Karma and the Idea of Four Causes

Quoting Janus

Can the idea of Karma be related to the idea of the four causes?

I don't think so. The word itself, 'karma', comes from the root 'kr-' which is derived from the word for 'hand' and has taken on the meaning of 'work' or 'doing'. In Vedic India, good karma was something that was generated and maintained by the observation of the appropriate rites and rituals. The Buddha appropriated the idea, but broadened it to include any intentional act and in so doing severed its connection with religious rites and rituals. (Indeed one of the Buddhist vows is to 'avoid reliance on rites and ritual'.) But karma is not a naturalistic philosophy in an Aristotelian sense.

In respect of the Aristotelian idea of telos - it think it was simply assumed in Aristotle's day that things exist for a purpose, and can only be properly understood in terms of the end towards which they're directed. In the case of ethics, the 'proper end' for man, is sought through the pursuit of eudaemonia - flourishing - and also the pursuit of knowledge. Those are the basis of Aristotle's virtue ethics.

The underlying issue is of course the sense in which the Universe itself can be understood as animated by purpose. I suppose it is safe to say that in the ancient world, this was simply assumed, as the world was, for the ancients, the 'theatre of the divine' whether that be understood in terms of the ancient pantheist Gods or later monotheism. Part of the so-called 'disenchantment of the world' which marks the transition to modernity was the abandonment of that understanding. Medieval cosmology, based on Ptolemy, was thoroughly Aristotelian, believing that the sphere beyond the moon - the 'super-lunary' realm - was literally the changeless perfection of Heaven (which is why supernovae and comets were the source of such dread). The transition to the heliocentric solar system resulted the crumbling of that worldview and ideas of telos along with it. (Although biologists found it necessary to devise a neologism, teleonomy, to 'allow for the apparentpurposefulness and of goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms'.)

Personally, I think the whole question of the nature of intentionality, and whether the Universe is animated by purpose, is still open.

Quoting Wayfarer

I don't think so.

And yet according to the idea of Karma present actions are understood to give rise to (cause) future states, aren't they? It seems there must be some conception of causation involved in this understanding: and I am wondering just what that conception consists in, if it relates to the 'four cause' model, and if so, how, and if not, then what is that conception and how is it different?

Reply to Janus Well, of course it’s true that karma comprises a causal link between action and result. But that wasn’t elaborated in terms of the fourfold causation of Aristotle.

The theoretical analysis of karma is part of the abhidharma - Buddhist philosophical psychology. This is presented in terms of 'dharmas' (which in this context refer to the 'elements of experience' rather than 'dharma' as 'the principle of the teaching as a whole'.) That analysis was made on the basis of the twelve-fold chain of dependent origination (Prat?tyasamutp?da). This comprises a formula in which each link in the twelve-fold chain is explained in terms of arising dependent on the previous link, beginning with ignorance (avidya) as fundamental cause.

Over time this gave rise to the notion of the 'storehouse consciousness' (?laya-vijñ?na, sometimes glossed as the 'collective unconscious') of the Yog?c?ra school of Buddhism; that forms part of the monastic curriculum in Tibet and East Asia, but not in Theravada. It is here that the idea of the 'mind-stream' (citta-sant?na) which flows from life to life was developed. (It is this concept which tends to undermine the Buddhist opposition to the idea of the soul.)

But again, very different to Aristotelian philosophy, which was much more naturalistically focussed, in keeping with the Greek attitude generally. Aristotle was very much a naturalist, spent much of his life categorising biological specimens and the like whereas the focus for Buddhism was soteriological (i.e. pursuit of Nirv??a).

Reply to Wayfarer

Thanks, but I'm already aware of what you write about here, and it doesn't really address my question. What I am wondering is whether there is any actual philosophical explanation of the causation that is purportedly involved in karmic action. I mean it cannot be akin to either material or efficient cause it would seem. Maybe it could be tied in some way to the ideas of formal or final causation, I don't know; and that's why I asked the question, I was hoping someone well versed in Buddhist philosophy might be able to throw some light on the question.

As regards Cosmic purpose, which is kind of the "other half" of the question, it would seem, from what I know at least, that Buddhism does not admit of any overarching purpose.

Quoting Janus

I was hoping someone well versed in Buddhist philosophy might be able to throw some light on the question.

Sorry to let you down (as I seem to so often do).

Quoting Janus

it cannot be akin to either material or efficient cause it would seem

Try Sheldrake's morphic resonance. That is the nearest thing to a 'mechanism' or cause. But you're right - there's nothing whatever in mainstream philosophy or science about it.

Quoting Wayfarer

Sorry to let you down (as I seem to so often do).

No, I didn't mean it like that! :smile:

No worries.

Quoting Janus

As regards Cosmic purpose, which is kind of the "other half" of the question, it would seem, from what I know at least, that Buddhism does not admit of any overarching purpose.

Mahayana Buddhism most certainly does conceive of an over-arching purpose - that is 'the awakening of all beings'. It is not historically oriented in the same way that the Christian worldview was - with the expectation of there being a 'second coming' and the Day of Judgement at the end of history. Buddhism remained much more attuned to the cyclical cosmology of the East - the notion that the world/universe goes through periodic episodes of creation and destruction. Mahayana Buddhist cosmology envisages an infinite universe with infinitely many 'life-bearing orbs', on which beings all go through the same processes as they do here on Earth (which is close to one of the ideas that Giordano Bruno was executed for.)

Whereas in the Christian West, religion became identified with the idea of 'God's plan for history'. That is still the belief of many evangelical and millennial sects. So the abandonment of religion also entailed the abandonment of there actually being anything like purpose, meaning or intention. That is writ large in such essays as Bertrand Russell's Free Man's Worship, and a lot of atheist existentialism.

But it's also a form of historical consciousness - of 'being modern' as an outlook, a basket of attitudes and beliefs. That is the kind of thing that Owen Barfield and Jean Gebser wrote about.

Anyway, duty calls, have to log out.

Quoting Janus

The following passage from Biosemiotics by Jesper Hoffmeyer (page 53-54) ...

...is pretty unreliable. :)

The way I would look at it is that purpose and form are tied together by what, in modern physics, has become enshrined as the principle of least action. So when Nature has a purpose - an intent to be expressed in an action - there is an optimisation where the shortest path is the one chosen.

This is actually a really mysterious fact - or at least it requires spooky nonlocality because it means that nature picks out the most effective path having considered absolutely every available possibility.

So folk like Aristotle, Plato and Peirce looked at nature and could see something like this at work. Causation involves the holistic settling on some generalised optimal balance.

Plato made finality part of his world of forms. The idea of the good was the light that illuminated all the more particular forms. So goodness - as another way of getting at optimality, balance, effectiveness - was the ultimate purpose of existence. That was the telos.

Aristotle then made the distinction between final and formal cause more explicit. Finality spoke to generality - pure purpose, but now in all its manifest variety - while form became the explicitly particular - and now included the accidents of substance. Instead of one goal, goal-centredness became a thing. And formal cause became - in my view - over-identified with whatever the heck shape something wound up taking.

The idea of necessary form (that which serves the purpose) and accidental form (that which is only purposeful in the sense it doesn't actively prevent the said purpose being achieved) got confused.

Peirce then did take a fully constraints-based/hierarchical view of causation and so had a sufficiently complex model of reality to separate the necessary from the accidental (when it comes to the third thing of the actual).

And then while he stressed "irreversibilty" - a tellic trend in nature - it wasn't about the universal growth of accidents or randomness, but the exact opposite. The purpose of the Cosmos was the universal growth of reasonableness or orderly intelligibility. It was the growth of habits - the constraints that suppress randomness and chaos.

So there are differences and similarities. I prefer to focus on the similarities. What all these guys saw was that there is some kind of holism going on, some kind of downward acting oversight, which causes the Cosmos, the physical world, to be organised by a global optimising principle. The forms that matter take are intelligible because nature can check every possible option to find the most locally effective choice to actualise.

Now this is unmysterious when we think about it as evolution or development. It seems every possibility is being actualised and then either promoted or erased. We can see the optimisation in action.

But current physics - not yet having that kind of "four causes" holism when it comes to picture of reality - is still stuck with a rather hand-waving story on how nature actually implements its least action principle in practice.

With quantum theory for instance, we know that a path integral or sum over histories formalism works. The calculations are correct to umpteen decimal places. But how nature knows to try every path and actualise only the most optimal path (on average - this is a probabilistic story with quantum physics) is the weird and non-local hole in the theory as yet.

Quoting Janus

Final cause is traditionally understood to be synonymous with final purpose. How can we relate the ideas of "randomness" and "irreversibility" to the idea of 'purpose'?

Again, purpose does align with irreversibility. It says things are heading towards some end because they are moving away from some beginning. And right from the beginning, they were already headed in that direction.

But Peirce definitely didn't think randomness was the final desire. It was instead the chaotic beginning that reasonableness would leave behind by imposing its logical habits of order.

And even the Heat Death of the Universe can be understood as a state of maximal order, minimal chaos. (Entropy counting is a trickier concept than folk usually realise here.)

Quoting Janus

The Eastern idea of Karma is often explained as the idea of "cause and effect". Can the idea of Karma be related to the idea of the four causes?

I think it is related but different.

Eastern philosophy stresses equilibrium balance. So it is a picture of fluctuations or striving settling back towards stillness.

And again this is quite a naturalistic picture. You find it in the organicism of Anaximander or Heraclitus. The only surviving fragment of actual writing from Anaximander is a rather enigmatic comment about cosmic injustices becoming balanced.

So he had a developmental model of the Cosmos - the creation of worlds by the separation of the pure potential of the Apeiron into the hot and the cold, thence the dry and the moist. But this was a Karmic model also in that there was nothing standing in the way of all the separated apeiron simply folding back into itself and returning to its initial untroubled state. Disturbances might erupt - like turbulence in a stream - and then just as easily vanish.

This was also the Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising. It is the reason for a cyclic view. Stuff can bubble up and organise to have complex form. But that kind of symmetry-breaking seems perfectly reversible. There is no reason it should persist, except by accident, or because we falsely try to maintain it.

So you have two contrasting metaphysics - even though both are broadly organic and holistic.

And I, of course, find the fact that there is this dichotomy of choices only what one would expect. The actual whole story is triadic. So the equilibrium story, and the tellic story, are like the synchronic and diachronic views of the one metaphysics.

This indeed fits very nicely with the Big Bang/Heat Death cosmology of modern physics. As I mentioned about counting entropy, a problem is that from one point of view, the total entropy of the universe has never changed. It may have cooled, yet it has also expanded. So one thing has been exchanged for another, without changing the sum total.

So from a cross-sectional perspective, the universe is always in thermal equilibrium (if we forget the tiny fraction that is negentropic matter for the moment). But from a longitudinal perspective, the universe is transforming from a chaotic fluctuating beginning to a big silent nothingness of minimal fluctuation.

To sum up, the ancients did look at nature and did see a holistic story. But it gets confusing as there is then a tendency to latch onto one or other of a pair of dichotomous alternatives. Either existence is basically eternal and unchanging - so any eruptions of busy striving will be something temporary, and bound to get cancelled out. Or it is basically striving and transformative - and so there is some actual one-way journey that starts in chaos and winds up in some kind of intelligible perfection (like our good selves even :) ).

Peirce is the modern metaphysician who finally set out a larger framework - a tradic or hierarchical one - that could incorporate these two alternatives. It could be both a story of holistic equilibrium and a story of a natural growth of purposeful form.

But that kind of ninja metaphysics is hard to wrap your thinking around. Hoffmeyer and his fellow Euro-semioticians are a fine bunch, but they come at semiotics from a broadly linguistic angle. What is central to them is the code duality - the symbol~matter aspect of the story.

The biosemioticians who best understood Peirce - in my view - were those in the US who were the pioneers in applying hierarchy theory to biological science. They were looking at things structurally. So they could recognise straight away how semiotics mapped to that kind of triadic complexity - the kind which is built of pairs of dichotomies, the kind that has both a cross-sectional metaphysics and also an "exactly opposite" longitudinal one.

Quoting apokrisis

So when Nature has a purpose - an intent to be expressed in an action - there is an optimisation where the shortest path is the one chosen.

This is actually a really mysterious fact - or at least it requires spooky nonlocality because it means that nature picks out the most effective path having considered absolutely every available possibility.

This isn't problematic if one assumes Platonism to be true, no?

Quoting apokrisis

Eastern philosophy stresses equilibrium balance. So it is a picture of fluctuations or striving settling back towards stillness.

Except that 'stasis' is not the end towards which Buddhism strives.

??riputra, foolish ordinary beings do not have the wisdom that comes from hearing the Dharma. When they hear about a Tath?gata’s entering nirv??a, they take the wrong view of cessation or extinction. Because of their perception of cessation or extinction, they claim that the realm of sentient beings decreases. Their claim constitutes an enormously wrong view and an extremely grave, evil karma.

Furthermore, ??riputra, from the wrong view of decrease, these sentient beings derive three more wrong views. These three views and the view of decrease, like a net, are inseparable from each other. What are these three views? They are (1) the view of cessation, which means the ultimate end; (2) the view of extinction, which is equated to nirv??a; (3) the view that nirv??a is a void, which means that nirv??a is the ultimate quiet nothingness. ??riputra, in this way these three views fetter, hold, and impress sentient beings.

Sutra of Neither Increase nor Decrease

Quoting apokrisis

Peirce is the modern metaphysician who finally set out a larger framework - a tradic or hierarchical one - that could incorporate these two alternatives.

There were actually three.

In 1893 Peirce used the word "agapism" for the view that creative love is operative in the cosmos. Drawing from the Swedenborgian ideas of Henry James, Sr. which he had absorbed long before, Peirce held that it involves a love which expresses itself in a devotion to cherishing and tending to people or things other than oneself, as parent may do for offspring, and as God, as Love, does even and especially for the unloving, whereby the loved ones may learn. Peirce regarded this process as a mode of evolution of the cosmos and its parts, and he called the process "agapasm", such that: "The good result is here brought to pass, first, by the bestowal of spontaneous energy by the parent upon the offspring, and, second, by the disposition of the latter to catch the general idea of those about it and thus to subserve the general purpose." Peirce held that there are three such principles and three associated modes of evolution:

"Three modes of evolution have thus been brought before us: evolution by fortuitous variation, evolution by mechanical necessity, and evolution by creative love. We may term them tychastic evolution, or tychasm, anancastic evolution, or anancasm, and agapastic evolution, or agapasm. The doctrines which represent these as severally of principal importance we may term tychasticism, anancasticism, and agapasticism. On the other hand the mere propositions that absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and the law of love are severally operative in the cosmos may receive the names of tychism, anancism, and agapism."

C. S. Peirce, 1893

But Peirce's 'law of love' got pretty short shrift amongst his later scientific interpreters.

Quoting apokrisis

The biosemioticians who best understood Peirce - in my view - were those in the US who were the pioneers in applying hierarchy theory to biological science.

This is so as to simulate living processes for such purposes as biology, computing, artificial intelligence, and other practical applications.

Quoting Posty McPostface

This isn't problematic if one assumes Platonism to be true, no?

But how does that Platonism work? Yes, we have the allegory of the cave. But that points to a very unrealistic kind of reality-creating mechanism.

Consider the catenary curve - the form that a sagging chain adopts to satisfy the principle of least action - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenary

We can solve its dynamics with an equation that distinguishes between the constants (that stand for an equilibrium condition) and the variables (that are all the accidents that are the different actual arches or suspended chains).

So Plato offered no connecting metaphysics. He imagined a world of static forms that simply cast a shadow that was imperfect in its variability.

What you need is a description that ties matter and form together, having first separated them. And physics does this by being able to define a set of boundary conditions and a set of initial conditions.

So a dynamical or emergent view of existence would say that Platonia is not inhabited by a zoo of particular abstract objects - horses, triangles and spears - but is the home of constraining physical principles. Symmetries and their symmetry breaking possibilities. Then these principles get expressed directly because ... they are constraints. They exist in their very expression.

Reply to apokrisis

Well, if we're talking about the behavior or things in state space, then everything is striving to the lowest quantum level, hence the most optimal state space available locally. I don't know how to explain relative state space due to not knowing how QM meshes with GR or SGR.

But, your point is correct, if things ALWAYS strive towards the lowest quantum state possible, and hence the most efficient route, then there seems to be a 'hidden variable' that is the idealism of Platonism at work, no?

Quoting Wayfarer

But Peirce's 'law of love' got pretty short shrift amongst his later scientific interpreters.

Yep. This is indeed a case where his trichotomania may have led him astray. ;)

My metaphysics is content with accident and necessity - or freedoms and constraints. Creative love is not needed as a further category.

If we want to include an anthropomorphic dimensions to the discussion, that can be done via the contrast of simplicity and complexity. Hierarchy theory can speak to the human aspect without having to bring in transcendental agapism.

So sure, human feeling is fine and wonderful. But it is a side-story to creation, not its final goal. Hierarchies of complexity - like tiny dots of planets coated with a thin biofilm of life and mind - may arise in the middle of the Cosmic tale, like erupting turbulence. But the bigger picture is simpler. The Universe on the whole is just a spread/cooling bath of radiation. Humans are specks of heightened entropification - the socio-economic structure required to combust a trapped store of fossil fuel - that flared and disappeared in the Cosmic blink of an eye. Nothing more.

So agapism fails in that it lacks the immanence which makes evolution by fortuitous variation, and evolution by mechanical necessity, ring true to us natural philosophers.

Peirce makes mistakes, like anyone.

Quoting Posty McPostface

But, your point is correct, if things ALWAYS strive towards the lowest quantum state possible, and hence the most efficient route, then there seems to be a 'hidden variable' that is the idealism of Platonism at work, no?

