Universals

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Quoting tim wood

This sounds like universal as phenomenon rather than thing

It it is neither a thing, nor a phenomenon (an experiential appearance). Universality is a attribute of a concept, and, by extension, of words expressing that concept.

Quoting tim wood

By phenomenon I have in mind that my instantiated idea of a strong arm and yours, while both entirely different

I would say, not entirely different (equivocal), but analogical.
Quoting tim wood

may, by a third person both be adjudged to correspond in the sense of referring to strong arms. If that, then of what, exactly, is the universal comprised

Quoting tim wood

may, by a third person both be adjudged to correspond in the sense of referring to strong arms. If that, then of what, exactly, is the universal comprised

Universality is not about communication. What a third person does or does not understand is irrelevant to the intrinsic nature of our concepts. All that is required is that multiple instances have the objective capacity to evoke my concept and (possibly other) multiple instances have the objective capacity to evoke your concept. Of course this can lead to difficulties in communication, because when I say "strong arms" the idea the words evoke in you may differ from the idea I have. Such is life. It is important, we can work out the differences and communicate more effectively.

In any culture, it is likely that our concepts will be very similar, having prety much the same set of instances. Differences will have to do with marginal cases.

Quoting Dfpolis

The problem is that unless both individuals and universals can be recognized by the same faculty, we can't form judgements linking them. We cannot think (an intellectual operation) , because (in the Thomistic view) "this" is not an idea, and therefore not something the intellect can grasp, while the universal predicated of "this" can't be represented at the sensory level.

The difficulty can be resolve simply, by identifying the agent intellect with awareness (as I do) and noting that we can be aware of both an object as a unified whole (ousia, substance) and as having various universalizable features or notes of intelligibility.

Again, animals have awareness, but not the ability to abstract and judge, to say 'this means that', or 'this thing is the same type as that thing'. Animals are possessed of awareness, but have none of those capabilities, except for in rudimentary fashion. That ability is partially pre-conscious, i.e. it operates partially below the threshold of discursive consciousness, and is employed whenever we make rational judgements, which we do continuously as language-using beings. Don’t you see a link between this faculty - intellect - and what enables humans to think, reason, calculate and speak?

As to what synthesises the intelligible and sensible into a unity, this is connected to the 'subjective unity of perception', which I think suggests a principle very much along the lines of Kant's 'transcendental apperception' and also suggested by the Ideas of Reason. So I don't find 'awareness' a sufficient explanatory principle.

My view is that universals, mathematical and syntactical laws, logic, and the like, are like the 'ligatures of reason'. They are what binds together our mental operations. And being possessed of those abilities opens up domains of possibility that are not visible to non-rational creatures. How would science, scientia, be possible, were it not for the ability to recognise types, forms, substance, and so on? And these were ultimately grounded in the ideas, types, substance, and so on, of the metaphysical tradition, which nominalism, and then later empiricism, abandoned. Hence in the Ockham essay I referred to above:

critics of Ockham have tended to present traditional realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality has an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality.

Quoting Wayfarer

Again, animals have awareness

We know that animals have what we might call "medical consciousness," which can be defined in terms of physiological responsiveness. We do not know that animals are aware in the sense of being knowing (as opposed to sensing) subjects. On the principle of parsimony we have no reason to suppose that they do.

Quoting Wayfarer

That ability is partially pre-conscious, i.e. it operates partially below the threshold of discursive consciousness

All that we know animals to do can be explained without assuming that they are conscious of what they are doing. We can explain it at an entirely physical level. We cannot do that with human intentional operations such as knowing and willing.

Quoting Wayfarer

Don’t you see a link between this faculty - intellect - and what enables humans to think, reason, calculate and speak?

Of course I do. It is the same faculty.

Quoting Wayfarer

So I don't find 'awareness' a sufficient explanatory principle.

But it is. All we need to judge is to be aware that the same object that evokes the concept is the object that evokes . What more do we need? You can easily extend this analysis to the syllogism in Barbara -- following the identity through the premises to the conclusion. So, awareness explains ideogenesis, judgement and deduction. We do not need more.

Quoting Wayfarer

Hence in the Ockham essay I referred to above

I'm reading it. I note that it misconstrues Aquinas by leaving out the role of intelligibility in the instances of a universal.

I think you've failed to answer my question: How can we judge that a particular is a universal if particulars and universals are never found in the same theater of operation?

