard to see how it can be "independent" if it evolves over time, as that would make it dependent both on its interactions with other forms, and on time itself.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If nature were rigidly deterministic, then what objects will be, the forms they will take, would be predetermined by nature itself. If this were not the case, then the future would be open, which would mean that the evolution of the forms of objects would not be predetermined, but instead would be subject to novel circumstance. I can't see why the absence of predetermination would preclude the existence of objects. Can you give an argument to support that?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As I already indicated, predetermination of the evolution of the forms of objects would obtain if nature were deterministic. Of course no object could "come into existence as an object other than itself" whether nature were deterministic or not, determined by God or not, the very idea of such a thing is meaningless, like the idea of a round square.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, I can't see that you have provided any argument to support this assertion, or even any explanation as to what it could mean.
Hah. Isn't that just showing how Hegel got it the wrong way round?
My approach (following Peirce) ends up saying that bare contradiction is instead what everything is founded upon.
So it is a dialectical metaphysics. But it is the fact of symmetry breaking that is the foundation of Being, not the fact of "a pre-existing substantial symmetry".
The logical process itself is the ground, not some kind of further "indeterminate substance" - as Apeiron is often understood.
I agree this is not easy to accept as we are so accustomed to materialist ontologies. It in fact it seems pretty idealist - objective idealism - in laying so much stress on the logic of dialectics or dichotomies as how "anything can happen in the first place".
Yet I am still arguing for physicalism even though it is a pansemiotic physicalism. There is still primal material cause as well as primal formal cause. They are just now themselves to be understood as the originating "logical division which couldn't be prevented from starting to express itself as dialectically structured, or hylomorphic, Being."
Quoting apokrisis
Hegel is hard to parse, but I think subject = substance is related to "bare contradiction is what everything is founded upon." As I understand it, indeterminate Being "others" and increases its complexity due to internal contradiction until it overcomes all contradiction by knowing itself. So Hegel is just positioned at the end of a historical dialectic that preceded him. He merely describes.
Quoting apokrisis
You might be closer to Hegel than you think:
[quote=wiki]
For Hegel, the most important achievement of German idealism, starting with Immanuel Kant and culminating in his own philosophy, was the argument that reality (being) is shaped through and through by thought and is, in a strong sense, identical to thought. Thus ultimately the structures of thought and being, subject and object, are identical. Since for Hegel the underlying structure of all of reality is ultimately rational, logic is not merely about reasoning or argument but rather is also the rational, structural core of all of reality and every dimension of it.
[/quote]
Quoting t0m
To be honest, I've given up trying to parse Hegel himself. But the key difference that keeps cropping up (apart from the tilting of the argument in favour of theistic readings) is that Hegel stresses the resolution of dichotomies, while I (following Peirce) am stressing the separation that results from dichotomisation.
This is why Peirce had to make a clear distinction between vague being and general being. Hegel was indeed describing the generality that results from difference being self-annihilated. But Peirce's approach shows that the resolution or synthesis lies in the thirdness of habit formation. The dichotomised become equilibrated in the form of a complex mixture. Every part of reality becomes good and bad, or entropic and negentropic, as some generalised "fractal" balance.
So generality can't be where things start. It is where things end because - once achieving equilibrium - a complexly divided systems is now in a state of generalised indifference. It is both completely composed of difference, but none of those differences now make a difference (to the overall state of Being).
This then leaves open the need to characterise the ground that could give rise to this habitual equilibrium thirdness. And that is where vagueness or Firstness - just the pure spontaneity of a difference, not as yet judged or reacted to in any way - comes in.
So Hegel - for me - failed clearly to see that generality is not any kind of ultimate simplicity. It is well organised complexity. We need a developmental opposite to this generality - which vagueness supplies.
The vague and the general then find their own resolution in secondness or actuality. The mix of irreducible freedoms (inexhaustible firstness) and constraining limits (robust emergent habits) is why there is then a material reality that forms in-between these two ontic bounds.
But then again, many passages of Hegel could be read as if he were aware of vagueness in this way too, just wasn't clear on the point as Peirce was.
True, but 'transcendental' is more polite.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't see how what is 'material' could be 'primal'. In the Western philosophical tradition the 'primal' was, or became conceived of, as the uncreated. And that is logical, because what is 'made' is obviously derived from something, fabricated from something - but ultimately there must be something unfabricated, which was to become Aristotle's first cause.
Perhaps the 'apeiron' was one conception of the uncreated:
Apeiron would seem to precede 'matter' wouldn't it? Matter is derived from, therefore ontologically junior to, the apeiron. And this is before Democritus and Leucippus articulated the idea of the 'atom' which located 'the changeless' in the midst of phenomena.
****
Anyway, this thread is the mother of all digressions. I am going to try and pick out something which I hope relates to the OP.
It has to do with the role of mind in the construction of reality, as touched on above.
Logical laws, numbers, and other intellectual functions, are fundamental to our understanding of reality. They are used to create our 'meaning-world'. And that understanding is in some sense all we have; we can't rise above, or get outside, of our understanding, although clearly we can, and do, alter it, enlarge it, amend it, and sometimes even up-end it.
But the reason that numbers, and the like, are 'real but not existent', is because they pertain to the very nature and structure of the understanding itself; they are that by virtue of which we know things. They're not 'out there somewhere', but they're also not simply 'products of the brain'. That's where 'Platonia' is - in the very structure of our understanding. It's not an external reality or a 'ghostly domain' as it is generally misunderstood to be. And this is the reason that numbers are predictive (i.e. 'the uncanny effectiveness of maths in the natural sciences.') Why this is so hard to see, is because it is not apart from or other to us, we can't objectify it.
That is why I’m talking in terms of a process ontology.
And so too that would be the correct understanding of Anaximander’s apeiron, or even Aristotle’s prime matter.
So number in fact divides experience into theory and measurement. The maths strength concepts and then the values we read off dials.
So both concepts and impressions are rendered as “objectively” symbolised. Reality is understood in mathematically idealised fashion.
And that understanding is objective as it is encoded in actual material symbols. It can be written down and transmitted from one mind to another. It is replicable, and indeed evolvable, as semiotic structure.
I agree, mostly. But when you say that they are not products of our brain, you are perhaps overlooking our apparent groundedness in our body. Somehow consciousness and meaning-making are tied to the brain. So it seems that the same "stuff" that natural science deals with is the raw material for at least the foundation of consciousness. At the same time, this scientific image is itself grounded in and part of the same meaning-making. It's a Mobius strip.
I agree that the objects of Platonia are ironically invisible to the very science that employs them. "Numbers aren't real because we can't measure them." We need concepts to deny the reality of concepts in the first place. What is strange is the emergence of conceptual consciousness. This was/is probably one of the strongest arguments for God. But the problem with "God" as an explanation is that it seems to simply anthropomorphize the mystery. (I'm not saying that you are proposing a God, just acknowledging that the strangeness of consciousness emerging from "matter" is such that one is tempted to understand it as willed or intended by something itself conscious. It is counterintuitive that the higher can emerge from the lower, even if this is in fact the case.)
It’s not embodied cognition I wish to avoid - it is ‘neuro-reductionism’. ‘Oh, that’s just your brain’s way of keeping your genomes alive’. Remember, in our world, the human mind is simply a late arrival, on top of the work of the blind watchmaker, a dollop of apparent meaning-making ability atop the robot that's only mission is to progenerate.
Quoting t0m
Of course it does. But as I've said before, we now go to such extraordinary lengths to avoid even the suggestion, that it distorts our thinking the other way. That is one of the things Thomas Nagel, a professed atheist philosopher, has written some really important analyses of (such as his essays Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, and Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament.)
Quoting t0m
Actually there's a huge disconnect here. Many mathematicians (such as Godel and, I think, Penrose, among others) really are Platonists, they believe in the 'reality of number'. But it can't be accommodated within the standard empiricist accounts so is highly unfashionable. I commented on that in this post, I'd like you to read that as I know you're a maths gun!
Still not 'objective' so much as 'inter-subjective'; we discover and symbolise all of those aspects of experience which we as a culture and as a species have in common. But again, only the symbols are material, the structures they denote are noetic.
I can empathize with that. It does reduce agency to an illusion. I think the theory would only become undeniable if human behavior could be reliably predicted on a gene-computer. And I mean the computer should print off the next philosophical masterpiece or great work of literature, before it would have otherwise been written. Until we get that kind of concrete prediction, we really just have faith in a paradigm.
Quoting Wayfarer
You have a point. There is now a bias in the other direction, at least among some. And it's significant that Nagel is an atheist, since he can't be accused of the usual bias. I'll check those out.
Quoting Wayfarer
Ah, yes. I've read some of Penrose. Also read lots about Godel. As I see it, our ability to conceive of a distinct, ideal unity is at the heart of math. "God created the integers," since we just can think whole numbers. Most math can be built up from that. And then the set, too, is a distinct unity. The same idea in a different flavor. I'll check out your post.
EDIT:
I remember that post. I'm on your side on that one. Meaning (including number) is primary. Only within and from this primary meaning can we hypothesize its emergence. To meaningfully or numerically search for meaning or number is tragicomical.
Just seen Blade Runner 2049, which is big on these issues. (I thought it brilliant, by the way, despite some flaws.)
Quoting t0m
He's too hard for me. I read the review of Emperor's New Mind, which I naturally agreed with, but couldn't understand the book. Apparently he's 'Road to Reality' is hard for even physicists to read.
Quoting t0m
PDF of the latter here. The former is not online as far as I can tell although his review of Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' covers some of the same ground.
If it is "the ideal", it is the absolute perfect, meaning that everything about it must be precisely according to that ideal, or it will be less than the ideal. Therefore it is completely distinct from all others, it is particular, as nothing but the ideal could be the ideal.
This is why the phrase "a difference which makes a difference" is very misleading. It implies that there is such a thing as a difference which doesn't make a difference. But in the case of the ideal, as in the case of the particular, there is no such thing as a difference which doesn't make a difference. In fact, this is a bold contradiction. If we allow contradiction into our ontological principles, intelligibility is lost as in Peirce's vagueness. To hold that the ideal is necessarily particular, as a singular, unique, unity, "One", and not just any "one", is very important.
Quoting Janus
Yes, the form is changing with the passing of time, that is exactly the point. For a material object to exist as a definite state, we must assume a time when it exists as such. However, prior to existing as that material object, it is becoming that object. The argument demonstrates, that at this time, prior to the object having material existence, when it is "becoming", the form of that object exists independently of the material object (being prior to it), causing the "becoming" to create that particular object rather than something else.
There is nothing here to indicate that Forms wouldn't interact with other Forms, clearly they do. And that's why Neo-Platonists like Proclus described a complete procession of forms.
Quoting Janus
The future is open, that's what the freedom of the will demonstrates to us. Because the future is open there are many possibilities for material existence at each moment of the present. There is no material existence on the future side of the present, but there must be something there that "chooses" which possibilities will be actualized into material existence at each moment of the present. The Forms are responsible for this. So the future is open, but material existence, existence at the present, is determined by the Forms which exist on the future side of the present, prior to material existence. Therefore we must assume the procession, which occurs at each moment of passing time, and determines the material existence at each moment of the present. The future is open, but what exists in the future, the Forms, determine which possibilities will have material existence at the present.
Quoting Janus
This is correct, and that's why Aristotle's argument is so forceful, it begins with this principle of identity which cannot be denied without leaving one in the meaninglessness of contradiction. But that's what happens when we allow that there is differences which do not make a difference, we open the door, and allow ourselves to walk right into this realm of meaningless contradiction. If we hold fast to this principle of identity, we disallow such nonsense which threatens to undermine the foundations of logical process. Then we can accept the reality of, the beauty of, and the importance of, particularity. From here we can proceed toward a true ontology which has respect for the greatest aspect of existence, particularity.
Quoting Janus
I'll state the same argument again then, in slightly different words, because it appears like you didn't apprehend it as an argument. This time, pay attention, and address whatever problems you perceive. A material object cannot come into existence as an object other than itself. You seem to agree with the premise. Material objects exist, so it is not the case that what is existing is random, disordered, or nonsense, there are objects. Therefore there must be a cause for every material object being the particular object which it is, and this is what we call the object's Form. As the cause of the object's material existence, it is prior in time to the object's material existence, and therefore independent from the object's material existence.
The material object exists as the object which it is, at each moment of the passing time. There must be a cause of this, and the cause is the object's Form. As the cause of the material object's existence, rather than being the material object itself, the Form is independent from the material object
Can you support your claim that there's equal reason to take the opposite sort of alternative seriously? I've been unable to find a satisfying argument along those lines, but I'm interested in reasonable suggestions.
When I say that to all appearances, minds emerge in the natural, physical world, I mean something along these lines: It seems to me I have a concept of the mental that's informed primarily by my experience of myself as a thing that perceives and imagines, remembers and intends, believes and doubts, thinks and speaks and moves in the world it appears to inhabit; as well as by my experience of others like me, who seem sentient in about the same way. So far as I can tell, all the sentient creatures I've encountered are living animals with nervous systems.
That much seems about as evident as anything, and about as evident as the fact that each such sentient animal is born and dies. Each such organism emerges in the world and endures for a while; and its nervous system emerges and grows and develops in the world and endures for a while. These are familiar observable phenomena, not controversial claims.
It's equally evident that the mental activity, or mind, of each such organism, depends on its body and on other physical states of affairs in familiar and predictable ways. If you call my name and wave, and I look up and see you there, you change the content and character of my experience. If you clap my shoulder, pluck out my eyes, or stimulate regions of my brain with electric current, you change the content and character of my experience. When a sentient organism's brain is damaged by injury or disease, its power of sentience is altered. When a sentient organism dies, there is no sign of sentience persisting.
Accordingly, I say the claim that minds emerge in the natural world is no more controversial than the claim that organisms emerge in the natural world. As I understand them, these claims are neither fantastic nor metaphysical, but phenomenological and empirical, and I'm not sure what it would mean to deny them without denying the whole world of appearances.
I'm aware there's a great variety of claims made by many people in various times and places, about things called minds and souls, spirits and ghosts, demons and deities, said to exist somewhere beyond the natural world of our experience, or somehow independent of anything like an animal organism. I suppose some of these views are consistent with my claim that minds emerge in the world. But so far as I can see, none of them is supported by the balance of appearances. And if that's the case, what reason is there to take them seriously?
Quoting Rich
I'm not sure I follow.
Are the cells and organs of your body little humanoids? I expect not. Nevertheless, it seems all the functions of your body, including its mental activity, depend on their good work.
Your claims are certainly not fantastic or metaphysical; they’re naturalistic, and, as such, perfectly sane. However it might be worth considering the fact that Greek philosophy itself is not naturalistic although it is in parts. But Platonic philosophy is not naturalistic - its primary concern with the state of the soul. (The most recognisably naturalistic of the Ancient Greek schools was the Epicurean). That doesn’t make your approach wrong or right, but I thought it is worth mentioning, as naturalism is the prevailing attitude in many quarters, and accordingly it is simply assumed by many people to be obvious.
Perhaps a solipsist may find some way to argue consistently with his principles that the world disappears when he sleeps. I'm a skeptic, not a solipsist. It seems to me that solipsism of the present moment indicates a point of maximum certainty from the first-person point of view, but I see no reason to suppose such certainty is required for knowledge.
It seems my view of the world is grounded in my mind. But I see no way to support the claim that the whole world is grounded in my mind, or in anyone else's mind. I see no way to support the claim that the world disappears when any one animal goes to sleep; nor the claim that the world disappears when any one animal dies.
Of course anything's possible. But it seems that very little of what's possible is supported by the balance of appearances.
To join you in speculating about the history of ideas: I prefer to imagine our problem has its roots long before the advent of abstract conceptions of isolated subjectivity, in the animist impulse that seems to come natural to human beings, an impulse we share perhaps with other animals who jump at shadows and howl at thunder.
That sort of prediction is impossible because it leaves off the environment required to create the next philosophical masterpiece. It also leaves off the brain. Genes don't encode everything about the brain. Rather, it's just enough information for brains to form. All the learned behaviors and knowledge of a brain are because of the brain, not the genes. And brains live inside bodies, and bodies live inside environments with other bodies. Genes can't predict culture.
It's like imagining that you could predict what sort of cultural artifact an intelligent robot would make loosed upon the world from just it's circuit diagram.
One of The Partially Examined life podcasts on Buddhism dealt with this. They argued that although evolution resulted in our brains being what they are, the brains themselves created a whole new means for generating rich mental life that was not specifically selected for by evolution.
It's basically an argument for emergent behavior, and thus genetic-reductionist view is faulty.
I'm also a bit skeptical of Dawkins gene-centric view of evolution. Seems to me the organism is the instrument of evolution, not the genes themselves. And in the case of social species, it's the group as much as the individual, even though group selection is controversial.
I agree. I don't think it's possible. I suppose I am suggesting that the "true" epistemology is pragmatic. A scientific paradigm really earns our trust through prediction and control. I'm no expert, but I don't find it likely that we either have or will have the "whole story." We get more and more effective and convincing stories. Is it possible that we are the result of a blind machine? Yes. Is it ridiculous to be a little skeptical of this paradigm? I don't think so. And yet I don't have some other theory to suggest. I just keep a certain distance from any particular theory, especially when the limits of its ability to predict and control are manifest.
I was unclear about your position in the last comment. My bad. I think the theory is very close to what you suggest. It is about stripping off the accidental properties and retaining the essential ones, the unchangeable ones, the ones that, if removed, then the object would lose its nature. E.g. a property of me is to have long hair. If I lose this property, I am still me? What if I lose the property 'ability to think'?
I read the review. It was pretty great. His position is roughly my own. He notes that either explanation is not really an explanation. It points back at an unexplained given. There could be a transcendent God. He or It could be the brute fact behind which we cannot peer. I still hold that explanation cannot be total.
I also find Dawkins shrill, and that shrillness reminds me of the dark side of investment. There's an "absoluteness" in it that suggests a hardening of thought. We can also recall atheistic religions becoming dogma (dialectical materialism).
I think it's wrong to think religion only in theist terms. A generalized religion is a set of fixed beliefs centered on a value or image. For instance, the Russian nihilists were Utopian fanatics. They murdered in the name of abstractions. It's not hard to imagine (and films have been made) a rigidly secular dystopia where all dissent is "diagnosed" as a mental health problem. Ironically, Dawkins himself has the dark side of the religious personality.
My thoughts exactly (although I don't see how Buddhism fits in the picture).
Quoting t0m
That's because Dawkins' materialism is actually a direct descendant of philosophical theism. It has the same absolutism about it, but now attached to what it sees as 'science' as opposed to 'religion'. My overall view is that this kind of darwinian materialism is like a mutant form of Christianity - perhaps even a heresy.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Much easier to deploy with 'triangles', that argument. ;-)
Yes. Yes, indeed. As you may recall, I suggested before that it's really all about the positioning of the sacred (of "God"). My thesis is that everyone is religious. Who lives without an image of virtue? Propositions about the "supernatural" are secondary to "religious" feeling attached to basic beliefs about who we are and what we should be. In short, scientism and various political positions are just as much religions in this extend sense as religion proper. As I see it, the philosophy that matters most for the individual is just a working out of the details of one's generalized religion. What is most important in life? What is true virtue? The rest follows from that basic decision. A philosopher has already decided implicitly that his position should be examined or "reasonable."
Although I do have to add something (I can never shut up) - after I graduated in 2013 from my MA program, the professor gave the 'occasional address' at the graduation ceremony, on the theme of 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' It was a real paean to critical thinking, in the Socratic tradition of questioning everything. That speech summed up so many things about my whole experience at that University, and made me so glad to have been there (even though I'm not an academic or author.)
I just mean that the world as we value and know it as humans is only here while we are. If an asteroid wipes us out, the substratum will still be here. But I can only think or say this while I'm here. Where was the world before I was born? It was here, of course. But only because I arrived to think the world before my birth. To my knowledge, the human world (the world I care about) is only experienced first-person.
I agree completely. I don't even see it as a tangent. We are always already our pasts. We come to language with an inherited "interpretation of Dasein [being-there]." Man is essentially historical. Our authentic options are there, in our own inheritance, simply because we have no possibility of starting from zero. This might explain the variety of positions, too. We play the cards we are dealt, and we are dealt different cards. I can tell that you've been working on the same themes for decades. So have I.
These are just my themes. My life shaped me so that I experience a sense of above-average access to my particular issues. Youthful crises and ecstasies are perhaps fundamental here.
OK, I get that particular ideals are particular ideals, but I don't see how that makes them particulars in the kind of sense that particular objects are particular objects. But perhaps you didn't mean that...?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but if what it is to become is not predetermined, then there is no need to think of it as having its future form determined by an ideal form.
You have written rather a lot, but unfortunately that's all I have time to respond to right now. These seem to be the most salient points anyway.
I think this is too prohibitive in spirit. Of course no one works in a vacuum; but anyone who has anything to say that is worth hearing will be offering a perspective that is unique and new to some degree; just as we are all individuals with our own unique perspectives. The challenge is, in fact, just as with the arts, to find your own voice, and each individual will do that in their own way.
The same thing which makes a material object a particular (i.e., that it is unique, and there is no such thing as a difference which does not make a difference), is what makes an ideal a particular as well. Clearly, there is a difference between the two, and that difference is matter. But in the sense of being a particular, there is no difference.
Quoting Janus
The determination is made within the act of "becoming", not prior to. So it isn't "predetermined", it is determined at that time. The determination is made in the same way that human choice determines. We cannot "determine" things (in the sense of fix the outcome) prior to the occurrence, nor posterior to the occurrence, it is done during the occurrence. If you do not understand, it is probably because our concept of "time" is inadequate here. It creates contradiction between a point in time, and an activity occurring at a point in time..
Becoming is explained by the concept of matter, and matter has elements which appear to be unintelligible, the existence of potential, which allows for both what may and may not be. This is indeterminacy, in the common use of "determined", i.e. determined by the past. Material existence occurs only at the present, it is the human being's description of what is, at the present. When we allow for this indeterminacy, we allow for "determined by the present", which is determined by the Forms, in the act of "information". But this power is limited by the power of the being which utilizes the Forms. (Remember, these are not ideas in the mind, generals or universals, these are independent Forms, particulars, acting in the world, with particular effects.) If one assumes an omnipotent Being, this creates certain difficulties which St Augustine is famous for grappling with. The powers of the lesser beings must be willfully allowed by the omnipotent being.
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Is it not also a justified belief that there is an "I" telling "me" what the "I" is finding to be a justified belief, or is that really happening? Is there really an instance of you telling me what you find to be a justified belief? If there is, then you do have direct access to reality as it is - that there is actually a state-of-affairs where Apo is telling Harry Hindu what he finds to be a justified belief AND that Apo is not pretending to have transcendent access to absolute truth.
What you're basically saying is that the reality is that you know you don't know - which I already pointed out is a contradiction. To say that you don't know is itself an objective statement about reality - as if you had direct access to some part of it and it's state-of-affairs - that you don't know everything.
You're arguments are so full of contradictions it's absurd that you don't see it.
Quoting apokrisis
Hypocrisy. You, the dodger of questions, accuse me of dodging questions? I haven't avoided answering anything. It is you that is doing that. You are either confused or just a blatant hypocrite.
I've asked you several times to describe how it is that you arrived at your notions of pragmatism and semiotics. There had to be a transfer of information by causal processes somewhere.
And this talk of some "model" not being driven by "causal fashion" is preposterous. How can you say that it is a model when it doesn't include information about what caused the model? How can you say that anything that is a model doesn't include information about some cause along the line that preceded it. If it doesn't, then it cant be said to be a model of that thing.
Quoting apokrisis
Again, if it is models all the way down, AND we only have access to models, then we have direct access to reality, and it would then be wrong to call it models. We'd simply have direct access to reality.
Why should the idea that the existence of the world is not independent of first-person experience conflict with the observation that the world continues when other animals sleep?
Why the single-standard assumption that what is true to say of the third-person must also be true to say of the first-person?
Why the prejudice against solipsism?
Seems like a reasonable hypothesis.
You feeling up to explaining how colour constancy supports your assertions about direct cause and effect yet?
If colour constancy is a model, then there must be some causal relationship with the model and what caused it. If not, then how can you say that what is happening has anything to do with, or carries information about, something else - like the experience of color having to do with the state of something else? How did colour constancy arise? What evolutionary problems did it solve? These are the questions you should be asking.
The point you took issue with was the point that our thoughts don't have to be "identical" but only sufficiently "similar" to support communication and mutual understanding. So far as I can see, you have yet to support your bold claim to the contrary.
The fact that language involves "common meanings" is not contested here. What's contested is the characterization of such common meanings.
Quoting Wayfarer
Do you mean to say the only relevant conversation about communication is conversation about the symbols we use to communicate? Even if that were so: What is the symbol, how does it symbolize, how do we understand it? Aren't these relevant questions? It seems this is close to what you were asking at the outset, in your own way.
You ask how information could be physical, if each of us has "the same information" about an apple on the basis of perception, or grasps "the same meaning" of an utterance or waving flag. My answer is that it is not identical information, but similar information in similar heads.
I can understand why you might think this conflicts with your position, but I can't imagine how you could possibly think it's not a relevant concern for your position and for the theme you've introduced.
Quoting Wayfarer
I said that we have nonidentical, but similar, perceptions of the same; and that this is an instructive analogy for the case of speech. A point you seem to be wriggling around without addressing.
You're aware it's common to speak of perceptual "information", and you began our conversation by asking about information and about the claim that information is physical. Is there some reason perception is not relevant to this theme?
I recall you started out by talking about waving flags and other signs we interpret on the basis of sensory perception.
Quoting Wayfarer
Did I say "the physical is fundamental"?
I say I'm not sure what it means to say that something is "not physical"; and I say it seems, to all appearances, that minds and their abstractions are grounded in the physical. I'm open to the abstract possibility that there is something that is not physical -- I don't think the very idea of something nonphysical is a logical contradiction -- but I see no reason to suppose that anything I've encountered, even in speech or thought or dreams, is not physical in the way I mean.
Your idealist has not helped to clear up the matter, and he hasn't made the case for his own point of view.
How is the fact that we make judgments of the form, "x is physical", "x is not physical", "x is mental", "x is not mental"... relevant here? It seems to me that's exactly what we're evaluating here, our judgments, the judgments of these two sentient animals.
Quoting Wayfarer
Now I'm sure you're not addressing me, but rather some stereotype of a physicalist who stands between us, obstructing your view of my position.
As you're well aware, traditional discourse about physis and nature far predates the recent scientific theories you mention and the technologies that have enabled the investigations that inform those theories. My conception of the physical is informed primarily by my own experience as a thoughtful, perceptive, and introspective animal. I don't need an "account of how we got here" to support my conception of the physical, though to all appearances, the accounts provided by current empirical science seem among the most reliable and useful answers to that question.
You may recall I'm inclined to say empirical science is just a rigorous extension of ordinary empirical investigation and ordinary experience, a careful phenomenology of nature that does not entail any metaphysical views.
It may be that empirical investigation cannot provide an answer to questions like "why the world exists". It may be that definitive answers to such questions are impossible, and I see no reason to suppose that such answers are forthcoming. I'm no more inclined to be perturbed by that silence than I'm inclined to find contradiction in the thought that "bad things happen to good people".
You're so concerned with relevance to your own OP: How on Earth is the question "Why does the world exist?" relevant to your OP?
Quoting Wayfarer
I take it there's a difference between an original post and the thread that originates from that post. Was it your purpose, in your opening post, merely to "show" that information is not physical, or rather to initiate a conversation on that topic, and to invite reflection and comment on your speech?
I expect the physicalist and I have two different views, but he'll have to come here and tell me what his view consists in before I can make up my mind, unless someone else will speak for him.
I'm not arguing on behalf of the physicalist, but on my own behalf. Whatever your purpose may be in attempting to establish the claim that "information is not physical", that is the claim I am challenging here, while you gesture repeatedly at your own initial intention and confuse my claims with the claims of others.
Quoting Wayfarer
Feel free to continue that argument in light of what I've actually said so far.
Of course. The only question is whether the state of mind is being caused directly or indirectly.
Colour experience alone shows that conciousness is mediated Interpretation. We don’t see light as it is, but light as our neurology symbolises it.
Colour constancy rams this point home. Any interpretation is relative to some judgement we are making about how some colour would look under more ideal lighting conditions.
Perception is so indirect we can experience colour as stable properties belonging to object surfaces. Which is thus both a truth and not the actual information reaching our eyes.
It is the same as distance correction. Things far away are seen as being of normal size, far away. Which is true, but not the truth of the information hitting the backs of our eyes.
All perception relies on interpretation, so is not direct but mediated by our beliefs. That sugar tastes sweet and roses are red show just how unreal our resulting reality is. We impute a useful sensory image to create a structure of experience that certainly corresponds to the world in a reliable way. It gets us around this reality, as a map symbolises a territory. But being mediated via symbols - qualia - it is not direct.
Robert Wright was arguing that Buddhism is supported by evolutionary psychology, and helps us overcome our attachment to desire and what not.
Never came across that word before. If I have Google translate it to Korean, then French, and then back to English it says:
Print Authorization
Right, so the evolution of the actual forms of things is likewise not determined priorly by ideal forms.
I take it, that by "actual forms of things" of things, you mean material things. If so, then the argument is that the "actual form" is the immaterial Form, and this determines the form of the material thing.
You are not distinguishing between being and becoming. A describable form is a state, static. The "evolution of actual forms" implies a change from one state to another. The "becoming" which is implied by this change, cannot se described as an intermediate state, or else we would need another intermediate state, and so on ad infinitum. The activity of the independent Forms, is within the intermediate of becoming, so it is not describable as the form of a material thing, which implies a static state.. So, the actual forms of material things is determined priorly by the Ideal Forms, but they are not "forms of things", meaning material things, because they are immaterial, acting on the passive material, in the act of information.
I would have thought that the law of identity, a=a, is central to logic and meaning. 'a' is not similar to 'a', it is the same. That's what '=' means.
But, whether something is 'the same' or 'similar', in both cases, the faculty that makes that judgement is essential to the matter. That is the faculty of abstract judgement. You and I, as rational beings, are able to make such judgements; it is the source of such judgement that interests me. That's why I included the long quotation from Steve Pinker in this post. He is confident that 'the computational theory of mind' accounts for such judgements; he tries to give a materialist account of how this works, in terms of 'bits that are arranged to bump into other bits'. Whereas, I'm arguing (not very well, perhaps) for a dualist view: that the symbolic and the physical are ontologically distinct. Also, I argue that even if computers are analogies for the processes of thought, that is only because humans have specifically manufactured them for that purpose, so the fact that they reflect the operations of human thought, doesn't explain the nature of thought.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Symbols and language are the province of semiotics and linguistics, respectively, and they're enormous disciplines in their own right; to become conversant with them takes considerable study. That's why I admit to 'skating over' a lot of major issues. It's a very general and high-level argument based on a single observation.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
No, but it's the widespread assumption of e.g. Steve Pinker above. I would say that the cultural mainstream is generally physicalist in its orientation to these issues. I think that the account of 'how the mind works' is generally a lot nearer to Steve Pinker's view (that was the title of the book I quoted, by the way) than anything I am likely to advocate, and that it's probably a much less contentious view than my own.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
I am addressing what I see as the issue at hand. I don't regard that as a process of stereotyping but of analysis of the implications of the physicality, or otherwise, of ideas and symbols, in the context of philosophy and history of ideas. Now the fact that you will characterise yourself as a 'thoughtful, perceptive and introspective animal', is, I think, significant - incidentally, you are extremely thoughtful and highly perceptive, not to mention articulate, so let's put that aside - it's the 'animal' tag that I'm questioning. Rational animal, yes; animal, no. And it's a difference that makes a difference.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Right - are the issues being discussed here empirical in nature? Is the basic question one for empiricism at all?
This, incidentally, is why I provided that excerpt from the article on the 'indispensability of mathematics'. That article likewise notes the incorporeal nature of number, as I have done with 'information'. It says that the non-materiality of mathematical objects is very difficult to reconcile with the fact that 'our best epistemic theories seem to debar any knowledge of mathematical objects'. And why do 'our best arguments' do that? I suggest it's because they're empiricist in the sense you are defending. The difficulty is, that rationalist philosophy indicates the reality of rational truths that are not justifiable on solely empirical grounds. So the whole point of the argument is 'an attempt to justify our mathematical beliefs about abstract objects, while avoiding any appeal to rational insight'. (My emphasis. By the way, I can't help but find this conclusion ironic, considering the degree to which empirical science goes on about 'reason'.)
I am not going to come to any conclusions on this point, but I think it's worth considering why such an argument has to be made, in the context of modern analytical and empirical philosophy.
(Now, also, I acknowledge that my attitude is tendentious - I was accused of that as an undergraduate, and it's probably true. And I know it goes against the grain. I am trying to have these arguments, therefore, in a fairly detached manner, so they're not directed at persons, but ideas. And also that these are difficult questions - especially yours.)
= is a mathematical equivalence. "Same" cannot be reduced to =. That would mean that all qualities could be expressed as quantities. This assumption actually denies the possibility of dualism, by saying that every difference can be expressed as degrees of the same type, quantity. That's a monism.
Your argument falls down because the idea of things being "in a state" is a merely formal abstraction which does not correspond to actuality.
So, actually being is becoming. The form of material things is never actually static; we just conceive it as such, in order to simplify for the purposes of understanding. It is analogous to the use of infinitesimal calculus to model motion as a series of infinitesimal differences, differences that for practical purposes don't make such a difference that the series would not be close enough to actual motion to make calculation workable.
Indeed, concepts are not necessarily in the mind, because they are first abstracted from the particulars. E.g. 'triangle-ness' is abstracted from particular triangles we observe.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There may be an ambiguity of the term 'concept'. In philosophy, concepts are the essence of things. In informal language, it is indeed synonymous to a mere idea. I think ideas are essentially in minds, but concepts are not, because they are abstracted into the mind, from "somewhere outside of it", so to speak.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Technically, you may be right that we could be mistaken about our notions and the real concept, but I am optimistic that it is not the case; because if my notion of "yes" could be your notion "no" and vice versa, then it would be utterly hopeless for us to try to communicate.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As Aristotle says, we all have the implicit knowledge of concepts; this is how we can have intelligible conversations; but not necessarily the explicit knowledge. E.g. we can all use the word 'justice' correctly in a sentence, but we don't necessarily know its essential properties. Plato and Socrates used dialogues to obtain the explicit knowledge. I think their underlying assumptions is that the concept is found if all parties agree with the definition. Let's try it with fineness. I think its essence is: "IIIII" (or whatever other object, as long as there are five of them). If this corresponds to your notion of it, then we can conclude that we have found the real concept.
This critical question is the sole reason I took on philosophy. Still searching for the answer.
If you deny states, then you deny things. Objects exist as a describable state with a temporal extension. You might claim that this is just a formal abstraction, but unless you allow in your ontology, that it is also reality, your formal abstractions have no grounding, they are just imaginary. This is the problem with any process ontology, which denies the reality of "being" in favour of "becoming". There is no grounding for formal logic, what is and is not, as all reality is described as becoming, what may or may not be, and you are left with apokrisis', or Peirce's vagueness, where the law of non-contradiction does not apply. Dualism avoids this problem by providing an ontology with the principles for this duality of existence, being and becoming.
Quoting Janus
See, you are faced with a question here. Which is real, what is depicted by the model, a series of states, or what you call "actual motion"? If you cannot produce a model to represent it, on what basis are you claiming that this is "actual motion". It appears to me, like you have an imaginary idea of "actual motion", which cannot ne justified. Why insist on the realityof this "actual motion"?
Quoting apokrisis
That's weird because I have no conscious effort, or will, to mediate my colors. Color constancy is a process that is UNconscious (unintentional) with it's EFFECTS appearing in consciousness.
Color constancy is something that helps us identify objects in different lighting conditions. Using light as a source of information about your environment has it's pros and it's cons. Mirages and camouflage are some cons, as well as not being able to get consistent information about an object in different lighting conditions. It seems that natural selection found a solution in color constancy.
So, what color constancy actually does is prove my point, not yours. It shows that we are still getting at the real property of an object, which is the apple's ripeness or rotteness, not the light, which changes, and isn't the important information you're trying to get at. Do you want to know the state of the apple, or the state of the light?
The fact that you can tell me about color constancy and that the color we see isn't the same as the wavelength of light, which means that you actually do know the wavelength of light compared to the state of the apple and the color we see, then tell me again how you don't have direct knowledge of all these relationships?
Ah. So seeing red even in bad lighting conditions is the way we directly apprehend the ripeness and rottenness of objects.
Sounds legit. Look at that ripe postbox. Look at that ripe Ferrari. Yes I see what you mean.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Direct inference perhaps?
Not at all; things can be conceived as agents or manifestations of activity, rather than as bearers of states. Things must then be thought of as extended instantiations of temporal activity, rather than as entities that exist merely in successions of static point-instants.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Actual motion is motion as experienced; which is continuous. It is not experienced as a succession of discrete states or positions. Motion as experienced is the territory, and motion as a succession of discrete positions is the map. The the map is a reduction, the map is not the territory.
The abstraction occurs within the mind, a process which the mind carries out. So how does this make an argument that concepts are outside of a mind?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
"Abstracted into the mind" makes no sense to me. A mind abstracts. Abstraction is a process which the mind carries out, completely within the mind. If there is a thing called an abstraction, it must exist within a mind. Nothing is abstracted into the mind.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
So what happens if no one can say what the essential properties of "justice" are, or, like in Plato's republic, there is no agreement as to what the essential properties are? What makes you think that there is such a thing as the essential properties of "justice"?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
How does that make sense? You say that the essence of "fiveness" is that there is five of them. So the essence of justice is that it is just? And the essence of greenness is that it is green? That doesn't make any sense.
OK, if you want to take that route, and deny that a thing is a state, then the laws of logic do not apply to any thing. An activity, is by definition a change. So instead of explaining activity as a thing which is active, carrying out an activity, for you the activity is the thing. There is no thing which is carrying out that activity, because the activity is the thing. As an activity, then,what that thing is, or is not, cannot be stated because it is changing, and this depends on one's perspective. It is relative. Are you satisfied with an ontology which denies that the laws of logic can be applied toward understanding real things?
Because abstraction is a process, from A to B, from input to output. Yes, the output is in the mind, and so could be the process; but the input is not from the mind; or else what would change from A to B? It would be like shovelling dirt from one place to put it back in the same place.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It just means they have not yet found the explicit definition of the concept. Not a big deal in everyday discussions because we still all have the implicit definition of it. E.g. you and I can still agree on whether a particular event is just or unjust; we just could not figure out general truths such as if justice is by definition always more profitable than injustice. For this one, we need the explicit definition.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A property is essential to a concept if, should it be removed, the concept would no longer be present. Thus, if there exists a case (1) that is undeniably just, and a case (2) that is undeniably unjust, then there must be some properties in case (1) to make it just, which are not found in case (2) to make it unjust. And these, by definition, would be the essential properties of justice.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have mislead you by adding the things in parentheses. I meant that fiveness can be represented by IIIII or *****. The particular object doesn't matter, as long as the quantity is correct. So the essence of triangle-ness is not to be a triangle (that would be circular), but to be a flat surface with three straight sides.
I think you’ve put that well.
So, how do you conclude that because the input is not in the mind, therefore the abstraction is not in the mind? "Abstraction" refers to either the process, or the output, it doesn't refer to the input. The input is what the abstraction is abstracted from.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
If we both agree, then this indicates that we both have a similar concept within our minds. What is being discussed is the possibility of a concept which is not within our minds. If your claim is that a concept exists as a definition, that definition is only symbols on a piece of paper, which needs to be interpreted by a mind.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I don't buy this at all. By the method you've proposed, accidentals can be mistaken for essentials. Suppose I want to know the essential properties of the concept of "wet". I have some cold water which is undeniably wet. And I have some warm sand which is undeniably dry. According to your logic, this property, "cold", which is found in the water, but not in the sand, is an essential property of "wet".
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
So you are saying that the essence of fiveness is a particular quantity. I do not agree with this. I think that the essence of five is defined by order. I learned what five is by learning to count. Five comes after four, and before six. That five is a particular quantity of counts, one, two, three, four, five, is accidental, not essential, because one could start at zero, then five would be six counts, or one could start at a negative number. Therefore, what is essential to five is that it holds a place between four and six, within a particular order, not that it represents a particular quantity. I think that you are wrong because you've already demonstrated that you use faulty principles in determining what is essential, such that you may confuse accidentals with essentials.
Since we cannot agree on the essence of fiveness, what makes you think that there really is an essence of fiveness? What if we were to trade places between five and three? Then five would represent a different quantity, and a different place in the order. In reality, the essence of fiveness is just a convention, one which we can't even agree on. What kind of convention is that?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Suppose I agree with you, that the concept of a triangle exists by means of this definition "a flat surface with three straight sides". Would you agree with me, that this definition only exists as physical symbols? How do you propose that we get beyond this, to say that the concept, or definition, has an immaterial existence, without being read and interpreted by a mind? In which case, the immaterial existence would only be within a mind? The definition would be material symbols, but the immaterial concept would be in the mind. So we have a division between the definition, being material and outside of minds, and the concept being immaterial and within minds. How do you propose that the immaterial concept could exist within the material symbols, independently of a mind?
I would say the laws of logic do not apply to things, but to our understanding of our experience, which is given in terms of 'things'. On the other hand, maybe there are no things beyond our understanding of our experience, in which case the laws of logic would apply to things. The phenomenal life of which the things are manifestations, though, cannot be captured in terms of the laws of logic.
The idea that being is a manifestation of life is really a phenomenological, not strictly a metaphysical or ontological, idea; unless you count the latter as being founded upon the former, as I would say the great phenomenologists would (think of Husserl and Heidegger among others here), when they didn't reject metaphysics and ontology altogether.
Actually, I agree that the abstraction is likely in the mind. Just not the input. My point was that concepts are abstracted from outside of the mind to inside of it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I claim concepts exist as things in themselves, found in particulars, and later abstracted in the mind. We describe concepts with words and definitions, but these are merely signs pointing to the concepts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with you. My method was not to separate the essential from the accidental properties, but merely to demonstrate that the essential properties existed. Thus in your example, 'cold' is not necessarily an essential property of 'wetness', but we know that 'wetness' has essential properties because some things are wet and some things are not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure we can say that five is defined by order, but that is by order of its quantity. 4 comes before 5 comes before 6 because IIII < IIIII < IIIIII with respect to quantity. We cannot trade 5 and 3 in order of quantity, because IIIII > III. The only thing we can do is switch the symbols so that 5 points to III and 3 points to IIIII; but we cannot switch the concepts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I side with Hume and Descartes, among others, when they say that we acquire most of our concepts from observation of the outer reality. The proof is that a blind man born blind has no concept of greenness, because he cannot conceive the difference between different colours. Therefore the concept is not conceived in the mind, but is abstracted from observation of outer reality. One might argue that since colours are physical, then so is the concept of greenness; but I counter-argue that since size and location is not an essential property of greenness, then the concept is not physical.
I would say the world "as we inhabit it", or "as we experience it" is only here while we're here. But there's no reason to suppose that the world as we inhabit it is "the whole world". We only get a glimpse of the world, even while we're here. That's all. Or so it seems.
I don't think the two views conflict. They seem compatible to me, but one seems supported by experience and the other doesn't.
We can imagine a wide variety of metaphysical scenarios compatible with the evidence that the world continues while other animals sleep. The fact that they're compatible with this evidence, and the fact that we can imagine them, is no reason to suppose that they are true depictions of how things really are in the world.
Quoting sime
It's not an assumption or a prejudice.
The preponderance of evidence suggests that, in general, what is true of others is also true of me, and vice versa. If you want to make the case that you're so very special, the burden's on you to provide a warrant for the claim. The fact that we can imagine things being so gives no such warrant. We can imagine things being so, and we can imagine things being otherwise. Imagination is not enough. Possibility is not enough. Logical consistency with the evidence is not enough, because the contrary claim is also consistent with the evidence, and arguably far better supported by the evidence.
Ok, so this is where we disagree. I think that in the process of abstraction, the concept is created within the mind, it is an act of creation. I do not believe that the concept is pulled into the mind from a location outside of the mind, I believe that it is created by the mind.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
This is faulty logic though. We call things wet. I say water is wet, you agree that water is wet. We agree that certain things are wet, and that certain things are not wet. But this does not produce the conclusion that "wetness" has essential properties, it just means that we agree about which things we should call wet and which things we should call not wet. In order that we can say that wetness has essential properties, we need to agree again, as to what the essential properties of wetness are. Otherwise I might say that the essential properties are such and such, and you might say something completely different. Since "wetness" is a word that we are using, then if we can't agree on what it means, there can't be essential properties of wetness.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I don't agree that order necessarily implies quantity. One comes after the other, which comes after the other, and so on. That is order. Now, unless you insist that there is necessarily a first, then this order exists without quantity. So I can recognize an order, of one after the other, without having any idea of the quantity. I come into the middle of a succession, and recognize the order of one after the other, without any idea of the quantity.
When we allow for negative as well as positive integers, then quantity becomes irrelevant. The numbers simply express an order. There is no such thing as a quantity of negative two, or negative three, these are completely imaginary, and nonsense quantities. If I owe you two dollars, this does not mean that I have a quantity of negative two dollars. The number line expresses an order, not quantities.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
But this doesn't make sense. What if the blind person learns about the different wavelengths of light, and learns which wavelengths produce the sensations of green. Would you not agree that this blind person has a concept of greenness? Would you think that human beings have no concept of xray, ultraviolet, infrared, and such wavelengths, just because we cannot see these colours?
What light does this shed on the point in question? Or is this more "skating"?
The law of identity merely expresses the logical form of judgments of identity. It doesn't inform any such judgment. It doesn't tell us whether any two items introduced into conversation are identical or nonidentical.
For instance, the law of identity doesn't by itself determine for us whether, or in what respect, something we call a thought in my head is identical to something we call a thought in your head. At first glance, it seems there's good reason to call these two things nonidentical, though they may resemble each other in various ways.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm inclined to agree that artificial simulations of human intelligence are not adequate to explain human cognition, as Searle for one has argued. It seems AI designers produce increasingly accurate simulations or representations of human thinking. Simulating or representing is not the same as explaining, though representations may be of use in various explanations.
You may recall my favorite take on ontology is that "there is no privileged ontology", as Rorty puts it. We use different ontological models for different purposes.
What is the "faculty of abstract judgment"? Isn't that just a term of art for our capacity or power to make abstract judgments? Isn't it a philosopher's high-level placeholder, that provides a way for us to refer to a human capacity without making assumptions about what in the world the capacity is grounded in?
I take it talk about a "faculty of abstract judgment" is compatible with a view that physical bodies in a physical world are the source of that capacity, and compatible with a view that angel's whispers are the source of that capacity, and with diverse other views. An attempt to isolate such cognitive powers and analyze them at an abstract level leaves no necessary path back from abstract representation to "real source". The abstraction will be multiply realizable in principle, and compatible with an infinite range of views of what the world may be in fact if it contains such minds.
The same goes for abstract theories or formalizations of signs and language, and for computational models of mind and information. The abstract formal representation is no explanation or reproduction of the real system it represents or simulates. You and I agree with Searle and disagree with many cognitive scientists in this regard: Even if computational models of mind may yield perfect simulations of human intelligence, it seems there's no reason to suppose they'll ever explain human consciousness or produce real sentient beings.
Quoting Wayfarer
So much skating, it's hard for me to tell what connection your claims have to the rigorous disciplines you cite. It's as if you suggest your skating is informed by these disciplines, but so far as I can see, the only connection is that you borrow a few of their words and phrases, then point to the disciplines as if they are justifications for any claim you make with those words and phrases.
What's gained by that sort of gesture but confusion?
It seems you have yet to clear up your own thoughts on what "symbol" and "information" mean in your own discourse, but before you think that through, you rush into proofs that "information is not physical" and that the "symbolic and physical are ontologically distinct".
What is the "single observation" that informs your argument?
Quoting Wayfarer
In this case you used the claim in responding to me, not to Pinker, and you put the claim in my mouth. That's just one example of the way you seem to conflate the views of your interlocutors till you wind up skating circles around straw men. At least, I often feel that you've mistaken the claims of a skeptical naturalist like me for the claims of an extreme materialist.
Quoting Wayfarer
Isn't a rational animal a sort of animal? I recall we've spent some time trying to distinguish our use of terms like "rational", "intelligent", and "sentient" in our conversations, for it seems we have different dispositions in the use of such terms. In my view, traditional English translation of Aristotle's zoon logikon muddies the distinction between language and rationality. Humans are the only full-fledged language-users we know of, and our capacity for language seems closely associated with our distinctly human practice of reasoning, of "giving and taking reasons". But it makes most sense to me to say that many nonhuman animals are rational, intelligent, and sentient, like human beings.
What are the "implications of physicality"?
We may distinguish i) conversations that proceed from the assumption of some metaphysical or theological dogma, such as materialism or idealism, theism or atheism; ii) conversations in which no such assumption is granted, while one or more such assumptions are contested; and iii) conversations in which no such assumption even comes into play, where discourse remains consistent in principle with a wide range of conflicting metaphysical biases external to the conversation.
For many years now, I prefer to have conversations of the third sort. Engagement with interlocutors making metaphysical claims of any stripe tends to drag me into conversations of the second sort. Occasionally I'm induced to play along in conversations of the first sort by granting the required assumption hypothetically.
I might say the reason I prefer the third sort of conversation is that I've become agnostic about metaphysics in general. I say this agnosticism is not a metaphysical point of view, but an epistemological point of view on metaphysical claims. My agnosticism about metaphysics is one feature of a broader epistemological skepticism that's closely aligned with methodological naturalism and with a phenomenologically grounded conception of nature and the physical.
In keeping with that point of view, I say there is no "implication of the physical" that we may firmly grasp, that clearly points beyond the physical. Though we may imagine anything we please in a logical space we call "beyond the physical".
Quoting Wayfarer
Do you mean the question, "Is information physical"? I ask again, what would it mean to deny that information is physical? If information is not physical, then what is it, and how do we come to know of it, and how do we determine that it is not physical?
Clearly we pursue empirical investigations that inform us increasingly about cognition, including about perception and speech. Clearly we construct and analyze formal models of language and communication that abstract away from physical contexts, but the fact that we jot abstract representations in a notebook is no evidence that those symbols correspond to abstract "entities" that exist somehow independent of the physical instantiations they're designed by us and taken by us to represent.
I make the same sort of argument with respect to concepts of number and symbolic representations of numerical concepts.
Quoting Wayfarer
I do find your arguments tendentious. I suspect they'd be more clear and persuasive for me, if you'd spend more time bearing down in small spaces to tighten up your discourse before reaching out to synthesize whole disciplines in quick runs around the rink. But you put it together with intelligence, imagination, creativity, and passion. It's challenging and enjoyable exercise for me.
If my line of questioning is difficult, it may be in part because I try to speak carefully and to avoid biting off more than I can chew, and in part because I'm more sympathetic to your point of view than you're inclined to suppose.
The fact that very different types of symbols can mean the same thing. The harbourmaster receives an exact account of what vessel is arriving, not simply something 'similar' to that.
Were the topic at hand vastly more complicated - the instructions for construction of a complex machine, for example - the text might comprise millions of words and hundreds of thousands of diagrams and measurements. That two could be represented in different languages and media. Yet if there was a mis-translation of a single term in one of them, then the different sets would no longer be identical. (This is what caused a European Mars Lander to fail - a metric unit being mis-understood as imperial. Similar, but not the same!)
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
I am arguing that it is the basic ability to recognise similarity and to abstract. It is 'basic', in the sense that language and representation relies on that ability; we employ it all the time, simply to think and speak, and perhaps for that reason it might be somewhat 'hidden in plain sight' - taken for granted. It might suit you to say that animals display that ability (and I suppose some might in a rudimentary sense) but I believe there is a truly fundamental distinction between animal and human communication and thought. (Indeed I think the blurring of this distinction, is an indication of a basic confusion in a lot of current thought about the matter; I think the uniqueness of being human, and the challenges and freedoms it offers, are part of the existential plight of human life, and the feeling that we are, after all, 'only animals', is actually a source of comfort to us. It defuses the challenge. Nagel has some perceptive things to say about that; I also think it's part of the meaning of Fromm's 'Fear of Freedom.)
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
That doesn't say anything about the nature of rationality; and in itself, it's an abstract argument. 'Look, a rational thing!' Actually, such a thing, is not a thing, but a being.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
What it would mean is that physicalism is shown to be false - that no coherent philosophy can be created on the basis of the claim that only what is physical is real.
When you ask 'what is information?', I don't think there is a single answer to that question, as 'information' is a polysemic term. But in this context, the kind of information concerns relatively simple subject matter, and a discussion of what is involved in translating it between media types. Again, the central argument is that whilst the physical representation can be changed entirely, the information remains the same. So the question is, in this scenario, what changes, and what stays the same?
But behind the question, is the whole issue of the ontology of abstract objects. That's why I included the reference to the 'argument for the indispensability of mathematics'. I don't know if you noticed it, but I think it is germane to the question - 'this argument says that the non-materiality of mathematical objects is very difficult to reconcile with the fact that "our best epistemic theories seem to debar any knowledge of mathematical objects". And that's because I think there's something fundamentally wrong with 'our best epistemic theories' - because they're essentially physicalist!