I agree that Plato was trying to put a finger on the same general idea. Any causal description of nature is going to need some kind of global downward acting purpose to organise its affairs. It can't be all a matter of blind accident with no helping hand.

Reply to apokrisis

So, then Platonism is a absolute sense of idealism working on local and global state spaces? Just another way of stating the idealism of Platonism hereabouts.

EDIT: A while ago I had the question on mind, as to whether QM obeys causality. For that to be the case, then some absolutism in terms of 'hidden variables' or Platonism is required IMO.

Quoting Wayfarer

Except that 'stasis' is not the end towards which Buddhism strives.

Oh well. Stillness doesn't have to be dead emptiness. It is the disengagement that resolves the karmic cycle of engagement.

But you are right that there is a tellic trajectory in Buddhism if the letting go is meant to result in nirvana - which you would read as a state of pure mind?

So it depends on how you frame this. Is the end a return to the beginning - if all is spirit and ceasing to strive is to become one again with that spirit? Or is the end a proper transformation - where the material world was the beginning and pure mind is the desire?

So everyone is wrestling with the same metaphysical conundrum. Existence seems to be both a tale of entropy and negentropy, progress and illusion.

There is the growth of complexity out of simplicity - with us sitting at the enlightened peak of that, and presuming that the ladder extends all the way to the pure mind up in heaven.

Then there is also the just as obvious cycle of life and death, birth and destruction. Complexity arises and crumbles. Material simplicity wins.

Both these stories are true of nature. A grand metaphysical narrative has to show how that can be the case in a complementary, rather than a contradictory, fashion.

Quoting apokrisis

But you are right that there is a tellic trajectory in Buddhism if the letting go is meant to result in nirvana - which you would read as a state of pure mind?

Customarily, Nirv??a is said to be inconceivable, but it is sometimes imagined as being stasis or quiescence. And traditionally Buddhism has been more inclined towards negative descriptions of Nirv??a in terms of what it is not - i.e. not being anything which is self, suffering, and impermanence (i.e. the whole domain of experience.)

But there are also positive descriptions such as it being:

permanent, stable, imperishable, immovable, ageless, deathless, unborn, and un-become, that it is power, bliss and happiness, the secure refuge, the shelter, and the place of unassailable safety; the real truth and the supreme reality; that it is the Good, the supreme goal and the one and only consummation of life.

A key point being that it is only 'understood by the wise', i.e. understanding or seeing it is wisdom (jñ?na). And it might be noted that Nirv??a is not Heaven (even if on the village level they are sometimes conflated.) The traditional view is that there may be Heavens (typical of Buddhism there are numbers of them), but beings in those realms are ultimately doomed to be re-born in lower realms, as they too are 'impermanent and subject to decay' albeit over much vaster time-scales than the human. (That's why, in Tibetan depictions of the 'wheel of life', the Buddha and bodhisattvas are shown as being outside the circle - they're not 'in heaven', they're actually 'off the map', so to speak.)

Quoting apokrisis

Then there is also the just as obvious cycle of life and death, birth and destruction. Complexity arises and crumbles. Material simplicity wins.

Both these stories are true of nature. A grand metaphysical narrative has to show how that can be the case in a complementary, rather than a contradictory, fashion.

I think that religious metaphysics, generally, understand the human - or more broadly, the subject - as intrinsically real. In other words, reality is also a subjective reality, not simply an array of things, forces or material energies (although I think perhaps 'subjective' is misleading, it's more 'possessing subject-hood', but that's a very awkward expression.)

Hence Nagel's observation that

Plato was clearly concerned not only with the state of his soul, but also with his relation to the universe at the deepest level. Plato’s metaphysics was not intended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality – intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly.

...The Platonic sense of the world is that its intelligibility and the development of beings to whom it is intelligible are not accidental; so our awareness and its expansion as part of the history of life and of our species are part of the natural evolution of the cosmos.

...in the Platonic conception, even the biological and cultural evolution that has led to the starting point at which each of us arrives on Earth and reaches consciousness is embedded in something larger, something that makes that entire history less arbitrary than it is on the reductive view.

(From Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament.)

Whereas nowadays, we're inclined to dismiss such an understanding as anthropocentric - notwithstanding that even science is at the end of the day a human enterprise. But now we see the human as the kind of tag-end of an undirected process. I think that's what underlies the sense of 'otherness' that so pervades much of modern culture; whereas the underlying ethos of a traditional metaphysics is a sense of relatedness to the cosmos.

Quoting Wayfarer

Except that 'stasis' is not the end towards which Buddhism strives.

Quoting Wayfarer

Customarily, Nirv??a is said to be inconceivable, but it is sometimes imagined as being stasis or quiescence.

permanent, stable, imperishable, immovable, ageless, deathless, unborn, and un-become ... that it is the Good, the supreme goal

Aren't you contradicting yourself now?

Reply to apokrisis I think apparent contradiction is a consequence of the inability to imagine such a state, which is not simply non-existence or non-being.

Reply to Wayfarer Hey, it was you who said it wasn't about stasis, except that it was.

Remember that my own metaphysics is founded on vagueness, apeiron, quantum foam or firstness. So I have a pretty specific conception of a state of being that is "less than nothing" in being "potentially anything".

Quoting apokrisis

So there are differences and similarities. I prefer to focus on the similarities. What all these guys saw was that there is some kind of holism going on, some kind of downward acting oversight, which causes the Cosmos, the physical world, to be organised by a global optimising principle. The forms that matter take are intelligible because nature can check every possible option to find the most locally effective choice to actualise.

What's this, some form of pantheism? Are you saying that the belief expressed by these metaphysicians is that the universe, or "Cosmos" is some sort of thinking mind, which considers every single possibility, prior to every physical action, choosing the most "locally effective"? Or is this a way of saying that the entire physical universe which we know of, is just a computer simulation, and the computer figures every possibility prior to actualizing the most effective choice? What do you mean by "nature can check every possible option"? Is "nature" a computing machine making decisions according to a predetermined program of entropy or some such thing, or is it a free willing being, making decisions according to a principle of "Good", or as wayfarer pointed to "Love". Why would you say that choosing the principle of Love for one's metaphysics is a mistake?

Here's something you ought to consider apokrisis, if you wish to produce a more comprehensible metaphysics. You appear to be mixing together two completely incompatible metaphysics without offering any real principles which might establish compatibility and consistency between them.

Quoting apokrisis

The forms that matter take are intelligible because nature can check every possible option to find the most locally effective choice to actualise.

Quoting apokrisis

Remember that my own metaphysics is founded on vagueness, apeiron, quantum foam or firstness. So I have a pretty specific conception of a state of being that is "less than nothing" in being "potentially anything".

So you have here, first, from Anaxagoras, the concept of Nous, a controlling mind of the cosmos. Then you have from Anaximander, the concept of apeiron, which is an infinite potential. Do you not see that the one metaphysics excludes the other, in the sense of contradiction, leaving one or the other impossible if you accept either one? If there is a controlling mind, "Nous", then infinite possibility, apeiron, is impossible because the controlling mind, Nous, is itself a limitation. And if there is infinite possibility, apeiron, then there cannot be a controlling mind, because the existence of the controlling mind, Nous, would be a real limit to the possibilities, leaving the possibilities less than infinite.

You have a proposed solution, the triadic solution, which suggests the co-existence of both. But this solution is impossible. As described, one excludes the other, so the two cannot coexist in the triadic way. This is why Plato, and his followers, Aristotle and other Neo-Platonists, went in a totally different way, introducing a completely new principle the Good, the Perfect, the Ideal, the One. This new principle, introduced by Plato out of the necessity derived from the inapplicability of the other two, is neither the controlling mind, Nous, nor the infinite possibility, apeiron, nor does it allow that either one of these is a valid principle.

The conclusion to be drawn, is that both of these, the controlling mind, Nous, and the infinite potential, apeiron, are inherently incompatible. The triadic approach you present, which is an attempt to do the impossible, establish compatibility between the two incompatibles, ought to be dismissed, as the impossible solution. Further, since neither one, the controlling mind, Nous, nor the infinite possibility, apeiron is capable of describing reality in itself, both of these ought to be dismissed as unacceptable. Simply put, they negate and annihilate each other. Therefore we must proceed to derive a new principle, as Plato did, which might be "good", "love", "karma", or some such thing.

Quoting Wayfarer

I was hoping someone well versed in Buddhist philosophy might be able to throw some light on the question. — Janus


Sorry to let you down (as I seem to so often do).

it cannot be akin to either material or efficient cause it would seem — Janus


Try Sheldrake's morphic resonance. That is the nearest thing to a 'mechanism' or cause. But you're right - there's nothing whatever in mainstream philosophy or science about it.

I had not enough time to write a more detailed response before. It might have seemed that I was suggesting that you are not well-versed in Buddhist philosophy, and that is one possibility. But the other possibility is that there is nothing in Buddhist philosophy (which you also seem to suggest here) that explicates, in any way analogous to a Western philosophical approach, the concept of cause involved in Karmic action.

If we accept the overall Western approach (with all its differences; ancient, medieval and modern, of course) as being paradigmatic of philosophy, this would seem to point to the fact that the East has no real philosophical tradition of its own at all. Just as western theology is a separate discipline from philosophy, in that it founds itself on faith rather than experience or speculative reason, so the eastern traditions are theologies rather than philosophies.

In the east you have the trope of the enlightened master. The master is said to know things that lesser mortals cannot. Now there are two possibilities here; either this is true and the master does know things in ways impossible to ordinary people, or this is merely a cultural myth. If we accept for the sake of argument the idea that the master can understand the absolute truth of karma, for example, that he or she can absolutely know this truth purely from experience (with no faith at all needed), even though no discursive explanatory account of it is possible in the way explanatory accounts of Aristotle's 'four causes' are, what does this entail? I would say that it entails that although for the master Karma is not a matter of faith, it is nonetheless a matter of faith for everyone who is not an enlightened master. How many enlightened masters are there? How could we lesser mortals know the answer to this, know what karma even really is (in the absence of explanation of it) or even know whether there are actually enlightened masters at all? Obviously for us, it is merely a matter of faith, no matter how you cut, and thus belongs to theology, to religion, but not to philosophy.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The conclusion to be drawn, is that both of these, the controlling mind, Nous, and the infinite potential, apeiron, are inherently incompatible. The triadic approach you present, which is an attempt to do the impossible, establish compatibility between the two incompatibles, ought to be dismissed, as the impossible solution.

You are talking about two incompatible things. I'm talking about two complementary limits.

A dichotomy is logically that which is mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. So Apeiron and Nous would have to "exist" as the inverse or reciprocal of each other. They would be the mutually opposed limits on being, and hence Being would be that bit - the actual or substantial bit - left in the middle. The limits themselves are not part of what is actual because they are the extremes that mark the limit of what even could be actual. We might give them names, like Apeiron and Nous. But they are the names of the complementary limits on being.

This is why my metaphysical approach is irreducibly triadic or hierarchical. It says actuality is the meat in the sandwich. Two reciprocally-defined bounds define the limits of reality, and so you have everything that is real found in-between those limits.

This is systems thinking - just like Aristotle's four causes and hylomorphic form. The substantial is the bit that exists in-between the limitations of formal causes and material possibilities. The approach I take is the dichotomous/triadic one that actually underwrote Ancient Greek metaphysics and so modern science.

But Aristotelean logic - the three laws of thought - then also had a huge influence on metaphysical argument. While four causes thinking was holistic, the laws of thought (and atomistic philosophy) set the scene for the great reductionist project. Which in turn resulted in theistic dualism.

So here you are trying to assert the authority of the law of the excluded middle. Faced with a dichotomy, you say its complementary pair must be reduced to either/or. One thing or the other. You deny the third thing of the reciprocal relation that creates the separation and so also forms the interaction. You say - with the full force of an unexamined habit - that only a yes/no answer is logically acceptable.

Holism has a metaphysical logic. Reductionism has its own metaphysical logic. If you feel confused by my posts, it is only because you read them through the same distorting lens every time.

Quoting Wayfarer

Mahayana Buddhism most certainly does conceive of an over-arching purpose - that is 'the awakening of all beings'.

But this purpose is a human purpose, not a purpose purported to be inherent in reality itself, isn't it?

Quoting Janus

If we accept the overall Western approach (with all its differences; ancient, medieval and modern, of course) as being paradigmatic of philosophy, this would seem to point to the fact that the East has no real philosophical tradition of its own at all.

It might be instructive to consider the Kyoto School. That was a modern attempt to take a Westernised look back at the Eastern tradition to recover its essential themes.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/

...it is fair to say that the Kyoto School thinkers generally consider the purest sources for the idea of absolute nothingness to lie in the traditions of the East. Hisamatsu went so far as to speak of absolute nothingness as “oriental nothingness” (Hisamatsu 1960); though it is important to bear in mind that his claim is that this idea was first clearly discovered in the traditions of East. Absolute nothingness is by no means only relevant to Eastern cultures, anymore than in 1500 CE the earth was only round in the West. Moreover, if the idea of absolute nothingness “came to awareness in the spirituality of the East,” as Nishitani says, the philosophy of absolute nothingness is generally considered to be the Kyoto School's own contribution to the contemporary world of thought opened up by the meeting of East and West....

...The Kyoto School might even be thought of as recovering a suggestion from one of the first Presocratic philosophers, Anaximander: namely, to think finite beings as determinations, or delimitations, of “the indefinite” or “the unlimited” (to apeiron)...

...Their explicit references are primarily to Mah?y?na Buddhism, especially to the East Asian Buddhist schools of Zen (predominantly the Rinzai tradition but also notably D?gen of S?t?) and/or Pure Land (predominantly Shinran's Shin). The key Sanskrit term in Mah?y?na Buddhism here is ??nyat? (“emptiness”; k? in Japanese). With the noteworthy exception of the later Nishitani, however, the Kyoto School tends to favor the Chinese glyph mu (“nothingness”; wu in Chinese), which is found predominantly in Zen, and which reflects the early attempt to “match terms” with Daoism in the translation and interpretive development of Buddhism in China. Let us briefly examine both of these Asian sources for the Kyoto School's philosophies of absolute nothingness, ??nyat? and wu/mu...

Continuing the discussion with @Wayfarer....

In Mah?y?na Buddhism ??nyat? refers first of all to the fact that all things come into being in “interdependent origination” (Sanskrit: prat?tya-samutp?da; Japanese: engi), and they are therefore “empty” of any independent substantial self-nature or “own-being” (Sanskrit: svabh?va). This thought is closely tied to the basic Buddhist thesis of “no-self” or “non-ego” (Sanskrit: an?tman; Japanese: muga). All beings, including the ego, are interconnected and in flux.

Psychologically, ??nyat? refers also to the releasement from all attachment to beings, from all reification and willful appropriation of them. Such attachments are both based on and in turn support the primary attachment to the fabricated ego, since the ego both strives to possess and is unwittingly possessed by its reification of beings. Awakening to the emptiness of all things, to their lack of substantial own-being or egoity (Japanese: shogy?muga), thus frees one both from an ego-centered and reified view of things, and from the illusion of the substantial ego itself.

However, if the movement of negation stops here at a one-sided negation of being (i.e., at negation of the independent substantial reality of things and the ego), and if the idea of “emptiness” is not itself emptied,[8] then we are left either with a pessimistic nihilism or with an ironically reified view of ??nyat?. These are what the Buddhist tradition calls “??nyat?-sickness” (Japanese: k?by?).

True ??nyat? must be understood to dynamically negate the very opposition of being and (relative) nothingness (see Nakamura 1975, Vol. 1, 278). Hence, in Mah?y?na we find an explicit return—through a “great negation” of a reified misunderstanding of being—to a “great affirmation” of a non-reified understanding of being. Emptiness thoroughly understood is nothing separate from or opposed to “being” properly understood.

As the often chanted lines of the Heart Sutra put it: “[phenomenal] form is emptiness; emptiness is also [phenomenal] form; emptiness is no other than form; form is no other than emptiness” (see Bercholz/Kohn 1993, 155). The famous Mah?y?na Buddhist philosopher of ??nyat? N?g?rjuna (ca. 150–250 CE) went so far as to provocatively state: “The limits (i.e., realm) of nirv?na are the limits of sams?ra. Between the two, also, there is not the slightest difference whatsoever” (Inada 1993, 158). In other words, nirv?na is neither a nihilistic extinction of nor a transcendent escape from the phenomenal world (sams?ra); it is rather an enlightened manner of being-in-the-world here and now (see Garfield 1995, 332).

This radical reaffirmation of the phenomenal world was particularly stressed in East Asian developments of Mah?y?na Buddhism, where we find such remarkably affirmative phrases as: “true emptiness, marvelous being” (Japanese: shink?-my?u).

Quoting apokrisis

The way I would look at it is that purpose and form are tied together by what, in modern physics, has become enshrined as the principle of least action.

We might see a tendency of things to take paths of least action and enshrine that as a principle. This may give us the impression that nature is purposeful, but the notion of purpose seems to be emptied of its meaning in the absence of deliberation; it seems to become an idea of mere function.

Quoting apokrisis

Again, purpose does align with irreversibility. It says things are heading towards some end because they are moving away from some beginning. And right from the beginning, they were already headed in that direction.

But again, this would seem to count as purpose only if there had been some intention right at the beginning if not along the way.

What you say about Karma is an interesting slant, and makes it sound like a kind of final cause. But again the tendency to return to equilibrium absent any inherent intention in things to behave that way (according to a spiritual reality that this world is an expression of, perhaps, or the direction of a God) would tend to look more like function than purpose. :smile:

Quoting apokrisis

It might be instructive to consider the Kyoto School. That was a modern attempt to take a Westernised look back at the Eastern tradition to recover its essential themes.

Hmmm, interesting..."absolute nothingness". And yet absolute nothingness is not absolutely nothing...a deep paradox!

The middles section of the quoted passage, with the reference to Anaximander, seems to be right up your alley, apo!

Quoting Janus

We might see a tendency of things to take paths of least action and enshrine that as a principle. This may give us the impression that nature is purposeful, but the notion of purpose seems to be emptied of its meaning in the absence of deliberation; it seems to become an idea of mere function.

Or even less than that. It is a mere universal tendency.

So yes, it is a deflationary view. But not an eliminativist one. And that is a significant difference.

Mind is purposeful. Life is functional. Physics speaks to propensities.

Mind, being the most complex or particular, clearly has the most choice to make because it is that which is most individuated from the general or contextual. It can have purposes or choices that set it apart from its circumstances. Indeed, that is kind of definitional.

Life makes choices that are functional. They are choices entrained to environmentally general demands like maintenance and replication.

Physics is then about the truly universal tendencies. And there are now no choices apart from the most general ones already baked into the fabric of being as that which characterise the Cosmos itself.

But still, the least action principle shows that there is something "mysterious" going on in the very heart of reductionist physics. There is a necessary holism that reductionism just cannot explain and simply accepts as a useful simplifying fact.

Newtonian mechanics quickly became recast in the language of Lagrangians and Hamiltonians for practical reasons. The principle of least action made the business of calculating simpler. And then Quantum Mechanics really needed the principle of least action - in the guise of Feynman's path integral - to make calculations of any complexity even humanly possible.

Quoting Janus

The middles section of the quoted passage, with the reference to Anaximander, seems to be right up your alley, apo!

That's what led me to the Kyoto School of course. I was googling for references. :grin:

There is speculation about who influenced who as Anaximander was around at the same time as Taoist thought was developing. Anaximander was a coloniser and traveller. So the essential ideas could have gone West to East or the other way. Or developed as obvious for both.

Quoting apokrisis

Or even less than that. It is a mere universal tendency.

Yes, that's better put: purpose, function, tendency.

Quoting apokrisis

But still, the least action principle shows that there is something "mysterious" going on in the very heart of reductionist physics.

Entanglement?

Quoting apokrisis

it was you who said it wasn't about stasis, except that it was.

You left out:

that it is the Good, the supreme goal and the one and only consummation of life.

I was going to say there's probably a genetic resemblance to Animaxander's 'apeiron' and the Buddhist 'unconditioned' - in fact the 'unconditioned' or 'uncreated' is universal in world philosophies and religious traditions. (I have a book called The Shape of Ancient Thought, by an art critic and historian by the name of Thomas McEvilly, which expresses the (generally unorthodox) view that there are much more profound connections between ancient Indian and Greek philosophy and science than is generally accepted. I will look into that later and see if he has anything to say on the topic.)

Quoting apokrisis

the Kyoto School.

Interesting. I encountered some of the Kyoto School authors when doing Buddhist Studies a few years back - Masao Abe, in particular.

However, a caveat in respect of the translation of ??nyat? as 'nothing' or 'nothingness'. ('No-thing-ness' is acceptable!) The reason for that - when Buddhism was first discovered in the West, there was a widespread view that Nirv??a was indeed nothingness or non-being and that Buddhism is therefore a nihilist philosophy. This was certainly the view of Nietzsche, who characterised it as the 'sigh of an exhausted civilisation.' Likewise for Schopenhauer and others. And the Hindus generally characterised the Buddha as a nihilist because he refused to acknowledge the Vedic gods and scriptures.

The second passage puts paid to that mis-interpretation. But there's an important point in that passage about the Buddhist understanding that sams?ra and nirv?na are 'not two'. That's characteristic of Mah?y?na - the Theravada don't hold that view. Whereas the non-dualist understanding of N?g?rjuna and subsequent schools is that there is only one 'domain', but that because it is seen wrongly, or clung to, then it is experienced as 'sams?ra'. If it is seen rightly, then this very world is nirv?na. Hence the aphorism: 'sams?ra is nirv?na grasped, nirv?na is sams?ra released'. (This is where the 'perspectival' nature of Buddhist teachings become apparent, although it's very hard point to grasp.)

There's a saying in Buddhism, that 'emptiness and compassion are like the two wings of a bird' - you need both in order to stay aloft. So the question I sometimes contemplate is: where does the energy of compassion (bodhicitta) come from? What is the source of that energy, that equips the Buddhist to 'work diligently for the salvation of all sentient beings'? I don't think it has a physical source; nor do I think it's just 'nothing'.

Quoting Janus

But again the tendency to return to equilibrium absent any inherent intention in things to behave that way (according to a spiritual reality that this world is an expression of, perhaps, or the direction of a God) would tend to look more like function than purpose. :smile:

Agree.

//ps// - the section in the SEP article on Nishida's topology of nothingness - this is starting to make sense to me now, when I first encountered it years ago I couldn't make head or tail of it.

__//|\\__

Quoting apokrisis

You are talking about two incompatible things. I'm talking about two complementary limits.

A dichotomy is logically that which is mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. So Apeiron and Nous would have to "exist" as the inverse or reciprocal of each other. They would be the mutually opposed limits on being, and hence Being would be that bit - the actual or substantial bit - left in the middle. The limits themselves are not part of what is actual because they are the extremes that mark the limit of what even could be actual. We might give them names, like Apeiron and Nous. But they are the names of the complementary limits on being.

Now, instead of addressing my post, you've completely changed the subject. You said "nature can check every possible option to find the most locally effective choice to actualise". And also you said, "my own metaphysics is founded on vagueness, apeiron, quantum foam or firstness.". Clearly, nature checking every possible option is not a limit, it is a thing, nature, acting. And the apeiron you propose is not proposed as a limit, it is proposed as an existent thing. What you stated earlier was two distinct principles of existence, two distinct ontological principles, a mind which organizes, and the chaos which it organizes. Now you want to talk about a dichotomy of opposing limits.

You cannot produce an ontology from limits, because you need existents. Now you do not want to talk about what exists anymore, you just want to talk about the limits of existence.

Quoting apokrisis

So here you are trying to assert the authority of the law of the excluded middle. Faced with a dichotomy, you say its complementary pair must be reduced to either/or. One thing or the other. You deny the third thing of the reciprocal relation that creates the separation and so also forms the interaction. You say - with the full force of an unexamined habit - that only a yes/no answer is logically acceptable.

No, you misunderstand. What was described is not a dichotomy. What was described is two principles, each excluding the possibility of the other. For example, "God exists", and "God does not exist". These are two incompatible principles, each excludes the possibility of the other, like Nous and Apeiron are two incompatible principles, each excludes the possibility of the other. Either you totally misunderstand, or you intentionally changed the subject, to now talk about a dichotomy.

So you misunderstand why the "reciprocal relation" is impossible. The reciprocal relation requires that we accept both principles as if they were limits of a dichotomy. But this is not a dichotomy of limits, it is two opposing principles, and acceptance of them both is impossible because they contradict each other. And, to accept just one is insufficient to explain reality. So it is necessary to reject both, neither the principle Nous (God exists) nor the principle Apeiron (God does not exist) is acceptable as a first principle.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You said "nature can check every possible option to find the most locally effective choice to actualise".

Yes, it is as if that were the case. As if there was a sniffing out of all trajectories.

So the metaphysical challenge would be to understand that as a physically intelligible process. It is not saying that reality has some actual mindlike active choice. It has to be something much more deflationary in practice.

As I replied to Janus, we are only talking about generic propensities or tendencies at the physically simple level here. So we must both do justice to final cause without getting any more spooky about it than makes sense.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

And also you said, "my own metaphysics is founded on vagueness, apeiron, quantum foam or firstness.".

Yes. That is the "material" beginning. And finality is the "formal" end. That is how it works.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Clearly, nature checking every possible option is not a limit, it is a thing, nature, acting.

Again, I use anthropomorphic language here, while also explaining that I use it in a deflationary sense.

So the principle of least action says that nature applies this limiting constraint on all material possibility. And what results is the actuality of a substantial action - some actual trajectory taken by a process or event.

You have to think of this holistically and triadically, not reductionistically and dually.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You cannot produce an ontology from limits, because you need existents.

You're not listen as usual. The actual is what emerges as a result of a complementary process of limitation. The existents are what are hylomorphically left after material possibility and formal necessity have had their combined say on the matter.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

For example, "God exists", and "God does not exist".

Yeah. That is addition and subtraction. Simple negation. Dichotomies are a reciprocal or inverse relation. Completely different.

Remember that division is the odd one out in arithmetic because it is a holistic relation, not a compositional one. And so this is like that difference at a logical level.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Either you totally misunderstand, or you intentionally changed the subject, to now talk about a dichotomy.

Or you aren't keeping up.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So it is necessary to reject both, neither the principle Nous (God exists) nor the principle Apeiron (God does not exist) is acceptable as a first principle.

Who was talking about God here? Not me. That's your bag.

Quoting apokrisis

Yes, it is as if that were the case. As if there was a sniffing out of all trajectories.

So the metaphysical challenge would be to understand that as a physically intelligible process. It is not saying that reality has some actual mindlike active choice. It has to be something much more deflationary in practice.

The "sniffing out" is an apprehension of possibilities. This is what a mind does, apprehends possibilities choosing appropriate ones. Where your approach leads you astray is in the attempt to understand this as a "physically intelligible process". The physical and the intelligible are distinct, as material and immaterial, one excluding the other, like in the example of Nous and Apeiron, one excludes the other. If your goal is to maintain these two as real, then it is necessary to produce a separation between them which allows them to interact but also maintain their separation, in order that they can each stay true to their incompatible descriptions. Then we would have the two incompatible principles, with a separation between them, allowing them each to stay true. Instead, you portray "the metaphysical challenge" as uniting them under "physical process".

We could start with Whitehead's "prehension", as the means by which the immaterial, non-physical, is related to the physical. Notice that whatever is prehended by a mind, is necessarily in the past, and this consists of actualities, actual occasions. Now we need to account for how actual occasions, the past, comes to be, from the future. Whitehead proposes the concept of "concrescence". Concrescence is an ordering of the occasions, events, which will occur at the present, being prehended as they slide into the past. For Whitehead, future events can have no physical existence, we could call them possibilities. So concrescence is a non-physical, non-temporal, ordering. The present itself, being, existing at the present provides the boundary of separation between the actual events of the past, and the possible events of the future.

This ought to provide a brief explanation why the possibilities, possible trajectories, cannot be understood as a physical process. The world in its physical form, all the physical objects of the universe, cannot have any existence prior to the moment of the present. This principle is central to eastern metaphysics (arguably the principal feature of Awakening, found in nibbana, and where Whitehead and Buddhism share principles). But instead of giving the Awakened credit for understanding this feature of reality, the western world of physicalists tends to dismiss this as a confused falsity. However, consider the existence of a physical object, like a cup on a table. A human being with a free wiling mind, and a hammer, could sit there and smash that object, annihilate it, at any moment of the present. Since this could happen at any moment, it is demonstrated that the object cannot have physical existence in the future. We could extend this general principle to include all physical objects, and conclude as Whitehead states, that there is no physical, temporal, existence in the future, and as eastern metaphysics states, that the physical world must be created anew at each moment of time.

Quoting apokrisis

So the principle of least action says that nature applies this limiting constraint on all material possibility. And what results is the actuality of a substantial action - some actual trajectory taken by a process or event.

This is problematic. What is this "nature" which is acting to constrain or limit material possibility? You have invoked a "nature" which is outside of, transcending, material existence, which can have real influence over what occurs in the material world, by choosing from possible trajectories. Why not use "nature" in the customary way, to refer to what actually happens in the material world, and call this thing which transcends the material world, and can make free choices as to what happens in the material world, what we normally call it, God. If you would just replace "nature" with "God" here, you would greatly reduce the ambiguity of your writing.

Quoting apokrisis

Yeah. That is addition and subtraction. Simple negation. Dichotomies are a reciprocal or inverse relation. Completely different.

Right, dichotomies are completely different, that's why I accused you of wantonly changing the subject. If we could get to the point of establishing the necessary boundary, separation, between the two incompatible principles which negate each other, then we might be able to present them as a dichotomy, something like what I proposed above from Whitehead's perspective. But to class the two together, unite the contradictory principles, under "physical processes", rather than providing a real separation between them, is a mistaken approach.

Quoting apokrisis

Who was talking about God here? Not me. That's your bag.

Call it "nature", or call it "God", if it bears the same description, we're talking about the same thing under a different name. But you are in the wrong here, because you have no convention which allows you to say that "nature" transcends material existence, as you do. So you ought to relinquish such misleading use of terms.

Reply to Janus

Would the idea of Karma equate better with a conception of "harmony, perfection, or "the good"", or with a notion of "randomness and irreversibility"?

It's almost like you are asking if Ethics ought to be first philosophy, or if the irrational is the only other option. I think Karma is closer to luck.

A man goes to the market to buy fruit, runs into some one who owes him a lot of money and he confronts the man and the debt gets paid off. The purpose of going to the market was to purchase fruit, but the good end was that the debt was paid off.

The man was lucky. The question Aristotle asked is...was this man born lucky, is this part of nature's own irrationality (or perhaps nature's determinism) that some men are, quite unknown to themself, lucky.

Reply to Cavacava

That's an intriguing slant, but I am not seeing how it relates to what it is supposed to be responding to.

I wasn't trying to address any question of ethics, but to consider whether the conception of causation involved in karma, which is itself yet to be explained, (on here at least) would be more compatible with metaphysical ideas of "harmony, perfection, or "the good'" or with "randomness and irreversibility". I was wondering whether considering that question might help to clarify just what is the conception of causation involved in the notion of karma.

Considering that question further I think the conception of causation involved in karma is perhaps most akin to a mixture of formal and material causation. Our choices (whether deliberately or not) form what we become (they are thus formal causes), and then what we become acts as material cause in that it determines what kinds of interactions (experiences) are possible for us.

Reply to Cavacava
In addition to the "four causes" Aristotle considered two more, which you demonstrate here, "chance" and "fortune" (or luck). He decided that "chance" could not really be a cause in any proper sense of the word, but when it is considered in relation to final cause (intention), chance can be viewed as a cause of fortune (luck). This is what the example you've provided demonstrates. If "luck" or 'fortune" is considered to be a real thing, then the only thing which could cause this is chance. So by saying fortune or luck is real, then chance becomes a real cause.

The chance meeting of the two men in the market, on its own does not cause anything. However, since there is a debt to be paid, and we allow that the chance meeting is the cause of the debt being paid, then we ought to allow that the chance meeting was for the sake of the debt being paid, in the sense of final cause. However, there was no intent by either of the individuals, so we cannot allow final cause, and we must turn to chance as the cause.

This is the very odd, and difficult to understand relation between chance and final cause. Once we take that event, the payment of the debt, which has an immaterial substance, the debt, and consider it as a real object or event, which was caused to occur, it gets placed into the immaterial realm of intent requiring final cause, purpose. However, there is no intent evident from either of the two parties, which is expressly stated by the example. Therefore we have no intent, or final cause to attribute to the occurrence of the immaterial event, the lifting of the debt, so we must turn to the physical event as the cause, which is designated as a chance occurrence.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover In a deterministic system there are no chance events.
in a probabilistic system only the constituting (micro) events are chance (random) and there are no chance macro events.
Given human limitations of knowledge chance is thus an epistemic characteristic of macro events in both cases.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover :up:

Reply to Janus :down:

Quoting Janus

In a deterministic system there are no chance events.
in a probabilistic system only the constituting (micro) events are chance (random) and there are no chance macro events.
Given human limitations of knowledge chance is thus an epistemic characteristic of macro events in both cases.

Allowing that final cause is a true cause denies determinism, in favour of free choice. You cannot have a deterministic system and final cause, they are incompatible. If we opt for the free choice system, then we have to allow for the instances when one's desires, wants, or needs are fulfilled without the person willing the act which causes this. This is luck, and chance.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

How would the reality of final cause entail free choice or chance?

Reply to Janus
The intended goal, not the efficient cause, is the cause of the act. So in Aristotle's example, the goal of "health" is the cause of the man's walking. The man is walking to be healthy. The cause of the act, walking, is therefore the freely willed choice of health, not some efficient cause.

The need for "chance" follows the acceptance of free choice, as described already. Perhaps the man becomes healthy without walking.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You cannot have a deterministic system and final cause, they are incompatible.

If final cause is understood as constraint, then you have a much simpler story where determinism is just the limits imposed on chance happenings.

Choice and freewill then become more complexly constrained degrees of freedom. So same story, just with more levels of organisation imposed.

I can hold out my hand straight. The hierarchical organisation of my nervous system makes this possible. But I can't control a slight wavering and tremor. The hand is never perfectly still as its position is only being constrained within limits. However I can hold it straight and still enough to the degree that is mostly matters.

The thing to note is that the kind of constraints that are choices are the counterfactually poised ones - the ones where we are regulating a material instability. We can act as if we were logical switches, doing either the one thing or its precise opposite.

So constraint is essentially an organic notion - not a mechanical or deterministic or computational kind of control. But choice is about constraints becoming machine-like - a logical switch - because the system itself is poised on an instability and so an informational or semiotic nudge is all it takes to flip action with counterfactual definiteness in one direction or the other.

This is why there is an irreducible wavering when a hand is held outstretched. The musculoskeletal system is designed on this control principle. Contraction and extension are opposing forces. To maintain the hand in some fixed position means a delicate balancing of those opposed "wills".

Good metaphysics is about describing the world as simply as possible. Final cause needs to be understood first at the physically basic level - as a system of constraints on degrees of freedom. Then the question is how it becomes more like what we mean by human meaningful choice due to hierarchical elaboration.

How does the generalised tendency become a particular function and eventually a counterfactually-definite goal?

The advantage of the semiotic view is that it adds the least metaphysical furniture to the story. It all starts with habits of constraint on degrees of freedom. Then it adds the twist that logic - information - is also "real" here. Latent in the notion of constraint is that it can become maximally definite - as in the choices made by a switch - to the degree that the freedoms in question are themselves maximal!

The two are connected reciprocally. The material aspect of the system - the degrees of freedom - must be as unstable as possible for the constraints, the semiotically-encoded bit, to be as sharply regulatory as possible.

So the story is a little complex - irreducibly triadic in being hierarchical. But it is immanent or self-organising. No need for the unexplained hand of transcendent causality.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Firstly, I would point out that although we can certainly say that the intended goal, in this example becoming healthy, is a cause of the act of walking, we can equally say that the material (bodily) conditions and efficient processes involved in walking are causes of the act of walking. We can also say that the form of the body is a cause of the act of walking. So, all four kinds of cause are involved.

None of this necessitates that the intended goal be freely chosen by the walker. And I cannot see how the possibility that one could become healthy some other way, by eating well, or cycling, or lifting weights, or Tai Chi, or whatever, has anything to do with chance.

Quoting apokrisis

If final cause is understood as constraint, then you have a much simpler story where determinism is just the limits imposed on chance happenings.

But this would not be keeping true to Aristotle's description of the four causes. Formal cause might be understood as constraint, but not final cause. Final cause is the intent, what is wanted, and this causes the person to act in a way accordingly. Final cause is associated with the freedom of the will to choose one's own actions, so constraint is contrary to final cause.

Quoting apokrisis

Good metaphysics is about describing the world as simply as possible. Final cause needs to be understood first at the physically basic level - as a system of constraints on degrees of freedom. Then the question is how it becomes more like what we mean by human meaningful choice due to hierarchical elaboration.

I don't think final cause can be understood as physical, because it is an idea, a notion of what is wanted. As such it is an immaterial object, intelligible but not sensible, having no physical existence.

Quoting apokrisis

How does the generalised tendency become a particular function and eventually a counterfactually-definite goal?

This seems like a good approach, any suggestions of how this is possible? Suppose I have a general feeling of hunger. This feeling, being completely general is not a tendency toward eating any particular food, nor could it be a desire for any particular food. As something "general", it is completely non-physical. However, I may consider physical objects which are available to me to eat, which I have sensed, and I may make a definite goal of making a particular type of sandwich. So the immaterial, and general, feeling of want, which is called "hunger", becomes the desire to eat a very specific, and particular material object, which I am now creating with my hands, the sandwich.

Quoting apokrisis

The advantage of the semiotic view is that it adds the least metaphysical furniture to the story. It all starts with habits of constraint on degrees of freedom. Then it adds the twist that logic - information - is also "real" here. Latent in the notion of constraint is that it can become maximally definite - as in the choices made by a switch - to the degree that the freedoms in question are themselves maximal!

So I think this oversimplification is not the proper approach. We cannot start "with habits of constraint on degrees of freedom", because we need to place the general feeling of desire as prior to the habit forming. The constraints of habit are produced from the individual's activities, and the activities follow from the general desire.

Quoting Janus

Firstly, I would point out that although we can certainly say that the intended goal, in this example becoming healthy, is a cause of the act of walking, we can equally say that the material (bodily) conditions and efficient processes involved in walking are causes of the act of walking. We can also say that the form of the body is a cause of the act of walking. So, all four kinds of cause are involved.

I know you can say this. You can also deny free will if you want. My point was that the necessity to consider luck and chance, follows from allowing that intention (final cause) is a real cause. So if you insist that the material body is the cause of the person walking, rather than the intent of health, and likewise in all other instances of intent, insisting that intent is not a cause, then you remove the need for luck and chance.

Quoting Janus

None of this necessitates that the intended goal be freely chosen by the walker. And I cannot see how the possibility that one could become healthy some other way, by eating well, or cycling, or lifting weights, or Tai Chi, or whatever, has anything to do with chance.

Do you understand Cavacava's example from Aristotle? When we allow that things are done with intent, we must allow that a particular action is good or bad in relation to the intended end. If it helps to bring about a desired end the action is good. If it hinders a desired end it is bad. So when we choose to act, the act is chosen because it is designated as good in relation to a desired end. The good act helps to bring about the end, and that act can only be said to be the cause of the desired end, if it is freely chosen. If it is not freely chosen there is a regress of causation, a causal chain, and the choice is not the true cause, because it is caused. Only if the act is freely chosen can it be said to be the true cause of the desired end, because otherwise there would be a chain of causation and the choice would not be the true cause.

The good act however, which is the act that brings about the desired end, may happen without being chosen. In this case we say that the desired end is brought about by chance. So it is a function of the determination of an act as good or bad, which brings about the need for "luck", and "chance". We can only say that an event is good or bad, if it is put in relation to some desired end or intent. If the event is directed toward that end, and caused to be, by a free willing agent, it is an intentional act. If it is not directed toward the end, and caused to be, by a free willing agent, it is still good or bad, but it is so by chance. If we remove the free willing agent, deny that free will is real, then we have no difference between the intentionally good act, and the act which is good by chance, because both are simply caused by a chain of efficient causes. Therefore "luck" and "chance" only make sense if one accepts free will, because it distinguishes the chosen (willed) good or bad act from the unchosen (chance) good or bad act.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Therefore "luck" and "chance" only make sense if one accepts free will, because it distinguishes the chosen (willed) good or bad act from the unchosen (chance) good or bad act.

OK, that makes sense. I see what you were getting at now. :smile:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Suppose I have a general feeling of hunger. This feeling, being completely general is not a tendency toward eating any particular food, nor could it be a desire for any particular food. As something "general", it is completely non-physical. However, I may consider physical objects which are available to me to eat, which I have sensed, and I may make a definite goal of making a particular type of sandwich. So the immaterial, and general, feeling of want, which is called "hunger", becomes the desire to eat a very specific, and particular material object, which I am now creating with my hands, the sandwich.

Is that how it works? If you are really hungry, you can't afford to be too fussy. Food in general will satisfy your need. But if you have a well-stocked fridge, then already you have constructed a world of forced choice. To make the ham sandwich is not to make the cheese sandwich, the tomato sandwich, the egg sandwich.

Maybe to help you make a sensible decision you would have sought out further criteria. You might have been guided by what was nearest its sell-by date, what was healthiest, what was easiest to throw together, or what left the most of what the rest of the family might like. Or maybe you didn't think much and chose ham out of general habit. Or maybe the choices were so evenly weighted that you might as well have tossed a coin. Your hand went to the first food that caught your eye, accidentally left prominent by the last person to raid the fridge.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

But this would not be keeping true to Aristotle's description of the four causes. Formal cause might be understood as constraint, but not final cause. Final cause is the intent, what is wanted, and this causes the person to act in a way accordingly. Final cause is associated with the freedom of the will to choose one's own actions, so constraint is contrary to final cause.

You defend a scholastic view of Aristotle. So already we differ strongly. Your argument from authority comes from a secondary source.

And anyway, I am basing my position on modern psychological science. What we call freewill is about constructing these states of mental constraint - to the degree that the accidental actually needs to be ruled out in any of our actions.

So I defend a pragmatist metaphysics, not a theistically absolutist one.

Quoting apokrisis

Is that how it works? If you are really hungry, you can't afford to be too fussy. Food in general will satisfy your need.

I think you're missing the point. No one eats "food in general", we eat particular items. It doesn't matter whether the fridge is stocked or not, the person who has the general feeling of hunger must progress to choosing a particular item to eat, and therefore the desire for that particular item. So my criticism of your proposal remains. We cannot "start" with the habits of constraint if we want to understand this process, because these habits of constraint are particulars, while desire and want start in the general. Habits of constraint follow from particular choices which follow from the general, desire and want. So to say "It all starts with habits of constraint on degrees of freedom." is to utter a falsity. And if this is the basis of the semiotic metaphysic, then that is based in a false premise.

Quoting apokrisis

You defend a scholastic view of Aristotle. So already we differ strongly. Your argument from authority comes from a secondary source.

The Scholastics were well versed in Aristotle, as am I. That the Scholastics interpret Aristotle in a way similar to me doesn't mean that I am arguing from a secondary source. But that you interpret Aristotle in a way which strongly differs from us, indicates that you are probably not so well-read in Aristotle.

Quoting apokrisis

And anyway, I am basing my position on modern psychological science.

Well which is it? Is your notion of "final cause" based in modern psychological science, or is it based in Aristotle's description? If it is the former, then I would argue that this is not really "final cause" at all, and you are just pretending that it is compatible with Aristotle's "final cause".

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

No one eats "food in general", we eat particular items.

I think you are hoping to evade my point. If your need is food and you haven't got the option of being particular, then any item will do just as well.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

the person who has the general feeling of hunger must progress to choosing a particular item to eat, and therefore the desire for that particular item.

It isn't necessary at all. But we may then supply further reasons - further finalities - that might make those particular choices count. Like sell-by dates or habitual preferences.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

desire and want start in the general.

In the general what?

How is a choice of the particular thing of the ham sandwich, given the variety of options in your fridge, a necessary expression of your general desire of your feeling hungry and so wanting an answer to that in the form of food?

Constraints/habits simply point to the top-down hierarchical structure of these things. Which - if you are Aristotelian - you will immediately recognise as his central metaphysical point. Food is the genus, ham sandwich is the species. And for the particular to relate to the general, it has to be either by virtue of accident or by necessity.

If by necessity, constraints will be in play to ensure that. If by accident, then any particular is merely a material contingency and not a formal need.

So while you are quick to point out that Aristotle was concerned with true spontaneity or accident - the rock that for no reason falls off the cliff - you seem to forget that fact just as fast.

Perhaps you should make it basic to your metaphysics like others who have followed more truly in Aristotle's footsteps have managed to do.

Reply to JanusKarma is only a type of causation, based on the moral hue of conscious free action.

1. Causation isn't simple. People talk of chain of causation. I prefer web of causation. Aristotle's classification is too simplistic to allow analysis of causation. It isolates a single entity for analysis and that's not possible. We're in a network and while what we do may have effect our actions can't be adequately extricated from the causal web for anything useful. Mr. A guns down Mr. B but there are so many causes acting on Mr. A that it would be unfair to hold Mr. A as solely and wholly responsible for the murder.

2. Free will. We all know that free will is an open question. Nobody knows if we are actually free to do what we want. Right?

3. Morality. Even where I stand, so very far from completely understanding philosophy, I can see that morality has no foundation. Morality is nothing more than a set of arbitrary rules to make society possible.

Quoting apokrisis

I think you are hoping to evade my point. If your need is food and you haven't got the option of being particular, then any item will do just as well.

That doesn't avoid my point. You still must choose something particular before you can eat. So you still must go through that process of transforming the general feeling of hunger, to the desire for something particular.

Quoting apokrisis

It isn't necessary at all.

You haven't produced any argument, just this assertion. If it's not necessary, then explain how a person goes from the general condition of being hungry, to the circumstances of eating something particular, without going through a process which transforms this general desire, similar to what I describe.

It seems like your claim is that people just eat particular things, out of habit, without ever having that general feeling of hunger, and then this general feeling of hunger develops out of a deprivation of the habit. Is that the point you are arguing?

Quoting apokrisis

In the general what?

It starts in a general feeling. The desire for food, like any other desire, is a general feeling of discomfort, a lacking, a feeling of dissatisfaction. The concept of suffering, which is a broad term, referring to many different types of deprivation, is derived from this general feeling. It is often very difficult to distinguish the particulars of the suffering, as is the case in many forms of mental illness.

Quoting apokrisis

How is a choice of the particular thing of the ham sandwich, given the variety of options in your fridge, a necessary expression of your general desire of your feeling hungry and so wanting an answer to that in the form of food?

That is not what I said. You are reversing the necessity here. What I said is that the general feeling is necessarily prior to the particular choice. But there is no reason to conclude from this, that a particular choice is a "necessary expression" of the general feeling. This is why the will is free, and we have the capacity to suppress our desires and be moral beings. There is, as I've argued, a logical necessity that if there is a particular choice, the general feeling is prior to the particular choice, as the feeling is necessary to produce a choice. But a choice, following the general feeling is not necessary. And because there is no necessity of any particular choice following a general feeling, the particular choice cannot be said to be " a necessary expression" of a general desire. However, a general desire is necessary to account for any particular choice.

Also, as I've been discussing with Janus, the thing needed to relieve one from the general condition of desire, suffering, may come to a person without that person intentional seeking it, and this we attribute to luck, and chance. The reality of chance demonstrates that the relationship between the general feeling, and the particular choice, really is not a relationship of necessity, and therefore the will is in fact free.

Quoting apokrisis

Constraints/habits simply point to the top-down hierarchical structure of these things. Which - if you are Aristotelian - you will immediately recognise as his central metaphysical point. Food is the genus, ham sandwich is the species. And for the particular to relate to the general, it has to be either by virtue of accident or by necessity.

I don't recall Aristotle ever talking about a top-down hierarchical structure of things. He seemed to be more interested in getting to the bottom of things, the substance. There is no top-down hierarchical structure to his logic. There is primary substance, as the individual, particular thing, and there is secondary substance, as the species. Further there is genus. All knowledge must proceed from the thing more well known toward the less well known. All assertions, propositions, or statements, must be validated, substantiated from the bottom up. This bottom-up substantiation is our defence against the deception of pie in the sky sophistry.

Quoting TheMadFool

2. Free will. We all know that free will is an open question. Nobody knows if we are actually free to do what we want. Right?

By choosing free will we release ourselves from that complicated chain, that web of causation which you refer to in #1. No longer must we set out to analyze an immense complicated network of causes, seeking to understand the "why" of an individual's actions, because we see that this is impossible. The "why" is attributable to a free will act. And the free will act is a cause that starts a physical event, so there is no physical continuity prior to that event. Therefore that entire web of causation is completely irrelevant, and seeking the causes for the act in this web is impossible because the causes are not there..

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You haven't produced any argument, just this assertion

I argued that either further more particular constraints decide the matter, or it then becomes an accidental outcome.

Quoting TheMadFool

Karma is only a type of causation, based on the moral hue of conscious free action.

I'm not sure that the idea of karma can be associated with the idea of free will in the full libertarian sense that is to be found within some forms of Christianity.

1. I agree that causation isn't simple, and I think Aristotle's idea of four causes is an attempt to address the complexities. Is it ever a case of one cause or type of causation operating to the exclusion of all others, as it would be with the notion of radical libertarian free will?

2. Right. We experience ourselves as being (more or less) free. Are we really free at all? Is that even a coherent question? What could it even mean to experience ourselves as free, and yet not "really" be free at all? What could such a vision consists in other than an objectification of ourselves? And yet such an objectification could never be more than merely one of the possibilities inherent in our all-encompassing phenomenological experience, could it?

3. If certain moral rules are necessary to "makes society possible", then I don't see how they can be arbitrary.

Quoting apokrisis

I argued that either further more particular constraints decide the matter, or it then becomes an accidental outcome.

So there is no final cause, or intention behind the general feeling of hunger? It is not there for the sake of anything, it is just an accidental outcome? The feeling of hunger is clearly more general, and therefore not a more particular constraint, so this leaves us with "an accidental outcome".

I take it that you are arguing that the feeling of hunger is not essential to the human being, it's just accidental. Is this what you are arguing? This would require that not all human beings experience hunger, it's something that some experience and not others. I suppose that if a human being keeps up with its preprogramed activity of eating, it would never feel hunger. Only those whom for some reason decide not to keep on with this activity, or cannot do it, actually ever feel hungry. So hunger is accidental, the result of a failure to stick with the program, eating. How do you think eating ever came into existence in the first place?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So there is no final cause, or intention behind the general feeling of hunger?

Keep on inventing things I never said. I'll sit back and watch you win arguments that are just against yourself.

Quoting TheMadFool

I can see that morality has no foundation. Morality is nothing more than a set of arbitrary rules to make society possible.

Steady on. If karma is actual, then the quality of the intentions behind your actions will always have consequences. And that is not arbitrary but actual.

[quote="Janus;177129"]Reply to Wayfarer

Causation is very interesting. It requires rules or laws so that we may abstract a causal inference. Thirst is quenched by water. If this relation quench-water weren't consistent over time and space we won't be able to infer causation at all.

Perhaps some forms of causation like the one above can be isolated from the causal matrix and inferred.

However, something interesting happens when we step back and take the whole instead of the parts. Brownian motion is the erratic/random movement of matter particles. It's interesting that Brownian motion is described as erratic/random even when we know that each particle is actually follwing the laws of mechanics just like balls on a pool table.

What I'm saying is that while causation requires the existence of general laws that govern interaction at all levels, the laws themselves are no guarantee for order in a system.

This clearly shows that Karma, dependent as it is on causality, can't be considered at indvidual levels, especially concerning the amount of control we have over our destinies.

Strangely, nirvana, the Buddhist goal, is exactly about letting go - to extricate oneself from the causal matrix. This can be done if one gives up the notion of free will because we must act without intention for benefit or anything else. We must turn off our egos and that translates to giving up on free will.

Reply to TheMadFool The early Buddhist texts are full of passages exhorting the listener to ‘hasten and strive’, to make great effort, to ‘work out your own salvation with diligence’.

Quoting apokrisis

Keep on inventing things I never said. I'll sit back and watch you win arguments that are just against yourself.

OK keep watching then. I'm pretty good at it, maybe you'll learn something.

You didn't state an argument to support your premise:

Quoting apokrisis

It all starts with habits of constraint on degrees of freedom. Then it adds the twist that logic - information - is also "real" here.

So I had to provide one for you. Got a better one? My contention is that habits must be formed, therefore it is impossible that it all starts with habits of constraint. Have you a solution to this problem? Maybe logic is really prior to habits of constraint?