Quoting Dfpolis

We do not know that animals are aware in the sense of being knowing (as opposed to sensing) subjects. On the principle of parsimony we have no reason to suppose that they do.

Animals can learn, and even display problem-solving, along with empathy, aggression, compassion, and many other abilities. But they don't speak and they can't count (in any form other than the very rudimentary). Anyway the point I'm making is that, animals possess awareness - I can't see how that is contestable - but not reason.

Quoting Dfpolis

So I don't find 'awareness' a sufficient explanatory principle.
— Wayfarer

But it is. All we need to judge is to be aware that the same object that evokes the concept is the object that evokes . What more do we need?

That is a very basic form of generalisation, and 'crispness' hardly a stand-in for the scope of universal judgements generally. The examples that Feser provides communicate the idea more thoroughly:

For Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and other ancients and medievals, the main reason why the mind has to be immaterial concerns its affinity to its primary objects of knowledge, namely universals, which are themselves immaterial.
...
Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once.
...
Now the thought you are having about triangularity when you grasp it must be as determinate or exact as triangularity itself, otherwise it just wouldn’t be a thought about triangularity in the first place, but only a thought about some approximation of triangularity. Yet material things are never determinate or exact in this way.

Some Brief Arguments for Dualism


Quoting Dfpolis

How can we judge that a particular is a universal if particulars and universals are never found in the same theater of operation?

I did address that - this is a question of the 'synthetic unity of consciousness' - 'synthetic' in the sense of there being a faculty which draws together (synthesises) the differing elements of sensation, perception and judgement into a united whole. So when we see an object, we can recognise it as a type - i.e. categorise or classify it - as well as recognise its colour, location and whether it's moving. And actually the faculty is involved in doing that is still somewhat mysterious to neuro-science - that is an aspect of the 'neural binding' problem (as I think we discussed).

So the universal form and the particular instance of it are both unified in perception, but due to the faculty of reason, we can make judgements about what the thing is - what type, and so on. That amounts to much more than simply a judgement about a quality.

And actually the Brennan passage addresses the issue too:

“Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable. The product of abstraction is a species of an intelligible order. Now possible intellect is supplied with an adequate stimulus to which it responds by producing a concept.”

I admit, I'm not familiar with all of the implications and elaborations of these arguments. But I do maintain that central to them is the acceptance of the 'reality of intelligible objects', which is that these forms and ideas are real in their own right i.e. their reality is not derived from their being in individual minds or brains.

Reply to Wayfarer

Concepts must be more then ligatures of our reason. Animals might not have our reasoning ability, but they are significant in the conceptual order which extends beyond the human use of reason. Humans don't need to be reasoning or thinking about an animal for it to have its place in the conceptual order.

A dinosaur eats without humans being present to reason about it. This schism between the conceptual order and human reason (i.e. that the conceptual order is over and above the existence of human reason/perception) also extends to concepts outside of reporting on the empirical order. Triangles and triangularity, for example, obtain as a concept even in the absence of humans reasoning about them. In any case, the unity of the concept is defined regardless of perception. General concepts which apply to an individual are defined with unity within the conceptual order itself.

In applying a general to an individual, we are making use of this conceptual order. If I perceive a tree, for example, I do not unify that specific tree the general. On it's own, the tree already defines that unity: an existing thing which express the generality of tree. We just have think this necessarily true concept to understand this aspect of the tree.

In other words, when I understand how a general applies to a particular, I'm not moving from a "fuzzy" guess to something more specific. Rather, I understand something specific (the existing tree) and that it reflects a particular general concept ( the general concept of "tree" ). The "fuzziness" is just an illusion created if I mistake the general concept for the object I'm talking about.

When Dfpolis says we don't need anything more than for an explanation, they are saying we need is experience of the right concept itself-- e.g. the crispness of the apple, the triangularity of various triangles, etc. There is no higher or more foundational order than these necessary concepts. The existence (or non-existence) of human reason/experience has no impact upon these.

Quoting Wayfarer

Animals can learn, and even display problem-solving, along with empathy, aggression, compassion, and many other abilities.

