What does it mean to say that something is physical or not?
Many people seem to be very concerned about the ontological status of things which we ordinarily think of as 'mental'. I sometimes wonder whether that is because it is (perhaps even unconsciously?) felt that their ontological status has some implications for religious belief, and most especially belief in an afterlife.
Perhaps we say that things are immaterial or intangible simply because we cannot see, hear, touch, smell or taste them. The idea that something is non-physical might mean something quite different; for example that it cannot be understood in terms of physics, even in principle. Is the notion that something is not materials the same as the idea that it is not physical?
So, it may be that we often say things are not physical ( when we really mean 'material') simply because they are not immediate objects of the senses. On the other hand there might be a dualistic metaphysics implicit in such statements.If one wants to say that there are non-physical things; would this necessarily imply dualism? I have heard people say that non-physical things do not exist but they are nonetheless real. Is this a valid or coherent distinction? Why or why not would you say it is, or is not, valid or coherent? If we want to say (some) non-physical things (meaning things which can be completely independent of the physical) are real, do we really know what we are saying?
There is more I could say, but that'll do for now. I'd like to hear what others think about this subject, which is a puzzling one, because it seems to skate on the thin ice of incoherence, and yet notwithstanding that it is apparently most compelling (you only need to look at the number of posts such topics attract) . I'm actually most interested in why people choose to believe one or the other, and also whether religious faith of whatever stripe is necessarily (not historically) more aligned with one position than with the other.
Perhaps we say that things are immaterial or intangible simply because we cannot see, hear, touch, smell or taste them. The idea that something is non-physical might mean something quite different; for example that it cannot be understood in terms of physics, even in principle. Is the notion that something is not materials the same as the idea that it is not physical?
So, it may be that we often say things are not physical ( when we really mean 'material') simply because they are not immediate objects of the senses. On the other hand there might be a dualistic metaphysics implicit in such statements.If one wants to say that there are non-physical things; would this necessarily imply dualism? I have heard people say that non-physical things do not exist but they are nonetheless real. Is this a valid or coherent distinction? Why or why not would you say it is, or is not, valid or coherent? If we want to say (some) non-physical things (meaning things which can be completely independent of the physical) are real, do we really know what we are saying?
There is more I could say, but that'll do for now. I'd like to hear what others think about this subject, which is a puzzling one, because it seems to skate on the thin ice of incoherence, and yet notwithstanding that it is apparently most compelling (you only need to look at the number of posts such topics attract) . I'm actually most interested in why people choose to believe one or the other, and also whether religious faith of whatever stripe is necessarily (not historically) more aligned with one position than with the other.
Comments (249)
There have been times when that was thought to be straightforward. Not so much now, though.
What it means to say ‘something is physical’ is to say that it is what is defined or studied by physics.
Sorry if I’m unable to accommodate all reading ages.
I don't think so. The problem for me is that the dualism/monism distinction is unessisary; it's an illusion. This actually relates somewhat to the thread I just started; the idea that there are non-physical things doesn't automatically assume hard dualism; there's no reason to assume that physical reality and a non-physical reality can never interact. A two dimensional drawing is apprehended in three dimensional space, within time. There's no reason to assume that the chain of apprehension stops there. As to whether a higher dimension would be physical and scientifically observable, my knowledge stops there, but I can imagine the strict lines of dualism/monism becoming blurred if science ever reaches out further than that. I also don't discount the possibility of something higher reaching down instead. It seems totally plausible to me.
This highlights the problem for me, though; because on the one hand you say dualism is not implied, and on the other you seem to be assuming there are two realities which interact with one another.
I said hard dualism; my understanding is that's a Kantian dualism where the two can never interact, but correct me if I'm wrong. But I'm saying a "soft" dualism could exist where the two interact; oil and water poured into the same glass will interact, although they'll never congeal. But the two will affect change in one another.
I don't necessarily even subscribe to that, but I think it's plausible. What makes more sense to me is a concept that transcends the dualism/monism distinction, which I think of as generative; spirit giving stillborn birth to the physical world. I've talked about that before.
I think that's actually an argument against materialism, though. What other definition can even be given?
So what's a definition of physical that isn't circular?
So defining "physical" is misguided because it suggests dualism? I assume you have a different reason to deny dualism, then? Otherwise, if no definition of physical can be given, I would assume that would open up the possibility for dualism.
In Kant's system appearances (phenomena) are appearances of things in themselves; so, for Kant we do perceive things in themselves, not as they are in themselves, but as appearances. It is an epistemological, not an ontological, distinction. Kant scholars argue over whether Kant meant to present a 'two aspect' or a two world' theory. I think the distinction between 'aspects' and 'worlds' is not really that significant. If things in themselves are not known to us as they are in themselves, but only as appearances, then these just are the two aspects of things in themselves.
But, if, for us there is a world of things in themselves as they are in themselves that we cannot know, and a world of things in themselves as they appear to us, then for us there are (epistemologically speaking) two worlds. But this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion, and thus should not lead us to conclude, that there are, ontologically speaking, two worlds.
So in this case, knowledge of the two worlds is impossible, but it doesn't mean they don't exist?
As far as I can see, if defining the mental or the physical will always be circular, then I'm not sure what we can define, since the most immediate human experience is the mental, and then the physical. I'm curious what you're getting at here; are you just trying to say that we can't define anything?
I would say there is only one world, which we know, not in itself, but as it appears to us, and that it exists both as it appears and as it is in itself.
I think you're onto something interesting here. It is vacuous in a way. In a way not. I think the apparent circularity is between the empirical science (physics) and its empirical object (the physical). I think this is only apparent however. Maybe the science of physics and its physical objects aren't defined in terms of each other but each depend upon a prior ontological disclosure of the world as physical. This world disclosure is not empirical, but purely ontological.
Heidegger often points out that the various "ontic" sciences all presuppose an ontology. He said somewhere that Newton's laws didn't exist before Newton. A tricky thought. The above paragraph is what he meant, I suspect.
What about the question I asked earlier though? If the physical is defined as that which is susceptible to being understood in the terms of physics, then animals (and possibly plants) cannot rightly be thought to be physical.
Quoting bloodninja
I don't think Heidegger would agree with framing the disclosure of the world which is Dasein as "physical".
I think I somewhat agree; what you're saying is mostly what I mean by generative. I just like that word better because it seems more elegant. But I can understand why Kant's terms could be more useful.
But again, this state of affairs doesn't rule out the possibility of knowledge of the world in itself.
That's a very ambiguous question.
That clarifies things. So what do you think we can define, then?
That's true; we do have knowledge of the world in itself: as it appears to us.
But why not the experience of the world itself?
Well, yes, it is the experience of the world in itself; but, by mere definition it cannot be experience of the world as it is in itself. The 'for us' and the 'in itself' is a logical distinction that circumscribes our epistemic limits, according to Kant.
Physical things are things that are amenable to perceptual cognition, or perceptual cognition via scientific instruments.
We can define more or less everything, except "physical" and "mental"? Two of the most fundamental concepts?
I acknowledge that the more fundamental the concept, the harder to define. But I think that difficulty warrants the effort to make the attempt. So I disagree with you because you seem to be saying that it's not worth attempting to define the most difficult things to define. Maybe at this point I'm just nit-picking. I'm exploring, just like you are.
Edit: and actually, if we can't define the most fundamental concepts, then how can we define the less fundamental ones?
I get that that's what is according to Kant, but I'm saying, in disagreement with Kant, why can't we experience the world as it is in itself?
Edited for clarity thanks to Kant's thorny wording.
The 2nd time you use "physical" above do you mean physical as in "an object of physics" like you do the 1st time you used the word? Because physical can mean different things
Heidegger distinguishes between being and beings (entities), or the ontic and the ontological. Empirical sciences studies beings (the ontic), and depend on being. It's hard to explain if you don't know Heidegger. Perhaps you know Kant? Ontology is basically the conditions of possibility for the ontic sciences. This condition of possibility, Heidegger thinks, is an original world disclosure. Is it mental, is it physical? It's neither...
That's a commonsense definition and I think most people would agree with it. But when people speak of things being non-physical, what often seems to be intended is the idea that there is another order of being beyond the merely physical; an order that may be even be thought to be independent of the physical, and I can't see why this would not amount to a dualistic hypothesis.
I don't know; maybe we can; but the question is whether we can know that we can; and I'd have to say 'no' to that.
Yes, apparently 'physical' can mean different things; and in fact that is just what I'm suggesting by saying that if "physical' is defined as that which can be understood in terms of physics, then animals must be thought to be non-physical beings.
Fundamental to experience. Likewise, theories and models themselves exist only within experience.
Well, "we" might not know that, but maybe there are some that do know that. The Buddha, the Christian mystics. My view includes the possibility that they know that.
That's what I'm saying.
1) to exist in space and time and
2) to participate in causal relations.
This is a somewhat standard definition imo.
I realize I'm confusing the terms. I see it like this: experience -> theories, models
(obviously that's incomplete, it's just within the terms we were discussing).
Many physicalists will of course acknowledge that you don’t study organisms through physics, but they will nevertheless insist that ultimately all of the constituents of organisms are physical. This is often put in terms of ‘supervenience’ - but the upshot is that biology emphatically can be understood in terms of physics, even if we don’t understand the details yet.
The term ‘immaterial’ is rarely used in modern English, it is more characterstic of pre-modern philosophy. You will find it in Platonism, philosophical theology, and so on (except for in the sense of meaning ‘immaterial to the point’ etc.)
Objects without properties 1. and 2. are called abstract objects.
So it is a matter of belief whether you think 2. is needed or not in the definition.
Yes, they probably would; and I would not agree with them. Whether a comprehensive account of biology may, sometime in the future, be reducible to the language of physics is an open question; but I doubt that it can, it seems impossible at present, even in principle, because the language of biology is the language of teleology and intentionality.
How could we know it is possible if we "don't know the details yet"?
Can you give an example of something which does not conform to this definition?
You mean in modern English translations of Plato, don't you?
What kind of existence do numbers, shapes and ideas have outside our thinking them, and their temporal and spatial instantiations in nature?
Agree.
@Janus I dont know. It depends on who you ask.
Don’t ask me, ask Daniel Dennett.
OK, I thought you were affirming it.
I haven't read Quine. Can you summarize his definition of existence?
Thanks, that's a nice exposition of the problem.
Edit: maybe it is better to say minds instead of mental processes.
They have no extra-mental existence. We apply those concepts to extra-mental things.
Mental: Of, or pertaining to, mind.
This strikes me as verging on a Straw-Man. Does anyone really claim that everything can be explained by GR and QM (+ other branches of physics)? That is a far cry from the more reasonable position that everything is subject to the laws of physics.
Do we have a (fully) worked out theory of anything? With respect to mentality, isn't it more reasonable to claim that, when we have an explanatory theory, whatever it is, mentality will be subject to physical laws just like everything else?
And the laws of physics are?
Neuronal and mental activities have mutual effects, but are incommensurable because physiological activity is a correlate, not a cause, of mental activity.
In addition to the two previously mentioned, you would probably need to include at least Thermodynamics.
Is the notion that certain systems may be subject to laws, but not explicable by them so difficult to grasp?
Sorry, my question wasn't worded well. What I meant to ask is; what does it mean for a thing to be a law of physics? Is a law of physics just whatever all things are subject to? That's the second horn of Hempel's dilemma, and makes for physicalism to be circular and vacuous. Is a law of physics just whatever is part of current physical theories? That's the first horn of Hempel's dilemma, and makes for physicalism to be known to be false as it is known that current physical theories are not a Theory of Everything.
Mutual effects, which aren't causal? What is that?
Correlation.
If it makes you feel better, substitute "dependence" for "effects".
If numbers, shapes and ideas have no extra-mental existence then what are the "extra-mental things" "we apply those concepts to"?
If I depend on someone for food does this not imply that they bring about (cause) the conditions in which I am fed? I can't see what correlation has to do with it.
Our physical universe is explainable as a system of inter-referring inevitable abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals. ...one of infinitely-many such systems. There' s no reason to believe that it's other than that.
It's unprovable and indeterminable whether or not the Materialist's objectively-existent physical world superfluously exists alongside, and duplicates, that system of abstract facts. A claim that it does would be an unverifiable, unfalsifiable proposition, positing a brute-fact.
Michael Ossipoff
Features of experience. We employ abstract concepts to classify, organise, structure, associate etc. to features of reality for various purposes.
Then you should probably read this article.
Do you define features of experience as extra-mental then?
If you are trying to make a Humean point that causality is not observed but inferred, and only correlations are observed; then that is a whole other argument that would also seem to be irrelevant to what is being discussed.
So the whole universe is an abstraction your view? I don't think that standpoint is going to be of much help.
Yes, although I realise "features of experience" isn't so clear. Just to clarify, by "features of experience" I mean features/properties of the environment (which are extra-mental) that we experience via our biological apparatus. (Although we could more broadly say we experience relating/applying abstract concepts to other abstract concepts in our minds as a sort of "inner" experience. But ultimately, my point is that abstract concepts such as "number" do not exist extra-mentally.)
person as already environment interaction. From this vantage, both the idea of the physical and that of the mental are confused notions.