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
You're absolutely right - I do write at much too high a level. What it would take to really develop my arguments is more patient groundwork. Actually I am going to lay off posting so much for the time being, I have a pretty big list of things I know I ought to read and try and absorb better. Appreciate your comments.
Bees like certain types of flowers, not particular individual flowers. Vervet monkeys make a certain type of a call when they spot a certain type of predator. Most of nature seems to operate with some degree of abstraction, doesn't it?
Yes - but I still say that bee languages and animal communications can be understood behaviourally, in terms of stimulus and response. There are patterns of stimuli, and patterns of responses. I suppose they provide a prototype for the elements of abstract ideas, but h. sapiens make the leap to a level of abstraction that is different in kind - general and universal.
Furthermore, prior to there being living organisms, which do behave in such ways, where can nature be said to exhibit a 'degree of abstraction'? Would you find any examples on Mars? or other uninhabited planets? In interstellar space? Even at simple levels of organic life, sentience itself embodies a certain degree of abstraction, which is absent in inorganic matter.
According to Berwick and Chomsky, this ability to grasp meaning amounts to an ontological discontinuity between animal and human communications (in review of 'Why only us: Language and Evolution' by Stephen M. Barr. A less friendly review in New Scientist.)
I think there is an underlying assumption in our current worldview that there is no discontinuity or leap involved; we naturally think of reason and language in terms of adaptive necessity - they evolved by the same means as other biological features, and so have the same essential rationale.
I wasn't just talking about communication. Animals of all sorts clearly respond to types of things. You don't flee a predator because it's Shere Kahn, but because it's a predator, and you flee in a way appropriate to the type of predator it is, if you can. So it is with eating, with building, with mating.
I would even say that a rock becomes part of a landslide based on the momentum of whatever strikes it, not, say, the color of what strikes it. That's a sort of abstraction. For any phenomenon you consider, some elements are relevant and some aren't.
I will speak unguardedly for a moment:
Semantics seems to be the big mystery. How do we symbolize? How can something mean something? And there's a view, the sort of thing we associate with Searle, to the effect that machines are merely syntactical, that they can manipulate symbols but not know what they mean.
So here's humanity standing above the rest of creation. We have meaning, but machines only have syntax. We have language, but other living things have signaling at best. It's tempting to identify the two hierarchies, to say that animals must have only syntax but no meaning.
But I think this is a mistake. Chomsky's work has always suggested that the key difference between human language and signaling is recursive, hierarchical, generative syntax. Semantics is not what distinguishes us from other critters, but syntax. It may very well be that "having semantics" is coextensive with "living", or at least with "having sense(s)".
It may feel like Landauer's claim that information is physical is part of an attempted reduction of semantics to syntax, to treating living things like computers, but is it really?
Actually, the fact that some things are wet and some are not, is sufficient to prove that wetness has essential properties, as so: Properties of a concept are essential if, should these properties be removed, then the concept would no longer be present. Conversely, properties are accidental if, should they be removed, the concept would still be present. Now, some things (1) have wetness and some things (2) don't. It means that properties of wetness are present in (1) and not in (2). If all these properties were accidental, then their absence in (2) would not result in the absence of wetness. But wetness is absent in (2). Therefore some of the properties of wetness absent in (2) must be essential to the concept of wetness.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I was going to object, but I find I have trouble arguing about this topic. If you don't mind, I will drop it to focus on the other topics.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This might get a bit off topic, but I think your claim here is a non-issue, because in real life, there is no such thing as a negative number in the absolute sense. E.g. there is no negative absolute temperature, pressure or mass. So I agree that quantities do not allow for negative values, but this is in conformance to reality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Greenness, the thing in itself, is not this 'range of wavelength of light' you describe. If it were, then it would be logically impossible for us to imagine greenness without imagining a light source, inasmuch as we cannot imagine a triangle without imagining three sides; but we can imagine greenness by itself. The true concept of greenness is not about wavelengths, but is simply this. Rather than being one and the same thing, this 'range of wavelength of light' is a cause of us sensing greenness, or to use Aristotle's terminology, it is an efficient cause of greenness, not its formal cause.
We have concepts of ultraviolet and infrared as wavelengths, but have no concept of the colour they may produce if we were able to see these. By the way, I think it is impossible for us to conceive a new colour, for the same reasons.
Maybe greenness was a bad example to use. Instead, imagine if you were incapable of feeling the emotion sadness. I can do my best to describe to you that it is the emotion one gets when being aware of a good that no longer exists; and from this, you may be able to infer that it is a painful thing; but it would not substitute the experience of the feeling itself. And the concept is the thing in itself.
Well when I started thinking about the question of 'whether information is physical', I googled that very question, as you do nowadays, and Landauer's name came up as the #1 reference. But he was a computer scientist - actually the head of IBM research labs - rather than a philosopher, as such. So to be honest, I probably don't really understand Landauer's work very well, but it is a reference point for the discussion.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I really don't see how that stacks up. Humans have the ability to imagine, to think in the past and future tense, to invent stories and artefacts and artworks. No other animals have that ability, aside from in the most rudimentary forms. So the ability of bees to dance and baby chicks to duck hawk shadows, doesn't say anything about semantics in the sense that it applies to language. At best it's an analogy - and again, maybe it's why semiotics is so applicable to biology, as organisms seem to function along lines that are much more explicable in terms of metaphors of language, then metaphors of machines. That is my take on what Apokrisis points to, and I think it's perfectly true. So I can't agree that animal behaviour denotes meaningful ideation in the sense that the human is capable of. 'Rational animal', again - the adjective is significant.
That book by Chomsky I referred to was called 'Why Only Us?' - I think, for naturalism, it is an embarrassing question. (Similar to why, according to 'our best epistemological theories', number ought not to be considered real, when it's so embarrassingly effective.)
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
And we can't have that; not the kind of thing that Darwinism would endorse. (Although it's instructive that Alfred Russel Wallace had a completely different view of the matter.)
Hey! Don't make the topic more confusing than it already is.
I think it does. I think the shadow means hawk to them in the same way it would mean hawk to us, and that the sense (!) in which the word "hawk" means [[hawk]] is derivative of exactly this "natural meaning". At least that's my working hypothesis. We'll see.
Quoting Wayfarer
No it's not.
While I understand that the human cognitive capacity evolves from the simpler forms of communication in other animals, I think the idea that the understanding of meaning in birds and humans amounts to the same thing, is mistaken.
Speaking of Chomsky, he gives a reason why animal and human communications are basically different, which I thought I had already mentioned earlier - it has to do with the fact that 'human language involves the capacity to generate, by a recursive procedure, an unlimited number of hierarchically structured sentences', which rely on syntactical order to indicate meaning in a way that neither birds nor other species can do.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Oh, sorry. The remark you made about 'humanity standing above the rest of creation' seemed to me an idea that you wished to avoid.
Are you even reading my posts?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I read what you said about Chomsky, but I don't get how you can reconcile that with this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Because that seems to negate the meaning of what you've quoted from Chomsky- because he's basically saying that the hierarchical syntax operates in the service of semantics - whereas you appear to dismiss semantics. Although perhaps I'm misunderstanding.
Why would I dismiss semantics? What does that even mean? I think it's safe to say you have misunderstood.
Maybe this would we a good point for us to take a breather. Work and reading call.
Sorry - that's how I read this:
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Never mind, we'll pick it up later.
It is thought that non-verbal modelling systems precede verbal modelling systems in evolutionary terms. Animals have non-verbal modelling systems, human beings have non-verbal and verbal modelling systems.
Verbal modelling systems (i.e., languages) are a set of signs having paradigmatic (class) and syntagmatic (construction) relations (variations in either type of relation varies meaning), hence; language presupposes vocabulary and syntax.
It would be a mistake to suppose that animals do not produce or assign meaning in terms of phenomena simply because they have a non-verbal (as opposed to verbal) modelling system.
It is species-specific categorisation and interpretation which decodes physical information (received through sensory stimulation and/or interoception), producing semantic information.
The point is. that things are only "wet" because we call them "wet". That constitutes "the fact" that some things are wet, we agree to call them wet. If we didn't call them wet, then there would be no fact that they are wet. If we agree to call certain things wet, this does not prove that wetness has certain essential properties, it proves that we can agree about which things to call wet.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Now it appears like you are starting to see my point. We produce our concepts according to how we perceive reality, not according to some "essential properties". We can name essential properties, according to how we perceive reality, agree on them, and use that as a guide in applying the concept, but this does not mean that any particular word necessarily refers to any particular set of essential properties.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
This seems to contradict your claim that concepts have essential properties. If we cannot define "greenness", only experience it, then how can it have essential properties? For instance, I often see as green, what others see as blue. According to what you say, I assume that I am correct in calling this green, and the others are correct in calling this blue, because this is how we each experience the colour. How can there be essential properties of greenness when the same colour is correctly called green by me, and blue by others?
What these extremists in "both camps" don't realize is that philosophy is a science.
Very learned post, but it is still the case that no animal can understand the concept of 'prime number' (for instance).
Quoting Harry Hindu
The difference between philosophy and science is a philosophical distinction.
Actually, Harry Hindu, the reason I ignored your comments is because of your dismissive attitude - 'the question is nonsense' - and your (I'm sorry to say) obvious lack of understanding of anything beyond pop science. It's not rudeness, but life being too short.
Unless I misunderstood what you said, I think I agree with you that just because we agree on the meaning of the concept 'wet', it does not follow that the particular thing we observe is in fact wet. It could be a false perception of wetness. But this is besides the point about essential properties. If you and I mean the same thing when using the word 'wet', then the meaning has some essential properties. More explanation further down.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But it does. Let's say you and I observe a chair. Assuming no false perceptions are present, you would be confused if I said "This is a lake", and rightfully so. Because the observed things correspond to the properties attributed to a chair, not a lake. Sure, some of the observed properties would be accidental, like its colour and location, but some would be essential like having a backrest or being a structure. And no observed properties would correspond to properties essential to the concept of lake, like 'a large body of water'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This concept is so basic that it has only one essential property: being green, or this; which does not help. Another reason why 'greenness' was a bad example to prove my point. I should really stick to triangle-ness haha.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Essential properties are essential to the concept; not necessarily essential to the particular things we observe. We could have false perceptions of the things we are observing. And when you call the thing green and we call it blue, we may disagree on the fact, but we still understand what each other mean by green and blue.
That is what I do not agree with.
If we are calling a certain object by the name of "X", and I can recognize and call that object X, then it does not follow logically that X must have essential features, unless you define "essential features" in some odd way.
Furthermore, if there is a type of object, which we class as "Y", and we can agree to call some objects by the name "Y", and that some objects should not be called Y, this is even less indicative that we should believe that called "Y" have an essential nature.
Do you not recognize, that in both these cases, our agreement to call objects by a specific name, "X", or "Y", says something about our capacity to agree on this type of thing, rather than something about the objects themselves? Both of these premises say something about our ability to agree on how to name something. Unless you put forward a premise which indicates a relationship between this ability to agree, and the actual existence of the object, you cannot make any logical conclusions about the objects themselves.
Now, you claim that there is a concept of "Y". What does "concept" refer to? Does it refer to the individual's capacity to class an object as "Y", or does it refer to the fact that we can agree to call certain objects by "Y", and that other objects should not be called "Y"? In either case, how do you get to the conclusion that the concept itself consists of essential features? The fact that we agree does not necessitate the conclusion of essential features unless you define essential features as what we agree on.
No. You wanted to have a discussion about Jerry Coyne, remember? You wanted to focus on a small sentence that wasn't even that important in my post, remember? And I told you that I'm not being dismissive - that I have done a 180 on my worldview before and that I can do so again if the explanation and answer to my questions are reasonable. You seem to think that I should accept an unreasonable question. You do believe that there are such things as nonsensical questions, don't you? If I said that a question is nonsense, then make an attempt to clarify, or tell me why it's not nonsense. When I've seen you "waste your time" with others who are actually thick-headed, I know that your complaint against me here isn't actually true. You just don't have the answers to the difficult questions that you should be asking yourself.
Quoting WayfarerWhat does that even mean? No, I'm not being dismissive. I'm asking a question that, if you have a legitimate, reasonable, answer to, then I can be swayed to see your side of things. So, instead of getting frustrated at difficult questions, that you should be asking yourself, try to answer them because it will do you as much good as it would for me.
Mainly, it means that philosophy is primarily concerned with a ‘metaphysic of value’ - some factual basis for values and meaning. Science doesn’t provide any such basis, as it is concerned with what is measurable, with objective fact. This is what underlies the ‘is-ought’ distinction that Hume is associated with.
First let's clarify a few things, just in case there is a misunderstanding with these.
1. Words are not concepts. Words point to concepts. Words are man-made and decided upon; concepts are abstracted. The word 'bird' in english is different than the word 'oiseau' in french, yet they both point to the same concept: the flying beaky thing.
2. Just because I claim that concepts have essential properties, it does not follow that the particular thing we observe necessarily has these essential properties too. We could have false perceptions. E.g. a colourblind may observe a grey chair, and thus have 'greyness' in mind at that moment, but it does not follow that the chair is objectively grey.
Now, I will attempt to break down my previous argument in steps:
1. An property of a concept is called essential if, when it is removed, then the concept is no longer present (not recognizable). Conversely, a property is called accidental if the concept remains after the property is removed. This is easy to see: A triangle in which we remove its three sides is no longer a triangle; therefore 'three sides' is an essential property of triangle-ness. Conversely, a triangle in which we remove its colour remains a triangle; and therefore colour is an accidental property of triangle-ness.
2. The fact is that we recognize a concept in some things X, and not in other things Y.
3. This means that properties of that concept exist in X and not in Y.
4. If all the properties in X were accidental to the concept, then the concept would still be present in Y, as established in step 1; but it is not.
5. Therefore some of the properties found in X are essential properties of the concept.
Some brief arguments for dualism part IV
Also my view. Unfortunately, I've been born in the wrong century. (Although I do admit, it has its good points.)
I agree that what he says about the sense in which a drawn triangle not being 'the ideal triangle' is awkwardly put. It's not as if a drawn triangle simply can't match the ethereal perfection of the Ideal Triangle - it's more that, the idea of triangle is such that it can many completely diverse forms, and still be a triangle and nothing else. The triangle is, I think, a simple example of the Platonic eidos.
He gives another example elsewhere using a figure called a chilliagon, which is a bounded geometric object comprising 1,000 sides. To the naked eye, at first glance, it looks damn like a circle - but it isn't a circle, it's a chilliagon. If you were asked to draw such a figure, you might find it a very difficult thing to do, but you would have to produce a thousand-sided figure, not a circle - because you would understand the concept.
How do you go about determining the factual basis for values and meaning without measurements of values and meaning?
It seems to me that you are concerned with objective facts as you are attempting to make objective statements about values and meaning.
Abstracted things are artificial, and decided upon too. What else, other than a human mind would perform the act of abstraction, and whether the abstraction is correct or not, is decided upon by the human mind as well.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I don't get this at all. We do not recognize a concept within things. The concept is within the mind, and when we apprehend a thing as meeting the conditions of the concept, we feel justified in calling the thing by the name which corresponds to that concept. Conversely, when we create concepts, we often try to formulate the concepts so as to best represent the thing which is being referred to by the corresponding word. There is no instances of the concept existing within the thing, as the concept is always within the mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
That a universal concept, such as triangle, exists by definition, (i.e., the existence of the concept of triangle is dependent on the definition of triangle), does not provide an argument that the concept is not dependent on "some process occurring in the brain". Any definition requires interpretation, and this is done by a brain. What is non-physical, is the content within the brain, which the brain is using, in the process of interpretation, the thoughts, and ideas, which are used for interpretation. This appears to produce an infinite regress, because some non-physical thoughts are required to interpret physical definitions etc.. But it need not lead to infinite regress if we accept that the non-physical, which is prior to, and necessary for the physical brain activity of interpretation, is something other than concepts. Then we allow, as Aquinas does, that human concepts are inherently tied to bodily existence, without negating the non-physical existence which is necessary for the existence of concepts.
Yet burn the book and the information is lost, kill the brain and the knowledge goes too. This being the case - a concept is constituted by neural matter, and you can prove it easily enough.
When I think "bird", it carries a unique set of bird experiences and observations and cannot be the same as yours. Such concepts have to the unique to the matter which comprises them in the neural tissues. Whilst we can agree upon what is and is not a "bird", our concepts can never be directly compared and can only be approximately similar, never the same.
If I ask you to draw a house, I'm asking you to draw a picture of a house. (Only Harold can draw an actual house.)
If you draw a triangle, are you actually drawing a picture of a triangle? No. Here are two equilateral triangles:
When you draw a triangle, you're not really drawing a picture, i.e., a picture of some object that happens to be immaterial. What you're drawing is a diagram, a graphical presentation of your knowledge. And this knowledge is primarily procedural, starting with the definition of "triangle", which is after all stipulative.
You can describe it as knowledge of an abstract object if you like, but what really matters here is knowing how to proceed. The triangles above have equal sides because I say they do. You can say this is a property of these triangles, but the point is that in using these triangles you know to treat their sides as equal. That stipulation gives you a rule to follow.
That doesn't add anything to the point; you know how to proceed, because you grasp the idea. Feser makes the same point - that a concept is not a mental image nor a drawing.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Such rules are, arguably, a form of universal; they are in one sense, mind-independent, i.e. they're not simply 'in the mind' or dependent on my say-so, but at the same time, they can only be grasped by a rational intelligence; hence, by analogy, they're called 'intelligible objects'. So, my argument is that such ideas are 'real but not physical' - which is very close to the classical idea of them, that Feser is arguing for.
The point would be that there is no mysterious "grasping of the idea" beyond simply knowing how to proceed. The same applies to going to the shops; you know how to go to the shops, thus you know "how to proceed"; but there is no mysterious grasping of the idea 'how to go to the shops' beyond that. You frustratingly always seem to be trying to put something objective, yet utterly mysterious, in place; which seems to be a performative incoherence that produces reified would-be entities that are simply not needed.
We cannot achieve an account of how the world could be intelligible to us that is given in worldly, objectivist terms, which seems to be what you are trying to do by positing objective abstract entities. I say this is a performative incoherence, because you can never say what those entities are, or what they are like; in the kind of way that it can be said what objects of the senses are or are like.
So ironically, it seems to me, despite your best intentions, you are desiring to objectivize the subjective. I don't say you attempt to do this, because really no attempt is ever actually made by you, on account of it being an impossible contradiction, you simply repeatedly allude to the possibility, or "what has been lost" by us moderns, and so on.
There's all this "grasping" in your approach, as if this explains things. Grasping is what you do to an object. I'm saying there's no immaterial object to immaterially grasp.
Yes, that's another way of making the same point than the way I took. "Grasping" is a metaphor, and Wayfarer seems to be hypostatizing the metaphor. Really nothing at all can be said about the supposedly immaterial objects we supposedly grasp or how we supposedly grasp them. This puts them out of the domain of philosophy, and into the domain of the poetic imagination. I've been making this point in various contexts and in various ways to Wayfarer over and over; but he always seems to slip away without acknowledging and dealing with what has been said to him.
Grasp: comprehend fully.
"the press failed to grasp the significance of what had happened"
synonyms: understand, comprehend, follow, take in, realize, perceive, see, apprehend, assimilate, absorb, make sense of, master, get to the bottom of, penetrate.
As distinct from:
1. seize and hold firmly.
"she grasped the bottle"
synonyms: grip, clutch, clasp, hold, clench, lay hold of;
I have here my dear canine, River, a rescue dog. He's capable of grasping a frisbee between his teeth, but has zero chance of grasping 'the concept of a triangle'.
Quoting Janus
All due respect, the debate about the reality or otherwise of concepts, laws, numbers, and so on, is one of the central questions of philosophy. I'm not 'slipping away' from anything but if you don't see the significance of it, then there's no point in discussing it.
One response is that, the idea of science itself presumes that there are regularities and an order of nature, the discovery of which is fundamental to scientific practice. Now you might say that too is just 'rooted in human practice', but that strikes me as undermining the very principles that are used to frame scientific explanations.
The reason the order of nature, and numbers, and the like, were held as forms of higher truth by the ancients is, I think, because they are 'nearer to the uncreated'. In all ancient thought, Western and Eastern, 'the uncreated' (which may or may not be conceived in theistic terms) was understood to be the source of the manifest (i.e. the created realm, the world, etc). This is because the uncreated was by definition eternal and not subject to change and decay. The Platonic distrust of the senses goes back to that intuition in which 'the sensory domain', i.e. the world of sense, was transitory and subject to decay. Whereas the principles that underlay the ever-changing phenomena of the world, were their logoi, the reasons why they existed. Numbers and geometric forms, were regarded as being higher than material objects, because less prone to change and decay; they do not come into and go out of existence and are therefore more like the uncreated, than the individual things that constantly arise and perish.
It was that understanding that actually gave rise to science itself. Now, however, science is busily eating its own foundations.
Quoting ?????????????
We're not able to infer the meaning of anything 'in the brain' from the examination of neural data without deploying the very abilities which you are presuming to try and explain. If you look at some brain-scan and say 'this is what it means', then immediately you are relying on rational inference, the 'laws of thought', 'it means this', 'it doesn't mean that', and so on. The rational underpinnings of science which constantly utilise those laws, go back, as you well know, to Pythagoras, the Platonists, Aristotle, and so on; the idea that these can now simply be explained in terms of neural architecture and adaptive necessity is question begging of a high-degree i.e. it assumes what it sets out to prove. 1
Can you name a philosopher or two for whom this is a "central question"? What could it mean to say that concepts, laws and numbers are or are not real? How could we go about confirming any answer to the question? Is it possible that the whole question is merely a matter of interpretation of the term 'real'? These are the kinds of questions you need to address, as I see it, otherwise you are indeed "slipping away".
You don't have to declare that regularities or natural laws 'are beings'. All that is necessary to say, is that what is described as 'lawful regularities' can be used to predict how the phenomena that are subject to them will behave. That is the meaning of the term 'natural law'. Robinson questions whether the term 'law' or even 'natural law' is appropriate, or whether it's anthropocentric, but I simply don't see how there can be any debate that there are such laws. Otherwise, why science at all? How do we make any abstractions, or predictions? They can't be purely arbitrary, they have to be predictive with respect to phenomena. Robinson seems to be saying that they're entirely ‘internal’ to human minds, but they have enabled humans to discover things unknowable by other means. Even in ancient times, they enabled discovery of fundamental principles like leverage and displacement. They're predictive, not simply conventional or arbitrary; emphatically not ‘human inventions’. Having discovered leverage, then you can invent all kinds of things with it; but the principle is not an invention.
I think that, for example, that the Pythagorean theorem describes something that is real whether or not perceived by humans. However it is is something that can only be grasped by a rational intelligence. So that is an example of an 'intelligible principle', i.e. something which is expressible in terms of a mathematical formulae; but that feature is not 'created by humans', only the notation is a human creation. But, nevertheless, it can only be known to a creature sufficiently rational to understand the principle ; hence it is an 'intelligible principle' - real but not physical.
Quoting ?????????????
I don't think it says anywhere that 'it doesn't occur in the brain'. What it says, is that the concept of the triangle is essentially rational and not the same as its physical representation. So the fact that one has to 'have a brain' in order to grasp 'the concept of a triangle' is not in dispute; what i would dispute is that such concepts can be meaningfully discussed in terms of 'brain activity', unless, of course, you are a neurobiologist with a professional interest in neural functionality.
Quoting Janus
Sure, it's a central question in metaphysics, generally. For the last two years, I've been wanting to enroll in an external course at Oxford, Reality, Being and Existence (next enrollment is Jan next year, and I will try again, now I've noticed it). But it focusses on five questions, the last of which is 'Does reality contain universal features as well as particular entities?' - which is a re-statement of the 'realism vs nominalism' debate that is central to this topic.
The book for the course is Crane, Tim, & Farkas, Katalin, (Editors), Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology (OUP, Oxford, 2004)
Ed Feser, who I referred to above, is a representative of what he describes as the 'Aristotelean-Thomist tradition' and is a realist with respect to universals.
The answer seems obvious; if reality "contains" "particular entities" then it must contain entities. In order to qualify as entities they must share common characteristics, i.e. "universal features".
Quod erat demonstrandum...case closed!
On the other hand is the question asking whether reality contains particular entities and universal features independently of us? Because it is obvious that at least for us, in terms of our experience and understanding,reality contains both of these; and this doesn't seem to be subject to argument. If the question is meant to address the nature of absolute reality, and the answer is "yes" then it is simply positing realism.
That quote you attributed to me, was not my words or my expression. It is the way that the summary of the course put the issue of the question of ‘the reality of universals’. In my view the reality of numbers, principles, natural laws, and the like, is part of that question. And I maintain that number is real, but not physical. So the case is by no means closed.
The wording is irrelevant. You have focused on that instead of addressing any of the points or questions I raised. Oh well...
The problem is that there aren't any right angle triangles except those created by human beings. So it doesn't really make any sense to say that The Pythagorean theorem describes something that is real whether or not perceived by humans, because the terms within the theorem refer to things only created by humans. So it is not correct to say that this feature is not created by humans.
The same is the case for pi, and circles. A cirtcle, as well as pi, are concepts created by humans. There are no naturally occurring circles, and that's why pi is an irrational ratio. All of these are concepts, are created by human beings, and are used to assist human beings in understanding the various natural features. They are tools, built by human beings. They are understood as absolutes, ideals, perfections, but without the human mind they have no existence because there is nothing natural that they refer to.
You claim that they describe something which is real, but there is nothing that they describe except themselves, and without the human mind, there is nothing there. The Pythagorean theorem, "the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, of a right angled triangle" describes nothing but the Pythagorean theorem. Without that statement, which is produced by human beings, there is no Pythagorean theorem, and nothing which "the Pythagorean theorem" refers to.
This is a wide-ranging debate. I can only express my view on specifics. I really would much rather just discuss the ideas in our own words without reference to medieval debates.
Are you defining nominalism as the rejection of abstract objects or the rejection of universals, or of both?
Were any other species of beings - non human but sentient - to evolve on some other planet, then I'm sure they would discover the same thing.
Quoting Janus
Well, when you asked me to name 'two examples of philosophers for whom the reality of universals is important', I provided two sources: one, this Oxford external course I have mentioned, Being, Existence and Time, which has a whole section on the question. (Regrettably the way they have described the debate uses what I now consider to be an inadequate description of the topic. I am tossing up enrolling for January, but it is $500.00 and probably not even tax deductible :-d )
The other was Edward Feser, who as you may know has become quite a popular philosopher in the last few years on the strength of his various publications about Aquinas, Thomist philosophy, his refutations of the new atheists and his blog. It was a blog article of his on the concept of the triangle which started this debate. His summaries and presentations of these types of questions are very useful in my opinion.
But the topic of the nature of universals is by no means settled, in fact it was the inability to settle such debates which is one of the reasons that modern philosophy tended to reject the whole question - as if regarding it as settled, when it's not. Note, for instance, earlier on in this thread, I referred to a scientific paper which explicitly invokes the Aristotelean concept of potentia in relation to quantum physics.
The reason it's necessary to talk about it in historical terms, is because it's an underlying factor in our whole current world-view. We are all the children of nominalism - to all intents they won the debate, and 'history is written by the victors'. There are wholly different ways of understanding, which in turn give rise to a different way of seeing the world:
WHAT’S WRONG WITH OCKHAM? Reassessing the Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West, Hothschild, Anamnesis Journal.
Much of the anguished existentialist atheism of the 20th century, about the purportedly scientific understanding that the Universe is devoid of causality, can be traced back to that development:
Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences
What lead me to this, was an analysis of how scientific materialism came to be the dominant worldview in the West. So the question of the immaterial nature of number and the reality of universals came out of that analysis. That's why I keep harking back to the historical development - it is a question which is simply not understandable in the frame of reference of the 'modern worldview'.
That is why, also, many of the proponents of such philosophies are reactionary. I don't consider myself reactionary, but I really do understand their rationale.
That's highly doubtful. The other species might develop a system based on forty five degree angles instead of ninety. Or, the species might not even use the circle as the basis for geometry, it could start with the chiliagon for example, instead, and never develop any of the circle based geometry which we use. There are many different possibilities for conceptual structure, depending on what the species is exposed to, and what becomes important to it. Even here on the earth, there are differing world view.
Perhaps the species wouldn't even live on a planet which is spinning like ours. The observations of the stars, planets, and sun, from the perspective of the spinning earth, lead to the circle based geometry which we use. To say that another species, living in another part of the universe, would develop a geometry like ours, is like saying that ants, or bees should develop a geometry like ours. There's just no reason to believe this. We all like to think that our understanding of reality is "the" understanding of reality, but this is just vain conceit.
And if your diagnosis is correct, so is everything that used to be described under the heading of philosophy.
You keep making statements that are confusing (and then don't have the stamina to back them up). What does it mean for something to be real but not "physical"? Why use that term, "physical", anyway? Numbers are real because they have an effect on other things, including on what many call "physical" and "mental". So it seems that numbers would either be both "physical" AND "mental", or we should just dispense with these two terms and talk about causation.
No, philosophy is to seek answers, to inquire, it is not to claim that we already have the answers. This is the problem with what you profess, and why it is a false representation of Platonism. If our concepts, what we supposedly "discover", are the way that they must be, because they are some type of independent form, then there is no room for error, it is impossible that our concepts are incorrect. This is the problem which Plato exposed in the Parmenidean, Eleatic, and Pythagorean principles, in general. This ontology of Idealism does not allow for the existence of error within human knowledge. "Knowing is being", what is known is what is. This is exactly what Socrates and Plato rallied against. So you have taken Plato's discussions, and demonstrations which expose the problems of such Idealism, and claim that this is what Plato actually promoted.
In Plato's dialogues, Socrates attacked this relentlessly, and over the course of many dialogues the weakness was exposed. It was exposed through reference to more subjective concepts, the various virtues. It was demonstrated that there is no consistency in these concepts, so it is impossible that the human being's concept is a participation in an independent Idea, because the human being's concept, with its individual idiosyncrasies, and variances, would necessarily be wrong in relation to the independent Idea, and therefore could not be a participation. Once this principle, concerning the nature of human concepts is established, the possibility that they are incorrect (or more precisely, that they are not the best, not perfect), can be extended right into the various mathematical principles, as Aristotle did. What is known, is not necessarily what "is", it is a possibility (one way of looking at things out of many possible ways). This forms the basis of skepticism. Then "the concept", "the idea", is a changing, evolving thing, created by human beings. It is not "discovered", and it can be doubted.
As an example, consider the evolution of the concept of "zero", its relevance to the modern day "equation", "algebra", "possible values", and "possible solutions". The zero, along with the negative integers allow for a possible existence. But the possible existence has no reality accept as posited by a human mind. Mathematics in general uses postulates, axioms, which the human mind must accept as real (like we must accept a premise as true), in order to proceed with the logical process, without regard for the fact that the postulate is itself just something created by human minds. Over time, the postulates change and evolve.
I hoist a flag that means "three-masted ship". You see the flag and write down "three-masted ship". Because i can convey the idea of a three-masted ship with a flag and you can write down the idea of a three-masted ship with ink, the idea of a three-masted ship is not physical. The flag and the marks in ink on paper are physical representations of something, an idea, that is not itself physical. This is the argument, yes?
If I draw a picture of my house, the picture is a physical representation of a physical object. If I draw another picture of my house, I have another physical representation of the same physical object. Having two distinct physical representations of something does not entail that what is represented is not itself physical, not even if those representations are dissimilar in some way, if, say, I use pencil for one drawing and charcoal for the other, of if one is a drawing and the other a photograph.
So, in your argument, it is not that there are multiple representations in different media that leads to the conclusion that what is represented is not physical; it is that what is represented is said to be an idea, not a particular three-masted ship, but a generic object, any member of the class "three-masted ships".
Thus in your scenario I am not conveying a single piece of information, but at least two: by hoisting a flag at all, any flag, I indicate that some object exists; by hoisting the particular flag I do, I indicate that the object is a member of a particular class. More particularly, flags indicate ships, and even more particularly, ships that I can see. I am not to raise a flag hypothetically.
Is the raising of a flag a physical representation of a ship the way a drawing I might make would be a physical representation of my house? Well, it's not a picture of the ship. If anything, it seems more natural to take it as a representation of my state of seeing-a-ship. Is it a picture of that? Hmm. It would seem not. Is it a representation at all? Well, it's certainly a symbol: my hoisting a flag indicates that I am in such a state. I don't think that's exactly what we usually mean by "representation", but I suppose we could make that work by defining our terms suitably.
What hoisting a flag has in common with hoisting a particular flag is that it too is generic: I do not have a flag for each particular ship I might see, and hoisting a flag does not indicate that I am seeing some particular ship, but that I am seeing some ship or other, again, a generic member of the class "ships". Similarly, I am in the state of seeing a particular ship, but what I indicate is that my state is a member of this class, seeing some member of the class "ships".
Thus my flag hoisting conveys two claims of class membership: one about my state, and one about the object that brought about that state. Agreed?
I thought we agreed that the input cannot come from the same place as the output, and that we cannot conceive simple concepts we have not yet observed, as was the case for the blind person not conceiving colours, a deaf person not conceiving sound, and an emotionless person not conceiving sadness. I accept that the abstraction process is happening in the mind, but the input must come from outside. Or else, how would we test that what I conceive as green is the same as what you conceive as green, if not by both of us observing the same colour located outside of our minds?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not sure I understand your distinction between "recognizing a concept within things" and "apprehending a thing as meeting the conditions of the concept". If we apprehend a particular object which has a flat surface with three straight sides, then we recognize a triangle in that object. And if our perceptions are true, then the object truly has triangle-ness as part of it.
Our concepts can be compared if we find their essential properties, based on our implicit knowledge of them. E.g. my concept of triangle-ness has the following essential properties: 'flat surface' and 'three straight sides'. If yours has the same essential properties, then this proves they are the same.
Finding the essence of concepts from our implicit knowledge of them is basically what Socrates did in Plato's dialogues, sometimes successfully; and this method presupposes that concepts are the same in everyone.
I agreed that the input could come from outside the mind. I see no reason to believe that it necessarily does, nor do I see reason to believe that all of the input comes from outside the mind. As for your test, it's as I told you, a matter of whether or not we agree, and often we do not. As I told you, I often disagree with people as to the colour of something. So your test, and the fact that we often disagree about things, indicates that input must come from within the mind as well.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I still do not understand your use of English. I would not say that I recognize a triangle in the three sided object, I would say that I recognize the three sided object as a triangle. Do you see the difference? I recognize a certain object as a car, or another object as a house, meaning that for me these objects fulfil the conditions required for calling them by those names. I do not see the concept of a car, or the concept of a house within these objects. I think that you are using contrived English to support your position that the concept is within the physical thing, rather than within the mind of the observer.
The significance of something being 'real but not physical', is that if there are things which are real but not physical, then physicalism is false. As physicalism is the de facto philosophical attitude of today's secular intelligentsia, then this is significant.
And, numbers don’t cause anything. Not unless, say, you walked under a clock-tower at the precise time the numeral 7 fell off the clock-face and landed on your head. But, facetiousness aside, the ontological question concerning number is not whether numbers are materially efficient; I don't see how they can be. The question is about whether they're real and not simply the products of brains, as we are inclined to think.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
My understanding is, there is plenty of room for error - we may fail to comprehend or see the Forms. 'The discerning of the forms by reason' is basic to Platonism, right?
What you're not seeing is the Platonic and Aristotelian notion of 'intelligibility'. I'm really not wanting to sound pedantic, as I'm well aware that I too am a rank amateur in this business. But it seems to me, you have only a partial grasp of the basics of Platonic epistemology. Have a look at the Wikipedia entry on the intelligible form. It starts with the assertion:
This is because, as you should know, Plato's Socrates questions the reliability of the senses; knowledge of sensory objects is pistis, or doxa; knowledge of mathematical and geometrical objects is dianoia; knowledge of the forms, noesis. The 'higher' you go, the more certain is knowledge - knowledge of math. is 'higher' than knowledge of material things, knowledge of the Forms is 'higher' than knowledge of math. This is in the Analogy of the Divided Line.
But nothing in Plato casts the 'knowledge of the forms' into doubt. What they are, and the manner of their existence, is, of course, a matter of huge debate.
***
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, very good. That's getting close to what I think is the meaning of an idea or an abstract universal. Your use of 'generic' is significant, because the word itself actually evolved from the Platonist tradition in Western thought - 'genera' being a species or type, so one level of abstraction. I think it was the Platonic and especially Aristotelean tendency to 'classify by type' that gave rise to the whole idea of taxonomy which is basic to science itself. But, I digress.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I wonder, again, how accurate it is to describe it as 'physical' . It's a representation, which you or I understand as 'a depiction of a house'. If I showed it to my dog here, the dog would sniff it to see if it's something to eat, otherwise would have no interest. Your mind is able to infer that the drawing represents a house and to impute meaning to the drawing - 'this particular house'. So the salient point, again, is that the drawing could be an architectural drawing, an impressionist oil-painting, or a sketch, but you will say 'it's a house' because you have the kind of intelligence that is able to impute that resemblance. That's the work of what Aristotle called 'the active intellect'.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It is indeed a symbol or a sign. Hence the link with semiotics.
Overall, I'm in agreement with your analysis. What I'm trying to hone in on is, what faculty performs these transformations of meaning. On the one hand, it's obviously the role of intelligence, which seems simple enough - but, again, is intelligence something that is describable in physical terms, as Steve Pinker wishes to do in the quote I provided from his 'How the Mind Works'? (materialist philosopher that he is)
What I'm working towards, is the argument that the same principle applies on the neurological level as well as the representational; that meaning in a general sense, can't simply be equated with neurological activity, as 'neurological reductionism' assumes it must be.
****
Here's an encyclopedia entry on Platonic realism with some comments by me.
1. 'Exists' is a misleading word in this context. Here is a passage from Russell's Problems of Philosophy that explains why:
Notice use of the word 'subsists' (underlined above). This is much more accurate for universals than 'exists'. Note that 'thought apprehends but does not create' - however it is the action of what Aristotle calls 'the active intellect' to 'apprehend'; that act 'creates' the 'meaning-world' which is to all intents 'the world' (c.f. Wittgenstein 'I am my world'.)
2. 'Exist in two places at once' - again, misleading - it's more that individual particulars instantiate these attributes. They're not spatially distributed.
3. It is not 'a thing' and it precedes 'concepts', because it is what concepts must assume if they are to be able to be formed (I think that's where Kant comes into the picture).
4. The 'existing in a ghostly or ethereal domain' is the entire problem and error of the understanding of forms, in a nutshell. This is what almost anyone thinks nowadays, and then rejects the idea on the basis of this poorly-formed understanding. Universals don't exist - that's why they're called 'transcendental', they're logically prior to 'what exists'. But, they're real, in a way that phenomenal objects are not. The 'ghostly domain' that is misleadingly named here, is sometimes referred to as the 'formal realm' - it's not actually 'a realm', but a domain, like 'the domain of natural numbers'. But it's the 'domain of form', namely, that of numbers, possibles, universals, and so on, that in some sense is logically prior to the 'phenomenal realm'.
The problem is, we've been acculturated to a form of naturalism whereby only things that exist in space and time are real to us.
Augustine on Intelligible Objects
Analogy of the Divided Line.
But this is not what you have claimed in reference to the Pythagorean theorem. You said that any mind would discover the same principle, or concept. This not only denies the possibility of error, it denies the possibility that there could be a better way of rendering what is expressed by the theorem, in a similar, but different principle.
My point is that we need to allow a separation between human concepts, and the Ideals, which are supposed to be independent from the human mind. That is the conclusion which Plato came to in "The Republic" There is the idea of a bed which the carpenter holds, and follows in producing a bed, but this is intended to be a representation of the divine Idea of a bed. So there is always a separation between human concepts, and the divine, independent Forms. The human concept can only obtain to the level of being a representation of the divine Idea, it is never the independent Form. What you need to respect, is that when we talk about mathematical principles, like the Pythagorean theorem, these are human concepts. As much as they may be intended as representations of divine Ideas, they are not divine Ideas, they are human concepts, and as such they are dependent on the flesh and bones of the human body. This is a point which Aquinas was very insistent on. The fact that human knowledge, ideas and concepts, are dependent on the material body of the human being, is what separates human knowledge from divine Forms.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I fully understand this hierarchy of knowledge. Notice that knowledge obtained from mathematics is not the highest level of knowledge. That is because even mathematical principles are lacking in perfection. They are deficient because they are produced by human beings and are thus dependent on the material body of the human being. Mathematical principles are not true "Ideals" in the sense of independent Forms, they are human concepts and therefore do not obtain to the highest good, perfection.
Knowledge of the Forms is even higher than mathematical knowledge, because this is what gives us an understanding of the separation between human concepts and the divine Forms. Through this knowledge we come to understand the deficiencies of even mathematical knowledge. That is why it's a higher knowledge than mathematical knowledge, because only this knowledge can point to the errors in mathematical knowledge. The deficiencies, errors, are due to the nature of the human being, it is imperfect, dependent on a material body, but the deficiencies can only be discovered by allowing for a perfection which can only be found in independent Forms.
That is completely mistaken. The principle of intelligibility in ancient philosophy, was based on the exact opposite of what you’re saying.
This is not true at all. No Platonist would ever say that. You're instinctively modernist in your responses. The idea that mathematics could be 'the product of a brain' would never occur to Plato or Aristotle. Nor the idea that mathematics was something 'created by humans'.
Listen to this lecture from 38:40 up till 40:16 - pay special attention to the phrase ‘thinking is the Identity of the intellect with this intelligible'.
'Literally, you could not think if materialism was true.'
My argument exactly.
I think you are correct about not all concepts coming from outside the mind. Just because I have a concept of a unicorn, it does not follow that unicorns exist outside the mind (sadly). Only 'simple impressions' as Hume says, like colours, sounds, and basic shapes, must exist outside the mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes... We are back to that special case when perceptions of objects are false. But if we assume that the perceptions are true (I don't think this is a stretch), then the test would work, would it not? You and I observe a ball and both agree that it has roundness. Conversely, you and I observe a cube and both agree that it does not have roundness.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Honestly, I don't see a difference. The concept of X is by definition composed of all and only those properties essential to X. If you recognize a certain object as a car (again assuming no false perceptions), then some of the properties of that object must be essential to the concept of a car; or else, you would not recognize it as such. And if so, then the object has the concept of a car, by definition.
Saying the same thing with math:
Let concept X = A+B
Let observed object Y = A+B+C
Therefore Y = (A+B)+C = X+C
I guess I don't know what you mean by "the principle of intelligibility". It is not found in any ancient philosophy. There is much concern in ancient philosophy with intelligible objects, in contrast with visible objects, but I think that you mean something different than this when you say "the principle of intelligibility".
Quoting Wayfarer
You ought to read some Thomas Aquinas, he is very insistent on this point. Human concepts are not independent Forms, because they are dependent on the human being which has a material body. Independent Forms are immaterial, and not dependent on a material body like human ideas are. This is a principle derived from Aristotle's cosmological argument.
Quoting Wayfarer
Actually, this is the fundamental consequence of Aristotle's cosmological argument, where he firmly refutes Pythagorean Idealism in Bk. 9 of his Metaphysics. If ideas exist prior to being "discovered" by the human mind, they are eternal. But prior to being discovered, their existence could only be as "potential", because being discovered is what gives them "actual" existence. Being discovered actualizes them. However, according to the cosmological argument, it is impossible that any potential could be eternal. Therefore it is impossible that human concepts are "discovered". So they must be created by the human being. Aquinas expounds on this principle, explaining the difference between divine Forms, which are properly independent, separate, and immaterial, and human ideas which are not separate Forms, because the human soul is united with a material body, making it impossible for the human being to possess any immaterial Forms. Any ideas or concepts which the human being holds, are necessarily imperfect, i.e. not immaterial, because the human being is dependent on a material body, and so are the human being's concepts. This is stated very clearly in The Summa Theologica.
Quoting Wayfarer
I really don't care if you want to insist that what I say is mistaken, and not true. I've read the material, primary sources, and you obviously have not, relying on hearsay. However, you strike me as a person who is very interested in this subject, so I am bringing this to your attention in order that you might research and learn about these principles. This will open your eyes to a whole new way of seeing the Forms. It is what they call "seeing the light", from Plato's analogy between the good and the sun. The good is what makes intelligible objects intelligible, just like the sun is what makes visible objects visible. Perhaps this is what you mean by the principle of intelligibility.
Part of the "ghostly existence" problem is the issue of logical priority. I think Russell's example that Edinburgh is north of London shows that the particulars are prior to the universal (the relation in this case).
The "is north of" relation is simply the logical consequence of London and Edinburgh being located where they are in a physical world with poles. Without those particulars, no logical consequence follows and so there is no relation.
As Russell points out the relation obtains independent of language and thought, contra Nominalism. But, contra Platonism, the particulars are prior to that relation.
Gerson refers to it in the video link I provided, specifically:
Whereas you had said:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So - not independent or separate. That is the specific point at issue.
Quoting Andrew M
Nevertheless, the fact of there being 'north' is not dependent on whether there is a city called 'Edinburgh' or not.
Book 9 of the metaphysics is online here. Kindly indicate where in it Aristotle 'refutes Pythagorean idealism'.
More references on the principle of 'intelligibility':
Wikipedia entry 'intelligibility (philosophy)'
Wikipedia entry 'intelligible forms'
A relation depends on particulars whatever names they may have. For Aristotle, the empirical (or phenomenal) world just is the intelligible world. So you won't find universals prior to or separate from the particulars that they are predicated of.
This is what distinguishes Aristotle's solution to the problem of universals from Plato's.
It is at Bk. 9, ch. 8 & 9, specifically 1050b, 1051a. It is first argued at 1050b, that actuality is prior to potency, and therefore nothing which exists potentially can be eternal. Imperishable things must be actual. That is the fundamental principle of the cosmological argument. Then at the end of 1050b, into 1051a, he directs his attention specifically toward the Idealists. In ch. 9 (1051a), he argues that the discovery of geometrical constructs is an activity of the geometer. Prior to this, they can only exist potentially. Therefore geometrical constructs cannot be eternal ideas.
Quoting Wayfarer
Notice that the "ible" of "intelligible forms", indicates that their nature is that of potential. The cosmological argument clearly indicates that actuality is necessarily prior to potential. That's the issue I continually point out to apokrisis who adheres to a first principle of infinite potential, from Peirce. The cosmological argument effectively refutes both materialism and idealism because both matter and ideas are reduced to having the same nature, that of potential. In modern metaphysics you cannot distinguish between materialism and idealism, because modern physics has reduced matter to ideas ("fields").
The Neo-Platonists, as idealists, get beyond the cosmological argument by assuming active, (actual) Forms. But this is why there develops a categorical separation between these Forms, which in Christianity are the active divine Forms, and human ideas which have the nature of potential. Neo-Platonists like Proclus give an outline for a structure of order within the divine Forms, but Aquinas develops this order much further, under the name of angels.
First, Aquinas expresses very clearly the separation between human ideas, and the divine Forms which are immaterial, as I explained already. Then according to the principles of Plato's Timaeus, in which immaterial Forms have creative power over the material world, Aquinas discusses a hierarchy of angels, which, being immaterial Forms, have providence over the various aspects of the material universe.
Further, notice that in Kant, the thing-in-itself, the noumenon, is said to be an intelligible object. But the human being, because it creates its knowledge through sense perception, phenomena, has no access to that intelligible object. This is another way of representing that separation between human ideas, which are tied to the human body, and the independent, immaterial, Forms,
So we are back at the very same discussion we had before, concerning the intelligibility of God, only approaching it from opposite sides. I said that God, being an intelligible object, is most highly intelligible, but you said that we cannot know God. Remember, I looked up the resolution to this, in Aquinas' "Summa", and he said that God, being an intelligible object, is in essence, most highly knowable. But God is an independent, immaterial Form, and the human intellect is united with, and therefore limited by a material body. So as much as God is most highly intelligible, the human intellect cannot know God while remaining in this state of being united with a body. That expresses the separation between human ideas, and independent Forms.
This is the point I brought up earlier. Each material object has a particular form which is unique and proper to that object alone. This comprises Aristotle's law of identity. This line of thought comes out of Plato's later work, "The Timaeus", in which material existence is "informed", through the process by which matter is given a form. In the Platonic, and Neo-Platonic rendition, the form is prior to the material object, and given to the material object by the divine mind, in the act of creation.
I think we have an important distinction here between ideas as universals, which is central to Pythagorean Idealism, as well as Plato's earlier writings, and forms as the forms of particulars, which comes out of Plato's later work. The difference between ideas as universals, and forms as particulars, manifests in an inversion in the way that one object is related to another, depending on whether that object is a universal or a particular.
So in Aristotelian logic, which deals with universals, the more general is said to be "within" the more specific. The concept of "animal" (the more general) is within the concept of "man" (the more specific), as it is within the definition of "man". The essential aspect, "animal", is the more general, and is within the more specific being defined by the more general. The broader is within the narrower. Conversely, in the case of physical objects, i.e. the forms of particulars, we observe that the more particular, the local, is within the less particular, the global. So for example, the form of the earth, as the form of a particular object, is conceived of as within the form of the solar system, as the form of a particular object. The narrower is within the broader.
These two ways in which forms are related to each other, the way that particular forms are related being inverse to the way that universal forms are related, gets very confused and ambiguous in interpretations of quantum mechanics where a clear distinction between the universal and the particular is not maintained. What is accepted as the particular, the particle, is really just a function of the universal, the field, so that the real particular is not at all defined, it has not been assigned an intelligible form.
I didn't ask about the implications of your statement. I asked what it meant. I asked you why you used to the term, "physical", as it isn't necessary. All we need to do is talk about causation.
If there is some thing that is real, but not physical, that doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't also real things that are physical. The problem then becomes in explaining how these different real things interact. Maybe the problem lies in the making the distinction in the first place. If a physicalist says, "Everything in here is made of the same stuff as out there.", and an idealist says, "Everything out there is made of the same stuff as in here.", it seems to me that they are both saying the same thing. Again, it comes down to causation - the relationship between things "in here" and things "out there".
Quoting Wayfarer
Of course numbers have a causal effect on things. Take for instance the numbers in a recipe. If the recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper and you put 10, the food will give the consumers a serious case of heart burn, not to mention mouth-burn. Numbers influence our behavior just as much as any word, law, or thunderstorm does.
I really don't see any relevance to the topic, nor any ' firm refutation of Pythagorean idealism'. True, he argues that geometric constructs cannot be eternal ideas, but eternal ideas are nowhere denied in Aristotle.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is forbidden in all Christian theology to talk of 'objective knowledge of God' in line with Ex 33:20 'And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.'
Quoting Harry Hindu
In such cases, numbers are causally efficient only because human agents act on the basis of an instruction. The fact that numbers are able to influence human behaviour, is because humans are rational agents.
That's correct, eternal Forms are not denied by Aristotle. What is denied is that human ideas are eternal ideas. Now follow through with the simple deduction used by the Neo-Platonists.
P1. (from Aristotle). It is impossible that the mathematical and geometrical principles used by human beings are eternal ideas.
P2. (from Plato) We still apprehend the need to assume eternal Forms (forms outside of, or prior to temporal existence).
C. Therefore the eternal Forms are categorically different from the mathematical and geometrical ideas used by human beings.
What is this 'something other', according to Aristotle and Aquinas?
I think that for Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, the "something other" is the soul. It seems consistent through these philosophies that the soul is non-physical, immaterial. The soul is the non-physical existence which is part of that immaterial realm.
Before when you said you didn't understand the reference to the 'principle of intelligibility' - here's a really good summary. Notice that 'form' IS what makes particulars intelligible. Form is immaterial, as is the intellect/soul/nous which grasps it. The bodily senses are corporeal. This is basically Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism.
From Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P.; Macmillan Co., 1941.
That's a good reference, I like it. Now let's get to some specifics. I'll start from the end and go to the beginning.
Notice here, that according to the process of human abstraction, what is left in the human intellect, as "the form" of the object, is the essence of the object, without the accidentals. As described, this is an operation carried out by the senses and the intellect. The sensible object is only understandable to the human intellect in its essence, that is without its accidentals.
Now consider this opening statement:
Accordingly, each entity in the universe has a form which is proper to it, and it alone. This is the complete form of the object, including all particularities, all accidentals. According to the principles expressed in Plato's "Timaeus", supported by Aristotle, and carried forward by the Neo-Platonists, the form of the material object is necessarily prior in existence to the material object itself, as the cause of existence of the material object. Because the particular form of the individual object is prior to the material existence of that object, this necessitates the conception of separate, immaterial, Forms. The cosmological argument produces the conclusion that there must be an immaterial Form which is prior to all material existence.
So the point to consider here is that the human conceptions, produced by abstraction, do not contain the particulars, the accidentals. They are produced by abstracting from material objects through sensation and intellection, and are therefore posterior to the material existence of the object. The independent Forms are the forms of the particular entities, accidentals included, which are prior to the material existence of these objects as the cause of their material existence.