The brain processes most data without a hint of consciousness. Philosophers have long noted that even complex sensory processing can be automatic, absent awareness. Aquinas cites Ibn Sina's observation that citara players don't pause between chords since they're predetermined.  William James notes Rudolph Lotze pointing tof writing and piano playing as similar activities.  Roger Penrose remarks that people can carry on conversations without paying attention.  Reductionist J. J. C. Smart proffers bicycle riding as his example.  Psychologist Graham Reed studied time-gap experiences in which we become aware of the passage of time after being lost in thought. In my own case, I've found that I've been driving safely (on automatic pilot as it were) while thinking about some issue. By the time I realize this, I may have missed my exit. Thus, complex sensory processing and response need involve no awareness.

So, it's not merely the fact that a behaviorist model works for animals, but also that we ourselves experience complex sensory processing without subjective awareness.

Quoting Wayfarer

That is a very basic form of generalisation, and 'crispness' hardly a stand-in for the scope of universal judgements generally.

This is not a generalization on the Hume-Mill model of induction. I'm not starting with one or a few cases and then hypothesizing that all others are like those I've examined. Instead, it is an abstraction in which we see that the structure of a judgement is independent of what is being judged -- just as we come to arithmetic by seeing that the act of counting is independent of what is being counted.

The example is simple, but the model is quite general. How can the judgement <A is B> be true if the object(s) that evoke <A> are not Identically the object(s) that evoke <B>? Suppose I'm unaware that object(s) that evoke <A> also evoke <B>. How would my judgement be justified? Or, if I judge <A is not B>, isn't it because I'm aware that the object that evokes <A> doesn't evoke <B>? So, a judgement is simply my act of awareness of identity (or lack of identity, for negative judgements) of source for the subject and predicate concepts.

Maritain calls this "dividing to unite." We distinguish notes of intelligibility in abstraction and then reunite them in judgement.

For Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and other ancients and medievals, the main reason why the mind has to be immaterial concerns its affinity to its primary objects of knowledge, namely universals, which are themselves immaterial.

Am I saying that intelligibility, information is material? Not at all. It belongs to the logical order.

My rejecting Descartes's misguided notion that we're composed of two things or two kinds of "stuff," Isn't rejecting the difference between the physical and logical orders, or between materiality and intentionality. I see both material and immaterial aspects of reality.

Quoting Wayfarer

How can we judge that a particular is a universal if particulars and universals are never found in the same theater of operation? — Dfpolis

I did address that - this is a question of the 'synthetic unity of consciousness' - 'synthetic' in the sense of there being a faculty which draws together (synthesises) the differing elements of sensation, perception and judgement into a united whole.

This sounds like you are agreeing with me and rejecting Aquinas view that the intellect can't know particulars -- for that is what it means to say there is "a faculty which draws together (synthesises) the differing elements of sensation, perception and judgement into a united whole." This faculty has to be able to recognize particulars ("the differing elements of sensation") and universals ("the ... elements of ... judgement). So, it cannot be sense, nor can it be an intellect that can only deal with universals.

It is an experiential fact that we are aware of both particulars and universal concepts, so awareness meets all of your criteria for your synthetic faculty. It is also an experiential fact (noted by Ibn Sina, Aquinas, Lotze, James, Penrose, Smart and Reed among others) that we can sense, and respond to sense in complex ways, without a shred of subjective awareness. Thus, subjective awareness is not an aspect of our sensory faculties. It can only be what Aristotle called nous (noos = vision), i.e. intellect.

Quoting Wayfarer

And actually the faculty is involved in doing that is still somewhat mysterious to neuro-science - that is an aspect of the 'neural binding' problem (as I think we discussed).

Yes -- the question of how Aristotle's phantasm is formed. I have a hypothesis on that in my book.

Quoting Wayfarer

That amounts to much more than simply a judgement about a quality.

I am not restricting judgements to qualities.

Quoting Wayfarer

“Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable

This is a rejection of Aquinas' explicit doctrine. He is clear that we have no direct knowledge of essences, but only glimpse them by reflecting on sensible accidents.

Quoting Wayfarer

I do maintain that central to them is the acceptance of the 'reality of intelligible objects', which is that these forms and ideas are real in their own right i.e. their reality is not derived from their being in individual minds or brains.

I accept the reality of intelligibility. Still, as an Aristotelian Thomist, I reject the notion that universals are actual outside of the minds thinking them. What exists in individuals is potential universals (aka notes of intelligibility) -- not actual universals.