Why am I not surprised?
I don't know. Why?
OK, I certainly agree that abstract concepts do not exist extra-mentally. But the problem seems to be that, for example, numbers are independent of any particular mind. Does that mean they are independent of all minds, or independent of the totality of minds? If so, then does that "independence" constitute some kind of existence or being or reality? If we answer in the affirmative, then should we call that existence or being or reality physical or non-physical. If non-physical, then mental? But if mental, then numbers are not independent of mind, not "extra-mental".
I tend to think the whole distinction between mental and physical ( beyond its ordinary commonsense applications) is fatally flawed; so I am not. like you, a physicalist, and nor am I an idealist. I understand no logical or ontological priority between the physical and the mental.
What were you wanting it to help with?
It's helpful as an explanation. ...an explanation that doesn't make any assumptions or posit any brute-facts.
In fact, not only is it explanatory--It's inevitable fact.
As a system of inter-referring inevitable abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals, the metaphysics that I described doesn't say anything that anyone would disagree with. Which part of it do you disagree with?
So it's a completely uncontroversial metaphysics.
Maybe I should add a little detail:
A set of hypothetical physical-quantity variable-values, and a physical law, consisting of a hypothetical relation between those values, are parts of the "if " premise of an if-then fact.
...except that one of those variable-values can be taken as the "then" conclusion of that if-then fact.
A mathematical theorem is an if-then fact whose "if " premise includes (but needn't be limited to) a set of mathematical axioms (algebraic or geometric).
A physical system is an inter-referring system of such abstract facts. As I said, there's no reason to believe that our physical universe is other than that.
But the if-then facts needn't only be mathematical. If there's a traffic roundabout at the corner of 34th & Vine, then it's also a fact that, if you go to 34th & Vine, you'll encounter a traffic roundabout.
Any fact about our physical universe corresponds to an if-then fact.
We're used to declarative grammar because it's convenient. But I suggest that we're unduly believing our grammar. Conditional grammar is all that's needed to describe our physical world.
Instead of one world of "is", there are infinitely-many worlds of "if".
I mentioned physical laws because, when we more closely examine the physical world, that's what we find evidence for. ...then that's the form taken by our experience of the physical world.
Michael Ossipoff
I'm sorry to say none of this makes any sense to me Michael. I've tried a few times to understand your metaphysics and failed every time. Perhaps I'm simply not intelligent enough for the task. :)
Yes, then we would still say they are not physical as such, according to the ordinary definitions of 'physical', but are also not something beyond or 'over and above' the physical world.
Yeah, this seems to be a statement of the typical physicalist's metaphysical position. "Anything which is real is physical because physics attempts to understand everything."
The question to be asked of those physicalists, is why does physics fail in its attempts to understand everything.
Yes. In fact it's worse than that. You aren't even able to say which statement, word, term or phrase you don't understand the meaning of.
Michael Ossipoff
No I can understand the words and phrases; it is how they are all meant to hang together to support your conclusions that I don't get. In any case it's off-topic as far as I can tell.
Making time central to physics and reenvisioming it as a science of evolutionary process unites it with living processes and points the way to an eventual conciliation with the new mind models. Such models dissolve the divide between the strictly physical and the mental by seeing self-organizing informational processes as fundamental.
Then that's different. It isn't that you don't understand what I said. It's that you think that I said something that I didn't support.
...but you regrettably are unable to specify which conclusion(s), in particular, it was :D
That's ok, but of course I can't be expected to answer a disagreement with an unspecified statement or conclusion.
"What does it mean to say that something is physical or not?"
You asked about the matter of physical and nonphysical things. I answered that it's possible to explain "physical things" by nonphysical things. (Not unheard of with Idealisms :D). I mentioned that as part of my answer to your comment about whether saying that there are physical things and nonphysical things implies Dualism--a matter that you'd brought up.
Michael Ossipoff
If time is something real as Lee Smolin suggests in Time Reborn, how could time be something physical? Imagine space for example. If "space" were something real it would be nothing, how could that be physical? If it's not nothing, then it is described in terms other than "space" and is not really space.
"A dictionary definition is an analytic reduction of some not understood complex concept to more fundamental ones that are assumed to be so basically simple that they are well known to everybody."
These "simple" ideas, are only said to be simple because of the ease of access one has to them, not because they are easy to define. Time, space, objects (physical) - are such "simple" ideas.
Our integrated experience of these concepts shapes our feeling towards what this or that concept is, at least when we call upon our selves to define said concept.
Circular definitions are a problem philosophers face, but an inescapable one. As Munn himself demonstrates, if you go far enough, you will always be using terms you´ve used before, to define the term you are yet to fully define.
Circular definitions may be a solution towards making a world picture that holds itself together. It might be strange for us to fathom, but what is, is, and that is that. Is there an actual logical objection to this?
(Y)
Important point. The consequences of Cartesian dualism, the apparently neat division of 'the world' into mind and matter, are one of the major factors behind this whole debate. The other is the invention of Cartesian geometric algebra, and the discovery of Newton's laws of motion. They set the stage for the development of modern science and also the philosophy that went with it. Combine it with Locke's empiricism and then top it off with natural selection, and you have the framework within which the question 'what is physical' is generally considered.
Quoting ?????????????
That is basically the framework in which the question as to 'what is physical' is being asked in my view. Materialist theories are those which assert that there is no ontological distinction between inorganic matter, organisms, and mental states. All of them are reducible to physical facts, in principle if not in practice, the practical difficulty being due to the complexity of living systems (both on the level of individuals and on the level of ecosystems). But the materialist view is that biochemistry is basically complex chemistry, which is ultimately the consequence of molecular action and understandable in terms of atomic forces, as physical forces and entities are the only ultimately real things in the Universe. And note, physicalism has to say that; as soon as any kind of real, non-physical entity is admitted, then it has lost the argument, as it is a form of monist philosophy.
One of the best-known advocates of physicalist or materialist philosophy of mind is Daniel Dennett, who has been discussed in couple of recent threads.
On the other side, Thomas Nagel's 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False is an critique (as the title says) of the 'materialist neo-darwinian conception of nature', which is understood to be the dominant paradigm in the secular West, exemplified by the likes of Dennett and others.
Hempel's dilemma has already been mentioned. I think it holes any form of materialism beneath the waterline, in the aftermath of the radical discoveries of 20th century physics. Even matter just doesn't seem material any more; but that's not news, Russell noted that in History of Western Philosophy.
And that is why 'philosophy always buries its undertakers'.
Agree. This would also be one of the philosophical implications of Godel's theorem, I would have thought.
I don't have a problem with the purported circularity of physicalism, it is a metaphysical stance after all. If it were in fact the case that physics was proliferating and laws were having to be altered to accommodate new entities like, vital forces, the aether, flogiston, then perhaps the physicalist project would need to be reconsidered, but that is not happening. Admittedly dark energy and matter, and even the multiverse are new entities that have had to be admitted to physics, but they are not the result of a proliferation of physics.
One possible threat to the unification project of physics is panpsychism. If the panpsychics are right, then consciousness would have to be brought under the umbrella of fundamental physics. If that happened, then I would admit physicalism is false, though following Hempel, others might simply absorb it into their definition.
It seems I take a different view of the meaning of the "Completeness of Physics" from Hempel. I don't mean the laws of physics as we currently have them nor some imaginary perfect future theory. I mean that the deep fundamental principles of physics are manifest in Reality and will be respected by all future theories.
How about:
Physics is the science of the fundamental constituents of reality and their interactions.
Physical is everything that is subject to the laws of and principles that physics discovers.
Physicalism is the metaphysical claim that only physical entities exist.
Could be better worded of course, but is it circular?
I think so:
1. only physical things exist
2. only [things subject to the laws of and principles that physics discovers] exist
3. only [things subject to the laws of and principles that [the science of the fundamental constituents of reality and their interactions] discovers] exist
It's also vacuous. It just amounts to the claim that only the things that exist exist.
Although it seems to me that this doesn't really explain the issue. Surely people make such claims as "the fundamental constituents of reality are immaterial"? And so using the above definition(s), physics is the science of the immaterial, and so physicalism and immaterialism are identical?
Bit of a self inflicted injury there. Perhaps "discovers" should be replaced with "studies" or "discovers and may discover". The implication is that physics is complete, not that it is over.
I think a more frequently encountered claim is that the mental and consciousness are substances in their own right.
What are "numbers" ontologically in your view?
In my view, "numbers" are abstract concepts that exist in the mind. Ontologically, they exist as particular mental abstracts in the form of brain processes. That means that "numbers" are dependent on minds; they are not independent of minds. If that were so, then that would obviously mean they exist extra-mentally.
Quoting Janus
Strictly (and ontologically) speaking, I don't make a distinction between "mental" and "physical", so there is no problem or flaw.
I think number is inherent in nature; so number is not merely the product of minds.That much seems obvious to me.
Quoting numberjohnny5
And yet you say you are a "physicalist" not a "mentalist". Seems like an ontological distinction to me.
I'm not saying that Dennett has completely succeeded, but I do think efforts like his point the way to a kind of materialism that is not talking about Cartesian mechanistic causation.
Quoting Wayfarer
Wayfarer, judging from your reply, I think you read "that does not mean you can discard the framework".
I generally refer to criticisms of Dennett (which are not hard to find) as arguments for why materialist theories of mind are doomed to fail.
Quoting Janus
When you say numbers are 'inherent in nature', what does it mean? You won't literally find anything like 'a number' in nature. Numbers are only perceptible to minds capable of counting. It is said that crows and monkeys are able to differentiate between groups of 2 and 3 people, but I don't think that qualifies as counting. Given the ability to count, one can discern all manner of mathematical relationships in nature, but I am dubious as to whether that means that numbers are 'inherent' in nature. Not that it's an easy question.
Quoting Janus
Actually, you're correct, I did misread that statement.
The point I was trying to get across to ????????????? was that in philosophy, when we ask 'what is physical', that question generally presumes the background of Cartesian dualism. It doesn't mean that you have to accept Cartesian dualism, but the notion of separate physical and mental 'substances' underlies the debate. The quote from Lusthaus is about the way that this developed subsequent to Descartes, with materialists/physicalists gravitating towards the kinds of explanations that could be given in purely physical terms.
Well, obviously you are not going to find fives or tens laying around; and I said "number is inherent in nature" not "numbers are inherent in nature".
Quoting Wayfarer
That would seem to qualify as an ability to recognize different numbers of objects. It is counting, I would say, though it seems obviously not self-reflective or linguistic counting.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-animals-have-the-ability-to-count/
Could you specify some examples of number being inherent in nature?
Quoting Janus
Physicalism says that every thing/object/existent is physical; that includes minds since minds are things. Mental states are distinct from non-mental states. Both mental states and non-mental states are just particular kinds of physical states.
Suppose that this is the case, that each present moment is not predictable. What does this say about the future? It is impossible that there is physical existence in the future, because what will exist has not yet been determined. Then we must assign to everything on the future side of the present, what has not yet occurred, some sort of non-physical existence.
...if you're a Materialist, and believe that this physical universe is all of reality.
I don't think there are many Materialists here.
Michael Ossipoff
Let's get specific. If you believe that Nagel's criticism of Dennett's materialism is spot on, then my response is that Nagel is in no position to critique Dennett on this issue, given that Dennett's attempt involves bridging the gap between naturalism and phenomenological philosophy, which claims to resituate the subject-object binary. I don't see Nagel as effectively grasping phenomenological or post-phenomenological philosophy. Your response to Dennett would be more effective if you could find me asomeone from these philosophical traditions who believe all materialisms are doomed attempts at incorporating mental phenomena.
You'd have to exclude Dan Zahavi, for instance, one of the best phenomenological philosophers currently writing.
If you are against all materialisms, what sort of philosophical account do you think deals with reality better?
I ask because for me the interesting battle today isn't between materialist and and subjectivist philosophers, but between Cartesian philosophies( which includes the neo-Kantianiam of Putnam, Searle, Nagel, Chalmers and Fodor). and post-Cartesian philosophers(Rorty, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Derrida, etc).
Number is inherent in nature if there are multiple things.
Humans didn't always see the world in terms of a self-Identical counting(Piaget studied the development of the concept of number in children).
Quoting Joshs
By my metaphysics, this universe is one of infinitely-many systems of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals. Among the infinity of such systems, there must be one that matches the events and relations of our physical universe.
A set of hypothetical physical-quantity variable-values, and a physical law (consisting of a hypothetical relation among those values), are part of the "if" premise of an if-then fact.
...except that one of those physical-quantity variable-values could be taken as the "then" premise of that if-then fact.
A mathematical theorem is an if-then fact whose "if" premise includes, but needn't be limited to, a set of mathematical axioms (geometric or algebraic).
There are infinitely many systems of inter-referring abstract logical facts, including systems of facts of the types described above. As I said above, among that infinity of such systems, there must be one that matches the events and relations of this physical universe. There's no reason to believe that this physical universe is other than that.
Instead of one world of "is", infinitely-many worlds of "if".
Could the Materialist's objectively existent physical universe superfluously exist alongside with, and duplicating, the events and relations of that system of abstract facts? Sure, I can't prove it doesn't. But the suggestion of that is an unverifiable and unfalsifiable proposition that posits a brute-fact.
Anyone would agree that Materialism posits a big brute-fact.
My metaphysics (which I briefly outlined above, and will fill in better in about an hour) makes and needs no assumptions, and posits no brute-fact.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness. Many or most (but not all) Materialists perceive that illusory problem. There's no problem.
We're animals. There's no such thing as Mind, Consciousness, etc., separate from the body.
We're animals, and animals are unitary. No separate Consciousness or Mind.
An animal is a purposefully-responsive device. ...like a mousetrap, a refrigerator-lightswitch, or a thermostat. ...but more complex, and influenced by its natural-selection origin.
Consciousness or awareness is the property of being a purposefully-responsive device.
A purposefully-responsive device's experience is its surroundings and events, in the context of its purposes, as a purposefully-responsive device.
I briefly outlined it above. I have to prepare dinner for my 2-person household now, but in about an hour or so maybe there'll be something to add, that I've left out.
...but, in the meantime, I invite comments, disagreements or questions.
In pre-existing terms, my metaphysics could be called an Eliminative Ontic Structural Anti-Realism.
Michael Faraday suggested the principle of that metaphysics in 1844.
Since then, as you probably know, Wittgenstein has been quoted here, as saying that there are no things, just facts. ...which seems to agree with this metaphysics.
(...if "things" means "things that aren't facts", or maybe "physical things". ...as opposed to its more general meaning: "Things are whatever can be referred to.")
Tippler and Tegmark have made similar proposals, but it seems to me that they've both missed the mark in various ways.
Michael Ossipoff
Whether our concept of number happens to be an abstraction of mind or not, our concept is derived from the perception of our environment.
Number is analytic, the absolute properties of any one number mean that there is always a predictable outcome, e.g. 5*5 = 25.
It is in this sense that we use number to predict outcomes or or objectify our observations, i.e. calculate lengths or distances, & calculate speed and force.
From this it seems, rather than self-identification, number is used in the process of identifying our externals through an internal process (e.g. counting).
The accuracy of mathematics and physics to describe material things and their processes means that our concept of number is accurate, but only as accurate as our observations.
Observable 'physics' is thereby limited by our own effective capacity to perceive physical reality.
For example, it is becoming evermore apparent in the realm of quantum physics that the mechanics of the subatomic world is much different to that which we perceive/observe directly.
Physics in and of itself, however, must work using mathematics. It's as easy as 1 + 1 = 2... supposedly.
In the quantum realm, calculations get much more complex and in some cases it becomes impossible to predict outcomes as we would expect; for instance, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
Despite the seeming unpredictability, one thing that is inherent in seemingly all things is proportion.
Whether it be in the form of quantum probability or even mass or volume, I am defining proportion as the relationship of two numerical entities in equalling a singularity.
Simply, a + 2a = 3a.
This proportion is inherent within all things that physics currently understands and can reduce to simple formula. The real problem arises in relationships we do not understand, because things don't add up when we run the arithmetic.
While number is an effective means to understand the world as far as we can observe, there is no way
to determine whether our conception of number is purely a figment of our own perception or exists objectively within reality at large, but it seems that through the bridge of our perception number is an effective way to describe reality at large, but the further we delve, the less effective number becomes.
One thing is consistent, however - proportion, where proportion is a relationship between two entities/variables.
While the world is in perpetual flux, number is absolute.
It is the relationship between absolutes that excites the state of variability.
Until again, change (function) meets constant (number).
Besides, 'numbers' by themselves aren't worth talking about. What is a number without it's relationship to other numbers? Or without it's individual proportion to a larger whole?
Self-identity has nothing to do with it.
Numbers are used to identify individualistic variables among others, such as a cat predicting it's trajectory when jumping.
It's not number how we would understand it in our model of 123456... , but number as proportion between singular entities as is the relationship between two numbers or variables that truly of interest.
Thus is the cornerstone for maths, physics, chemistry, and too biology.
Proportion either describes number or number describes proportion, but this is missing the point.
So, for all you avid sceptics: Proportion is inherent in nature. Am I wrong?
Sorry for being long drawn out and painful but I needed to go into depth.
As for the topic of physicality, 'physicality' as we describe it is contingent upon the experience of 'physicality', and 'physical' experience is determined by sensory perception.
Therefore, our understanding of 'physicality' in an objective sense is meaningless because it is contingent upon our perception to be understood within the realm of, say, physics and maths.
What is physical must be that which is an entity that undergoes physical change. Entity being, for example, photon. Physical change being for example, linear movement.
Therefore, what is 'material' is problematic, but what is 'physical' is not.
A photon is hardly material, although it does have insignificant mass.
However, a photon is involved in physical change - movement.
Therefore, a photon can be considered physical.
I'm going to leave it at this because I'd like to see some responses before I continue.
I disagree; number is inherent in multiplicity which is found everywhere in nature. Think about social animals like dogs or baboons where each individual recognizes all the other different individuals and responds uniquely to each.
That doesn't mean that our math is t useful to us, just that there's nothing platonic about it. It's a device like any other we invent.
I think the problem with mathematical operations being 'social constructions' is that through them, many genuinely novel discoveries have been made. I mean, mathematical physics is not a parlour game, it does have obvious material consequences and even philosophical implications, which in no way were foreseen by those who founded the discipline. In fact the history of modern physics seems to comprise the discovery of ever stranger things, ideas which are literally beyond the ability of the human imagination to picture, but at least some of them give rise to predictions which can subsequently be validated. For that matter, recall that many of the consequences of Einstein's theories couldn't be tested at the time, because of shortcomings in the equipment; but over the ensuing century, as the apparatus became more sophisticated, a lot of the predictions were born out. How many times have we seen the headline 'Einstein proved right, again?' I'm not sure, but a lot more than the contrary.
So I really don't buy this 'deflationary' account of mathematical ability, nor do I think it is something that can be profitably analysed through the lense of evolutionary biology or cultural history.
The fact of the matter is that experienced reality never repeats itself exactly, not our perceptions moment to moment or our conceptually accessible world. So we are already used to the idea, from our own experience of it, that the future is going to evade our attempts to precisely duplicate our present or past. Rather than making future reality, however you want to characterize
it, nonexistent, it does the opposite. EX-istence moment to moment implies a certain aspect of non-predictability, of exceeding the past in some qualitative way. But that isnt normally a problem for us. For instance, our perceptual system is designed to optimize for regularities, patterns, consistencies in the flux of incoming sensation. So we don't normally notice the fact that our perceptual world is not self-identical moment to moment. It apppears that way to us because our perceptions abstract the regularities.
That is what the physical world is, a reality of constant flux, out of which we are able to extract and construct regularities.
If we try to turn these regularities into determinisms, we may preserve a prectability at the cost of a meaningful understanding of a constantly developing world.
I don't know if you're not confusing and/or conflating "number" with "multiple things". "Number" is a mathematical construct existing within an axiomatic system. "Multiple things" are objects or groups of objects. Those are ontologically two different "kinds" of things. The former is a mental construct that is applied to the latter. The number "2", for example, is not actually in or between two objects. If you think it is, could you specify where it would be?
I really do wonder about math. Tegmark has said that all physical properties are mathematical. Leaving aside consciousness and how we experience the world, it is a very deep question as to what isn't mathematical about the fundamental stuff that makes up everything else, like electrons and quantum fields. The fact that they exist? That they have spatial & temporal extension of some sort?
You’re in Schrodinger’s Cat territory, which is the graveyard of many a thread. However, I can produce one of my stock quotes on this exact point, from someone with unusual authority in this particular question, namely Werner Heisenberg, who said:
[quote=Heisenberg, The Debate between Plato and Democritus]...the inherent difficulties of the materialist theory of the atom, which had become apparent even in the ancient discussions about smallest particles, have also appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the present (i.e. 20th) century.
This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here, the development of quantum theory some forty years ago has created a complete change in the situation. The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.
During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?
I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics. [/quote]
There was also an article I mentioned earlier in this thread, which talks about the nature of the existence of sub-atomic ‘particles’ in terms of the Aristotelian idea of ‘potentia’, and which also mentions Heisenberg, namely, Quantum Mysteries Dissolve if Possibilities are Realities.
Because people think a reality tv show host would make for a good president?
But really, where the white coats saying the ultimate truth was only atoms in the void before the bubble chambers? You still have to deal with all those composite objects and events.
The symptom not the cause. In that I would agree with Landru.
Quoting Marchesk
—?Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities
Heisenberg has holed that idea beneath the waterline, but most people seem to believe that it's still true. It's just that hardly anyone has caught up yet.
Even if Laplace had been right, wouldn't Wolfram have dragged the idea underwater? What good is a single equation unless you can compute the result? And when it comes to the universe, you have to run the entire thing to see what happens.
Well, we know that now.
But I still reckon that the idea of determinism and of life being the 'accidental collocation of atoms' is the go-to philosophy of the proverbial man-in-the-street.
I remember years ago, on breakfast radio, the presenter, who is a math and science geek of note, was interviewing Lawrence Krauss about, you know, life, the universe and everything. The conversation turned to dark matter/energy. 'It's a fact that science now thinks that only 4% of the total mass and energy are known to us, right?' 'Yeah, that's what seems to be the case.' 'So, that missing mass could be all around us, and we'd never know it was there?' 'Yeah, could be'.
The conversation moved on. :-O
I agree with this. So let's begin with this assumption, this premise, as an approach toward looking at the physical world. Notice first, that this description does not describe the physical world, it describes our experience, memory, presence, and anticipation.
Quoting Joshs
In relation to the physical world then, you had suggested that each moment of the present could not be predicted in an absolute sense. This would indicate that there is no linear continuity of physical existence between past and future. The present provides a discontinuity to physical existence. My point was that if what we understand as "physical existence" is provided by our experience of past events, and there is no necessary continuity between past events, and future events, then we cannot validly extend "physical existence" into the future.
So it is not my claim that the future is not part of reality, or that the future is "nonexistent" in any absolute sense. What is my claim is that if the future is part of reality, and existent, then we must allow that the non-physical is part of reality and existent. And I see no reason to exclude the future from reality. So rather than excluding the future as unreal, and non-existent, we allow, from our experience of anticipation, that the future is very real, and existent, just like we allow from our experience of memory, that the past is very real. But this necessitates that the non-physical is also very real.
Quoting Joshs
The "constant flux" refers to our presence. Presence consists of the reality of a determined, physical past, and the reality of an undetermined, non-physical future. Since the past is real, according to memory, and the future is real according to anticipation, the question we must ask is whether the present is real. Is our experience of presence anything more than just anticipation and memory? If there is a real difference between past and future, as I have described with "physical" and "non-physical", then necessarily the present, as the division between these two, is real. Then, the constant flux which we experience at the present may also be said to be real. But if there is no such difference between past and future, if the past and future are equally "physical" for example, then the present itself is nothing real, and the constant flux, which is a feature of our presence is also not real.
In ordinary parlance to say that there are. for example, multiple sheep is exactly the same as to say there are a number of sheep. I'm not claiming that an elaborated concept of number is inherent in nature (although if we are part of nature and such a concept is in us then in that restricted sense it is inherent) but that multiplicity (the fact that there are numbers of things) in nature which is inherent is the prior and necessary condition for any elaborated concepts of number.
It can make a difference to us only in terms of our feelings. If we attempt to think those things and end up only with a feeling of mystery; that feeling itself can still make an enormous difference.If you think people are driven only by what can be apprehended rationally, then I would say you have a narrow, inadequate view of the human condition.
See this:
Quoting Janus
This doesn't follow, because the future, when it becomes present will be physical in just the same sense as the present is and the past was. It is better to say that the future is non-actual; it exists only as potential, and if nature is not deterministic; what it will be is not yet determined.
No, that's clearly contradictory. The future is what is always ahead of us, just like the past is what is always behind us. To say that the future becomes present is contradictory therefore. What is the case is that events anticipated may become present, but the future does not become present. Likewise, we say that past events were present, and events occurring now will be past, but it would be contradictory to say that the past was present.
To avoid this type of confusion, I tried to be clear in my post, to distinguish between time as we experience it, and the physical world. What I was trying to do is to establish a relationship between these two, time and the physical world, not to conflate these two, as you are doing.
Quoting Janus
So, with respect to this statement. We cannot say that the future is non-actual, because the future is just as real as the past. It is only by referring to physical existence, that we can make statements like you have here. So physical existence in the past is actual, and physical existence in the future is potential. But when we refer to time itself, both past and future are equally real. The difference between future and past which we can describe in terms of actual physical existence, and potential physical existence, is a substantial difference according to this description. Because of this substantial difference, the present is necessarily something real, as the separator, the boundary. As Joshs stated, we observe the present as constant flux. This flux is described as activity, so here we have another sense of "actual existence", activity, which is not the same as the "actual physical existence" which I have just described as proper to the past.
THis does t really have much bearing on the naturalistic formulations of current philosophers of mind, most of whom are neo-Kantians anyway.
These thinkers, while acknowledging that physics is not a direct contact with language-free objects, see our scientific concepts in terms of a correspondence or mirroring of something out there we can't have direct contact with as objects.
The interesting debate is between these neo-Kantians and philosophers( and psychologists) who dont see out concepts as mirrors of an external nature but transformative interactions with an evolving world.
They dont see mathematics and science as offering us a privileged language of description of the world in relation to philosophy or other disciplines. Instead these are special types of pragmatic discourses that are used for practical engagement with the world. Their potential as evolutionary tools, as achieving progress in understanding, is not in their use of math but in their inventing of new dimensional frameworks within which to order and predict the world. In this endeavor they are no more capable than philosophy. In fact, it has been philosophy that has taken the lead historically in anticipating new sciences(Descartes, Leibniz and Newton), Hegel and Darwin, Nietzsche and Freud,
Husserl and cognitive science).
It's not at all contradictory to say that is what now future will become present, just as what is now present will become past.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The past is determined whereas the future is not. The past is non-actual in a different way than the future is. Actual can mean present and in this sense past is non-actual. But actual can also mean something like capable of acting, and in that sense the activity, or actuality, of the past is determinable in the present. We can also say the future is capable of acting, but its activity is not determinable, because in itself it is only a possibility, yet to be determined. The future acts only on beings who are capable of anticipating it; whether consciously or unconsciously.
What do you mean; an anti-realist in what sense? I don't believe numbers are 'out there' floating about in some 'realm' if that is what you mean. But I do believe natural complexes are real, and that they instantiate number (multiplicity and difference).
Sorry this reply took so long, but it’s a long reply.
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Yes. Experience first. It seems to me that it comes down to our experience (but that's the bias of an experiencing-being). Each of us is the center, the primary and essential component, of our world, our life-experience possibility-story and, secondarily, the possibility-world that is its setting.
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I guess the main requirement of our experience is that it not be self-contradictory*, because a proposition can’t be true and false. For each of us, our own system of consistent inter-referring abstract if-then facts is subject to that fundamental requirement.
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*But it isn’t obvious to me why that is. If there are infinitely many (consistent) possibility-stories, aren’t there also infinitely-many (inconsistent)impossibility-stories too? It seems to suggest that maybe logic is metaphysically-fundamental after-all.
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We and our experience are what give meaning and relevance to the logical facts. …and that experience-story is more fundamental, as I mentioned above. …for us anyway, because, as animals, purposely-responsive devices, response to our environment is what we are.
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Nisargadatta said that we don’t create the word, but we make it relevant. But, when “relevant” means relevant to us, and we purposefully-responsive devices are billed as the bestowers of relevance and real-ness, doesn’t that sound circular, and give un-due self-importance to us purposely-responsive devices? That’s what I call an “animal-chauvinistic”view.
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And then there’s the fact that the abstract facts constituting our life-experience possibility-story aren’t really different from all the other ones. (…just as our bodies’ atoms aren’t different from those of our physical environment. We, our bodies, are part of the physical world, and likewise, in the same way, our life-experience possibility stories are part of the logical world.)
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…and the fact that our life-experience story seems to have to be logically-consistent, not self-contradicting—suggesting that abstract logic governs, has authority over, personal experience.
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And there couldn’t have not been abstract logical facts, because an abstract if-then fact, or a system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts, doesn’t need any outside justification, context, continuum, medium, or reality or existence in an outside context. It need only be self-consistent, within its own context.
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So there couldn’t not be abstract facts, because each of those facts, and each system of inter-referring abstract facts, is independent of outside context, and needn’t be real or existent in any context other than its own. …and doesn’t need a medium or continuum in which to exist or be. …doesn’t need some sort of global permission that could be negated by a global fact that there are no facts.
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Someone pointed out that if there were no facts, then the fact that there are no facts would be a fact.
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But someone else pointed out that there could obtain a fact that there are no facts other than that one fact that there are no other facts.
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…but such a fact would be a special brute-fact, in need of explanation, but not having it (how could it, if there are no other facts?).
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Besides, for the reasons that I mentioned above, an abstract fact, or a system of inter-referring abstract facts, is completely isolated and independent of anything outside it, and doesn’t need a global permission that could be denied by a global fact like the one suggested in the 2 paragraphs before this one.
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Those are reasons why I say that absolute Anti-Realism is out of the question.
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For all these reasons, I feel that the Anti-Realist metaphysics that I propose can’t really be complete, even metaphysically. But I propose it anyway, because it’s still locally valid, as a subset of what metaphysically is.
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…because, as I was saying before, a system of inter-referring abstract if-thens about hypotheticals that is my life-experience possibility-story is just as valid as any other abstract facts. And, because, from the special point of view of purposefully-responsive devices, our own experience is central, then our experience possibility-story is primary. …locally from out point of view, as purposefully-responsive devices.
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So Anti-Realism makes sense locally, in the world of purposefully-responsive devices, but can’t be taken to obtain generally and objectively.
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One other thing that I’ve got to say: One instance where I disagree with what Tegmark has said, is where he said that his metaphysics explains reality. No, a metaphysics can only explain metaphysical reality (where “metaphysical” means “describable and discussable”).
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I don’t think any metaphysics can describe or explain Reality, and I don’t think Reality can be discussed, described, or explained.
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Isn’t that what philosophy is? Metaphysics is my main philosophical interest, though I don’t think it or its subject is everything.
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Michael Ossipoff
So, you don't believe that our language practices emerged and evolved in a living world context at all then? Language is just "pouring from the empty into the void"?
Your logic relies on a notion of object as already constituted. I don't mean here physical or material object. I mean a conceptual object that persists in itself , that is self-identical in its meaning and sense, and then is pared with other such concepts. That's a traditional notion of logic that goes back to Aristotle. But there are recent accounts of logic that rid it of its too-full hidden suppositions.
The basic idea is that what we experience moment to moment is not objects in the world, and it's not yet objects of thought. It's qualitative variations of meaning. The psychologist George Kelly defines our perceiving of the world in terms of constructs. A construct is simply a way in which two things(meanings) are alike and differ from a third. To be awake and experiencing the world is to be always construing. And to be construing is always to be construing something new, and slightly different from what came before. Piaget had a similar notion. He said that to experience something is to assimilate it into one's system of understanding. But at the same time it is to accommodate ones system of understanding to the unique aspects of what it is that one is assimilating. So, assimilation always implies accommodation.
These are holistic accounts of experience. They also see the role and person as always in motion, and knowledge as anticipatory. They posit a knowledge system that encounters and construes the world always as a whole. They also assume that one can never encounter an isolatable element of ones psyche or world that isnt also a change in the system as a whole.
Your notion of abstract if-then logic is a derived concept that is built out of a more primary activity of a recursive self-organizing system that is at every moment accommodating and transforming itself as it assimilates ever more new experience. Your logic doesn't realize that its static reifications are masking as much more
mobile, dynamic and self-transformative process underlying it.
Brief preliminary partial reply:
Quoting Joshs
Yes, a purely subjective experiential metaphysics would be neater, and, and as you said, i wanted that, and propose it as a our local metaphysical subset. But, as a whole metaphysics, it seems to run into problems--as I was discussing--and I couldn't justify it.
Will reply again after I study your post and its references.
Michael Ossipoff
But then how do you explain the fact that our experience seemingly must always be logically self-consistent, never self-contradictory? Doesn't that suggest that logic is really in charge? ...that underlying logical rules govern our experience?
Michael Ossipoff
So I think the universe is an infinite development that we are participants in via our inquiries into its ( and our) nature. And I think that our successive attempts to understand it result in ways of engagement(for knowledge is an activity)that allow us to see the world in terms of regulaties and consistencies that are more and more integral and at the same time more differentiated. It's a very different notion than Newton's static clockwork universe composed of arbitrarily assigned parts in relationship.
It's true that
To me it's not a question of logical consistency in the formal sense, but of self-consistency, of the relative inferential compatibility of new experience with our system of understanding.
A new event that appears inconsistent with our way of making sense of things will be handled in a number of ways. We can find a way to modify our previous understanding such as to make the challenging event consistent with our values. Or we can try and force the abberant meaning to comply with what we think it should mean. This usually doesn't end well. Or we can be left in a situation of crisis.
When we encounter experience that is wholy outside our ability to make sense of it, to accomdate our system of understanding to make room for it, we simply are unable to assimilate it. Our negative emotions respresent these sorts of transitional phases in our experience, when our world threatens to become chaotic and incoherent. Some psychologies argue that we do incorporate conflicting ideas and then cope with this by hiding from ourselves the internal conflict(cognitive dissonance, Freudian repression).
By this way of thinking our past is actually in front of us in a way not unlike the present. Each past that we recollect is in a sense a fresh past, and points ahead of us. Recall is always for some future-oriented purpose of ours, so it is anticipatory.
If you buy into this , I think the lesson it teaches is that notions like physical and real can still be seen as providing constraints on the free play of our conceptualizations( there is SOMETHING that we are trying to adapt our ideas to, and reference to this something can tell us if we are succeeding or failing). But
if memory itself isn't just a veridical
internal carrying of external objects via symbolization, but an inseparable component of a relational complex of the experience of the present, an experience that is at every moment disturbing our sense of past as well as present, then we may want to reimagine physical as more radically relational than traditionally assumed.
Obviously we can only represent the world as it is presented to our senses. Bur if we believe language has emerged and evolved in the context of a living world then it would seem to be reasonable to expect that languages (including mathematics) as natural products, should reflect the structures and characteristics of that living world.
If not then philosophy and discussion and any intellectual activity that purports to be of more than a merely practical nature would seem to be empty and pointless.
(Y) I think similar ideas are found in Varela and Maturana’s work on embodied cognition. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense to me.
This is obviously a very complex issue, but one response is to equate numbers with brain processes is a form of category mistake. Obviously, one needs a brain - and presumably a hominid brain! - to recognise numbers and perform arithmetical operations. But the same operations can be outsourced to a variety of different devices, other than brains. And in studying brains themselves, there are major obstacles in understanding the relationship of neural events and such elements of rational thought as number, logic, language, syntax, and so on.
The Western rationalist tradition would say something like, numbers exist independently of any particular mind, but they are only perceptible by an intelligence capable of counting. In that way they're dependent on mind in one sense - in the sense of only being perceptible by a mind - but independent of it, in the sense of being the same for anyone who can count.
So saying that 'numbers are dependent on the brain' (which is actually what you have said, not 'mind') doesn't really say anything. It just safely puts the whole issue into the category of 'things we'll figure out when we understand better how the brain works'.
Sure. I should have asked instead "are you an anti-realist with regards to abstract/conceptual objects, like mathematical abstract objects like "numbers...'out there' floating about in some 'realm'".
Just to clarify, by "numbers" I take it you mean abstract concepts like "2", equations, and the like?
Quoting Wayfarer
The materials of "different devices" would not be brains though. That's an important ontological distinction. A calculator or operating system might "deal with" numbers, but in a different way than brains do.
Quoting Wayfarer
We know some of the elements, locations and processes involved with regards to brains processing "number, logic, language, syntax", etc. We don't need to know more than that, in my opinion, in order to realise that brains are different than non-brains processing stuff like numbers, logic, etc.
Quoting Wayfarer
The mind is identical with the brain, in my view.
Quoting Wayfarer
As I said, there's no need to or no good reason to withold the view that the brain processes stuff like numbers.
Another way I like to think about it is that arithmetic is a system of language (in the broadest sense) in which abstracts like "number" play a part, according to particular axioms. Any abstract number wouldn't make sense without at least some rough axiomatic system. Axiomatic systems are not extra-mental.
By number, I mean real numbers.
Quoting numberjohnny5
I guessed.
I think it’s a mistake to believe that you can explain numbers and the like. Mathematics is one of the main ways in which explanations can be found for all manner of things - almost anything that can be quantified, really. But explaining number is a notoriously difficult thing to do.
What I don’t think your account allows for, is the ability of mathematical reasoning to predict otherwise unknowable things. I mean, you can’t do that just using language. It’s the fact that mathematical concepts and operations seem to have an uncanny correspondence with nature that gives mathematics what Eugene Wigner called it’s ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ and predictive ability. There are quite a few examples of discoveries falling out of mathematical physics that were predicted just by the maths - Dirac’s discovery of anti-matter is a classic example, not to mention the many predictions that came out of relativity.
Well "explanation" is subjective, and individuals have different criteria as to what counts as an explanation. I think that's where some of the dissatisfaction, disagreement, or non-conclusivity comes from.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm an anti-realist with regards to mathematical (abstract) objects, but I tend to take an instrumentalist approach to mathematics. So mathematical concepts or theories can be useful in making predictions about phenomena, but that doesn't necessarily mean I make ontological commitments to everything those theories posit.
I agree with this way of describing memory, it is not veridical. But I think we assume that there is something "real" which the memory refers to. And this is how I would define "real", as what we assume as the veridical, the truth, what some call objective reality. In the case of the past, it is what we assume to have occurred regardless of whether or not it was observed, interpreted, or remembered. At the same time though, we must grant some reality to what is referred to in anticipation. I do not think that just because there is an assumed veridical necessity in "what actually happened", and a lack of such necessity in "what will happen", that things of the past can be said to be more real than things of the future. In relation to myself, who is a being at the present, things of the past, and things of the future, appear to be equally unreal; so if I grant to the past, in the form of an assumption, some sort of reality, I have no reason not to assume some sort of reality for the future as well. Therefore I assume that past and future things are equally "real".
Quoting Joshs
The meaning of "physical" is much more difficult, because it is as you say, relational. Exactly what is related to what varies greatly depending on usage, and may be quite difficult to understand, especially when the description is mathematical. So let me start with the most simple primitive set of relations, derived from the basic meaning of "physical", which is "of the body". I believe "the body" is a concept derived from relating past points of memory. Past memories indicate that there is something which remains the same, consistent, as time passes. I look around me when I get up in the morning and things are pretty much the same as they were yesterday morning. This consistency of things, which we apprehend by relating past points, is what Aristotle explained in his Physics with the concept of matter.
The existence of matter accounts for things remaining the same as time passes, and it is fundamental to the existence of the body, because the body provides that fundamental unchanging aspect of reality, which we infer is real, from relating the points of past memory. The unchangingness of the body, which is validated by the concept of matter, is taken for granted in Newton's first law of motion. It becomes "inertia". Through this concept, the related points of the past, held by memory and assumed to be supported by the real, are projected into the future, such that the the body is successfully predicted to maintain its course of existence through anticipated points of the future. What Newton states, is that this projection will occur necessarily, unless there is a "force" which interferes.
So we now have a second type of relation, the relation between the body and the force. Notice how the force is what interferes with the temporal consistency assigned to matter. Necessity and normalcy are assigned to the temporal consistency, and this is only broken by the force. The key point in understanding the force, I believe, is that it will only occur at the present. The force acts to break the continuity between the mapped points of the past, and the future projected points. This can only occur at the present. Therefore "the force" is inherently contrary to "the body", and in many ways it would be best to understand "the force" as non-physical.
However, in the study of physics, bodies are described as interacting. They interfere with each other's continued existence in time (inertia) and this must be accounted for. So the temporal existence of a body, its inertia, (its mapped past points), may be converted to force, in order to model its interference with the temporal existence of other bodies. But as described above, there is an inherent incompatibility between the body and the force, so the expressions are in some way incommensurable. The physical "body" is a representation of the continuity derived from the past points of time, the non-physical "force" is the representation of a change assigned to the present moment. That is why there is a significant difference between inertia and momentum, which philosophers need to respect. The difference is acceleration, which is essential to force, but incompatible with inertia.
I sometimes suggest that it would be impossible to prove that a world or a life-experience story is inconsistent, because there could always be some un-discovered physics that will consistently explain something that presently seems inconsistent.
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…as was the case with the black-body wavelength-energy curve, the Michaelson-Morely experiment result, the planet Mercury’s anomalous rotation of apsides, etc.
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And now there’s the apparent acceleration of the recession-speed of the more distant galaxies. Past experience suggests that there’s a system of physics that will make it consistent with currently-known physical facts.
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But say your house is locked and sealed, and you look away from the tv for just a second, and when you look back, there’s a Bengal tiger in the room in front of you. It just appeared in the second during which you looked away. Suppose things like that are happening all the time.
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Arthur Clarke said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Sure, but what if blatant inconsistencies like that were happening all the time, in everyday life? …and not just at the frontiers of physics, because there isn’t any evident consistent physics in the first place.
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You’d have no reason to believe that a particular apparent inconsistency will later be shown consistent with previously-known things. The most reasonable presumption would be that the world, or your life-experience , is inconsistent. Of course you could always explain it by hallucination or amnesia, I guess…if you already had some reason to believe that the world is consistent in the first place.
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An organism couldn’t survive in an inconsistent world? Of course it can, in a cartoon for example. The survival of an observer might seem inconsistent with an inconsistent world, but there’d be no reason to expect that consistency either.
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But the world seems consistent. The relatively few seeming inconsistencies have shown a tendency to be explained by new physics.
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So why should the world/experience be so self-consistent?
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That’s why I said that it seems as if logic is in charge of experience.
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I’m going to read more of or about what was said by the authors that you named in your previous post. Maybe I’ll be able to understand the kind of metaphysics that they’re proposing. But it sounds complicated, and a metaphysics that’s more complicated, with unnecessarily-many complicated rules, is harder to justify.
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You seemed to be agreeing with that position that says that logic is secondary to minds.
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But if there’s human-like life on another planet, in this or any universe, then mathematics is the same for them as for us (…though of course they might pursue some different areas of mathematics—in addition to some same ones.).
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Logic too. Those things aren’t subject to the whims of minds.
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…and if that human-like life is reasonably nearby in this universe, then they’ll find the same laws of physics too.
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Anyway, even aside from that, I don’t understand how anyone can say that logic is only the result of minds.
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“If all Slithytoves are brillig, and all Jabberwockeys are Slithytoves, then all Jabberwockies are brillig.”
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Of course that inevitable if-then fact is true even if neither of its premises is true, and even if there are no Jabberwockeys or Slithytoves.
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It can be shown that if the additive associative axiom of the real numbers (…and of the rationals and the integers) is true, then 2+2=4.
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(…with a reasonable obvious definition of 1, 2, 3 & 4 in terms of the multiplicative identity and addition.)
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That would be true even if there were no sentient beings. Even then it could be said (if there were anyone to say it) that if the additive associative axiom is true, and if there were someone to count, and some objects to count, and, if he put 2 objects next to 2 other objects, then there would be 4 objects together there.
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It’s an inevitable if-then fact.
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It’s evident that this universe’s mathematical physical laws have been operating for billions of years (unchanged, or nearly so, in recent billions of years, in our part of this universe), long before there were any minds. Mathematics is a logical subject. Logic evidently has been valid all that time too.
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Abstract if-then facts don’t, for their validity, need anything external to them. Likewise a system of inter-referring abstract if-then facts.
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As I said, among the infinity-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals, there inevitably is one that matches the events and relations of this “physical” universes. There’s no reason to believe that this universe is other than that.
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Materialism, or any other relatively complicated or unexplained metaphysical theory, could of course also obtain, alongside, and duplicating the events and relations of, that logical system, but it would be an unverifiable and unfalsifiable proposition—and , at least in the case of Materialism, a brute-fact.
Our experience is a phenomenon and an inevitable possibility-story within that infinite set of complex logical systems.
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Anyway, I’ll look up those authors you referred to, and their metaphysicses.
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Michael Ossipoff
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Personally I don't cling to the idea that number is 'Platonic' or even that it exists independent of mind, I'd agree with you in saying that it is a device of our own invention, and therefore there is nothing overly surprising about it's 'correspondence' to observed truth.
I think it is quite amazing we have developed such an intricate system for modelled understanding and utilised it in the way we have.
Proportion (as opposed to number) describes "a part or share in comparison to a whole", and is the fundamental basis for mathematical relationships.
It doesn't have to be Platonic or absolute, and it's not important that it wouldn't conceptually exist without our minds to process it, because the same can be said of any conceptual thought or even the standard conception of reality we refer to as delineating perceived Truth.
Proportion is a measurable relationship, and number is a means of conceptualising proportion.
Both may be conceptions of the human mind, and therefore contingent upon the mind rather than necessary without it, but dismissing the marvels of human conceptual thought on the grounds that it is merely an insignificant byproduct of our experience is a perspective that heavily overlooks the intrinsic value of conceptual thought as an essential, functional and referable tool that is one of our greatest assets.
That's sure a get-out-of-jail-free card, for anything whatever. 'Works for me!'
First off, it's a fact that "explanations" are subjective. There are no objective criteria for what counts as a correct/incorrect or right/wrong "explanation".
Secondly, it's not simply a dismissive and self-reinforcing belief with regards to explanations serving my (or anyone's) needs, as you seem to believe. For example, it's not as if I haven't been challenged on my views; it's not as if I haven't developed my views that support my explanations. For me, it comes down to whether the reasoning for my views is "good" (which is also subjective). It's not as if you would be excluded/exempt from this fact; in other words, it's not as if you don't think "works for me!" with regards to your "good" reasons and explanations.
I'm sorry, but there are objective criteria regarding what makes a good explanation, and what makes one explanation better than the other. In fact, we have a rather well-developed method for deciding between explanations. It's called science.
Here's the objective criterion as to whether an explanation is good/bad: An explanation is good/bad if it is hard/easy to vary while still accounting for what it purports to account for.
I agree that criteria can exist objectively in the sense of text or sounds. But the source of the criteria comes from minds. And again, what makes something "good" or "bad" re evaluative claims is subjective. Adhering to "objective criteria" (in the sense that I'm using) doesn't necessarily correlate with the criteria getting ontological facts right. That's why I tend to use an instrumentalist approach, at least with respect to unobservables and strictly mathematical theories.
Sore, you decree this from above, with no explanation. Why not, explanations are totally subjective.
Meanwhile in reality, explanations of a certain broad category may be tested and compared objectively, by experiment. The other class of explanations may be criticised and compared using objective criteria like the one I gave earlier.
To some degree it can be a harmless hippy sort of thing, but on the other hand it's also led to a lot of death and suffering in the past (e.g. religious wars, some types of political struggle, etc.).
I don't think it matters provided we don't prescribe for other people our own feelings and the ideas associated with them. To do that is fundamentalism, and it could take the form of scientism or religious bigotry.
Do you really think Buddhist monks or Christian renunciates, Christiam or Muslim moderates are all either maleficent influences or merely "harmless hippies"? If so that would seem somewhat condescending. You may prefer to be motivated only by what is "rationally verifiable" but do you believe you are justified in prescribing that attitude to others.
That sounds fair enough then. :)
I looked up the metaphysicses of George Kelly, and of Piaget, but I couldn't find the part where they state what their metaphysicses take as fundamental or primary.
All I could find there were articles about psychology, and educational and theraputic technique.
If you meant that experience is primary, I've agreed that it is, in a meaningful sense, because it's fundamental to our life-experience possibility-stories. Above all, everything is true as we experience it, and our experience is the center sand subject of that possibility-story.
And, as you suggested, what our life-experience story requires is merely that it be self-consistent. But that's logic. The requirement that a proposition not be true and false.. Experience has a logical requirement, and logic has authority over experience.
As we experience a closer study of our physical world, what we experience is physical quantity values and their relations defined by physical laws, in abstract if-then facts--facts that must remain self-consistent and mutually consistent.
I said that the abstract fact "If the additive associative axiom is true, then 2+2=4", and said that that's so even when referring to a world with no conscious inhabitants...if there were people to count things, and things to count. ....or, in that uninhabited world, if wind or erosion caused two rocks to roll down a hill and come to rest next to two other rocks.
Likewise, from our perspective in this world, we can say that the Slithytove & Jabberwockey syllogism is an inevitable abstract fact, in any world, inhabited or not. ...because it doesn't need there to really be any Slithytoves or Jaberwockeys.
...or without a world, because of course it doesn't even need that, for that abstract fact's truth. I emphasized the independence of abstract if-then facts, and systems of them, from any outside context, medium, or permission..
Michael Ossipoff
Where does 'being wrong about something' fit into that?
Good point. I think it's fair to look toward the realm of values here. What it is to think and feel is already whatever it is to think and feel. The abstract concepts we paste on experience (concepts like experience) do matter to us. But does anyone else feel a distance from the usual metaphysical game of slapping on mere categories? This goes in box A. That goes in box B. This returns to your mention of afterlife. What we want is more life, better life. Maybe we can deny death with the right set of categories. Maybe we'll settle for a sense of righteousness and innocence while we're still here. Maybe we will even settle for the mere hope that eventually humans will live correctly, as we see fit.
I refer you to "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" by Karl Popper. In that book you will discover why science is precisely a method, and what that method is.
For a concise exposition of the state-of-the-art in our understanding of the scientific method, try this brilliant paper:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.02048.pdf
I mean I think this first answer, this prephilosophical answer, is the right answer.
Why?
Well, what do we mean by “trees, houses….the planets, etc.”?
I think we mean dividedness. Reality divided up into a number of discrete things. To say that you believe that Reality is physical is to say that you believe Reality is divided up into many discrete things.
To say that you believe that Reality is not physical is to say that you believe Reality is not divided up into many discrete things. (Experience for example (subjective experience) is not physical because it is not divided up into discrete things.)
That list, “trees, houses, etc.” is a list of material objects, or bodies, or substances. Physics doesn’t believe in the reality of these things anymore. It believes that Reality, physical reality, is waves and forces and energy in timespace (or something like that).
So believers in the reality of the Physical say that the physical reality they believe in is not discrete substances—but it is still physical.
I disagree. I think physics, howsoever sophisticated it is, still involves physicists pointing to different things, this and that, that is to say to at least two things. They believe (perhaps at bottom) that you can talk about different regions of Reality: that out there, this down here; that to the left, this to the right, etc.. (In so far as physics becomes fuzzier, equivocates about its independence from the mental, says that Time is subjective, that something can be in two places at once, etc., equivocates about dividedness, says that there is also a countervailing physical reality of oneness (such that all the fields and waves of the physical universe are felt, if to an infinitesimally small degree—everywhere)—then it is no longer the Physical.)
Left and Right, Up and Down, In Front and Behind: that’s all you need for dividedness. You just need two things, of which you can say, “This is different from (non-identical to) that”. Doesn’t even matter that they can talk about infinitesimally graded continua (of forces or fields or something), they still have to say “from here to there”. —And there you have it again, two discrete things, two timespace points.
Doesn’t matter how clever they get, how they equivocate, how their answers are lost in impenetrable hieroglyphics or paradox—you will always find this, this division into at least two, right at the base of things.
That’s because, in a Kantian sort of way, it is the form of their supposition. And that supposition is this, at base: there is a scientist and there is a thing he is looking at. That is to say—before any sort of thought about minds or representation or looking or knowing—there are two things, this (whether a mind or an eye or whether just a lump of some kind) — and that.
I am not saying that the basis of dividedness is Subject and Object. I am saying that the basis of dividedness is that there is a thing in a certain place, not a mind, but a brain (or a particular location, if you like, such as say, Paris, or London) and another thing in another place. (That after all is the most significant corollary of the physicalist principle: thoughts happen in places, they are in brains, or they are the whirrings and grindings of brains.)
Substances in space, atoms and the void—that was Materialism. But it wasn’t that people saw material substances (which, subsequently, sensitive instruments discovered weren’t there) and failed to see the forces, waves and fields between those material substances (which, subsequently, sensitive instruments discovered were there): it was all the time merely a representation of a concept of dividedness. You think there are many things. So you make a picture of coloured-in bits and non-coloured in bits.
Why does the physicist think there are two things, Earth, if you like, and a galaxy he is looking at? —Because the ground of everything he is doing is—say—his hope of getting a Nobel prize. That hope he has of getting the Nobel prize, contrasted with his current Reality, of not having the Nobel prize—is the form of Reality that is his heart and blood. And he sees it in every thing he looks at.
It needn’t be the Nobel prize; any hope will do—or any dread. But he always has one or the other. We all do. Hope or Desire contrasted with Dread or Hatred. That is the basis of Dividedness. That is the basis of the Physical: Will.
We are all hoping and dreading all the time, to a greater or lesser degree. That is why we are all incorrigibly, prephilosophically, Physicalists. That is why the casual language of the everyday is physicalist.
I think that this is fundamentally untrue. What is expressed by physicists is the reality of quantum mechanics. And a quantum is inherently a discrete, individual unit. So physical reality as represented by quantum mechanics, is still discrete individual things.
Wave functions and field theories are mathematical (therefore non-physical) principles which are applied toward understanding this physical reality of quantum existence. The quanta of physical reality are then expressed as particles. It is metaphysical speculation, and not physics itself, which assigns reality to the non-physical fields and wave functions, rather than the quanta of physical existence, the particles. What is the case is that the exact nature of the quantum, or particle of existence is not understood, so speculators turn to the mathematical theories rather than the empirical observations, as a more accurate description of what is real.
If the immaterial, or non-physical things aren't accessible by the senses, then how is it that we even know about anything non-physical? Our knowledge itself is composed of sensory impressions. Anything we know is something we can see, touch, smell, hear or taste. Even words and numbers are colored shapes, or sounds. We then go about attributing abstract concepts to these visual and auditory symbols, which are also in the form of other visuals, sounds, etc. So it seems that if the non-physical is inaccessible by the senses, then it is similar to saying that the non-physical doesn't exist.
If you'd like an explanation just ask. Whether or not you'll accept that explanation is another matter.
Re "you decree this from above", I don't consider my views superior or anything like that. Maybe you think that because my claim seems to challenge or disagree with your views. "Explanations" just seem to be facts in my view though. I'm just stating what my ontological belief is with regards to explanations.
Quoting tom
How are you using "objective" there? I use it to refer to location: "objective" is everything that is not mental; "subjective" is everything that is mental. Explanations occur in minds; it's not something that non-minds do. Otherwise, you'd have to tell me where we would find explanations that occur in the world that are not mental. The same with "criteria": where in the world do criteria occur/originate from?
I do agree that we are, in general, excessively prone to rigid categorization; however I think different people settle for different things, and so the hope for some collective settling-for in the future seems somewhat dim.
Yes indeed. That hope is dim. I waste no time on it. For lack of a better word, I experience the quest for clarity on these matters as a private 'spiritual' project, as a sort of 'rational' religious practice. It just feels good to occasionally find others who can more or less relate to one's private project. It also just feels good to share the words one finds for the situation. I don't know exactly what I want from such sharing. I suspect that overhearing one's self in public discourse helps keep the words 'honest.'
Emotional intelligence comes to mind. For instance, I know some people whom I truly respect who haven't read the so-called great philosophers. To me these people understand better than various others who can parrot the famous words. It's in their eyes. It's in their comportment. They have lived and suffered and managed to stay beautiful, aware, curious. They aren't bricked in by some favored little vocabulary or by some fantasy of themselves as a super-scientist with the one true system. When I think back on my own progress, it's usually been an escape from a vain attachment to this our that one-size-fits-all idea. Far be it from me to prohibit the kinds of philosophy I find less important.I just want to do it the way that feels right to be. (Oh sinful subjectivity...)
"Combining this observation with the insight that science has no special method, we arrive at the result that the separation of science and non-science is not only artificial but also detrimental to the advancement of knowledge. If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not just a small selection of them. The assertion, however, that there is no knowledge outside science - extra scientiam nulla salus - is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale."
I relate to your general approach. You mention linguistic pragmatism elsewhere in your post. For that gets it right. Besides the subject-object dualism, there is also the tendency to think in terms of fixed categories. Sure, in some contexts we have a loose, functional mental-physical distinction. It gets the job done. We know well enough what is meant. But then as philosophers we are tempted to pluck out a rough distinction and do a sad kind of math with it.
'Define your terms,' someone said once. It sounds wise. But (or because) trying to do so opens up to us our fundamental ignorance, it only gets the job done by revealing its impossibility. We can't exhaustively and conclusively say what it is to say or for something to mean. It's that old game of looking up one word's definition in the dictionary and then looking up the words that the first word is defined in terms of, and so on. The system exists as a whole. One feels oneself into a language in a bodily way, in the context of words and actions, thoughts and feelings and 'sensations.' But all of this is already too abstract and misses the way the situation hangs together.
The subject-object distinction along with the mental-physical distinction is a tool we rely on. But I contend that we use such distinctions with a know-how that is largely invisible to us. We just can understand one another. We found ourselves this way.
I can relate to this; much of what passes for modern philosophy seems to consist of academic gherkin jerkin'. There is certainly an arrogance in the way some philosophers think their discipline is the great umbrella under which all others are protected from the rain of incoherence and irrelevance. On the other hand anthropologists provably think much the same. And psychologists, and physicists, and biologists...oh, wait...
Sometimes I think we cannot help doing theology. What seems to distinguish one person from another most of all is what they worship (and why they worship it; so maybe it's mostly all theology and psychology).
Yes, I like 'gherkin jerkin.' I had to look gherkin up, but I had a sense of what to expect. I think you nailed it in terms of the arrogance. If philosophers think they provide foundations, I think they don't. In some ways they make things worse, in that they pretend to provide foundations. In my view, we operate with a kind of basic know-how that we cannot make explicit. I'm not saying it's bad to try. I've tried myself, and that's how the darkness of this know-how became darkness visible. I agree that it's bigger than any discipline. It's just our human tendency to learn a few things and become smug.
Quoting Janus
This is one of my basic beliefs, actually. Even here I'm selling a negative theology. Yes, it's what we worship. It's the shape of our 'god' that varies. What I like in Hegel is the idea of this shape evolving. What I don't like in Hegel is the exaggeration of the importance of concept. Art and music say what concept can't say. Images of the heroic human, the ideal love object, etc. Sounds that somehow mirror the complexity of human feeling. As far as theology and psychology goes, I also relate to that. In some ways philosophers (especially the ones I like) are theologians of theology itself. Theology itself is god. The substance-seeking subject is the only god worth worshipping. All other gods are (at least as mere concepts) flat objects for the dynamic, passionate subject. I suggest that we more or less explicitly worship the virtuous human, projected or not into the sky or onto some eroticized abstraction. (Justice, truth, science, ...)
That's right, that's Heidegger's and the late Wittgenstein's point, or really context, of departure. I have been looking into a little known American philosopher named Buchler a bit lately, and I find his ideas very congenial with in line with what the way I have been thinking for some time: that knowing is not merely knowing that, but also knowing how and, further still, the wordless knowing of familiarity as well. He says that all our forms of activity involve judgement and he identifies three kinds of judgement: assertive judgement, active judgement and exhibitive judgement.
I can map these to knowing that, knowing how, and the knowing of familiarity; or even more clearly, judging that, judging how and the judging of familiarity. So when we do something that we know how to the doing of that involves that we continually make judgements (In an implicit or unconscious way) what to do. This kind of know-how can be explicated, though, if we want to. Exhibitive judgement involves the familiarity that cannot be made explicit like how to paint, or play music or make love (over and above the technical "know-how" dimensions of those activities).
[quote"Wayfarer;131704"]
"everything is true as we experience it, "— Michael Ossipoff
Where does 'being wrong about something' fit into that?[/quote]
I didn't mean that the way it probably sounded. I didn't mean that our interpretation, conclusions or explanation about what we experience are necessarily true. I merely meant that the raw data we experience is so, as (meaning "when") we experience it.
Like the sound of an engine, even if it's only a motorcycle, when we think it's an airplane.
Alright, that doesn't say a lot.
I was only agreeing with something said by the post I was replying to, about experience.
MUH, a Realism, emphasizes mathematics, but, because I suggest an experience-based possibility-story, then experience of whatever kind is to be emphasized--experienced facts that aren't necessarily mathematical (...but are, when the physical world is closely studied). But the requirement remains that your experience not be outright self-contradictory...meaning that logic still has authority over experience.
I think litewave was right when he said that realness or existence depends on non-contradiction. That might resolve the awkward problem about impossible, inconsistent worlds.
Michael Ossipoff
Ah yes, I love both those guys. Early Heidegger and late Wittgenstein. I've been experimenting with not referencing them, just to see what I could do in English and how the ideas sounded without being attached to great names. This is not some veiled criticism of your mentioning them, to be clear. I'm just taking this opportunity to share a thought. In passing (for context), I mention, for instance, that I no longer like the word Dasein being left untranslated. It becomes a technical term, an inside jargon --more metaphysics in the sense that the medium 'is' the message. Early Heidegger (as you may know) used terms like 'factic life' or 'life,' and Dasein can be translated as existence. Better to make it new in English, in my opinion. Phonemes matter. Direct access. Anything fancy and foreign betrays the quest for wakefulness, perhaps --at least in some sense.
Quoting Janus
Buchler sounds great. I've never heard of him, but this is my kind of theme. I like the idea of divided know-how into the kind that can and cannot be made explicit. I suppose the know-how of language is at the center of my contemplation lately. For me this can't be made explicit. We live on the surface of it, in a sense that I'm still finding words for. It's pretty much what I took from the OLP movement. Metaphysicians rip a few words out of context and strive for an explicit know-how, but in my view they rely on all the other words that still function in a sort concealment, as a necessary but dim background.
Everything in Heidegger, all the various distinctions he draws in language, draw from a fundamental dynamic of change, variation, unfolding, transformation and otherness that is not there in these other writers.
I confess that I may read all of these guys idiosyncratically.
It's been awhile since I've read Wittgenstein. I had what I'd call a sort of insight or click about ordinary language, and this intuitive sense has always been more important to me than the sources I associate with its inspiration. That's one of the reasons I've thought about not dropping the names of influences, because I don't want to drag along the implication of some argument from authority. I like the idea of just sharing ideas in my own English and defending them as words that ring true to my own direct experience.
I've read lots of Heidegger lately. His pre-B&T texts and Kisiel's impressive Genesis. That's a strong influence, but I have my own ax to grind. The medium-message theme is key for me. The how of our grasping is overlooked in our focus on the what that is grasped. But this receding 'how' of our grasping constrains the 'what' that appears. Along the same lines, our questions are always loaded in ways that we don't notice. One might say that the goal is to get behind the past --as much as possible. We can't get completely behind the past. The past makes our questioning possible. But we open up our future (as I see it) by getting behind the past, since the past constrains the question that opens the future. That sort of thing. I'm still looking for the best words.
That's true, but the thing they have in common is the idea of an implicit shared background. The later Wittgenstein employs the idea of "forms of life" which can be interpreted as being similar to the Husserlian notion of "Lebenswelt". Of course, Wittgenstein is not concerned with developing a phenomenology as Husserl and Heidegger, in their different ways, obviously primarily are.
Quoting ff0
Can you explain what you mean by "get behind the past"? Do you simply mean to think about or understand it or are you referring to something else?
Sure. It's my favorite theme lately. Given your post above, none of this will probably sound new to you. I'm largely inspired by Heidegger, though I like the idea of making it my own --emphasizing the ideas I like and finding new metaphors, etc.
The 'living' or 'primordial' past is the 'how' of the present. This 'how' is the method we take for granted, the pre-grasp or invisible background. The form of life. It hides in its familiarity. It's our manner of questioning that goes unquestioned as we question the 'what' of our focus.
To get behind the (living) past is to see 'around' all the crust of yesterday's living choices that we've inherited as blind necessities. The apparently necessary (the blindly inherited paradigm) becomes optional once we strip away its familiarity. The 'living' past is the water that the fish doesn't see. It is the medium that quietly controls what can and cannot appear as the message.
Normal discourse is 'message' focused. It uses the medium in an unconscious manner. Abnormal discourse 'attacks' or destroys this past. Just making it conscious is sufficient. A homier example:the living past is the glasses we don't realize we are wearing. But to get completely behind the past would be to pluck out our eyes, since we live in language and language is historical.
OK, I get it now: it is not merely to understand the past in the terms which the past itself has cemented into the present forms of discourse, but to attempt to get free of those cemented forms in order to gain fresh insights. Of course, as you acknowledged, we can never becomes wholly free, because to do so would be to become blind. I agree that it does take creative effort to produce something new rather than merely to continue repeating the same old patterns of thought. Every theme contains within itself the possibility of variation; and this is well exemplified in music.
I don't agree, though, that we live wholly in language if that is just taken to mean verbal or written speech. We live in languages. We live in visual language, musical language, mathematical language, and of course body language, as well as 'linguistic' language.
And 'linguistic' language itself has modes: propositional, practical and poetical (which includes the religious and theological). This last is often forgotten by those who aspire to "know' in the philosophical sense; philosophy is a discipline which should avail itself of all three modes.
Also, I don't believe we (or culture itself for that matter) are entirely socially constructed.
Right. Life is bigger than language. It's even bigger than all of those languages you mention. The way the body moves through the world comes to mind. The way we claim stairs, step into the bathtub, embrace those we love, chew out food, etc. I was just focusing on the blind know-how of speaking/writing at that particular moment. It's a fairly new theme/realization for me. It's so easy and traditional to snap into a certain artificial mode when doing philosophy.
Right. I more or less read the authentic mode as the phenomenological mode. It's one of the slippier themes in Heidegger (to me), but he does speak in The Concept of TIme of authentic Dasein attaining clarity about its temporal being. I suppose one can bear the angst of abnormal discourse without thematizing it, however. But I doubt anyone could thematize it without experiencing it.
But I really don't like the word Dasein anymore. It sticks in my throat. It becomes theological in its association with a famous brand name. 'Idle talk' can itself become part of idle talk, for instance. This is not at all directed at you. I've just read lots of Heidegger criticism, lately (and the man himself). It's fascinating how any particular approach to describing factic life can 'harden' into a crust that blocks the phenomenon. The words become academic and lose their force. Everything tends to become clever and precious as it succeeds. I feel the need to keep reaching for new words. I think slang evolves for the same reason.
I have read somewhat of Derrida, and to be honest I was not impressed by his ideas or his degree of clarity and rigour. If he means 'context' then why not just say "context" instead of 'text' since the latter definitely implies written language?
Of course I agree that all meanings are relative to contexts, but I do not agree that all contexts are merely confined to language; whether written or spoken.
What do you mean by "in fact exists by being split with itself"? Is this a reference to Hegelian dialectic; that every idea holds within it its own negation? It might be complex stuff, but unless it can be clearly expressed I can't see that it could have any use beyond the merely poetical.
Then I read Heidegger's Being and Time. Apart from the content of the work, I had never come across a way of formulating questions like that. It immediately had a profound effect on me. Heidegger wasn't simply offering a new set of ideas couched within the conventional methods of exposition. He was offering a genuinely, from the ground up as it were, new way to approach thinking. If you take it as your project to do something so audacious(as did Kant , Hegel and other), then what you are doing is essentially inventing a new language, and you will be accused of being unnecessarily turgid. There is a big difference between obscurantist language and vocabulary that is initially impenetrable because it is introducing strikingly new concepts.
I had a friend who told me anything worth saying should be summarizable in a sentence or two. Of course he would believe that. He was in the corporate world. By definition they deal in product that must be accessible to as large a population as possible in order to maximize profit. Only goods whose purpose and value is already widely understood by a culture will be desired by the masses. Such goods are of course summarizable in one or two sentences.
The problem with Derrida's ideas is that they are rich enough, as is the case with all great philosophy, that they are accessible from a myriad of cultural fields, Like the blind men and the elephant, Derrida has been embraced within literary criticism, architecture, religious studies, political theory, and finally philosophy. From my vantage, only the philosophers have 'gotten Derrida right'.
I have read just about everything Derrida has written. I dont have patience for bloated, superficial thinkers, I cant tell you that my interpretation of Derrida is 'correct'. What I can tell you is that I find his ideas to be just as powerfully original as Heidegger's. I havent found an unnecessary word in anything I've read of his.I can explain my interpretation of him to you in systematic terms. And I'm not the only one. I recommend 'The Tain of the Mirror' by Rodolph Gasche for a clear exposition of his idea. Also 'Derrida' by Geoffrey Bennington..
BTW, the root of text is tissue or woven. He means text , not context. And he richly and complexly inscribes this word alongside a chain of other terms to arrive at what his project is about .Derrida would never mean one word to carry the weight of depicting what text, difference, deconstruction, the trace, the gram point to.
Sure, but I have read something of Leibniz; and quite a bit of each of the rest and found them to be understandable, despite their idiosyncratic language. I find them to be as easy to read as Wittgenstein, Davidson, McDowell or Brandom for example. You just need to know what their beginning assumptions are; these are the key ideas and keystones of their thought.
I don't agree with the key ideas of Derrida's thought, and from what I have read I don't even believe he consistently elaborates his ideas based on these key axioms, as the other's you mentioned do. So, I certainly don't find his ideas " to be just as powerfully original as Heidegger's"; in fact I believe he is a clever charlatan, and that he will disappear into the "dustbin of history".
BTW, I don't say the same about Deleuze, Foucault, Badiou or Henry.
I'd love to hear your take on the key ideas of Derrida's thought, so that I can compare my Derrida with your Derrida. I would like to build you a 'Derrida machine', a kind of subpersonal architecture.
One of the reasons Derrida may be so difficult for you is that his ideas challenger your assumptions in ways that the others don't. That might lead to the impression of incoherence on the part of the writer when in fact the incoherence is in the reading. i also find his writing to be more theory-dense than that of Foucault, with his long-winded genealogies, and Deleuze's semi-literary style.
It would help for me to have a sense of what family of ideas and writers are most relrevant to your own thinking. Since individual philosophers are interpreted in so many often contradictory ways, I like to understand another's idea via a network of philosophers. That would help me situate your orientation to Derrida. Consider it a kind of genealogical triangulating. I do know that those most hostile to his ideas havent yet made it into Husserlian territory and so cant make to jump from Husserl to Heidegger to Derrida..
Do you think most have a chance to choose what to believe in? I know you didn't intend to say so.
Quoting Janus
I think this has roots in an open question: what is matter? hasn't been resolved completely because Quantum and string theories and so on ...have not merged.
To me now - in a multiverse belief - any imaginable is matter. Furthermore, that may be just a trivial subset of what matters constitute. I will explain if any aspect has a question.
Apologies for the late reply: I just saw your post now. I don't have time to respond in detail, but let me just say that I have not made a really consistently concerted effort to persist with reading Derrida, because every time I have tried reading him (The gift of Death, On Grammatology are the two I can right now remember attempting) I have gotten the impression that the reward will not justify the investment of time and energy.
I also read along with this thread: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/23390#Post_23390 ( although I didn't actively participate) and it seemed that none of the participants could make much sense of Derrida's 'arguments' in his critique of Husserl's philosophy. On the other hand I certainly see Henry as a post-Husserlian thinker (See Material Phenomenology).
I am not saying my view of Derrida is definitive, but it is the view I have; and I'm not interested enough, due, amongst other things, to already not having enough time to study what I really am interested in, to engage with anyone wanting to 'educate' me as to Derrida's significance.
I think you've nailed it. If I had to pick one issue as an indicator of others, I'd go with afterlife.
If the mind needs the brain and the brain dies, then the mind dies. So the believers in afterlife seem to need something that can float away from the brain and remain intact.
It occurs to me that more rigid metaphysical beliefs might also need an independence of mind from the brain. After all, the brain is a fragile piece of gear. It's also spongey. It's counter-intuitive that this spongey, organic, fragile piece of gear is going to make for non-spongey surgically-exact symbols that somehow get reality right. And this whole intuitive notion of getting reality right may itself be problematic as we push it beyond the everyday sense of factuality.
(BTW, I wrote a paper for the journal of the British Society of phenomenology analyzing Derrida's reading of Husserl).
In any case, I'm an amateur, a dilettante, when it comes to philosophy. My abiding interests are more in painting, music and literature, particularly poetry. I have always tended to mostly think for myself, and then been attracted to philosophers that seem to be in accordance with the ideas that i am currently entertaining. I have no aspiration for or interest in becoming an academic. I am interested to know, though, what are the key ideas in your reading of Derrida's reading of Husserl.
So, then do you think "non-physical" things exist, or are real, and, if so, then what is the nature of that existence or realness? Could it be completely independent of the physical world?
have you thought about phenomena like quantum collapse and its philosophy aspect?
Thinking a bit about this distinction. We live phenomenally and we conclude a realty behind our experience, as we try to understand what our experience means. I am not sure about the distinction, however it seems to me that the reality of our self (body/spirit) lies outside of the distinction between "physical or not", straddling this presumed divide.
"my body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks at all things can also look at itself and recognize, in what it sees, the "other side" of its power of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching, it is visible and sensitive for itself. It is self, not by transparency, like thought, which never thinks anything except by assimilating it, constituting it, transforming it into thought--but a self by confusion, narcissism, inherence of the see-er in the seen, the toucher in the touched, the feeler in the felt--a self, then, that is caught up in things, having a front and a back, a past and a future. " Merleau-Ponty
The self's being is whole, it is not divided up into physical and non-physical parts. While parts can be abstracted, studied as if they were separate, in reality, and as it is experienced, none of it is separate.
So, if we were to say that there is some immaterial reality completely independent of this physical universe we would just be talking nonsense; we would not know what we are saying?
Yes, I agree the self is neither physical nor non-physical. And I would say the self is not independent of the physical nor the non-physical. If we say the physical is presence and the non-physical is absence; then the physical is not independent of the non-physical and nor is the non-physical independent of the physical. As you say, "in reality and as it is experienced" there is no separation at all.
Quoting Janus
I'm not sure how helpful the distinction is. I see the world as more hylomorphic than either physical or non-physical. The reason for that being that if you analyse physical things, you will actually end up with non-physical things, ie patterns which can often be recorded in mathematical equations. So I would agree with the Aristotelian version that matter is potency and form is act. So matter, by itself, without form, is nothing.
Quoting Janus
Can the world ever be "in itself"? I think this distinction is itself incoherent for those of us who don't buy into Kant's TI.
Quoting gurugeorge
Exactly - so how can physical things be said to exist if they don't / can't interact at all? And the only way they can interact is precisely if they're not just physical - if they take part in a certain pattern.
Quoting Janus
I think that numbers (or more specifically ratios) exist both mentally and extra-mentally.
Quoting Janus
Hmm, see, I think the "order" that you consider to be physical, is actually non-material.
Quoting Janus
Tell us more.
Quoting Janus
I've always been much the same. I also personally have a certain distaste (and distrust) of academics.
Bang goes the law of the excluded middle! Why do philosophers waste their time on these things?
I don't have much time: (it's the Christmas rush and all my projects are expected to be complete in a few days time :-} ), but you don't seem to have answered my question here; which was really concerned with whether ontological standpoints such as idealism and materialism are necessarily implied by the various forms of religious belief. I don't think so; for example, there were apparently materialists who were Buddhists more than a thousand years ago, as there are today.
So I don't see it as a contravention of the LEM to say that the self is neither physical nor non-physical; it is just to say that the self cannot be coherently thought in either of those ill-formed categories.
Is a computer program physical or non-physical?
