Teleological Nonsense
Teleology is a projection of nature that explains its processes in terms of ends or goals. As famously exemplified by Aristotle, employing a teleological perspective does not exclude other modes of explanation. He saw formal, material, efficient and final "causes" each as rational, but incomplete, explanations of natural processes. Many contemporary thinkers see teleology as obsolete, prescientific, anthropocentric, and generally "a bad thing." For example, the theory of evolution is proffered as illustrating the triumph of mechanism over teleology. Meanwhile, biology students are taught to eschew talk of biological ends.
I see rejecting teleology is utterly irrational, because mechanistic and teleological explanations are not in conflict. Philosophical naturalists reject finality, not because doing so is rational, but because it threatens their faith position -- allowing a religious position to dictate scientific methodology. Since mechanism focuses on means, while teleology focuses on the consequent ends they are not opposed, but complementary.
Objections to teleology include variations on the following:
1. It assumes vitalism, some extra life force beyond the laws of nature.
2. It involves backwards causation: the future reaches back in time to pull a system to its end.
3. It is incompatible with known mechanistic explanations.
4. It is “mentalistic,” assuming mind in nature when there is none.
5. It is empirically untestable.
6. Teleology is a metaphor, not an explanation.
1. If one is fully committed to physical determinism, one is necessarily committed to the proposition that the laws of nature, together with the prior physical state, fully specify future states. Thus, teleology need posit no vitalistic principle and objections to vitalism are irrelevant.
2. The future does not “pull” the present forward. Teleology acts via present intentionality. Just as human goals are attained by implementing our present intentions, so the concurrent operation of the laws of nature result in physical "final states."
3. This objection is based on irrational either-or thinking. As noted earlier, finality and mechanism are not opposed, but related as ends and means. Mathematically, they are convertible representations of the same phenomena. Mechanisms can serve ends and ends require means.
4. Mind in nature is a conclusion drawn from the data of teleological processes, not a premise in deriving them. Thus, the “mentalistic” objection is question begging. Rather than engaging the evidence, it uses an a priori denial of the conclusion to reject data.
5. The assertion that teleology is “empirically untestable” is baseless. Aristotle made falsifiable claims for final causality:
6. Metaphors have no predictive power, but teleology does. Many biological processes are too complex to calculate mechanically; however, their ends are clear. We cannot calculate how a spider will respond to a fly caught in its web, but its ends predict its behavior. Rejecting teleology’s predictive power is the irrational imposition of a dogmatic faith position.
Thus, the standard objections to teleology are either a priori or fail under empirical scrutiny.
I see rejecting teleology is utterly irrational, because mechanistic and teleological explanations are not in conflict. Philosophical naturalists reject finality, not because doing so is rational, but because it threatens their faith position -- allowing a religious position to dictate scientific methodology. Since mechanism focuses on means, while teleology focuses on the consequent ends they are not opposed, but complementary.
Objections to teleology include variations on the following:
1. It assumes vitalism, some extra life force beyond the laws of nature.
2. It involves backwards causation: the future reaches back in time to pull a system to its end.
3. It is incompatible with known mechanistic explanations.
4. It is “mentalistic,” assuming mind in nature when there is none.
5. It is empirically untestable.
6. Teleology is a metaphor, not an explanation.
1. If one is fully committed to physical determinism, one is necessarily committed to the proposition that the laws of nature, together with the prior physical state, fully specify future states. Thus, teleology need posit no vitalistic principle and objections to vitalism are irrelevant.
2. The future does not “pull” the present forward. Teleology acts via present intentionality. Just as human goals are attained by implementing our present intentions, so the concurrent operation of the laws of nature result in physical "final states."
3. This objection is based on irrational either-or thinking. As noted earlier, finality and mechanism are not opposed, but related as ends and means. Mathematically, they are convertible representations of the same phenomena. Mechanisms can serve ends and ends require means.
4. Mind in nature is a conclusion drawn from the data of teleological processes, not a premise in deriving them. Thus, the “mentalistic” objection is question begging. Rather than engaging the evidence, it uses an a priori denial of the conclusion to reject data.