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

When Dfpolis says we don't need anything more than for an explanation, they are saying we need is experience of the right concept itself-- e.g. the crispness of the apple, the triangularity of various triangles, etc. There is no higher or more foundational order than these necessary concepts. The existence (or non-existence) of human reason/experience has no impact upon these.

Thank you.

I don't think I would say that concepts have an intrinsic necessity. They result from an subject-object interaction between say, a human and a tree. Since both are contingent beings, the concept resulting from their interaction must also be contingent.

Quoting Dfpolis

The brain processes most data without a hint of consciousness.

I think what you're calling 'subjective awareness' is what I would call 'discursive awareness' i.e. things which we can bring consciously to mind, or are conscious of being conscious of. But there is a vast ensemble of ideas and knowledge which know tacitly or implicitly or without conscious reflection. Musicians, as you say (I myself am a self-taught jazz pianist) internalise skills in such a way as to perform them without deliberation, which is referred to as the stage of 'unconscious competence' in learning theory. As well as that there are all manner of unconscious or sub-conscious interpretation going on all the time, beneath the threshold of discursive awareness. But that is still 'conscious' in the broader sense as being attributes of a sentient mind.

But that has nothing to do with behaviourism, as such. In fact a behaviourist couldn't even comment on it, unless he was able to show how they manifested as behaviour, as by definition the behaviourist does not concern himself with internal states but only with behaviour.

Quoting Dfpolis

Still, as an Aristotelian Thomist, I reject the notion that universals are actual outside of the minds thinking them. What exists in individuals is potential universals (aka notes of intelligibility) -- not actual universals.

But the problem then is how to account for the reality of intelligibles in their own right, rather than as derived from a purely material, neurological process. You say that you accept the logical order is real in its own right, but in what sense is it real? How do you ground it?

I mean, the fundamental dogma of materialism is that 'mind is a product of the brain' and that the brain in turn can be understood in terms of evolutionary biology and neuroscience (which is the default view in secular culture). But in what you're saying, I can't see anything that evolutionary materialism couldn't account for. Whereas the sources I have been quoting do support a form of dualism (although not Cartesian dualism).

From a review of Nagel's Mind and Cosmos:

Physics is the question of what matter is. Metaphysics is the question of what exists. People of a rational, scientific bent tend to think that the two are coextensive—that everything is physical. Many who think differently are inspired by religion to posit the existence of God and souls; Nagel affirms that he’s an atheist, but he also asserts that there’s an entirely different realm of non-physical stuff that exists—namely, mental stuff. The vast flow of perceptions, ideas, and emotions that arise in each human mind is something that, in his view, actually exists as something other than merely the electrical firings in the brain that gives rise to them—and exists as surely as a brain, a chair, an atom, or a gamma ray.

In other words, even if it were possible to map out the exact pattern of brain waves that give rise to a person’s momentary complex of awareness, that mapping would only explain the physical correlate of these experiences, but it wouldn’t be them. A person doesn’t experience patterns, and her experiences are as irreducibly real as her brain waves are, and different from them.

Now, what I am attempting to articulate is how this can be the case, with reference to ideas in traditional metaphysics, namely, the distinction that can be made between the material form of language, numbers, and so forth, and the meaning which they embody. I am trying to argue that the mind, when it comprehends meaning, sees something which can't be accounted for in neurological terms. (I have elsewhere argued that in order for neurology to account for it, it has to appeal to the very thing it is trying to account for, so it must involve itself in a circular argument.)

So while we both generally agree that there is a logical order which can't be accounted for by physicalism, I am trying to develop an argument for how it can be considered real apart from the in-principle account provided by science.

Quoting Dfpolis

Maritain calls this "dividing to unite."

Glad you mentioned him. I have dipped into Maritain, because I was interested in his book Degrees of Knowledge, which is sub-titled 'distinguish to unite', although I haven't made much headway with it; very difficult book. But the essay I've been reading recently is his Cultural Impact of Empiricism, in the introduction to which he says:

if it is true that reason differs specifically from senses, the paradox with which we are confronted is that Empiricism, in actual fact, uses reason while denying the power of reason, on the basis of a theory that reduces reason's knowledge and life, which are characteristic of man, to sense knowledge and life, which are characteristic of animals.

Hence, first, an inevitable confusion and inconsistency between what an Empiricist does -- he thinks as a man, he uses reason, a power superior in nature to senses -- and what he says -- he denies this very specificity of reason.