Therefore the material world, temporal existence, can be regarded as a medium of separation between the human forms (essences) created by abstraction from the material world, and the independent Forms, which include the accidentals, and are understood as prior to, and the cause of the material objects. The riddle involves the question of the relationship between the particular forms and the essential forms. Why is it that objects are known to the human intellect through essential forms, when the actual form of the object is a particular form? As they are both "forms", they are each inherently intelligible, but the particular forms are not apprehended by the human intellect due to its mode of intellection.
I too read this as saying that each particular thing has a particular form associated to it. But I could be misreading it, because my understanding is that forms are generals, not particulars. E.g., particular rocks participate in the one form of rock-ness, and particular rivers participate in the one form of river-ness.
(1) The original post serves to demonstrate that the container of information is a separate thing from the information itself, because while all the properties of the container may fully change (say from purely visual properties of a letter to purely audio properties of a speech), the information does not. In other words, the metadata is a separate thing from the data. It may be that information is dependant on a container as a necessary cause for its existence (at least in our physical universe), but it remains that they are separate things, as an effect is separate from its cause.
(2) By the law of identity, the information stripped of its container is not merely a copy in each separate container, but is in reality one and the same thing, because all the properties that make the information is the same in all containers. The same info is acquired whether it is obtained from a book, an ebook, or an audiobook.
(1) and (2) together should be sufficient to deduce that information is not physical, as a single set of info may be located in many places at the same time; but let’s back it up with another argument.
(3) By the law of conservation of mass and energy, all physical things transmitted from an emitter to a receiver must be lost by the emitter by the same amount that is gained by the receiver. Information does not behave that way because the emitter does not lose the info transmitted. The containers abide to that law, but as previously demonstrated, the info contained is a separate thing from the containers.
Bob’s your uncle.
This is one of the reasons that William of Ockham invented his razor - that would be an example of what he criticized as the 'proliferation of entities' inherent in scholastic metaphysics. However:
What's Wrong with Ockham, J P Hochschild
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Thanks, although I will admit to glossing over many issues.
However, even from your summary of the argument, a dualism can be discerned, namely that of an idea and it's representation. In this case, it's a 'ship, 3 masted, Greek, arrives after noon', and the various ways it is represented. I have been attempting to show that this resembles, in some sense, the Platonic meaning of 'an idea', even though the example is a specific idea, and not a general form.
However, I suppose a modernised version of the argument might be that it's only because the mind understands general forms and ideas that abstraction and verbal communication is possible. In other words, the capacity to grasp general meaning and general ideas, is intrinsic to rationality. The point that 'thought is a universalising activity' is driven home by the quotation from Lloyd Gerson, who says that although it's Aristotle's argument (in De Anima), it is the articulation of an idea from Plato.
But, no, of course I don't subscribe to many of the ideas in Aristotle and other ancient philosophers, just because they held them. However, the topic at hand is of a different order.
(Yes, another Thomist. :-} )
The Platonic meaning of "idea" is that if you take away the material representations, the eternal idea remains. That is the ghostly existence that Aristotle and Ockham rejected. Instead, the information is only in the material (i.e., flag movements, log book ink) and anyone with the requisite intelligence and skills is able to identify it.
It all hangs on the meaning of the word ‘exists’ (in this case, ‘remains’.) My example of the ship, is indeed a particular instance. But more general forms, such as geometrical and arithmetical forms, might be ‘awaiting discovery’ as it were - any rational being in the Universe would discover such forms. The same could be said in the case of logical laws, such as the law of the excluded middle and so on. Now, I know this is not something spelled out in Platonism in those terms, I have to do the work to understand where this kind of idea is represented in the Platonic corpus, but I’m sure something like it is there.
Say in the case of ‘the idea of the Good’, I would think this is something entirely transcendental, i.e. can’t be represented materially at all. The same could be said of some of the other foundational concepts of Greek philosophy, such as Plotinus’ Ta Hen (the One). This was clearly something that must be real - a necessary being - but could never be represented at all.
I think there’s some merit in what you’re saying, but I do wonder you’re trying to squeeze Aristotle’s ‘moderate realism’ into the Procrustean bed of modern empiricism.
This statement is what makes it physical.
Quoting WayfarerBut not only because we are rational agents, but also because we have senses that take in information about the world, one of which is numbers. How could you know anything about numbers, what they mean, or how to use them, without having first acquired that information at some point in the past? Numbers take the shape of squiggles on a sheet of paper and sounds in the air which have to be seen and heard in order to associate them with other things that aren't squiggles and sounds, but are the ideas those squiggles and sounds generate in the mind, which then influence behavior. This is why I don't get the division between the rationalists and empiricists. In order to be rational, your rationality has to take some form and the form it takes is the forms of our sensory perceptions.
Right. Thanks to the differences in our brains - thanks to the way we are "designed".
I'd like to know the form our linguistic abilities take prior to having learned any language.
Right, those paragraphs express what I take as important consequences of what is said in the quotation. Maybe you have different concerns? I'm glad we managed to have a productive discussion though
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
That is Plato's theory of participation, you've expressed it well. It is drawn from his earlier work, and represents his efforts to make sense of Pythagorean idealism. There's a good representation of it in "The Symposium", with the Idea of beauty.
As I explained earlier in this thread, as Plato started to grasp the difficulties involved with that type of idealism, his understanding evolved, such that the form of idealism which he ends up supporting is quite different from this. In The Republic, he exposes "the good", and finds the need to assume divine Ideas. This brings on a completely different type of idealism, because the divine ideas are ideals, the best, most perfect conception of each class of general concepts. Now the independent Idea must be an Ideal, the best possible conception of "just", or in the case of your examples, the best possible conception of "rock-ness", the best conception of "river-ness" .
But this throws a wrench into the whole structure of participation, because now the individual things, with their unique particularities cannot properly participate in the Ideal, because the Ideal must be an unique perfection in itself, and the particulars are lacking in this perfection. This produces the notion that all things suffer from privation. But the reverse of that is that all things have a perfection proper to themselves, and it is this perfection which makes a thing the thing which it is. This gives two possible directions. One is that "perfection" is proper to the ideal universal conception, the other is that "perfection" is proper to each particular object, that which makes it the unique object which it is. The latter choice is supported by material existence, material existence is good (though some mystics claim matter is evil, and go the opposite direction assuming all material existence is privation). In comparison, the ideal universal conception is an untenable principle because it cannot be produced, while material existence is evident. So we choose the direction which assumes that there is a perfection which is proper to each individual material object, making it the object which it is.
That is why Aristotle goes on to produce his law of identity so as to represent a perfection which is proper to each individual particular, in itself, "a thing is the same as itself". So any individual thing is identifiable as having a unique, particular form, which is proper to itself only. It is not identified in the way of the sophists, by a general form, which allows that a multitude of similar things have the same identity.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
This is the point which I objected to in this thread. It is physically impossible to strip away the container from the information package, because then the information would be lost. Without the container, there is no information. So the container, which makes the existence of information possible is just as essential as the contents. There is no contents without a container. Therefore it must be accepted that the container is part of the information package.
That is the problem with "the difference which makes a difference", it contravenes the law of identity, which implies that every difference must be respected, by implying that we can disrespect certain differences. When we disrespect those differences, contravening the law of identity, and we remove the container, as a difference which makes no difference, we assume "a difference which does not make a difference". This is just veiled contradiction, or at best, it moves "difference" into the subject, making what constitutes a "difference" completely subjective. So we cannot strip away the container without violating the law of identity, placing identity within the subject (sophistry), rather than within the object according to Aristotle's law of identity.
Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism
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[quote=“XanderGrey”]Information is matter and energy yes?[/quote]
No.
Norbert Wiener (founder of the science of cybernetics) Computing Machines and the Nervous System.
**
Quoting Harry Hindu
According to neo-darwinian materialism - which is why I mentioned Coyne.
Yes, we live in an intelligible universe where such laws and forms can be discovered by any rational being.
Quoting Wayfarer
Since the common thread for Aristotle is that universals can only be grounded in material particulars, you can probably predict what he thought about Plato's 'idea of the Good':
Quoting Wikipedia
Quoting Wayfarer
The way I see it, Aristotle provided some important insights that can inform a modern empiricism, of which his view on universals is one.
I would prefer 'instantiated' to 'grounded'. It's more that particulars are 'grounded in form' rather than vice versa. According to A's 'hylomorphic dualism', particulars are always composed of matter (hyle) and form (morphe) - and the form is what is grasped by the intellect, both the intellect (nous) and form (morphe) being immaterial. I would say that is the aspect of Aristotelianism which was rejected by the advent of nominalism and then empiricism, as forms and formal causes.
Even better though one could be like Aquinas, both Platonist and Aristotelian.
Quoting Wayfarer
The form of the particular may be what is grasp by the intellect, but the intellect only grasps what it apprehends as essential, missing the accidentals. So its grasp of the forms of particulars is imperfect, and we need to account for this fact in our metaphysics.
What Aquinas argues, is that this imperfection is due to the human intellect being not completely immaterial. So he develops Aristotle's distinction between passive and active intellect. The passive intellect, whereby we receive the forms of things through sensation, must be of the nature of potential, or matter, in order that it can be "informed". I believe that the active, or agent intellect is supposed to be the immaterial aspect of the intellect.
It just occurred to me that the sentry and the receiver of the sentry's signals could both be computers. (I'm not sure if anyone else has already brought this up, since I haven't read through the entire thread, but if so apologies for redundantly repeating a point).
What do you think the implications of this are for your argument.
Can you cite any text where Aristotle claims that " intellect (nous) and form (morphe)" are "immaterial"?
Computers are human instruments. They could replace flags and morse code, but the same arguments apply. It's similar to the point that Apokrisis often makes about the fundamental difference between physical and semiotic systems.
Quoting Janus
Have a look for the Lloyd Gerson argument that I have quoted numerous times in the thread. It's also in this video in this post. (This is a brief reference to an Aristotelian argument, from a lecture called Platonism vs Naturalism. Gerson is a leading academic specialist on Plato and Aristotle.) There's also a very nice modernised summary in this post.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Edward Feser describes his school as Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) - it was his argument about 'the triangle'. You do realise that in many of your responses to that issue, you have taken a position which is basically nominalist, i.e. opposing the A-T analysis?
The burden is on you to show how the fact that computers have been created by humans is relevant to your argument that information is not physical. Computers could sail the ships, be the sentries and the receivers; all without human beings, and probably do a better job. In such a scenario, would you say that there is any information being conveyed in the system?
As another example, computers can recognize faces; isn't that the ability to recognize a generality (that it is a face), coupled with the ability to recognize a particular (that it is the face of some particular person)? Is the computer not receiving and acting upon information in such a system? If you say 'no' then it would be possible that, similarly, we are not acting on information in similar contexts, wouldn't it?
Also, I asked for a quote from Aristotle, not from tendentious interpreters.
I've justified my responses by referring directly to what Aristotle wrote, and my understanding of what Aquinas wrote. So your claim that my responses are "opposing the A-T analysis", only indicate that you have a misunderstanding of the A-T analysis.
Do you recognize the distinction of passive intellect and active intellect? Or are you ready to deny that this is part of the A-T analysis?
Sure do. What does the active intellect do, that the passive intellect can't?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Beside the point. What I'm saying is that in many places in this thread, you have responded from the perspective of nominalism.
Here are some examples:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is what I mean by 'nominalism':
"Nominalism: the doctrine that universals or general ideas are mere names without any corresponding reality. Only particular objects exist, and properties, numbers, and sets are merely features of the way of considering the things that exist. Important in medieval scholastic thought, nominalism is associated particularly with William of Occam.'
Correct me if I'm wrong.
I agree that with no container, there is no information. But as I have previously stated, it does not follow that the container is an essential property of information, as it could simply be the cause to its existence. Or to use Aristotle's language, the container could be the efficient cause of information, not necessarily its formal cause. And I claim the efficient cause is the correct one, because I can acquire the same information from different containers which have no properties in common. E.g. obtaining info from a purely visual media like a book, or purely audio media like an audiobook.
Furthermore, we can prove that a container is not essential to information because we can imagine information being acquired directly through telepathy. The fact that we can imagine a thing proves that it is logically possible. And if logically possible, then a container is not an essential property of information.
Yes I think much of the history of philosophy can be seen as the playing out of Platonic and Aristotelian ideas in different contexts.
Quoting Wayfarer
Hylomorphism doesn't imply dualism. The phrase "hylomorphic dualism" seems to have been coined by David Oderberg as a description of the general Thomist view (see Ed Feser's discussion here).
In Aristotle's ontology, the particular is material in a specific form. But there is no ontological separation of form from the particular as there would be under dualism. Instead the particular is described and explained in terms of material and formal causes.
So, for example, it is Alice, a particular human being, who has intellectual capabilities or acts intelligently. But her intellect is not ontologically separate from her matter, just as the ship information is not ontologically separate from the material flag waving and log book ink.
Quoting Wayfarer
Agreed, though the main reason was due to the proliferation of unnecessary entities which I think was really a misapplication of Aristotle's basic empirical approach.
SO you’re saying that Aristotle doesn’t accept the immortality of the soul?
Actually, found a reference on that:
‘the soul neither exists without a body nor is a body of some sort. For it is not a body, but it belongs to a body, and for this reason is present in a body, and in a body of such-and-such a sort (414a20ff).
So on Aristotle’s account, although the soul is not a material object, it is not separable from the body. (When it comes to the intellect, however, Aristotle waffles. See DA III.4)’
https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/psyche.htm
I will keep reading! But I think that as you say, hylomorphic dualism does seem to belong more to Aquinas’ aspect of Aristotelian Thomism, as Aquinas must defend the immortality of the soul as a central dogma of the faith.
1) "Aristotle ascribed to each living organism a psuche (soul). The psuche was conceived to be the form of a natural body that has life. It was also characterised as the first actuality of a natural body that has organs (De Anima 412 5-6)."
2) "Aquinas, capitalising on Aristotle's obscure remarks about the active intellect, argued that 'the intellectual principle which is called the mind or intellect has an operation through itself (per se) unless it subsists through itself, for activity belongs to a being in act...Consequently, the human soul, which is called the intellect or mind, is something incorporeal and subsisting' (Summa Theologiae I, 76, 1)."
So, Aquinas changed the meaning of "soul" from "form" to "mind" and separated it from "body" for theological reasons.
But, I still think the passage I provided from a modern analysis of Aquinas really sums up the issue as I see it:
From Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P.; Macmillan Co., 1941.
The theory that I'm working on is that the rational mind - the mind that recognises meaning and can therefore translate and transform ideas between media and languages - corresponds with the 'immaterial intellect' above. After all, the concept of the 'rational soul' is often found in Aristotle's and other Greek writings. I had always wondered why the term 'rational' - but I now see it's not 'rational' in the modern or scientific sense, rather it is 'rational' in that it is the mind that directly grasps forms (or ideas, in the Platonic sense.) Just as the meaning of a text can be distinguished from the manner of its representation, so too the intellect which understands meaning can be distinguished from the sensory apparatus.
And, not co-incidentally, it is just that somewhat archaic sense of the 'rational intellect' which is denied by materialist theories of mind.
If I remember correctly the Aristotelian distinction between passive intellect and active (agent) intellect, is not much more than a mention of the need to assume both, to maintain consistency with hylomorphism, matter being passive, form being active. The soul is an immaterial form, while the powers of the soul, the different capacities including the intellect, are potentials, and therefore associated with the material existence of the living body. The potencies manifest as "habit" (another concept not well developed by Aristotle). We look at "habit" as a way of acting, but Aristotle defined it as what the beings "has", and you can check the etymology on this word. The being has the power to act in a particular way.
To the point though, there was discussion among the Arab philosophers who followed Aristotle, as to how to position the passive and agent intellect. One argument was that one is the property of the individual, while the other is the property of a communion of individuals. I'm not sure how Aquinas resolved this (I'll check this and get back to you), but I think that he proposed that each individual has both passive and agent intellect.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not too familiar with nominalism, but assuming this definition, and the quoted passage from me, then to make me nominalist you would have to argue that an agreement between human beings is not something real.
Modern realists, following philosophers like Wittgenstein will argue that there are real rules which govern the way that we use words. "Conventional use" implies real conventions. The real rules are supposed to be independent of individual human beings. However, these realists refer to things like definitions to support that position. But definitions are descriptions of how words are used, they are not prescriptive rules which govern the activities of human beings, like ethical rules are. So there is equivocation between descriptive rules and prescriptive rules, and the majority of modern realism is supported by such equivocation. For example, some say that the laws of physics govern the activity of matter. But the laws of physics are human descriptions, produced by inductive reasoning. It is impossible that they could have any governing power over the activity of matter.
If you have a better explanation, I'm here to be persuaded, but it doesn't seem like you have a better explanation. You're only "argument" is "That's neo-darwinism and I don't like that." - as if labeling some explanation as "neo-darwinian" and that you don't like it, automatically disqualifies it.
I asked what form our language abilities take prior to us learning a language, and you missed that opportunity to persuade me. You just don't seem to have the stamina to support your ideas, nor the open-mind to question your own premises.
The human mind is immaterial and united with a material human body, comprising a psychophysical unity. So, I don't agree with Brennan that, "To understand is to free form completely from matter."
Aquinas's and Brennan's position is dualist, not dual aspect monist (which is Aristotle's and Peirce's position).
Due to the "ship on the horizon" example provided in the OP, this has become more a discussion of semiosis than of information (although semiosis is subsumed under information). This is because semiosis (sign processing) involves representation and communication.
A sign is an object which corresponds to a representation.
And because this is really a discussion about semiosis, the definition of "representation" should conform to its usage in semiotics, to wit: a representation is a socially conditioned concept, category, or mental model.
The two aspects of a sign (the object and its corresponding representation) can be distinguished, but not separated due to the relation of signification. Therefore, signs are psychophysical objects.
Also, since meaning is an idea which can be described by attribution and/or relation, it is embedded in the representation, not the object.
The same message, transmitted in different codes (physical information), through different physical channels or mediums, conveys the same representations/meanings (semantic information) to a recipient (a psychophysical organism) who has knowledge of the codes used and their corresponding representations.
So what does semiosis say about physicalism and idealism?
My view also - the active intellect is what perceives the forms or ideas - it is 'intellect' proper. The passive intellect receives sensations. That is what that passage I quoted says.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hence, 'hylomorphic dualism', which perhaps means no more than 'body and soul'. The difficulty is, whether the body and soul can exist separately. But Aquinas, for obvious reasons, is required to uphold the dogma of the immortality of the soul, perhaps in a manner which Aristotle was not. (I imagine this is a very well-ploughed field.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's real, but only as a matter of convention.
Wittgenstein rejects metaphysics ('that of which we cannot speak') and so his discussions are mainly oriented around language.
The important point about the OP, is articulating an idea of what is real but not material - a genuine metaphysic which grounds meaning in reality, not in social convention or language.
When I say you're modernist in your response, this is not at all pejorative. To be critically aware of the assumptions we bring to this kind of issue means to question what we generally take for granted. Notice in your remarks about physics, and what you're saying here, the tendency towards relativism and perspectivism. Again this is not a slight, but a critical reflection; a sign of the times, perhaps.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Not, it's not that. Nowadays, most people simply assume that evolutionary biology explains everything about humans, so to question that then leads to a whole series of other arguments. So if you assume the neo-darwinian view (which I think you do), responding to that is a completely different question to the questions in this thread.
Quoting Galuchat
My premise wasn't so much about the nature of representation, but the fact that the same idea can be represented in different languages or symbolic forms. So the question I asked was, if the representation changes, but the idea doesn't change, then the idea - or in this case, information content - may be differentiated from the representation.
But then the next question is: can there be an idea which exists apart from a representation? And I think the response is that it is the act of representing an idea in abstract form, which relies upon the rational capacity of humans. That's what the human brain - the most complex object known to science - does: it abstracts and represents. At issue is the reality of such abstractions and representaions: are they real, or are they 'in the mind'?
It is nowadays taken for granted that the rational capacity has evolved in the same manner as other human attributes - as mentioned to Harry above, it is the assumption that everything about humans can be understood through the lense of evolutionary and neural biology. In other words, it is almost universally assumed that the rational capacity has an ultimately physical explanation, in terms of neurobiology (as was also assumed in the responses of @?????????????). But I am challenging that assumption on philosophical grounds, on the basis that the same differentiation between idea and representation can be applied even to neurobiology; that there is a genuine ontological distinction between idea and representation that applies at all levels of description (See Thomas Nagel: Thoughts are Real.)
WWR
What I'm working on, is the idea that whilst obviously h. sapiens did evolve as biological science has discovered (although the details are constantly shifting currently), when a certain cognitive threshold is reached, the mind does begin to comprehend transcendent realities - which I think Plato's 'forms' represent. In other words, I don't accept that the Platonic intuition of 'the forms' is merely archaic and scientifically uninformed. So I think there's something in hylomorphic dualism, leaving aside the question of whether the 'immaterial intellect' can exist separately.
Quoting Galuchat
Peirce rejected Cartesian dualism, with good reason - he thought the very idea of a spiritual 'substantia' unsustainable. There's an interesting essay on Peirce's metaphysics here, The Intelligibility of Peirce’s Metaphysics of Objective Idealism. It makes it clear that Peirce was much part of the idealist tradition, however he was also a working, hands-on, pragmatic scientist. That's one of the reasons his work has so much value.
A more causally-explicit way of saying this would be that a sign has the function of constraining an interpretation.
So the actual physics of a sign falls away - even though a sign, as some kind of mark, is always also physical.
The causally important things going on are that signs are intended to have meanings. A purpose must exist. And signs then have an effect in terms of constraining or limiting some form of freedom or uncertainty.
The relation is causally stronger than a correspondence or association. It narrows a mind - an interpretation - in a fruitful fashion.
The physics then re-enters the picture because an interpretation results in some action in relation to the world. When the light turns red, the car stops. When enemy ships appear over the horizon, the signals back to headquarters lead to cannonballs blasting into the air.
Quoting Galuchat
Again, terms like correspondence and representation are problematic because they arise from a passive, information-processing, metaphysics.
Semiotics makes more sense because it emphases the active and purposeful nature of what is going on. And it does that without falling into a mechanical or deterministic view of causality. It takes the probabilistic approach where information constrains action.
So what gets transmitted through a variety of transmissions is not the actual information, like some precious substance or cargo. It is the constraints that would limit another mind's state of interpretance. It is the container rather than the contents that get delivered.
When Amazon posts you a novel, they don't send you the experiences that are the story. What you buy is an artfully constructed set of constraints on your imagination. You expect your thoughts to be limited to some specific parade of imagery. And the mental picture you might have of the main character is hardly likely to correspond to the author's, or any other of the millions of readers.
Information of that kind only has to be conveyed to the degree that the constraint on your interpretive freedoms make a difference.
So Peircean semiosis is a paradigm shift in a number of very important ways.
Quoting Wayfarer
The soul would be the form of the body - the particular way its material organisation is constrained.
So in one sense, hylomorphism recognises that any object can't actually be separated in terms of its material and formal causes. To be an object is to have some organisation.
But constraints are also transmissible - due to semiotics. Genetic information means the "human-shaped soul" can be passed down from generation to generation.
Each actual person is a unique material interpretation of this information. Even twins are not identical. But still, the essential information that makes a biological person is now known to be separable as a physical fact.
But Aristotle is more right than Plato or Aquinas. What gets transmitted by a code is not the contents but the container. So the soul here is not the interpretation - the mindful bit. It is the shape that is getting passed along as a particular way to constrain some set of material freedoms, some heap of fleshy metabolism.
The paradigm you are applying demands the transmission of some substantial essence. Information is its meaning. It is the content that must be passed along.
But semiotics says what gets transmitted is the organising constraints needed to limit material variety. Communication is about the rebirth of functional states of interpretance. Every rebirth will be interestingly different. No two interpretations are ever going to be the same. You never step in the same river twice.
But that is understood. Constraints only need to signal the differences that make a difference.
Which is what information theory measures all the way down to a foundational material level now.
Again, you want information to be a substance - a semantic content. That just seems obvious because matter is its opposite - a meaningless content. The paradigm shift is understanding the shaping role that containment plays. That is the other aspect of a hylomorphic reality.
So semantic information is not a rival substance - a second material. Talk about information is our physicalist recognition that constraints are causally real. We need to include them in our picture as complementary to material causes.
And so there is no mystery when it comes to the "missing interpreter" when taking the information theoretic approach. The interpreter doesn't have to ride along with the transmitted information to underwrite its precious meaning, stop it leaking away. Instead, states of interpretance are the third thing - the actually substantial thing - which emerges when formal constraints and material freedoms come together in an act of interpretance, or a sign relation.
I think you're conflating 'shape' with 'form' here. What is being passed along is more than a shape, it is the entire principle of organisation. (Actually I learned recently that the original meaning of 'organise' is 'to endow with organs'.)
And also, if indeed Aristotle's philosophy of formal and final causation is correct, then the immaterial intellect has a reason for existing - in the same sense that fire is the reason matches exist, fire being the formal and final cause of a match. Aristotle's philosophy is inherently teleological - things exists for a reason; in the case of the rational intellect, that reason being, to perceive the ideas, which the 'rational animal' is alone capable of doing. That is the one faculty or attribute of man that Aristotle says is immaterial (although he seems to equivocate on many of the details.)
Quoting apokrisis
Emphatically not. That is the distinction that I am trying to make about the 'ontology of intelligible objects' - they're not existent, they don't exist in the way that phenomena do. In fact even to say 'they' is to improperly reify the subject of the conversation, but that is on account of the limitation of language, which (especially for our culture) is built around 'objectification'.
So I agree that 'the soul' is certainly not any kind of substance, especially in the modern sense. I think that 'soul' might be productively interpreted as a metaphorical expression for the subjective unity of consciousness; it is the principle by which the being hangs together, physiologically, psychologically, and even spiritually (which is also very close to Aristotle's meaning). But when you ask, 'what is this principle' or 'where is this principle', then that is a reification. But it's also not simply non-existent. This is the point that I think perplexes everyone in this conversation - as soon as you name it, you reify it, and then ask 'can it exist'? But that's a reification and therefore a category error.
Furthermore an idea is itself immaterial - it only can be represented materially, because of the brain's ability to abstract, represent and signal. That may seem a physical process but refer to the Schopenhauer quotation in the above post.
Quoting apokrisis
'States of interpretance' are invariably associated with a mind, in my view. There are only two broad types of phenomena which I think embody 'interpretance', namely, organisms, and minds.
I was just reading up on this in The Summa Theologica. The issue is a bit more complicated. Following Aristotle, Aquinas says that we must assume a passive intellect to account for the difference between potentially understanding and actually understanding. The passive intellect provides the potential to receive the intelligible forms. There are some confusing statements involved here, because the passive intellect must be passive, or receptive, to every possible form in order that we can potentially know all forms. This makes it similar to prime matter, as pure potential, but Aquinas states that it is purely immaterial. I think that because it has no particular form, it cannot be a material thing. In any case, it seems to be what you call the intellect proper, as what receives the forms or ideas
The active intellect is said to be what makes things intelligible. It acts to produce the abstractions which are received by the passive intellect. So he goes into the analogy with light, or the sun, which makes visible things visible. The active intellect must make things intelligible in a similar way. So the questioning turns to where the active intellect is located. Is it something independent from the human being, is it within the human being but the same for each human being, or is it within the human being with particular differences according to the differences of each person? He goes toward the third option, but maintains that there must still be an outside principle, like God, which the active intellect takes part in.
I would summarize by saying that the active intellect makes things intelligible by rendering them into an intelligible form. The passive intellect receives the intelligible form, and this is what is actual understanding. So there are two distinct types of potential involved here. The passive intellect is the intellect's potential for understanding. The active intellect puts the material objects into a form (abstract) such that they have the potential to be understood. These two together produce actual understanding.
Quoting Wayfarer
But this is a very important question, what is "a matter of convention"? We have to be able to assign some sort of reality to social conventions, or else everything falls apart, all knowledge, all morality, society, all humanity falls part. we cannot just take these things for granted. The Wittgensteinians argue that there are real rules of language use, which are out there, somewhere, which we must follow, or else we are wrong, not following the rules. But there are no such rules. We are free to use language as we will. They just take it for granted that such rules exist, and really cannot demonstrate the existence of them.
However, formal rules of language use are extremely important to higher education, science, mathematics and logic, just like rules of morality are extremely important to higher living. The two are very closely tied together, as it is by following these rules that we evolve toward "higher" existence. We cannot take them for granted. And if we cannot take them for granted, then we need to create them, and find ways of encouraging human beings to follow them.
Quoting Wayfarer
The examples of the op rely on convention. How does one know what the signal means? By convention. You take the conventions for granted, just like the Wittgensteinian realists. They for their purpose, you for your purpose. The idealist realist is really no different from the materialist realist. By shying away from language and social convention, I think you are missing the essence of the immaterial. What is it which is at the root of all social conventions? The good. What is it which Plato says renders the intelligible as intelligible? The good. What is the active intellect?
The point about the ‘conventional nature of language’ is NOT that judgements are unreal on those grounds. The point I was making was in relation to your posts which seemed to advocate a nominalist response to Samuel Lecrampe’s realist ones. It seemed to me that you were taking the position of nominalism, perhaps without knowing you were doing that. Note that is not a personal criticism but I think in the context it is worth bringing that out.
(This is part of a longer argument, specifically, how nominalism undermined scholastic realism, and with it, the possibility of any real metaphysics. That is why I have referred to an article called What’s Wrong with Ockham: The Role of Nominalism in the Dissolution of the West, by Joshua Horschild. There’s also a somewhat famous book, called Ideas Have Consequences, by a Chicago English academic by the name of Richard Weaver, which makes a similar argument. Perhaps unfortunately, it has now become very influential in American conservativism, but it’s an historical argument I’m very interested in.)
I think that if you push this analysis further, you'll see that you are not actually acquiring the same information in those two cases. This, in my opinion, gives credence to the belief that information is indeed physical, that it is possible and likely that two different information medium share the ability to inform the same particulars, but that in most cases you'll be able to notice differences in the ability of different medium to carry the same information.
So both written language and spoken language can equally inform you of the proposition that "Montréal is in Québec", but a text attempting to describe physically the Mount-Royal will provide an unequal amount of information to a 3D model of the same.
I'm sure that this line of inquiry could be well informed by a bit of information theory. More mathematically inclined minds that mine must have already found a way to calculate the capacity of an information medium to carry information based on its capacity for variation, preservation, etc...
Perhaps put more simply : It is up to the information processor to establish the identity between the information particulars encountered across multiple mediums. This identity belongs to the interpreted information, not to the information medium, and therefore does not inform us on the medium, which means that this does not contradict the claim that information is material.
You can name constraints. They really do things causally.
And when we talk about consciousness, that normally cashes out as attentional-level processing. And attention in turn is all about constraint - the limiting of awareness by a focus, or spotlight, or filter, or bottleneck, to use the usual metaphors.
So the soul - in the sense Aristotle seems to be striving after - would be a limitation on material possibility. It is not a substance, but the organisation that gives material possibility its rationally organised form.
And Aristotle wanted to insist that this constraining organisation was physically real and not ghostly or immaterial. He just lacked the modern knowledge to make full sense of that. We now know that the constraints that create bodies with intellects are physically real. They are the information that our semiotic machinery encodes. DNA really exists. Neurons really exist. Words really exist. That information gets made flesh. Animate matter gets its soulful form from a system of symbols interpreted as a state of organisation.
Quoting Wayfarer
You really only need organisms. Life and mind are just different levels of the same semiotic modelling relation.
For me the issue is that language itself is a "container" -- at least to the degree that we believe in translation. Do we think in words? In my experience, we do, with maybe a little wiggle room for some kind of spatial-temporal reasoning. Can we generally strip meaning from its body? It's not so clear. The distinction of information/container strikes me as an ideal distinction like spirit versus flesh. It founds or institutes a continuum. But the poles don't make much sense. They are limits at infinity.
But is inorganic matter on a continuum with life and mind? Or is there a discontinuity there?
When have I ever not flagged the critical discontinuity? It's the epistemic cut. It is only after that that life and mind become a thing.
So that then raises the question of whether there is still a continuity that is "semiotic".
The reply is that if the epistemic cut internalises constraints - this being the information that membranes, genes, neurons, words and numbers encode - then that now raises the definite possibility of constraints which are encoded or remembered externally, out in the world itself. The Cosmos might be understood as a dissipative structure, organised by its historically fixed information.
And this is what the information theoretic turn of modern physics hinges on. Entropy. Event horizons. Holography. Quantum information. Material cause no longer carries the weight of explaining existence. Instead, formal cause provides the intelligible structure.
So it is telling that you ask about a continuity that can connect biosemiosis back to "inorganic matter". You assume that real physics can't afford to let go of material causality. But physics has pretty much let go now.
The symmetries that account for the fundamental forms of reality - the symmetries of spacetime and particle physics - are the part of existence that feel hard, definite, crystalline. They have the force of mathematical necessity.
The "action" that then animates this mathematical pattern must still be part of the physicalist story somehow. But now it feels like the mysterious ghost in the machine. The metaphysical puzzle has been reversed. Matter seems the most immaterial part of the modern physicalist equation.
Check out ontic structural realism to see how current metaphysics is trailing along in the wake of this particular turn of events.
In this section, Aquinas first makes it clear that the intellect is not the soul itself. It is a power of the soul. So we're not discussing the nature of the soul itself here, and the important thing to notice is that following Aristotle, the powers of the soul are individuated according to the material body of the living creature. So Aquinas explains how the intellect is distinguished from the other powers of the soul, vegetative power, power of sensation, etc.
He agrees with Aristotle, that there is a need to assume a passive intellect, in order to account for the intellect receiving intelligible forms. As such it is of the same nature of matter, which receives forms. This is the proper sense of "inform", to receive forms, be acted upon by forms. Aquinas states though, that the passive intellect is immaterial, and I see this as an inconsistency because he doesn't explain how anything immaterial can be informed. He already agrees that to be informed requires that the thing being informed receives forms in a passive sense, like matter receives forms.
The active intellect is what abstracts, it puts the sensible objects into an intelligible form. We cannot say that the passive intellect receives the form directly from the sensible object, or else it would have the exact same form, and be that sensible object. So it is required to assume an active intellect, which abstracts a form, but not the same form, from the sensible object.
Quoting Wayfarer
I take neither a nominalist nor realist position on this, because both are too simple. The realist position, as I said, takes social conventions for granted, so the analysis which it provides does not go deep enough to understand "the good". "Realism" is a misrepresentation of the Scholastics, perhaps a nominalist "straw man". So the nominalists simplify even further from the simplification already implied by "realism,". There are two levels of simplification, one simplifies the Neo-Platonist/Arsitotelian analysis/synthesis of the scholastics to a realism (which is a faulty representation), and the other, by claiming that realism is inaccurate (which it is, due to the unjustified simplification) simplifies even further.
I'm not assuming anything when I ask the question, "What form does our linguistic abilities take prior to learning a language?".
You were the one that said this in this thread:
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm simply asking a question about what you said. If you can't answer it, then I guess your statement isn't anything more than word art. To say, "They are born with that." seem to imply that our linguistic abilities only take shape once we are born. Doesn't that assume neo-darwinism? What is it about being born - about moving from inside the womb to outside of it that gives us our linguistic abilities?
Cheers.
In other words, information is a lack of uniformity per Donald MacCrimmon MacKay and Gregory Bateson.
Is information physical (meaningless), semantic (meaningful), or both (independently or simultaneously)?
Can semantic information be received by sensory stimulation and sensation (becoming empirical, or a posteriori, knowledge), by cogitation (becoming pure, or a priori, knowledge), or both (independently)?
If Aristotelian forms exist and constrain material action, what is the source of pure knowledge (i.e., the formal sciences)?
The container is not the cause of existence of the information, it is part of the information package. The information must be put into the package, so the container cannot be the cause of the information. There is a thing which is said to contain information. The information and the container are two parts of the same thing Certain properties of the information which can be held by the container are restricted, or constrained, by the type of container. The container restricts the information. That is why it is false to say that the same information can be contained in different containers, because each container has restrictions proper to itself only.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
These two types of media do not give you the same information. You are ignoring the accidentals. When the accidentals are ignored, this is insufficient for calling something "the same", according to the law of identity.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The fact that you can imagine something does not make it possible. Yes, you can create a logical possibility, through definition, like I can imagine that "circle" has the same definition as "square", making a square circle logically possible. And that's all you've done here, defined information as independent from the container, through your imaginary telepathy. But until you prove that telepathy is possible, your definition is meaningless.
Quoting Akanthinos
That's right, this is the point I've been making since the beginning of the thread. The faulty analysis is defended by the claim that "same" is used in a casual way, like two different people might be driving the same car. But this is philosophy, and this use of "same" is a premise to a logical argument, so we need to adhere to a rigid law of identity. When we adhere to the law of identity in our designation of "same", the argument fails on the faulty premise that "the same" information is transmitted by different media.
Quoting apokrisis
I think that this is an incorrect representation. The sign itself does not constrain the interpretation, it is completely passive in this respect. All constraints on interpretation occur within the mind of the interpreter and this can be expressed as habit, or lack of habit. There are no constraints on interpretation within the sign itself.
Quoting apokrisis
So you carry forward this faulty representation, claiming that what is transmitted within the information package is these constraints on interpretation. But such constraints really only exist within the interpreting mind. The only constraints within the information package, are constraints on the physical world, which have produced the order which is apprehended as information., And this order is interpreted as information, according to the constraints within one's mind.
Quoting apokrisis
This I insist is a false premise. And if you think that semiotics proves that constraints on interpretation are transmitted, you need to demonstrate this proof. The material realist assumes that constraints on interpretation are transmitted, but this is a false assumption, because such constraints are either innate within, or learned by the living being through repetition. They are not transmitted to the living being through the sign. How could they be, if the being has to interpret the sign to determine the constraints required for interpretation?
It was more than a lack of uniformity for them. A difference that makes a difference also implies reciprocally the existence of differences that don’t. So signals stand out against a background of noise. But that then demands in turn a context of interpretance. Someone must be indifferent to the differences that don’t make a difference.
Thus there is an irreducible triadicy in the concept of information. At least in the way that the cyberneticists were trying to formalise a theory of information. Differences were hierarchically divided into noise and signal. That is, the indifferences and the differences that made a difference - according to some interpretive context.
Quoting Galuchat
The next step then is a more general physical view of information where even indifference or noise gets counted. So in the specific case, the concern was to count the signal. In the general case, the concern is to count any difference, or degree of freedom, that simply could have been a signal, under some context of interpretation.
That was Shannon’s big step, where he connected to concepts of entropy or fluctuation. A degree of freedom is the naked possibility of an action, a surprise, an uncertainty, a bare difference.
You will note how physics’s adoption of the information theoretic view is thus pansemiotic. An interpretive context is still implied - the one that can see the bare difference of noise as potential differences that make a difference. But now this interpreter is so generalised that it appears to drop out of the picture. The interpreter seems so unselective that it is as if the selection were meaningless.
Of course the second law of thermodynamics lurks here in the background. Entropification has become the cosmic purpose that provides the missing pansemiotic interpreter, the context that gives meaning even to physical noise.
So information theory now can count the meaningless differences as well as the differences that make a difference. And it does that by generalising the very notion of interpretance to its pansemiotic or cosmic limit.
Clever stuff.
The mind is simply the fact of the process of interpretation. You don’t need a further kind of witnessing thing within which the interpretation is interpreted, or sensed, or perceived, or whatever other homuncular regress you want to leap into it.
Yes, interpretance also has variety as it must develop its stable habitual regularity. So the response to a signal may be vague or radically uncertain before an interpretation has become fixed as a habit. And human minds are complicated enough systems of interpretance that they seem a place where new acts of interpretation are always just “taking place within it”. There is hierarchical structure of that kind.
But the generalisation of semiosis, or the information theoretic perspective, is about boiling what is going on down to the barest possible notion of an interpretive relation. Our human-level notion of being a mind making meaning of a world stands at the other far extreme to the generalised or more fundamental notion here.
Are you confirming my point in your repeated failure to follow my meaning?
I’m posting you carefully worded thoughts. I’m hoping they might constrain your state of mind so that we share some point of view. Yet your responses come back as saying your understanding is at best vague or uncertain. Or actually you are in the habit of interpreting signals you can’t follow as “this just has to be wrong - it is not the formula of words that I am accustomed to responding to with the return signal of a thumb’s up,”
So definitely in verbal communication between humans,there are complex language games going on. You are forming your sense of you in terms of whatever you can recognise as “other”. Faced with a message that wants to constrain your understanding in a way not already your habit, you apply your own habit of finding anyway to deny the right of the words to have any force on the pattern of your thoughts. This becomes proof of both your own rational existence and your absolute freedom of will - inside the place that you call your mind.
I doubt therefore I am. The first principle of “philosophy”. :j
So sure. Signs can be intended to function as constraints, but they can regularly fail in that intended function. On their arrival in another mind, words can find that rival formulas of words have already taken up permanent residence. Aquinas might have got there first. And the resident interpretations don’t welcome the threatened intrusions.
That is far from the truth. You yourself believe that the Platonic forms amount to 'social conventions', and then fault the realists for thinking that!
Quoting Harry Hindu
Human infants are born with the ability to learn language. It is innate. Certainly it is in some sense a product of evolution, what I'm questioning is the extent to which language and abstract thought can be understood solely through the prism of evolutionary biology. Because to do so, invariably reduces the subject of the enquiry to 'how does that help the species survive?' That is the sense in which biological explanations are often reductive. While the neo-darwinian synthesis is a biological theory, it is often taken as a philosophical principle to support positions and conclusions which are outside the scope of biology per se. But it is, as I say, a separate question.
Quoting apokrisis
You often refer to that, but this was part of his paper on sending and receiving information, wasn't it? It wasn't a philosophical theory as such, was it?
Quoting apokrisis
Now I don't expect any of the following to sway you, I am simply spelling it out so as to clarify the point. This still assumes that the fundamental forms are physical. I have been researching the Forms, which is the 'formal' side of hylomorphism, and the original concept of the Forms is that they are outside space and time altogether. The motivation of early philosophy was not instrumental or scientific in our sense- it was as much 'the quest for the transcendent' as the quest for useful knowledge about the sensory domain.
The words don't constrain my mind at all, that is a completely deterministic assumption. All the decisions concerning interpretation are made within my mind. My mind makes these decisions based on principles within, not the words, because I don't know what they mean until I've already interpreted them.
Quoting apokrisis
I can follow the words, but my mind follows the words due to habits it has produced. The constraints on my interpretation are these habits, they are not the words.
Quoting apokrisis
So you admit, that signs fail as constraints on interpretation. So why insist that they are? It is not the case that sometimes words constrain and sometimes they do not. The fact that they sometimes bring about the desired affect is due to the power of the interpreting mind. The words themselves have absolutely no power over the human being.
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Indeed. And these interpretations exist systematically. A fundamental interpretation of existence (what am I here for? What is virtue?) "radiates" outward. If a scientific thesis threatens my fundamental interpretation of existence, so much the worse for science. But that goes for religion and metaphysics, too. That's where "Romanticism" comes in, which thinks in terms of these fundamental interpretations. It's "pre-science" or "pre-metaphysics" in that it thinks the conditions of possibility for metaphysical, scientific, and religious frameworks. On the other hand, it is itself such a framework, self-consciously holding itself at a distance from (other) particular commitments.
How can the sign carry its function if it doesn't not act as a restraint on interpretation?
Distinguish between these cases :
1) Any meaning, however complex, can be assigned to a sign.
2) Any meaning, however complex, can be determined from a sign.
Weither 1) is true or not does not impede the function of a sign to inform. As long as a non-null amount of meaning can be assigned to a sign, communication can still occur. With 2), however, you can quickly see how this would deprecate languages. You cannot build a language out of nothing but variables and expect it to be able to describe the feeling of kissing a cute girl.
Yes, during assignation, a single sign can be given the role of carrying a lot of information. We could build a language right now where "&" stands for the complete Gymnopédies of Erik Satie, but that would impose an enormous informational weight on the shoulders of the information processor. To realise properly the materiality of information, you must, in my opinion, conjure thought experiments of such kinds. Inversely : attempt to build a functional system of musical notation which could encode the Gymnopédies on less than 1 micron of paper. Less than 0.1 micron?. Less than 0.01 micron? The point, at some level you'll likely hit a wall, where the material complexity of the medium is just not great enough to support the complexity you wish to assign it.
For what it's worth, I agree. 'Interpretation' is a good stab at a synonym for human existence. The "mind" is a token within or derived from the interpretative process. Interpretation itself is interpretations 'self'-image or model of itself within the "world" as a whole. The world is just "what is," where the 'is' here remains unstable or itself endlessly re-interpretable.
Where I fault the realists is in what type of existence they give to social conventions. Instead of giving real objective existence to things like concepts and ideas, as you and other Platonic realists do, they give a faux objective existence to these things as social conventions. The problem is that this is not real objectivity, though it is claimed to be. It is a disguised subjectivity, which is sometimes called inter-subjectivity. So instead of recognizing that the real essence of the social convention is to be found within the manners, habits, and disposition of the individual human beings, they base their principles in the assumption that there are real existing objects which are referred to as social conventions, (laws and rules of language, etc.). Those realists just switch out the real objective existence of Platonic Ideas, for the real objective existence of social conventions. But the essence of the social convention is that it is a similar property which individuals have.
I really like this. I can imagine a comedy about a very theoretical guy who tries to encode this kissing of the cute girl in a string of ones and zeros. You also mention that piece by Satie in the rest of the post. That's one of my favorites. To me this thinking of the experience if kissing the cute girl and of hearing great music is already enough to demolish the fantasy of describing reality in some cold, precise language. Metaphysics is always a symbolic reduction of reality. It is a tool that functions within the "real" that largely utterly eludes symbolization. "Feeling" is why we bother with such symbolizations, and yet there's a massive gulf between the symbol and the feeling. If we think in symbols (and I think we do), then metaphysics can hope to model the thinking aspect of life. But feeling is the ghost in the symbolic machine that gives it life in the first place.
A sign does not carry its function. Its function is determined by the mind of the author or by the mind of the interpreter. If this were not the case, misunderstanding and misinterpretation would be impossible, because the sign would always deliver the correct function to the interpreting mind. Since the interpreting mind often makes mistakes, then it is necessary to assume that the function of the sign is determined by the mind.
Quoting Akanthinos
I really can't grasp your point. How does this argue that the function is within the sign, not within the mind.
Well I said it was a hope. I could have said a vain hope. ;)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But I can see when you are not following the intended meaning that the words were supposed to encode. The information is not being transmitted. You may be responding back in words, but they are just other kinds of noises that have habitual meaning within your constructed world.
So yes, you do have a capacity for misunderstanding. That proves something here. But not what you think.
The point I made was that words can only constrain an interpretation, they can't determine an interpretation. So all one can hope to transmit is the constraints, not the actual cargo or contents -
which would be the meaning, the semantics, here.
You are proving I am right by asserting your irreducible freedom to confuse or confound any message.
The best my words could do is constrain your state of mind in a suitable way so that you more or less shared my intended meaning. You would have the same point of view - down to the level where any differences didn't make a meaningful difference.
But my words can fail even to achieve that. You can categorise the incoming text as a bunch of internet static lacking any embedded signal. So I can't determine your state of interpretance. And much of the time, I can't even limit its free variety in any measurable way.
And that's fine. That is what semiotics explains.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But that is obvious bullshit. Everyone grows up spouting precisely whatever is the common wisdom of their formative linguistic context.
You are telling me you are a rational soul with freewill. Fine. I've done anthropology. I can recognise a social belief system when I see one.
But Romanticism was also literally the reaction to the Enlightenment. So it is post that science and metaphysical turn.
In the end, the claims of being fundamental are stronger for the Enlightenment view - the method of objective reasoning.
You can dispute that and we can weigh the evidence.
(See, the scientific method wins again as the best way to do actual philosophy.)
It was a vague "philosophical" distinction given solid mathematical/empirical foundations at last. And so that has had immense consequences if you actually believe in progress in metaphysics.
Information stopped being airy-fairy and hand-wavy. There was a formula for measuring it. And hey presto, it turned out to be the same formula as for measuring thermodynamic entropy. Mental uncertainty and physical disorder could be measured in exactly the same coin.
The fact that these two apparently totally unrelated things are somehow two aspects of the one thing has to be a pretty seismic metaphysical discovery, no?
Are you still just going to shrug it off?
Quoting Wayfarer
My working assumption is in fact that the fundamental forms are immanent, not transcendent. So I am with Aristotle rather than Plato on that score.
My metaphysics starts further back with Anaximander. The form of nature emerges through the expression of actions. The timeless/placeless symmetries are revealed to "exist" via the symmetry-breaking that actualises the world in which they are a formal/final source of cause.
By "pre-science" I mean the establishing of what counts as evidence in the first place. Even the idea that disputes 'should' be resolved in terms of weighing evidence is already a commitment. It makes no sense to weigh the evidence for a weighing of evidence as the right method. We inherit a fuzzy criterion. "Abnormal" discourse challenges this criterion, while "normal" discourse employs it to make warranted assertions.
Quoting apokrisis
That it came later should give us pause. To view entities as present-at-hand for an ideal subject was a massively useful idea. Public objects became predictable and manipulable in an unprecedented way. We started to think that this non-intuititive way of "deworlding" objects gave us the real object. I'd say that it just rips the object from the fullness of our experience of it in a way that's good for certain purposes. Beyond the usual "sentimental" objections to this, there is also the question of not wanting to inaccurately understand the world by uncritically being trapped in just one framework.
Remember that in the context of the discussion about ‘reality of universals’, I mean by ‘realism’, not ‘modern realism’, but ‘realism with respect to universals’. It has a very different meaning to today's realism.
I don't know if I'm a Platonist, but I believe there is a valid intuition, which is expressed in Platonic philosophy, whereby something like the ideas or the forms are organising principles or archetypes. They are inherent in, but also transcendent to, the fabric of the cosmos, as the ideal forms to which things tend. That is an old idea, long since rejected. But this intuition, modified by the tradition, and especially by Aristotle provided a means of unifying perception, action and aim which has since been generally lost.
What's Wrong with Ockham, J P Horschild.
It is the loss of this sense of there being a rational order in the Cosmos, that marks the advent of scientific materialism, foretold by Nietzsche:
**
Quoting apokrisis
I'm not 'shrugging it off', but I am pointing out that Shannon's theory was originally published as a theory about information transmission:
It was in this context that the notion of 'information entropy' was introduced:
However that appears to be different to thermodynamic entropy:
'Thermodynamic entropy': 'For a closed system, the quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.'
So, what is the relationship between logical and thermodynamic entropy? it seems to me that they're being equivocated.
Quoting apokrisis
Nevertheless, Aristotle, with Plato, believed that the Ideas are immaterial and eternal; it's simply that he didn't believe it was meaningful to speak about them as if they existed apart from their instantiations. But the Forms don't come about as a result of any kind of physical process; Aristotelianism was 'top-down', not 'bottom-up'.
If the meaning of a sign is determined by the author or by the interpreter, then again communication would be impossible. All direct conversations would be spent trying to establish a common vocabulary and semantic, and all indirect communication would be simply impossible.
The meaning of the sign is established at the moment of its formation as a sign. "&" means nothing until someone assigns meaning for it, by making public another bit of information with at least some degree of authority, which is that "'&' means 'and'". Before this, "&" was the sign of nothing except perhaps of random human activity as scribble.
The sign restricts interpretation by refering to a connected bit of information available to properly prepared processors, which is the knowledge of general acceptable use of the sign.
But my point is that something can't count as evidence unless there is a theory framed to be countable.
So what is Romanticism counting? As a theory, what actually possible measurements does it suggest. If it doesn't offer any, then it is not even a theory. It is just an idea that is "not even wrong".
Quoting t0m
Fine words. But now deliver the theory that has countable facts and so can rise above the class of ideas that are not even wrong.
I mean poetry is fine. Feelings are fine. Pluralistic viewpoints are fine. There is a reason why Western culture promotes these things for sure.
And I have the right theory about that. :)
There is a rational sociological explanation for the fostering of irrationality. Convincing folk they are self-actualising beings creates the pool of requisite variety that rapid cultural evolution can feed off. Society becomes this great big competition for attention. Apply a ruthless filter over the top of that, and hey bingo, out pops out your master race. Or at least the ruling elite.
Of course there is then the rational reaction - the PC response to try and declare everyone some kind of cultural winner. Prizes all round. Everyone gets an equal share of the social limelight.
Yeah right. Dream on.
Jesus Christ. How do you think paradigms can be changed except by someone managing to ignore what everyone else was insisting had to be the central thing.
Like everyone else, you are obsessed by the semantic content of a message. You believe that it must exist - even though you've search high and low and nowhere does it seem to have physical existence. It is spookily immaterial - a transcendent ghost haunting the world.
Then along comes someone who ignores that it must be about the differences that make a difference and focuses on the physical limits of difference-making. The constraints on information at the general cosmic level. Forget about the vastly elaborate human level, let's get down to the fundamental basics.
I mean who would have thought the Universe has a limited information capacity before that was demonstrated by Shannon? Had it crossed any mind that you know of? Do you not see the genius in discovering that materiality can only hold a certain amount of meaning? Do you not yet get the Copernican nature of that revelation and why it now reverberates so loudly through the sciences?
Quoting Wayfarer
You go check the equation and tell me where you see any equivocation.
I'm by no means against quantitive evaluations of assertions. But is it not a "non-quantitative" assertion that only such assertions should have weight? The "not even wrong" framework is "not even wrong" by its own notion. That falsifiability should be the criterion is itself not falsifiable. You see what I mean? Metaphorically speaking the "law" itself is the supreme "crime." I suggest that such frameworks are "justified" pragmatically. They are experiments that "worked." If evaluating assertions in a particular way gives us what we want more than it leads to disaster, then we tend to keep evaluating them that way.
Quoting apokrisis
I think we are talking about the realm of value or motive here. There's a certain "objectivity" in a great art. It resonates for a culture. It concretizes that culture's ideals. Maybe the dominant ideals can be made partially explicit in theory, but I grant art and literature an important place in the revelation of reality. Art is not just "subjective" or amusing. It's at the center of a culture's understanding of existence. Some quantification of this realm is possible. We can see measure the proportions of a culture's ideal woman. But I don't see why we would measure our understanding of cultural ideals only in a quantifying manner. We don't just want to manipulate and predict. We want to participate in and grasp or enjoy these ideals. We aren't only manipulative-predictive knowers.
Quoting apokrisis
I relate to all of this. They are excellent points. I'm not defending the holy individual here, though I do think there are limits to this dissolution of the individual into the social. I'm really just trying to be accurate about the world. For me, however, this very notion of "world" is in question. I don't assume the world of natural science. To me that is a useful abstraction that exists within a more "primordial" notion of the world. We are in the world with others. But I don't think the spatial notion of objects next to other objects captures this "in-ness" or "with-others-ness."
Information entropy is exactly about semantic content, isn't it? It's how many bits can be lost before the information contained in the string loses its meaning? Yes or no?
Quoting apokrisis
Which equation? You mean https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Entropy_in_thermodynamics_and_information_theory
Quoting apokrisis
No.
Quoting apokrisis
I said in my last response to you, emphatically not.
But isn't the problem the interpretation of meaning as reducible to bits? I love bits. It is eye-opening that the universe can only "store" a finite number of bits. But this abstract universe and there bits are themselves "information" in the more "primordial" sense of meaning, whatever it means for something to mean. We can make the question more manageable and more productive by deciding that meaning is bits. But this cuts the knot. What is it to mean something? What is intelligibility itself?
Very close to the question I asked in the OP.
Consider this: the above discussion about information theory was based on the requirement of information being encoded in a medium and transmitted electronically. Shannon’s theory is behind data compression and the like, because it provides ways of creating algorithms which enable you to compress English text (for instance) by deleting redundancies without altering the message content. So if you wanted to convey a body of text or an image, those methodologies enables you to reduce the number of bits you have to transmit without loosing any of the actual content. (Recent useful essay on Shannon here.)
But there’s no way to quantify meaning, as such. For instance, take the case of some important piece of information, like an equation - the very equations we’re discussing here, for instance. Imagine if you were the inventor, and sole possessor, of such idea, and you encoded it on a computer. And then you died, and the hard drive became corrupted. You’ve then lost a lot more than information - you’ve lost an idea, that might have had profound and far-reaching consequences in the physical sciences. How could you possibly quantify the consequences of that? You might be able to encode it in - I don’t know - a few hundred bytes. But the principle the equation describes might have ramifications and applications that revolutionise industry. So - how much information was actually lost?
Interesting point. I hadn't thought of it that way.
What I had in mind is the direct experience of meaning. Meaning is. Similarly redness is. We "live" in language in that cannot be quantified. We can quantify how many bits it takes to encode a string of letters of course, but that's just the "shell" of meaning. And yet meaning seems to need a body, if no particular body. In any case, it seems to me that reducing meaning to information "throws away" the depth of the question, however practical such a reduction might be otherwise.
(Mind you, I’ll admit I’m responsible for equivocating the meaning of ‘meaning’, ‘idea’, and ‘information’ in this thread. That’s why I understand how my approach must be exasperating to a lot of people. But, somewhere amongst all the smoke, I sense a flame.)
Then the words are not actual constraints, they are potential, or possible constraints. The listening being must take the words into ones mind and convert them into actual constraints. But this itself is an act of interpretation, so it is impossible that the words act as constraints on interpretation because interpretation must occur before the words are converted from possible constraint to actual constraints. The words which exist within the hearer's minds are only representations of the spoken words, they are interpretations, that's how we can mishear. So if the words actually constrain something, it is something other than interpretation. Perhaps the person might use the words to help exercise some constraint over one's own behaviour, but this is posterior to interpretation.
Quoting apokrisis
It is possible, that I could allow your words to have some influence over my state of mind, but again, this is posterior to interpretation. The only influence which they have on my state of mind, is dependent on how I interpret them. So they do not constrain my interpretation because the interpretation is prior to any affect that they have on me. The affect which they have on me is the result of my interpretation.
Quoting apokrisis
So why did you claim that the words are constraints on interpretation then? If the words can be interpreted as something other than words, then how is it possible that the words are constraining this interpretation? They are not even words according to this interpretation.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes I understand this. What I was pointing out, is that some modern forms of realism assume the basis for the reality of universals, in the reality of social conventions, rather than in the reality of independent Ideas (Platonism). But when the "social convention" is analyzed it turns out to be nothing more than a similar disposition, attitude, or manner, in many different individuals. This renders it completely subjective, leaving the important point, the means by which the similar manner is produced.. Subjectivity is ruled by what appears as "good" to the individual. So now we have to turn to "the good" (the common good), to ground the reality of universals. That forces a turn toward God and religions, where "the good" is studied, and best understood.
Apokrisis right now is refusing to acknowledge the subjectivity of social conventions, claiming "a social belief system". But we all know that all belief systems are particular to the individual human being, and any claim of a "social belief system" is just a generalization, it isn't a real thing. So Aprokrisis' argument just takes us in a vicious circle.
Quoting Akanthinos
Why do you say this? Once a habit of recognition is established, meaning is determined on that basis. There is no impossibility here.
Quoting Akanthinos
I don't think that you understand meaning at all. I can write &, and it has some meaning for me. it symbolizes something for me, without making anything about what it symbolizes public. Meaning is not something public. It can be made public, but it is inherently private.
How come that is not the very same subjectivism you’re criticising in the top paragraph of your post?
You might mean ‘first person’, rather than ‘private’, perhaps?
Incidentally, a snippet from the Aeon article I mentioned on Claude Shannon:
Sounds a fascinating character.
In the top paragraph, addressed to apokrisis, I am not criticizing subjectivism I am proposing it as opposed to apo's objectivism. Apokrisis claimed that the words of communication exist as actual constraints on interpretation. I insisted that Apokrisis has this turned around, what constrains interpretation is the habits of the individual who is interpreting. In relation to interpretation, the words are just a passive thing being interpreted, and the interpretation depends on how the individual recognizes them. So all constraints on interpretation must be in the mind of the interpreter.
Apokrisis turns final cause around, such that it is not associated with the will and intent of the individual, but it is supposed to be the function of some phantom being, called "society", as if society has its own intentions and thereby constrains individuals to do what it wills.
I agree that some media or containers are better suited to convey specific types of information, much like it is better to use a picture than to describe a place using words. That said, you could still describe the place using words and convey the same information; it would just take a lot of words.
Quoting Akanthinos
Sorry, I did not understand that paragraph. Could you perhaps rephrase it?
You bring a good point, but yet I think we can still think without using words or images, or imagining any other containers. Think of the concept of 'justice'. Can you describe this concept with words? It may be possible but I can't because I don't know its essence yet. Can you use an image for it? The concept itself does not seem to be physical. And yet, the word 'justice' is not a meaningless word, and I'm sure we can all use it correctly to describe a specific situation. This goes to show that we can think about some concepts like 'justice' without having to rely on containers.
Perfect. Then we agree that the form our ability to learn a language takes is innate - physical - a product of evolution. So then how do you go from saying it is a product of evolution to saying that those explanations don't explain some aspect of language that isn't biological. That seems like a pretty big assumption - that language isn't biological in every sense. If biology can't explain all of it, then what do you think will - and what is it that is missing? The way our minds work is also biological, and would therefore be acted on by natural selection. What do you think learning is, if not natural selection acting on our minds and shaping the way they interact with and understand the world in order to propagate genes more efficiently?
I can't begin to explain. That is why I ignored your posts before - it's not as if I don't think there's an answer, or that I don't have a response, but that in order to get to the point where you would understand what the point was, we would have to discuss a completely different topic. I might consider starting a new thread on this point, but it's not relevant to this thread.
//edit// - I've created a separate thread to address these topics.
The public\private dichotomy does not help us here, and it is not toward it that my use of the term "public" was aimed, but rather to the fact that the initial act of assignment, the first time someone establish that & means "and", that must be at least at some point be shared to the processors. If "&" has meaning for you, it is because you also have access to another bit of information, that is, the meaning of "&" as "and".
Put even more simply : the identity established between the information of the spoken sentence "Montréal is in Québec" and the written sentence "Montréal is in Québec" is an additional piece of information which is only born out of the processing of those two different item of data by an efficient processor.
This does not inform us on essential properties of the information medium, but on properties of the data post processing.
Yeah. I'm not arguing that art should be doing science's job somehow. My position here is about how art is employed in the social construction of what it means to be a modern Western mind. A painting is exactly like a bicycle in making it obvious how you are meant to view your world. It is another part of the technology that Heidegger was talking about.
If something is hung in a gallery as if its contains sacred meaning, then we know the hushed tone and clever reverence with which we must approach it to be "part of the club" - even if it shit in a can.
Quoting t0m
I do presume naturalism. And I think that gets at what you mean because it says everything is connected in that everything emerges from the same primordial ooze. Humans weren't inserted into the world by divine intention. And none of us are truly individual as we are all creatures formed by a context.
So naturalism is the organic view, the developmental view. I agree science is often Scientism - the mechanical or reductionist view.
This is too cynical, IMV. No doubt that's part of it, but "hushed tone and clever reverence" as the highest aspect of experiencing art ? Also reducing paintings to bicycles seems a little extreme. I'm no Heidegger scholar, but it's my understanding that he gave art a high place (especially poetry) as one of the ways that the world is revealed.
Heidegger aside, I contend that we use art to make sense of the world as much as we use physical science. Isn't what you individually experience as a whole a function to some degree of the art you've been exposed to? I can understand deciding to ignore that and do metaphysics in a way that ignores the subjective aspect. But from my point of view it's a reduction of the field, justified by an attachment to a more reliable if narrower method.
I can relate to that. One could even say that the forms are outside of space and time in the sense that they make space and time possible. I suppose Kant put them outside of space and time. For me there are basic forms (like the intuition of unity) that are truly outside of the time. They are always already there. That intuitively grasped "unit" is why (some) math is eternal truth, for instance, IMV. Other concepts like "justice," however, are arguably subject to the "dialectic" or historical evolution. So they would be "in" time. For Kojeve man "is" time as an embodied concept system increasing in complexity and self-knowledge. The "forms" are the intelligible-speakable form of self-describing reality itself.
But that's a digression. I sense a flame too. Or really I'm on the bonfire. Meaning is the least deniable thing, one might say. To deny meaning is to employ meaning. To insist that meaning is physical is to employ the meaning of 'physical.' The "physical" is already an abstract entity. As Hegel noted, we can't point at an particular unless it's already conceptualized and included in a universal, even if it's just the universal of the thing devoid of other determinations. There's already the projection of unity, that most basic and eternal of meanings as I see it.
You got it. Not so much ‘outside’ as ‘prior to’. But, right on the money.
I should maybe say that they make space and time possible as concepts. They make talking about space and time possible? Putting event A before event B in an intelligible way, saying that X is to the right of Y.
Note the "message" is a random set of data. Quite deliberately a meaningless pattern. So you can't cheat by posting A, B, C,.. The test is a transmission of symbols of maximum uncertainty. One shouldn't give you any information about the next for free.
Quoting Wayfarer
Oh that occurred to you? It's also mentioned in the criticisms section on the page. ;)
Quoting Wayfarer
The physics comes into it as enough granite boulders would form a gravitational field so strong they would collapse to create a black hole. More bits could thus be stored in a volume of space if they were scratched on grains of sand. And even more if they could be dents in microscopic flakes of silica.
So you see where this is going. Eventually there is a plankscale limit on the possible information content of a volume of space. See this good SciAm article -
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~bekenste/Holographic_Univ.pdf
Indeed. Aren't they Kant's 'primary intuitions'? But I'm so glad you see the point. Really this is the single issue that has been my main interest, ever since joining forums, which must be getting near to 10 years. It has to do with the fact that rationality, rational relations, can be understood to be true with reference to nothing other than thought itself, and yet (miraculously) they are also predictive with respect to phenomena. It really is an astonishing thing, which most people simply take for granted - like, they use it all the time, without actually noticing what an amazing faculty it is. That is actually the primary sentiment behind the essay of Wigner's, 'The Unreasonable Efficiency of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences'. Why should it be that the 'laws of thought' can unlock all of these undiscovered facets of reality? That, I think, is near to the heart of the entire Pythagorean-Platonic-Aristotelian tradition.
My question was about the equivalence of thermodynamic and logical entropy - the 'equation' which you referred to. So I looked it up, and that is a question about it. I strongly suspect that Claude Shannon created his equation on the model of Bolzmann's equation, but that it is basically an analogy. But I'm willing to be corrected if I'm wrong.
From that article I cited, this might help....
Note also that Boltzmann's entropy is based on probability theory foundations - statistical mechanics. The point about energy/temperature relate to the earlier classical entropy equations of Clausius - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(classical_thermodynamics)
You would have spotted that wrinkle in the criticism section that occurred to you.
So it is why the conclusion is....
This is what I claim to be mistaken though. It's very likely that the first time someone wrote down that symbol, it had meaning only for that person, until that person explained to someone else what it means. We find this in mathematics quite frequently. A physicist producing a theory will introduce a new symbol. That symbol has meaning only for that physicist, within that theory, until other physicists are exposed to the theory.
Quoting Wayfarer
One point which I've been trying to make in this thread, is that it came to Plato's attention that these Forms which are outside of, or prior to material existence, are not the human conceptions of universals as is commonly attributed to Platonism in the modern representation, they are, as described in "The Timaeus", the forms of individual, particular objects.
The conclusion that there is an immaterial Form, which is prior to the material existence of each and every particular object is derived from two principal premises. One of the premises is concerned with the nature of intention, will, "the good". The other premise is concerned with the nature of material existence in relation to the passing of time.
Aristotle uses a slightly different method to prove that the form is prior to the material existence of the object. He produces his law of identity, which is an inductive principle derived from the uniqueness of every particular material thing. Every material thing is unique, so a prior form is necessary to ensure this uniqueness. This also can be derived from the principle of sufficient reason. There must be a reason why every thing is unique.
As I said, he derived a fundamental measure by assuming the message to be maximally meaningless - just some random binary sequence. So that means no matter how meaningful (or otherwise) your message, Shannon information defines the logical space it takes up in the world.
Meaningful messages can be pretty compact as a fragment could be used to deduce the whole. Contextual knowledge could be applied. But what Shannon was tackling was the problem of being sure your incoming message hasn’t been corrupted by noise.
So the strictest test of that is the accurate reception of a message where each symbol is random and completely unpredictable from the others before and after. The risk of uncertainty is the greatest. Therefore solve the noise issue there and you have your limiting case. You can quantify the worst your uncertainty would be. You know the limit to which a message may have been disordered.
On your other point, the tight connection between information and matter is something more recent. It is with the holographic principle that now spacetime can be viewed as imposing informational limits on material being. That is what the SciAm article is about.
I know! Shannon is of course concerned with quantitative representation of information - about the maximally efficient ways to compress and transmit information via electronic media. That is the problem the paper addresses, and we're all relying on Shannon's work every day. I am starting to see, now, why this is felt to be a kind of 'copernican revolution', because it greatly amplifies and generalises the scope of quantization. But it's not especially relevant for the metaphysics of meaning as I understand it.
Well I explained why in fact it is. If you can quantify, you can do science. So Shannon clears the decks for the assault on semantics.
At the start of the thread I cited the way that information theory, and indeed its "ugly twin", entropy theory, are being employed to make sense of life and mind - material systems that are clearly "all about the meanings". So you have Shannon information-based metrics, like mutual information, self-information, ascendency and dozens of other ways of now measuring the semantic content of material systems.
My favourite model of the way the brain works - Friston's Bayesian brain - jumps right over to the entropy view. It talks about brains being systems to minimise free energy. So what that does is convert neuroscience into thermodynamics.
We already know that thermodynamics explains biology in a general way. And biology explains psychology. So this is making that relationship mathematically precise. Something we can now go out and measure in those terms.
That sounds plausible. I read parts of Plato closely but have utterly neglected other parts. For me that's secondary, I suppose, because something like conceptualism is more plausible to me.
[quote=Wiki]
Particular objects are perceived, as it were, already infused with conceptuality stemming the spontaneity of the rational subject herself.
[/quote]
Because I know that (in some sense) I'm "in" a brain, it makes sense that a semi-automatic conceptual processing of sensory information is going on. Concept seems central to this processing. But this theory itself is part of the less automatic part of that processing, so we have a strange mobius strip. Concept is. Intelligibility is. Hypotheses about its nature or origin occur within this 'is.'
Right. That's how I understand it. Then entities are revealed as 'unities' in relation within these intuitions.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree. It's amazing. I think we tend to get "sucked in" to taking care of business that distracts us from wonder. As far as why thought can unlock reality, you probably remember that's one of my big issues. As I see it, introspection and mediation on what we tend to mean by "why" reveals that any 'explanation' has 'brute fact at its apex. For me this is fine. Wonder becomes a logical necessity, a conceptual result. It's not (only) how but that the world is that is the mystical or wonderful.
Was Parmenides struck with wonder? We know that Plato was influenced by Parmenides.
[quote =Parmenides]
One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is.
Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find thinking apart from what is, in relation to which it is uttered. (B 8.34–36)
For to be aware and to be are the same. (B 3)
It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not. (B 6.1–2)
You will know the aether’s nature, and in the aether all the/ signs, and the unseen works of the pure torch/ of the brilliant sun, and from whence they came to be,/ and you will learn the wandering works of the round-eyed moon/ and its nature, and you will know too the surrounding heaven,/ both whence it grew and how Necessity directing it bound it/ to furnish the limits of the stars. (Fr. 10)
…how the earth and sun and moon/ and the shared aether and the heavenly milk and Olympos/ outermost and the hot might of the stars began/ to come to be. (Fr. 11)
[/quote]
The idea that thinking and being are one seem proto-Kantian to me. Language-concept makes entities possible as entities. "It is" reveals or suggests pure intelligible presence.
Shannon's work is about 'the quantification of information', and science is also centred around quantification. Well and good, but it's a different matter to the metaphysics of meaning. What interests me, is the idea that rational and mathematical truths are real but not physical. Nor can they be derived from physical premises. In fact in order to arrive at any premisses, we have to employ them first.
I have to say something about ‘emerging from ooze’, also. I am not creationist, but I do think think that man embodies, or is, a ‘spark’ of the divine (which is a frequent expression in the mystical side of Greek philosophy.) So, ooze + spark. Much philosophical discipline is based on dis-identifying with the ooze so as to realise one’s tru nature as spark.
Quoting t0m
The Parmenides is one of the principal dialogues. It's deeply mystical. The difficulty is with these materials, such words as 'thought' and 'knowledge' - and even 'is'! - are laden with unstated meanings that have to be drawn out by scholars expert in the tradition (which I'm certainly not).
One key point of the Parmenides the introductory section wherein he meets various goddesses and then travels to 'the meeting place of day and night'. That is often interpreted as a reference to a similar kind of non-dualism that is found in other cultures of that time, notably Indian. "What is', is rather like the Indian 'sat' , or truth. Perhaps it denotes an awareness, typical of mysticism, that is in some sense beyond or outside time and space. It would have to be something like that, otherwise what he says makes no sense.
The Parmenides is said to be the origin of systematic metaphysics, i.e. the first attempt to infer the nature of reality on the basis of logic alone. When stated baldly, it sounds completely implausible - that what is, cannot not be, and what is not, cannot come to be. But I think where the Parmenides is significant is as a pole in a dialectic (the other being Heraclitus). He sharpens the question, what do we really mean when we say what something is? Recall, this is generations before Aristotle with his ‘substance and accident’.
Obviously enigmatic, but I would say this is a reference to the apodictic reality of being - the same idea, basically, as the Cogito.
Ah yes, Hegel used that dialogue as an example of "the labor of the concept." Is it mystical? I've only skimmed it, and I wasn't the frame of mind to get absorbed by it. I'm not saying it's not.
Quoting Wayfarer
Interesting. That's plausible. As you may know and seem to hint at, Popper had a go at this. He understood it as "pure logical reasoning" as opposed to sense experience. The way of illusion is all the useful pragmatic "knowledge" that is metaphysically-logically false. IMV, that is a reasonable if limited interpretation. It's hard working with only fragments. The poetic form indicates a high feeling. Is that elation wonder or a sense of the power in the logic that pierces the rich illusion? Or both? Something else entirely? Something esoteric or mystical?
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm a broken record, but sharpening the question of what we mean by 'is' is the 'one thought' of Heidegger's life and work. That quote does remind me of the apodictic reality of being, and perhaps also of "only as phenomenology is ontology possible." But (following Heidegger) the tradition is 'wrong' to think of the phenomenon as a mask worn by the noumenon. The phenomenon is the thing itself from a different perspective that sidesteps the ultimately scientistic Cartesian framework that understands the human as a disinterested knower or isolated subject of the (mediated) extended matter in physics-space.
I like Parmenides' idea that all awareness is being. For practical reasons we divide this awareness between only-private and private-but-public-also. In our usual mode of talking, we start with agreed-upon alreadyclarified-or-revealed or 'thematized' phenomona. But our most human mode employs a "productive logic" or poesis that "opens" a field for science (or just 'business') by disclosing-inventing the entities and basic framework involved.
What appeals to me especially is getting behind or around all the pre-interpretedness that we don't think to question (since it's almost invisible as we use it) that traps our thinking in certain loops.
That was probably the first sense of "inform", where Plato referred to the creation of particular things as matter being informed. Matter is passive, and receives a form. Aristotle produced a similar description of the mind, it receives intelligible objects, as forms. This produced the need for the "passive intellect" to account for the reception of forms. The Neo-Platonists and Christians went even further to say that matter is created in the act of informing.
"Information" properly refers to the act of informing, though we commonly use it as a noun referring to a thing called "information". If "information" refers to the activity of informing, then it really doesn't make sense to speak of information as not being physical, because the passive thing receiving the form will be physical. There are two parts to the act of informing, the immaterial form, and the material thing receiving the form. If "information" is used as a noun, referring to the thing doing the informing, then we are speaking of nothing other than th e forms themselves. And if the forms are assumed to be non-physical, i.e. exist independently from matter, such independent existence needs to be demonstrated logically.
The independent existence of forms is necessitated by Aristotle's cosmological argument, that is the necessary logical demonstration. The consequence of this principle is that not only is matter a passive receiver of forms, but matter is created in the act of information. This accounts for the fact that the living soul creates its own material body.
So you want a definition of meaning. And you don’t think it useful to first have a definition of the meaningless?
Mathematical truths seem fundamental in some crucial way, yet you don’t seem impressed when two such opposed things - information and entropy - are shown to be mathematically the same?
You’re a tough crowd. :)
Do you have any kind of definition of the semantic as yet? My impression is that anytime meaning is mentioned, your mind skips immediately to the necessity of a self experiencing that meaning. That is where all he mystification begins. Meanings can’t be just acted upon. They must be felt. They are not just states of interpretation or information that constrains, they are understood, appreciated, perceived, known to be.
So a meaning encodes a point of view. Yet points of view are then by definition particular, personal, individual. That is why sharing meanings is a fraught business. Likewise any claims to be able to measure meaning in any objective or scientific fashion. Your way of thinking about meaning - as rooted in the subjectivity of the singular point of view - already defeats any possibility of all attempted objective descriptions.
You’ve set up a nice fortress of presumptions to protect your view of semantics. So you don’t need to take the generalisations of the philosophy of semiotics, or the science of information, seriously.
Even though that generalisation project is arriving at its mathematical terminus. Somehow you can hold mathematics in the highest regard, yet ignore it completely when it comes to the generalisation of semantics.
I really like the way you’ve been expressing this. But I think the weakness is that it depends heavily on the metaphysical truth of some communal or shared state of being, when the phenomenal mind is so completely private and unshared.
So it is both an appealing notion - expressed in many philosophies - but also fails unless we can define the “ground state” in something other than the usual mentalistic terms.
Alluding to the divine kind of works for me if it again has nothing to do with anthropomorphic creators, or creating forces.
There is a mathematical magic at the heart of Peircean metaphysics, a self-making relation that can call forth being from its pure inescapable logic. And then that meaning-forming, structure-creating device points deeper to its own ground, its own precondition, in the “not-being” of Apeiron, of Firstness or vagueness.
So reality swims into existence. And it condenses out of neither some ur-substance, nor some rarified divine mind - ur-phenomenology. The ur-potential of the Apeiron has to be a still more subtle concept.
Yet I can see that that approach to metaphysics is by-passing phenomenal being, which is actually the basis of our particular being as humans. So to match the ur-objectivity of the pansemiotic metaphysics I just described, there is then the ur-subjective description that would formally complement that.
There is here the possibility of two complementary metaphysical projects.
To my mind this brings up the grounds of phenomenology --or actually its groundlessness. "To the things themselves." But what normalizes this discourse? How do we know that Heidegger is "correct" about being-in and being-with-others as the phenomenon? It just "sounds right." It convinces. Since the phenomenon is the "thing-in-itself" for Heidegger, this is still "metaphysical" in some sense. But strives for some analogue of presuppositionlessness. Yet the method itself reveals that things are always already preinterpreted. This is the "guilt" of being Dasein, of having a past, of not being able to get behind the past. I believe this is what is meant by "finitude." The "perfect" phenomenology is impossible. Or rather an attempt to go to the things themselves reveals the impossibility of taking an eternal-atemporal or before-the-past view of them. Being is so entangled with time as history (preinterpretedness) that we can't have it pure.
As far as "mentalistic" goes, I think trying to get beyond this framework is a big part of radical phenomenology. I guess this is already in Hume. Look for the subject and you can't find it. It exists in a certain sense only in the way we use the word "I." The distinction mind-matter is also a tool that works in daily situations that philosophers have tended to absolutize. We try to reify a mark-noise that exists for the most part as a ready-to-hand tool. We look for a present-at-hand "non-physical
" entity just because we have the word 'mind' misleadingly ripped out of context/use. It's the same with the word 'real.' Perhaps (later) Wittgenstein is usefully thought of as a phenomenologist of language use. But philosophers don't want to understand his critique, since it threatens the project of building a crystal castle from these reifications.
Quoting apokrisis
I'm with Feuerbach on the divine. It's "just" the highest human feeling-thinking. Of course this "just" is also the most unjust adjective possible here. For me the usual alien creators or forces are dead machines. They have life only to the degree that we project what is most highly human on them. The "philosopher's god" often strikes me as a scratching of the systematizing itch. I'm not saying such an itch as bad. I'm suggesting a continuum of notions of the divine. On one side there is love, for instance, and on the other side a "mechanical" apex employed the knowledge-hero.
Quoting apokrisis
I can somewhat relate to this. There is a "productive logic" that calls beings from being which is nothing (Heidegger's idea) or from the apeiron. There is emergence from a postulated background or source. Being is not itself a being. Or our image of the source is not the source itself. Our image of the source emerges from the source as its self-representation. I think we agree that distinctions emerge, that no distinction is fundamental. There is a kind of logic that is ontology. Reality is a self-thinking "thought," but of course "thought" is the wrong word here. The "thought" cannot be mental, since thought or difference or distinction is prior to the mental-physical dichotomy as its condition of possibility.
Quoting apokrisis
I agree, to the degree that I understand. For me there is a "Hegelian" project (or Peircian) and a "Heideggerian" project. I can imagine complementarity and I can also just see both projects as fascinating and worthwhile in themselves. We can such try to see clearly what it is like to be human in the non-theoretical mode (by seeing around this theoretical mode) and we can push the theoretical mode to extremes.
So maybe Plato was proto-Kantian? I'm understanding Heidegger at the moment as an "improved" Kant. It seems that Kant was most interested in understanding the possibility of Newtonian nature. He was interested in the possibility of objectivity. It was a "scandal" that there was still no proof of the objective world. For Heidegger it was a scandal that such a proof was thought necessary. A less biased look sees how purpose-driven our informing of the substratum or matter is. The disinterested staring at present-at-hand entities is not at all our primary mode of experience of what is. "Matter" is revealed to us for the most part as resource or tool-to-be-used. Language use involves a deep sense of being-in and being-with. True statements conform not to some dead external "matter" but to being-with and being-in.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For me "information" doesn't have a fixed meaning. There is the modern scientific meaning properly used within that context and then the vague everyday meaning successfully vaguely employed non-scientifically. I do like the background you provided. To in-form as the imposition of form is nice. I also see matter as created in a distinction that is not material. We use a sign to refer to what is not sign.
I'm not after a definition of meaning, really. It's too fundamental a term to admit of definition - 'what's the meaning of meaning' :-} . I'm simply saying that the ability to quantize information, important as that indubitably is, doesn't necessarily tell us that much about the original point of the thread, namely, the nature of reason and the ontological status of abstract 'objects'. I'm very interested in that original meaning of the idea of 'intelligibility', and I think it's something that has been lost or forgotten, rather than superseded; just because something is archaic, doesn't mean it is obsolete.
The other point, as I mentioned to tOm, is that there can't be any way to quantify meaning, really. The example I gave was: imagine a short string of text, like, for instance, a ground-breaking or seminal scientific discovery, like the Laws of Motion. In terms of an amount of information, you can calculate what it would take to digitise it, store it and transmit it -actually it would be a trivial amount of information it today's world - but the meaning of those ideas, and the consequences of discovering them, are impossible to quantify.
Quoting apokrisis
Very good observation, and thanks for it. Yes, I do think that, in fact, I can't see how it can be any other way. That's why I don't get the idea of 'states of interpretance' without a mind that interprets - as discussed here in some of the other posts.
if we take this as a principle, we can refer to two distinct ways that forms are imposed in the act of informing. In the one case, we accept intelligible forms into our mind in understanding, and in the other case, we impose intelligible forms onto the material world, in the act of creating.
How do we relate "information" to this? I like to think of information as the act which is either the passive mind receiving the form in understanding, or the matter of the material world receiving the form in creating. This act of informing can be called information. But what is this thing which is called "information", which is supposed to be somehow independent from the act of informing? is it just the form itself, or is it something other than the form?
I think the everyday understanding is that information is "meaning." But what is meaning? And what is the "is" here? I suggest that we approach the irreducible with these questions.
Not only intermingled but (until the expression terminates) deferred are the meanings that gel to constitute this sentence. I'm suggesting that plucking individual forms out of this intermingling, deferred flow is already a reduction-for-convenience of what it is to think. I suppose "forms" are the "atoms" of thinking, yet these forms don't "snap together" in a simple way. The whole is greater than the parts. Can we get behind this meaning-making? I think we can make it more conspicuous. We can peel off our unwitting projections of what it "should" be.
If I understand, your hypothesis is close to Kant's, which claims that the perceived data is modified in the mind, and is therefore different from the raw data from outside the mind? But then how do you explain that when both you and I read the message "Montréal is in Québec", we both perceive the same information, such that we can have a coherent conversation about it? It seems to me that the simplest hypothesis is that we are both observing the same outer object.
I think I know what Apo had in mind. The 'pure' individual is an abstraction, just as 'pure' society is an abstraction. Yes we have (practically) distinct bodies, but we swim in a language picked up through interaction. The foundation of our interpretative software is social. That which me might associate with the 'pure' individual is something like a fresh, top 'layer' of the interpretative software. The great poet, scientist, or philosopher makes an interpretative leap that can slowly 'seep down' into to the lower, shared layers of interpretation. 'Irrational' metaphors become literal, common sense.
So the brain-mind is an individual piece of hardware running largely social software. That's why constraints are (arguably) to some degree constrained by a 'phantom being.' As I see it, the 'pure ego' is arguably just a deeply embraced interpretation of what it is to be there. IMV, meaning-being is prior, though I understand that practically it's justified in thinking the primacy of the "I" that experiences meaning-being.
Per Luciano Floridi, I don't see information as a distinction which makes a difference. That describes data. I describe data (in terms which currently make sense to me) as physical or mental variables.
Floridi calls dedomena "pure data", and describes them as that which is inferred from, and required by, experience. Depending on one's interpretation, these may correspond to the notion of Form in a Platonic and/or Aristotelian sense.
So, for me, information is relational data.
I think that in the strictest sense, meaning is defined as "what is meant". This implies the intent of the author. In a different sense, we have "what it means to me". This implies interpretation. I believe it is important to keep these two senses separate, and not to equivocate, because the first requires an author, the second does not. So in the second sense, things have meaning to me which I do not believe have an author. Also, in communication there is often a difference between what is meant by the author, and what it means to me, due to difficulties in expressing, and difficulties in interpreting.
There are other ways in which "meaning" is used, which tend to be various different ways of conflating the two above ways, in ambiguity. Principally there is often assumed "what it means to us". Because of the separation between individuals, outlined above, I don't accept these senses as having any philosophical rigour, so I look at them as untenable principles.
Quoting t0m
I do not think that "the individual" is an abstraction. I believe it is a logical principle posited for the sake of intelligibility, i.e.it is necessary to assume individuals in order to understand reality. The unit is the basis for all mathematics, and the subject is the basis for deductive logic. Each of these is an assumed individual. It may not even be correct to call "the individual" an "assumption", because it seems to just inhere within the soul, and is necessarily prior to all intelligibility.
So the "assumption" of the individual, which inheres within the soul, is a fundamental tool to the active intellect which abstracts, and creates abstractions. But I do not think that this tool is an abstraction itself, it must be something inherent within the active intellect. This is evident from the way that we perceive things with sight. We always see individual objects, as if there is a boundary between one object and another. It is inherent within that mode of perception, that we perceive such separations, and without this the world would be unintelligible. Furthermore, it is evident that in all of our senses, what is sensed is differences, but the active intellect, when it produces abstractions, does this by correlating similarities. So an abstraction is based in similarity, while "the individual" is based in difference. I believe that "the individual" is more primordial to the soul than "the abstraction".
This is why philosophers have so much difficulty with identity, and the concept of "same". There is a sense of "same" which is based in similarity, used in abstraction, such that all human beings are the same, as human beings. There is another sense of "same", which is based in difference, it is used to identify the temporal continuity of an object, such that I am the same individual as myself twenty years ago, and this is based in the assumption that I, as an object, am separate, different from everything else.
Quoting Galuchat
I haven't yet managed to grasp your distinction between information and data. Here, you imply that information is a certain type of data, and data you describe as variables. What makes a certain type of variable informational? If it is that the variable is relational, isn't this just something which a mind carries out? Anyway, isn't "relation" implied already within the concept of "variable"? So aren't all variables, by their very nature as variables, necessarily relational?
Right, but this doesn't approach the 'is' itself or what it means to mean. If meaning is what is meant, then what is this 'what' that is meant? We tend to 'move around' in a 'field' without noticing or questioning this field itself. What is intelligibility?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For me this stays on the surface. I'm asking what it means for something to mean something in the first place, apart from the difficulties of communication and interpretation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree that the notion of the pure subject is basic to common sense. But you neglected to address the context in which I made this statement. We meet reality in terms of a language that is social, shared. So I am perhaps mostly 'us' in the way I unveil reality. Language is central here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree. There is a 'primary intuition' of unity. It can't be pointed to in the environment. It's 'there' in the way the environment is interpreted as 'circles within circles.' The parts within a whole are themselves wholes which can contain parts. The 'totality' is the circle we draw around everything. It's a digression, but I contend that this largest circle (the totality) has to be 'brute fact' to the degree that explanations are understood as deductions from postulated necessary relationships between entities. This unity is connected to that unity in particular way. The unity of all these unities can be related to nothing apart from itself, since by definition there is no such thing.
I don't think my hypothesis constitutes an ontological position, such as that held by Kant in regards to constructivism. I've simply brought forward the fact that identity is a property which can only be attributed to two different format of the same informational particulars iff the processor is capable of attributing the same meaning to each of the two instances. I.E. that the processor already know how those two
instances are related to each other, thanks to possessing another piece of information, that is, the proper interpretative rules associated to each format. As such, I think this identity does not inform us of the properties of the medium, but of properties of the processor.
Therefore there is no problem with the judgment that the information contained in two different readings of the sentence "Montréal is in Québec" is the same, because in those cases the identity is established in regards to the same result obtained from the same interpretative rules. It is because the sign restrict (to a certain degree) the range of possible meanings as interpreted by processors similarly primed that we will likely arrive to the same reading of the same sentence.
So you are saying that in order for me to acquire the message "Montréal is in Québec" from a letter and from a voicemail, I must be able to read, hear, and speak english; is that correct? And if I did not, then I may misinterpret the information and acquire a different message? But there is objectively a correct interpretation of the information, that is, a correct message, and all other interpretations would be incorrect, would it not? So objectively, it would still be the same message in both mediums, independent of the subject's ability to interpret them correctly.
Well, you must understand spoken english and written english, which for the purpose of the questionning here might as well be two different languages. And you must understand both statements to mean the same thing, and this despite the interpretation rules being different (after all, reading and understanding a sentence is not, at all, the same as listening and understanding the same sentence).
This is why I don't think that the argument you brought forth, that is, that the same information can be in two different medium suggest that information isn't physical, actually can put weight one way or another. The identity of the two messages is established only after connected interpretations take place in the same processor, and therefore belongs to process, not the information.
I'm not entirely sure the objectivity/subjectivity dichotomy, anymore than the public/private dichotomy really belongs in this line of questionning. Again, objectivity and subjectivity are determined intra-lingua, so to speak, in the sense that we'll treat information differentely if we know that the state-of-affairs it refers to is subjective or objective. The information itself, the piece of data, doesn't exhibit it's objectivity or subjectivity.
Right, that is what I was addressing, what it means for something to mean something. What I said, is that there are two distinct ways to approach this. One way is "what it means to me". The other way is to assume an author, and from this approach, what it means to mean something is viewed as the intention of the author, or creator of the thing.
Do you see the difference between these two ways? In the first sense, what it means to mean something is that the thing has been interpreted by a subject, as having some value to that subject. In the second sense, what it means to mean something is that the thing has been created by a being with intention.
My point is, that these two ways are very different, and quite distinct. But in many instances people will state what it means to mean something, as an ambiguous conflation of these two, or else by introducing other unnecessary principles. So, for example, as a variance on the first way, some will say that what it means to mean something, is "has been interpreted as having value to us", instead of "has been interpreted as having value to me". This appears to be the most common way that "information" is used, "has been evaluated by us". The problem with this is that it assumes a "common interpretation", proper to "us", when interpretation is inherently subjective. The "common interpretation" implies a value structure which is common to us, when values are inherently subjective.
What I see is two possible resolutions to this issue. We can say that meaning is inherently subjective, what it means to mean something, is to have some value to a subject. Or, we can give objectivity to meaning by saying that what it means to mean something, is to have been created with intention. In this case the thing is assumed to have one objective meaning, which corresponds with, or is, the intent of the author.
Quoting t0m
I don't see how you get "I am mostly us" out of this. Yes, it's true that we are influenced by language and other human beings, but we are also influenced by everything else around us, and each person is a unique individual. By your principle, we might just as well say "I am the universe". But you cannot assign priority to the whole, in this way, because you must respect the meaning of "part". Therefore you must say "I am part of us". And by doing this you give logical priority to the individual "I". This logical priority is established because reason proceeds from the more certain toward the lesser certain. And what the term "I" refers to is much more certain than what the term "us" refers to. Therefore "I" is as the premise, and "us" is as the conclusion, when we add the premise that a collection is a whole..
Quoting t0m
But this is exactly opposite of what I am saying, and that's probably why come to the opposite conclusion, that "I am mostly us", rather than my conclusion that "us is a collection of Is". What you call the "primary intuition of unity" is actually what is pointed to in the environment. We see individual things as individual unities, surrounding us. This is why I called it a primordial "assumption", it is not proper to the active intellect, as inherent within it, it is produced by experience. So it cannot be called an intuition, it must be assumed by the active intellect. And without assuming this principle of individuality, nothing is intelligible.
Quoting t0m
That there is a totality, a whole, the universe, is produced by a completely different process than the assumption of individuality. It is produced by a process of reason, so it is necessarily posterior to the assumption that there are individuals. Remember, we proceed from the most certain to the less certain, and we are quite certain that there are individual things around us. However, since we conceive of things as individuals, this necessitates a boundary of separation between other things, such that we cannot properly conceive of a boundless thing, infinity. So we posit a boundary which produces the whole, the universe, as an individual thing, attempting to make everything intelligible rather than infinite. But this conceived whole, "the universe" is just some vague notion, produced by our inability to conceive of things other than as individuals, just like "us" is some vague notion of a whole, which is produced by our inability to conceive of things other than as individuals, such that "us" is proposed as some sort of individual, and "the universe" is proposed as some sort of individual.
From my perspective, your're underestimating the 'power' of language here. You seem to take the subject as an absolute without understanding the subject as a sign or concept that only gets its content or meaning via its relations to other concepts. Concepts exist systematically. 'I' learn how to use the word 'I,' just as I learn to use the word 'fair' or 'good,' but I'm not so sure that there are crystalline entities that correspond the intelligibly distinct symbols. This perception of the symbols as distinct wholes is what I have in mind in the intuition of unity. If we ignore the deferment of (happening right now) meaning and just 'stare' at a sign or object, we can pluck it out from its background (circle it). Math with integers is 'certain' precisely because we work with the 'pure form' of unity. In my view, the pure subject is related to this intuition of unity. 'I' learn to understand myself as distinct, a 'crystalline' metaphysical object distinct from the not-I, itself 'enclosed' in a 'circle' and ripped out of the flow of meaning-making, meaning-being.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
For me this experience of the subject as more certain than the 'us' is an inherited pre-interpretation of the situation. We start from something like the Cartesian subject without questioning it. We don't look at the 'things themselves.' It's even hard if not impossible to look at our experience 'around' what's 'encrusted' in the language we begin with. 'Phenomenology' is a good name for the thrust against our 'finitude' (our typically binding inherited mostly- invisible interpretative frameworks.)
This is close to the heart of the matter. The question is about the reality of concepts. According to (old school) realism, it is the mind's ability to understand universals that is the basis for rational judgement; that is what is meant by 'intelligibility'; and universals are real, not simply 'in the mind'. That is what leads to all of the conundrums about 'where they are', and the sense in which they can be said to exist. Nowadays we say that what exists is 'out there somewhere'; which illustrates how we can only conceive of things that exist within space-time. Whereas, universals precede space-time.
So one solution to this problem is that universals are indeed concepts, and that concepts are purely psychological in nature; universals are said to be simply general concepts, that can be applied to whole classes, and not simply to particulars. (This is called 'conceptualism'). There's nothing corresponding to concepts in reality, it's simply the way that the mind operates. It's a natural position to take, as most people are comfortable with the idea that such things exist 'in the mind'. Then you can explain them in terms of adaption to the environment and neural architecture; in other words, in terms of evolutionary biology.
The view I favour is that universals are actually inherent in the structure of reality - they're not simply concepts, because they're predictive of features of reality that otherwise we couldn't know. And ultimately this is because things are neither 'outside' nor 'inside' the mind; it is, rather, that 'outside' and 'inside' are both fundamental mental constructs. Consequently, we can't think without the rules of logic, grammar and number; they literally 'inform our experience' of what is 'outside' us, but in the sense that they underlie or precede our knowledge and experience (per Kant).
Naively, we believe that numbers are 'in here' and we 'impose' them on the world 'out there'; but experience is not actually divided up so neatly as that. This is tied to the question of 'synthetic a priori' judgements and the 'unreasonable efficiency of mathematics'. And I think this has to do with the fact that numbers (and the like), being neither objective nor subjective, are actually transcendental; they possess a kind of inherent truth that thought must utilise, but can't explain, because it can't explain anything without assuming their truth. But there's no place that corresponds with 'transcendental' in modern empiricism; what exists has to be 'out there somewhere'. Hence the dismissal of the 'ghostly realm of Universals' (which goes right back to Aristotle).
I think my view is that our instinctive naive realism presumes that our well-adapted brain is the source of universals, but that nature is devoid of meaning, and we therefore 'impose' those meanings on nature. That is the source of subjectivism and relativism which is pretty well standard issue nowadays. So I'm trying to recover the sense in which universals are attributes of reality itself, and not simply the artifacts of a well-adapted hominid brain.
I don't understand what you're saying here. Perhaps you could explain. As far as I understand, a sign is created, and therefore there must be a subject prior to the existence of the sign, such that it is impossible for the subject to be a sign.
Admittedly this is deep water. The Mobius strip is no joke. We are in a world that is in us that is in the world, etc.
Do you remember a time 'before language,' before being immersed in signs? Do you remember being a pure subject without access to the sign? Or was your ability to understand yourself made possible 'within' or 'with' language? But what is this language? Is it really conceivable apart from our movements in the 'primordial' world of 'being-with-others.' I don't mean the systematic nature that we learn as an abstraction. I mean learning to turn doorhandles, flush toilets, not bump into furniture, stand at the right distance from others, 'comport' ourselves appropriately.
Our pre-theoretical immersion in the world includes (some have argued) a non-theoretical sense of being-with-others. We see objects not as meaningless shapes but in terms of what they are good for and what they mean not only for us but also for others. The metaphysical-scientific tendency is to 'deworld' or rip away all of this in the pursuit of an eternal skeleton. It does the same thing with language, too, ripping concepts out of the deferment and entangledness of meaning in order to just stare at an 'atom' of meaning. It needs crisp context-independent meaning to build an timeless image of the timeless skeleton.
I understand that 'consciousness' is apparently tied a particular brain that can be located in space and time. On the other hand, 'consciousness' is 'being itself' somehow. That we survive to see the death of others suggests that there is some substratum apart from our own brain that nevertheless opens up the 'there' in which all of these concepts exist. So I believe in something like the metaphysical subject of Wittgenstein, but it does seem to be a notion that evolved historically within language. We create pointers to the 'there' that themselves only exist within the there. "Being is not a being." Any specification of the 'subject' is already saying too much. The 'subject' is is itself? But this is said within a shared field of meaning that apparently has its foundation in a substratum. Deep water. I don't pretend to have it all figured out. Just sharing a bit of my own (largely borrowed and inherited) thinking...
*I highly recommend The Concept of Time. It's the first draft of B&T, only 100 pages. By no means am I saying that Heidegger is the last word. I'm just delighted by 1920s Heidegger having previously been in a Hegel phase.
It does seem that we have ripped apart meaning and 'reality' for practical reasons. Dazzled by utility, we forget that this ripping-apart always already exists within a field of meaning or understanding of being. We take a useful fiction as an absolute. This useful fiction, a mere tool, is made sacred. It becomes a hardened notion of the rational itself (the 'technical interpretation of thinking.') We learn a basic notion of the world as resources to be used/conserved, dead-stuff about which we can be correct. The value-layer is something else, important perhaps but not 'theologically' real like the stuff we can be correct about. If I critique this worldview in terms of its incorrectness, however, then I slip into the essence of the paradigm. I criticize the technical interpretation thinking within the technical interpretation of thinking. For me this is like religion that learns to understand itself as an opposing scientific framework, metaphysical as opposed to physical.
I do think we can grasp universals as atoms to some degree, but the phenomenon of deference (which I learned about (or to see) in Bennington's Derrida) suggests that we usually have a 'field' of dynamic meaning. The flow of this payload semantic consider. Not atomically really operate in their employment the signs. Crystallization is both aesthetically and pragmatically justified, but there's something alluring in the in-the-faceness of the object of phenomenology.
On the other hand, we don't see how to build a gadget from it, so it's suspect. There is no such thing as experience, right? We fit what exists to the method, not the method to what exists. Philosophy asks questions that make the scientists giggle. 'Why is there someting rather than nothing' must refer to the absence of objects in the space of physics, not to the presence of the field of meaning or the there itself in which something a concept of space can exist. An anti-wonder is at work. Wonder is suspect. I even understand that. It is manly to be astonished at nothing. It's just girlish hysteria to find something surprising, uncanny. I strive for a neutrality that demonizes neither wonder nor anti-wonder. I want to see what's going on, maybe even as simply as possible but no simpler.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'd go so far to suggest that 'universals' (functioning together as the field of meaning) are the structure of reality. Reality as we experience it is deeply linguistic, conceptual, meaningful. The subject-object paradigm breaks down to some degree when we understood the revelatory/creative power of language that we are perhaps too quick to think of as sounds that buzz over an otherwise meaningless space filled with unnamed objects. This space of unnamed objects is itself revealed/created by the language it demotes. It's useful sometimes to think in terms of a values as a film that sticks to what is really there. We learn a certain practically potent way of thinking the world and forget that this thinking of the world is not the world itself. (But this 'world itself' is not to be immediately understood in terms of the in-itself of physics. 'Logical space' seems to involve a basic intuition of being-with-others in a shared world of language. If we say that the physics world is an illusion, we aren't thinking of holding it against the world of physics to see its failure to correspond. We are holding it against a presumably shared world of experience. We mean that it is false in the sense that it conceals possible experience.)
How is my memory relevant to this point? Just because I do not remember the time before I learned how to talk doesn't mean that there wasn't a time when I didn't know how to talk. Surely you believe that I existed as a person prior to learning how to talk.
I think that you are confusing my existence as a subject, with my recognition of my existence as a subject. My existence as a subject is necessarily prior to my recognition of such existence, so it doesn't make sense for you to refer to my recognition of my existence as a subject as the starting time of my existence as a subject.
Excellent post. I was recently musing that science proceeds on the basis of ‘what we can explain’ and metaphysics with ‘what explains us’. That takes a sense of humility which ‘homo faber’ doesn’t much care for.
Thanks for your contributions in this thread, it’s helped me to see how what I’m thinking about maps against contemporary philosophical ideas.
This is where you and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum. I see the structure of reality in particular entities. The human mind understands in terms of universals, but this is the deficiency of the human mind, which makes reality so difficult to it.
I refute your argument by claiming that the information is in the container, independent of the ability of the subject to interpret it. If a letter says "Montréal is in Québec", then that is the message on the letter, regardless if people can read it or not. And if they interpret something else from reading it, due to inability to read properly, then they have obtained an incorrect message. To say that a thing is incorrect implies that a correct thing exists. And if a correct message exists, then it must exist in the container.
..which is similar to what nominalism says, although it speaks about it in terms of concepts or names - hence, ‘nominalism’ - not necessarily a deficiency. But you are generally coming from a nominalist position in many of your comments. And hey, relax - I’m not accusing you of anything, it’s a philosophical dialogue.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Right - ideas aren’t physical. But physicalists will say that ideas exist in brains and brains are physical, therefore they’re also physical - no matter what you argue.
Well, I don't think it's really a nominalist position which I propose, because I respect the reality of universals.. I just say that it is more accurate to describe them as created by the human mind rather than as having independent existence, being discovered. This is the way that we can account for deficiencies and inaccuracies in our conceptualizations, by allowing that the concepts, though they have real immaterial existence within the immaterial minds of human beings, are creations of those minds.
I do allow for real independent immaterial Forms, but these are the forms of particulars, as described by the Neo-Platonists and Plato in the Timaeus. Therefore I have a duality of forms. Material existence is the medium between the independent Forms of particulars, and the forms of universals, abstractions within the human mind. This corresponds with primary and secondary substance in Aristotle. The important thing, in understanding the nature of reality is to not confuse the relation between the two types of forms and material existence. The relation between the human abstractions and material existence is an inversion of the relationship between the independent Forms and material existence, because one is prior to material existence while the other is posterior to it. I believe that this is a very important principle in understanding the nature of time.
I find that with metaphysical positions, they all have their good points and bad points, so it's not good to simply choose one over the other and support that position, because the other has some opposing principles. It's best to try and understand them all, and find the principles of consistency between them, because there always is principles of consistency.
What about cases where the information is non-factual? There's information in a song or in a melody, but the song doesn't refer to a factual state of the world. How about an order or an instruction?
Still, I think this mostly misses the point. That you could refer to one objectively correct way of interpreting the data doesn't say anything about the materiality of the data. In a way, interpreting incorrectly a statement like "Québec is in Montréal" is like applying the wrong procedure to any other data treatment. If I ask you to look at a grain of sand and you take a thousand steps back from the object, you probably won't be able to look at the grain of sand in such a way that I can communicate to you whatever it is that I want to communicate about said grain of sand. That obviously doesn't imply that the grain of sand is anything else than physical.
I take it you are playing devil's advocate, but I don't see how your statement refutes my argument. If ideas exist in brains and brains are physical, then by the same rationale, it is logically impossible to steal other people's ideas: Just as my brain cells are mine and not yours, ideas in my brain are mine and not yours. Yet, there is such a thing as intellectual property, which implies ideas can be stolen. How do physicalists explain this?
You might say that 'stealing' is simply a metaphor for what is actually copying.
Anyway, I don't want to keep rehashing the arguments in this thread. I've been starting to read up the Platonic dialogues again, but it's hard work. You could study Plato for years, and still have an interpretation that nobody else understands or agrees with and with no practical outcome. They're the original Dusty Tomes.
But the basic notion I'm working on is that some kinds of ideas are real, and that they constitute the 'archetypes' or forms of existing things. Where I think there is a fundamental error, is to assert that therefore these ideas exist. They don't exist - trees and mountains and rivers exist, and animals and people exist, but the ideas are purely and only intelligible. That's why they're properly described as 'transcendental'; and here a distinction needs to be made between 'what is real' and 'what exists'. I think there's a version of that in Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena - 'noumena' means really 'the ideal object' which is I'm sure Platonic in origin. In the secondary literature I see hardly any reference to this kind of interpretation.
I think the problem is, it takes a kind of cognitive shift to understand the sense in which the ideas are real. Augustine got it, but I don't know if Aristotle did. So these are deep questions. To which end, I'm seriously considering enrolling in Reality, Being and Existence starting January.
For a physicalist, an idea is a pattern of physical matter. So stealing (i.e., the illegal copying of) an idea entails the occurence of the same pattern in different physical matter, not the transfer of matter.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree with this.
And so Aristotle's objection to Plato's Ideal Forms really applies to Kant's noumenon for the same reason. Aristotle agreed that there are ideas and that they are real. But he rejected the view that they are separable from the world of everyday experience.
Suppose Bob loses his beloved gold watch and that he imagines it in great detail as he ransacks his office for it. A skeptical colleague interrupts him and asks " what makes think that your imagined gold-watch has a bearer? After all, you cannot physically see a watch, so you are only imagining an 'idea' of a gold watch in the same way you might imagine a unicorn or a fairy" Perhaps bob in exasperation replies "my imagined watch obviously isn't my ACTUAL watch!". The skeptic of course responds "But now you are only thinking of an 'actual' watch. And what makes you think THAT has a bearer?"
The answer of course, is that "realness" has no logical justification in terms of truth-by-correspondence . For bob to say "my imagined gold-watch has an actual bearer" is only to express his motivation to search.
A realist kicks a rock and howls in pain to refute the idealist. The idealist says "there you see, i told you the rock is nothing more than your idea of it" (The idealist charges the realist with 'truth-by-correspondence'. The realist charges the idealist with denying facts).
Suppose Bob then experiences waking up and has no real memories of possessing a gold watch. If he concludes that the above scenario was all a dream, he is likely to stop searching for a watch and to conclude it wasn't real after all. But not necessarily. Perhaps he grew up in a superstitious family where dreams were interpreted literally. He might even keep searching in the spirit of wishful thinking and insist that the gold-watch might be real. But this changes nothing about our understanding of realness, for "realness" still reduces to bob's behavioural tendencies.
To say "i conclude that my gold watch isn't real" expresses a change of heart and nothing more. Logical argument and rhetoric of course *can* lead to changes of heart, hence the reason we might hope to use logic to convince the delusional. But here logic is purely a rhetorical device of persuasion that appeals to a persons sense of coherence and familiarity. Using logic here isn't qualitatively different to cajoling somebody through charm or threatening them violence.
So there is nothing essentially wrong on thinking of 'archetypes' as real, if in saying that one is expressing one's motivation.
That Bob is motivated to search for his (alleged) watch implies that he thinks there is a real watch. But that is not what it means for there to be a real watch.
What it means for there to be a real watch is that there is a physical state that would satisfy claims about the watch.
That does presuppose a mind-independent world and can be doubted by the skeptic.
This is what I see as the riddle of Kant"s "Critique of Pure Reason". He refers to the noumenon as "intelligible object", yet he disallows that the intellect can apprehend noumena because our understanding is limited to phenomena. "Intelligible object" in this sense, can only be understood as of Platonic origin, and immaterial, but Kant posits the phenomenal world as a barrier to a true understanding of the intelligible world. We cannot access intelligible objects directly with our intellect because we must interpret phenomenal objects in any attempt to understand the intelligible objects which lie beneath.
Plato, on the other hand seems to allow that the human intellect can apprehend intelligible objects directly, through the means of "the good". And I tend to lean more toward Plato here because I believe that there must be a way that ideas come to us purely from the inside, without the necessity for a phenomenal medium. This is fundamental to decision making, the will, and the creative power in general. These come from within. There is a movement from within, from thinking, through the act of decision making and conception, outward towards the creation of an object.
So despite the fact that we hear and see words as sense phenomena, the intelligible object is always created within, based in an individual's own values (the good), such that the real intelligible object which we form in conception is always coming from within. We receive information from the sense world, such that information is always phenomenal, but the means for interpreting must always come from within. This is the very important problem which Wittgenstein addresses at the beginning of The Philosophical Investigations. The means for interpreting cannot be taught to us because we would always have to be able to interpret what is being taught. As he implies, we must always already know a language in order to learn a language. He goes in the wrong direction though, finding a way to avoid this issue rather than facing it.
But this little problem implies that our real access to the intelligible realm is through the internal not through the external. In this way, the intelligible realm, the noumenal, which appears as transcendental, and inaccessible to the human intellect, for Kant, due to the very nature of transcendence, becomes immanent, and therefore intelligible to the human intellect, due to the direct internal access, in this interpretation of Plato.
Quoting Andrew M
Yes, I think that you are both correct; that my argument falls apart if the term 'stealing' really means 'copying'. I see now I also made the mistake of using a song as an example in my argument, which is a kind of meaningless information, as I already conceded that meaningless information is visibly only physical; that only meaningful information has the potential of being non-physical, because only this kind of information points to concepts.
Yeah I too should read up on forms. Here are the questions I would like to solve:
(1) Are 'forms' synonymous to 'necessary entities', like the laws of logic and morality?
(2) If not just that, are they also generalizations, like apple-ness and river-ness, in which individual apples and rivers participate in?
(3) If not just that, are they also particulars, i.e., a particular apple has a particular form?
Here are my preliminary answers, until someone can tell me better:
(1) They are definitely that at least. Only this type of form can be adequate for Plato's theory of recollection, where we can dig up the truth simply by thinking hard about it. This is because if an entity is necessary, then it is literally impossible to conceive it in a different way than its necessary way, without making a rational mistake. E.g. it is impossible to conceive that "2+2=3" if only we know what the terms mean. Let's call these 'Forms' (capital F).
(2) I think these too are forms, even though they are contingent. They are acquired through Aristotle's theory of abstraction, that is, we conceive the generalization of tree-ness after observing numerous trees. Our concepts of these forms must be identical, because otherwise, how could individuals be able to communicate together? Let's call these 'forms' (lower case f).
(3) I don't think there is a particular form for each particular material thing. It seems to be an unnecessary hypothesis: What could be explained by the presence of the particular form which could not be explained by the matter?
Two excellent posts with a huge amount to consider in both. I will reply later.
Snap!
Modifying Floridi, I have: Dedomena (Pure Data) is that which is inferred from (contingent upon) physical experience (i.e., Universals), or required by (necessary to) mental experience (i.e., Transcendentals).
Agree. I looked into 'noumenal' and found that it is derived from 'nous' which is the seminal Greek term for 'mind' or 'intellect'. (Perhaps it means something which can't be expressed in the modern lexicon.) In any case, the 'noumenal object' is indeed something like 'the ideal object' - something as it truly is, as distinct from how it 'appears for us'. Kant says we only know how things 'appear to us'.
But recall that passage from Lloyd Gerson on Aristotle, where A. says that when we know something intelligible, then the mind is 'identical with that intelligible'. That plainly cannot be the case with any actual object which is by its nature separate from us. When we know a logical or mathematical truth, then that truth is immediately apparent in a way in which knowledge of a particular cannot be; it is known 'in the mind's eye' so to speak, which is higher than the 'corporeal eye'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is more that they're illuminated by 'the light of the Good'. We see by that light the truths of reason, that possess a certainty that sensible things cannot. That is how we can know 'a priori', and on the basis of reason alone.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
That is an excellent question. I have been proceeding as if they are, but I really don't know if that is correct. Bear in mind, Plato was an ancient thinker and that such ideas as logical laws, hadn't even been devised in his time; it was Aristotle who was to put that into a methodical form. When I go back and read the originals, it is not nearly so neat and conclusive as that. There are hints, to-and-fro's, questions, and aporia, and so on. One thing I am finding, is that Plato seems to think the Forms are real, or are actual existing things, whereas I interpret them as having a kind of implicit reality which is less literal than Plato seems to understand it (or at least as many people says he understands it). In other words, I am abstracting what I think the Forms mean, but I might be taking liberties with the idea in so doing.
Nevertheless, a point that strikes me is this: that the idea of the separation of 'form and substance', which was started by Plato, but finalised by Aristotle, seems really foundational to Western thinking generally. Think of something that we all take for granted: a template. If you have any experience with IT, you will know the concept of 'the template' is used in an enormous number of ways, from simple MS Word templates, to entire bodies of code. Now, how could that concept have been developed without Plato? (Note to self: must read Plato at the Googleplex.)
So anyway, my short answer to your question is Yes, even if it is not actually obvious from the original texts that this is what Forms do mean. I take the knowledge of the forms to be the 'rational insight into principles', in the broadest sense, although in saying that, I know I'm taking liberties.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Agree. This is one of the notions that Ockham exploited - he depicted the forms in such a way that suggested 'a heavily populated universe of discourse'. However
WHAT’S WRONG WITH OCKHAM?, JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD
This is the essential principle of Aristotle's law of identity, and his hylomorphism. Every object has a "what" it is, which is proper to it, and it alone, this is its form. According to the argument in the middle of his Metaphysics, the important metaphysical question to ask of existence, is "why is anything what it is, rather than something else?". He argues that when an object comes into existence, it is necessarily the object which it is (what it is), and not something else. It is impossible by contradiction that it is something other than what it is. So he concludes that the form of the object is necessarily prior to the material existence of the object, in order to fulfil this condition, that it is impossible that the object is something other than it is.
Plato gets to a very similar conclusion through a long and round about adventure which spans his entire career of writing. He expresses this in the Timaeus, as the creation of material objects from the divine mind. Form is given to material existence, in the process of creation (what I called information earlier in the thread). Plato's method is more like this. We see that things are desired, wanted by the human mind, as "the good". So the human mind designates something as "good", and forms a conception of that object, then proceeds to give physical existence to that object, produces it. So for example, the architect has a conception, makes a plan, the blueprints for the building, then proceeds to produce the material building. In the case of all artificial objects, the form of the object exists within the mind of the artist before coming to be in the material world.
And since naturally occurring things exist with an intelligible order, or form, Plato sees the need to extend this principle to all material things. They must have been created by an intelligent mind in order that they are observed to exist with an intelligible form. So the same principle of creation is followed in natural things as in artificial things, such that the immaterial form of the thing precedes the material existence of the thing. And this is necessary in order to account for the fact that things are intelligible, i.e. that they have intelligible forms.
I hope that this satisfactorily answers your question: "What could be explained by the presence of the particular form which could not be explained by the matter". What is explained by assuming that each thing has its own particular form, is the intelligibility of the material world. Consider that if we could not distinguish one thing from another, the entire world would appear as random nonsense. It is the act of distinguishing differences within the world, which we all do, that is the act of making sense of the world. This is what the various senses have evolved to do, each one distinguishes a different type of difference, and the mind tries to make sense of all the different differences.
So it is the fact that each thing has its own particular form, peculiar to itself, which makes the world intelligible. That is why we manage to tell the difference between one thing and another, rather than being confused. But as soon as we accept this fact, as the brute fact which it is, we are faced with the much more difficult, and very imposing question, which Aristotle asks, of how does it come to be, that any particular object is the object which it is, and not something else.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, so this is the difficulty exposed by Kant. How do we reconcile "the ideal object" (what the object really is, it's real form) with "what appears to us"? Kant implies that this cannot be reconciled, and therefore we cannot really know the physical world. All we can know is the phenomenal, what appears to us.
Quoting Wayfarer
So this is the exact problem which I've been referring to, how the human mind is deficient. The mind cannot become identical with any particular object, because it desires to know every object. Therefore it has evolved to know universals rather than particulars. The result is that we cannot know any particular object to the point of perfection, because we identify with these particulars through the means of universals. This principle indicates that we cannot know, completely, any particular object.
Quoting Wayfarer
A logical or mathematical truth is a universal truth. But remember, according to Plato's hierarchy, this is not the highest form of knowledge. The highest knowledge is knowledge of the Forms. And to understand the Forms is to understand that each particular has a Form proper to it, which cannot be completely apprehended by the human intellect. This knowledge of the Forms is not sense knowledge, it is derived from reasoning, but is indicative of the defect of sense (phenomenal) knowledge. And through extension we learn the defect of logical and mathematical truths. As universals they cannot completely know particulars. Despite the fact that mathematical principles are grasped immediately and completely, they cannot give us a complete understanding of reality, which consists of particulars. There is a categorical gap which we need to reconcile through principles other than mathematical principles.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree, it is "the light of the Good". The Good is the light which makes intelligible objects intelligible. But this principle casts our attention in the direction of "the good", if we desire to follow, and understand the true nature of intelligible objects. And the good is inherently subjective, it is determined from within, by the subject and that's why it is associated with pure reason, not requiring anything empirical. It is the basis of the a priori because it is what inspires us to agree on a definition, we see that it is good. But in recognizing "the good", we are required necessarily to turn our attention inward, and recognize the particularities of the subject. And when the particularities of the subject are recognized as real, we are induced to extend this to all material existence, and recognize the particularities of all material things as a fundamental aspect of reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
Please read my reply to Samuel, above, as to why it is necessary to assume particular forms of individuals in order to account for the intelligibility of material existence.
So you are saying that if there is a physical obstacle, like distance between the message and the recipient, which prevents the receiving of information, then info must be physical; because if it wasn't, then there could not be any physical obstacles. But this is not necessarily the case, because the physical container could simply act as a cause to the existence of the information, as opposed to being the information itself. I.e, the physical container is the efficient cause of information, not the formal cause. And a cause is a separate thing from its effect; therefore if this is true, then the container is a different thing than the information it causes to exist.
It's more about the inherent unreliability of the physical senses. That comes out more clearly in Thomism as was discussed earlier - the 'corporeal senses' receive sensations from the 'particular', whilst the 'incorporeal soul' apprehends the form. Note here the link between 'form' and 'formal cause'. So to see the form of a thing, is also to see it's reason for existence. That link between the reason for something, and its existence, or essence and existence, is what was severed by nominalism, culminating in the typically modernist view that things exist for no reason, or only out of 'adaptive necessity', or perhaps that 'existence precedes essence' in existentialist terminology.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I wouldn't bring biological evolution into it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think the forms are those of an individual particular, not a particular individual - types, not persons. You see the difference? In other words, all men instantiate or personify the idea of 'man' - there are not separate Ideas, one for each individual. 'An essence is general, in that more than one individual may have the same essence' 1; and the essence is the 'is-ness' as can be seen from the etymology of the word 'essence'. (This of course leads to many other conundrums, such as whether Socrates can be thought of as a man, or mankind, generally, which is, I think, one of the inherent shortcomings of Aristotelian logic.)
So
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I really can't see how this can be correct. Again, I think you're defaulting to nominalism - not deliberately, maybe, but because modern culture has been shaped by nominalism which was the predecessor of empiricism. It is natural for us to attribute reality to particular objects of perception, but I'm sure that's not how the ancients understood it. And I'm not saying the ancients had it right, and we have it wrong, but it's important to recognise this distinction, which I think you're consistently blurring in your analysis. You're always attributing reality to the concrete particulars, whereas the ancients thought individuals were real only because they realiize, or make real, the Form or the Idea. That may not have been correct in saying that, but you're consistently interpreting them to be saying something that they (both Plato and Aristotle) didn't actually say.
I haven't really started studying the Timaeus yet, but from my reading of the summary I can't see where Plato proposes 'individual forms' of the sort you're proposing - if you could point that out I would be obliged.
All right, but when the incorporeal soul apprehends the form, through the means of the mind, that form is always apprehended through universals. This necessitates that some aspects of any object, are always neglected by the mind, as accidental. The mind apprehends what is perceived as essential to the object, while missing the accidentals. But the nature of a particular is such that each accidental is essential to its existence as the particular which it is. The accidentals are what give it its uniqueness.
So the mind suffers from an inversion of the same limitation which the corporeal senses suffer. The senses can only detect particulars, while the mind only knows universals. So the mind is limited in its capacity to know and understand the uniqueness of the forms of the particulars of the sense world.
To claim that forms only exist as the universals which the mind apprehends represents a misunderstanding of the nature of reality. Where Plato and Aristotle clearly agree is on the idea that each particular must have a form proper to itself. My argument is that the human mind is limited in its capacity to know the form of the particular.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is why the position I argue is not a nominalist position. Nominalists proceed away from realism in the opposite direction from me. I see that reality is more complicated than what the realist believes, because I see two distinct types of forms, particulars and universals. These are known by Aristotle as primary and secondary substance, primary being the form of the object itself, secondary being its description. The nominalist claims that reality is simpler than what the realist believes, dismissing the reality of forms altogether.
Quoting Wayfarer
OK, but the form of a thing is "what" the thing is. So the question is this: Do you not believe that there is a "what it is", which is specific, and particular to each individual human being, and object? In other words, there is a description which describes MU, one for Wayfarer, and one for Samuel Lacrampe, etc.. If there is a particular description which is proper to each particular person, then it is necessary to conclude that there is a particular form which is proper to each person.
Quoting Wayfarer
An essence is general, but we can ask of the individual, the particular, "what is the essence of an individual". And the answer to this is that the individual has unique features, that are otherwise called accidentals, which are proper to it alone. So the essence of the individual, as an individual, what you call the "is-ness", and I call, "what it is", is the accidentals. What makes a particular a particular is its uniqueness, the accidentals.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's a really straight forward principle, and I do not understand why it's tough for you to grasp. Say you and I are both human beings, and it is this universal form, "humanness" which makes it true that we are both humans. This is the universal form. However, there is something which makes you Wayfarer and me Metaphysician Undercover, and this is the particular form which we each have. So we must assume that each person and thing has a particular form that is proper to it, which makes it the unique thing which it is, allowing us to identify it as itself, and distinguish it from others. This is fundamental to Aristotle's physics. All existing matter has a form which is proper to it, and it alone, such that if any matter had the same form, it would necessarily be the same matter.
Quoting Wayfarer
I would say that the entire book is an argument for this principle, that each individual thing has its own form. Timaeus describes all different types of things, explaining how each has a form unique to it. Let me see what I can dig up quickly. Start at the end of 30, going into 31, where Timaeus emphasizes that the universe is "one", a unique and individual thing, rather than two, or an infinite number of similar universes. He spends some time describing Same and Different. At 44 he is describing how intelligence is the ability to distinguish between what is the same and what is different. He then provides a physical description of the human body. By p49 he starts to talk about what later becomes known as "matter", as the "a receptacle of all becoming". He discusses the nature of this receiving thing for a few pages.
I see at 51 he says: "Is our perpetual claim that there exists an Intelligible Form for each thing a vacuous gesture, in the end nothing but mere talk?" Then he offers a brief argument to support this claim. By page 80 he is describing very particular things, particular motions, and how they are not random, just particular. Then he gets into the uniqueness of fragmented parts, and the specifics of various diseases. He continues to describe all the uniqueness in the world, and how this is good and a perfection, closing the book with this
Yes, that is a great point. As I was wondering myself, if the theory of forms is so important in philosophy, then why is it that nobody really speaks of them outside of the context of Plato, as though it is more of a theoretical exercise than something relevant to our days? I think the answer is that forms are still very much around, but under different names. Thus Plato's Forms (1) are now called necessary / eternal / rational truths or natural laws, or simply Truth as per Kierkegaard; and Aristotle's forms (2) are now called concepts (not to be confused with the ambiguous term 'concept' as a mere idea or draft for a design). And in both cases, forms have essential properties or essences because they are universals.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, if Plato's Forms (1) are indeed synonymous to necessary truths, then we can prove that they are real and separate from matter: Necessary truths are, by definition, eternally existing; and if matter is not eternal (which is reasonable to suppose), then Forms (1) must be able to exist separate from matter. And that makes them more real than anything which exists only temporarily, or which existence depends on other things.
Also I think Plato does refer to necessary entities and not contingent entities, as most of his dialogues are about either logic and maths, such as in the Meno (geometry), or morality, such as in the Republic (justice), both of which are typically considered eternal truths.
Yes, I came to the same conclusion myself about the form of anything that is man-made: the form of a man-made thing coincides with its end or purpose. Thus the form of a chair is "a device designed to sit on", and the form of a boat is "a device designed for transportation on water".
But the analogy of a blueprint works more in favour of the general forms (2), than particular forms (3), because a single blueprint typically serves to build many particulars, like several buildings built from the same template.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But all accidental properties are physical, and forms are not. Even using the law of identity, I find that a particular form for particular things remains an unnecessary hypothesis: Consider two rocks A and B. We know they have different identities because of their different x, y, z properties; which are physical properties. Then consider rock A only, which has identity A. Split the rock in two halves A1 and A2. Which of the two halves retains identity A? They cannot both retain the same identity, because A1 and A2 have different x, y, z properties, just like rocks A and B. Glue them back together, and we obtain the original rock A, because the physical separation is gone.
Similarly, consider a tree which is able to grow many trunks, but is one organism (they exist but I forgot the name). We call it one thing and not many, because all the trunks are physically connected. But now cut the roots connecting the trunks together; all trucks will live, and what was one is now many living things; separate identities. The reason is because there now exists a physical separation between the trunks.
Therefore, the answer to the question "how does it come to be, that any particular object is the object which it is, and not something else?" is indeed because of their accidental properties added to the general form (2), but these are physical properties and need only be explained by matter without having to add a particular form (3). (The ship of Theseus anyone?)
Quoting Wayfarer
Actually ... upon further thinking, I have to make an exception when it comes to humans. Split a human body in two, and we do not obtain two separate humans. Assuming the human survives, only one of the two parts retains the human identity, that is, its self, personality, subjectiveness, soul. And that is the part that is still able to think. So I am siding with Metaphysician Undercover when it comes to a being who has a self or soul, that this particular being has indeed a form that is particular to it.
I think Aristotle separates the formal cause (essence) from the final cause (reason or end). Thus the formal cause of a triangle is "a flat surface with three straight sides", but I don't think that would be a relevant final cause. Having said that, I think this is true when it comes to man-made things, as described at the beginning of this post.
(Empirical) data being a set of distinct (unique) physical or mental variables (objects capable of change), accessed and elaborated at a given level of abstraction.
The point is that there must be both, general forms and particular forms. Suppose there is a blueprint from which a product is mass produced. We still have to account for the difference between each of the items produced. They cannot be the same in the sense of identical, because each is unique. You might be inclined to say that the differences are "material" differences, rather than formal differences. But if the difference can be described (in the sense of "what" constitutes that difference) it is a formal difference. Descriptions, as what the intellect can grasp, are always formal, as the intellect only grasps forms.
This is Leibniz' principle, "the identity of indiscernibles". If two items have the exact same form, they are necessarily one and the same thing. So we must allow that even products which are mass produced, have a different form from each other. Since the mind only grasps forms, if the numerous items had the same form, we would have no principle whereby we could say that one is not the other. But we do say one is not the other, therefore there is a difference between them, and they have different forms.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Under Aristotelian hylomorphism, all physical things consist of both matter and form. It is a type of dualism. That is the fundamental principle of Aristotle's physics, which you and Wayfarer don't seem to be getting. Physical existence is composed of these two constituent parts. So it makes sense, in a way, to say that forms are not physical, as you do, but the form is a constituent part of the physical.
Some philosophers prior to Aristotle had posited a "prime matter", like the atom. The prime matter was supposed to have no form whatsoever, but capable of taking any form. This allowed that all things are composed of the same underlying thing, prime matter (perhaps atoms), which, by themselves have absolutely no form. Having absolutely no form under the Aristotelian system, would mean that they are absolutely unintelligible. What Aristotle demonstrates with the cosmological argument, is that matter cannot exist without a form. Matter without form is an illogical principle. Therefore the concept of prime matter, though it was very useful for the scientific investigations of his time, is something which cannot possibly be real.
After Aristotle, the Neo-Platonist respected his cosmological argument, because it is very strong. The argument though, proves that matter cannot exist without a form, but it allows that form can exist without matter. So the Neo-Platonist took up the cause of independent, non-physical Forms, while maintaining consistency with Aristotle. But when you say "forms are not physical", this is not the whole truth, because a form may be physical, or it may not be physical, depending on whether it has material existence.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
What you are not respecting here, is that to describe the properties of a thing is to describe its form. Properties are always aspects of the form of a thing. That's what makes the difference between rock A and rock B intelligible, the fact that they have different forms. If they didn't have different forms, then the difference between them would be unintelligible, and the claim that rock A is not rock B would be an unintelligible claim.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
So this is a mistaken claim. We cannot explain differences in properties by referring to matter. Matter on its own (prime matter without form) is inherently unintelligible. Having the nature of potential, it accounts for what may or may not come to be, violating the law of excluded middle. The intellect can grasp forms only. So if we can differentiate between two objects by referring to different properties, it is differences in form which is being referred to.
Well, that's not really the point I'm making, but I think this could be a great initial path of inquiry if you start again the interrogation taking for starting point the assumption that information is physical. If we exclude error in data-processing, can we find non-physical obstacles to communication beween two properly-primed processors? None come to mind easily.
I'm rather taking the more defensive position that the argument brought forth initially, the distinction between potential causes, does not actually weight in one way or another. I'm also criticizing the recourse to higher-level form of communication to treat information ontologically. Looking, feeling and hearing are all forms of information treatment which precedes the attribution of meaning in any epistemologically relevant way and the series of distinction between objectivity/subjectivity that necessarily comes muddle the analysis.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
What is the explanatory power of such a theory? Imagine two agents trying to communicate information from one to another. Unfortunately, despite all their best intentions and efforts, they fail. Agent B never understands whatever it is that Agent A wanted to say. So how does this ontology helps us? Can you explain in terms of the information and the information alone why B couldn't get A, without ever bringing up the container? It doesn't strike me as possible. However, the opposite does seem possible. I believe an explanation in terms of the physical treatment of the input, it's association with an index of common 'experiences' (in other terms, another piece of pre-processed information) would be able to explain away the situation.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
You could reframe this in terms of an emergentist account of the informational property of matter. I think, all in all, this is all that the application of aristotelean metaphysics can lead to, on this subject. Again, this does not really support your argument. It can as well support the idea that information is material as the idea that it isn't.
The point you're arguing is that forms pertain to individuals, whereas I understand them to pertain to types. I dealt with that issue in this post, specifically, 'the forms are those of an individual particular, not a particular individual - types, not persons. An essence is general, not specific to the individual, contrary to what you're arguing.
I provided a reference. This whole paper is about ways in which Aristotle might be interpreted so as to support the notion of 'individual essences', which, the author says, he is sure Aristotle did not propose. This does result in many interpretive difficulties, but that is one of the shortcomings of the whole system.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The form, as such, is not physical, only the particular is physical. That is so even now, and very much to the point. 'A model of car' is not physical, it's a set of specifications which are then manufactured or real-ized physically.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think you will find a discussion anywhere of the difference between individual rocks, as such differences are accidental. You might find a discussion of the different types of rock. But recall that the notion of there being forms for 'dirt, hair and mud' are ruled out very early in the debates on forms. Again, you're thinking about 'intelligibility' in terms of particulars - that this or that particular individual 'is intelligible'. That is not how the ancients thought about it.
But, look, this debate goes nowhere, because when you're challenged, it results in long digressions which ultimately end up repeating the same things. So I'm buying out of this thread now, unless anything new comes in, and thanks to all for your feedback, I have found it very interesting.
Quoting Wayfarer
Here's a quote from the Wikipedia (of all places) entry on "essence":
"Aristotle moves the Forms of Plato to the nucleus of the individual thing, which is called ousía or substance."
As I said, I do not deny forms as types, or universals, I just see the need, as Plato and Aristotle did, to assume forms of particulars as well.
But OK, you have a different opinion than I, a different interpretation of Aristotle than I. Though I think you misunderstand, I respect the difference. The question though is which opinion, or interpretation best suits reality. Whichever best describes reality is the one we should go with.
Do you agree that we can only know things through their form, or essence, this is what is intelligible to us? The form, and nothing else is what is grasped by the intellect. And do you agree that we can know two things of the same type to be distinct, different things? If so, then doesn't this produce the conclusion that two distinct things of the same type must each have a different form?
Quoting Wayfarer
But don't you agree that the physical object has a form? Without a form, what would the particular object be other than random matter? Look at a car. It is not just random matter, it is matter with a particular form. When you look at the car, you do not see matter, you see particular aspects of the form, its colour, and shape. If you touch it, you feel other aspects of its form. You can hear some aspects of its form, and maybe smell some, or even taste some. But all these things which you sense, are aspects of its form. That's why the physical object, that particular car, is intelligible to you as that particular car because it has a form, and you've come to know its form. The form is part of the physical thing, the part which you perceive and is intelligible to you. If you cannot distinguish one particular car from another, it is because you have not come to know each one's form well enough, not because they do not each have a particular form.
Upon abstraction, intellection, the intellect receives the form of the physical object. But it cannot be the exact same form which exists within the physical object, or else the mind would actually be that object by the law of identity. Let me refer you back to a quote you posted two weeks ago, pay particular attention to the first paragraph.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Your claim "that is not how the ancients thought about it" is not right, because this is at the root of Aristotle's law of identity, "a thing is the same as itself". Aristotle's rendition of the law of identity is intended to account for accidental differences, in response to sophists who could produce absurd conclusions from the assumption that two distinct things with the same description were logically the same thing.
This is from earlier in the thread and is the crux of the issue. When you say 'created by the human mind', that is modernist thinking - nearly every modern philosopher would agree with you. But the classical A-T (Aristotelian-Thomist) understanding is completely different. I don't think those philosophers would agree at all that the human mind 'creates' any such thing as a form; it receives sensations, and apprehends the form, which is an 'intelligible object'. That is the point of those Edward Feser articles and references that I provided earlier in the thread; it's also the point of the passage you have quoted again, but I still think you're not reading it right.
Accordingly, geometric forms are both mind-dependent, and mind-independent. They're 'mind dependent' in that they're only perceivable by the rational intellect. But they're 'mind-independent' in that their existence doesn't depend on them being perceived by the intellect, and certainly not created by them. They exist - or rather, they are real - whether or not they're perceived. That is why Platonism is called 'objective idealism' - it says there are such things as 'real ideas', which is the crux of the entire thread. They're not 'in the mind', but can only be grasped by a mind. But the fact of them being both dependent on, and independent of, the particular mind, is, I think, my own interpretive contribution to this debate. I haven't seen reference to that argument anywhere in the literature (and if anyone knows better, I would be very interested.)
All through your posts, I agree with many things, up to a point - but then I run into statements I can't go along with, which I think are due to the fact that you're viewing the topic with a modernistic bias, which you yourself don't recognise. So what you think is 'natural' or 'normal' - for instance, that particular things are intelligible, or that triangles are the creations of the human mind - is not at all what the classical theories say. (And I acknowledge my own inexpertise in the subject, but I honestly can't say that I think you know better ;-) But I will also acknowledge, you are almost the only poster who is attempting to address the issue with reference to the classical tradition. This is why, if I can sort out employment, I fully intend to enroll in an external metaphysics course at Oxford in January.)
So - let's keep at it at that for now. As I said, I think it's been a very interesting exchange, but the questions are vast - like 'angels on the head of a pin', it could go for centuries, and I have to attend to more mundane issues.
I do not think it is correct to say that the A-T understanding is different from what I claim, because this is what Aristotle argues in BK 9 of the Metaphysics. This forms a crucial part of the cosmological argument, and his famous refutation of Pythagorean Idealism. I think I referred you to the actual passage earlier in the thread. He states that prior to being "discovered" by the mind of a geometer, the geometrical constructs do not have actual existence. They only exist potentially. And, the cosmological argument demonstrates that potential cannot be eternal, so the eternal Ideas of Pythagoreanism is refuted. The word "create" is mine, but to bring something from potential existence to actual existence is to create.
Furthermore, Aquinas in the Summa Theologica is very explicit about distinguishing between independent Forms, which are attributed to the divine, and human concepts which are mind dependent. I must admit that when I first read this in Aquinas, it threw me off, because I couldn't see where he was deriving this principle from. It wasn't until I read through Aristotle's Metaphysics again ( I don't know how many times that made) that I understood where he was getting this principle from.
Quoting Wayfarer
What do you mean I'm not reading it right? The first three sentences, as the premise to the entire passage, state:
"EVERYTHING in the cosmos is composed of matter and form. Everything is concrete and individual. Hence the forms of cosmic entities must also be concrete and individual."
How can you ignore what is explicitly stated, as the opening premise, then claim that I'm not reading it right when I bring your attention to this?
Quoting Wayfarer
You are mixing up mind-dependent with mind-independent in a category mistake, which can only lead to confusion. If you allow that some forms, universals, are mind-dependent, and other forms, the forms of particulars, are mind-independent, then you avoid this confusion. From this perspective a huge part of the A-T perspective will suddenly make sense to you.
Quoting Wayfarer
Here's something to consider. I've read the original material, and reread the original material, in some cases many times. Understanding does not come easy. The material is complex and layered. It takes a very long time for the understanding to sink in. Every time you go back you apprehend something which you missed before, because of what you've learned since. The cosmological argument only made sense to me more than twenty years after I first encountered it. And although I've understood Aristotle's principle that physical things consist of matter and form for a very long time, the arguments in the Timaeus for particular forms, and Aquinas' distinction between human concepts and independent Forms, only made sense to me after the cosmological argument did.
You insist that my interpretation is biased by a modern perspective, but this does not necessarily mean that I misinterpret, it may only mean that the material is very relevant in the modern world. Please, read Aristotle's Metaphysics BK9, ch 8 and 9, and then decide whether or not he is saying that triangles are the creation of human minds. Here's parts of a passage from 1051a,
"It is by an activity that geometrical constructions are discovered; for we find them by dividing. If the figures had already been divided, the constructions would have been obvious; but as it is they are present only potentially.
...
Obviously, therefore, the potentially existing constructions are discovered by being brought to actuality; the reason is that the geometer's thinking is an actuality; so that the potency proceeds from an actuality; and therefore it is by making constructions that people come to know them..."
Quoting Wayfarer
I think that this is an excellent idea. Take the time and read the original material as much as possible. As I said, it's very complex and layered, but each time that you understand something new, it's a revelation which opens all kinds of doors toward understanding other things. University professors will typically focus on bits and pieces, offering an interpretation, and sometimes an entire platform based on these bits. Unless you take the time to read a lot of work by any particular author, and put the bits into context, you cannot even begin to judge the professor's interpretation.
Wayfarer, you are correct to assert that the A-T tradition accepts the mind-independent existence of forms, but only insofar as they are the immanent constituents of some substance. At the end of the day, particular substances are what exist, whether material or immaterial, and a substance is always a composite of potency and act. In the case of material substances, form is the principle of act and matter is the principle of potency, and neither can be said to exist in the absence of the other.
Interestingly, Thomism does allow for the existence of pure forms as a consequence of accepting the so-called "real distinction between essence and existence". Aquinas supposed that angels exist as pure forms, but still as composites of potency and act. In the case of angels, form plays the role of potency in relation to the pure act of existence ("esse") bequeathed via the direct creative power of God. But angels are here understood as intellectual agents that are capable of interaction with material existence, and not as Platonic "Ideas" subsisting in some independent realm of purely intelligible being.
In the case of mathematics things get a little more complicated. Aquinas maintained mathematical objects were abstractions produced via the agent intellect out of the contents of sense perception ("phantasiari") and, as such, consigned entirely to the realm of ens rationis (mind-dependent being). He did not deny the real, mind-independent existence of quantity in the material world (which is always manifest as an accident of some material substance, and therefore exists only in or through material substance), but he did deny that material quantity is identical to mathematical number. For Aquinas, to confuse mathematical number with material quantity is to mistake the map for the territory.
I disagree with this aspect of what you wrote Aaron. Aquinas allows for substantial existence which is not a composite of potency and act. This is obvious in the case of God. For Aquinas, as for Aristotle, a form is actual. Pure independent Forms, like God and the angels are pure act. Matter is what provides potency so independent Forms are pure act. This is most evident in God whose essence is His existence. The angels are also pure act, but having been created they are described as aeviternal rather than eternal.
Quoting Aaron R
So this doesn't make sense at all, to say that form plays the role of potency, because it is an obvious inconsistency. The angels do not partake of matter, or potency, but having a slightly different temporal position from God, they have a slightly different relationship to potency.
God is the only exception.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
My understanding is that just as matter is potency with respect for form, so form is potency with respect esse, which is the act of existence bequeathed by God to every finite substance. Aquinas is quite clear that angels are composites of potency and act. See "Article 2: Reply to Objection 3" at the link below:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1050.htm#article2
However the passage then goes on to say that while the Forms are 'concrete', they're nevertheless not material:
Quoting Wayfarer
So, if what you're saying is true, those forms only exist in the mind of the observer. And if so, they can't be 'received' from anywhere, because they don't exist until the mind conceives of them. Whereas, here, the 'intellect' is [u[receiving[/u] the forms. Then, the 'active intellect' combines the received sensation with the apprehended form, to create a concept, but the concept is dependent on the form. //edit// so the fact that they're 'received' shows that they exist as immaterial but concrete realities.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not so. I believe, like Einstein, that 'the Pythagorean theorem' is mind-independent in the sense that it is not the product of a mind:
However, I don't think Einstein realised, or acknowledged, that the Pythagorean theorem can only be known by a rational intelligence. That is what I mean by 'both mind independent and mind dependent'. It is not confused, I say it is a novel idea.
Quoting Aaron R
Many thanks for your contribution.
I have yet to plumb what this 'independent realm' really comprises. I conceive of it as something akin to the 'domain of natural numbers'. Now, where does that exist? Plainly, it exists nowhere - but it is nevertheless real.
Per Aquinas, it exists as a product of the intellect, which is as real as anything else that exists.
So if I understand you correctly, particular things must have particular forms (3) because only forms are intelligible to our minds, and matter is not. Now why is that the case? If I perceive a particular chair, why can't we not simply conclude that it is because my mind perceives the matter of the chair through direct sense data?
I'm sorry, but I admit I have trouble understanding your posts. And unfortunately, it seems this conversation has drifted far away from the original argument on whether info is physical or not. Maybe I can go back one last time to my original argument in the form of a syllogism, and perhaps you could pinpoint which part you disagree with?
P1: A thing A is not identical to thing B if A remains when B is removed.
P2: Information A is present when container B is present. But information A is also present when only container C is present, and C ? B.
C: Therefore information A is not identical to either containers B or C.
But they're nevertheless real. I am arguing for Platonic realism.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sorry if I was discourteous or unkind.
OK, I stand corrected on this matter, thanks. But this is extremely difficult to understand, and it appears as inconsistency. In Aristotle's metaphysics, the existence of potential, which is central to his physics and biology, is substantiated by matter. It is the same problem we approached with Aquinas' description of the passive intellect. The passive intellect is said to be of the nature of potential yet it is immaterial. So Aquinas assumes a potency which is not associated with matter. For Aristotle, potency is inherently unintelligible due to its relation to the law of excluded middle. It is known by relating it to other things, analogy and metaphor. So the existence of potential is only made real (intelligible) by its relation to matter, and the assumption that matter is real.
If we separate potential from its association with matter, we need another principle to give it real existence, or else we just have an unsubstantiated assertion of reality. This is like the assertion that a possibility is a real possibility because it is a logical possibility. Any imaginary possibility (it is possible that a cow could jump over the moon) is a real possibility unless we insist that the possibility is substantiated by physical existence (matter).
This is why I think it is necessary to turn to Aquinas' conception of time to understand the existence of angels. When we look at the order of creation, the angels are after God yet prior to material existence. This implies time which is prior to material existence. Not all temporal existence is material existence. From here we can work to substantiate the concept of potential and potency, in relation to time rather than matter. So we may leave behind Aristotle's metaphysical principle, which substantiates potency with matter, and now substantiate potency with time.
I agree with you; that the term 'form' is archaic. It should be seen as a temporary term early philosophers used as a place-holder until later philosophers found clearer terms to define the same things. Thus Platonic Forms (1) became 'eternal / necessary truths', Aristotle forms (2) became 'concepts' (or 'pure data' as you call it, and although I never heard that terminology before, I find it fitting too), and particular forms (3) became empirical data.
I must say I am especially disinclined to call empirical data a 'form', because it seems out of place with the other two forms (1) and (2), which have the commonality of being universals, where as form (3) does not. Furthermore, the explanation that our mind acquires empirical data directly from matter seems sufficient, without having to add another factor (form (3)) in the mix.
That is essentially my current view, crystallised after reading Luciano Floridi's, Information: A Very Short Introduction (2010) and this discussion on Forms.
In addition, I equate (1) with Transcendentals, (2) with Universals, and classify both as Pure Data (Dedomena) as noted earlier.
I find MU's explanation of particular forms consistent with Aristotle's hylomorphism, and both are consistent with Floridi's definition of (empirical) data.
Where, in that argument, do you see mention of materiality? There's none. What you have done is distinguished between two things, saying they aren't the same. They could still be made of the same stuff.
This is what I mean by saying that your argument doesn't weight in one way or another.
Quoting Aaron R
I'm curious as to how both of you think that what Aaron says here would differ from what naturalism allows. Or to put it another why I wonder whether both of you agree that naturalism would not allow mathematical objects to exist "as a nexus of relations etc...". I would also like to hear exactly why Wayfarer thinks that, and why Aaron does, if he does. Also I would like to know whether you think this applies to all possible forms of naturalism, or only to specific forms.
Step 2: Proof that info is one thing in two separate containers.
P2.1: The law of identity says that if "two" things have the exact same properties, then they are one and the same thing.
P2.2: Information A, separate from its container, is identical in container B and container C.
C2: Information A in both containers is one and the same, as opposed to being mere duplicates.
Step 3: Proof that information is non-physical.
P3.1: No one physical thing can be in two places at once.
P3.2: The same information A is obtained from containers B and C, which are in two separate places.
C3: Information is not physical.
Now I still have unanswered questions. To start with, do general forms (2) exist only in our minds (excluding God's mind), or do they exist in particular things that participate in them? My answer is the latter, and here is why.
P1: It is evident that general forms (2) or concepts are the same in all minds. To assume that it could be otherwise would be absurd, because any coherent communication among individuals would be impossible: If my concept of "yes" could be your concept of "no", and so on for all concepts, then how could we hope to ever find this out, and then reach a common language on concepts? Like Meno's Paradox, we could stumble upon the same concepts by sheer luck, but then could never know for sure. Therefore, in order to avoid absurdity and despair, we must have faith that concepts are the same in all minds. This seems similar to Wittgenstein's problem that MU mentioned earlier.
P2: If the concept I perceive is the same as the one you and everyone else perceives, it is much more likely that the concept comes from outside of our minds as opposed to come from our individual minds, and coincidently is the same in all minds. To use an analogy: If I hear a piece of music, it could be either that it comes from my mind or outside; but if two persons hear the same piece of music, it is much more likely that the music comes from outside both minds.
P3: You and I likely live in different countries, and so my concept of tree-ness must have been abstracted from different particular trees than your concept of tree-ness, despite the concept tree-ness being the same.
C: General forms (2) or concepts first exist outside of our minds and inside the particular things that participate in them.
I touched on this topic earlier in this thread, by referring to 'the indispensability argument for mathematics':
Quoting Wayfarer
Because, says the IETP article on the topic:
Standard readings of mathematical claims entail the existence of mathematical objects. But, our best epistemic theories seem to debar any knowledge of mathematical objects.
This is because 'our best' epistemic theories always assume that the objects of knowledge are somehow reducible to the physical. However it then goes on to say:
Some philosophers, called 'rationalists', claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies.
So the point of the 'indispensability argument' is
...an attempt to justify our mathematical beliefs about abstract objects, while avoiding any appeal to rational insight.
The reason that mathematical knowledge seems to conflict with 'our best epistemic theories', is because those theories are essentially physicalist in nature; they explain reason in terms of evolutionary adaption . But it's embarrassing for scientists to admit that, because they rely so heavily on mathematics. So, how to present the case for the reality of mathematical objects, 'while avoiding any appeal to rational insight'? Don't you sense the irony? Scientists are always tub-thumping about 'the importance of reason' - but their notion of 'reason' is such that it is bound by the physical sense, there can't really allow any such thing as an apodictic or self-evident rational truth. Rationalism, which used to be the jewel in the philosophical crown, is now an inconvenient truth.
In historical terms, this is because modern empiricism only recognises what the classical philosophical tradition would call 'the corporeal senses'; whereas the intuitive grasp of reason, which is such an embarrassment to empiricists, would have been similar to their 'grasp of immaterial forms' or 'the eye of reason'. But, we can't allow 'immaterial forms', so instead we have to sanitize mathematical truths to be empirically respectable.
***
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I think the Augustinian answer to the above question, is to identify the divine intellect, with the 'nous' of the Platonist and neo-Platonist tradition, as the source of Forms. That is evident especially in the later Platonists, such as Proclus.
Quoting Wayfarer
Mathematical objects would seem to express something true about the limits of corporeality. So they speak to the reality of constraints. And they are thus real more as generals than particulars.
Consider a table or a chair. What kind of "deep maths" do they represent?
Well, as objects, they speak to symmetry-breakings and least action principles - the natural limits on concrete material actuality.
A chair or table are significant in that they break 3D space with a 2D plane. The definition of chair or table can be reduced to being "a plane" upon which we can either rest our arse or perch our elbows.
And then this is coupled to a least action principle. We want to achieve this broken spatial symmetry with the least material effort. So the plane must be supported by legs. And these would naturally be the thinnest and fewest number of supports we can manage. That is, at least three legs would be needed for a self supporting chair or table, but five or more would usually seem an extravagance.
So the maths that rules nature is about the "simplest actions" - achieving the most definite symmetry-breakings with the least amount of effort.
The debate about forms is about identifying the essence of things. As chairs and tables illustrate, the mathematical essence appears as we arrive at some universal natural principles. And the core of mathematics is about how the most difference can be produced with the least effort.
Chairs and tables are obviously objects to people. They are "chairs" and "tables" because they actually have some fit in terms of the human form, the human point of view, the way humans themselves break the symmetry of the world. So the fact that universal principles can be constraints that then harbour more particular points of view, or localised purposes, is one source of confusion in these discussions.
Then the other standard confusion is that actualised forms, or substantial forms, can freely incorporate material accidents. A chair could accidentally be brown or blue, wood or gold, etc. If the constraint is only the idea of "something suitable on which a human could balance an arse", then that definition is indifferent to many kinds of materially actual chairs.
So form is a hierarchical business - which becomes more obvious once we talk about form in terms of the causality of constraints. And form also avoids being overly-specific as, in expressing a global purpose, it doesn't need to sweat the accidental details.
I would say rather that scientists correctly realise that the forms of nature are emergent. So everything does get tied back to the "corporeal" for a good reason.
In your view, did God have a choice about the maths he created? Let's get at the consequences of your position and discover how rational they seem.
So which is it that maths describes - unavoidable regularity or some accidental divine choice?
You seem to be taking the metaphysical route which creates two further problems. It seems the maths could be different - if it is all up to some creator. And then how maths gets imposed on the world is the usual Platonic mystery.
So why isn't my self-organising metaphysics better?
I think a problem is the assumption that either matter or form must be the primary constituent. On Aristotle's hylomorphism, neither is. Instead the particular is the primary constituent and matter and form are necessary aspects of the particular. So, for example, the wooden chair has four legs. It is possible to describe just the material of the chair (the wood) or just the form (it has four legs), but it is not possible to separate out either the material or the form from the chair. They are not more basic constituents. They are simply different modes of description.
It is the particular and only the particular that has causal efficacy. Why does the chair hold our weight? Because it is made of solid wood (a material cause) and has four legs (a formal cause). But matter and form are not themselves things that have causal efficacy or have an independent existence.
Those are the forms received within the mind that are immaterial. The form of the object itself is also immaterial, in the sense that matter and form are distinct, and one is not the property of the other. However, there must be a distinction between the form of the object itself, and the form received within the mind, or else they would be one and the same, then the material object would be in the mind. It is not though, it is what is sensed. The difference cannot simply be matter, because matter does not constitute an intelligible difference.
Quoting Wayfarer
They are received by the passive intellect, from the senses and active intellect. The passive intellect receives the forms which the active intellect "creates". Remember the active intellect is similar to the good, it gives intelligible objects their essence, as "intelligible".
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
It is simply how the terms are defined. Form refers to the actuality of what the thing is, and matter refers to the underlying potential for change. So a thing, or object must have an intelligible "what it is" (form) regardless of whether or not it has been apprehended by a mind. But Aristotle strove to make sense of change, in his physics. So he allowed that the form, what it is, changes. However, the sophists contention was that if "what the thing is", ceases to be, and a new "what the thing is" begins being, then "becoming" is not a reality. There is just a ceasing of existence of one thing, to be replaced by the existence of the next thing. In order that a thing "changes", instead of ceasing to be, and being replaced by the next thing, he posited an underlying thing, "matter", which does not change, but persists through the change. This allows us to say that a thing "changes", its form may change while it still continues to be the same thing. What we sense, and comprehend with the mind, is forms, which are capable of changing, and actually are changing. We do not sense the underlying matter which does not change. Nor do we apprehend it with the mind, it is posited as a necessary assumption to account for the temporal continuity of existence.
Quoting Wayfarer
No apology needed here. I didn't think that at all. I just wanted to impress upon you, that I have read the material, with the serious intent to understand and nothing else, and that it is extremely difficult. Because of this difficulty there are many misinterpretations and misconceptions concerning what these authors have written, even by professors and scholars. That a group of scholars reads some passages and comes to a consensus as to what has been said, does not necessitate the conclusion that any of them actually understands the material. I don't claim to have the perfect understanding, or interpretation, Aaron corrected me already yesterday, but I do believe that I have a better than average understanding of this material.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Read my last paragraph directed toward Wayfarer. The fact that there are many different interpretations of the same material, misinterpretations, and misconceptions, especially with extremely difficult material like what we are dealing with here, clearly demonstrates that concepts are not the same in all minds. In the case of very simple concepts, you might argue that the concepts are "essentially" the same, in different minds. But this is to ignore the accidentals, and Aristotle's law of identity is designed such that accidentals must be accounted for, so this does not qualify as a philosophically appropriate use of "the same".
Why wouldn't you say that the particular, the substantial, the entified, is the ultimate resultant?
This interpretation of Aristotle's hylomorphism makes no sense to me given the context of everything else he has to say about metaphysics.
Quoting Andrew M
Right. So in what sense is the four legged wooden chair either "primary" or a "constituent"?
It is certainly particular and constituted. It is in-formed material being. It is what it is. But it can't be a primary constituent just because it denies primary constituency to other levels or degrees of substantial being.
Clearly the four legged wooden chair just simply is a highly specified or particularised mode of description - materiality suitably constrained to the degree that it formally matters.
We could talk about its wood as a more generalised notion of materiality, its leggedness as a more generalised notion of form. The four legged wooden chair stands sharply delineated in the world due to it being so highly particular in both its material and formal qualities. And so when it comes to talk about the chair's "constitution", we can point to the general matter from which it is constructed - the wood that is its efficient/material cause. And we can point to the general forms which constrain its being - the leggedness that is its formal/final cause. The chair is some kind of high point of organised materiality in this sense.
But then we can analyse wood in the same hylomorphic fashion. And leggedness. To the degree these are emergently substantial, they can be deconstructed in both their causal directions.
So to be "constituted" is what is hylomorphic - some actualised intersection of constructing materiality and constraining formality. Hylomorphism is just another way of saying everything substantial is emergent from some particular balance of bottom-up and top-down causes.
Quoting Andrew M
Again, this seems far from Aristotelean intent.
Substances of course harbour further potentials. Their enduring particularity gives character to their properties.
But the analysis of substances is in terms of the causes that produce them. It is their very being that is being explained, not their further causal efficacy.
So matter and form don't have independent existence. It is only in the unity of substance that they show their reality. Yet hylomorphism is all about how substance is emergent from the intersection of bottom-up construction and top-down constraint - the two varieties of causation in a systems view.
You know that ‘supernatural’ and ‘metaphysical’ are Latin and Greek for the same word, right? Their meaning is synonymous - something like ‘above’ or ‘before’ the domain of ‘physis’. As we all know, the term ‘metaphysics’ originated with one of Aristotle’s librarians, who categorised those volumes as ‘after physics’. But it also means ‘first philosophy’ or the philosophy of first principles. And I don’t see how physics could ever be a ‘philosophy of first principles’, because the subject of physics rests on certain givens, in the sense of an existing order, namely, the domain of natural laws. Discerning those laws has enabled great scientific power, but explaining them is another matter altogether. (Peirce calls them ‘habits of nature’, although that doesn’t go that far toward explaining them.)