5. The assertion that teleology is “empirically untestable” is baseless. Aristotle made falsifiable claims for final causality:
- Means-ends relationships exist in nature (Physics ii, 8, 199a8ff) – confirmed whenever behavior is a means to an end such as communication, reproduction, or nutrition;
- There are target forms (Physics ii, 8, 199b15-18) – verified by convergent evolution, the stability of toolkit genes and evolutionary stasis in stable environments -- as argued in my my article, "Mind or Randomness in Evolution (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution).
- Means are prepared in advance of need (Physics ii, 8, 199a10ff) – confirmed by the existence of unexploited potentials in toolkit genes and their refractory nature.
6. Metaphors have no predictive power, but teleology does. Many biological processes are too complex to calculate mechanically; however, their ends are clear. We cannot calculate how a spider will respond to a fly caught in its web, but its ends predict its behavior. Rejecting teleology’s predictive power is the irrational imposition of a dogmatic faith position.
Thus, the standard objections to teleology are either a priori or fail under empirical scrutiny.
Comments (300)
I don't quite understand your response to the first objection, though.
Quoting Dfpolis
Are you saying that teleology doesn't entail vitalism since it is consistent, on your view, with "physical determinism"? Are you thus committed to defend a form of compatibilism regarding teleology and (nomological or physicalist) determinism?
Evolution offers a triumph over teleology by providing a causal explanation for teleology, thus clarifying the primacy of causality over teleology.
If I want to know why the bird flies south in the winter, and all I am told are the details related to how the bird's neurons fire and muscles contract, surely I know less than if I'm told "so he can find food when it gets cold." Such is hard to deny. However, if I want to know why the bird wants to eat and I keep asking these "why" questions, at some point I'm going to resort to causality (namely evolution). To do otherwise (i.e. to keep reaching toward a higher teleos), one would be reaching toward God. It's therefore not that teleological explanations are irrelevant under the scientific model, it's that they are reducible to causal ones.
If one took a different approach and thought of teleological explanations as primary, one would demand to know the purpose of one's life, not just demand a recitation of the meandering path that led one to one's dead end job.
But the kicker is is that evolution can only be a true triumph over teleology if one is satisfied that the existence of evolution does not itself require a teleological explanation. And isn't that where the theological/scientific compatibility arises, where the theologian finally concedes the existence of evolution, but then asks for what great purpose did our Creator implement the existence of evolution?
Science journalists like Richard Dawkins do give this impression. Real evolutionary biologists don't agree. Teleology never has any place in evolution.
In biology in general, though, it's built into the way we talk about organisms. We think of them as causally closed systems.
Note the careful way in which goal-directed behaviour is accommodated while avoiding any suggestion that evolution itself is teleological (don't mention The War :yikes: ). To suggest otherwise is to fall in with the kinds of views described as 'orthogenetic':
It might also be noted that Hegelian philosophy naturally falls into this category. But all of these are generally regarded as unacceptable from the viewpoint of mainstream biological science.
My view is that methodological naturalism certainly must put aside or bracket out any consideration of an overarching purpose or intentionality. But I think a problem arises when this bracketing is then interpreted as a metaphysical principle in its own right, that is, it becomes a declaration about the absence of purpose. And so much of 20th century philosophy has assumed just such an absence of purpose as a metaphysical (or anti-metaphysical) axiom; the belief that science has shown that the Universe unfolds according to purpose-less laws, which is, to all intents, the inverse of Christian eschatology. It is certainly writ large in many existentialist and materialist philosophies and is the animating force (pardon the irony) behind the 'ultra-darwinism' of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Jerry Coyne.
It seems to me that passing off the evidence of teleology in living organisms as mere 'teleonomy' is a mistake. This is an attempt to distinguish irreducible teleology from reducible teleology, while claiming that the latter merely has the appearance of the former. But this reductionist thesis also seems to rest on a equivocation between ultimate, or external, teleology and intrinsic teleology. Arguments from design typically are arguments for ultimate teleology. The acknowledgement of the irreducibility of teleology, as it is being manifested in living organisms (and also, I would argue, in human functional artifacts!) doesn't entail anything about ultimate teleology, or the existence of a divine plan preexisting the evolution of living beings.
I myself am happy to defend the idea of the irreducibility of internal teleological explanations (aptly characterized by @Dfpolis as simple means/end relationships) while being agnostic (or unconcerned) about ultimate purposes of life or evolution. The purposes at issue, in internal teleological explanations, merely are the purposes that living organisms manifest as features of the way in which they are functionally organized and constitutively embedded into their environments (or Umwelten). Their thus manifesting, in their physiology and behavior, irreducible teleological features can be acknowledged independently of the question of the evolutionary explanation of the emergence of those features also being 'teleological', or not, in the ultimate or external sense of 'teleology'.
I had also begun to argue, however, in a manuscript titled Autonomy, Consequences and Teleology, that the Darwinian(*) process of natural evolution though natural selection is teleological, in the internal sense, in a manner that is entirely derivative from the internal teleological structure of the physiology (and/or behavior) of living beings that aren't merely being passively sorted out by natural selection, but that are thus selected while (and as a partial result of) being actively struggling to survive, and seeking to flourish, within their natural and social co-evolved Umwelten.
(*) I'll later edit this post to provide references to a couple of interesting papers that have argued that Darwin himself likely was more of an Aristotelian (internal) teleologist than he was a reductive physicalist; although he was, for sure, arguing against external teleology, or against Paley's design argument.
Yet both selected and unselected organisms exhibit the intention to flourish. Or are you saying we should look at the whole group (or the group and its environment) as an evolving, living thing?
What I am suggesting is that the selection process is teleological in the very same sense in which the organism's physiological and behavioral activities are teleological (or structured by means/end relationships), and for the very same reason. An organism, for instance, engages in some sort of behavior in order to quench its thirst. If it tends to succeed, thanks to some heritable feature of its physiology or anatomy, then this feature tends to be positively selected. And the reason why descendants thereafter exhibit this feature, and have the ability to engage in the behavior that such structures enables, is precisely because they subserve the end that was being actively pursued by the ancestor: namely, quenching its thirst. I conclude that the process of evolution through natural selection does have a telos, but that telos isn't external to the life form of the evolving organism; it is rather internal to it. The main engine of evolution is the organism's already existing struggle to flourish and survive (in very specific ways) in its day to day existence.
So the feature was highlighted for selection by the organism's quest to survive. I'm not sure that will generalize, though. Consider the moths who turned black because they lived in a town that was covered in coal dust. The white moths were all eaten by birds. The black moths weren't trying to hide. And I can't think of some behavior they were engaged in that links turning black to their quest to survive. Can you?
Quoting Pierre-Normand
But keep in mind that Darwin thought evolution is natural selection. We now know that natural selection is only one way that organisms change. It's a more important feature of evolution in creatures like bacteria.
I agree that there are cases, such as this one, where the organism is entirely passive with respect to the natural selection process. But I am also happy to concede that, in such cases, the feature thereby selected (viz. the moths's being black) can be fully explained causally in a non-teleological manner. Other mechanisms of evolution, such as genetic drift, likewise, are non-teleological. Nevertheless, the internal functional organization of an organism's physiology (and behavior) does provide specific directions (or ends/teloi) to the selection process. In short, I am arguing for the irreducibility of teleological explanations, not for their being the sole forms of explanations of all the inherited features of organisms.
:up:
How does it establish primacy? Human beings are part of nature and are clearly goal-seeking organisms. In us, goals have a clear primacy. I first decide to go to the store, then employ the means (mechanisms) required to effect getting to the store. If my car is not working, I may walk, take a bus, or call a Lyft or taxi. It is because of this temporal and dynamical primacy that finality is called "the cause of causes." The same is seen in other organisms, but with less variety. The end of obtaining food is prior to spiders spinning webs. The desire to mate is prior to mating behavior.
As mentioned in the OP, specific capabilities, such as the ability to develop wrists (found in Tiktaalik roseae, a 375 million year old fossil land-exploring fish), vision (encoded in Pax6, which controls vision in organisms as diverse as vertebrates, mollusks, and fruit flies) or specific beak and jaw forms (diverse expressions of BMP4), are latent in toolkit genes, but unexpressed until needed. In other words, toolkit genes develop adaptive flexibility before the environmental pressure to express that flexibility.
The only priority I see is epistemological. We developed an understanding of physics and chemistry before we understood evo-devo.
Quoting Hanover
And surely you know more if you are told both. Remember, I am not saying that mechanism and teleology are opposed. My thesis is that they are complimentary. I think it is fair to say that the need for adequate nutrition drove the evolution of the animals' migratory capabilities, rather than say that the advent of migratory capabilities led to migrate.
Quoting Hanover
I suggest you read Aristotle's discussion of his four "causes" in Metaphysics A, 3-7. As he makes clear, "why" is not a univocal question. It can seek a variety of distinct modes of explanation. You can tell me all of the mechanisms involved in eating, but I would still have no idea what purposes these mechanisms serve.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, one would. The purpose of life is one of the main questions driving philosophical reflection and religious meditation. Further, while why anyone in particular ended up in a dead-end job is outside the purview of scientific thinking, which deals with universals, it is surely explained by the ends or motives that led them to take the job.
Quoting Hanover
No, not really. Historically, the compatibility of science and theology can be traced back at least to the doctrine of the two books in which God reveals Himself: the book of revelation and the book of nature. Medieval Christendom promoted science as a way of understanding God via His work. (See, e.g., James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution.)
Quoting Pierre-Normand
Yes, I see teleology as compatible with physical determinism, which says, essentially, that ends are implicit is present states and the laws of nature. However, this has to be contextualized by two other positions I have defended on this form:
(1) That natural science is self-limited to objective physicality by the Fundamental Abstraction of science. This leaves natural science bereft of data on the subject as an intentional agent. So, the physical sciences lack the data and concepts to connect what they know of the physical world to the intentional operations of knowing subjects. Thus, we have no rational basis for extending conclusions about the purely physical to questions involving human intentionality.
(2) That the laws of nature are a species of intentionality:
(a) They and committed human intentions are the only known species in the genus of logical propagators.
(b) They and committed human intentions both are intentional in virtue of exhibiting Brentano's essential characteristic of "aboutness." Just as my intention of getting to the store is about by arriving at the store, so the laws of nature are about the final states they effect.
So, my commitment to determinism in the realm of physics does not commit me to determinism in the realm of intentional operations of knowing subjects.
I don't know about that. I was never a biology student (and neither were you, AFAIK), so I don't know what students are taught; but teleology in biology is a controversial but well-explored topic. I wonder whether you are actually familiar with any of that discussion.
Quoting Dfpolis
Oh boy. You know, when you write something as obnoxious as that, one is discouraged from reading further.
As the teleological nature of biology is baked into the laws of nature, there is no question of going outside of the natural order. So, again, this is not an either/or issue. It is a matter of viewing the same data from various perspectives. Still, thinking of anything in a certain way, say as a causally closed system, does not make them that way.
It seems that you are offering no argument, merely a claim. If humans are part of nature (and why should we not be?) then goal orientation is part of nature, and the only question is its range of application.
The existent, that which operates in reality, behind teleological explanation is some form of intentionality -- either a law of nature, or a committed human intention.
As for the truth of teleology as an explanation, the only question is: Is teleology adequate to reality. Obviously no human truth is exhaustive, but many provided us with insights adequate to various intellectual needs. The fact that we can use teleology to predict how a hungry spider will respond to an insect being caught in its web (while we still can't model it neural net adequately to make the same prediction), shows that teleological explanation is often adequate to reality.
Talk about fighting straw men! Aristotle never claimed ends were efficient causes. The author lacks the most rudimentary understanding of Aristotle's four "causes." Take building a house as an example. The final cause or end (telos) of house building is, say, to provide shelter. The formal cause is the plan of the house -- how its parts are arranged to effect that end. The material cause is the parts assembled according to that plan. The efficient cause is the building crew that assembles the parts according to the plan to effect the end. No "cause" is in conflict with any other, nor does any "cause" alone explain the building of the house. Specifically, the goal of providing shelter is not the building crew -- as implied by the quotation above.
Changing name of goal directed explanation from "teleologic" to "teleonomic" does no more than force one to Google two terms when one would do nicely.
This is very amusing! Pittendrigh, a biological organism, is assigned the goal of preventing the inadvertent invocation of goals in biological organisms. On what rational grounds would anyone, including the author, want to avoid goal talk? Clearly the author sees the rationality of Pittendrigh having, and acting upon, a goal. This is a clear case of performance belying doctrine.
On the contrary, as explained in my article, evolutionary biology has discovered copious evidence of goal seeking. First, the existence of numerous examples of convergent evolution shows that certain biological forms are naturally preferred over others. Second, the advent of refractory toolkit genes before there is any evolutionary pressure for their latent modes of expression provides us with many examples of means being laid down before they are required to effect their ends. Third, the discovery of punctuated equilibrium in evolution shows that there are "ends" ecosystems tend to and remain at in response to new environmental circumstances. Of course, these phenomena are explained by the normal operation of the laws of nature, but the operation of adequate means is evidence for, rather than against, the existence of ends.
The entire structure of Kantian philosophy has been rebutted by modern physics. Kant saw space, time, and time-sequenced causality as forms of thought necessarily imposed on reality by the mind. That makes alternate understandings of space, time and causality literally unthinkable. Yet, Special Relativity falsifies this by conceiving space and time in radically different ways. Similarly, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory, whether true or false, rejects the universality of causality in nature -- showing that a revised understanding of causality is not unthinkable. Thus, space, time and causality are not forms of thought imposed a priori, but empirically derived concepts. The fact that many biologists question teleology shows that it, too, is not an a priori form, but empirically derived.
Of course, what is empirically derived has ontological implications. Whatever informs the mind is existentially adequate to so inform it.
Clearly, this is part of the picture. The laws of nature and refractory toolkit genes are internal principles that partly determine the line evolutionary development will take. Another major factor is the set of challenges imposed by the environment. As we now know, evolution is not a matter of endless and aimless genetic drift, but of the rapid convergence on a new stasis described by the theory of punctuated equilibrium.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why? If humans are natural and teleological explanation applies to us, why should methodological naturalism exclude it a priori? This seems a very arbitrary dogma. It is far better to take an empirical approach and let nature tell us the limits of goal seeking.
I agree with your closing. Ultra-Darwinism is ultra irrational.
Actually, my brother Gary was a world-famous biologist (and philosophical naturalist), and we had many detailed discussions on these issues.
Quoting SophistiCat
By not engaging, you confirm me in my position that we are discussing a faith position, not a rational conclusion.
I think this confuses purpose and conscious purpose. Aristotelian teleology is not limited to conscious purpose. The telos of a seed is the mature plant it can become. It need have no knowledge of its end.
A description is a fiction unless it is adequate to some reality.
Quoting tim wood
Are not humans part of nature? If we have real ends, then ends exist in nature, and the only question is their extent of application.
Quoting tim wood
I agree that we are part of nature, not the whole of nature. That does not mean that seeds lack a determinate potential (telos) to become mature plants.
As Aristotle points out, potencies are known by analogy. We don't see the potential. If we did it would not be potential, but actual. Still, we've seen that tomato seeds sprout into totato plants, grains of wheat into wheat stalks, and acorns into oak trees. So when we see another tomato seed, grain of wheat or acorn we know, by analogy, that it has a determinate potential to grow into a certain kind of plant. That is how all scientific knowledge is applied -- by analogy. We've never seen the exact new case before, but we've seen cases very like it, and, in analogy with those cases, we know what to expect.