And second, an inevitable confusion and inconsistency even in what he says: for what the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously introduced intellective ingredients, -- sense-knowledge in which he has made room for reason without recognizing it. A confusion which comes about all the more easily as, on the one hand, the senses are, in actual fact, more or less permeated with reason in man, and, on the other, the merely sensory psychology of animals, especially of the higher vertebrates, goes very far in its own realm and imitates intellectual knowledge to a considerable extent.

That is very close to the point that I'm trying to get it - that h. sapiens possesses a faculty which is of a higher order to sense-knowledge, but which is occluded or ignored in a lot of modern thinking.

So I think we agree on the main point, but not on the supporting arguments for it.

Reply to Wayfarer

The concepts themselves are the ground of knowledge. Each concepts is necessarily expressed so grounding there is something for us to know.

The world has necessarily expressions of conceptual meaning, such that things, be they empirical truths (they express a concept which allows understanding of them) or logical ones. Human experience adds nothing special to them. Our experiences are just moments when we understand some of this necessary conceptual order.

Issues understanding the place of knowledge do stem from moves made by the empiricists, in the sense of philosophers, such as Kant, who equate our experience as the grounding of our knowledge. In claiming our experience is the origin of knowledge, they undercut the underlying conceptual order. We get stuck in a position of being unable to say necessary concepts define knowledge because what is known get reduced to a function of contingent experience. We mistake means of our knowing (our experiences) for the means of what is known (whatever truth we might know or not).

To unpick this equivocation, we have to return to the question of how there are things to know. What is it we need to know about something? How do our experiences of knowledge have understanding?

Once we make the move back to an account of Rationalism, where a necessary conceptual order forms the things we know, something interesting happens in the context of empirical knowledge. Since events of the world are of the necessary conceptual order, rather than just our experiences, empirical observation is not the foundation of knowledge , including of empirical states.

We can know about empirical events we never even observe.

In the context of metaphysics this very important because it reveals an incoherence to certain empiricist objections to realism. If I want to make a claim about the past world I never observe, we find I am no longer attempting the impossible.

Since the necessary conceptual order grounds the meaning of events, I just need the right concept to understand a state present before I exist and observe. I can know, for example, it was true dinosaurs roamed the Earth perfectly well. I just need the concepts expressed by those past living beings

Reply to Dfpolis

They are all contingent beings, I wasn't suggesting otherwise. My reference to necessity is only in respect to their concept. In any case, the concept or meaning of a contingent state is necessary.

"The green leaves of the tree in my backyard" is a necessary meaning of that contingent state, until such time as it expresses a different meanings or ceases to be as a state. If someone comes along claiming this state doesn't mean "green leaves of a tree in my backyard yard" they will be necessarily wrong.

Quoting Wayfarer

But that has nothing to do with behaviourism, as such. In fact a behaviourist couldn't even comment on it, unless he was able to show how they manifested as behaviour, as by definition the behaviourist does not concern himself with internal states but only with behaviour.

Yes. My point was that there is no need to invoke the notion of being subjectively aware, as opposed to medically conscious, to explain the kind of complex behavior we see in nonhuman animals. The examples I cited were to point out that complex behavior without subjective awareness is part of the human experience as well. Thus, subjective awareness is something over and above what is required for complex behavior.

I would not call subjective awareness "discursive" because I am not referring to "things which we can bring consciously to mind, or are conscious of being conscious of." "Subjective awareness" does not name things we are aware of (which are on the object side of the subject-object relation), but our act of being aware of such things -- of being a knowing subject.

Quoting Wayfarer

But that has nothing to do with behaviourism, as such. In fact a behaviourist couldn't even comment on it, unless he was able to show how they manifested as behaviour, as by definition the behaviourist does not concern himself with internal states but only with behaviour.

Of course. Perhaps "functionalist model" would have been better. My point was and is that we have no need of subjective awareness to explain the kind of complex behavior we see in nonhuman animals -- the same point I was making by pointing to human experiences of automatic behavior.

Quoting Wayfarer

But the problem then is how to account for the reality of intelligibles in their own right, rather than as derived from a purely material, neurological process. You say that you accept the logical order is real in its own right, but in what sense is it real? How do you ground it?