Historically, western culture moved from the theistic philosophy of the Christian period, towards what was hoped to be a purely naturalistic account, such that the notion of there being a sense of a divine or ordained order was no longer required. That is the overall orientation of the ‘naturalist project’. But, notice that in this outlook, the human intellect, and the human sciences, have now become the yardstick against which everything is measured. That is why naturalism looks ‘down’ as it were, to the earth on which it stands, and seeks explanations in terms of what it can materially observe and measure.
(Actually that reminds me of a comment on the famous portrait by Raphael of Plato and Aristotle in debate - the idealistic Plato on left gesturing skywards, the empirical Aristotle on the right, palm downward:
In any case, naturalism now wishes to develop what amounts to a scientific metaphysics, but I think that is a contradiction in terms, as science itself must always be, in the Aristotelian sense, a second-order enterprise; it assumes nature.
An implication of that is that any kind of understanding of metaphysics is unavoidably conjectural, as the subject of it is over our cognitive horizons, so to speak. But it is intuited in the ‘order of things’ even though it can’t directly be known. To put it a slightly different way - Perhaps you could say science is concerned with ‘what we can explain’; metaphysics with ‘what explains us’ (including the abiility we have to explain)
[quote=C S Peirce]The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds . . . that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale. . . . The value of Facts to it, lies only in this, that they belong to Nature; and nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real— the object of its worship and its aspiration.
The soul’s deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with will by slow percolation gradually reach the very core of one’s being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities.[/quote]
Reasoning and the Logic of Things, edited by Kenneth Lainc Ketner, (Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 11; quoted in Nagel, Thomas, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, in The Last Word.
So if that’s the kind of thing you mean by ‘metaphysics’, then yes, I do have something like that in mind.
D'oh! The passage in question explains that quite clearly. It says, again: '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.' That is the essence of Aquinas' version of hylomorphic dualism: 'the senses' see the corporeal object, 'the intellect' grasps 'the form'. (Actually when you think about it, you can see a direct line from here to Descartes, except for Descartes' egregious error of treating res cogitans as a self-existent object.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
One of the things I have learned in this debate, is that the active intellect creates the concept, but the form is not created by the intellect, it is received by it.
OK, but in your disdain for physicalism you seem to be assuming that for the physicalist the physical is reducible to objects and/or particles rather than relations and/or processes.
Your objections would seem to evaporate if you acknowledged the processual as opposed to the substantial nature of physicality.
Indeed, and I think the movement towards process philosophy and the ugly and incomprehensible beast called 'ontic structural realism' are a consequence of the fact that physicalism is indeed on the wane. But the notion that reason itself is the output of a purely fortuitous material process is still prevalent, so there's plenty of work to do yet. X-)
We've been through this. That's why I say there is deficiency in the human intellect. It cannot grasp the form of the individual because it only grasps universals. How is it possible for the intellect to adequately know individuals if it only grasps universal forms? And if it cannot grasp the forms of individuals, do you not agree that this is a deficiency?
Quoting Wayfarer
Remember, it is the passive intellect which receives the form. The reason for assuming a passive intellect is to account for the receiving of the form. It receives the forms which are created by the active intellect. Aquinas asserts that the passive intellect is immaterial, but as I said to Aaron, this appears like a possible inconsistency to me. As a passive thing which "receives", the passive intellect has the nature of potential, and the real existence of potential is substantiated by Aristotle as matter. So Aquinas asserts a potential which is not of the nature of matter, and since this potential is not substantiated in the Aristotelian way, through matter, it needs to be substantiated in some other way. Otherwise it is just like an imaginary possibility. Anything which is not contradictory may be stated as a possibility, but whether or not it is a real possibility is dependent on the nature of physical reality.
Got it. I figured it was likely a confusion of terms. I am personally ticked off at how freely the term 'form' is used to mean so many different things that don't seem to have any connection, but I'll deal with it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think you are using the word 'concept' ambiguously. You mean it in the sense of understanding of a sentence or text. I mean it in the sense of contingent universal forms (2). In that sense, only single words point to concepts, not whole sentences, and these are the same in all subjects that have abstracted it, as demonstrated in my previous post. Therefore, either a subject has abstracted the concept of 'redness', or he has not because he is colourblind; but there is no possibility of misunderstanding concepts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's okay, if they are two separate things because located in different minds, it could be that my concept is an exact copy of your concept. But I don't think this is true. Since concepts are not physical, they cannot have a physical location. Instead, I think that my mind and your mind connect to the same concept. This could explain how communication is done: to communicate is to connect to the same concepts.
That's true as well. So we would seek to explain the causes for the chair's existence in terms of other particulars. For example, the person who made it. Or the particles that it is composed of. But it is always the particular that is the locus of cause and effect whatever the mode of causal explanation.
Quoting apokrisis
In the sense that there is nothing more basic than the particular as an ontological kind. Of course the chair can be composed of further particulars (e.g., the seat and legs, or particles) - that's fine. But the chair can't be ontologically separated into matter and form. That is the false premise of dualism.
Quoting apokrisis
So that unity of substance is ontological of which matter and form are necessary aspects. As to what constructs or constrains a substance, the answer on a hylomorphic view is: other substances. There is no formless matter or immaterial form lurking in the background.
There’s your ‘unconscious modernist bias’ again. In ancient philosophy, ‘the individual’ was hardly a matter of consideration. The subject of debate was the relationship of universals and particulars.
But that is just a modern atomist/reductionist notion of causality. It is far from an Aristotelean account.
So are you trying to do anything other than assimilate hylomorphism to your unquestioned atomism?
Quoting Andrew M
Again, I would say the sensible understanding of hylomorphism is triadic. So it is the intersection of formal and material causes that produces the third thing of substantial being.
It is not dualism that is at the heart of things here, but the hierarchical relation of bottom-up constructive actions and top-down limiting constraints. That is how systems thinkers would read Aristotle.
Quoting Andrew M
And yet Aristotle was concerned with the reality of prime matter and prime movers.
Thank you for the well thought out reply. I could go through each propositions of part 2 and 3, but honestly, I think P2.1 leaves enough of an opening for me to try and go for a quick kill.
Regarding P2.1 : Epp means each thing is identical to itself. You equivocate here if you push this to means that objects with identical properties are the same object. This is much above the level of foundational premises where Epp is located. And it happens to be false, because we happen to be in a universe filled with multiplicity.
No, Democritus' atoms and the void it is not. It's instead the recognition that causality applies to hylomorphic particulars, not to mysterious immaterial forms or formless matter.
Quoting apokrisis
What is doing the acting? Or constraining? What, on your view, would be an example of a formal cause and a material cause that does not originate in a hylomorphic substance?
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, but that is not hylomorphism, it is remnant Platonism.
My understanding is that experience is fundamental. All that is is relation, and substance is merely a convenient idea for understanding the dynamic-as-static. Physicality would be seen as energy, but not as 'blind' energy; so there would be no difference in ontological kind between a rational process and, for example, a chemical reaction. There would be nothing transcendent and unchanging, but all. including God, is immanent in the World. 'World' here taken to refer to the 'living world', not the the empirical world; which is merely an idea of the living world conceived as a realm of static entities. (The empirical world is of course conceived as changing but the changes are from one state to another, and the 'living' character of trans-formation itself cannot be captured).
That's a good reply. Clearly when we are talking about actuality or being, it is always concretely substantial, always in-formed materiality. So material and formal cause can't be said to exist in some isolated, non-incarnated, way.
Yet still, the ontological question is what is the cause of being. And it is an important point that being must always be already hylomorphically developed. Two things - material and formal cause - have come together with a result, implying that those two things exist separately in their own right, and yet they can't in any proper sense exist that way.
So there is a logical bind when you get down to the root question of what causes being itself.
My triadic approach accepts that bind. That is why I say reality/being/existence is irreducibly complex. You can't dissolve what is really a process, a relation, into some simpler set of components - either a material (or idealistic) monism, or even a dualism of prime matter plus prime mover, or whatever. Bottom level is a three way hierarchical knot, a self-making process.
To make sense of that requires a further ontic dimension - the vague~crisp - which can allow existence to start off with an ultimate tentativeness yet swell and grow a definite substantiality as its own limit.
This would be the Peircean improvement on Aristotelean metaphysics. And of course it is not a well understood argument.
But you are right that the very first scrap of being would have to be already hylomorphically substantial, in some way a particular. Yet also the most general possible kind of particular. And in being the most general of all particulars, it would be the vaguest or most indeterminate state of being.
That is the logical argument. And then we can imagine this most general hylomorphic particular as "a fluctuation" - an action with a direction. So the most general notion of materiality - an action - coupled to the most general notion of a formal cause, or a constraint, which is the having of a direction.
So we can wind the clock backwards from where we stand - in a world of concrete particulars - to imagine the least concrete/most general initial conditions of hylomorphic being. A fluctuation is our best intuitive picture of this primal undeveloped state.
The very idea of an action implies a direction, and so should the very idea of a direction imply an action. We can see that each arises from the other - or at least this should be obvious since quantum mechanics showed it to be the case.
Anyway, I agree with your point - being is always already hylomorphically particular. We can't claim that material and formal cause somehow existed separately before being brought together. That's not the way it works.
But then the triadic approach says we can understand the genesis of substantial being by seeking the most generalised image of its particularity. The ontic question becomes what is the most primal incarnation of hylomorphic being? The best answer would be a fluctuation - an action~direction. That is still "a particular something" from one point of view, but it is also the most generalised, or rather the vaguest possible, particular something.
Again, if this seems a weird metaphysical claim, comfort can be found that this is just how modern physical "theories of everything" are having to imagine the creation of the Cosmos.
Loop quantum gravity approaches in particular have been finding that they all wind up back at this position of positing "bare actions" as their foundation. For mathematical reasons, attempts like causal dynamical triangulation to weave 4-dimensional models of evolving spacetimes out of "pure relations" all arrived at having to presume the notion of a bare action with a single direction. Spacetime dissolves into causal 2D shards at the primal level.
I dunno. As I've just described, I think physics is doing a good job of advancing the ontological project of metaphysics.
Greek metaphysics - if we date that to Anaximander - has been a huge revolution in human thought because it has shown how immensely successful the assumption of natural causes could be. If we are asking ontological questions, naturalism has been winning hands down ever since. Yet you want to take the curious position that supernatural causes are still just as much in play.
Now reason understands that remote possibilities can never be eliminated. Yet any fair reading of the history of ontology would have to agree that naturalism rules. That has been the presumption that has worked.
So yes, not all mysteries have been conquered. But we can understand why. When questioning becomes self-referential, it reaches an epistemic limit. In the end, not every question can be answered. But that doesn't then prove the ontological existence of woo. It just accepts we can't completely eliminate uncertainty, even if we can minimise our uncertainty to the point we really ought to cease to care.
Then when you talk about metaphysics having to deal with the issue of the intelligibility of existence, our capacity to explain, then that is epistemolology rather than ontology. And yes, naturalism has worked there too.
Or at least that is what semiosis is all about. We don't need a supernatural explanation of rationality or mind. Semiosis or meaning-making is world-modelling. It is a biological process, based on the epistemic cut.
And the last neat Peircean twist is seeing that the Cosmos itself is pan-semiotic. So epistemology gets united with ontology. The Cosmos is self-making in that it logically develops from primal fluctuation (Firstness, Tychism) to become a self-regulating set of habits (Thirdness, Synechism), by way of the intermediate interaction that is a play of reactions or concrete particulars (Secondness, dyadicity).
I don't agree. I think physics qua philosophy is in a state of complete and possibly terminal confusion.
Quoting apokrisis
The central question of philosophy as far as Plato is concerned, is the state of one's soul. Ultimately what Platonism is concerned with, is seeking out an identity as something that is beyond death, what is beyond the vicissitudes of time and change. But that is 'woo' for today's philosophers, who have become totally focussed on instrumental questions. But as far as I am concerned, philosophy has to be existential, not simply explanatory in the physical sense.
Thomas Nagel. And the sentiment is not too remote from Peirce's idealistic side.
Quoting apokrisis
I think you've done that very successfully.
I don't see how a concept could be apprehended on the basis of one word. The concept is always the meaning of the word, and it requires an explanation to understand the meaning of a word. The concept of redness is not grasped by seeing red things, it is grasped by understanding what it means to have the property of being red. So I think this paragraph is way off track from what a concept really is.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
This could be the case, and it appears to be what Platonic realists claim. The difficulty with this position is to support the existence of these concepts with some ontological principles.
Quoting Andrew M
Correction, it is your opinion that this is a false premise of dualism. The Neo-Platonists, following the logical principles which make up Aristotle's cosmological argument, see the need to conclude that the form of the object is prior in time to the material existence of the object; and, it acts as final cause of the object, in the same sense that the blueprints for the building are prior in time to the material building. From this perspective, your claim that the matter and form cannot be ontologically separated has already been proven to be false, and that's why dualism has been so prevalent in the past. It is not the case that modern philosophers have proven dualism to be false, they just totally ignore, and neglect the arguments which prove the need for dualism.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't see your point here. I would use "individual", and "particular" here interchangeably, they would be synonymous. I happened to use one instead of the other. You know, Plato and Aristotle wrote in ancient Greek, and there is a large difference between different English translations of these works. For Plato, I like B. Jowett because the words he uses are simple, what I think is more representative of the original. When I see complex and specialized terms used for translations of ancient material, I tend to think that the translations represent the interpretation of the translator rather than the intent of the author. The use of simple terms with a broad range of meaning creates ambiguity, but ambiguity is a useful part of artistry, and whether its intentional or not, it enters into philosophy.
Poets use a lot of ambiguity. It increases the size of the interested audience by allowing the words to have different importance to different readers. I think we approached this topic once, with respect to interpreting holy scriptures. In philosophy ambiguity is employed for different reasons. One can create a shroud of mystery with ambiguity, like Heidegger does, and this is common in mysticism. Wittgenstein is very crafty with ambiguity, literally playing games with words, laying out traps for unsuspecting readers. What he does is to define a word in a very particular way which is not completely consistent with common usage, it is one particular way of usage. Then he proceeds to banter using the word, producing various examples using that word, inviting the interpreter to fall into habits of common usage, habits which give the word a meaning different from the specific defined meaning. Then the reader is invited to produce logical conclusions which can only be drawn through equivocation. He is very sly, not to explicitly state the conclusion himself, but to imply that the conclusion ought to be made. So the unsuspecting reader makes the faulty, equivocation based conclusion.
I think that there was much ambiguity in the time of Socrates and Plato. It appears like the use of it was rampant amongst the sophists. I believe Plato worked to bring ambiguity out into the open, expose it and leave it bare for resolution. This is how I see Platonic dialectics. Socrates goes through various interlocutors asking them what does this word mean to you. What does "beauty" mean to you? What does "just" mean to you? For each proposed "meaning" he proceeds to analyze it and find problems with it. As it turns out, none of the words analyzed seem to have an acceptable meaning, and that's probably why ambiguity is pervasive. If there is no single, one good meaning, for the word, then everyone produces a meaning which suits their own purpose according to the circumstances.
I second this motion. What is at the heart of this confusion, I believe, is a complete lack of understanding of the nature of time.
Easy to claim, but now let's see the evidence.
Is naturalism terminally confused? How are you to explain away 2500 years of success then?
Quoting Wayfarer
Uh, yeah.
I mean it is important to be able to place ourselves in the world in some meaningful relation. We want to understand the truth of that.
Again, I don't see evidence of naturalism's failure.
I agree that in some true sense, modern society feels sick and badly adjusted. Humanity is quite carried away and artificial, or superficial, in its relation to the natural world on which its existence ultimately depends.
But that is all down to Romanticism and its belief that we are all individuals with a soul or spirit, answerable only to whatever we ultimately "find within".
So it is the way of thinking you want to support - the supernatural one - which is the source of our misunderstandings. Romanticism is what has led us away from nature.
Oh, I agree that Scientism has done that too - man's technological triumph over nature. But the Scientism you bemoan is part of Romanticism. It is just the final disconnect where the metaphysical belief in some higher transcendent purpose becomes completely internalised as a selfishness of purpose. If nature is made meaningless, we become our own god. Because what else is there.
So that is why I am arguing your metaphysics is in a tangle. You agree about the general diagnosis of the modern condition, yet you are blaming on naturalistic inquiry what is just the other face of a failure to be truly naturalistic.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yeah. Existentialism is Romanticism taken to its Scientistic conclusion. Nature has no meaning. All meaning has to be constructed by "your self".
That is why it is so important to feel our continuity with nature. Which is what got the thread started - the fact that physics now recognises that continuity at the most fundamental level of entropy and information.
We are not different from nature. We are a thermodynamic expression of nature.
You then reject that as you think we can't just be entropy producers. But a holistic understanding of nature sees that the dichotomy of entropy and negentropy is intrinsic. One does not deny the other. Each requires its other. It is a harmony and not the war you imagine - even if it is not exactly a "harmony" either. :)
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure. Let's use metaphysics to connect to nature.
I'm just pointing out the degree to which you presume nature to be mentalistic and "not physical" at root. What you focus on is evolved agency rather than raw potential.
This is why you seek a monistic idealism in Peirce's writings. This is how you can know you "win".
But this is just so anthropomorphic. It makes the human state of being the centre of the Cosmos. Existence becomes "a state of mind, a state of spirit, a soul-stuff".
Science is a method for forcing us to look out into the world and seeing it in its own terms. It is a de-centering project.
Yes, you can complain it is dehumanising. But that is just Scientism doing its best to turn human civilisation into an unthinking thermodynamic engine. It is a consequence of not realising the Romantic view is wrong in encouraging us to look inwards and ignore what is happening with nature.
You've made naturalism your philosophical enemy here. And that is the sad thing.
One of my very best friends has a very similar attitude. We had lunch yesterday, we talk about politics, current affairs, what we're up to. He's an accomplished technologist and IT journalist, we have worked together in the past. But we never discuss philosophy. There's a lot of people I never discuss philosophy with, but this is a philosophy forum.
Quoting apokrisis
What scientific naturalism does is declare that 'only what can be measured by science is to be taken seriously' - so it has an anthropomorphism of its own. But it is nothing like the traditionalist understanding of 'man as epitome of the Cosmos', the cosmic 'anthropos'. But that takes a very different philosophy, a different way of being, and it's not just 'romanticism'.
An unfortunate lack in the naturalistic account is that life, and mankind, is literally a cosmic accident. Oh, that's right, not an accident - a 'dissipative structure', the shortest route for thermodynamic processes back to equilibrium, which is non-existence. But as I've said before, I can't recognise this as an 'final cause' (and that's not 'a complaint', it's a philosophical criticism). Aristotle, in fact all the Greeks, would naturally believe that there is a reason for existence; but that is part of what has been abandoned by post-Enlightenment philosophy, as noted in books like The Eclipse of Reason. Even to believe there is a reason for existence is now regarded with suspicion.
Whereas, in the traditional philosophical systems I study, philosophical idealism among them, the human is in some way the cosmos endowed with the choice (and burden) of conscious awareness. (That's not just 'romanticism', either.) There's an echo of that in:
Quoting apokrisis
Except that thermodynamic processes are inherently insentient.
Quoting apokrisis
When I started to read up on 'objective idealism', I found Peirce is always said to represent that school of thought. Current science has appropriated aspects of Peirce's semiotics, as it is far better for describing biological processes than is mechanistic materialism. But Peirce was indubitably a monistic idealist, among other things. So it's not hard to find it, although apparently it's easy to deny it.
That is more how you require science to be so that it can be clearly wrong in your lights.
You gravitate to the sort of science rhetoric that is easy to be opposed to, and ignore anyone who might talk about cosmic unity - as right here in this thread when physics sees information and entropy in terms of a measurable continuity.
Your response is to argue that science is confirming its prejudice that reality is fundamentally meaningless. Yet, I see it as science recognising that materiality is fundamentally "mindful" in some important objective sense. It is the move that now makes holistic naturalism possible.
Quoting Wayfarer
It is true scientific naturalism should look on a "purposeful cosmos" with great suspicion. That is anthropomorphic romanticism.
But scientific naturalism can still recognise a place for teleology in a constraints-based systems realism. It is not a problem that the Cosmos has some global tendency - the weakest or vaguest kind of purposefulness. And that life and mind then produce richer or more intense and localised senses of function and goal-seeking.
Naturalism - being hierarchical - would expect nature to work like that. Complexity does produce that kind of intensification.
Quoting Wayfarer
Says you.
And science can agree fair enough if you are making some semiotic point about the necessity of an epistemic cut as the measurable threshold of what we would dub sentience ... or self-interested organismic existence.
So life and mind are both thermodynamic processes (we know that as we can measure their existence in terms of waste heat or friction produced) and they are sentient in being organismic processes (we can measure that to in terms of the presence of the necessary semiotic relation).
Again, your rhetorical need is to frame this as a case of strict either/or - either thermodynamic and meaningless or sentient and meaningful.
My ontology is a case of and/more. At base, life and mind are expressions of thermodynamic constraint. And then nothing was preventing life and mind getting sentiently organised to beat thermodynamics at its own game. In fact thermodynamics required that they would if it were possible.
Quoting Wayfarer
Great. When you can square your notion that he was a monistic idealist with the facts of his irreducibly triadic process ontology, I'll be waiting to hear.
Agreed and good post. One consequence of continuing to investigate the world is that it ultimately reveals hidden assumptions that force us to look at the world anew (familiar examples being QM and relativity). And this is where philosophy will always have an essential role to play in developing a meaningful and coherent story for those strange hylomorphic creatures that want to know "Why?"
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, the form of the building can be represented in a prior blueprint. But that doesn't imply that form is separable from matter. Both the blueprint and the building (and also the builder who has the form in mind as the building is constructed) are hylomorphic particulars.
That we can abstractly consider the form of something apart from its matter is the mark of intelligence. But it doesn't imply that form ever is apart from matter (or vice versa). That, to my mind, is the mistake of dualism.
Philosophy is about realising a higher state of being through the reasoned application of philosophical principles and practice (theoria and praxis). It is not a science and engineering project.
Perhaps you can define what you mean by a higher state of being. What are its measurables exactly?
Our universe is filled with multiplicity because each of those things has distinct properties. Since no two physical objects can occupy the same space at the same time, all physical objects have at least different x, y, x positions at time t.
If I observe an object with all its properties, and you observe an object for which all properties coincide with mine, and assuming no false perceptions, then the objects we observe must logically be one and the same; not duplicates, but one. As is the case with objects, so it is with information.
What would you be measuring? Not everything that counts can be counted, you know. And not everything that can be counted, counts.
Is it going to be defined in terms of the ineffable, the immeasurable, the "not even wrong", I wonder? Or do you claim what you claim on some actual rational - that is, counterfactual - basis?
The word only points to the concept. The concept is apprehended through experience or observation of particulars that participate in the concept or form (2). Children abstract the concept of redness simply by seeing a few red things. Simple proof: ask a toddler to pick the red ball out of other coloured balls, and as long as he can understand the language, he will do so correctly. Other example: you and I can find the cat out of a cat and a dog correctly, even though we (at least I) don't know all the essential properties that make a cat a cat, and a dog not a cat.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you asking how we know that universal forms (2) are one, and not duplicates in individual minds? The ontological principle that supports this is the law of identity.
E.g. My concept of 'triangle' has the essential properties 'flat surface' + 'three straight sides'. And I am fairly sure yours does too. Therefore, by law of identity, my concept and your concept are one and the same.
It's elaborated at length in Greek philosophy, particularly neo-Platonism. As I have explained, much of this was subsequently incorporated into Christian theology and then much later discarded along with it. You still find it in Hegel, and even in the American idealists, including Peirce, Josiah Royce, Borden Parker Bowne, and also William James. But because it has religious or at spiritual overtones, then it is naturally rejected as 'woo' by most hard-nosed scientific types - ‘not even wrong’, as you’re fond of saying. And also, it's true that it's not really measurable objectively, although there have been attempts - such things as studies of mindfulness meditation, mind-body medicine and so on might be vaguely related.
But this is why I’m studying metaphysics, in particular - I see it as the attempt to understand a philosophy to live by, not simply an exercise in theoretical science. ‘metanoia’ is the Platonist term for realising ‘higher states’ (although again that has been, perhaps regrettably, appropriated by the Church to mean ‘repentance’.)
Quoting apokrisis
This is an example of how methodological naturalism is treated as a metaphysical principle. Scientific naturalism has nothing to say about purpose, in the philosophical or Aristotelian sense, but 'having nothing to say' is not the same as 'saying there is nothing'. Methodological naturalism is quite right to put all such questions to one side, but here you’re extending that into a metaphysical principle.
Quoting apokrisis
I have an excellent doctor, who did a series of blood tests and advised me to change my diet. For that I am grateful, but I don’t regard his advice as ‘philosophy’ other than in a general sense of having revised my ‘philosophy of eating’.
Yes and no, because that would depend on what form your ontology allows properties to take. I could argue toward a very desolate ontology, where only non-relational aspects of an object can be allowed to be attributed the state of properties of that object. That would rid us of any spatial and temporal incongruities in our ontology, but I think that it would have a lot more negative effects than positive ones. It would force us to move to attribution of object as a category up the scale from individualisation to systematisation, which would be very counter-intuitive. Myself, I've always taken a more pragmatic view of property attribution, and therefore my ontology is quite literally limitless. It's not Meinong's jungle, but its not far either. I'd argue in the same sense as you, but rather viewing temporal and spatial properties of information as yet another indication that information is physical. Datum informs also the processor from their occurences in space and time, and therefore in no actual way does Epp applies in a meaningful way to both individualised occurences of "Montréal is in Québec" and "Montréal is in Québec".
Oddly you have avoided any attempt to define it as I requested.
Philosophy is 'love~wisdom'.
What implies that form is prior to matter, and therefore has separate existence from matter , is the nature of the particular in relation to the nature of time. That is the cosmological argument. The fact that the mind of the builder, with the form of the building, acts as final cause to create the material building, is referred to to explain this peculiar understanding of reality which is necessitated by that argument.
This makes me wonder why we need a study of metaphysics, as opposed to, or in addition to, a study of ethics and/or moral philosophy in order to understand how to live well: or as you call it, "a philosophy to live by".
It becomes a metaphysical issue if you decide that the "way to live" requires an ontic-strength foundation.
I think in practice, people realise that "how to live" is pretty much just a social issue. So you don't need to drill down to the truth of the Cosmos - or inwards to the truth of Spirit.
However humanity has also reached a stage where how to live has become an ecological issue, even a thermodynamic one. So now we really need a science-informed naturalism to understand our current social situation. Why do we do what we do, and what might be better?
Wayfarer is arguing that this misses the "higher plane of being". The Cosmos is really mind (or wisdom, or feeling, or something) at an ontologically basic level.
It is a familiar traditional position, but it doesn't really cash out as anything more than hippy wishfulness in this day and age. It is well-meaning and heart-warming. But where is the evidence it works?
You said that before, and I said that ‘we’re born alone and we die alone’, which for some reason struck you as ‘nihilism’. It’s not nihilism - it’s about the idea that ‘the state of the soul’, to express it in Platonist terms, is not a social issue (one of the themes of Gorgias, specifically in the section on the ‘judgement of naked souls’.)
As I understand it, in the biosemiotic view, h.sapiens is is nought but a ‘dissipative structure’ which, as it happens, is doing its utmost to ‘maximise entropy’ at this time in history, by over-breeding and destroying the ecosystem. Is that a fair depiction?
Quoting apokrisis
If you don’t carry it out, there can be no evidence.
But that is only the tale one would tell having formed a conception of existence in terms of "my mind".
Sure, I see that the "tale of me" has a birth, a death, a bit in-between. But that seems like an impoverished account in terms of my metaphysical naturalism.
You want to make it basic. I say that way lies the metaphysical disunity of dualism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Fair enough if you remember the rider. To the degree we are unthinking about it, we will simply fall into line with this "base desire". :)
So naturalism would see that the basic equation is "good". If the philosophical concern is human happiness, we can understand why entropy production is something we are evolutionarily hardwired to enjoy.
But then the essence of dissipative structure is that it has an effective balance. It might not want to actually blow itself up with an excess of heat production.
Biosemiotics would argue for the self-aware intelligence that might do something right now about fossil fuel burning and global warming.
So if natural science ran the planet, we might have long ago implemented the changes called for by the Club of Rome.
Unfortunately the planet is run by those with a more romantic philosophy - one which rejects any natural limits on the soaring human spirit and its right to express itself freely in its every desire.
I'd say that, apart from ancient schools such as Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Neoplatonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism and so on, the only "experiential" path in philosophy (in the way I think you mean) would have been associated with Christianity and Judaism in the form of monastic life ,Gnosticism, hermeticism, kabbalah, theosophy and anthroposophy. If you wanted to penetrate an experiential dimension you would need to become a practitioner of one of those disciplines, But I thought you are a practicing Buddhist?
Nothing wrong with pursuing an intellectual interest in western metaphysics, though I can't see how that would help you to become a better person, or even a mystic. So, I am still left wondering what you are really after, Wayfarer.
I’m sure not. I think Platonic philosophy is oriented around a kind of spiritual awakening, albeit understood in terms very different to the Indian tradition of same. But that is, I’m sure, the import of the famed Allegory of the Cave, which is central to Platonic epistemology.
Modern science owes a considerable part of its methodology to Platonic epistemology, due to Galileo’s reading of ‘dianoia’ (‘the book of nature written in mathematics’). But it’s not enough by itself. Galileo’s approach resulted in the relegation of the ‘domain of values’ to the subjective - which is where you place it.
But as I’ve said before, I think one of the primary concerns of philosophy is with a ‘metaphysic of value’. But that is too much like religion for our liking, never mind that philosophy has always had that religious aspect, up until it was displaced by scientific materialism. So now you can only ever understand that in either personal or social terms - either it’s Wayfarer’s ‘hippie metaphysics’, or it’s a communal sense of harmony.
But what if ‘awakening’ actually is a natural event, and one with real significance? Something real, something our science has completely lost sight of?
Quoting apokrisis
Nothing to do with romanticism. (Honestly, your understanding of what constitutes ‘romanticism’ is way off.) It’s consumerism, obviously, supported by a capitalist economic model that has no conception of the ‘limits to growth’ And that I certainly agree with, but it has nothing to do with ‘romanticism’. (This week there has been a letter released by concerned scientists, per this story. )
This is where this path, of debating on philosophy forums, has led me. I’ve started to realise the unique value of the Western philosophical tradition, a lot of of as a consequence of these very debates. Which makes me realise, that even though it seems like an unproductive pastime sometimes, I am learning something of great value.
It is very different to Buddhism, to which I’m still committed, but the fact of the differences is one of the things that makes it most interesting. To be honest, I really do feel as though in a past life, I was a scholastic monastic, somewhere on the Silk Road, and that at least part of what I’m learning is by way of ‘anamnesis’ - un-forgetting. ;-)
Yes, I suppose it's natural enough for people to want to live in accordance with 'ultimate' reality. The problem is that there is such a plethora of different ideas about what it is, and adherents of one idea often think all the others are wrong or misguided. No one really knows what it is, so is what it is as important as the fact of individual commitment (provide of course that any individual commitment is doing no social harm)? Maybe 'what is it?" is the wrong question. The closest I have seen to producing a satisfactory metaphysics would be process philosophy and God (although not the changeless, omnipotent dictatorial God of some sects of Abrahamic religion) is always a part of the picture in any serious process thought.
I agree with you that how to live is mostly just a social issue; with the caveat that what people do when they are on their own is really up to them and is nobody else's business unless the individual is significantly harming him or her self, or doing something that will lead to harming others.
I also agree with you that ideally we do have ecological responsibilities, but it seems to be so hard to get anyone, including ourselves, to take them seriously.
Quoting apokrisis
Any evidence could only be personally experienced and not inter-subjectively corroborated because it will, like metaphysical ideas always involve personally accepted presuppositions and interpretations based upon those. You could see that it works in yourself, or you could see that another has become a significantly better, or even a totally transformed, person, but how could you convince anyone who disagreed with you about that? And if it is experienced by you in the most profound way as being the good, the beautiful and the true; what more evidence would you need, and why would, or should, you care what others think about it?
Note that the builder is a hylomorphic substance. It is the builder, not his mind, that is the causal actor. It is he that is constructing the building so that people can live in it (the final cause).
That is the form that the cosmological argument must have if it is to be coherent. It is hylomorphic substances all the way down.
Yep, so back to the Ancient Greek recognition of the transcendence of mathematical truth. The world has seem capricious, whimsical, the product of rather human gods, as fickle as the weather, as changeable as the elements. And then behind this surface reality was discovered hard structuralist truth. The necessary eternal forms of mathematics.
Gotcha. But then how was the unity of naturalism restored following this marvellous shock? Did it all halt with Plato, or did we move on to Aristotle pretty smartly?
Quoting Wayfarer
OK. Then along comes reductionist science which applied the maths to the world. Newton revealed the simple mathematical structure behind all the variety of experience. That fostered the Enlightenment view. And engendered the Romantic reaction.
Theism was forced into a major retreat. It took what it could grab and set up shop again. It sat on the sidelines talking about everything science couldn't talk about - like the secret of life, or the nature of freewill. That lasted a little longer until the revolutions of biology and neuroscience.
Meanwhile science was ripping up even Newtonian mechanics. The mathematical bones of reality became ever better exposed.
Quoting Wayfarer
You would be right that science - hard physical science - deliberate leaves out values. But that is because it is seeking the mind-independent view of reality. Or if you look closer, the view of reality that allows us the most effective way of inserting our own values into the general story.
Again, you take the either/or reading. But I argue that science is a modelling relation in which "the self" is revealed as much as "the world". This was the argument in response to your complaint that a physics of information appears to completely leave out the issue of meaning.
By creating a baseline view of the world - a view of its structure of constraints - that is how we can then maximise the degrees of freedom that analysis reveals to us. We can see exactly how to start pulling the levers of the world to do the things we think are of value.
So science had the job of washing the world clean of values to maximise our human ability to impose our values.
Which is fine and dandy, but when push comes to shove, it is not as if those human values are all that fixed and obvious. Plato waffled about "the good" - truth and beauty - yet we all know humans are far more complex critters. The talk about "higher being" is rather pious and optimistic, not a solid metaphysical basis for action.
And so I say let science complete its job. Once we work our way through thermodynamics, biology and human evolutionary history, we will get towards some sensible account of what folk actually value and why. Then we can use our power over nature in a more productive long-term fashion. We will have the proper metaphysical basis for action.
Quoting Wayfarer
OK. Show me.
I can accept any conjecture. All I ask is for some evidence.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm talking about the prevailing system of values that allows consumerism to become a thing.
The consumerism is just the waste by-product, the excess entropy production. I'm talking about the mythology that underpins it in society. Bigger, faster, rarer. Everyone needs to live like a super-hero.
I agree it is confusing as historically Romanticism was framed as being about the power of nature. But the context was a response to the new citified, socially stratified, Enlightenment self. Romanticism pointed towards nature to draw attention to the primal existence of a free and unconstrained ego. Nature was made the excuse for transcending the merely social.
He can't show you; it's the nature of the beast. You would only ever be convinced by a testimonial if you had a feel for it yourself.
No they don't.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
OK, now you add another qualification, the child must be able to understand the language. That just proves my point. Which do you believe, does the child abstract the concept of redness solely by seeing red things, or is the use of language necessary as well?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
No, the law of identity does not support this. It states that a thing is the same as itself. Therefore it doesn't say anything about universal forms, it says something about things.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
This is a very poor argument. First, you beg the question with your definition of universal form, by saying that they are separate from the minds which they are in. That is what you are trying to prove, that they are separate from the minds. Then, you still do not have any premise which allows you to assume that concepts in different peoples' minds have "the exact same properties"? I would assume that being in different minds is a case of having different properties.
Quoting Andrew M
Actually, the builder's mind is the cause of the various activities of the builder's body. So ultimately, it is the builder's mind which is the "causal actor" in this case. That is what final cause is all about, and this is understood through the concept of free will. The mind sets into motion physical bodies. But the decisions of the mind, which set these motions, are not caused by any physical motions themselves. So the chain of causes, which we trace back from the existence of the material building, through the hands of the builder, ends with the intentions of the builder, hence "final cause".
Quoting Andrew M
No, this is just a statement of your prejudice. You probably aren't even acquainted with the cosmological argument so you just assert that it must be consistent with what you already believe in order to be coherent. But its coherency is based in principles which you haven't considered yet.
But I don't accept that because I don't agree that experience - of this kind - is primal.
My position is that "pure experience" is just a lack of differentiation. That is all folk are talking about when they talk about the ineffable.
So I have a psychological model than can be validated in the usual scientific fashion. I can make claims and offer support in a way that is epistemically self-consistent.
You are arguing for an epistemology that can make claims about experience as something we both could all share, and yet could never actually share. This is the radical inconsistency I keep pointing to.
It is claimed there is this spirit stuff, or higher plane, or state of cosmic awakening, or whatever. And that is somehow both something we all could have in common yet is also always forever private.
It is an incoherent epistemological formulation. It piggybacks for credence on the fact that awareness is normally a highly attentive, highly differentiated state. It is "a point of view" above all. And so it points most definitely to the psychological construct of the "witnessing self" in pointing towards the contrast of "the external world as it is right now ... for the ineffably private me".
We can then imagine a relaxing of this state of extreme differentiation. It just seems logical, in the usual dialectical way, that a strong self~world divide could be relaxed so that there just is ... undifferentiated experience.
So the psychological mechanisms are clear. So is the rationalising philosophy. There is no actual big mystery here.
However that is just me taking a naturalistic science perspective. And when folk reject that, they reject the very grounds of metaphysical claims that aim to do more than just be "not even wrong".
The point is that such experience is felt as primal; there is nothing beneath it that we can get to experientially; and such experience forms the intuitive basis upon which the presuppositions that form any individual's worldviews rest.
Of course we can critique that primary feeling of experience rationally and mount arguments as to why we should not think that experience really is primary; if we are so inclined. We can produce arguments to critique whatever we like. But any critique will be based on some other groundless assumptions. The point is, why should we question the primacy of our intuitions in metaphysical matters? We may elaborate our thoughts, but I doubt anyone genuinely questions their deepest intuitions about how things are. I see this constantly in life and on these forums.
So, I say own your own experience and elaborate your worldview upon your deepest and most honest intuitions. I have no doubt that is what you are doing anyway; but you seem to want to claim that your thoughts are not based on rationally groundless presuppositions; which I think is just necessarily BS. You might argue that you go for the inference to best explanation; but, in metaphysical matters at least, there is no way to measure, or collaboratively assess, that; so it ultimately comes down to what you want to believe; in the sense of what feels most right to you.
IF you had your way, it seems, everybody would have the same worldview, or at least the same kind within a very narrow range; how boring would that be! >:O
Dang. Once again, I have trouble understanding your big words. Could you provide an example of what you call 'non-relational aspects of an object'?
Quoting Akanthinos
If I understand correctly, you say that because the information "Montréal is in Québec" was spoken at a specific time and place, then that indicates that info is physical. But as I was trying to show, the info is a separate thing from its container. The container has a time and place, but not the information. People acquire the same information from the message "Montréal is in Québec", regardless if they hear it today or tomorrow, in Canada or in France.
No, for me it's not an idea at all, but a certain kind of feeling, undifferentiated of course (because pre-conceptual), but it can vary over a vast qualitative range. For you the undifferentiated seems to be the opposite, instead of an idealess affect, an affectless idea.
What you refer to as ‘scientific validation’ always requires a separation between knower and known - your ‘epistemic cut’. This is why, to you, quantification is the first step in any valid knowledge - ‘show me the data’. So the way that ‘shares experience’ is by eliminating anything that can’t be replicated in the third person. That is the subject of Thomas Nagel’s book, The View from Nowhere:
Quoting apokrisis
That’s not the reason. It leaves out values because they are associated with ‘the subject’ and also with ‘secondary qualities’ in the Galilean and Lockean system of empirical sciences. Values are always ‘mine’, or maybe ‘ours’, but they’re on the subjective side of the ledger. Accordingly the distinction that Platonism makes between ‘doxa’ or ‘pistis’ (mere opinion or belief), on the one hand, and ‘knowledge’ (episteme) on the other, no longer obtains to the domain of value. Sure, we can ‘insert’ whatever values we like, but those values no longer have any relationship with an essentially value-less Cosmos (values being ‘anthropomorphism’.)
Quoting apokrisis
Which is a very valuable and important thing to do. We need great technology.
A colour realist, someone who would say that "the rose is red" states a true fact about the object rose, would very likely say that a colour is a non-relational property of its object. On the other hand, a relationalist would say something to the effect that a colour is a property of an object to be seen as such under certain circumstances.
Now, the thing is, everyone is free to choose when and where they draw the line when it comes to properties. For example, a lot of people would say that objects don't have negative properties. It makes a sort of sense, because of parsimony, because once you start admitting negative properties then you must admit that almost everything as an infinite amount of properties. If my hand has the properties of not having more than 6 fingers, then it has the properties of not having more than 7, 8, 9, ... n fingers. And as such, someone could say that because temporal and spatial properties are intrinsically relational (or at least, it is very intuitive to admit that they are), then they are not really properties of the object itself.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Why not? Understanding happens in a time and a space.
But psychological science gives us good reason to question "primal experience". What is the status of the yellow we see? Judging by dreaming or sensory deprivation, how much is reality imagined? We presume introspection is part of primal experience and yet it is a learnt, language-scaffolded, skill - a social framing.
So for many reasons, I would say we don't experience primal experience in any direct sense. It is a construction. What we believe about it shapes what we think we see.
Of course there is still something "there". And we can apply psychological science to try to construct a view that is "maximally primal" in some conceptual sense. But you seem to be encouraging the acceptance of a naive realist stance towards the primality of experience. We don't have to construct the self that looks. There just is ... experience happening.
Quoting Janus
Why groundless? Psychological science shows that we are only thinking about our consciousness in some particular socially constructed fashion. It reveals this to us via experiment and observation. It is a hypothesis, true. But inductively confirmed.
Quoting Janus
But that is not how I think it should work. I accept a method of reasoning. And the prime tenet is not to just believe your "deepest intuitions".
Sure, it makes sense to axiomatise those intuitions - assert them as foundational hypotheses. You need to form a belief to test a belief. But those intuitions are then up for grabs. They get judged by the work they do.
The very last thing I would want to do is to cling on to assumptions that seem natural and yet don't yield to inductive testing.
Quoting Janus
Absolutely not. Otherwise how could my sense of "what's right" have evolved so much over the years.
I can clearly remember not wanting to believe in ontic vagueness for instance when I first heard about it. It felt a quite objectionable metaphysical thesis. I argued hard against it. But in the end, it came to seem a necessary belief because it laid a better ground for understanding.
So deep metaphysical principles come to seem right as the result of inductive confirmation. And belief in those principles remains provisional. They are merely ideas that work, nothing more.
Quoting Janus
If that were such a big issue, why would I seek out a forum like this where so many would strongly disagree?
That misrepresents me.
Quantification is the third step following the abductive formation of a hypothesis and the deductive formation of a general theory. After these first two steps, then comes the inductive confirmation of particular acts of measurement.
So produce a theory that is capable of being falsified. Then discover how it fares.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is correct. And the point here is that all this talk about "experience" is a third person point of view of "what is going on inside our heads". It itself requires that epistemic cut between a knower and the known - even if the two are supposed to be the same in this case.
You are just talking about a first person point of view. It's a theory. Then you are confirming that conception by demonstration - to yourself. You are looking inwards, introspecting, and finding you encounter just what you predicted. There is that ineffable sense of being a self. There are qualia floating about. All this is private information that only "you" witness. Etc.
So to justify your theoretical position in these threads, you are offering the quantification of these personal acts of observation or measurement. And you and Janus urge me to look inwards and make the same quantifications.
So it is not that you escape the necessity of the epistemic cut that allows there to be a "knower" dealing with the data of the "known".
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree there is a dichotomy, and as usual my reply is that dichotomies mean complementary limits. So the view from nowhere is one extreme. The view from "me" is its other. And "we" then sit in the spectrum of possibility that two limits create.
The big difference of switching from a dualised reading of the situation to a dichotomised one is that I can see that the "self", the "mind", the "experience" is just as fictional as the "world". There is no need to ontologise or reify the first person point of view. The mind or self doesn't have to be primal. It is merely emergent in the limit. We can approach the particularity of "being a me" as closely as we like. But we don't have to start with the presumption this "me" foundationally exists.
So yes. We are talking about a sharp division between first and third person points of view. We can imagine both as poles of viewing. But I draw a very different conclusion in seeing those poles as the complementary bounds on our conception, not some tricky ontic choice about which counts as the ground of our being.
Not by much. The salient point still remains. As I said before, the crucial step, if not the first step, in modern scientific methodology, is to ascertain what is measurable, and eliminate other factors. I say you're doing this reflexively - these are the spectacles through which you see philosophy. Please understand, that's not a personal criticism, I've had this discussion with a lot of people on forums, and it's a discussion about the way we all tend to see things in the culture we're in (although you may not agree that it is culturally-determined.)
Quoting apokrisis
'Looking inwards' is not a quantitative matter. It's a different stance, not an application of the same method to a different subject matter.
Quoting apokrisis
The evidence is in the interpretation of the metaphysics of the Republic and other facets of Western metaphysics. There are other sources from various philosophical traditions. In most philosophical traditions, but not in modern science, there is a category of evidence called 'the testimony of sages'. But I know they're not likely to persuade you, because they're not what you would consider 'evidence'. Maybe you're looking for this kind of evidence:
You've just perfectly described 'ghost in the machine' dualism. I'm suggesting that it is only hylomorphic particulars that have identity. And so existence and causality apply to particulars, not form or matter.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am familiar with how the argument goes. To succeed, the argument must be consistent with what we observe and what we observe are hylomorphic particulars such as the builder, the blueprint and the building, not immaterial forms or formless material.
This really comes down to Wittgenstein's private language argument. Hylomorphic particulars are public observables. Public terms like "form" and "matter" are used to describe those particulars and are not themselves things that have some mysterious ghostly existence or causal efficacy. Only particulars exist and have causal efficacy.
Yes. We can eliminate theories that are "not even wrong". If some formula of words makes no observable difference, then it is an empty and meaningless thing to say.
So it is not eliminating other factors. It is eliminating contentless assertions. It is eliminating claims without real consequences.
Quoting Wayfarer
But you are treating looking inwards as counter to looking outwards. It is not a different stance, but the same stance in a different direction.
And you do hint at quantification. Look inwards and you discover .... qualia, selfhood, a higher plane of being, pure feeling, the Dao, or whatever.
You wind up talking of an inner substantial being to match the outer substantial being. So it is you who require hard dualism to make your theory fly. You need Scientism to justify your Romanticism as being "properly other" and not merely a hollow formula of words.
Quoting Wayfarer
What, in most philosophical traditions except the Western? Was the lesson we took from Ancient Greece that we should trust experience and feeling, or trust dialectical reason and concrete observation?
You’re simply recapitulating Carnap and A J Ayer here.
Quoting apokrisis
The lessons in respect of the ‘domain of values’ have been forgotten.
I'm agreeing that the unreasonable effectiveness of maths, the existence of a Hard Problem, the poverty of Scientism, the nature of personal values, are all important philosophical issues. But I am questioning the vagueness of your proposed unifying ontology.
It sounds perfectly well-intentioned and it is certainly rooted in cultural tradition, but you need to subject it to proper philosophic examination. And that winds up being "scientific" in that theories have to be contested on evidential consequences. Conclusions must somehow be "showable".
Quoting apokrisis
What is the evidence, what is the context, what is the domain of discourse for such a science? Which science is it? If you wanted to enroll at university and study such a subject - which I did - you certainly wouldn't enroll in science. (The nearest I got was psychology, which was at the time mainly concerned with 'pulling habits out of rats'.)
Take for an example of a domain of discourse the Zen tradition. (I'm not claiming any special expertise or attainment in it by the way. ) But there is a process whereby the aspirant's understanding and grasp of the discipline is subjected to rigorous assessment by a roshi, who has previously been assessed, generally over the course of many years of arduous discipline, by those senior to him or her. So that 'domain of discourse' has means of such validation and of providing for the continuity of the core understanding that it is concerned with.
You may recall, the Platonic Academy was originally very holistic in its approach. Students who were accepted were expected to be all-rounders, in addition to mandatory requirements, such as understanding of maths. They were also trained in athletics, rhetorics, and so on, as well as the higher teachings. In fact the Academy (and the Lyceum, which was Aristotle's) were the ancient templates for the modern University. But notice that today's universities are essentially secular, they can't, for fairly obvious reasons, provide instructions or assessments in the kind of know-how that we're talking about. Actually I think a lot of that side of Platonism was (a) never written down in the first place, and (b) whatever was there has been redacted out by subsequent editors who didn't comprehend, or wished to exclude, the spiritual side of Plato's teachings.
Both of these arguably constitute a form of science, namely, a 'sacred science' (scientia sacra), but in such cases, the aspirant is both the subject, and the object, of analysis.
What I'm pointing out is that, at the very beginning of the modern scientific period, some decisions were made which have considerable consequences for this whole debate. That is why there is a 'hard problem of consciousness', it's a consequence of early modern philosophy, and it looks like being utterly unsolvable in those terms (as per this 5,000 word essay which wonders why the world's 'great minds' can't 'solve the mystery'.) And many other problems, including those you mention. So here, I do try and discuss that, from a cross-cultural and also historical perspective. But it isn't disclosed by modern scientific method, as an important aspect of that is to exclude the very kinds of ideas that we're trying to consider; and then forgetting what it has excluded.
Quoting darthbarracuda
This smashes together a whole bunch of ideas.
But quickly, hierarchy theory doesn't have to rely on atomistic foundations. All it has to claim is the possibility of entification over multiple scales.
So higher levels of organisation stabilise and simplify the lower levels from which they emerge. The story is about the functional regulation of instability.
Is a living body composed of subatomic particles? Or is it more properly composed of functional organic chemistry?
The cell is realm of hot metabolic activity where molecular machines are constantly falling apart and reforming. The show is kept on the road because the information encoded at a higher level in DNA is enduring enough to keep pointing the way. And then energy flows through the molecular structure in a fashion that keeps it constantly reforming just a bit faster than it falls apart.
So once your model of causality includes functionality - formal/final purpose - then the stability becomes a top-down feature. The information that endures at the higher level is what regulates the stability of its material/effective parts.
Atomism does presume the opposite. A grounding substance just passively exists. But quantum physics and thermodynamics challenge that ontology. Even particles become contextual things - instabilities regulated by the information content of a history, or an environment.
So you are talking about hierarchical order in a sense that is very atomistic and reductionist, not particularly Aristotelian.
Then hierarchy theory as understood in modern holistic systems thinking offers a self-grounding story of how stability is a feature that develops through the semiotic regulation of instability.
The ground floor of being is now understood as being the most radically unstable or indeterministic state of affairs - a sea of fluctuations, a chaos, a vagueness. Then constraints emerge to tame that, give it direction. Information builds in levels to create functional structures that endure. And thermodynamics speaks to that overall function - the imperative to entropify. Every hangs together because it is falling down the same hill - the slide from a Big Bang to a Heat Death.
So a human body persists because it has the informational machinery to preserve a functional idea of itself. It can harness a flow of entropy to rebuild itself faster than it would otherwise fall apart.
See - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867416302082
I didn't say it had to be a recognised science. I was arguing that Western philosophy actually does employ "the scientific method of reasoning".
This is Peirce's point. The practice of reasoning - which may have reached its early high-point in Plato's academy - is a process of abductive guess, deductive theorising, and inductive confirmation.
And note the importance of there being "an academy". Like Peirce says, reasoning is all about a community of minds. So it is a mechanism for arriving at common agreement. The academy was a step up because it wasn't individuals muttering to themselves. It was all about the power of dialogue to flush out ideas with clear consequences that could be judged.
Likewise the academy led to texts. Stuff had to get written down so it could be shared directly with students. Earlier philosophers wrote poems. But a new rational or dialectical style of argumentation was developed to "show the workings, show the justifying" in definite fashion.
So there is a method for advancing philosophical concerns. My criticism is that you don't think the constraints ought to apply to your talk about "a higher plane of being". You are saying there is another way of knowing, just as valid if not better.
Again, I say well show me. And so we go around the same circle again.
But his hylomorphism led towards both a prime mover and prime matter. So there was some ultimate form/purpose (like the global shaping hand of circular motion), and also some basic formless notion of "stuff", a prime matter. Or what Plato called the chora, or receptacle.
So my modern approach understands hierarchical causality as being about constraints and degrees of freedom. This tracks back to Aristotle's dichotomy of prime mover and prime matter. Or top-down functional cause vs bottom-up material cause.
The laptop, like the floor, the planet and the cosmos on which it rests, is subject both to universal laws and particular material initial conditions. It has to rest on formal or functional conditions as much as material ones.
So in claiming the existence of x is explained by the existence of y, you are only telling the tale of material causality. And you are making a big mistake in presuming that stability is a property simply inherited from baser levels of being rather than it being the property a hierarchical system needs to impose on its "base layers".
Quoting apokrisis
If the hierarchical system imposes stability on its base layers, it is only because the base layers are capable of being arranged in some way. The workings of the composite is done through the combined efforts of the parts, but it's still the parts doing the work.