A computer program occupies the logical space created by the hardware of a computer. So, it exists as an epiphenomenon if that makes any sense.
Like the tree that falls unheard in the woods, is what a computer program computes meaningful without an act of interpretance?
Observables demand observers. Von Neumann spelt out the logical problem that creates for naked physicalism.
So, entropy is an epiphenomenon? The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is an epiphenomenal law?
I don't understand how computer programs are related to entropy or the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
I suppose the issue is understanding how emergent properties can emerge from basic systems.
Further, it hints me that if you have such a great impact then probably the word is your own, akin to but not identified with the others' worlds.
Haha, I've closed the biggest part of my work already this week, but past 2 weeks were very busy for me as well. It's not only about Christmas, but end of the year stuff - have to deal with bureaucracy X-)
Quoting Janus
Ahh okay, I must have missed that. If that's the case, then I agree with you. I think obviously that ontological standpoints aren't necessarily implied by forms of religious beliefs. But I do think that idealism will generally tend to lean towards being adopted by the religious, while materialism will tend to be adopted more frequently by atheists and non-believers. But I think this is really a false dichotomy, since idealism is really opposed to realism (not just materialism). I'm a realist for the most part, but not a materialist.
Your claim that computation is an epiphenomenon struck me as rather strange because I had thought that such effects were strictly non-causal, and it seems that the computation itself must be causal. But, perhaps it isn't, perhaps we just line up all the marbles in the right way, and let them roll down the hill.
Maybe tigers are just an epiphenomenon as well, but if computation is an epiphenomenon, then entropy creation certainly is. Entropy and computation are related by information theory, and you can't do a computation without the production of entropy. It seems strange that we have a physical law about an epiphenomenon.
I've not come across a convincing account of emergence. However, as I've understood it, we know it has happened when explanations must take account of the emergent entity. So, our best theory of biodiversity is couched in terms of replicators, selection, variation. None of these emergent properties is even necessarily biological.
I would like to clear up the issue of whether computation is emergent or epiphenominal.
In what way is quantum mechanics simpler than the alternatives?
I agree, idealism seems to be the favored metaphysics for most of the religious.
Whether idealism is the other pole of materialism or of realism is a complicated question, though. I guess it depends on what form of idealism and what form of realism. Thinking in terms of substance; there are idealists who say there is one substance and it is consciousness and materialists who say there is one substance and it is physical.
Then in terms of realism, there are conceptual idealists (like Kant) who say that universals are only in the mind, and there are conceptual realists who say that they are mind-independent (such as Plato).
Or take Spinoza, who some say is a neutral monist. He says there is one substance and it appears as both extensa (material form) and cogitans (idea). Yet if you take his philosophy to its logical conclusion the world does appear to be an idea in the mind of God, and this does seem to lead to the metaphysical primacy of mind. Spinoza can say that God (substance) is extensa (material), though, insofar as He is infinite extension, but it seems more difficult to claim that God is also form, because 'form' implies 'boundary'.
There's also the neo-Platonist or Aristotelian notion that the forms are both in the mind AND mind-independent. And I think the Kantian transcendental idealism does necessarily slide into a more thorough-going idealism. Because the phenomenal world is necessarily ideal, and the thing-in-itself probably isn't spatial or temporal at all. Space and time are mere forms through which our mind organises sensation. So that means that it's like the computer's desktop. It's an interface that allows us to survive, but not also access truth. Maybe the whole world, if we follow Kant, is formed of pathé as TGW would say - and the phenomenon is just a useful interface for navigating our own pathé. So hunger is primary, and then it gets projected through the forms of space and time into a pain in the stomach associated with food, or whatever.
So materialism is incoherent for a Kantian. Idealism is the only possibility. The sensations, the content of experience, is indeed real - but this just means that it doesn't depend on our own mind, there is no solipsism involved. So we're back to a kind of Berkeley, where the question is where are the sensations (as ideas) coming from?
Quoting Janus
Why do you think so? I see this as one possible interpretation, but why do you think it's the right one?
Quoting Janus
Well, in Spinoza's system, any given extension has a corresponding idea/thought - that's the parallelism of the attributes. So, technically, infinite extension would necessitate the infinitude of the other attribute as well.
Also in Aristotle, form doesn't imply boundary, and God is form - form being equivalent to act as opposed to potency.
The thing with Spinoza's system is that it allows for other possible parallel attributes. So we experience things as thought and extension, but maybe there are other attributes that are parallel to those that we don't have access to. That's one interpretation of the "infinite attributes" of the one substance.
Quoting Agustino
I don't have much time this morning, so this'll have to be quick. I agree that for Spinoza every extension has a corresponding idea. This, it seems to me must precisely be both the connection and the distinction between the eternal and the temporal. So, for every temporal extension there is an encompassing eternal idea in God. So, it seems that the eternal is the ideal parallel of the material. This seems to mean that the eternal is mind and the temporal is body; and the dependency logically seems to go one way; that's why I say mind (the eternal) is logically primary. There are probably holes in what I have said here; and I can see that much more thought needs to be given to it; but there it is.
Maybe its neither, once one jettisons the representationalist view of the world in favor of a pragmatist one. Maybe computation is one of a potentially limitless way of describing things, used for a particular purpose, So whether it is seen as a a macro product of a micro process or vice versa is a function of our purposes of description.
My understanding is that the incompleteness theorems that Godel postulated can be seen as emergent phenomena from underlying axioms, although unprovable from those very axioms, which would seem like a contradiction of face value. I might be of course wrong about this.
Well, Godel's theorems are deductions from a set of axioms. With a different set of axioms, you are likely to get a different set of deductions. Nothing has emerged or epiphenomenalised.
If you are looking for an emergent phenomenon, then why not Life?
Not if the set of axioms is entailed by another one which is also consistent with the lower domain set?
Interesting. I have been pondering this. It is one of the less discussed issues of Spinoza since it impinges on Part V which is often ignored. For example V. XXII. & XXIII. open up the issue that there must exist within God the eternal idea of this particular body - so there is some notion of personhood lingering there. And it is quite evident that ideas can be eternal, while motions (& bodies) not so much.
There is in Spinoza this Gurdjieff-like notion that it is of crucial importance (& urgency) in this life to develop those adequate ideas which are actually what our mind's immortality consists in.
So the self sub specie durationis is different from the self sub specie aeternitatis. And indeed, it is this latter self which Spinoza claims is (or can be) eternal. What sort of existence does this latter self have?
So there is a sense in which this eternal self goes on existing since God goes on existing - although this existence is not of a temporal nature.
This leads me to the conclusion that the ideas we have sub specie durationis cannot be the kind of ideas that exist in the infinite mind of God, but rather only copies of them as it were - and the copies are necessarily parallel to their representations as physically extended natures. If this wasn't the case, and the ideas that existed in God's mind were the same ideas we empirically had, then it would follow via the parallelism of the attributes that for our mind to be eternal, our body would have to be eternal - or in other words that there would be no ideas which don't have a current physical instantiation. And that would ultimately be an anti-Spinozist anthropocentrism since it would lead us to claiming that only our reality - that which we see and perceive empirically now, natura naturata - is real.
In the end we're dealing with a gradation of existence from the very subtle God, to God's infinite ideas, to temporal existence (the parallelism of thought and extension). So we ascend from matter and extension to thought. But thought remains in the realm of the temporal, it is of the mind. Beyond thought is that which gives birth to thought itself (and accessed via the third kind of knowledge directly, or indirectly as a copy via reason), that's the infinite ideas of God. And beyond that it is the abyss of God Himself. And of course all this is also coupled with Spinoza's acosmism, that only God really exists, and the temporal nature is (ultimately) illusory.
And so, to put it in more concrete terms, an extended thing is a less subtle form of a thought, and a thought is a less subtle form of God's infinite idea, and God's infinite idea is a less subtle form of God. In this regard, the distinction between materialism and idealism breaks, since we're just sliding across the same continuum. The difference between eternity and temporality being that in the latter only a limitation of God is given - a shadow as it were. Since God in-Himself contains both A and ~A, temporally only one at a time can be given - indeed obedience to the principle of non-contradiction is the hallmark of being in time as well observed by Schopenhauer. Eternally, mutually contradictory ideas can exist side by side.
It would seem that if there is a "self sub specie aeternitatis" then it must be eternal. On thinking more about this, I think I have reverted to a common mistake in speaking about the primacy of mind. This seems to be an easy intellectual trap to fall into since we commonly don't think of matter as being eternal. For example, the Buddhists although they speak of interdependent co-arising or dependent origination (ideas which I think would be better combined as interdependent co-origination) seem to often devolve into the 'mind only' mode of thought. But if God has attributes of both infinite thought and infinite extension, then the eternal existence of his modes would be as both. This would mean that the eternal life of the self would be both material and mental (and perhaps infinitely more besides if God has infinite (in the sense of 'infinitely many') attributes. This may be hinted at in the Christian idea of resurrection of the body.
Quoting Agustino
This sounds about right. Ideas are real spatio-temporal complexes just as bodies are, although in a different way. So our ideas are the temporal face of our (God's) eternal ideas, just as our minds are the temporal expression of our (God's) eternal minds and our bodies are the temporal counterparts of our (God's) eternal bodies. In eternity ideas must be idea, minds must be mind and bodies must be body.The temporal mind cannot understand this fully. We cannot fathom how there could be any diversity, or the possibility of any diversity 'coming out of', eternity.
Quoting Agustino
This sounds very much like Kabbalism and also Gurdjieff's teaching about finer and courser 'energies'. The latter is comprehensively set forth in Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe: Principles of the Psychological Method In Its Application to Problems of Science, Religion, and Art. It must be nearly thirty years since I read that book!
It is also very much found in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, where the distinction is between God's energies and God's essence (refer to energy-essence distinction). As such, at the stage of theosis (or union with God), we achieve union by grace with God's energies, but not with God's essence which necessarily remains incomprehensible & hidden. So in Eastern Orthodox spirituality, spiritual development is also viewed as going from coarser aspects of reality to ever-more subtle ones.
From the link I gave above:
All this, as you see, does bear on my reading of Spinoza, as I think Spinoza landed very close to this understanding even though it was likely not available to him by direct sources.
Surely Spinoza here is referring to the immortality of the soul?
I think this is the distinction between appearance and reality, common to many a metaphysic, whereby 'individual particulars' are not real in their own right - that is the meaning of saying 'they do not exist'. If that was translated from Latin, it would be interesting to see what Latin phrase was translated as 'do not exist'. Because here I think the meaning is that they don't truly exist, but are only real by virtue of them being 'comprehended in the attributes of God'.
Quoting Janus
God cannot be 'extended' because anything 'extended' is 'divisible'.
This is not correct. Bodies, as finite modes of infinite extension, have boundaries, and are hence divisible. You are conflating the idea of infinite extension with the idea of a body.
Interesting; I must do more reading into Eastern Orthodoxy. :)
Yes, infinite extension is by default unbounded.
Quoting Wayfarer
With regards to the quoted bits from Part II of the Ethics, I doubt Spinoza was referring to the distinction between appearance and reality. Rather he was just referring to particular modes which don't empirically exist right now. For example, your ancestors from 5 generations ago, they don't exist right now, they are inexistent finite modes. And yet, since God exists, and their existence is a mode of God (the one Substance) it follows that in a sense they exist - in the same sense that the infinitude of possible intersecting straight lines exist given a circle:
So even if a particular set of lines are not actually drawn right now, they still exist given the nature of the circle from which they emerge in the first place.
This is a good book (as an introduction) if you haven't already read it.
Right! Very important point and thank you for it. I had a thread on the old Forum, about 'a unity which is not an entity', which explored a similar idea. I think this is an aspect of non-dualism, which is a very elusive concept.
Quoting Agustino
It's a powerful work, that. I also have a book called A Different Christianity by Martin Amis, who was resident at Mt Athos whilst researching it. I do read some of those Eastern Orthodox theologians but I have to be careful as I could easily be pulled into their orbit ;-)
Reading those quotes from Spinoza, it is worth recalling that the term 'substance' in philosophy, was translated from 'ousia' in Aristotle. I think it is nearer in meaning to 'being' or 'subject' than what we understand as 'substance'. So, in the case of Spinoza's 'one substance', if it is read as 'one Being', though perhaps not strictly accurate, it does convey something of importance, I think.
Thanks, I haven't come across that one yet.
Quoting Wayfarer
>:O
Quoting Wayfarer
Yeah, it does cash out in terms of the interrelationship of all (one) existence. Spinoza was using the term in Aristotelian fashion anyway with slight Cartesian tints. Basically, substance was the bearer of modes and predicates (as per Aristotle's definition) and also that which had an independent existence - ie it existed in-itself and did not depend for its existence on another.
I've never read Gurdjieff through Ouspensky, I've read him through Osho who commented at length on him - I must have been 13 or so back then, so it's quite a long time ago.
Gurdjieff at 13? That is an early start!
Yes, that's what happens when your atheist father has Osho books lying around >:O .