In nature intelligibility never stands on its own as some kind of abstract entity.. Substances (ostensible unities) are capable of some acts and incapable of others. So, we can say that each has existence (the indeterminate ability to act) -- everything that is can do something, and if it could not it could never evoke the idea . It also has an essence, which I define as the specification of its capacity to act -- telling us what it can and cannot do. (Note that this is not the kind of "essence" defined by Aristotle, the kind that defines a species, but can vary between individuals in a species.)

When something acts on our senses is is doing one of the many things specified by its essence and so is providing us with incomplete information on its essence. (Perhaps it's looking like a duck, quacking like a duck and walking like a duck, but not revealing everything it can do.) When we become aware of the object's action on us we are informed by it. (The logical possibility that it could not do what it is doing to us is eliminated -- thus meeting Shannon's definition of information). Thus, our act of awareness raises the physical action of the object on us to the logical order.

So, if it's looking, quacking and walking like a duck its likely eliciting the concept . Of course it is logically possible that the other acts it can do, the acts it has not revealed to us could give us pause. Perhaps it can also act like a demon, fulfilling Descartes's worst nightmare. So, our knowledge of its essence is incomplete and somewhat conjectural and constructive. Still, we are justified in calling it a "duck," even if it is a very special kind of duck.

Quoting Wayfarer

But in what you're saying, I can't see anything that evolutionary materialism couldn't account for.

Of course, I disagree on many grounds that I have argued in detail in my book. Here are a few:

First, there is the fundamental abstraction of natural science which begins by abstracting away all data on the knowing subject as in favor of fixing attention on the known objects of the physical universe. Consequently, natural science is bereft of data on the knowing subject and its correlative intentional operations. As natural science lacks lacks these concepts and data, it cannot possibly connect these concepts to its knowledge of the physical world -- as required to reduce subjectivity to physicality.

Second, as David Chalmers has pointed out, in over 2500 years of materialist reflection, no progress has been made on the "hard problem of consciousness." Indeed, Danial Dennett, a naturalist, has shown at length in Consciousness Explained, a naturalistic model of consciousness is impossible. The relevance of this is that unless one can show what kinds of genetic modifications and consequent physical changes would produce consciousness, any appeal to the mechanisms of evolution is moot.

Third, unless you give subjective awareness and its correlatives independent ontological status, the only rational position is epiphenomenalism, which is to say that, while we have awareness, it has no physical consequences. But, if epiphenomenalism is true, then no mutation that gave us a glimmer of awareness could have a physical effect. Without a physical effect, it cannot impact reproductive fitness. If it does not impact reproductive fitness, the mechanisms of evolution cannot select it. So, evolution cannot explain the advent of awareness.

One response to this is that awareness could be the accidental concomitant of the evolution of some other, selectable feature. That is simply to admit that evolution does not explain the advent of awareness -- that it is an accident of unexplained origin.

Finally, no physical process can separate what is physically inseparable, but distinct in thought. For example, how could a purely physical process form separate representations of action and passion (acting and being acted upon) when they never occur separately?

Quoting Wayfarer

I am trying to argue that the mind, when it comprehends meaning, sees something which can't be accounted for in neurological terms.

I agree. My example of the distinction of action and passion forms a prime example.

Quoting Wayfarer

I am trying to develop an argument for how it can be considered real apart from the in-principle account provided by science.

I suggest that you look at the difference between formal and instrumental signs in Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic. It shows that physical representations are not the same kind of signs as ideas.

Quoting Wayfarer

That is very close to the point that I'm trying to get it - that h. sapiens possesses a faculty which is of a higher order to sense-knowledge, but which is occluded or ignored in a lot of modern thinking.

Again we agree. I am suggesting that awareness is the sine qua non of reason.

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

the concept or meaning of a contingent state is necessary

I am not sure where you are seeing the necessity. Clearly the concepts come to be in the individuals thinking them. If they were necessary, they would always be. Are you a Platonist?

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

"The green leaves of the tree in my backyard" is a necessary meaning of that contingent state, until such time as it expresses a different meanings or ceases to be as a state

Meaning is a relation between a sign and what it signifies. Since the sign need not exist and the relation is contingent on the existence of the sign, its meaning is not necessary. I do agree that the judgement can't mean anything other than what it actually means. The problem is simply that the judgement need not exist.

Quoting Dfpolis

I suggest that you look at the difference between formal and instrumental signs in Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic. It shows that physical representations are not the same kind of signs as ideas.

:up: