We are designated 'human beings'. It has always seemed important, to me, that we are called 'beings' - I think that word, which is so everyday and taken-for-granted, actually has great significance. I mean, what are designated 'beings'? Presumably, if you're a naturalist, only intelligent animals, including h. sapiens., although this fact doesn't cast much light on the question of the meaning of 'being'.
Anyway, I think your OP is asking an interesting question and one that I would respond to by initially comparing ancient Greek and Indian philosophy. As is well-known, the ancient Greek philosophers laid the groundwork for what was to become science (although in those times, there wasn't really a distinction between science and philosophy). But certainly such figures as Archimedes, Animaxander, Thales, Pythagoras, and Aristotle were precursors of what would become known later as 'natural scientists', who were motivated to ask very broad questions about 'how things can be the way they are' - what are the governing principles of motion and such questions, which were to lay the groundwork for what was to become physics, chemistry, and so on. After all, all of the subjects with the suffix -logy, were descended from the Greek exploration of the 'logos' of various subject matter domains.
Contrast that with ancient Indian thought, which, whilst it had a naturalistic or scientific side, was mainly concerned with existential questions - the Buddha asking, for instance, 'what is the cause of suffering?' Within this domain, the raw data are not objective, but experiential - you're asking questions about the nature of experience, not what drives changes in nature. (Of course, questions of the meaning of being are also represented in the Greek tradition, especially in the Platonic dialogues. But overall I think it's fair to say that the Greeks were more naturalistically oriented than was India.)
Or consider the Hebrew prophetic tradition, which is different again, being mainly concerned with the relation of God and mankind.
It's often difficult to separate all of these strands of thought, as they have intermingled and given rise to many kinds of hybrid traditions (such as the way in which Greek philosophical thought became incorporated into Christian theology or more recently, by the way that Eastern philosophical perspectives are being incorporated by physics.)
But, having made that basic distinction, I think that the 'way things work' questions are very much the domain of science and engineering (especially now in a culture that is so utterly shaped by technology and science.) So I think those who are engaged in those fields don't have much interest in or sympathy for questions about 'the meaning of being'. They're practical types, that like to get things done, make progress, solve practical problems; they're likely to think of philosophy as 'navel-gazing'.
Whereas the 'what does life mean?' types of question are more the domain of philosophy, religion, art, drama and literature. How these two broad cultural attitudes fit together, or whether they complement or compete, is the subject of a vast amount of commentary and literature (one notable example being C P Snow's essay on The Two Cultures.) And that is indeed a major cultural dynamic which I think you're reflecting.
It seems fair - and seems to mend usage - to allow being to refer to that which works. The engine works, but in its essence of being an engine, it seems unchanged.
I think here you're conflating these two 'domains of discourse' in a not very satisfactory way by using this analogy. The analogy of mechanism is very characteristic of modern science (as distinct from post-modernism). In any case, engines are manufactured objects which are designed by humans to execute a function. Beings are of a different ontological order - and the very term 'onto-' is derived from 'being'. Nowadays the whole distinction between machines and beings has been blurred by the invention of computers, but in my mind this reflects a deficient understanding of the nature of being. I think we have lost sight of the ontological significance of 'being'.
To understand the question of 'the meaning of being' is indeed a deep philosophical, not a scientific or technological, question. In recent philosophy, this question has been debated most meaningfully by Heidegger and the hermeneutic tradition in Continental philosophy. It goes right back to the origin of philosophy itself, but I think it is much more on the existential, rather than the naturalist, side of the ledger.
I don't think of it quite the same way you have presented it. Thinking about this problem in terms of reality which you ended up at, the following is my rough understanding. You stated:
The present experience is fairly called a phenomenon.
to my mind the phenomenological is reality. It is the only thing we can say we really know (and while we can be wrong about what it entails, we cannot be wrong about what we actually experience), the world literally presents itself to us. Science explains why reality appears to us the way it does, but that explanation is dependent on what was experienced or observed.
Being does not reside behind us, it is in front of us, hidden in plain sight, in our experience of reality, which is always becoming. What we abstract and differentiate from experience is the commonality, consistency and coherence in what we observe from things like trains, a commonality that extends everywhere from high speed Maglevs to the steam locomotive. The only reality attributable to an 'essence' as such is its virtual existence, which makes the phenomenal understandable, and which enables it to be communicated.
Reply to tim wood Being is dynamism or chance constrained. Steady existence is what you get once a process has gone to an equilibrium balance and now simply persists in spite of any microscopic shifting about.
In asking, "Are you a being," however, my question was really, is your being-ness defined - or realized - in something static or something dynamic. I could as well have asked a Heracletian question, "What is a river?" (that you cannot step into twice).
Well, Buddhists, as is well known, deny that there is anything static or changeless. And Heraclitus is often compared to Buddhism and to Lao Tzu; the case has been made that they all anticipate what is come to be known as 'process philosophy' and there's some truth in that. Nevertheless, Buddhists also recognise that there is a 'beyond' which transcends all the vicissitudes of worldly life.
The easy answer is science. I can say scientific things about them. The engines works - the rock just "rocks" - either way an answer in terms of function, dynamism, potential, change: continual becoming always new, effervescent.
But this is also a deceptive answer, because science deals only with objects, with what can be measured, what can be known objectively. Philosophy has a broader scope than that, because it asks the kinds of questions you're now asking, about the nature of knowledge itself, or meaning itself. To seek scientific responses to philosophical quandaries is to fall into the scientism trap. But beings are not objects, but also subjects of experience, and the 'nature of being' is therefore not necessarily an objectively-answerable question.
There are very many schools of thought which try to address the question of the nature of being, but the most common approach nowadays is to actually not even ask the question, or to pretend it's not even a real question (as per the 'What is Scientism' thread; see this essay, in particular the passage under the heading 'The Spirituality of Secularity'.)
The reason it's deceptive is because our idea of what is normal or what is real, is itself deeply culturally conditioned, masquerading as 'objective third-person knowledge', the kind of thing that 'everyone knows'. Being philosophical, is being critical of that.
I wonder if [Buddhists] have the concept of a moment, the slice of the temporal, "worldy" world small enough to admit of no change within it.
Some Buddhist schools taught that the underlying nature of existence is actually a succession of minute instants which arise and pass away in rapid succession, each instant giving rise to (= conditioning) the next. One of the things that the Buddha is said to know is the precise duration of those moments.
(This is sometimes referred to as a form of 'atomism' with the caveat that the 'atoms' in this case are of momentary duration - referred to, confusingly, as 'dharmas' - which are not the imperishable particles of atomism, which have always been rejected by Buddhism as a matter of principle. This kind of analysis was associated with an early school called the Sarvastivada, but in any case, later developments in Buddhism tended to undercut this approach although I do know that it is still [s]taught[/s] mentioned at the popular 10-day Insight Meditation retreats founded by Goenka).
Spirit is a virtually real construction, in the same way logic, and mathematics are virtually objectively real"?
I wouldn't concur with that. I think of 'spirit' as a gloss on 'the unconditioned' - that which escapes all conceptual analysis.
Here's a quote:
There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, emancipation from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned.
Now, it has been suggested that this passage in the Buddhist texts can be compared to the 'wisdom uncreate' of the theistic traditions; however Buddhists will generally object to that interpretation, as they scrupulously differentiate themselves from theistic religions. Be that as it may, in all the traditional philosophies, there is something like 'the unconditioned' or 'the uncreated'. I suppose in the context of Western philosophy it is rather more like the mystical notion of 'Godhead':
[quote=Wikipedia]Godhead is the divinity or substance (ousia) of God, the substantial impersonal being of God, as opposed to the individual persons or hypostases of the Trinity; in other words, the Godhead refers to the "what" of God, and God refers to the "who" of God. The concept is especially important in Christian negative theology, e.g., the theology of the Godhead according to Pseudo-Dionysius. [/quote]
Certainly dogmas can be constructed around such ideas, but the whole point of such a being is that it is not something constructed or created - it simply is. (I personally think the whole idea of 'the uncreated' has been progressively forgotten by Western philosophy, much to its discredit.)
I like to think the smart jumper jumps not just from, but also to. In this case, to Phenomenology. A system in itself, to be sure, but one consciously intent on setting aside, "bracketing," that which obscures.
Right. That was very much Husserl's approach, and phenomenology generally. I am not that well versed in phenomenology, but I admire what I know of Husserl.
How do you make clear your distinction between a "virtually real construction" and something "virtually objectively real"?
Our self, the I our virtual organism is constructed through our experiences in the world where the other is of dominant importance, as Rimbaud put it "I is another". Our virtual self is constructed by and in our interactions with others from the get go, we become a virtual self due to our intersubjective experiences. How we approach the world, how we construct conceptions about the world are based on what we have learned from others, filtered and automatically reconstituted, self actualized, by our prior experiences, our feelings, wants and desires.
There are instinctive aspects to this ability in my estimation. The way we think and infer, our regard towards pleasure and away from pain, form the 'mortar' for our construction and are common/typical to how we are constituted as a species.
The phenomenal train is based on our idealization about what constitutes trains, which enable us to recognize them as such. Its ideal is constructed virtually. The virtualization of phenomena is based on our history of observations of trains, from which we infer or add to previously learnt commonalities. The train does not proceed from transcendental ideals, rather it starts in the world and ends up being virtually understood by our construction. It is only by taking apart, the abstraction or reduction of these commonalities, that ideal components can be inferred as objective/shared. The shape of a ball, pyramid or anything else is based on its form, which we raise to the level of being objectively virtual due to its ability to provide commonly understood, intersubjective coherence to our experiences. This process is, I think, similar to how we can treat our self as an object.
My admittedly rough thought is that we move from not from the transcendental presuppositions as a basis for experience but rather from phenomenal experience providing the presuppositions for transcendental ideals. Reality is not hidden or occluded, it is experienced as such. Our and science's attempt is to explain why we experience what we experience, the ontological determination of that 'why' is dependent on the reality of what experienced and not the other way around, in my opinion.
It might be pertinent to note (don't want to surprise you latter, I already did that with someone else...ha, ha) that I am sorta Panpsychist, While I don't believe that every atom is conscious, I do assert that matter over the course of billions of years obtained a vital structure, from which consciousness has evolved. Spirit has to come from somewhere, I don't believe we are deluded, spirit is and it seems to me, in a very materialistic way, that similar to gravity's relationship with matter, the correct structure of matter gives rise to life, to spirit.
K?
:)
numberjohnny5April 05, 2018 at 10:50#1696870 likes
How it works, or how it is? Are these the same thing? Does working reduce to being? Or vice versa?
In my view, everything is constantly in relative flux with other things (on a macro and micro level). So some x "working" or "being" in particular ways are identical ways of describing states of change or motion. It obviously depends on what you or others mean by "working" and "being"; but I interpret your initial questions (in the quote) as asking, ontologically, "how do things exist/behave?"
Let's suppose that spirit (dreams, awareness, intentionality, etc. - the content of these things) is just phenomenon. Then isn't spirit real? Reality blushes at this, and the runs away from it. What am I to make of it?
Time for you to write a bit more on what spirit is, perhaps how it relates to life itself. I assume that for you, no life, no spirit - yes?
Spirit is a virtually real construction,
I suggest that the phenomenal is real and that the reductions or abstractions we derived from the manifest are virtually ideal. What we have learned determines how these ideals effect our lives. The societal discourses we learn, share and contribute to enable us to have common values and explain a shared world. The effect is that of a coherent whole, whose qualities form the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period...this what is meant by spirit as a social construction in my opinion.
numberjohnny5April 06, 2018 at 09:15#1698730 likes
What you are is ten to fifteen gallons of chemicals, mostly water - or at least that's one way of looking at it. Not a useful way in terms of your human being.
I don't agree, since, using your analogy, "taste" refers to brain states, and brain states are collections of chemicals/particles, in my view. (With the proviso that "explanations" are subjective.)
Also, "usefulness" is subjective. It might be useful, for example, just to ascertain the properties of matter that make-up human beings.
But this offers no account of what changes or moves. It appears that some account of being comes first, then comes movement or change. On that account, though, we need an account of what change is.
In my ontology, (a) all existents are continually changing/moving, and (b) change or motion are identical. In other words, to exist is to change. Existents are collections of properties. So properties are what change. For example, small particles are changing on a micro level, and larger objects (as a collection of particles) are changing on a macro level.