When I turn on a light, it is clear that the lightbulb requires a voltage source to work. The light turns on because is is connected to a live voltage source. The voltage source itself depends on many other things to act as a voltage source. These things require other things, which require other things as well. There's no such thing as a physical entity existing by itself, there is always something more that is "keeping" it in existence. So the demonstration here is that things require other things to keep them hoisted in existence and if there cannot be a physical entity that pulls itself up by its bootstraps, then there must be something non-physical that ultimately keeps everything existing. Which we presumably call God.
That's solely because I go to the trouble of trying to explain it, and you don't understand it.
History locks them in. When a wavefunction collapses, an event has now happened in some spatiotemporal location with a definite energy. By the same token, it's possibility of happening anywhere or anyhow else has been removed. So the past is a memory that constrains. Actions become ever more limited by their environment.
The same applies over all scales. If a river branches at one point, then that removes the possibility of it bulging and breaking at a host of other points. The branching is an accident. But it leaves a permanent mark that grows to have real effect on everything that follows.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yeah. My ontology always IS fundamentally two-way or complementary. You've picked that up. It is the basis of the systems view.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Now you are being reductionist. The parts do the constructing, the whole does the constraining. And so the whole shapes the parts that are re-making its wholeness. (Haven't we been through this 1000 times?)
So work is being done from both directions. And importantly for this discussion, the stability of the parts is due to their contexts of constraint. It is not inherent but emergent.
Of course once we start talking about substances - like metal, or rock, or plastic, or glass - we conveniently overlook this bigger picture.
Even protons and electrons are fundamentally unstable - stable only because of a marked lack of their anti-particles in the near vicinity.
Quoting darthbarracuda
And now we are into the human engineered view of the world when we create machines made of rigid bits. Somehow examples of artificial things seem canonical examples of nature at its best.
Why are folk always stumbling into this obvious ontic mind-trap?
Quoting darthbarracuda
Perhaps a rigid mechanical understanding of nature would require you to then imagine a God to wind the clockwork with his circular prime mover, adjust the hands with the occasional miraculous intervention.
Me? Nope, don't need divine cause. I don't make the mistake of thinking the Comos to be rigid mechanism.
I asked about this "higher plane of being". You've said a lot but nothing that counts as an explanation. What is it? How is it? What is it? Where is it? When is it?
I mean you could have replied that it isn't really a plane, nor being, nor higher. All that is suggestive of some psychic, transcendent, stuff - a Platonic realm of ideas, or dualism realm of spirit. You could have said it was a poor choice of words and you didn't mean to reify intuition, feeling and value as if they were perceptions of an alternative reality that ordinary rational perception fails to see.
I would still dispute any mystical, non-natural, non-biological, account of our ability to know reality this way, but we might have been more on the same page. But once you make claims about the literal existence of "a higher plane of being", its a different metaphysical ballgame. And I haven't seen you stacking up the justification to take that seriously.
Thanks for the info on relational properties. indeed, I think it is the case for colours. I don't see why temporal and spatial properties would be relational though. Relational to what? They are accidental only. I also don't agree with the negative property concept. Instead of saying "an object has the property of non-x", it seems more correct to say "an object does not have the property x".
Quoting Akanthinos
I think understanding happens in a time, but not in a space. Here is why: Consider time t1 before I understand an info, and time t2 after I understand it. If we could go back to t1 (somehow), then I would not understand the info. But I understand the info at places p1 and p2, provided it is at time t2. In other words, the existence of understanding seems to be a function of time but not of place.
But I wonder it this is besides the point anyways. The existence of the information "Montréal is in Québec" is not dependent on the receiver understanding the message, is it?
The child abstracts the concept of redness solely by seeing red things. The understanding of language is not necessary for abstracting the concept, but it is to test if the child got the concept or not, simply because us observers need to ask the child questions. If we could pierce into his mind without asking questions, then he would not need to understand the language. The language is necessary only to know the words which point to concepts, not to obtain the concepts themselves.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you suggesting that universal forms are identical to minds? This seems so absurd to me that I did not find the need to backup that statement. Does this means that if you think of a triangle, then your mind becomes triangle-ness? Anyways, I was not trying to prove that concepts are separate from minds, I was trying to prove that all minds connect to the same concepts; as such the argument is not begging the question.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We went over this before but I will demonstrate once again for one concept. My concept of triangle-ness has the essential properties "flat surface" + "three straight sides". Does your concept have the exact same properties? If not, then what are they?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But I thought you agreed that forms were not physical, did you not? If not physical, then they cannot have any physical properties, such as a physical location.
IN the context of a discussion about Platonic philosophy, the 'higher plane of being' is the domain of forms. Given that there is doubt about whether the Forms (Eidos) are real, the question could be asked analogically, i.e. 'where is the domain of natural numbers'? That is obviously nowhere, in a spatial sense. What it is, can't be reduced to anything lower, i.e. the domain of natural numbers simply is that. How is it? - unclear. And so on.
Quoting Andrew M
The cosmological argument is consistent with what we observe, as well as consistent with logical principles derived from what we observe. Do you recognize that in every case of a hylomorphic particular, the potential for that particular precedes, in time, the actual existence of that particular? And do you allow a general, inductive principle derived from this fact?
Quoting Andrew M
What it comes down to is whether or not you are prepared to accept some simple logical principles derived from our understanding of reality.
So your claim is that the child understands what "red" is without understanding language. Why is that not contradictory to you?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
No, I'm not saying that at all. I don't know how you derived that conclusion, it's far from what I said.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Sorry, but my concept of triangle is not the same as that. Mine is of a plane figure, with three sides and three angles. See how different mine is from yours? Yours is "flat", mine is "plane". Mine has three angles. yours does not. Mine is the concept of a triangle while yours is the concept of triangle-ness. To have "the exact same properties", all properties, even the accidentals, must be the same.
Do you really believe that we can have concepts without language?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Space and time, as we understand them, are not physical things. Nor are the relationships between physical things physical things. This is why physicalists produce such a confused form of metaphysics, they take the descriptions which physicists produce, concerning the physical world (descriptions of relationships between objects), and treat these descriptions as if they are actually physical things.
Your objection is misplaced, because I have already acknowledged that when it comes to empirical claims, the scientific method of collective observation and corroboration is the most effective we have. But metaphysics and phenomenology are different matters. Of course there can, and should, be agreement in those but it is of the nature of testimonial commonality and agreement, rather than strict experimental arbitration. You would want to subsume those disciplines to science, and you speak as though this stance is justified by itself being supported by science; but this is circular reasoning, and you are thus assuming a standpoint that you are called upon to show is free of that very assumption.
Quoting apokrisis
Firstly, as I already stated at least once, if I am not mistaken, I am not talking about introspection in the sense of "looking within and seeing the (objective) contents of experience'; I am talking about reporting how experience seems to us in its 'first person' immediacy, not its objective contents but its subjective quality. I believe this is something we all know; we know what it is, subjectively speaking, to experience ourselves in relation to a world of others, not as some objectivist description about it, but as subjective immediacy.
Even animals must be thought to emjoy such a subjective quality of life, or experience. This is prior to any "language-scaffolded, skill - a social framing"; you just don't seem to be able to get that, though; apparently because you are too caught up in your discursive deliberations. This is stuff that inhabits the domain of the arts, not that of hard science (although the so-called human sciences may participate in both domains). I agree that both third person understanding and first person experience should be consistent with one another, even though they are given in very different terms and one can never replace the other.
Quoting apokrisis
This shows clearly what I say above; you keep defaulting to thinking I am talking about "thinking about consciousness" in some objective sense; you just cannot seem to get outside your presuppositions in order to understand what I am saying. It seems we will continue to keep talking past one another; and no fruitful discussion can ensue if one side tries to eliminate or subsume the other, so maybe it's a good time to stop wasting each other's time. :)
This is where you keep getting unstuck. You keep arguing about whether ‘the same’ means ‘the same’, or whether it means something else. Whether your idea, and someone else’s idea, of ‘a triangle’, is the same or different. Whether the difference between two accidental objects (i.e. rocks) is intelligible. You are arguing here that because the way you describe ‘a triangle’ is different to the way another does, that this difference is significant. All I see in all of that is obfuscation.
I have been reading up on Timeaus again, following your recommendation. The key idea that Timeaus introduces is between ‘that which always is’ and ‘that which becomes’ - being and becoming. The idea is that the Forms are ‘that which always are’, and actual things, particulars or individuals, are in the realm of ‘becoming’. Now at this stage, very little detail of how forms relate to particulars etc is left vague - it wasn’t until much later that the details were really considered.
But to try and get the dialogue back on track, here is one version of the original quote on the ‘concept of triangle’
Feser, Some Brief Arguments for Dualism
So I don’t have any confidence in the idea that ‘your idea’ and ‘my idea’ of ‘what constitutes a triangle’ means or amounts to anything.
Hmm. I thought you were referring to a realm of meaning, value, wisdom and consciousness rather than a realm of mathematical abstracta.
I'd say that Plato's forms are easy to understand in terms of constraints or immanent limitations. They are the shapes, the structuration, that stand at the edge of material possibility. And this connects to the initial discussion about information/entropy.
So the realm that maths inhabits is the zeroed realm where dimensionality and energy have gone to their effective material limit. A code, for example, is dimensionality constrained to a 1D sequence that is then composed of 0D points. The natural numbers are just such a structure - with the addition of the points being arranged in an ordinal sequence. The code contains a message in that it points the temporal direction for acts of counting.
So everything about mathematics can be understood as a limit description on dimensioned materiality. There is a world of action and direction. Then there is the antithesis of the "realm" which is the emergent limit on actions and directions. The reduction of actions and directions produces this ghostly space of the zero-d - an infinite wasteland of discrete points, which can then be semiotically imbued with private meanings.
Once entropic existence is reduced to a set of bare marks, then the marks can take on unlimited meaning within a new level of semiotic mechanism. That is, us humans can describe the structure of the Cosmos in terms of constructive patterns. We can build systems of constraint using our mathematical templates - our ideas about triangles, numbers, manifolds, and so forth.
So Plato's realm is what springs up at the edge of material existence. It is the "flattened" view of the whole produced by dimensional constraint going to its extreme. Collapse dimensionality and energetics - actions with directions - and you wind up with patterns of marks that can be used semiotically to encode the world just collapsed.
Is a triangle real? Well our concept of a triangle certainly encodes the core facts of spatial geometry. We can throw away nearly everything - all entropic irregularity or actual dimensionality - to arrive at a limit state description in terms of a number of sides, a sum of internal angles, a quantification of a compact surface in terms of its ultimate simplicity.
Where does this triangle exist? Well, in our minds, in our habits of conception. But also it "exists" in the world as a particular ideal limit - a constraint on 2D dimensionality using the least number of 1D edges and 0D vertices. So it doesn't really exist in the world as limits are where existence finally ceases to exist. There are no perfect triangles in a materially real world, just their asymptotically close approximations.
So my point is - connecting again to the OP - is that the "higher plane" really exists in the semiotic view. There is an epistemic cut that divides reality into its entropic material sphere and its semiotic informational sphere.
Existence or being can be accounted for as the constraint on potential. In the beginning, the Cosmos would have been unlimited materiality - just pure unbounded fluctuation. An infinity or chaos of action and direction. In expressing every possible action and direction, this vagueness would have been no kind of action or direction in any proper sense at all.
Then out of this "everything goes" conflict, constraints would have to emerge. All the conflicts would start to cancel each other out, leaving only what counts as the simplest harmonies or resonances. In quantum cosmology terms, this is exactly the path integral or sum over histories approach. Order must emerge from chaos. Free action must still find its long-run equilibrium balance.
And so the dimensionality of initial cosmic chaos would be reduced. It would collapse towards the definite three spatial directions and the one collective temporal dimension we experience. The maths of symmetry and symmetry breaking are particularly good for describing this natural self-simplifying tendency. Physics is deeply mathematical because symmetry maths encodes the greatest possible states of simplicity. Symmetry maths explains why the goal of the Cosmos is to become as reduced in direction and action as it can get - the ultimate imperative that is a Heat Death.
But in this story of entropification - the slide towards greatest equilibrium simplicity - is then to be found the other side of the coin, the informational realm that emerges ever more strongly as dimensionality is flattened and simplified. As the Universe heads towards the closest it can get to zero-d constraint, that produces the new possibility of negentropic semiosis. You can get the counter-action of regulating the material world through zero-d systems of symbols, marks or codes.
Plato's realm comes alive in our hands. Ideas about numbers, triangles, and other abstracta, can be turned from being the deadened limits on materiality to the formative constraints we place on still lively materiality. As long as there is a little heat left in the Universe, we can mine it, regulate it, for some privately created meaning or purpose.
Of course, overall, our human-centric semiosis or negentropy has to be entropic. We must produce waste heat whenever we do work. But for us, Plato's realm is a higher plane of being in that it is a place from which we can actually act and give direction. It encodes the physics of the world in a way that is real, but also in a way that is causally reversed in that we are imagining the patterns as not emergent but constructed. We reframe the entropic truth of the world in a way that is technologically convenient.
Now you may see that as a spiritual move. Plato's realm is somehow accessing something divine or actually transcendent.
But the semiotic story is only of a faux transcendence - an epistemic cut. We extract a story about limits so that we can impose those limits on nature through acts of entropic construction. If I want to build things, I can have in mind a kitbag of ideal shapes, like triangles, cubes, planes, etc.
Plato's higher plane exists in our imagination as the entropic world turned around on itself. So it "really exists" as being a realm of physical limits or ideal constraints. But it is really a mirror-land in that it is this physical realm imagined in terms of the constraints being constructable. The causality is flipped around from being top-down to bottom-up.
(Although of course the causal relation between the forms and the physics is precisely what created all those Platonic ontic puzzles - the allegory of the cave. It was clear that the constructive approach of actual mathematics was in conflict with the fact that in nature, limitations are emergent. Platonic debate recognised the disjunct, but failed to resolve it. Hence the dualism that has bedeviled the subject ever since.)
But the entire point is that Plato was concerned with a real basis for value, an objective 'domain of values'. That is the sense in which Platonist philosophy provides a dimension of a 'higher truth', which I know is a terribly non-PC thing to say. So you were challenging me - 'where is this higher truth? When? How' etc. That's why I brought it back to the Platonic intuition about numbers.
But, you're still maintaining an essentially physicalist ontology. I think, perhaps, with semiotics, you're half-way between plain old-fashioned reductionism, and something else altogether - 'the old is dying, but the new is struggling to be born'. I'm with you on biosemiosis, but I loose you at pan-semiosis - in other words, I agree with you about the science, but not about the metaphysics.
Metaphysics and phenomenology couldn't be more connected. Epistemology doesn't get going until we accept that we find ourselves already thrust into the world in a state of conditioned perception. "Metaphysical" presumptions are already in play by the time we realise that there is this thing called "phenomenal experience".
So no circularity. We start by recognising we are already caught in the bind of a hermeneutic circle. The idea of "raw feelings" is just another of the things that folk are talking about.
So the task is to haul ourselves out of this unthinking state and move towards some better considered position. Hence the method of scientific reasoning. We accept the necessity of making assumptions. And then we turn a bug into a feature. We consciously state we begin with a guess and then deductively work through its consequences, inductively confirm its advantage.
It is not circular but hierarchical. Axioms are footholds to lift ourselves to a viewpoint that has some greater advantage.
Of course you can question the nature of the progress being made by any particular hierarchical excursion. But that is simply itself a meta-practice of the same epistemic technique. At least it is if your question is "reasonable".
Quoting Janus
Again, I can only say that this is a cultural conception which we all have to learn. So the "first person" claim very much does have to be put in scare quotes.
Quoting Janus
Again, I can only repeat that of course we would expect animals to have a biological sense of self. I have pointed out how perception is based on the very ability to make a self~world distinction. And yet also, we have no reason to think that animals are aware of this self in a third person descriptive fashion.
They would be extrospective, not introspective. They would simply "be themselves" in experiencing "the world". They wouldn't do the linguistic thing of experiencing themselves as beings in the world. The self and its qualia would not switch from being subjects to objects as a matter of conception.
Quoting Janus
It's not a default. It is what psychological science has to tell us. The social default position is that we are self-aware creatures in some innate way. It is very much against the grain of popular opinion to say that our habit of objectifying our selves, our experiences, is the product of linguistic behaviour.
So yes, you keep refusing the consequences of this understanding. You maintain, despite the facts, that there is "raw feeling" in some pure first person sense.
But the first person point of view is a view constructed via a third person stance. It is not itself fundamental. At best - as a phenomenological project - it is only an honest attempt to recover what might be a pure first person point of view. It would be our best go at imagining our state of mind with the least cultural en-framing. Just the "raw feels".
The mathematical forms were a pretty convincing motivation for positing a concrete realm of abstracta. Philosophy began with the realisation that the world had this necessary immanent capacity for deep order.
But as you say, Plato then tried to tack on some rather anthropomorphic notions on top of that. He wanted to place "the Good" at the top of the chain of being. It was the light that illuminated the forms and caused them to be received as the impressions in a material world.
So yes, beyond the formal causes, there must be the final causes. That seems to make sense. Something must breath enough meaning and purpose into the possibilities of mathematical form to then cause them to become instantiated. The mathematical forms represent a set of free choices. Then someone, or some principle, has to make that choice for some reason.
In my semiotic/physicalist metaphysics, it is pretty obvious what plays the part of The Good. The animating purpose is the thermodynamic imperative - the general drive to self-organising simplification.
So again, it is no problem for me to point to the generic least action principle at the heart of Cosmic existence. We now even have the information theoretic maths to model and measure what we are talking about metaphysically. We can produce inductive confirmation of the metaphysical claims we might make.
Perhaps you might spell out the end-point of the 'thermodynamic imperative' - what it is all heading towards. This, I presume, will be what you see as the 'final cause'.
Again? Even I feel I have repeated myself enough. :)
That also happens with great regularity. Right now I really ought to be going and having lunch.
No, I don't. Time is a universal. As such, it is immanent in particulars and not transcendent to them.
So, on a hylomorphic version of the cosmological argument, there can be no universals prior to the existence of the prime hylomorphic substance, including time or potentiality.
Right then. The thermodynamic imperative is not pointing towards anything particularly grand. Just a Cosmic heat death.
So it represents the constraint, the final cause, that is a globalised tendency towards some state of ultimate mathematical simplicity.
If you wanted to, you could spin that as some deeply spiritual goal. It sounds like a state of maximal oneness or quietude. The Universe folds back into the depths of itself, let's go all its passing localised cares, and goes ... Ommmmm!
You can view the Heat Death as the ultimate failure of meaningfulness or celebrate it as the arrival at some ultimate state of elegant self-integration. There are plenty of anthropomorphic angles you could apply.
I don't have a strong feeling either way. Rightfully, the fate of the Cosmos is pretty much a neutral thing. Neither victory nor tragedy. We don't actually have to value it, do we?
But if you want to manufacture some kind of personal meaning from the thermodynamic imperative, there is definitely the practical concern - the question of why do we humans keep tending towards a certain kind of entropic end as living creatures?
And then if you are after a purely aesthetic judgement - and why not, it's fun - I think it's quite neat if the Heat Death can be shown to have Platonic necessity. It is one of your revered mathematical objects.
If symmetry can be broken, then this is the image of symmetry breaking taken to its ultimate limit. This is the image of maximum simplicity. Physics can hope for an ontological "theory of everything" as particles, forces, spacetime dimensionality, the constants of nature, the whole shebang, are indeed a Platonic object waiting at the end of time. The Universe is the crystalisation of an abstract limit on unbounded "everythingness".
So it is quite possible to dress up the Heat Death poetically. It can sound just like something really special. The secret of existence. The ultimate knowledge. The creation of eternal order.
We can say these things with a straight face. ;)
Well, this is where I think your appeal to the Aristotelian notion of 'final cause' doesn't really stack up. In Aristotle's scheme, final causes work on various levels - even mundane creatures have a final cause or 'telos'. But there's also a sense of an ultimate end, to which all the particular causes are directed. Of course that is then interpreted by later theistic philosophers in their terms, although Aristotle himself was not 'theistic' in their sense. But in any case, the salient point is that it is not simply non-existence or nothingness; so I think there's a problem with appropriating the notion of a 'final cause' but then adopting the 'thermodynamic imperative' in place of that.
So this is another thing I've regularly repeated. Biology can internalise that kind of information. That is what the epistemic cut permits.
The Cosmos just has a pansemiotic tendency. Biology can encode semiotic functionality. Sociology can encode a human notion of purpose.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well this is where the advantage of constraints-based thinking shows. The Cosmos can have a tendency. And yet we can - for a while, in our own limited way - defy that. The flipside of constraints is that they also create freedoms.
So you are stuck with the notion of "only one end". My view demands orthogonal ends. In the middle of an entropifying Cosmos, it is not a surprise that we would find a height of complexification.
It is a yin and yang thing. Even the Heat Death is both a state of order and disorder. Entropy is not the simple thing folk make it out to be. To be carefully disordered is a strict kind of order.
Quoting Wayfarer
Did I call the Heat Death a state of non-existence? It might be maximally nothing - the ultimate featurelessness. But that is also a great big something in that it is an eternally continuing and expanded featurelessness.
Remember that the Heat Death is defined as the asymptotic approach to absolute zero degrees kelvin, or the minimum possible energy density. We only arrive there when the Universe has reached a vacuum state balance in which it expands and dilutes exactly as fast as it can quantumly fluctuate and radiate.
The Universe still changes just as much, but the changes can no longer make a difference. It's like the Red Queen's race at the Cosmic scale - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race
Such a beautiful idea!
Why is it contradictory to you? It would be contradictory to understand the word "red" without the language, but not the concept "redness". Concepts are not made of words; rather, words point to concepts. A blind man may know the language, but cannot grasp the concept of redness if he has never seen a red thing. Therefore language is not the cause of acquiring concepts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
"Flat", "plane"... don't be so picky about the words MU. And yes, you can have three angles too, but these are redundant because a plane with three sides necessarily has three angles. You might as well add that the sum of the angles equates to 180°, but this is once again redundant. To sum up, your concept coincides with mine; thereby demonstrating that subjects acquire identical concepts, which is necessary to have coherent communication.
What accidentals can you add to concepts? Remember that concepts are universals.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think I agree with you regarding time not being a physical thing, because it is a function of causality, which is not necessarily about physical things. But what about space? Common sense or default position is that space or location is a physical thing. How can you back up your claim that it is not?
You stated the terms 'blueprint' and 'eternal' in the same sentence. I think it is important to keep the distinction between Forms and forms. Forms or necessary truths are eternal; forms or concepts or blueprints are not. It is not possible to imagine a thing that is illogical, thereby making logic an eternal Form. On the other hand, it is possible to imagine a world where no red things exist, that is, where no particular participates in the blueprint of redness, and effectively, no subject in that world (excluding God) can acquire the concept of redness; thereby making redness a non-eternal form.
Actually that was in reference to the Timaeus, particularly in this section. Plato speaks of a ‘craftsman’ or demiurge who ‘fashions’ the Universe from ‘an eternal model’. So only ‘what does not become’ is what is ‘eternal’ whereas those things that are becoming (that is, sensible objects) are not the objects of knowledge. Knowledge is only possible with respect to the Forms, because they’re eternal, i.e. ‘always are’, by virtue of which they’re intelligible in a way that sensible objects cannot be.
However, when you equate ‘forms’ and ‘necessary truths’, I don’t know if that is made explicit here, nor in the later, Aristotelian account - I haven’t studied it enough to know. But I think you’re surmising that the Forms amount to the justification of ‘necessary truths’ - and i suppose that may be so, but I don’t know if that is explicit at the early stage of Platonism. (It sounds like an essay question).
I urge you to have a look at this passage, on Augustine’s presentation of ‘the nature of intelligible objects’ (scroll down to the numbered paragraphs; from the Cambridge Companion to Augustine). I have often presented and discussed this passage on forums, and I find it is of the utmost importance, particularly the way in which he uses it to demonstrate the reality of incorporeal forms. I think this is one of the keys to understanding how Platonism influenced first Augustine, and then indeed the whole development of Christian theology.
One question I have about it is - what exactly is meant by the term ‘intelligible object?’ An example is given, namely, that of prime numbers. But there must be others. I interpret that like you are also doing - that it’s a reference to universal abstract truths that are in some sense embedded in the fabric of the cosmos but are transcendent in nature - reason can glimpse them, but they’re above it.
Perhaps it appears as obfuscation to you, but to me the beauty of the world is found in the uniqueness of each and every thing, with each and every minute difference. That is the basis of intelligibility, difference. The senses and the agent intellect act to determine the differences of the world. This is what Timaeus points to, the uniqueness of all the different animals, and different parts of animals, found in the realm of becoming. Understanding and knowing concerning the realm of becoming, is obtained through distinguishing all these differences.
The principle, that there is a difference which is not significant, is fundamentally unintelligible by way of contradiction. This is because by saying that it is a difference, you have already assigned significance to it. You cannot determine a difference without assigning significance to it. That there is a difference which doesn't make a difference is inherently contradictory. That is what Aristotle's law of identity is all about. And the law of identity forms the basis for logical proceeding. By saying that a thing is the same as itself, absolutely no difference is allowed into the designation of "same", and the logical process which follows.
So you really have your ontological principles, which form the foundation for epistemological principles, backwards, just like apokrisis. By allowing that there is a difference which does not make a difference, you permit a tainted sameness into you epistemology. The tainted sameness allows that two distinct things, can be said to be the same, because the difference is not significant. What follows from this tainted sameness, necessarily, is confusion. So in reality, you are the one engaged in what you accuse me of, obfuscation. The difference between my accusation against you, and your charge against me, is that mine is rooted in a firm principle. Yours implies that the judgement of which of the differences are important, and which are insignificant, can amount to nothing more than a matter of reference, so we leave ourselves defenceless against sophistry, those who will take advantage of different points of reference.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, this is the premise of Timaeus, and it is a very important premise, because the incompatibility between those who profess being as a first principle (Parmenides etc.), and those who profess becoming as a first principle (Heraclitus etc.), has been well exposed by Plato's other dialogues. It was explicitly laid out in Theatetus. Aristotle demonstrated how being and becoming are fundamentally incompatible. It is impossible that one is reduced to the other. This produces the logical necessity for dualism which Aristotle exposed.
Hegel, now, in his dialectics of being, alters this, and designates being as the ultimate form of becoming, through negation. Now being is reduced to an aspect of becoming. Becoming is described as being which is negated by not-being, which is negated back again by being, etc.. What this does is allow for a monist materialism, as there is no longer the need for a categorical separation between being and becoming. Being and not being (the logical distinctions) are subsumed within becoming (matter), hence the development of the phenomenology of spirit, where being is an emergent part of the material world, rather than a separate, fundamentally incompatible, category. Now, in the western world, we tend to look at being as a phenomenon, which means that we know it through our sense information. This is distinct from turning our attentions inward, to see being directly within, whereby we apprehend the fundamental incompatibility between being (which is within) and becoming (which is external) .
So process philosophers assume this type of materialism, as a starting point. But you will notice that anyone who carries process philosophy through to its finality, in trying to understand the reality of the world through processes, ends up in mysticism, having to posit mysterious principles, or even God, to account for the temporal continuity of sameness, which is otherwise called "being".
Quoting Wayfarer
Actually, an outline for the relationship between universals and particulars is well laid out in the Timaeus, that's why the writing became so important to the Neo-Platonists and early Christians through the influence of St. Augustine. As you say, Timaeus lays out a realm of eternal unchanging forms (being), as well as a temporal world of evolving forms (becoming). The two appear to be incompatible as Aristotle will demonstrate. As I indicated in my earlier post, Timaeus posits a third thing, in the middle of the Timaeus, and this is "the receptacle", which receives the form in the divine act of creation. This is "matter" in Aristotle's conceptual structure, and I've seen one translation of Timaeus, (I think it comes from a Christian tradition) which actually uses the term "matter". But I believe that "matter" although it was mostly developed by Aristotle, was in use at that time already, perhaps by the atomists, and I think Plato was intent to create a separation from this term. Aristotle, through his use, brought the term in line with Plato's Timaeus.
So I think it is more accurate to say that Plato described this third principle, as the thing which receives the form, without actually giving it that name. Nevertheless, it provides a bridge between Plato and Aristotle, an approach from Neo-Platonism toward Aristotle's "matter". So "matter" is what relates the universal Forms of Pythagorean Idealism, (the realm of being), what is referred to as Platonism in general, to the changing forms of particulars, (the realm of becoming), which we find in Aristotle's physics.
Now to turn to your description of triangularity:
This idea is inherently contradictory. It claims that the concept of triangularity is necessarily perfect triangularity, but then it allows that a triangle may be of different types. Perfection implies one and only one, the perfect one. Having within the universal concept, different types, is a privation from perfection. Perfect implies One, it does not allow Many. It is impossible that there is a conception of the perfect triangularity when the concept itself allows for different types of triangularity. This is the problem with universals which Plato exposed when he caught a glimpse of "the good". No universal can establish itself in perfection, as "The Ideal", because the ideal is necessarily a particular, the best.
This is the gap, the categorical separation, between the proposed eternal forms, (universals), and the particulars. The idealist, such as yourself, wants to close the gap by claiming that the perfection of "The Ideal" is within the realm of the universal. "The universal is a perfection". But in asserting perfection, "The Ideal", "the perfect idea", is exposed for what it truly is, it is of necessity, a particular. This turns reality right around, such that the perfect Idea can only have real existence as a particular, not a universal. So the gap is closed by replacing the reality of the universal Idea with the reality of the particular Idea. This is why Plato's cave people who are seeing particular material objects, are actually seeing reflections, they are the reflections of the particular ideas which lie behind those objects. What is left is to explain the "matter" which is the medium between the Ideal particular Forms, and what the cave people are seeing and apprehending through universal forms.
Quoting Andrew M
If you do not allow that the potential for the existence of an object precedes the actual existence of that object, how do you explain becoming? If the potential for a particular hylomorphic substance doesn't precede the actual existence of that substance, how does such a substance come into being from not being? Do all hylomorphic substances have eternal existence?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
You argument is non sequitur. Just because a person may know a language without knowing a particular concept, does not imply that a person can know a concept without knowing a language.
There is no such thing as redness unless there is such a thing as what the word "red" refers to. And, there is no such thing as what the word "red" refers to unless there is language. Therefore there is no such thing as redness without language.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
You said "exact same properties", so if I am not picky I have not carried out my obligation of due diligence to determine whether the conditions of "exact same" have been fulfilled.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
That's the problem. "Exact same" implies that accidentals have been included. "Universal" implies that accidentals have been excluded. The two are incompatible by way of contradiction. Yet you insist upon using the two together, to say that I have the exact same concept as you.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Space is one of the concepts which we use to understand relations between things. So we say for instance, that there is space between the chair and the table. Upon analysis we find that there is air between the chair and the table, so it is not really space which is there. Likewise, one might say that there is space between the earth and the sun, but upon analysis it is found that there is electromagnetism, gravity, and other things there. So it is not really space which is there. Space is just a concept which we use in our measuring of things, it is not a real physical thing.
It must be hard for you to talk about differences in pressure or temperature when you don’t even believe in macrostate descriptions. Oh the tainted sameness of summing over microstates that make no significant difference.
So you may be correct that "all forms are eternal" could be what Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine thought. It is hard to tell because Plato's dialogues I have read (far from all of them) were all about logic and morality which are necessary truths, not about contingent things like apple-ness and redness. Same goes for your passage from Augustine, which uses math as the example so that doesn't help us either :( . But more important than opinion is truth (philosophy > philosophers); and I think I can justify why we should make a distinction between eternal Forms (1) and non-eternal forms (2).
Imagine an evil tyrant who takes over the world and decides to erase the past by burning all books and teachers talking about logic, math, and morality. Well, despite this, the new generation would still be able to rediscover or recollect the laws of logic, math, and morality, and furthermore, the tyrant would not be able to successfully teach different laws than the true ones, such as "2+2=3" and "justice is bad and injustice is good". This is also on par with Plato's Theory of Recollection in the Meno, in which a slave can recollect geometric principles despite never being taught geometry. As these Forms are indestructible and unchangeable, even in the mind, they are eternal and stand above all else.
On the other hand, if the evil tyrant decided to destroy any particular object that is red (jerk), then the new generation could not conceive the form of redness. Redness is not an eternal Form that can be rediscovered or recollected; and must be observed at least once to be conceived; and so Meno's slave could not have recollected redness if he never observed a red thing before. As these forms cannot be acquired by the mind without existing in particular things observed, they are not eternal in the mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
Good question. My guess is that 'intelligible' it is not synonymous to 'observable', but is rather related to having coherent communication. We can observe particular things with all their accidentals, but we cannot intelligibly describe each particular thing without the use of universal forms followed by their accidental properties. In order to have an intelligible conversation with you about a particular rock in my backyard, I would have to describe it literally as "the rock (universal form of rock-ness) in my backyard (its accidental properties)". If I called it "Rock #22" or "Bob", you would not know what I am talking to you about if you have never observed said rock.
To an anti-realist, information is not physical because NOTHING IS.
To a physicalist, information is physical because EVERYTHING IS.
Is the implication then that we are all actually dualists? Or is something else meant by "physical" in this context?
And then there is the question of the meaning of the term "information". I would argue that a poor choice has been made by physicists in adopting the word "information" to describe quantum states. Like using "real" and "imaginary" to describe numbers in math, the term "information" has too strong of a colloquial usage (i.e., tied to the mental activity of interpreting symbols - or of a mind choosing to assign a meaning to an observed thing). Back at the beginning of the discussion, Bitter Crank asked if DNA is information. Well, DNA is a complex physical arrangement of genes that a particular system can react to, but calling it "information" might imply that the system is conscious and assigns meaning to the DNA. So the question of whether information is physical or not might hinge on whether you believe consciousness is physical or not.
Welcome to the Forum.
Fair points. I think I am inclined towards dualism, albeit not of the Cartesian type; 'mind' is not a 'substance' in the Cartesian sense. I favour a functional definition of mind as 'that which grasps ideas'; almost a truism, but there's an observable difference between human mental capacities, which can, and those of animals, which cannot.
And, while I might be an anti-realist, I certainly accept that there are physical things, that physics and physical have referents. A comment from a encyclopedia article is: 'Objective idealism accepts common-sense realism (the view that independent material objects exist), but rejects naturalism (the view that the mind and values have emerged from material things)'. That describes my outlook pretty well.
So, what I do question is the ultimate reality of physical things, i.e. they're not 'self-existent' (in Buddhist terminology) but exist dependent on a causal matrix in order to exist (in line with 'dependent origination'). But they're still real on the level of conventional description i.e. a medicine has genuine causal powers to treat an illness, a hammer blow to the thumb really does hurt, unless you're sufficiently dis-identified with the domain of name-and-form not to be troubled by it (and I'm not).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I couldn't disagree with the sentiment, but that is not what is at issue in the discussion of Forms and Universals. This is where you keep muddying the waters. I can't see any such discussion in Timaeus; I think the idea of individuation started later, with Aristotle. In fact, the Wiki entry on the 'principle of individuation' says this:
So, here I think I can see your point: that because it is matter that is responsible for differentiation, then material distinctions are in some sense 'accidents' and are perceived by the corporeal senses. However
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I really think you're on your own here. You still find yourself in a position of quibbling about the law of identity and fundamental geometry; that's where the confusion lies. (But please don't go to the bother of trying to re-explain it.)
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
This was touched on earlier in this thread: there is a distinction between 'concept' and 'form'. I think, in Aquinas' terminology, the senses perceive the shape, the intellect perceives the Form, and the mind derives the concept. So concepts are internal to minds, but the Forms are not. That is also the argument of Point (1) in the passage from Augustine I quoted. (I have to get around to reading some of Feser's books.)
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Well, no, 'intelligible' has a very specific meaning in this context; 'intelligible' is the property of Forms, and they are intelligible because they are unchanging, therefore eternal, and because they're grasped purely by reason itself, not by the 'corporeal senses'. The discussions about knowledge in the Dialogues are very important in this respect, because of the sense that what people believe they know is being constantly challenged. But that often concerns subjects such as justice, virtue and beauty, not techne or technical know-how.
So the 'principle of intelligibility' is very specific to philosophy arising from Plato, modified by Aristotle, and then developed by the Western tradition of philosophical theology. Within that context, 'intelligible' has a very specific meaning.
One thing that should be understood, is that, for Plato, the world of common experience, the world as understood by the hoi polloi - that's you and I - is an illusory world. We don't see 'the real', which is the eternal domain of the Forms, instead we are trapped and beguiled by the sensory domain - the 'shadows on the cave wall'. But to see the real, to ascend from the Cave, requires the arduous intellectual and even ascetic training that students of the Academy would have undergone, which produces metanoia, something akin to 'conversion', a gestalt-shift which totally changes your perception of the nature of things. It was never the arm-chair philosophy that it was to become later.
@apokrisis - check out this blog article - I'm sure you'll appreciate it if you don't know it already.
This is long-winded, but on close inspection all I'm seeing is a bunch of assertions, and no cogent argument that makes any sincere attempt to address anything I've said so "hast la vista, baby" ...
The point is that that there is no way to definitively establish whether or not what we experience as 'raw state' is socially constructed or not. In dialectical terms any argument whatsoever entails the possibility of its contrary. So then as to which seems the more plausible, that again depends on which set of presuppositions one favors.
If animals also experience a raw state of immediacy of perception, the that pretty much shows, to my mind, that it is not something socially constructed. Life underpins discourse, not the other way around.
One will never convince the other if founding presuppositions are opposed; it is not a matter of rational argument in such cases.
There's not much point in continuing an argument that effectively amounts to one saying "it is" and the other "it's not" over and over again.
Yep. Thompson was on to what has become the evo-devo point of view. Nature has self organising dissipative structure. So biosemiosis has pansemiosis to latch on to. Simple informational constraints can harness complex structure forming processes. Growth or development are not amorphous or featureless processes. They can easily be steered in ways that result in regulated pattern.
This is what flips the mechanical view of nature on its head. The anti-science view argues that nature is too richly organised for it to be the product of mere mechanical regulation. The chance of life arising seems to involve astronomical odds.
But now we can understand just how little mechanism is actually needed. Most of the requisite organisation already comes for free. The growth of entropy itself throws up negentropic self-order. Nature can’t escape a considerable degree of pattern even when “trying to be random”.
That would be the pansemiotic thesis. Material acts mostly respond to a context. They read off a direction in which things are meant to be happening.
Reductionism presumes the natural state of material events is to be atomistic and independent - exactly as modelled by the particles composing an idea gas.
But a holistic view sees correlations between events as irreducible. The parts of a system are always semiotically entangled. Events don’t happen in some context-independent fashion. The history of the system is always impacting on its present state as a generalised constraint.
I'm with you on this project. In my view, the subject-object paradigm does become destabilized as we look closely at what is going on. For the most part, the subject is unthematized. It 'is' what it concerns itself with. In its dealing with others (participating in conversations), it 'is' the shared revelation of the shared world through language. This is an older and deeper [s]concept[/s] of world. But this older, deeper [s]concept[/s] ('phenomenon') is covered over by physics taken as metaphysics. This is not in the least to say that physics isn't true as physics. It only looks toward the ground of physics, which a basic sense of being in a shared world with others and an ability to navigate that world.
The how tends to be concealed by the what. In other words, the background from which theories emerge operates or exists for the most part invisibly. This gives metaphysics a certain shallowness. It neglects its own ground in our facticity. It gives rise to misleading preconceptions of language that generate 'pseudo-problems.' It involves a tossing around of concepts that are treated as crystals rather than blurs ripped out of a continuum. One could speculate that there's the desire to escape the always-becoming self-world we are into some kind of eternal completion of having-become.
Lots of these debates are 'really about' feelings. They are cultural criticism masked as metaphysics. The idea is to ground cultural criticism in the super-science of metaphysics. Epistemology therefore becomes the obsession. Things are 'proven' in a pseudo-mathematics of words understood as time and context independent essences. What those apparently opposed agree on is the unthematized how of their establishing their views as authoritative. They turn the crank of the same machine and somehow get different results. But the machine itself is not questioned. Only the other's operation of the machine is questioned. For me, this machine/method/approach/medium is itself a more fascinating target of questioning than the 'what' or the output of the machine. In my view, there is often a gut-level doubt about this machine-like approach that nevertheless wants to use the machine to subvert the machine. But this implicitly recognizes the machine as truly authoritative, so we have only reform rather than revolution. It is insufficiently radical, one might say. That we can't have 'pure' revolution but only more radical reform is how I understand our finitude. We can't get completely behind our past, where this past is the inherited 'how' of our approach in the present. [Forgive the long post. I'm feeling particularly inspired and longwinded.]
We have to manufacture this divide between a knower and the known, a perceiver and the perceptions, an experiencer and the experiences.
So your argument was that raw feels are primal. I reply that I hear what you are saying.
Where we differ is that you believe nothing at all is to be known without the dualistic rational "stepping back" or "stepping out" of the living process. I disagree and say that we can know everything we need to know (existentially and not scientifically speaking, of course) from within lived experience, and that if we want to talk about that lived experience we must resort to metaphor and allusion; it is lost if we try to reduce it to rationalistic, scientific terms.
I say that this metaphor and allusion (the arts) is an alternative discourse to the so-called scientific understanding, and of at least equal importance. In fact I would say it is primary and that scientific understanding is secondary and derivative.
According to Plato, that's because the Universe is fashioned on the basis of an eternal model. There's nothing in what you say that contradicts that.
I'd suggest (and I think you'll agree) that the usual conception of 'raw feels' is already too theoretical. That's because 'raw' experience is already meaningful. We start from an immersion in a shared world with shared language. The self is for the most part deeply entangled in what it is doing and the others it is doing things with. It meets the object in its network of social meanings, in its possibility for use (as tool or resource). The others are there with us as we make our decisions in terms of what they will think and do in response.
The cold, staring ego is a late development, created in the pursuit of ideal certainty. But really this ideal certainty was itself pursued as an act of imposing an understanding of existence on the culture. Methodological skepticism is a rhetorical ploy.
But let's be fair. There is something like a raw feel. Redness just 'is,' in a certain sense, even if it's only revealed by a sophisticated way of looking at things, by peeling it off of the apple. So there does seem to be a stubborn or dogmatic stupidity in any position that ignores 'consciousness' and 'meaning.' This is not to say that we can't or shouldn't point out the theory-laden-ness of these raw feels --but such theory-ladeness supports the idea that significance is 'primordial.' The idea that the subject 'pastes' meaning/concept on raw sensation is fascinating but misleading. It might justify itself in terms of prediction/control (haven't looked in to this)l, but it's not phenomenologically accurate.
You make some nice points here from unusual perspectives, and I find nothing to disagree with in what you say.
Absolutely. Science (for all its glory) is parasitic upon a basic ability to be in the ordinary world among others as a 'who.' Much of what we 'know' is gut-level or background or un-thematized. We don't see it. We are it. The how of our taking the world is obscured by the what that is taken. The interpretative framework functions like our liver or pancreas. We don't even here it whirring away. Yet we completely rely on it. The big revolutions in thought are, arguably, related to changes in this receding framework. An apparently necessary assumption (a pre-conceptional 'assumption' as unthought 'how') can constrain the human conversation for centuries. Then someone 'sees' this constraint, thematizes it, and can thereby think around or behind it. The conversation's field of possibility is thereby opened. --but this doesn't mean it can't be closed back down and the revealing words lose their force in our tendency to lose ourselves in the what.
Thanks!
You kant be serious ;-)
Yes indeed, Kant is involved here. Of course I am playfully serious. It's what we leave unquestioned and take for granted that leaves us trapped. That's the danger in calculative-mechanical reasoning. It treats the material and the method as given. It doesn't ask after the calculative-mechanical approach itself and how such an approach might determine what can show up as 'material.'
With respect to the OP, I suggest that information in the sense of meaning is prior to the physical/non-physical distinction.
What is the relevance of this comment? To what is it addressed?
An amazingly long thread of 45 pages for such a simple question.
All information relies on its physical existence, be that a tape, a CD ROM, a flash drive or a book.
Information held in the memory of a person is no different. If you don't believe me I can demonstrate the destruction of information with a Stanley blade, a bone saw and a spoon. Care to take the challenge?
Earlier in this thread, there was a brief allusion to the sense in which logic, number, and so on, are attributes of 'meaning-world' which humans inhabit. That expression, 'umwelt' or 'lebenwelt' is attributable to Husserl, but in that respect, he was indebted to Kant and to the Western idealist tradition generally...which originated with (drum roll) Plato. But I also plead guilty to equivocating 'meaning' and 'information', which, even though there's an overlap, have many different connotations.
Quoting charleton
You have destroyed only a representation, not information. If for instance one man alone knew 'the Pythagorean Theorem' and had recorded it in all kinds of media - you could destroy each copy, but the idea would still be in the possession of that man, even if it wasn't represented anywhere. Kill him, and the idea is no longer possessed by anyone - although it still might be rediscovered by another person. You couldn't destroy the idea.
Nope not even the relationship between right angled triangles exist in nature.
Without humans to conceive information there is no information. Information is ideal.
Pythagoras' theorem is an invention, based on a fantasy 2D world.
Information implies an informer and the informed.
In other words, although knowing the concept is not a necessary effect of knowing the language, knowing the language can still be a necessary cause. I accept the correction.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
My turn to call non-sequitur. Just because the word "red" refers to the thing which causes the concept redness in the mind, it does not follow that the word "red" is necessary for the existence of the thing, and by extension, the existence of the concept. (Note that I have used the term "concept" to refer to both the thing outside the mind and the idea inside the mind, and as Wayfarer points out, this could be inconsistent with Aquinas who differentiates between form and concept).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But according to google, a plane is a flat surface, and so we are really saying the same thing, and in which case our concepts of triangle-ness does coincide.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree that 'universal' implies that accidentals have been excluded, by definition of 'universal'. But why would 'exact same' implies that accidentals have been included? As a side note, I thought your position from an earlier post was that universal forms (2) existed, in addition to particular forms (3).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Although I find this topic interesting, I will drop out of it because it drifts away from the main topic of forms.
All ideas are dependant on representation.
It's dichotomisic rather than dualistic. Yes. My point is that what is primal is the process of "separating out" (that being "apokrisis" :) )
We are born into the world already complex in our experience. We then construct a simplicity through an act of separation. We develop a notion of selfhood that is detached from its experiences.
To the degree that you are trying to reunite the two in a return to some hazy notion of the "raw feel of being a self", you are talking about the primality of the process of achieving a crisp division.
But note how you attempt to recover the "raw condition" by way of the opposed concepts of a self and its experiences. You construct your primal state as being the least amount of self which still leaves a self, and the least amount of sensory definiteness that still leaves some general idea of sensation.
So I say pay attention to how you go about constructing some third person point of view about the very thing of "forming points of view". In an indirect way, you are proving my argument. My argument just tries to speak directly about the vagueness which is the true primal condition here. It doesn't conceal that the primal state can only be recovered by stepping back even further.
Beyond the first person point of view which you seem to wanting to make basic, I say there is a zero person point of view which is just a vague firstness.
Quoting Janus
OK. These are the social goods you want to support with a founding metaphysics. So first you claim that all discourse is equal - science is no better than art. Then you claim that all discourse is rooted in the primacy of "raw feeling" - the place where the self dwells. And so art is better than science because it is part of the foundational "in here", the subjective realm, and not part of the derivative "out there", the discourse that can only pretend to objectivity as a limit.
The self-serving structure of this argument is nakedly plain. And it hinges on idealism or dualism being true. I've said enough to show that subjectivity is also a limit rather than a foundation to discourse. The dyad of the self and its sensations are the product of certain socially-constructed point of view. Subjectivity is what we term this selfhood being developed to its highest limit. And an artist expressing his/her raw feelings would be the epitome of that. It is iconic.
Well, if its immanent, it ain't transcendent. So we still have a contradiction I hope.
I think that's the heart of this issue. Isn't what you really have in mind the idea of the non-physical? the idea of the idea? Does the OP ask (essentially) whether anything non-physical exists?
That's what I'm saying.
Quoting 0rff
Exactly.
Quoting 0rff
I always agree that there is this kind of Hard Problem issue. But then my position is that this boils down to an issue over the lack of counterfactuals. Red just "is" because we haven't got something we can compare it to as what might be "other", given the same observable "psychological machinery".
We can still say quite a lot about red to the degree we can point to counterfactuals. So I can point out that we can see yellowish red (ie: orange), but not greenish red. And this is just an East Problem because we have the opponent channel processing logic of the visual pathways to explain the fact. If the arrangement of the neural logic was otherwise, there would be no reason not to be able to experience a greenish red.
So yes. Ultimately our models of cognition run out of counterfactuals to sustain the explanatory assault on "experience". That is just a general fact about the scientific method. It applies for all scientific explanation and is not evidence that the mind is somehow "unphysical", or primal in not being part of nature.
Quoting 0rff
Hope you not talking about me. I give very good reasons for deflating the inflated notions of "consciousness" and "meaning" that folk routinely trot out. :)
From a review of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos
As you can see, I think there’s a distinction between ‘what exists’ and ‘what is real’ (which is why I inserted ‘is real’ where the original said ‘exists) - a distinction which has been lost in modern philosophy, due to the ‘flattening’ of ontology since the victory of nominalism at the end of medieval times. So I think the Platonist tradition had an hierarchical ontology, i.e. ‘the great chain of being’, which has subsequently been forgotten. That’s my basic view.
Laughable. Sure, interpretation must be rooted in physical marks. Something must defy physics, defy the usual fundamental process of entropification and disorder, by rather unphysically standing firm as a 1 or 0 marked sequentially on a tape, disk or other "media". But that still also leaves the interpretation to account for.
And as I say, even the degree to which a mark or symbol is physical, it is singled out by its unnaturalness in terms of any known physics.
The odds against a mud tablet being marked in some particular cuneiform pattern are astronomical if we were relying on normal geological processes like weathering and erosion. The odds against a CD-ROM being formed by normal physics are beyond anything that could be sensibly imagined.
So to suggest that information is "just physics" is about as wrong as you can be. You need a triadic relationship to make sense of what is going on. You need a world of actual natural physics - the entropic one. Then the unnaturalness of the marks or signs which can stand as significantly unnatural against that natural backdrop. Then the habits of interpretation that can latch onto the codes that these marks support.
I like the Nagel quote quite a bit. I agree that there is a flattening, a pretty ghastly flattening. There is in my view a spiritual element here. Why should a doctrine of being be neutral? Can a doctrine of being be neutral? Is philosophy just cold impersonal super-science? Or is it a deep expression of the spiritual? For me it's the latter. And those who choose the former are still perhaps expressing their spirituality nevertheless in such a choice. We reveal what we revere in our choices.
It's not unrelated because under objective idealism experience is fundamental. This is certainly true of Hegel's (the original) objective idealism. That's why his text is called Phenomenology of Spirit, and why he rejects Kant's notion of 'thing-in-itself-as-independent-of-human-experience. The dialectic must start from experience as such; where else?
Well that's true. Except you are talking only of simple anti-symmetry here, not the proper asymmetry of a reciprocal or inverse relation.
So higher and lower, or left and right, are symmetry-breaking of the simple single scale kind. Like positive and negative, or clockwise and counter-clockwise, it takes hardly any energy to reverse the direction and erase the difference. The symmetry-breaking is only the smallest possible step away from being reversed.
A proper metaphysical strength dichotomy - like chance~necessity, discrete~continuous, flux~stasis, matter~form, etc, are symmetry-breakings across scale. They are hierarchically divided. They are as far apart as possible due to being defined in formally reciprocal fashion.
This is a big difference. So the question becomes whether immanence~transcendence is being understood as just a simple pair of cancelling opposites - adding a bit of up to a bit of down erases any difference. Or whether we are understanding them as being defined reciprocally. So transcendence would be 1/immanence. And vice versa.
Discrete and continuous are poles apart as a metaphysical dichotomy because discreteness is defined by being the least possible form or any continuity. It is 1/continuity. And continuity can likewise be defined as 1/discreteness.
Whatever value you can assign to a notion of "the discrete", that becomes then mutually the value you assign to "the continuous" via the maths of the reciprocal.
So there is a proper way to think of these things. One that is mathematical. Are we talking mild additive/subtractive anti-symmetry or fully blown, limit taking, asymmetry - the product of an inverse or reciprocal relation?
As I said, it's a tainted sameness, because it's a matter of overlooking differences, and assigning "same", for one purpose or another. By way of contradiction, this is not a true sameness if it includes differences. When we allow such a designation of sameness, then the real differences are, of necessity, undisclosed in order that sameness may be declared. And the reason for not disclosing these differences, the purpose of concealing them, is therefore undisclosed as well. Having such hidden goals amounts to sophistry. Therefore allowing such a tainted sameness allows that we are victimized by sophistry.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
What you claim here is false. Without the word "red" there is nothing that "red" refers to. That's the point. You are claiming that thing which "red" refers to would exist without the word red. But without the word "red" there would be nothing which "red" refers to, because there would be no such thing as "red". So this nothing cannot be an existent thing. To get to the point of asserting that there is something which "red" refers to, it is necessary that there is the word "red".
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
No, I am saying "plane", and you are saying "flat". By what principle of identity do you conclude that two very distinct words are "the same thing". And since it is very clear that these two distinct words are not the same thing, then it is also very clear that we are not saying the same thing when we say these distinctly different words.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
This is how we distinguish between when we are referring to two distinct things which are similar to each other, and when we are referring to the exact same thing, by taking account of the accidentals. So it is by analyzing the accidentals that we determine whether we are talking about two distinct, but similar things, or that we are talking about one and the same thing.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Yes, that's what I was arguing. But I also argue that these two types of forms are categorically different, and that's why we need dualist principles to understand reality.
The starting point of Platonism is that ‘the Forms’ are purely intelligible, i.e. they’re seen by the intellect in an act of pure intuition. Appealing to experience as the basis of philosophy, is simply empiricism - Kant’s ‘critiques of empiricism’ puts paid to that, i.e. in order for experience to mean anything, there must already be the categories of the understanding, the intuitions and so on. ‘Concepts without percepts are empty, percepts without concepts are blind’.
Quoting apokrisis
No, not opposites, but poles - the transcendent is beyond experience, the immanent is within it, but in the context of philosophy, they’re often understood as two aspects of the same reality, paradoxical as that might appear. But in the context of theological philosophy, which I know of course that you don’t accept, Deity is both transcendent and immanent - at once beyond the world, but also within it. That idea finds expression in many different schools of philosophy.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
:-O I guess that’s one of the hazards of posting on public forums.
Surely the debate is normally over which it is, not that it is both?
Generally I take the distinction to mean that the causes of being are either fully within that being, or in some important fashion, causality comes from without. So, speaking theistically, either the divine is immanent in being, or the divine is a cause that stands transcendent to that being.
But perhaps you are taking my constraints approach where what develops are limits. So being is both the cause of its own structure, and yet that structure appears to lie without. As the kind of limits on possibility that maths describes, the limits are where being ceases. And so they are boundaries that are outside what they encompass. Or at least that is how they look when we draw them in as the metaphysical line marking the edges to existence.
But it goes far deeper than that, to all instances of overlooking differences in order to declare that two things are "the same". Unless it is a principled declaration, meaning that it is recognized that the two things are not really the same in any absolute sense, only similar, and therefore "the same" in reference to some stated principle, then we loose sight of reality. If it is asserted that two things are the same, yet that principle of reference is not stated, and we proceed to assume that they are the same, as a premise for a logical argument, then we are victimized by sophistry.
That is the case with your op. It is sophistry. You declare that "the same information" is transmitted by different media, without any statement as to the principle by which we can call this "the same"information. You assert that it is the same, and the reader is meant to assume that it is the same, but no reason is given as to why it ought be called the same.
And the problem goes deeper, because if such a principle is brought forward, then this is admittance that what is called "the same" is not really the same, but similar relative to some principle. And the argument which follows relies on "the same" being used in the absolute sense.
Greek ship, three masted, arriving after noon.
Griechisches Schiff, drei Masten, Ankunft nach Mittag.
Navire grec, à trois mâts, arrivant après midi.
Graeca navis tres masted, venientes post meridiem.
--. .-. . . -.- / ... .... .. .--. --..-- / - .... .-. . . / -- .- ... - . -.. --..-- / .- .-. .-. .. ...- .. -. --. / .- ..-. - . .-. / -. --- --- -.
All of those text strings mean the same thing; it’s not ‘sophistry’ but a simple statement of fact.
The argument is, that if the same idea can be represented in completely different ways, then the information, the idea, is separable from the representation. The representation is what is physical.
I know this thread has wandered all over the place, but am hesitant to pursue this line of thought here. So I will refrain from responding here, but I think it might make an interesting topic, so will get around to posting it as a topic.
Yes, I thought so. But I'm between your position and Janus's. I think Janus was just trying to point at the that-it-exists of experience. It's all too natural to phrase this in terms of the subject, overlooking the entanglement of the 'subject' and the 'object' in the lived non-instantaneous moment. But I agree with Janus's general point about what is excluded by the scientific method. We have a tendency to privilege the publicly quantifiable as the 'really' real.
What is philosophy for? Is it a higher science 'devoid' of value? A value-neutral tool? Or is it an expression of the spiritual? I don't expect one-answer-for-all here. I'm just suggesting that half-conscious answers to these most general questions shape everything from the get-go.
Quoting apokrisis
I wonder if you are understanding 'just is' as I intend it. I don't mean that it's mysterious (though maybe it is). I just mean the bare fact of color. We live in a world of color. Any talk about this color is not the color itself as unthematized color. One might say that redness is not a 'thing' apart from concept, but what this concept grasps is there for those (literally) with eyes to see.
Quoting apokrisis
What also interests me is description that reveals. Are we sometimes so eager to explain what we already have grasp that we stop feeling around for what we haven't noticed? It's not just about explaining. It's also about paying attention in a new way, seeing around inherited preconceptions. We might even think of un-explaining what has been badly explained.
Quoting apokrisis
I wasn't talking about you. I had that Nagel quote in mind. The total denial of what-it-is-like strikes me as absurd. I remember reading BF Skinner as a teen. I see the attraction of ignoring consciousness (as a theme of the investigation) methodologically in this or that context, but that's a local context.
I also like questioning the notions of consciousness and meaning. We use these 'pieces' in discussions all too often without really thinking about what we could mean by them. We get stuck on the surface that way.
It occurred to me to add the pointification or atomization of the object in a hypostatization of or within ontology. We tend to call real what stands still for us to stare at. So the dynamic becoming that we ourselves are is unreal not only to the physicist but also to a certain kind of abstract theologian.
Everything mortal and passing is unreal from such a perspective, unworthy of contemplation even, since it can't be the foundation of the perfect knowledge which is itself understood as a static object. Yet our most intimate experience is unique, passing, mortal. If we aren't actually mortal, few of us live with certainty of this immortality. And in any case the moments themselves are mortal and not-to-be-repeated.
There's nothing 'wrong' with the depersonalized theoretical mode, but on could argue that shifting into this mode forecloses access to this or that aspect of the total human experience. (We perhaps assume that what is 'there' for us is independent of our mood/mode/motive.)
And I want to acknowledge that the Hard Problem has something to it, while also deflating it as much as possible. The way it is usually presented is much too strong.
So for example here, I would counter that experience can't simply exist. It requires someone that it exists for.
Janus said at one point he was not talking about qualia or particular sensations when he talked about raw feelings. He meant just the bare feeling of being "a self". Yet this doesn't sound right either because of such a selfhood involves at least some vague feelings to be "a feeling". The distinction of the knower and the known still lurks in that way of talking.
Quoting 0rff
My approach is Peircean. When I talk about scientific reason, I mean what he meant. So I am arguing something more inbetween the position you probably think I have and the one I believe Janus has. :)
So as an epistemic basic, I agree with the idealists that we can't transcend the conditions of experience. We don't get to peek at the Kantian thing-in-itself in any direct perceptual fashion.
But then that is what justifies the scientific method as the best epistemology can get.
The Peircean approach is semiotic. What we see of reality is the signs we form of its existence. We live inside our experience spinning theories that can then be inductively supported by acts of measurement.
This is just the basic form of all cognition or mindfulness. It is how the biological mind works. When I see the red of the post box or smell the perfume of a rose, these are just habitual signs that anchor my interpretations of the world. They form my "umwelt".
Redness or sweetness are symbols. They signify an appropriate response. We "know" from science that red is just something we feel because our eyes transduce some balance of radiant electromagnetic energy. We know that sweetness is just a response to some corner of a floating molecule connecting in lock and key fashion to a particular variety of odour receptor.
So our minds don't experience reality as it actually is. They just co-ordinate their habits of response in a functional fashion with the world that is presumed to exist via a robust shorthand of sensory signs.
At this point, people always bring up the perception of motions and shapes. Sure, they say, colour and smell are secondary qualities, but objects have forms we can directly perceive. Yet psychological science says not so fast. Even the primary sensory qualities are acts of interpretation. Tricks like the waterfall illusion and the motion after-effects it produces show how even "a feeling of moving" is a quale. It is sign we read into the world as something we experience.
So a biological level of consciousness is already about living within an umwelt - a system of signs that reliably coordinates us with the world. It is not some kind of veridical representation, a picture that recreates the world in our heads. The post box is not red in some thing-in-itself fashion. But the ability to coordinate behaviour in terms of such an experiential code - see red, see shape, know what that means - is a powerful thing.
And getting back to science, that just takes this basic semiotic logic to its ultimate level. Now we are actually talking about a mathematical level of sign. The theory predicts that I will discover my instruments will show certain numbers if I take a look.
All the bogus stuff about "seeing the thing-in-itself" is completely abandoned. There is no pretence, like there still is with talking about seeing red or tasting sweetness. Science deals directly in full-on signage. It says this is how nature works. And that's true because these are the numbers you will read when you make a measurement.
Yes, it is highly abstract. And folk still want to have their intuitive mental pictures. They want to imagine atoms bouncing about or forces pulling or whatever. They want a biological level of feeling - or sign.
But still, science reduces reality to a pattern of numerical signs. And we know that really works. Functionally, it has been immensely productive.
Again the protest will come, but what about experience, what about feeling, what about actually awareness of the world as it really is? However there is good reason to privilege the mathematical representation of existence.
Hence this OP. There must be a reason why physics has turned information theoretic. Counting is actually physically meaningful. We might as well admit that reality is a pattern of bits, a set of numbers, as far as we can tell. That is certainly a more accurate ontology than thinking of it in terms of a realm of "medium-sized dry goods", as is the usual "realist" case.
Yeah because QM broke the atom, that's why.
Ah, I think you misunderstand me. I don't mean atomism. I mean the tendency to understand the truly existent as that which is fully present as a clear and distinct intelligible unity --something like a form.
In my view, physics offers its own version of this. But these forms that are understood to govern the flux of experience are experienced as inhuman necessity (as amoral). So the idea is that we humans are alone in the machine of nature. So for me it's really a change which forms we regard.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is perhaps the central issue. Is there purpose beyond the individual and/or his culture? Are humans responsible to or informed by a purpose beyond their own concerns?
It's not my central issue, but to seems to set the feel of a culture. I think we'd agree that the intellectual mainstream understands us to be on our own. Personally, I don't know --but I live as if we are alone down here. Of course I strive for virtue and value the Christian heritage especially.
What comes to my mind is our ability to get absorbed in a task. We become the task. We forget that we are 'subjects.' This is admittedly complicated. In some sense consciousness is being itself, so that the 'pure subject' is name for being. But we can just as easily talk about a pure object that includes the empirical ego in its nexus.
On the other hand, the 'freeze frame' understanding of this loses the dynamism of being there. It's an old theme, the problem of the concept system trying to grasp continuity.
Quoting apokrisis
Right. In a worldly epistemic mode I'm a quasi-Kantian, too. But I would stress that the interpretative scheme is far more fluid. Maybe there is a 'hard' core that isn't subject to historical evolution (biologically determined), but for the most part the 'lens' through which we see the 'thing-in-itself' is liquid, which is to say linguistic. It's not just linguistic, though, but perhaps even involves the way we get around in the world. We navigate the concrete jungle. We stand a certain distance from others. To live in a culture largely requires a kind of know-how that may be the dark foundation of our consciously theoretical mode.
Quoting apokrisis
I like this, but I think lots of our seeing is peripheral. I'd also argue that perhaps the situation is more holistically understood in our non-theoretical mode. We have learned to isolate objects, to rip them out of context. By imaging these rip out objects in the same 'box' of experience, we don't recover the original unity. The 'deep' unwelt would (in my view) involve this original unity and the dynamic sense of time. The pre-theoretical object is perhaps act rather than object. 'The world worlds.'
Quoting apokrisis
I like this conception of 'full-on signage,' but I don't see how this negates sensation. After all, we have to see the sign, read the number. And we only care about the number because we interpret in terms of the expected presence of something that is not just a sign. The practice of science utterly depends on the basic knowhow of living in a group. Our sloppy ordinary language is still the receding background in what the sharp abstractions can function and be learned in the first place. This doesn't degrade science but only situates it in human reality as a whole.
Quoting apokrisis
There are strong practical reasons to privilege the mathematical representation of existence in the appropriate sphere. But I personally don't see why philosophy should present its rump to any fixed understanding of existence. We aren't just practical. We are the 'animals' who can and do kill ourselves, and in that sense we aren't just animals. Humans are uncanny. We think of our own deaths which are likely decades away. In cold blood we can calculate the sacrifice of our own lives and of murder. Don't get me wrong. I like philosophy of science. But whether we call it philosophy or not, I think it's deeply and maybe essentially human to ask radical questions, dream up daring understandings of the human situation, etc.
Quoting apokrisis
I have to disagree. The medium sized dry goods as we make and buy and use them have a certain priority to patterns of bits. But really I'd say that it's all real. Reality is medium sized dry goods and patterns of bits. And it's debates about whether reality is dry goods or bits. No doubt certain purposes suggest an exclusion of this or that aspect of experience.
If it is not represented then it is not information.
The world is as it is. From time to time humans get interested in it and that interest becomes information. It's just an abuse of language to say that information is some pristine objective quality of the universe.
Information is nothing if not a set of ideas, partial, incomplete and interested. We can never get at the thing in itself, we can only say things about the world we perceive.
Information is not "OUT THERE", it is that which we extract and collect, measure and codify.
It is about the world, but it is of us.
I was referring to the first (primary) hylomorphic particular per the cosmological argument. It can cause subsequent particulars to exist but there are no prior particulars to cause it to exist. Per hylomorphism, only particulars exist and universals are immanent in particulars. So there can be nothing (whether particular or universal) logically prior to the first hylomorphic particular, including time or potentiality.
They don't mean the same thing to me, and that's a fact. Perhaps they mean the same thing to someone else, but that person would have to make an argument for this, referring to some principle of identity, and demonstrating how the meaning of each was the same, according to that principle. Even then, since this demonstration would be based solely on what the text strings mean to that individual, it would simply be a matter of opinion. This matter of opinion is what you assert as a "statement of fact". I say that's sophistry.
This is why I keep coming back to the law of identity. In common language use we use "the same" in a number of different ways. It may mean "the very same", "of the same type", or even "similar". As a premise to a logical argument, "the same" has a very particular meaning according to the law of identity. To smuggle a sense of "same" from common usage, which really means "similar", into a logical argument, where it is implied that it means "the very same" is sophistry.
The simple fact is that if we adhere to the sense of "same" which has been smuggled in, meaning "similar", the conclusion of the argument does not follow. The conclusion only follows if we equivocate to the sense of "same" according to a proper law of identity. Therefore the conclusion is made through equivocation. It is a similar equivocation, in reverse, to what Wittgenstein exposes in the so-called private language argument.
It cannot help but appear to be a "third person account" when I talk about it; but in itself it is not so. That is what you are not getting here. And you misunderstand the subjective experience by saying it is "in here", The experience I speak about is prior to any separation of "in here" from "out there"; it is the experiential condition out of which the subject (in here) / object (out there) duality (or "dichotomy" if you prefer) is constructed; thus it is prior to any such construction.
That is interesting, I will consider that. Perhaps there's a distinction to be made between 'information' and 'idea'. However what is required to understand and translate information is the ability to understand and interpret ideas.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You’re saying that purely for sake of argument. If you were employed to do the job in the thought-experiment, you wouldn't have any latitude. 'What do you mean, "Greek ship"? What do you mean, "Three Masts"?' If it were a very much more complex set of instructions, then any variations or differences will result in the information not being conveyed. The information is either conveyed, or it's not.
Quoting Janus
What experience are you speaking about?
The experience that is prior to any speaking.
This is such a simplistic view. Phenomenology is not empiricism (unless you think along the lines of something akin to Jame's "radical empiricism") because it attempts to deal with the nature of experience and consciousness itself. It wants to return "to the objects", but not to a third person consideration of what might be thought to be the 'objective properties' of the objects, but rather to an examination and analysis of how they are experienced, of how we are affected by them. The question of their objective, independent existence is deliberately bracketed (the Epoché).
According to this no non-human animal's experiences can mean anything, and I think to say this is obviously absurd.
Have you read A Man Without Words? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words
But the linguistic framing begins when we are infants and becomes an engrained habit. So this is not about what you report to me using words. It is the very fact that you have the habit of "reporting on states of experience". Your thinking is culturally framed at base.
But the discussion is about the ability to understand and interpret abstract ideas. It is not absurd to say that animals are not able to do that. And animals don't reflect on 'the meaning of experience'.
Quoting Janus
I practice Zen, which is what this sounds like, but this thread is about Platonic realism.
Quoting apokrisis
'There is, however, an unconditioned, an unmade, an unfabricated. Were there no unconditioned, unmade, unfabricated, there would be no escape from the made, the conditioned, the fabricated' ~ The Buddha (paraphrase).
I haven't denied that the modes of our experience are culturally mediated, but there must be raw experience that underlies that. You can experience that yourself if you just gaze out your window without thinking about anything.
This thread is about Platonic realism, about which you show little interest. I have owned up to not being highly educated in that field, but at least throughout this thread, I am trying to relate whatever comes up to the Platonist principle of 'the reality of abstract objects'. I find that a genuinely interesting problem of philosophy. I just don't see how either phenomenology or meditative experience has any bearing on the thread. Perhaps you might start one on those subjects.
Quoting Wayfarer
And yet earlier you said this: " I’m interested in the formal study of the Western philosophical tradition. It has an experiential dimension which I think is largely forgotten and is certainly hardly taught any more. :s
Also you referred to "objective idealism" which is not Plato (which is rather a form of Conceptual Realism) but predominately Hegel, and following him, Peirce.
If the "reality of abstract objects" could be known, then it could only be known experientially, no? By the experience of so-called "intellectual intuition" perhaps?
Then that comes into the province of phenomenology and meditative experience. Otherwise it remains empty conjecture; "they are real", "no they're not", "yes they are", and so on ad nauseum.
And yet it seems obvious that animals' experiences do have meaning for them. One does not have to reflect on one's experience for it to have meaning, and reflection on the meaning of experience (whether it can be other than merely symbolic) is part of what this thread is about.. And this fact of animals' experience being meaningful for them does relate to the OP, because "is information physical?" could be paraphrased as "is meaning physical?". Is the meaning of an animals experience physical, then?
Yeah. There is no escape from it. And the question is why would one even want to escape from it?
If you do Zen, you will know that you can't actually still the mind. Your inner voice is always itching to yap away. Your training to ignore it, let it go, not pursue it, focus on something as unstimulating as possible, is only an attempt to get it to fade into the background a while.
Once you are shaped by linguistic habits, it is only natural for the brain to want to generate a linguistic response to every attentive moment. Whatever is passing through focus demands some kind of spoken comment. It is no different from seeing objects in the world and automatically having the start of the thought of what to do physically. See an axe and already your mind will be leaping to axe-wielding feelings and actions.
So Zen imagines what the mind might be like if it stopped doing what it was designed for. The mind is designed to find some meaningful point of focus in any instant and become flooded with the behavioural responses most appropriate. These include vocal framing responses in humans. We've already got to be getting going with the commenting as part of "being conscious".
That makes a philosophy of Zen very odd to me. I can accept that meditation may be very good for the modern mind. We now have a culture that could be said to be ridiculously wordy. The weight of comment we want to pack in to cover off every passing instant of awareness might be uncomfortably unbalanced. So unwinding back to a more unconditioned state would be a valuable skill to have in that context.
But to make a complete unwinding of the thinking self a cultural goal would be a strangely self-denying one. For me, the "highest plane" would be the balanced state of a mind well adapted to its world. So not too much talk, and not too little.
If Zen is understood as gaining control over that balance, then that makes sense. But note how that is then a meta- state. It is the gaining of control by stepping back another level to discover the variety to be controlled. So it is not about actually returning to some more primal state. It is about stepping back to make decisions on where on a spectrum of less considered states you might want to set your current state. You now have to have a clear idea of what you don't want to be so as to be the thing you do want to be.
Being "primal" is thus even less primal in being comprehended or measured in terms of what it is not. To achieve that kind of mastery is indeed a higher state of consciousness in being more meta-.
I didn't say that just for the sake of argument. You wrote lines in different languages. I don't even know what some of the languages you used were. How could those different lines possibly have the same meaning to me?
You haven't addressed the point I made. The conclusion of your argument can only be derived through equivocation, that's why it's sophistry. When you say "the same meaning" you mean "same" in the sense of "similar". But the argument's conclusion can only be drawn if "same" is taken in the sense of "the very same" or "identical". A phrase translated from one language to another doesn't maintain the very same meaning, nor does one phrase have the very same meaning for two distinct people. The meaning is similar. These are differences which often do not make a significant difference in common practise. But when the conclusion of your argument requires no difference whatsoever, then these differences do make a significant difference, because it's enough difference to invalidate your argument.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is clearly a misrepresentation of information. If it were the case that either the information is conveyed or it is not, then there would be no such thing as ambiguity. Are you aware of this Wayfarer? Do you recognize the existence of this thing which we call ambiguity? If so, how do you reconcile the existence of ambiguity with your claims of "same meaning"?
As I've just posted, I don't find it possible to literally "not think about anything". And neuroscience explains why that would be the case.
When we sleep, our brain really does try to shut down.
In REM sleep, the brain is active yet the sensory gates are slammed shut at the brainstem. Yet then we erupt with bright imagery and a confused narrative chase after some thread of story.
And even in n-REM sleep, where the neural activity is turned as low as possible, there is still a desultory inner chatter - a meandering disjointed ruminative thinking.
A conditioned brain can't just uncondition itself.
So there are good grounds for disputing your claims that there can be "raw experience" in some foundational sense.
Sure, we can be less talky. We can turn our attention towards a peaceful world and away from our interior chatter. We can lose ourselves in sport, or music, or dance or other absorbing forms of action.
But none of this answers neurologically to an idea of "raw experience".
I do indeed regard Plato as an objective idealist, in that he believed the Forms or Ideas were real, i.e. they were not simply the creations of individual minds or social conventions. The traditions in which I think the elements of Platonism as a living philosophy have been preserved are Christian, in the form of Christian Platonism. Two examples are Aquinas and 'neo-Thomism', of which Ed Feser is a representative and the Eastern Orthodox tradition, as well as in Christian mysticism. But then, I'm not a Christian apologist; it's just that in those traditions, something of the Platonist understanding has been preserved and still has some vitality.
But the experiential dimension I'm getting at, is not necessarily Christian. What I'm concerned with is a metaphysic of value. What I say has been lost, is due to the historical development or even deterioration of the classical Western tradition due to the influence of scientific materialism. There have been developments, or again, a degeneration, in the understanding of nature, which often shows up in the assumptions we make about reality, about what we take for granted or think is obvious.
Quoting Janus
In the original dialogues and the critiques of the 'Doctrine of Ideas' there are very detailed enquiries into such ideas, which again, you have not shown any interest in. There are various contributors that are trying to address the subject in terms related to the tradition of Western philosophy.
Quoting apokrisis
If you don't feel that need, then nothing need be said - it's a religious or spiritual quest, which I'm not particularly interested in discussing. I drew attention to that passage from the Buddhist suttas, only to provide a point of comparison for what Janus seems to be referring to.
That is the whole point of this thread. The meaning can be represented by entirely different symbols, languages, media types and so on - so 'the meaning' is separable from the representation. It doesn't matter that you can't read French, German, Latin, or morse code, the meaning is the same for those who are can. Not 'similar'- the same.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Every version means the same: "Greek ship, three masted, arriving after noon". NOT Spanish ship, two masted, arriving this morning, or anything else - it means specifically what it says.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is no room for ambiguity in the example given. Of course there can be ambiguity in other matters. But when it comes to conveying technical information, such as specifications, directions, instructions, and so on, then the meaning has to be conveyed exactly. I know this from practical experience, as I'm a technical writer by profession.
Have you ever read translations? The translator has a choice as to the best words, the best way to translate. One person will translate with completely different words than another. Clearly, the translation is not the same as the original, it is similar.
Quoting Wayfarer
That you can come up with an example, or a few examples, where there is very little room for ambiguity, doesn't negate the fact that in the vast majority of cases of information there is significant ambiguity. In order for your argument to be valid, there can be no ambiguity in any information, or else we could not call it information. Clearly you misunderstand, and therefore misrepresent, the nature of "information". Ambiguity is a widespread attribute of information, and your argument assumes that if there is any ambiguity whatsoever, it no longer qualifies as "information".
An objective idealist says that objects are ideas, are spiritual in essence, they are manifestations of spirit or mind. Spirit or mind is not separate from or transcendent of objects, it is what they are, what is immanent in them. Conversely if Plato says that ideas are objects, that would seem to be a completely different notion. The objective idealists were not Platonists as far as I know; Hegel and Peirce both rejected the idea of anything transcendent. So, you are muddying the waters by trying to mix different modes of thought together, or so it seems to me.
The problem is the word ‘objective’. That word didn’t come into use until around the 18th century. But the Ideas of Plato were not simply in individual minds, the were real in the sense that they are ‘common to all who think’, to use Augustine’s expression. So, yes, ‘objective’ might be problematical, but the basic notion of the ‘real nature of the Ideas’ is what is at issue.
Quoting Janus
That is simply not true. Hegel apart from being a philosopher, was also a Protestant. Actually if you read Hegel’s philosophy of religion, he develops a very detailed argument of the sense in which God is transcendent. Peirce likewise was not an atheist, although the spiritual side of Peirce is not mentioned much by his scientific affeciandos. He certainly rejected Cartesian dualism but it is simply not true that he rejected ‘the tanscendent’ as a category (although please don’t ask me to go to the bother of looking up a reference.)
As I said to Apokrisis, ‘immanent’ is generally posited in relation to ‘transcendent’; the Christian doctrine of God is that God is ‘both immanent and transcendent’, i.e. appeared in the world in the form of Jesus, and dwells in it as the Spirit, yet is also wholly beyond the world. I think that is the belief of all the major denominations.
Ah, so you've read that work? Perhaps you could proffer a brief account of the key ideas in Hegel's conception of a transcendent God then. My understanding is that for Hegel evolution and history are the unfolding of spirit or God. He broadly accepted Spinoza's account of God as being immanent in nature. He acknowledges that we can think there might be 'something' transcendental (as opposed to transcendent) but this cannot be anything more than an immanent (human) idea. But perhaps you can show where this is wrong.
I never said that Hegel or Peirce were atheists so you are responding to a paper tiger with that comment.
It doesn't matter much that Peirce was a believer of some kind any more that it does Newton, Darwin and Einstein were.
As to exactly what kind of theist Peirce might have been - or the various stages that went through - that is a tough question. He wasn't your usual.
His biographers note the strong influence of Emersonian transcendentalism in his circle at the time.
Here's Peirce himself saying he was reared in Cambridge at a time: "when Emerson, Hedge,
and their friends were disseminating the ideas that they had caught from Schelling, and
Schelling from Plotinus, from Boehm, or from God knows what minds stricken with the
monstrous mysticism of the East.”
Oh I get the point all right. The point is that you keep asserting, over and over again, for 48 pages, "the same", with complete disrespect for the law of identity, and all the evidence which I've brought forward to demonstrate "not the same".
Now you want to go right back and stake you claim of "the same" all over again, dismissing all the evidence of "not the same", as beside the point. Of course it's "beside the point", it's clear evidence against the point. And if I don't get that point, it's because that point is a falsity.
Is it "murky" because it doesn't accord with the interpretation you have arrived through you own readings of Hegel's works?
From the article you cited:
[i]" Hegel begins with a radical critique of conventional ways of thinking about God. God is commonly described as a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and so forth. Hegel says this is already a mistake. If God is to be truly infinite, truly unlimited, then God cannot be ‘a being’, because ‘a being’, that is, one being (however powerful) among others, is already limited by its relations to the others. It’s limited by not being X, not being Y, and so forth. But then it’s clearly not unlimited, not infinite! To think of God as ‘a being’ is to render God finite.
But if God isn’t ‘a being’, what is God? Here Hegel makes two main points. The first is that there’s a sense in which finite things like you and me fail to be as real as we could be, because what we are depends to a large extent on our relations to other finite things. If there were something that depended only on itself to make it what it is, then that something would evidently be more fully itself than we are, and more fully real, as itself. This is why it’s important for God to be infinite: because this makes God more himself (herself, itself) and more fully real, as himself (herself, itself), than anything else is."[/i]
According to this Hegel denies that God is a being and that God is "omniscient, omnipotent, and so forth". In fact logically, God cannot be anything at all if he is not a being or is not being at all. But then Wallace goes on to say that God, unlike finite things, does not depend on any relation to anything to be what He is. This is a blatant contradiction.
Process theology sees the God/ world relation as absolutely necessary; God needs the world in order to be what he is, in order to be at all, as much as the world needs God in order to be what it is, in order to be at all. The process God is a God that evolves along with the world, not a changeless transcendence. Hegel's God (as Spirit) is also like this, and I think it is likely that Hegel dissembled in relation to orthodoxy in the interests of his public image (I mean he did live in the late 18th through the early to mid 19th century after all) and quite probably also his due to a desire to support what he saw as the socially necessary institution of Christianity.
Are you saying then that the word "red" caused the existence of the redness in things, instead of the opposite way around? Following the same train of thought, there was no badness in things until we used the word "bad", and no wetness until we used the word 'wet'; and so to generalize, our words create reality, as opposed to reality causing us to create words to refer to it. Am I correct on your position?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
According to the dictionary here, a "plane" is defined as "a flat surface". By law of maths, if x = y, then x and y are the same thing; and so if "plane" = "flat surface", then "plane" and "flat surface" are the same thing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Does it follow that we cannot test if two things are the exact same if those things don't have accidentals, such as is the case for universal forms, which yourself claimed to exist? How can you speak coherently about universal forms if the first law of logic does not apply to them?
Here is a better way: We test if two things are the exact same by comparing all of their properties, regardless if those properties are essential or accidental, and checking if they are similar or different. As such, the law of identity is applicable to all, even to universal things.
Interesting. Could you explain the differences between "the intellect perceives the Form" and "the mind derives the concept"? I would have imagined that the intellect is part of the mind, and that the concept is the concept of the form. Maybe it is that the intellect is active in abstracting the form, where as the mind is passive and merely stores it (now called concept once in the mind)?
The difference between form and concept is, I think, the intellect ‘receives the form’ but then the mind ‘creates the concept’ (I have read a passage somewhere which spells that out recently, but can’t recall exactly where.) The latter process - ‘conceptualisation’ - is an internal activity of the intellect, but the intellect first receives the intelligible form; it doesn’t create it or imagine it (as per the passage from Augustine that I linked to the other day). This is what is difficult to grasp - because the question then arises, if ‘the form’ is ‘received’ by the Intellect, where does it ‘reside’ before being grasped? The Augustinian answer to that question is that the forms dwell eternally in the divine intellect (which I understand was adapted from Neo-Platonism.) However it almost goes without saying that the details of this issue comprise one of the most controversial and difficult aspects of classical metaphysics.
I think the other thing you should read up on is ‘nous’, if you haven’t already. Nous is a seminal word in philosophy and philosophical theology. It is translated nowadays as ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’ but in the original context it means something like ‘that which sees the real’. It is the root word of ‘noetic’ and also ‘nouminal’ (in Kant; but not of ‘numinous’, which is a common confusion). It has particular meaning in Plotinus as well, which is what I think influenced Augustine considerably, and thereafter became absorbed into classical Western theology. The Wikipedia article on ‘nous’ is not a bad starting point.
I made no mention of causation, that's your interpretation. What I said is that without the word "red" there is no such thing as what the word red refers to. Do you not recognize that the word "red" is an essential part of "what the word red refers to"? And so there is no such thing as what the word red refers to without the word "red".
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Again, I would not use the same phrasing as you. But I would say that an act must be judged as bad in order to be bad. The judgement of bad or good is not inherent within the act itself. The act must be compared to some set of values, standards, and judged as to whether or not it is bad. The same is the case for wetness.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The defining term is not the same as the term defined. In Aristotelian logic the defining concept is within the concept defined, as an essential feature. So "man" is defined by "animal", as the concept of animal is within the concept of man as an essential property but animal is not the same as man. Likewise, you define "plane" with "flat surface". One is not the same as the other. The defining term is the more general. If defining terms had the same meaning as the words being defined, then we would never get anywhere in our attempts to understand meaning. It would all be circular. "Flat surface" would mean the exact same thing as "plane", and it would be pointless to define one with the other because it would not help you to understand anything. It is the very fact that "flat surface" means something other to you than "plane" does, that it can be used to help you to understand what "plane" means.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
That is exactly what is at issue here, and why there is so much misunderstanding and disagreement about what universal forms are. Apokrisis, following Peirce argues that there is vagueness, and violation of the law of non-contradiction which is an inherent aspect of all universals, it is essential to universals.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
We determine the properties of physical objects through our senses, observations. And we can compare them. How do you propose that we ought to determine, and compare, the properties of the concepts within each others minds, other than by discussion? Discussion within this thread has demonstrated very clearly that there are differences between any concept denoted by a particular word, between your mind, my mind, and the minds' of others.
In many cases these differences are accidentals, so communication and understanding is still adequate. But these accidental differences are still there, and this disallows us, according to the law of identity, from saying that it is the same concept in your mind, as in my mind. So the law of identity is still applicable, it just forces the conclusion that the same concept of "red" which you have is not the concept of "red" which I have. In this way, the issue is decisively resolved. It is only when you want to give "the concept" some sort of independent existence, such as Platonic realism, and claim that the concept within each of our minds' somehow partakes of this independent concept, that "the concept" becomes some sort of vague object which defies the law of non-contradiction. Leave "the concept" within the minds of individuals and there is no such problem, but there is differences between what 'red" means to you, and what it means to me.
Most of what you've argued in this thread is that the law of identity means that the meaning of 'the same' is not actually 'the same'; or that A doesn't really equal A, because A for you means something different than A for me. So, really, the law of identity contradicts itself, in your reckoning; which renders your arguments unintelligible, as far as I am concerned.
If a difference doesn't make a difference, is it really a difference?
The Laws of Thought are framed for dealing with actual differences - differences that make a difference in relation to some generality. So particulars exist in that they contradict some generality. They only partake in that generality in a specific way.
A white horse and a white rhino are both white animals. So is the fact of their being a horse and a rhino a difference that makes a difference qua the universality of the class of "white animals"? Is it not a pointless distinction to say they are different kinds of animals in this context?
And remember that vagueness and generality are not the same in Peirce's view. They are dialectical opposites.
The vague is where distinctions don't even apply as there is no general context, no formative constraints, against which any such judgement could be made. The PNC has nothing to latch on to.
And the general is where all distinctions are subsumed under a common identity. As with the notion of whiteness applied across the class of animals. No particulars are excluded as the general can include them all within its class. Therefore now it is the LEM that has nothing to latch on to. And that becomes definitional of generality.
If "A" is a thing, then the law of identity applies, because that law says that a thing is the same as itself. So that instance of "A" is that instance of "A", and there is no problem. If "A" refers to a thing, then the law of identity applies to that thing which "A" refers to. The thing has been identified and given the name "A". But you are talking about "what A means". If "A" means something different to you, from what it means to me, then on what basis do you claim that there is a thing which is "what A means"? And if there is no such thing, then the law of identity cannot be applied.
Quoting apokrisis
There is no such thing as a difference which doesn't make a difference. That is contradiction. If it has been identified as a difference, then by that very fact, it has made a difference. That's the point of my argument. To say that there is a difference which does not make a difference is pure sophistry, it's self-deception if you believe that.
Quoting apokrisis
The law of identity is intended to distinguish one particular from everything else. If "everything else" is "some generality", then what you say makes sense. But in the act of distinguishing any particular from everything else, every difference makes a difference. Therefore every difference is an actual difference. Your attempt to differentiate between actual differences, and differences which do not make a difference, is pure nonsense.
Here, let's say 'A means: how to bake banana bread'.
Ingredients
2 to 3 very ripe bananas, peeled.
1/3 cup melted butter.
1 teaspoon baking soda.
Pinch of salt.
3/4 cup sugar (1/2 cup if you would like it less sweet, 1 cup if more sweet)
1 large egg, beaten.
1 teaspoon vanilla extract.
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour.
If you and I both follow this recipe, we will both make banana bread. In other words, the recipe results in - it 'means' - banana bread. Not regular bread, not muffins - but banana bread.
I can't honestly claim to know that details. It's the subject that Edward Feser is expert in. The nearest I could find is this:
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The modern concept of 'mind' is different from the traditional 'intellect'. But I admit, I'm running up against the (very narrow) limits of my knowledge of this subject.
You sound so Old Testament about this. Yes, it may all be horribly wrong in your chosen metaphysics, but it follows simply from a probabilistic view of reality.
The principle of indifference is a fundamental constraint on actuality in that view. It explains why we get the “weird” statistics of quantum entangled states and the quantum indistinguishability of particles among other things.
So sure. Reality appears composed of concrete particulars. But the emphasis is on appears. It isn’t really.
How can this make sense to you? It's just self-reference, "banana bread" means banana bread.
What I make, I will call "banana bread", and what you make, you will call "banana bread". But what I make, and what you make are not both the same thing, they are similar. The law of identity is meant to ensure that no one uses sophistry to produce absurd conclusions, such as, that you and I are both eating the same thing. We are not, we are eating similar things. Meaning is based in the similarity between different things. But, the fact that they are different cannot be overlooked in order to claim that the similar things are the same, or else the essence of meaning is lost. That essence is in the similarity of different things. Therefore, that the things are different is fundamental to meaning.
Quoting apokrisis
Oh, I see, you get "weird" quantum states because you can't tell one particle apart from the other due to the practise of your principle of indifference. Ever think that maybe this is a problem which should be addressed? And, that you choose a metaphysics which simply ignores this weirdness, as if it's acceptable, is an indication that your chosen metaphysics is not up to snuff?
To each other object. Space is, in such a metaphysic, composed entirely of relations between objects. Therefore, it could be argued that the objectual properties refering to space are not "of the object", but "of the world". Time could be seen in a similar way, replacing objects with events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_space
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
But that's not the same thing. "A triangle doesn't have the property of compatibility with circularity" states nothing about the potential compatibility of triangularity and circularity, which is exactly what we are trying to get at here. "A triangle has the property of not being compatible with circularity" is already closer to the mark. The first one doesn't have the causal relevance necessary the full phenomena.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
One could argue that there are at least two spaces for each act of understanding : the space occupied by the information itself, and the space occupied by the information necessary to interpret the object of understanding. As such, understanding, as a stand-in for information processing, would be distributed.
I reckon that seals it for once and for all. Wasn't even that difficult.
It wasn't difficult because you didn't even try. Are you going to try to explain "what A means" or just give some half hearted example of the fact that when two people follow the same recipe they come up with a similar product? How does this demonstrate that there is a "what A means" which is common to the two people? The fact that different people may act in a similar way after reading the recipe does not demonstrate that there is one common "what A means" which is the same for these people. Do you still have no respect for the difference between similar and same?
Sometimes differences don’t make a difference. And that is determined by the context.
So the probabilistic view accepts no two things are the same. But then the differences might not count.
Under the LEM, I either threw a 7 or I didn’t. But it doesn’t matter how that 7 was composed ... unless you introduce some further constraint that makes it a particular concern.
In just the same way, you are still the same MU you were a month ago ... even if most of your atoms got swapped by the continuous metabolic turnover of your parts.
Without the principle of indifference, our ordinary world metaphysics would indeed be weird.
Jeez. And so you agree that there are differences that don't make a difference!
Sameness - like difference - is just the idealised limit. All real things are never absolutely the same, nor absolutely different. They are just relatively alike or relatively unalike.
Where is the problem?
Checked, no problem here. Must be at the other end. ;-) (not *your* end...)
Of course it makes a difference. You can only make the decision that this difference doesn't make a difference in reference to some intent, or purpose. But we're talking metaphysics, ontology, and the foundations of epistemology, we can't make our principles concerning the nature of reality relative to our purposes. That is the context here, ontology. And since it is the truth which we are concerned with here, we cannot decide that there is a difference which doesn't make a difference in relation to the truth, as this is contradictory.
Quoting apokrisis
No, I do not agree. Just because I call two distinct things by the same word does not mean that I agree that the difference between them doesn't make a difference. That I think is a ridiculous conclusion. One is mine, and the other is Wayfarer's. I respect that difference, and I would not steal Wayfarer's banana bread, claiming that it must be mine because it is the same as mine.
Despite the fact that we use the same word to refer to different things, we still respect that the difference between them makes a difference. If you disregard this difference to produce a logical argument, as wayfarer did, it is a category mistake, and you engage in sophistry.
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I believe such sophistry is a very big problem which has infiltrated most modern metaphysics. Disrespect for the law of identity ought to be exposed for what it is, a complete undermining of epistemological principles. Sure, it's not a problem for you, because it doesn't make a difference to you. But by insisting that it's not a problem just because it doesn't make a difference to you, in complete disrespect for the fact that it does make a difference to me, you insist on making your epistemological principles completely subjective.
"Absolutely different" means "completely different". Two objects are said to be completely different if they have nothing in common. Are you saying there is no such a thing as two objects that have nothing in common? Of course not. I can easily give you an example of two sets that are completely different in the sense that they have no elements in common. Let A = {1, 2, 3} and B = {4, 5, 6}. A and B, we can clearly see, are two completely different sets because they have no elements in common. Not a single one. I don't think you're denying this obvious fact i.e. that there are objects that have nothing in common. So what exactly are you saying? What do you mean when you say there is no such a thing as "absolute difference"?
I think you will find that objects have being objects in common. Sets have being sets in common. Etc.
Yes, there are details that are irrelevant. And it is us who determine which details are relevant and which details are not relevant. For example, when we measure the length of an object we do so by counting how many objects of the same length (e.g. centimeters) can be put next to each other so that they appear to be the same length as the object we are measuring. When we say "the same length" we do not mean "the same length from any point of view". Rather, what we mean is "the same length from those points of view that are of interest to us". It is possible for two objects to appear the same from those points of view that are of interest to us and different from those points of view that are of no interest to us. Centimeters may appear the same from a distance but seen up close they may look different. When you move closer to a centimeter, new details may appear in your view of that centimeter. If this happens, then the two centimeters may no longer appear to be of the same length. And this is why it is extremely important to define the boundaries of a centimeter. You need to know what is a centimeter and what isn't. When you know what is a centimeter and what isn't then it becomes straightforward to determine whether any two centimeters are of the same length or not. There is no longer any room for "but if you take a closer look you will see that they are different!" because the concept of centimeter limits the set of vantage points that belong to this concept. Differences that can be observed from those vantage points that fall outside of the definition of the concept of centimeter can be dismissed on the ground that they are irrelevant. They are simply NOT part of the concept of centimeter.
Really, all your responses are off the point.
Absolute difference is a “thing” only in the sense of being the limit towards which reality can approach, yet never actually reach.
This is supported by the various fundamental physical laws that science has arrived at.
A merely logical argument against my position doesn’t hold water here. Likewise, saying that humans can impose measurement frames on the Cosmos is not an argument as all such frames are based on choices and so on the principle of indifference. Coordinate systems are mathematical conveniences, not the material reality of which I speak.
What physical evidence do you have to offer that says material being can reach either the limit of the exactly alike in all possible respects, or the exactly unalike in all possible respects?
If it has sound premises, and sound deduction, then the "merely' logical argument must be given higher respect than fundamental physical laws whose premises are often based in not so sound inductive conclusions.
Your claim is a tautology and thus unproductive. Now, either a thing is red, that is, it participates in the form of redness, prior to us calling it "red", or it is not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
"Man" is not defined merely as an animal, but "plane" is defined merely as "a flat surface". Then you have it backwards: If I defined "plane" as a "plane", then it would be circular. But to define "plane" as "flat surface" is not; precisely because I may know what "flat surface" means and not know what "plane" means. Then the definition of "plane" as a "flat surface" proves that they have the same meaning. If 2+2=4, then it proves that they are logically the same. I.e., having 2 apples and another 2 apples is logically identical to having 4 apples. Thus if "plane" = "flat surface", then they are logically identical.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Alright. Although I don't agree, I appreciate the consistency in the whole system.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Discussion or dialogue is adequate, as is the case for finding the essence of the concept for triangle-ness. I gave another argument before: the fact that if concepts could possibly be different in individuals, then all attempts for communication would be hopeless. Consequently, we must have faith that concepts are, if not identical, then at least exact duplicates in everyone's mind. Finally, if concepts are different in individuals, then most of Plato's dialogue are pointless, because Socrates and his peers, attempting to find forms through arguments, all assume that the form they are looking for is the same for everyone.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You contradict yourself with the earlier claim that you believed in concepts being universal forms. If universals, then these forms or concepts cannot have accidentals.
But it starts from an idea. A building is a possibility that is realized physically.
If the tautology contradicts your claim, then you are wrong.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
What is at question is whether or not there is a "form of redness" prior to us calling something red. I say no, you say yes.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
That's totally untrue. My dictionary has a quarter of a page of entry under the word "plane". What is at issue here is whether or not there is ambiguity in word usage, and clearly there is. The ambiguity is reduced by producing definitions. So when you define "plane" as a flat surface, then through this definition you are reducing the possibility of ambiguity.
Once it is defined as "flat surface" we can proceed toward understanding the ambiguities within "flat surface". What exactly do you mean by a surface, and what exactly constitutes 'flat". Ambiguity is never removed in an absolute way.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
This is not true though. It is not required that individuals have the same concepts in order to communicate. If that were the case, then communication could not be a learned ability. This is the problem which lead Plato to introduce the doctrine of recollection. From your premise, we cannot learn concepts, because then we wouldn't be able to communicate in order to learn them. So Plato posited the principle of recollection, stating that we already know the concepts when we're born, and we just remember them. But this is an untenable position which is refuted in other dialogues, because it produces the absurdity that everyone must already know when they are born, everything which they
will ever come to know, throughout their lifetimes. Then, since these concepts must be passed from one life to another, everyone must already know everything which will ever be known. And that's an absurdity.
Instead of accepting and promoting this absurdity, we ought to consider the proposition that communication is less than perfect. When you say something, I do not understand it exactly in the way which you intend. That is because the conceptual structure within my mind is not exactly the same as that in your mind. But this imperfection does not necessitate the conclusion that we cannot communicate. On the contrary, it is an essential aspect of communication, and it manifests as the fact that communication takes effort. If my concepts were exactly the same as yours, then whatever you said would automatically be received by me exactly in the way that you intended. Communication would not take any effort. But this is not the case, communication takes effort. It is not perfect, and this is because of differences within our conceptual structures'.
The claim that our various conceptual structures (world views) are the same, is just an over-simplification, used to bypass the very difficult question of what is a concept. As soon as the lazy philosopher accepts this (false) premise, that concepts are the same for different individuals, then the real, and very difficult to understand, nature of concepts, can be simply ignored in favour of this false premise.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
I believe you misunderstand Plato. Plato's intent is to go beyond this false premise of Pythagorean Idealism, to determine the real nature of concepts. That is why he worked to expose all the difficulties of it. He continually took words with very ambiguous concepts, and worked to expose that ambiguity. This is known as Platonic dialectics. This flies in the face of Pythagorean Idealism, in which ambiguity is not possible.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
This is only according to your definition of "universal form". Your definition doesn't seem to allow a distinction between what the concept says (means) and what the concept is ( its ontological existence). This seems to be because you have no principle which allows for a concept to have any ontological existence. You take the lazy route, just assuming that concepts exist, with no principles to demonstrate how this is possible.
Show me where I've gone wrong.
I feel a better way of putting that would be that the physical has potential to be informational.
I guess I can't see much of a point in pursuing this line of inquiry through Plato's or Aristotle's lenses.
Can you distinguish meaningfully between the "work" of interpreting the information and the "work" of the information taken as instruction? I don't think it's possible. Information is already and always work, which would support the claim that its already and always physical.
Right. So as I was saying about the principle of indifference....
Right. So as I was saying about the principle of indifference....
I think what you said is the very opposite:
Quoting apokrisis
See, your principle of indifference doesn't allow that this difference is real. What I claim is fundamental to reality, particulars, with differences, you are saying is just an illusion. The problem with your stated position is that we know and understand things through the differences between them. We differentiate. So if difference is just an illusion then our knowledge is fundamentally flawed and reality is inherently unintelligible.
But I already knew that your ontology of vagueness first, leaves reality unintelligible. So you have just confirmed this point in another way. If difference were just an illusion then vagueness would be confirmed and reality would be unintelligible. However, the presupposition that reality is unintelligible is a dead end road for anyone who wants to understand (a philosopher), so it is exposed as nothing more than a meaningless statement of opinion.
Hardly. It allows me to distinguish between accidents and necessities for a start.
Is an oak tree still an oak tree if it is bent and twisted, blasted by lightning, ravaged by pests?
We are right to say an oak tree is an oak tree because we can point to some shared information - a genome and a history of adaptation which that genome represents. So the genome stands for what is necessary. And then that defines what are merely accidents that particularise oak trees - the differences in form that make this one distinct from that one. It is a matter of indifference if one oak tree has a broken limb, or a different pattern of branching, or whatever.
So my approach introduces a sound basis for separating reality into its formal necessities and accidental differences. Forms, constraints, bounds or limits are "real" to the degree that they "care".
Now humans can pretend they care about absolutely every detail. You can take the point of view where the slightest crinkle in the 1001st leaf of an oak tree is enough to distinguish it from its twin. There is no limit that you are willing to place on your ability to care.
Fine. That is a very idealistic and absolutist philosophical position. It is a very familiar stance, being the reductionism that underlies the classical mechanical/atomistic view of reality.
But here I am talking about a full Aristotelian four causes view of reality, one that is based on systems thinking or holism. This seeks to distinguish between formal necessities and material accidents. And so it talks of the constraints that encode a finality or general desire.
The flip-side of this is then that the constraints must also encode a limit to that desiring. The principle of indifference is what makes finality even possible. It says desires can be satisfied well enough for the purpose in mind. The fact that we can care is made a definite causative fact by their being, in complementary fashion, a limit to the degree we need to care. Accidents can be allowed to happen once they don't make a difference.
So your approach to this is metaphysically lop-sided. You want to argue for the primacy of form and finality. Yet in pretending that all differences can matter equally, you talk yourself into an incoherent position.
By the way, what happened to dichotomistic.com? It worked fine up until recently.
Could you elaborate on the use of "care" in this context? I get that they make a difference, or are bounds, or whatever, but I don't see how that adds up to "cares".
No, you are saying that no two things can be absolutely different. I am saying that they can.
Also, you are saying that:
Quoting apokrisis
I am saying that reality is composed of concrete particulars.
Your ontological vagueness merely introduces vagueness. It makes things unnecessarily complicated. I see no reason for it.
I'm simply saying I accept a causal ontology in which finality always plays a real part. That finality may seem completely attentuated - as in when talking about the entropic desire of the Second Law. But it is still considered real, even if only a material tendency and not a semiotic relation (as in an organismic function or purpose).
So you are arguing against the principle of indifference by telling me all about how you personally choose to apply it. Congrats.
I am not arguing against what you call "the principle of indifference". I am arguing against your claim that there is no such thing as absolute difference. I agree that we are only ever aware of a portion of reality (what you call "the principle of indifference") but I disagree that this fact leads to what you claim. There is this thing that you call "the principle of indifference" and then there is this thing we call "absolute difference". They are not mutually exclusive.
I also disagree with your claim that reality is not composed of concrete particulars. I have to note that this claim does not follow from "the principle of indifference" either. Just because we are only ever aware of a portion of reality does not mean that what we are aware of is not reality itself.
'Reality itself' eh? Philosophy as a discipline is based on questioning our innate sense of the reality of common experience. There is a fundamental sense in which reality is constructed by the brain/mind on the basis of sense data, but also on the basis of our intellectual and even biological faculties.
So one of the major points of this thread, I hope, is to call attention to the way the mind is able to interpret signals and signs so as to derive meaning which is able to remain constant even while the signals in which the meaning is encoded vary completely in terms of form and type. Our minds 'see meaning' and 'see reason', more or less reflexively. And what is simply given, what is already the case, might be impossible to completely disentangle from those interpretive acts which the mind is continuously engaged in. That's what I am hoping will be reflected on in this debate.
Furthermore, I have the view that Plato's intuition of universals, forms or ideas is fundamental to understanding this process. I think that universals and forms are something other than simply concepts or internal to the act of thinking but are actually real, albeit in a way that can only be grasped or understood by a rational intelligence. That is the basis on which I am hoping to understand and defend a realist view, with respect to universals.
Such a distinction is the one that is artificial, arbitrary. It's a good example of how the "difference which makes a difference" is a completely subjective principle. We distinguish necessities from accidents based on our purpose or intent. If the intent is not 'the truth", then the determination is skewed.
Quoting apokrisis
Oh come on, you cannot distinguish what is necessary from what is accidental by reference to the genome. That's nonsense.
Quoting apokrisis
That's a joke.
What does it mean that [s]reality[/s] one's perception of reality is constructed by the brain on the basis of sense data? That is the question. More generally, what does it mean that X is constructed based on Y? Even more generally, what does it mean that X is caused by Y? What is causality?
It means what it says. Your brain - the most complex single known natural phenomenon in the entire universe - consumes a large proportion of your body's oxygen and nutrients. What's it doing, other than keeping your heart and lungs going (most of which is done by the brain stem which is hardly any different in reptiles)? Why, it's creating your world - integrating all the sensory input into a unified domain of experience, a.k.a. 'the world'. That is reality. The notion of reality being 'there anyway', what persists when there's nobody around to see it, is also a construction of that superb organ, the human brain. We never know anything by other means.