Is there any distinction in your thinking in your first sentence between "real" and reality? I think we did admit a distinction above - I could be mistaken. If a tree-in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself, ding an sich selbst, is the reality, is "reality" interchangeable with "real"?
(What we see cannot be the tree itself - we see different trees - my image differs from your image!) I agree "the phenomenal is real" - just not reality, or at least not the reality of the tree. Maybe the reality of the perception of the tree. We just have to be careful about exactly what we're affirming. You've left out the steps between perceiving and learning - maybe that doesn't matter.
One reason I have gone to the phenomenal is its objective certainty. While we may be certainly wrong in what we perceive, we can't un-sense it, it may not be but it certainly can't be un-sensed. Descartes's point of certainty may be absolute but leaves us in a subjective waste land. The phenomenal , unlike the Cogito, can be shared. Did you see that cherry tree, yes it is beautiful I especially like it white blossoms against the stark gray background of early spring. Of course I could be feverish, delusional or tripping, but you can tell me that I am mistaken, and together we can work it out. Unlike the solipsistic nightmare of Descartes's certainty, shared phenomenally is objectively certain real. The certainty of the phenomenal is capable of being shared, corrected and enhanced.
I think an epistemological foundation is necessary and must be ascertained on an intersubjective level. If we believe Kant we can't know the "in itself" the objective, instead we determine the transcendental presumptions that are needed to account for our experience of the world . It is not really an ontology as such and I concur however I think the phenomenal realism I am thinking about has a transcendental character which based on its concurrence with others. Therefore it is both immanent (in the world) and transcendent (shared with others) at the same time in a shared world.
What we come to is "spirit as a social construction." Admitted and agreed: there certainly seems to be, e.g., national spirit. But this cannot be spirit in itself, can it? You've given an example, not the thing itself. If I look at your description, spirit seems to be the derived, the abstracted, the generalized, gelled into a being. If that's the case, then we have this, that, and the other thing called the spirit of this, that, and the other thing, but we have lost spirit itself, except as an entirely abstract collective term with no content in itself. The questions of the being and existence of spirit simply evaporate.
Spirit in itself is a dynamic whole, the affirmation all we have derived, learnt, remembered, shared. Its dynamism works in our life in concert with others...this is its affirmative effect I think. Spirit's construction starts on day 1 and never ends until we end. I don't think that Spirit, as a 'thing' is possible to demonstrate because it is constantly changing, only partial view points are possible.
It is only in and through our relationship with others that fragments of our spirit can be shared, imparted, and understood by us and others. Our relationship with others is cemented in language, where we can phenomenally share meanings.
numberjohnny5April 07, 2018 at 11:59#1700750 likes
If it's chemicals/particles, then you don't get to have subjective - there is no subjective. That's why regarding you as chemicals/particles "is not... useful... in terms of your human being."
Eh? I was using "subjective" there just to clarify that explanations are subjective, since you wrote "the bucket of chemicals does not explain, for example, your taste in neckties." We/minds do the explaining between or regarding phenomena, not the things themselves. (Btw, subjective--the way I use the term--just refers to the location of the mental. Mental states are brain states. Brain states are collections of chemicals/particles/etc.)
Sure. But in this you affirm properties (as opposed to their functioning). If functioning is all there is, then what functions? You can have all the doing you want, but you have to have something doing the doing (which is neither properties nor functioning!). Properties and functions are different; they cannot be one and a many at the same time.
I was just following the distinction that you were making between what something is and how something functions. The distinction is a conceptual one (i.e. conceptualism) that minds focus on with regards to "things". We can focus on what things are made of; we can focus on how things function--what we choose to focus on is subjective (occrring in minds). The functioning of properties is an instrinsic property of properties. In other words, functioning is just how particular things change/move. You can't have properties not functioning in some way. That goes for inert or non-living things like rocks too.
By the way, I lean more towards "bundle theory" than "substratum theory". That is, things are just bundles of properties (functioning in particular ways).
1) is problematic. What is a thing? What is change?
A thing is (a) a collection of properties (b) moving/changing dynamically in particular ways (c) relative to other properties within a thing, and relative to other external things. Change is just motion or movement or processes. Since it's relevant, functioning is about how particular things change/move/behave.
2) is a claim without evidence or argument. To be is to be just that that does not change.
The evidence is that when you look around things are changing/moving. Things decay. Things accelerate. Things disintegrate. Things develop, bloom, and wither. You can also see change occurring microscopically.
You may not like my arguments, but there is enough in them to point you toward rethinking your own.
Thanks for the condescension. What you have helped me do however is give me more incentive to elucidate my views, so I'm sincerely grateful for the questions you pose. Also, I wouldn't say I don't like your (or others') arguments; rather, I don't agree with them.
As a tub of guts, you're different from a human being, yes? No? I think - possibly in error - that you're arguing that tub-of-guts and human being are reducible to a one. Maybe in some aspects, for some purposes, but not essentially. Or do you say they're essentially the same?
By "tub of guts" do you mean the biological properties of a human? Then yes--a human being is biological properties. I'm also not a realist when it comes to essentialism, in case you're inferring that. I'm a nominalist.
Phenomenon, is by definition subjective, of the subject. I don't see how you manage to turn this around, and make the claim that it is objectively certain. Inter-subjectivity ("sharing") does not create objectivity (of the object). Human agreement does not ensure truth.
Objectivity in the sense of judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 08, 2018 at 12:44#1703570 likes
Reply to Cavacava
You are proceeding from "observed phenomena" (of the subject), to conclude "observable phenomena" (of the object). Isn't this like jumping across the is/ought divide? Observed phenomena is what is, and observable phenomena is what you conclude "ought to be", based on your observations. What produces the "objective certainty", that your conclusions of what ought to be, are correct?
I can and on occasion do confirm what I sense by discussing it with others who either agree or disagree, and typically we come to some sort of agreement. How do you do it?
What is your 'being'? Is it A being or being, the act of being from the point of view of ME being or an abstract being being.
And what is work? A person digging a ditch might be about to bury a friend and might not consider a ditch dug a work done, but rather - time to reel in the body. Is it work because it tires or because it is not something one wants to do or because it requires a lot of trouble?
numberjohnny5April 08, 2018 at 17:47#1704680 likes
I think this collapses to "collections of chemicals/particles/etc" explain phenomena. If not, what am I misreading?
It's your usage of the word "explain" there that I'm not clear about. I'd rather say that "collections of chemicals/particles/etc." are identical to phenomena. That's what phenomena is.
That reduces to a classical deterministic movement or a random quantum movement. Take your pick.
That's a false dichotomy. There are (at least) three "picks": strict determinism (only one possibility or 100% probability), indeterminism (non-equiprobable probability), or "pure" randomness (equiprobability).
I can and on occasion do confirm what I sense by discussing it with others who either agree or disagree, and typically we come to some sort of agreement. How do you do it?
I agree, but the issue is how do you derive objectivity (of the object) from agreement, convention, or inter-subjectivity? A group of people might all agree that the sun rises in the morning, and sets in the evening, and therefore the sun travels around the earth each day. But how would this agreement make it objectively certain that the sun travels around the earth each day?
But isn't this how we claim objective validity, the ability of another to verify my judgement, to replicate my results?
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 09, 2018 at 00:34#1706020 likes
Reply to Cavacava
There are a number of different ways that "objective" is used, and we ought not equivocate. "Objective validity" does not mean "objective certainty" because a valid argument does not necessitate that the argument is sound.
And the word "objective" is thrown around as if it adds something. But if the argument is valid, then to say that it is objectively valid adds nothing. So if you are certain, does saying that you are objectively certain add anything? It appears to me like you are saying that your certainty is a conventional certainty. Your certainty is based in convention. You are certain that what you believe is correct, because it is what other people believe. How is this any type of real certainty?
K, conventional agreement about what is the case determines what is the case because others can verify what is the case for themselves and agree with me or not... how's that? It is a synthetic, not a deductive claim.
From his commentators and translators come these as correctives: Kant was never for a single instant beguiled or confused by reality or practical knowledge of that reality. His ding an sich was more often ding an sich selbst: the latter being thing-in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself. Kant knew the chair was a chair, and he knew that he knew it - as a practical matter. When he then reflected on exactly what he knew and how, he understood he was asking a different question, from the ground of Wissenschaft, science. His argument was that scientific thinking can't get to the chair in itself, as it is in itself. I understand this simply to mean that all knowledge falls under, can be brought under, either practical knowledge or scientific knowledge, with the consequence that all knowledge is human knowledge, and the corollary that there is no knowledge qua knowledge. Indeed, if you pursue a scientist with iterations of the question, "How do you know," if he's a good scientist, soon enough he'll acknowledge that, (at the level of questioning achieved) he doesn't, and that what passes for knowledge (at that level) is either a working hypothesis or an absolute presupposition, i.e., an axiom. So much for Kant, almost.
Well stated. I have been discussing a Buddhist aphorism on another forum, to whit: ‘from the very beginning, not a single thing is.’ The ‘is’ here, is the salient point: sure there are tables and chairs and all manner of other things [the ‘ten thousand things’ being the Chinese term for ‘phenomena’]. But what they really are, is the question. Of course, Buddhists have a pragmatic answer: chairs, you sit on, and tables, you eat from. But don’t let that fool you into believing that they’re really ‘chairs and tables’; they simply fulfil that function, which is what makes them what they are. But, of course, that leaves a very large question; or should, anyway.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 09, 2018 at 12:31#1706720 likes
I can handle "perception" in this context: it's just something that happens (in me, if it's my perception). Phenomenon seems to be what gives rise to the perception. Let's question it. First, is it? If we agree that the perception was caused, then there was something that caused the perception - seems trivial enough. Let's just call that cause the phenomenon. It would appear the objective certainty transfers to the phenomenon - it is!
I would think that the subject, being the perceiver, is the cause of the perception. The phenomenon is the perception, so it cannot be the cause of the perception because that would mean it causes itself.
Now, it is not clear to me that the phenomenon (not to be confused with perception) has a content independent of itself.
I don't see how you separate the phenomenon from the perception, unless you are saying that the phenomenon is the content of the perception. If this is the case, then it is pointless to ask about the content of the phenomenon because you are just starting an infinite regress of "content".
To avoid this infinite regress problem, let's just make the separation by saying that the phenomenon is the content of the perception. How do you think that the content of the perception might cause the perception? It still seems more sensible to assume that the perceiver is the cause of the perception, and the content is utilized by the perceiver, in forming the perception, like we use utilize matter in creating things. The conscious mind takes the content (phenomena), and forms a perception (objects).
But none of this really makes a lot of sense, because now the phenomenon, as content, is just like a formless matter which the perceiver manipulates in creating a perception. So why not just assume that "the phenomenon" and "the perception" refer to one and the same thing? This is objects perceived, within the mind of the conscious perceiver.
I see a tree: I perceive a tree. Some phenomenon caused me to see the tree. Let's suppose that the phenomenon in question either is the tree that caused my perception, or is not the tree & etc.
Here is the problem right here. The object, being the phenomenon, the perception, is inherently within the subject, being the perceiver. But you want to position this object outside the perceiver, as "the tree". Where do you get the principles which allow you to place the object outside the mind of the subject. As an object is how the tree appears to the subject, it is not necessarily how the tree is "in itself". It may not be as an object at all. So we cannot position the object outside of the mind of the subject, because "an object" is what the perceiver creates in the mind, in the act of perceiving.
This is the problem with "objective certainty". We want to assume that how the subject perceives the world, as "objects" is how the world really is, independent of subjects. That is what we "want", therefore we want to validate "objects" as independent from subjects. So we appeal to an inter-subjectivity as described by Cavacava, and we insist that this inter-subjectivity, agreement and convention concerning "objects", manifests as an objectivity which is independent of the subjects' minds. But all this really is, is an agreement amongst subjects concerning the objects within their minds. It does not validate objects which are external and independent from human minds. It is just agreement.
So we must reconsider true "objective certainty". Since objects are proper only to the minds of individual subjects, then "objective certainty" is that certainty which is proper to individual subjects. There has been a philosophical movement, very evident in Wittgenstein's On Certainty, to bring certainty outside of the minds of individual subjects, to make it a property of the community, the society as a whole, inter-subjective certainty. But this is not a representation of certainty at all, it is an illusion of certainty, as if certainty could be the property of an object, in the sense of "it is certain that...".. It is really merely saying that I can be certain of something because others are certain of it. But because someone else is certain of something is not good reason to be certain of it yourself. To find true objective certainty, we must understand certainty itself, and certainty is a property of individuals. To assign certainty to anything other than individual subjects is to demonstrate a misunderstanding of certainty.
From above, I argued that a bucket of chemicals does not explain your taste in neckties. I think you're in the position of claiming that it does. Please make your case.
With the proviso that "bucket of chemicals" refers to "biological properties"; mental states are brain states, and brain states are biological properties. "Taste" refers to one's personal preferences regarding phenomena. Preferences, judgements, evaluations, etc. are mental states.
I have agreed that at some sub-atomic level, we're all electronic whizzies in constant motion - that as underlying ground, but not account. In the sense that metal is the "ground" of an automobile engine, but not the account of it. It's up to you to tell us how the sub-atomic particles that make up steel, for example, have in themselves the ability to become the engine. Or how your intestines, for example, cause you to favour striped over solid neckties.
I don't know why you'd think that intestines would cause one to favour neckties in the first place. It's the mind/brain that favours; the intestines can play a role though (if you're into eating neckties).
I'm not sure what you mean by "ground" and "account" there. Do you mean ontology of the engine (i.e. what kind of thing is it?) by "ground", and "explanation" for how the engine works re "account"?
Re the engine, the materials are fashioned by people to produce an engine, of course. It's not like the sub-atomic particles decide to become an engine. The functioning engine works within a system of other materials too--the gases and fuel, for example.
But the thing itself? What about the thing itself - is that abandoned? Apparently in Cavacava's view - we don't have to worry about it. And I think there's something to this. If the tree-in-itself really is as we perceive it, then we've gained, but not more than we already have. If it isn't, well, first question would be, how do we know it isn't. Second, what difference does it make?
The point is that the "thing itself" is not an object. The object is produced in the mind of the perceiver, in the act of perception.
The tree, then, whatever it might be, gives rise to - causes - the perception of the tree.
This is where I strongly disagree. The perceiver causes the perception, as the agent in the act of perception. The thing being perceived does not cause the perception. The content of the perception may be associated with the thing being perceived, but this cannot be the cause of the perception, and this is demonstrated by the reality of hallucinations and dreams.
Where is - what is - the phenomenon, if it is not the tree itself?
The phenomenon is the perception. You would completely distort the philosophical meaning of "phenomenon" if you were to place the phenomenon outside the mind of the perceiver. That's why Kant distinguished what's out there, what you call "the tree itself", from the phenomena, as the noumena.
I think this yields - is - Cavacava's point. He extends it by way of consensus, which arguably leads to a community OC, almost as a kind of transitivity. I accept this for what it's worth, but extend it as a greater OC through verification.
That's exactly what I argued against. What you and Cavacava called "objective certainty" I would call a false certainty. True, real, certainty is proper to the individual subject alone; and therefore objective certainty is that certainty which occurs to the individual subject, by way of the reasoning of the individual, and not necessarily by way of consensus or community. Consensus and community may play a role in certainty, just like "what's out there" plays a role in perception, but real (and therefore objective) certainty is within the human subject, just like the phenomenal object is within the human subject.
The point is that the "thing itself" is not an object. The object is produced in the mind of the perceiver, in the act of perception.
— Metaphysician Undercover
Stop right there! What do you say causes the perception. You seem to be saying the object is in the mind - if I see a tree, the tree is in my mind. Is that what you're saying?
Let me leap in here with the following observation: that 'the tree' is indeed a complex of sensations, perceptions and judgements. Part of that is 'apperception': the recognition of it being 'a tree' and then 'this type of tree', and then 'this particular tree'. The mind does that automatically, according to its acculturation, background, conditioning, and so on. So representative realism might object: well, of course I sense the tree, but the tree is the cause of these sensations and perceptions; there is a real tree, over there, and my perceptions and sensations, within my mind.
But a counter-question to that is: what is the tree, outside or, or apart from, these sensations and judgements? How do we know the tree aside from how it appears to us? How do we see 'the real tree' as it is in itself, apart from how it appears to us. The Kantian answer to that is, we don't - we only ever know the tree as it appears to us. And I think that's important because it maintains the realisation that there must be a subjective pole to the act of knowledge even of the apparently objective domain. Whereas, representative realism tends to believe that there is an always-existing world of which our knowledge is a representation. (Good blog post on this point here.)
As for the meaning of phenomena and noumena - 'noumena' is derived from the seminal Greek word 'nous', which is 'mind' or 'intellect' but has connotations which are remote from the modern sense of those words. Recall that in ancient philosophy, ideal objects such as geometrical forms and numbers and the like, were known in a way that the knowledge of sensible particulars were not; that in knowing such things as mathematical certainties, the mind realises an immediate and apodictic certainty which is incapable of error. This is the origin of the idea of a priori truths although I suppose the ancients imbued this with a kind of mystical sense that we've now lost.
What I think is forgotten in modern discourse, is the sense in which the noumenal refers to an intelligible order. Originally, this was the locus of the distinction between reality and appearance (phaenomenon). So 'the real' was 'what was seen by "nous' ' which was of a different, and higher, order to what was seen by the senses; it was the ability of the philosopher to see the hidden order of things which could only be discerned by reason, and which was a separate and higher domain than that of the material world.
I think, overall, that this sense has tended to drop out of modern philosophy. Of course, in one sense, it has been preserved in science, in that science now purports to provide that insight into the 'real order of things', but at the same time, due to its emphasis on empiricism, which is essentially validation solely in terms of 'phenomenal appearances', it has lost that sense of there being an intelligible order of which the visible world is but a reflection.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 10, 2018 at 12:07#1708780 likes
"Lost" is an appropriate word here. The empiricism places an emphasis on the importance of the reality of the "external object" as sensed, thus denying the possibility that the mind may be mislead by sensation. So when the determined "real order of things", which is produced by intellectual endeavours such as mathematical formulations, is inconsistent with what is sensed, science is incapable of resolving the problem, lost.
The problem is really not very difficult to resolve though. It stems from a misunderstanding of the act of perception, sensation. The misunderstanding is as tim woods says, that the external object causes the perception. Once we recognize that it is the perceiving being which is causing the perception (as tim would say, the being is working), not the external world which causes the perception, then we can understand that the inconsistencies between the way the mind apprehends the world, and the way that the senses apprehend the world, are all due to the different ways that one working being may interpret the world.
The content of the phenomenon is a re-presentation,
I don't believe there's any good reason to think this. On the contrary, phenomena are all direct presentation. There is something like representation in the brain, but we don't have access to it (e.g. some configuration of neuronal firings may represent an object in some abacus-like calculation in the brain, but that's all "rough work" going on underneath conscious awareness). Consciousness isn't something locked inside the head, or in the brain, it's actually the name of a process (causal, physical process) that takes place between an object and a conscious object. The brain is a necessary part of it of course, but so is, e.g., the tree, the actual physical tree "out there." (But there's no "out there", the tree itself is part of the process.) Memory, dreams, reflections, are time-delayed perceptions, gerrymandered in various ways. (cf. Riccardo Manzotti for this "Process Externalism" - precursors being the New Realists, and a roughly similar contemporary theory from a scientific point of view being J J Gibson's theory of perception and "affordances.")
As to the rest of it, I think your problem was solved by Aristotle, in his distinction between actuality and potentiality (Act and Potency in the jargon). Aristotle harmonized Parmenides and Heraclitus by positing a kind of existence inbetween being (actuality) and nothing: potentiality. The range of potentialities an object has (e.g. of a rubber ball to melt, but not to sprout wings and fly) constitute the object's essence or nature, and causality is the transformation of one or more potentialities of an object into actualities, by the impingement of the actuality of another object (e.g. heat from a fire applied to the ball).
"Work" then, in your sense, is the application of an object's actuality (being) to another object's potential, making it actual. A machine is potentially a machine when it's switched off, it's actually a machine when it's switched on by another actuality (e.g. engineer).
And then you get into full hylomorphism, the four different types of causality, and all sorts of other things in the extraordinarily sophisticated classical (Platonic/Aristotelian/Scholastic) philosophy, in relation to which most modern philosophy is like a child's finger-painting.
Perceptions, then, come and go. Can we say that they're caused? We can remain agnostic as to what, exactly, the cause is, but there must be one, yes?
If you say "there must be one", then you imply necessity in relation to what you have described as contingent, the perception. Since a cause is required to bring about the contingent thing, then causation is implied here.
Perhaps the difficulty is with "cause." I only mean that for this perception of this tree, the tree is sina qua non. I'm giving no account as to how it works, simply that it does. We could parse it: no light, no perception - I can't see the tree. Light (then) reflects off the tree into my eye, and I see it : I perceive it.
I cannot agree with this description of perception, because I have all sorts of things in my dreams, people, cars, buildings, and trees. Of course we commonly differentiate between things in dreams and things in perceptions, by saying that in the case of perception there is something present to the senses, and there is no such thing present to the senses in dreaming, but this does not dismiss the example, which indicates that objects present to the mind are created by the systems of the being which presents these objects to the mind, not by some external things.
So my argument is that your claim "no light, no perception" though it is correct, because perception is defined in such a way as to require sensation, does not amount to "no light, no tree", because a tree might appear in a dream. And, my argument concerns the real existence of objects. My claim is that the living being creates the object. As the creator of the object, it is the cause of existence of the objects which appear in the perception, just like it is the cause of existence of the objects which appear in dreams.
We affirmed above that when anyone says they see a tree, the one thing that does not happen is that they see a tree, agreed? There's a process, not well understood, that we call seeing the tree. But whatever it is, it involves something - we call it a tree. Is this MU's difficulty, on this understanding of cause? He (MU) appears to say that I create my own perceptions, and not only does the tree have nothing to do with it, but that apparently there ain't no tree.
No, that's not what I am claiming. What I say is that in creating perceptions, just like in creating things in the world with one's hands, we work with raw materials to bring about the product. So in creating perceptions, the living being works with raw materials to produce the object, as the image, which is present to the mind. In the case of dreaming the raw materials used are different from the raw materials used in perception, but this does not mean that the object is not created by the being in each of the two cases.
The claim that the raw materials are the cause of the product would indicate a gross misunderstanding of what is going on. The fact is that the working being may create all sort of different products with all sorts of different raw materials, as is evident from my example of dreaming, as well as the various different senses which produce distinct images of the world.
Let's suppose it real, it then puts the question to MU: either it (MU's experience of being whopped and perhaps returning the favour) is all in his head, or he has to 'fess up and say plain that something about it came from "outside" and caused his perception. Which is it?
Clearly the pain derived from being whopped is a product of the living body. To move backward down the causal chain, looking for an outside cause, is to take a step away from understanding the cause of the pain. Since you are requesting that we move in this direction, which is the direction opposed to the direction which leads to understanding, I think you are leading us toward misunderstanding.
You’re quoted statement seems to me to only be an incomplete statement. Imo, more completely stated, “Phenomena are mind-caused re-presentations of the mind-independent noumena regarded”. This where mind is readily understood in the commonsense fashion and where phenomena and noumena are understood in Kantian manners—who after all popularized the concept of phenomena within our modern lexicon, tmk [though, like Wayfarer, I’m preferential to the ancient, original understanding of these two terms; e.g., a word on the tip of one’s tongue is a given (a particular known meaning) apprehended by the mind (nous, hence noumenal) devoid of any phenomena (i.e., appearances, either visual or auditory), making the meaning of this word at the tip of one's tounge a purely noumenal apprehension in the ancient sense of these terms… this, however, being a foreign interpretation to our modern Kantian understandings of phenomena and noumena ... and I'll here stick to the Kantian meaning of these terms]. At any rate, as per Kantianism, members of the same species will share common mind-caused phenomena to re-present the same noumena, which will be independent of the individual or collective minds pertaining to members of the given species. The more different two species are, the more different their mind-caused phenomena in relation to the same independent noumenon will be; yet all species—trees, ants, humans, etc.—will perceive the same noumena in terms of its solidity and location, for example (where it to be a solid, e.g., a boulder [trees do perceive/sense boulders and react to them in their root growth).
To me at least, the phenomenal is mind-dependent, as MU states ... but not the Kantian noumena it re-presents to the perceiver.
Also, experienced phenomena (contra abstract understanding of phenomena at large) will always be experienced as a direct presentation of what is, as gurugoeorge states … but this does not of itself make phenomena when abstractly addressed non-representational of what is regarded.
BTW, don’t have much to argue in the being/process debate. Still, whether it holds any inkling of ontological value or is strictly a poetic metaphor unrelated to the ontic which it addresses, I’ve always found it interesting that the being/process dichotomy within metaphysics can be easily compared to the particle/wave duality in QM—such that whether it is being or else process/working will be to a large extent dependent on contexts of observation. Though of in one way a rock is a bundle of ever-changing processes; thought of in another way a rock is a (relatively) changeless thing; but you can’t think of a rock in both ways at the same time and in the same way. You can maybe differentiate aspects of it in this way, such as its atoms and their activity—neither of which would then be the rock as gestalt entity/process—but then these atoms too are either things or processes, and so on ad infinitum. Same then applies to whether a machine is a set of workings or, else, a thing, imo. But again, since I don't now know how to evidence that this observation has any ontological value, I wouldn't know how to debate it.
Reply to tim wood I think there's two ways to understand "phenomena are presentation" - either in an idealistic/phenomenological sense, in which there's nothing (or there cannot be shown to be anything) "out there, behind" the phenomenon; or in what I believe to be the true sense, in which the "out there" is in causal continuity with the "in here."
One might say, in a trope, that the idealistic/phenomenological view is "thin" (notionally a sort of flat surface, like a map, beheld by a hovering, abstract, point of view) whereas the correct view is "thick" (a participated-in "rod" with beholder and beheld as two poles of one existent).
An old thought just came to me, one can apply issues of phenomena on an impartiality spectrum—such that most partial is fully limited to what is for the individual and only for the individual and what is most impartial equally is for all sentient beings regardless of type, degree, and quality of awareness.
At the most partial level, it is the phenomena I perceive. Less partially, it is the phenomena which we perceive—and the inclusivity of this “we” will indicate the degree of impartiality relative the the most partial perspective of the “I” when solely addressed. For example, this "we" could be one and one’s buddy, one’s group(s), one’s total species, all mammals, etc. Lastly, that which is equally applicable to all sentience is most impartial relative to any particular sentience.
Replace “impartiality” with “objectivity”—as can be quite validly done—and you can then address objective phenomena … as long as this objectivity is not addressed in terms of an absolute but, instead, in terms of being relative to the inclusiveness of all sentient beings addressed.
From this, we then can validly address objects as objectively manifesting and as holding objective phenomenal properties relative to the human species. Whichever properties are present to other species of life will then be more impartial/objective … until we arrive at things such as natural laws that address without any contradiction why things are as they are--such as why the moon’s presence needs to be even were all sentience to be sleeping due to the many causal factors which the moon manifests upon everything else, from ocean tides to, if I'm not mistaken, at least some circadian rhythms which occur even when we’re sleeping.
This, of course, in some ways might be contradictory to what many/most? nowadays understand by “objective reality” … but I find that it yet holds validity as an interpretation of objectivity, hence the objective world, and, consequently, of physical objects.
Via this interpretation of "objectivity as impartiality", one then can cogently address things such as the objective certainty of objective phenomena; e.g. it is objectively certain (and not my illusion) that the tree with green leaves is taller than the gray tree next to it which is devoid of leaves.
Also, from a Kantian point of view, such an understanding of the the objective world, when addressed from a fully impartial pov, would strictly consist of noumenal givens which our mind re-presents to us via mind-dependent/created phenomena.
If there are intrinsic errors found in this reasoning, please let me know.
From his practical knowledge, we gather that, as a practical matter, none of this matters. The tree is a tree; the loaf of bread is just that; his table of friends - his biography tells us that however untraveled he was, he was also sociable and enjoyed company - were just as they seemed. What then of noumena?
It is the ancient question of 'reality and appearance' - so it's not just something that can brushed off.
The very notion of 'the noumenal' arose out of the attempt to make sense out of the riot of phenomena - to search for the order, the logos, that causes things to be as they are. In that sense, very much the precursor to science itself, although in those days, the questions also always involved what would now be regarded as questions of quality and meaning, which are nowadays relegated to 'the subjective'.
[quote=Tim Wood]I'm in this thread because of a recent wrestling match with a small but (imo) good book, The Phenomena of Awareness, C. Tougas.[/quote]
Terrific book, by the look of it. The beginning of Chapter Two has been a focus of mine since joining philosophy forums; the point about 'the nature of =' is something I have often (and usually unsuccessfully) laboured to make. it is a delight to read such a succinct exposition. And it's in my uni library! :party:
Actually, no matter. If a perception is caused by something present to the senses, then what is it that is present to the senses?
The point I am making is that it is incorrect to say that a perception is "caused" by the thing which is present to the senses. Do you not understand sensation as an activity of living beings? And isn't the act of sensing the cause of a sense perception? The living being is sensing, and this act of sensing is the cause of what you call "a perception". The external thing which is being sensed (and may well be passive) does not cause the perception, the sensing activity of the sensing being causes the perception.
Compare this to other activities which sentient beings are involved in. A human being builds a house. Would you say that the wood causes the existence of the house? Or is it the constructive activity of the human being which causes the existence of the house? Likewise, a human being sees a tree. Would you say that it is the tree which causes the perception of the tree, or is it the constructive, sensing activity of the human body which causes the perception of the tree?
If you get to the point of understanding that the sensing activity of the sentient being is the real activity which causes the existence of a sense perception, you might come to realize that it is not at all necessary that the external thing which is represented in the sense perception is even similar to the representation in perception. For instance, the word "tree", though it is used by the sentient being to represent the external thing, is not at all similar to the visual image. The thing which represents is not at all similar to the thing represented. So we ought not think that the external thing which we call 'tree" is even similar to the visual image which represents it in sense perception.
If a "system of the being," how does that work; what gets it going?
Well isn't this one of the mysteries of life? How is it that a living being is self-moving? How is it that the will is free? But we can easily understand that it is so, without understanding how it is so. One can understand that water freezes when it gets cold without understanding how it is so.
. Question: Kant famously denied knowledge to make room for faith. It's clear to me he denied scientific knowledge (of speculative matters) to make room for faith. I argue he did not in any way deny or intend to deny practical knowledge with respect to faith; indeed, he needed it to ground faith. Yes?
Kant denied the rationalistic arguments for the existence of God, he did not deny God. He denied the possibility of religious knowledge in order to safeguard faith, "in order to make room for faith". He did not challenge the intelligibility of religious doctrine, just that their truth or falsity could be known.
Faith for Kant is justified consent which is rooted the needs of practical life where faith binds us to morality through our free acts of the will. His linking of morality/religion gives (practical) knowledge a distinctively intersubjective status, where we legislate for all members of the 'Kingdom of Ends"
Reply to tim wood I'm not very well versed in that aspect of Kant (I've only really delved into him from a narrow angle on his epistemology as such), but my understanding is that he denied that scientific (which in contemporary terms meant demonstrable-with-certainty) knowledge was possible about speculative/faith matters, yes; but I'm not sure what he thought the relation of practical knowledge was to faith. Off the top of my head I'd say you're probably right, and I don't see any reason why they would clash in terms of his philosophy.
No problem here, for me. Umm, maybe one. If the phenomenal is mind-dependent, then what does "experienced phenomena" mean?
We do not need to hold concrete particulars of sight in order to contemplate sight in abstract terms. Same applies for the concrete particulars of hearing, taste, touch, smell, proprioception, etc., i.e. to all phenomena. For example, we could contemplate visual phenomena in abstract ways as manifesting from multiple vantages—e.g. an ant’s, a cat’s, and a human’s—toward any particular object without needing to invoke particular examples of the sight all three of these beings concretely see.
Hence, by “experienced phenomena” I was intending to distinguish phenomena as it is directly experienced from the same phenomena as it can be abstractly thought about with or without concrete examples.
I understand that there could yet be confusions all the same with the Kantian notions of phenomena—as in, within Kantianism, abstractions are experienced phenomena too (although not in the original ancient sense of phenomena, in which abstractions devoid of concrete examples would be experienced noumena). Still, the experience of that which is seen is not the same as the experience of an abstract contemplation regarding the contents of sight in general which is devoid of visualized concrete particulars.
So, in immediate experience, the green leaf seen is a direct presentation of the green leaf out there. In abstract contemplation, however, my seeing of a green leaf is a re-presentation of the object out there which to me and all other like sentience results in a green appearance. The former is what occurs in what I termed “experienced phenomena”. The latter is what occurs when we abstractly contemplate the nature of phenomena.
An old thought just came to me, one can apply issues of phenomena on an impartiality spectrum—such that most partial is fully limited to what is for the individual and only for the individual and what is most impartial equally is for all sentient beings regardless of type, degree, and quality of awareness.
At the most partial level, it is the phenomena I perceive. Less partially, it is the phenomena which we perceive—and the inclusivity of this “we” will indicate the degree of impartiality relative the the most partial perspective of the “I” when solely addressed. For example, this "we" could be one and one’s buddy, one’s group(s), one’s total species, all mammals, etc. Lastly, that which is equally applicable to all sentience is most impartial relative to any particular sentience.
Replace “impartiality” with “objectivity”—as can be quite validly done—and you can then address objective phenomena … as long as this objectivity is not addressed in terms of an absolute but, instead, in terms of being relative to the inclusiveness of all sentient beings addressed.
From this, we then can validly address objects as objectively manifesting and as holding objective phenomenal properties relative to the human species. Whichever properties are present to other species of life will then be more impartial/objective … until we arrive at things such as natural laws that address without any contradiction why things are as they are--such as why the moon’s presence needs to be even were all sentience to be sleeping due to the many causal factors which the moon manifests upon everything else, from ocean tides to, if I'm not mistaken, at least some circadian rhythms which occur even when we’re sleeping.
I think this is descriptive of the stance of natural sciences, is it not? This is not a criticism but a reflection on what actually is being analysed.
To elucidate: I have previously cited a passage from Bryan Magee's book on Schopenhauer, which can be understood as a criticism of scientific realism (an example here.)
However, even though this appears to be an idealist argument, I add that within the context of this kind of analysis, we're considering mind as THE mind - not your mind, or my mind, but a h. sapiens mind. So this means that it's not idealist in the sense that many would naturally assume, i.e. dependent on an individual mind. It's more that, as you and I are instances of a kind, namely, h. sapiens, then we share a certain reality. But that reality is not wholly or simply objective, given, or 'out there'. Whereas, because of the way moderns tend to parse experience, it is naturally presumed that what is 'out there' are material or energetic phenomena, whilst 'mind' is 'in here' as a private or subjective realm.
Then there's the fact that we're culturally-modern English-speaking humans as well. So there's a biological factor - h. sapiens have certain biologically-endowed attributes - but also cultural factors, such as mental constructs, paradigms, belief systems, and so on, which inform judgement.
And within that whole complex, there are greater and lesser 'degrees of objectivity' - that is what science is especially useful for finding out. Because science agrees on a method, and on common units of measurement, and a way of checking results and so on, science is able to discover things which are true from the most general possible viewpoint. And that, I think, is what you're referring to when you say 'we then can validly address objects as objectively manifesting and as holding objective phenomenal properties relative to the human species.'
But I think 'transcendental philosophies' wish to go beyond even that. I suppose you could say, Kant tried to show that you couldn't go beyond it, in the sense of knowing or demonstrating what could be beyond it, other than by showing that what we think we know of a supposedly purely external or objective domain, is in some sense constituted by the knowing of it.
I think this is descriptive of the stance of natural sciences, is it not?
Your comments seem about right to me.
That stated, to my mind, the concept of objectivity which I’ve tried to articulate does not of itself make an ontological commitment regarding whether or not minds as we know them—or even any conception of Mind with a capital “M”—are required for the physical to be. In other words, I currently believe it can equally apply to systems of idealism as much as it can apply to systems of physicalism. Notwithstanding, yes, what I previously described does very much take into account the objectivity of the empirical sciences, this due to these sciences being phenomena founded (i.e., empirical).
Yet the same principle of objectivity as impartiality can also be applied to non-Kantian notions of noumena, as in basic geometric forms and rudimentary mathematical relations between quantities which are only capable of being apprehended by the intellect—and can so be in purely abstract forms. Or to the principles of thought.
And, from the stance of my own beliefs: It would be a stretch—and I’m not interested in here arguing for the case—but one can also apply this objectivity-impartially equivalence to the notion of an objective good—in the Platonic and Neo-Platonic sense. To give an overall gist of this approach: what do all sentience desire/intent/want? This can wind its way toward what Buddhists address as a liberation from suffering—or, imo more formally, from obstructions to one’s will being fulfilled as one intends it fulfilled. Then there’s the issue of what such state of fully (or at least optimally) liberated being might ontically be and, once appraised, how it might be best pursued. As one example—a bit spiritual for the atheistic folks, I would assume—this could be a state of perfect non-duality; e.g., Buddhist notions of Nirvana or Neo-Platonic notions of “the One”. None of this is here conclusive, obviously; but, again, the impartiality/objectivity equivalence makes such sort of thinking feasible to me. For example, all subjects (or partial, ego-centric beings) are subjects of both physical objectivity/impartiality to which they conform—this being the world we experience phenomenally (e.g., truth being a conforming of beliefs and statements to that which objectivity is)—as well as being subjects to metaphysical objectivity/impartiality—this being quite a bit harder to succinctly specify in any meaningful way, but to me a) it is by definition not itself a subject, b) it incorporates the striven for end of liberation from suffering previously mentioned, and c) it is an Aristotelian-like telos/final cause via which the physical world is in large part determined in a manner fully compatible with the freewill of agents. Anyway, it’s what I’m working on … and it’s quite the headache. What can I say, a well supported value theory is important to me.
I mentioned this to try to illustrate that this notion of objectivity I’ve been working with in no way specifies what might otherwise be termed scientism—I won’t address scientific realism other than to say that any scientific realism that cannot properly incorporate value theory misses the mark, imo--but yes, imo, it is very much in tune with what the empirical sciences seek and often discover in their endeavors.
It seemed to me to especially fit into the nature of objective phenomena that was being discussed in the thread.
Apropos, having looked at the link you’ve provided, what do you make of Kant’s theorizing of the Nebular hypothesis? To me it so far indicates that he did not take the view that minds as we know them need to be in order for the physical to be. I’m speculating without any evidence that maybe he held some form of pan-something (panpsychism, pansemiosis, something) as a precursor to what we now can more readily talk about, this as an aspect of his transcendental idealism. Wouldn’t mind hearing about differing opinions on Kant’s upholding of the solar system’s formation in such manner … if it doesn’t deviate too much from the thread’s theme.
At the most partial level, it is the phenomena I perceive. Less partially, it is the phenomena which we perceive—and the inclusivity of this “we” will indicate the degree of impartiality relative the the most partial perspective of the “I” when solely addressed. For example, this "we" could be one and one’s buddy, one’s group(s), one’s total species, all mammals, etc. Lastly, that which is equally applicable to all sentience is most impartial relative to any particular sentience.
Replace “impartiality” with “objectivity”—as can be quite validly done—and you can then address objective phenomena … as long as this objectivity is not addressed in terms of an absolute but, instead, in terms of being relative to the inclusiveness of all sentient beings addressed.
I think that there has to be some sort of kind of progression, a semiotic which I don't think is caught in the conception of a spectrum. We all start with the phenomenal... we learn a language which combines phenomenal sounds with mental meanings and enables our ability to communicate of our ideas with others, this is the basis for developing ideals which enable us to immediate categorize the phenomenal as well as enabling our scientific determination of the underling reasons why the phenomenal (physical or mental) appears as it does.
If the tree-in-itself really is as we perceive it, then we've gained, but not more than we already have. If it isn't, well, first question would be, how do we know it isn't. Second, what difference does it make?
I think this is too black and white. It fails to capture the possibility that the tree is really in accordance with my perceiving of it, but that it does not consist merely in my perceiving of it. MU likewise speaks dualistically when he asks whether the perception is caused by the phenomenon or caused by the percipient. Why must it be one or the other? The perception is the relation or interaction between the phenomenon and the percipient from the percipient's point of view. The whole is the condition for the actuality of perception, and perception is just one part of the activity of the whole.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 12, 2018 at 02:13#1712220 likes
That is, since you're so clear that the external whatever-it-is-if-it-is is not what we make of it, then how do you know what it isn't?
I'm not saying that the external whatever it is is not what we make of it. I said it's not necessarily similar to how we represent it, just like the word "tree" is not similar to a tree. So I don't get your question. I know that "tree" is not "grass", because these two representations are different. I also know that my perception of a tree is different from my perception of grass. So I can say that the tree is not grass. But this does not mean that the tree, as it is, is not completely different from my perception of a tree, like the word "tree' is completely different from my perception of a tree.
A long question is possible here - who needs that? Maybe this: what do you make of the idea, that I call Kantian, of practical knowledge, and that it is dependable? My own view is to grant that (in terms of vision) we do not see the tree in all of its glory, but what we do see is accurate, its deficiencies more-or-less understood. Practical knowledge is, then, an assurance. And for the most part - the practical part - it doesn't even need an asterisk. So, practical knowledge, yes? Or no?
No, I don't agree with this at all. What we see of the tree is not accurate at all. Science tells us that the tree consists of all sorts of different molecules, each of which have different atoms themselves composed of different parts. We don't see this at all. The tree looks completely solid yet science tells me that there is much space between the parts
Furthermore, what you call "practical knowledge" is limited by its relation to the particular application, and is therefore extremely incomplete, deficient. For example, ancient people might have had enough knowledge concerning trees to dry the wood and use it to make fires. Yes, practical knowledge is dependable, dry the wood and use it for fuel. But this tells us nothing about shaping the wood and using it to build houses and furniture. This requires further knowledge. Beyond this comes the knowledge that we can make paper out of wood, and now we can do all sorts of things with wood fibre and the various molecules which can be separated out of the wood. So practical knowledge doesn't get us anywhere beyond the particular activity which is being carried out. We need theoretical knowledge to dream up all sorts of new things that we can do. That is why we need to think beyond what is immediately evident to our senses.
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Metaphysician UndercoverApril 12, 2018 at 23:54#1714360 likes
Reply to tim wood
A tree is a type, therefore "tree" is conceptual. I may judge something as being a tree, or you may judge something as being a tree, but how would such a judgement make it a tree?
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Metaphysician UndercoverApril 13, 2018 at 11:09#1715430 likes
Reply to tim wood
Why do I need to say either one? And of what use would such an answer be? Let's first decide what it means to be, to exist, then the question "does anything exist" might be meaningful.
Comments (73)
We are designated 'human beings'. It has always seemed important, to me, that we are called 'beings' - I think that word, which is so everyday and taken-for-granted, actually has great significance. I mean, what are designated 'beings'? Presumably, if you're a naturalist, only intelligent animals, including h. sapiens., although this fact doesn't cast much light on the question of the meaning of 'being'.
Anyway, I think your OP is asking an interesting question and one that I would respond to by initially comparing ancient Greek and Indian philosophy. As is well-known, the ancient Greek philosophers laid the groundwork for what was to become science (although in those times, there wasn't really a distinction between science and philosophy). But certainly such figures as Archimedes, Animaxander, Thales, Pythagoras, and Aristotle were precursors of what would become known later as 'natural scientists', who were motivated to ask very broad questions about 'how things can be the way they are' - what are the governing principles of motion and such questions, which were to lay the groundwork for what was to become physics, chemistry, and so on. After all, all of the subjects with the suffix -logy, were descended from the Greek exploration of the 'logos' of various subject matter domains.
Contrast that with ancient Indian thought, which, whilst it had a naturalistic or scientific side, was mainly concerned with existential questions - the Buddha asking, for instance, 'what is the cause of suffering?' Within this domain, the raw data are not objective, but experiential - you're asking questions about the nature of experience, not what drives changes in nature. (Of course, questions of the meaning of being are also represented in the Greek tradition, especially in the Platonic dialogues. But overall I think it's fair to say that the Greeks were more naturalistically oriented than was India.)
Or consider the Hebrew prophetic tradition, which is different again, being mainly concerned with the relation of God and mankind.
It's often difficult to separate all of these strands of thought, as they have intermingled and given rise to many kinds of hybrid traditions (such as the way in which Greek philosophical thought became incorporated into Christian theology or more recently, by the way that Eastern philosophical perspectives are being incorporated by physics.)
But, having made that basic distinction, I think that the 'way things work' questions are very much the domain of science and engineering (especially now in a culture that is so utterly shaped by technology and science.) So I think those who are engaged in those fields don't have much interest in or sympathy for questions about 'the meaning of being'. They're practical types, that like to get things done, make progress, solve practical problems; they're likely to think of philosophy as 'navel-gazing'.
Whereas the 'what does life mean?' types of question are more the domain of philosophy, religion, art, drama and literature. How these two broad cultural attitudes fit together, or whether they complement or compete, is the subject of a vast amount of commentary and literature (one notable example being C P Snow's essay on The Two Cultures.) And that is indeed a major cultural dynamic which I think you're reflecting.
Quoting tim wood
I think here you're conflating these two 'domains of discourse' in a not very satisfactory way by using this analogy. The analogy of mechanism is very characteristic of modern science (as distinct from post-modernism). In any case, engines are manufactured objects which are designed by humans to execute a function. Beings are of a different ontological order - and the very term 'onto-' is derived from 'being'. Nowadays the whole distinction between machines and beings has been blurred by the invention of computers, but in my mind this reflects a deficient understanding of the nature of being. I think we have lost sight of the ontological significance of 'being'.
To understand the question of 'the meaning of being' is indeed a deep philosophical, not a scientific or technological, question. In recent philosophy, this question has been debated most meaningfully by Heidegger and the hermeneutic tradition in Continental philosophy. It goes right back to the origin of philosophy itself, but I think it is much more on the existential, rather than the naturalist, side of the ledger.
I don't think of it quite the same way you have presented it. Thinking about this problem in terms of reality which you ended up at, the following is my rough understanding. You stated:
to my mind the phenomenological is reality. It is the only thing we can say we really know (and while we can be wrong about what it entails, we cannot be wrong about what we actually experience), the world literally presents itself to us. Science explains why reality appears to us the way it does, but that explanation is dependent on what was experienced or observed.
Being does not reside behind us, it is in front of us, hidden in plain sight, in our experience of reality, which is always becoming. What we abstract and differentiate from experience is the commonality, consistency and coherence in what we observe from things like trains, a commonality that extends everywhere from high speed Maglevs to the steam locomotive. The only reality attributable to an 'essence' as such is its virtual existence, which makes the phenomenal understandable, and which enables it to be communicated.
Spirit is a virtually real construction, in the same way logic, and mathematics are virtually objectively real.
Well, Buddhists, as is well known, deny that there is anything static or changeless. And Heraclitus is often compared to Buddhism and to Lao Tzu; the case has been made that they all anticipate what is come to be known as 'process philosophy' and there's some truth in that. Nevertheless, Buddhists also recognise that there is a 'beyond' which transcends all the vicissitudes of worldly life.
Quoting tim wood
But this is also a deceptive answer, because science deals only with objects, with what can be measured, what can be known objectively. Philosophy has a broader scope than that, because it asks the kinds of questions you're now asking, about the nature of knowledge itself, or meaning itself. To seek scientific responses to philosophical quandaries is to fall into the scientism trap. But beings are not objects, but also subjects of experience, and the 'nature of being' is therefore not necessarily an objectively-answerable question.
There are very many schools of thought which try to address the question of the nature of being, but the most common approach nowadays is to actually not even ask the question, or to pretend it's not even a real question (as per the 'What is Scientism' thread; see this essay, in particular the passage under the heading 'The Spirituality of Secularity'.)
The reason it's deceptive is because our idea of what is normal or what is real, is itself deeply culturally conditioned, masquerading as 'objective third-person knowledge', the kind of thing that 'everyone knows'. Being philosophical, is being critical of that.
Some Buddhist schools taught that the underlying nature of existence is actually a succession of minute instants which arise and pass away in rapid succession, each instant giving rise to (= conditioning) the next. One of the things that the Buddha is said to know is the precise duration of those moments.
(This is sometimes referred to as a form of 'atomism' with the caveat that the 'atoms' in this case are of momentary duration - referred to, confusingly, as 'dharmas' - which are not the imperishable particles of atomism, which have always been rejected by Buddhism as a matter of principle. This kind of analysis was associated with an early school called the Sarvastivada, but in any case, later developments in Buddhism tended to undercut this approach although I do know that it is still [s]taught[/s] mentioned at the popular 10-day Insight Meditation retreats founded by Goenka).
Quoting tim wood
I wouldn't concur with that. I think of 'spirit' as a gloss on 'the unconditioned' - that which escapes all conceptual analysis.
Here's a quote:
— Ud 8.3
Now, it has been suggested that this passage in the Buddhist texts can be compared to the 'wisdom uncreate' of the theistic traditions; however Buddhists will generally object to that interpretation, as they scrupulously differentiate themselves from theistic religions. Be that as it may, in all the traditional philosophies, there is something like 'the unconditioned' or 'the uncreated'. I suppose in the context of Western philosophy it is rather more like the mystical notion of 'Godhead':
[quote=Wikipedia]Godhead is the divinity or substance (ousia) of God, the substantial impersonal being of God, as opposed to the individual persons or hypostases of the Trinity; in other words, the Godhead refers to the "what" of God, and God refers to the "who" of God. The concept is especially important in Christian negative theology, e.g., the theology of the Godhead according to Pseudo-Dionysius. [/quote]
Certainly dogmas can be constructed around such ideas, but the whole point of such a being is that it is not something constructed or created - it simply is. (I personally think the whole idea of 'the uncreated' has been progressively forgotten by Western philosophy, much to its discredit.)
Quoting tim wood
Right. That was very much Husserl's approach, and phenomenology generally. I am not that well versed in phenomenology, but I admire what I know of Husserl.
Our self, the I our virtual organism is constructed through our experiences in the world where the other is of dominant importance, as Rimbaud put it "I is another". Our virtual self is constructed by and in our interactions with others from the get go, we become a virtual self due to our intersubjective experiences. How we approach the world, how we construct conceptions about the world are based on what we have learned from others, filtered and automatically reconstituted, self actualized, by our prior experiences, our feelings, wants and desires.
There are instinctive aspects to this ability in my estimation. The way we think and infer, our regard towards pleasure and away from pain, form the 'mortar' for our construction and are common/typical to how we are constituted as a species.
The phenomenal train is based on our idealization about what constitutes trains, which enable us to recognize them as such. Its ideal is constructed virtually. The virtualization of phenomena is based on our history of observations of trains, from which we infer or add to previously learnt commonalities. The train does not proceed from transcendental ideals, rather it starts in the world and ends up being virtually understood by our construction. It is only by taking apart, the abstraction or reduction of these commonalities, that ideal components can be inferred as objective/shared. The shape of a ball, pyramid or anything else is based on its form, which we raise to the level of being objectively virtual due to its ability to provide commonly understood, intersubjective coherence to our experiences. This process is, I think, similar to how we can treat our self as an object.
My admittedly rough thought is that we move from not from the transcendental presuppositions as a basis for experience but rather from phenomenal experience providing the presuppositions for transcendental ideals. Reality is not hidden or occluded, it is experienced as such. Our and science's attempt is to explain why we experience what we experience, the ontological determination of that 'why' is dependent on the reality of what experienced and not the other way around, in my opinion.
It might be pertinent to note (don't want to surprise you latter, I already did that with someone else...ha, ha) that I am sorta Panpsychist, While I don't believe that every atom is conscious, I do assert that matter over the course of billions of years obtained a vital structure, from which consciousness has evolved. Spirit has to come from somewhere, I don't believe we are deluded, spirit is and it seems to me, in a very materialistic way, that similar to gravity's relationship with matter, the correct structure of matter gives rise to life, to spirit.
K?
:)
In my view, everything is constantly in relative flux with other things (on a macro and micro level). So some x "working" or "being" in particular ways are identical ways of describing states of change or motion. It obviously depends on what you or others mean by "working" and "being"; but I interpret your initial questions (in the quote) as asking, ontologically, "how do things exist/behave?"
I suggest that the phenomenal is real and that the reductions or abstractions we derived from the manifest are virtually ideal. What we have learned determines how these ideals effect our lives. The societal discourses we learn, share and contribute to enable us to have common values and explain a shared world. The effect is that of a coherent whole, whose qualities form the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period...this what is meant by spirit as a social construction in my opinion.
I don't agree, since, using your analogy, "taste" refers to brain states, and brain states are collections of chemicals/particles, in my view. (With the proviso that "explanations" are subjective.)
Also, "usefulness" is subjective. It might be useful, for example, just to ascertain the properties of matter that make-up human beings.
Quoting tim wood
Focusing on how something works/behaves is just focusing on how particular properties function.
Quoting tim wood
In my ontology, (a) all existents are continually changing/moving, and (b) change or motion are identical. In other words, to exist is to change. Existents are collections of properties. So properties are what change. For example, small particles are changing on a micro level, and larger objects (as a collection of particles) are changing on a macro level.
Quoting tim wood
Why would we call what changes "spirit"?
One reason I have gone to the phenomenal is its objective certainty. While we may be certainly wrong in what we perceive, we can't un-sense it, it may not be but it certainly can't be un-sensed. Descartes's point of certainty may be absolute but leaves us in a subjective waste land. The phenomenal , unlike the Cogito, can be shared. Did you see that cherry tree, yes it is beautiful I especially like it white blossoms against the stark gray background of early spring. Of course I could be feverish, delusional or tripping, but you can tell me that I am mistaken, and together we can work it out. Unlike the solipsistic nightmare of Descartes's certainty, shared phenomenally is objectively certain real. The certainty of the phenomenal is capable of being shared, corrected and enhanced.
I think an epistemological foundation is necessary and must be ascertained on an intersubjective level. If we believe Kant we can't know the "in itself" the objective, instead we determine the transcendental presumptions that are needed to account for our experience of the world . It is not really an ontology as such and I concur however I think the phenomenal realism I am thinking about has a transcendental character which based on its concurrence with others. Therefore it is both immanent (in the world) and transcendent (shared with others) at the same time in a shared world.
Spirit in itself is a dynamic whole, the affirmation all we have derived, learnt, remembered, shared. Its dynamism works in our life in concert with others...this is its affirmative effect I think. Spirit's construction starts on day 1 and never ends until we end. I don't think that Spirit, as a 'thing' is possible to demonstrate because it is constantly changing, only partial view points are possible.
It is only in and through our relationship with others that fragments of our spirit can be shared, imparted, and understood by us and others. Our relationship with others is cemented in language, where we can phenomenally share meanings.
Eh? I was using "subjective" there just to clarify that explanations are subjective, since you wrote "the bucket of chemicals does not explain, for example, your taste in neckties." We/minds do the explaining between or regarding phenomena, not the things themselves. (Btw, subjective--the way I use the term--just refers to the location of the mental. Mental states are brain states. Brain states are collections of chemicals/particles/etc.)
Quoting tim wood
I was just following the distinction that you were making between what something is and how something functions. The distinction is a conceptual one (i.e. conceptualism) that minds focus on with regards to "things". We can focus on what things are made of; we can focus on how things function--what we choose to focus on is subjective (occrring in minds). The functioning of properties is an instrinsic property of properties. In other words, functioning is just how particular things change/move. You can't have properties not functioning in some way. That goes for inert or non-living things like rocks too.
By the way, I lean more towards "bundle theory" than "substratum theory". That is, things are just bundles of properties (functioning in particular ways).
Quoting tim wood
A thing is (a) a collection of properties (b) moving/changing dynamically in particular ways (c) relative to other properties within a thing, and relative to other external things. Change is just motion or movement or processes. Since it's relevant, functioning is about how particular things change/move/behave.
Quoting tim wood
The evidence is that when you look around things are changing/moving. Things decay. Things accelerate. Things disintegrate. Things develop, bloom, and wither. You can also see change occurring microscopically.
Quoting tim wood
No, ontologically, properties are physical components/aspects of matter/things.
Quoting tim wood
Thanks for the condescension. What you have helped me do however is give me more incentive to elucidate my views, so I'm sincerely grateful for the questions you pose. Also, I wouldn't say I don't like your (or others') arguments; rather, I don't agree with them.
Quoting tim wood
By "tub of guts" do you mean the biological properties of a human? Then yes--a human being is biological properties. I'm also not a realist when it comes to essentialism, in case you're inferring that. I'm a nominalist.
Quoting tim wood
Phenomenon, is by definition subjective, of the subject. I don't see how you manage to turn this around, and make the claim that it is objectively certain. Inter-subjectivity ("sharing") does not create objectivity (of the object). Human agreement does not ensure truth.
Objectivity in the sense of judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices
You are proceeding from "observed phenomena" (of the subject), to conclude "observable phenomena" (of the object). Isn't this like jumping across the is/ought divide? Observed phenomena is what is, and observable phenomena is what you conclude "ought to be", based on your observations. What produces the "objective certainty", that your conclusions of what ought to be, are correct?
I can and on occasion do confirm what I sense by discussing it with others who either agree or disagree, and typically we come to some sort of agreement. How do you do it?
What is your 'being'? Is it A being or being, the act of being from the point of view of ME being or an abstract being being.
And what is work? A person digging a ditch might be about to bury a friend and might not consider a ditch dug a work done, but rather - time to reel in the body. Is it work because it tires or because it is not something one wants to do or because it requires a lot of trouble?
It's your usage of the word "explain" there that I'm not clear about. I'd rather say that "collections of chemicals/particles/etc." are identical to phenomena. That's what phenomena is.
Quoting tim wood
Yes.
Quoting tim wood
That's a false dichotomy. There are (at least) three "picks": strict determinism (only one possibility or 100% probability), indeterminism (non-equiprobable probability), or "pure" randomness (equiprobability).
Quoting tim wood
That's question-begging.
I agree, but the issue is how do you derive objectivity (of the object) from agreement, convention, or inter-subjectivity? A group of people might all agree that the sun rises in the morning, and sets in the evening, and therefore the sun travels around the earth each day. But how would this agreement make it objectively certain that the sun travels around the earth each day?
But isn't this how we claim objective validity, the ability of another to verify my judgement, to replicate my results?
There are a number of different ways that "objective" is used, and we ought not equivocate. "Objective validity" does not mean "objective certainty" because a valid argument does not necessitate that the argument is sound.
And the word "objective" is thrown around as if it adds something. But if the argument is valid, then to say that it is objectively valid adds nothing. So if you are certain, does saying that you are objectively certain add anything? It appears to me like you are saying that your certainty is a conventional certainty. Your certainty is based in convention. You are certain that what you believe is correct, because it is what other people believe. How is this any type of real certainty?
K, conventional agreement about what is the case determines what is the case because others can verify what is the case for themselves and agree with me or not... how's that? It is a synthetic, not a deductive claim.
Well stated. I have been discussing a Buddhist aphorism on another forum, to whit: ‘from the very beginning, not a single thing is.’ The ‘is’ here, is the salient point: sure there are tables and chairs and all manner of other things [the ‘ten thousand things’ being the Chinese term for ‘phenomena’]. But what they really are, is the question. Of course, Buddhists have a pragmatic answer: chairs, you sit on, and tables, you eat from. But don’t let that fool you into believing that they’re really ‘chairs and tables’; they simply fulfil that function, which is what makes them what they are. But, of course, that leaves a very large question; or should, anyway.
I would think that the subject, being the perceiver, is the cause of the perception. The phenomenon is the perception, so it cannot be the cause of the perception because that would mean it causes itself.
Quoting tim wood
I don't see how you separate the phenomenon from the perception, unless you are saying that the phenomenon is the content of the perception. If this is the case, then it is pointless to ask about the content of the phenomenon because you are just starting an infinite regress of "content".
To avoid this infinite regress problem, let's just make the separation by saying that the phenomenon is the content of the perception. How do you think that the content of the perception might cause the perception? It still seems more sensible to assume that the perceiver is the cause of the perception, and the content is utilized by the perceiver, in forming the perception, like we use utilize matter in creating things. The conscious mind takes the content (phenomena), and forms a perception (objects).
But none of this really makes a lot of sense, because now the phenomenon, as content, is just like a formless matter which the perceiver manipulates in creating a perception. So why not just assume that "the phenomenon" and "the perception" refer to one and the same thing? This is objects perceived, within the mind of the conscious perceiver.
Quoting tim wood
Here is the problem right here. The object, being the phenomenon, the perception, is inherently within the subject, being the perceiver. But you want to position this object outside the perceiver, as "the tree". Where do you get the principles which allow you to place the object outside the mind of the subject. As an object is how the tree appears to the subject, it is not necessarily how the tree is "in itself". It may not be as an object at all. So we cannot position the object outside of the mind of the subject, because "an object" is what the perceiver creates in the mind, in the act of perceiving.
This is the problem with "objective certainty". We want to assume that how the subject perceives the world, as "objects" is how the world really is, independent of subjects. That is what we "want", therefore we want to validate "objects" as independent from subjects. So we appeal to an inter-subjectivity as described by Cavacava, and we insist that this inter-subjectivity, agreement and convention concerning "objects", manifests as an objectivity which is independent of the subjects' minds. But all this really is, is an agreement amongst subjects concerning the objects within their minds. It does not validate objects which are external and independent from human minds. It is just agreement.
So we must reconsider true "objective certainty". Since objects are proper only to the minds of individual subjects, then "objective certainty" is that certainty which is proper to individual subjects. There has been a philosophical movement, very evident in Wittgenstein's On Certainty, to bring certainty outside of the minds of individual subjects, to make it a property of the community, the society as a whole, inter-subjective certainty. But this is not a representation of certainty at all, it is an illusion of certainty, as if certainty could be the property of an object, in the sense of "it is certain that...".. It is really merely saying that I can be certain of something because others are certain of it. But because someone else is certain of something is not good reason to be certain of it yourself. To find true objective certainty, we must understand certainty itself, and certainty is a property of individuals. To assign certainty to anything other than individual subjects is to demonstrate a misunderstanding of certainty.
Correct.
Quoting tim wood
With the proviso that "bucket of chemicals" refers to "biological properties"; mental states are brain states, and brain states are biological properties. "Taste" refers to one's personal preferences regarding phenomena. Preferences, judgements, evaluations, etc. are mental states.
Quoting tim wood
I don't know why you'd think that intestines would cause one to favour neckties in the first place. It's the mind/brain that favours; the intestines can play a role though (if you're into eating neckties).
I'm not sure what you mean by "ground" and "account" there. Do you mean ontology of the engine (i.e. what kind of thing is it?) by "ground", and "explanation" for how the engine works re "account"?
Re the engine, the materials are fashioned by people to produce an engine, of course. It's not like the sub-atomic particles decide to become an engine. The functioning engine works within a system of other materials too--the gases and fuel, for example.
The point is that the "thing itself" is not an object. The object is produced in the mind of the perceiver, in the act of perception.
Quoting tim wood
This is where I strongly disagree. The perceiver causes the perception, as the agent in the act of perception. The thing being perceived does not cause the perception. The content of the perception may be associated with the thing being perceived, but this cannot be the cause of the perception, and this is demonstrated by the reality of hallucinations and dreams.
Quoting tim wood
The phenomenon is the perception. You would completely distort the philosophical meaning of "phenomenon" if you were to place the phenomenon outside the mind of the perceiver. That's why Kant distinguished what's out there, what you call "the tree itself", from the phenomena, as the noumena.
Quoting tim wood
That's exactly what I argued against. What you and Cavacava called "objective certainty" I would call a false certainty. True, real, certainty is proper to the individual subject alone; and therefore objective certainty is that certainty which occurs to the individual subject, by way of the reasoning of the individual, and not necessarily by way of consensus or community. Consensus and community may play a role in certainty, just like "what's out there" plays a role in perception, but real (and therefore objective) certainty is within the human subject, just like the phenomenal object is within the human subject.
No, it doesn't appear like we can get past this hurdle. I guess you haven't been reading my posts, or you would have noticed this problem already.
Let me leap in here with the following observation: that 'the tree' is indeed a complex of sensations, perceptions and judgements. Part of that is 'apperception': the recognition of it being 'a tree' and then 'this type of tree', and then 'this particular tree'. The mind does that automatically, according to its acculturation, background, conditioning, and so on. So representative realism might object: well, of course I sense the tree, but the tree is the cause of these sensations and perceptions; there is a real tree, over there, and my perceptions and sensations, within my mind.
But a counter-question to that is: what is the tree, outside or, or apart from, these sensations and judgements? How do we know the tree aside from how it appears to us? How do we see 'the real tree' as it is in itself, apart from how it appears to us. The Kantian answer to that is, we don't - we only ever know the tree as it appears to us. And I think that's important because it maintains the realisation that there must be a subjective pole to the act of knowledge even of the apparently objective domain. Whereas, representative realism tends to believe that there is an always-existing world of which our knowledge is a representation. (Good blog post on this point here.)
As for the meaning of phenomena and noumena - 'noumena' is derived from the seminal Greek word 'nous', which is 'mind' or 'intellect' but has connotations which are remote from the modern sense of those words. Recall that in ancient philosophy, ideal objects such as geometrical forms and numbers and the like, were known in a way that the knowledge of sensible particulars were not; that in knowing such things as mathematical certainties, the mind realises an immediate and apodictic certainty which is incapable of error. This is the origin of the idea of a priori truths although I suppose the ancients imbued this with a kind of mystical sense that we've now lost.
What I think is forgotten in modern discourse, is the sense in which the noumenal refers to an intelligible order. Originally, this was the locus of the distinction between reality and appearance (phaenomenon). So 'the real' was 'what was seen by "nous' ' which was of a different, and higher, order to what was seen by the senses; it was the ability of the philosopher to see the hidden order of things which could only be discerned by reason, and which was a separate and higher domain than that of the material world.
I think, overall, that this sense has tended to drop out of modern philosophy. Of course, in one sense, it has been preserved in science, in that science now purports to provide that insight into the 'real order of things', but at the same time, due to its emphasis on empiricism, which is essentially validation solely in terms of 'phenomenal appearances', it has lost that sense of there being an intelligible order of which the visible world is but a reflection.
"Lost" is an appropriate word here. The empiricism places an emphasis on the importance of the reality of the "external object" as sensed, thus denying the possibility that the mind may be mislead by sensation. So when the determined "real order of things", which is produced by intellectual endeavours such as mathematical formulations, is inconsistent with what is sensed, science is incapable of resolving the problem, lost.
The problem is really not very difficult to resolve though. It stems from a misunderstanding of the act of perception, sensation. The misunderstanding is as tim woods says, that the external object causes the perception. Once we recognize that it is the perceiving being which is causing the perception (as tim would say, the being is working), not the external world which causes the perception, then we can understand that the inconsistencies between the way the mind apprehends the world, and the way that the senses apprehend the world, are all due to the different ways that one working being may interpret the world.
I don't believe there's any good reason to think this. On the contrary, phenomena are all direct presentation. There is something like representation in the brain, but we don't have access to it (e.g. some configuration of neuronal firings may represent an object in some abacus-like calculation in the brain, but that's all "rough work" going on underneath conscious awareness). Consciousness isn't something locked inside the head, or in the brain, it's actually the name of a process (causal, physical process) that takes place between an object and a conscious object. The brain is a necessary part of it of course, but so is, e.g., the tree, the actual physical tree "out there." (But there's no "out there", the tree itself is part of the process.) Memory, dreams, reflections, are time-delayed perceptions, gerrymandered in various ways. (cf. Riccardo Manzotti for this "Process Externalism" - precursors being the New Realists, and a roughly similar contemporary theory from a scientific point of view being J J Gibson's theory of perception and "affordances.")
As to the rest of it, I think your problem was solved by Aristotle, in his distinction between actuality and potentiality (Act and Potency in the jargon). Aristotle harmonized Parmenides and Heraclitus by positing a kind of existence inbetween being (actuality) and nothing: potentiality. The range of potentialities an object has (e.g. of a rubber ball to melt, but not to sprout wings and fly) constitute the object's essence or nature, and causality is the transformation of one or more potentialities of an object into actualities, by the impingement of the actuality of another object (e.g. heat from a fire applied to the ball).
"Work" then, in your sense, is the application of an object's actuality (being) to another object's potential, making it actual. A machine is potentially a machine when it's switched off, it's actually a machine when it's switched on by another actuality (e.g. engineer).
And then you get into full hylomorphism, the four different types of causality, and all sorts of other things in the extraordinarily sophisticated classical (Platonic/Aristotelian/Scholastic) philosophy, in relation to which most modern philosophy is like a child's finger-painting.
If you say "there must be one", then you imply necessity in relation to what you have described as contingent, the perception. Since a cause is required to bring about the contingent thing, then causation is implied here.
Quoting tim wood
I cannot agree with this description of perception, because I have all sorts of things in my dreams, people, cars, buildings, and trees. Of course we commonly differentiate between things in dreams and things in perceptions, by saying that in the case of perception there is something present to the senses, and there is no such thing present to the senses in dreaming, but this does not dismiss the example, which indicates that objects present to the mind are created by the systems of the being which presents these objects to the mind, not by some external things.
So my argument is that your claim "no light, no perception" though it is correct, because perception is defined in such a way as to require sensation, does not amount to "no light, no tree", because a tree might appear in a dream. And, my argument concerns the real existence of objects. My claim is that the living being creates the object. As the creator of the object, it is the cause of existence of the objects which appear in the perception, just like it is the cause of existence of the objects which appear in dreams.
Quoting tim wood
No, that's not what I am claiming. What I say is that in creating perceptions, just like in creating things in the world with one's hands, we work with raw materials to bring about the product. So in creating perceptions, the living being works with raw materials to produce the object, as the image, which is present to the mind. In the case of dreaming the raw materials used are different from the raw materials used in perception, but this does not mean that the object is not created by the being in each of the two cases.
The claim that the raw materials are the cause of the product would indicate a gross misunderstanding of what is going on. The fact is that the working being may create all sort of different products with all sorts of different raw materials, as is evident from my example of dreaming, as well as the various different senses which produce distinct images of the world.
Quoting tim wood
Clearly the pain derived from being whopped is a product of the living body. To move backward down the causal chain, looking for an outside cause, is to take a step away from understanding the cause of the pain. Since you are requesting that we move in this direction, which is the direction opposed to the direction which leads to understanding, I think you are leading us toward misunderstanding.
You’re quoted statement seems to me to only be an incomplete statement. Imo, more completely stated, “Phenomena are mind-caused re-presentations of the mind-independent noumena regarded”. This where mind is readily understood in the commonsense fashion and where phenomena and noumena are understood in Kantian manners—who after all popularized the concept of phenomena within our modern lexicon, tmk [though, like Wayfarer, I’m preferential to the ancient, original understanding of these two terms; e.g., a word on the tip of one’s tongue is a given (a particular known meaning) apprehended by the mind (nous, hence noumenal) devoid of any phenomena (i.e., appearances, either visual or auditory), making the meaning of this word at the tip of one's tounge a purely noumenal apprehension in the ancient sense of these terms… this, however, being a foreign interpretation to our modern Kantian understandings of phenomena and noumena ... and I'll here stick to the Kantian meaning of these terms]. At any rate, as per Kantianism, members of the same species will share common mind-caused phenomena to re-present the same noumena, which will be independent of the individual or collective minds pertaining to members of the given species. The more different two species are, the more different their mind-caused phenomena in relation to the same independent noumenon will be; yet all species—trees, ants, humans, etc.—will perceive the same noumena in terms of its solidity and location, for example (where it to be a solid, e.g., a boulder [trees do perceive/sense boulders and react to them in their root growth).
To me at least, the phenomenal is mind-dependent, as MU states ... but not the Kantian noumena it re-presents to the perceiver.
Also, experienced phenomena (contra abstract understanding of phenomena at large) will always be experienced as a direct presentation of what is, as gurugoeorge states … but this does not of itself make phenomena when abstractly addressed non-representational of what is regarded.
BTW, don’t have much to argue in the being/process debate. Still, whether it holds any inkling of ontological value or is strictly a poetic metaphor unrelated to the ontic which it addresses, I’ve always found it interesting that the being/process dichotomy within metaphysics can be easily compared to the particle/wave duality in QM—such that whether it is being or else process/working will be to a large extent dependent on contexts of observation. Though of in one way a rock is a bundle of ever-changing processes; thought of in another way a rock is a (relatively) changeless thing; but you can’t think of a rock in both ways at the same time and in the same way. You can maybe differentiate aspects of it in this way, such as its atoms and their activity—neither of which would then be the rock as gestalt entity/process—but then these atoms too are either things or processes, and so on ad infinitum. Same then applies to whether a machine is a set of workings or, else, a thing, imo. But again, since I don't now know how to evidence that this observation has any ontological value, I wouldn't know how to debate it.
One might say, in a trope, that the idealistic/phenomenological view is "thin" (notionally a sort of flat surface, like a map, beheld by a hovering, abstract, point of view) whereas the correct view is "thick" (a participated-in "rod" with beholder and beheld as two poles of one existent).
( )
An old thought just came to me, one can apply issues of phenomena on an impartiality spectrum—such that most partial is fully limited to what is for the individual and only for the individual and what is most impartial equally is for all sentient beings regardless of type, degree, and quality of awareness.
At the most partial level, it is the phenomena I perceive. Less partially, it is the phenomena which we perceive—and the inclusivity of this “we” will indicate the degree of impartiality relative the the most partial perspective of the “I” when solely addressed. For example, this "we" could be one and one’s buddy, one’s group(s), one’s total species, all mammals, etc. Lastly, that which is equally applicable to all sentience is most impartial relative to any particular sentience.
Replace “impartiality” with “objectivity”—as can be quite validly done—and you can then address objective phenomena … as long as this objectivity is not addressed in terms of an absolute but, instead, in terms of being relative to the inclusiveness of all sentient beings addressed.
From this, we then can validly address objects as objectively manifesting and as holding objective phenomenal properties relative to the human species. Whichever properties are present to other species of life will then be more impartial/objective … until we arrive at things such as natural laws that address without any contradiction why things are as they are--such as why the moon’s presence needs to be even were all sentience to be sleeping due to the many causal factors which the moon manifests upon everything else, from ocean tides to, if I'm not mistaken, at least some circadian rhythms which occur even when we’re sleeping.
This, of course, in some ways might be contradictory to what many/most? nowadays understand by “objective reality” … but I find that it yet holds validity as an interpretation of objectivity, hence the objective world, and, consequently, of physical objects.
Via this interpretation of "objectivity as impartiality", one then can cogently address things such as the objective certainty of objective phenomena; e.g. it is objectively certain (and not my illusion) that the tree with green leaves is taller than the gray tree next to it which is devoid of leaves.
Also, from a Kantian point of view, such an understanding of the the objective world, when addressed from a fully impartial pov, would strictly consist of noumenal givens which our mind re-presents to us via mind-dependent/created phenomena.
If there are intrinsic errors found in this reasoning, please let me know.
It is the ancient question of 'reality and appearance' - so it's not just something that can brushed off.
The very notion of 'the noumenal' arose out of the attempt to make sense out of the riot of phenomena - to search for the order, the logos, that causes things to be as they are. In that sense, very much the precursor to science itself, although in those days, the questions also always involved what would now be regarded as questions of quality and meaning, which are nowadays relegated to 'the subjective'.
[quote=Tim Wood]I'm in this thread because of a recent wrestling match with a small but (imo) good book, The Phenomena of Awareness, C. Tougas.[/quote]
Terrific book, by the look of it. The beginning of Chapter Two has been a focus of mine since joining philosophy forums; the point about 'the nature of =' is something I have often (and usually unsuccessfully) laboured to make. it is a delight to read such a succinct exposition. And it's in my uni library! :party:
The point I am making is that it is incorrect to say that a perception is "caused" by the thing which is present to the senses. Do you not understand sensation as an activity of living beings? And isn't the act of sensing the cause of a sense perception? The living being is sensing, and this act of sensing is the cause of what you call "a perception". The external thing which is being sensed (and may well be passive) does not cause the perception, the sensing activity of the sensing being causes the perception.
Compare this to other activities which sentient beings are involved in. A human being builds a house. Would you say that the wood causes the existence of the house? Or is it the constructive activity of the human being which causes the existence of the house? Likewise, a human being sees a tree. Would you say that it is the tree which causes the perception of the tree, or is it the constructive, sensing activity of the human body which causes the perception of the tree?
If you get to the point of understanding that the sensing activity of the sentient being is the real activity which causes the existence of a sense perception, you might come to realize that it is not at all necessary that the external thing which is represented in the sense perception is even similar to the representation in perception. For instance, the word "tree", though it is used by the sentient being to represent the external thing, is not at all similar to the visual image. The thing which represents is not at all similar to the thing represented. So we ought not think that the external thing which we call 'tree" is even similar to the visual image which represents it in sense perception.
Quoting tim wood
Well isn't this one of the mysteries of life? How is it that a living being is self-moving? How is it that the will is free? But we can easily understand that it is so, without understanding how it is so. One can understand that water freezes when it gets cold without understanding how it is so.
Faith for Kant is justified consent which is rooted the needs of practical life where faith binds us to morality through our free acts of the will. His linking of morality/religion gives (practical) knowledge a distinctively intersubjective status, where we legislate for all members of the 'Kingdom of Ends"
We do not need to hold concrete particulars of sight in order to contemplate sight in abstract terms. Same applies for the concrete particulars of hearing, taste, touch, smell, proprioception, etc., i.e. to all phenomena. For example, we could contemplate visual phenomena in abstract ways as manifesting from multiple vantages—e.g. an ant’s, a cat’s, and a human’s—toward any particular object without needing to invoke particular examples of the sight all three of these beings concretely see.
Hence, by “experienced phenomena” I was intending to distinguish phenomena as it is directly experienced from the same phenomena as it can be abstractly thought about with or without concrete examples.
I understand that there could yet be confusions all the same with the Kantian notions of phenomena—as in, within Kantianism, abstractions are experienced phenomena too (although not in the original ancient sense of phenomena, in which abstractions devoid of concrete examples would be experienced noumena). Still, the experience of that which is seen is not the same as the experience of an abstract contemplation regarding the contents of sight in general which is devoid of visualized concrete particulars.
So, in immediate experience, the green leaf seen is a direct presentation of the green leaf out there. In abstract contemplation, however, my seeing of a green leaf is a re-presentation of the object out there which to me and all other like sentience results in a green appearance. The former is what occurs in what I termed “experienced phenomena”. The latter is what occurs when we abstractly contemplate the nature of phenomena.
I think this is descriptive of the stance of natural sciences, is it not? This is not a criticism but a reflection on what actually is being analysed.
To elucidate: I have previously cited a passage from Bryan Magee's book on Schopenhauer, which can be understood as a criticism of scientific realism (an example here.)
However, even though this appears to be an idealist argument, I add that within the context of this kind of analysis, we're considering mind as THE mind - not your mind, or my mind, but a h. sapiens mind. So this means that it's not idealist in the sense that many would naturally assume, i.e. dependent on an individual mind. It's more that, as you and I are instances of a kind, namely, h. sapiens, then we share a certain reality. But that reality is not wholly or simply objective, given, or 'out there'. Whereas, because of the way moderns tend to parse experience, it is naturally presumed that what is 'out there' are material or energetic phenomena, whilst 'mind' is 'in here' as a private or subjective realm.
Then there's the fact that we're culturally-modern English-speaking humans as well. So there's a biological factor - h. sapiens have certain biologically-endowed attributes - but also cultural factors, such as mental constructs, paradigms, belief systems, and so on, which inform judgement.
And within that whole complex, there are greater and lesser 'degrees of objectivity' - that is what science is especially useful for finding out. Because science agrees on a method, and on common units of measurement, and a way of checking results and so on, science is able to discover things which are true from the most general possible viewpoint. And that, I think, is what you're referring to when you say 'we then can validly address objects as objectively manifesting and as holding objective phenomenal properties relative to the human species.'
But I think 'transcendental philosophies' wish to go beyond even that. I suppose you could say, Kant tried to show that you couldn't go beyond it, in the sense of knowing or demonstrating what could be beyond it, other than by showing that what we think we know of a supposedly purely external or objective domain, is in some sense constituted by the knowing of it.
Your comments seem about right to me.
That stated, to my mind, the concept of objectivity which I’ve tried to articulate does not of itself make an ontological commitment regarding whether or not minds as we know them—or even any conception of Mind with a capital “M”—are required for the physical to be. In other words, I currently believe it can equally apply to systems of idealism as much as it can apply to systems of physicalism. Notwithstanding, yes, what I previously described does very much take into account the objectivity of the empirical sciences, this due to these sciences being phenomena founded (i.e., empirical).
Yet the same principle of objectivity as impartiality can also be applied to non-Kantian notions of noumena, as in basic geometric forms and rudimentary mathematical relations between quantities which are only capable of being apprehended by the intellect—and can so be in purely abstract forms. Or to the principles of thought.
And, from the stance of my own beliefs: It would be a stretch—and I’m not interested in here arguing for the case—but one can also apply this objectivity-impartially equivalence to the notion of an objective good—in the Platonic and Neo-Platonic sense. To give an overall gist of this approach: what do all sentience desire/intent/want? This can wind its way toward what Buddhists address as a liberation from suffering—or, imo more formally, from obstructions to one’s will being fulfilled as one intends it fulfilled. Then there’s the issue of what such state of fully (or at least optimally) liberated being might ontically be and, once appraised, how it might be best pursued. As one example—a bit spiritual for the atheistic folks, I would assume—this could be a state of perfect non-duality; e.g., Buddhist notions of Nirvana or Neo-Platonic notions of “the One”. None of this is here conclusive, obviously; but, again, the impartiality/objectivity equivalence makes such sort of thinking feasible to me. For example, all subjects (or partial, ego-centric beings) are subjects of both physical objectivity/impartiality to which they conform—this being the world we experience phenomenally (e.g., truth being a conforming of beliefs and statements to that which objectivity is)—as well as being subjects to metaphysical objectivity/impartiality—this being quite a bit harder to succinctly specify in any meaningful way, but to me a) it is by definition not itself a subject, b) it incorporates the striven for end of liberation from suffering previously mentioned, and c) it is an Aristotelian-like telos/final cause via which the physical world is in large part determined in a manner fully compatible with the freewill of agents. Anyway, it’s what I’m working on … and it’s quite the headache. What can I say, a well supported value theory is important to me.
I mentioned this to try to illustrate that this notion of objectivity I’ve been working with in no way specifies what might otherwise be termed scientism—I won’t address scientific realism other than to say that any scientific realism that cannot properly incorporate value theory misses the mark, imo--but yes, imo, it is very much in tune with what the empirical sciences seek and often discover in their endeavors.
It seemed to me to especially fit into the nature of objective phenomena that was being discussed in the thread.
Apropos, having looked at the link you’ve provided, what do you make of Kant’s theorizing of the Nebular hypothesis? To me it so far indicates that he did not take the view that minds as we know them need to be in order for the physical to be. I’m speculating without any evidence that maybe he held some form of pan-something (panpsychism, pansemiosis, something) as a precursor to what we now can more readily talk about, this as an aspect of his transcendental idealism. Wouldn’t mind hearing about differing opinions on Kant’s upholding of the solar system’s formation in such manner … if it doesn’t deviate too much from the thread’s theme.
I think that there has to be some sort of kind of progression, a semiotic which I don't think is caught in the conception of a spectrum. We all start with the phenomenal... we learn a language which combines phenomenal sounds with mental meanings and enables our ability to communicate of our ideas with others, this is the basis for developing ideals which enable us to immediate categorize the phenomenal as well as enabling our scientific determination of the underling reasons why the phenomenal (physical or mental) appears as it does.
I think this is too black and white. It fails to capture the possibility that the tree is really in accordance with my perceiving of it, but that it does not consist merely in my perceiving of it. MU likewise speaks dualistically when he asks whether the perception is caused by the phenomenon or caused by the percipient. Why must it be one or the other? The perception is the relation or interaction between the phenomenon and the percipient from the percipient's point of view. The whole is the condition for the actuality of perception, and perception is just one part of the activity of the whole.
I'm not saying that the external whatever it is is not what we make of it. I said it's not necessarily similar to how we represent it, just like the word "tree" is not similar to a tree. So I don't get your question. I know that "tree" is not "grass", because these two representations are different. I also know that my perception of a tree is different from my perception of grass. So I can say that the tree is not grass. But this does not mean that the tree, as it is, is not completely different from my perception of a tree, like the word "tree' is completely different from my perception of a tree.
Quoting tim wood
No, I don't agree with this at all. What we see of the tree is not accurate at all. Science tells us that the tree consists of all sorts of different molecules, each of which have different atoms themselves composed of different parts. We don't see this at all. The tree looks completely solid yet science tells me that there is much space between the parts
Furthermore, what you call "practical knowledge" is limited by its relation to the particular application, and is therefore extremely incomplete, deficient. For example, ancient people might have had enough knowledge concerning trees to dry the wood and use it to make fires. Yes, practical knowledge is dependable, dry the wood and use it for fuel. But this tells us nothing about shaping the wood and using it to build houses and furniture. This requires further knowledge. Beyond this comes the knowledge that we can make paper out of wood, and now we can do all sorts of things with wood fibre and the various molecules which can be separated out of the wood. So practical knowledge doesn't get us anywhere beyond the particular activity which is being carried out. We need theoretical knowledge to dream up all sorts of new things that we can do. That is why we need to think beyond what is immediately evident to our senses.
A tree is a type, therefore "tree" is conceptual. I may judge something as being a tree, or you may judge something as being a tree, but how would such a judgement make it a tree?
Why do I need to say either one? And of what use would such an answer be? Let's first decide what it means to be, to exist, then the question "does anything exist" might be meaningful.