So, the potential is not ours. It is immanent in the seed. Given the the structure of the seed and the laws of nature (which are also immanent), the seed will, under the proper conditions, germinate and grow into a plant.
Yes, I do understand that - the quote is from the wikipedia entry on 'teleonomy' and, as you say, betrays a misunderstanding of the whole notion of final causes as 'that towards which something is directed'.
Quoting Dfpolis
I'm sorry, but I can't agree. Many of the pioneers of quantum physics, particularly Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Pauli, and Ernst Cassirer who wrote extensively on the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics, were arguably neo-Kantian in important respects. Here's an essay on Kantian quantum physics by Kelly Ross. And Bernard D'Espagnat echoed many themes from Kant in his acceptance of the Templeton Prize.
Quoting Dfpolis
Because of what methodological naturalism deals with. Its job is to consider causal relationships evident in empirical experience, not to seek first principles or ultimate causes. What I’m saying is that the problems start when that morphs into positivism, when it pretends to be more than it is. Strictly speaking natural science is, or ought to be, agnostic with respect to metaphysics; something along the lines of Wittgenstein's circumspection about 'what cannot be stated'.
Then you will not mind explaining how what Kant thought to be literally unthinkable (alternate views of space, time and causality) were thought and accepted in light of empirical discoveries. To say that advances in physics falsified Kant's conjectures is not to say that everyone realizes that it did so.
I do not know the philosophy of all the luminaries you mention, but i have read enough of Heisenberg and Bohr to know that their views on observation are Aristotelian, not Kantian. Heisenberg even wrote a paper in which he proposed that energy was Aristotelian prime matter.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, science is not concerned with metaphysical first principles, but in reviewing the work of his predecessors in Metaphysics A, 3-7, Aristotle is not considering transcendent matters, but the work of the physikoi -- those who sought to understand nature. So, material, formal, efficient and final modes of explanation are approaches to the understanding of empirical reality in terms of immanent, not transcendent, principles. Thus, there is no reason to exclude them when we observe them on a daily basis in the lived world.
We see material modes of explanation in the atomic theory of chemistry, in nuclear and high-energy physics, and in DNA-based genetics. We see formal modes of explanation in the equations of mathematical physics, in the biological role of the geometric structure of compounds and in the dynamics of gene expression. Efficient causality plays a role in every branch of science. Still the role of final causality, though real, is denied.
For example, I wrote my dissertation on the S-Matrix Formulation of the Neutral Kaon System. S-Matrices are mathematical structures that link initial and final states directly, without explicit consideration of the intervening dynamics. Thus, they are the mathematical expression of final causality -- telling us that this initial state is, immanently, that final state.
I have already given simpler, but equally empirical, examples involving spider webs and the determinate potential of seeds. Let me expand a bit on the modeling of neurophysical processes. We know for a fact that the response of neurons to stimuli is nonlinear. So, the mathematical models of neural processes puts us in the realm of chaos theory, and its concomitant unpredictability. As confirmation of this, we have chaotic models of epileptic seizures. This means that not only can we not now predict the behavior of spiders' neural systems via efficient or formal causality, we have no expectation of doing so in the future. Still, we can predict using final causality. It is utterly irrational to refuse to do so because it offends naturalists' belief system.
A snippet from Kant
It is exactly the 'mind-independence of sensible objects' which has been called into question by physics - which is why I think Kant's basic thesis is still directly relevant.
Quoting Dfpolis
I have read a little of Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy and also of Bohr's ideas on complementarity. I don't think that there is a binary choice between Aristotle and Kant; Kant's 'categories of the understanding' were derived from Aristotle in the first place. Both Bohr and Heisenberg drew on a wide range of sources of philosophy, including even Eastern philosophy, so it's not one or the other. Heisenberg's speech 'The Debate between Plato and Democritus' (representing idealism and materialism) comes down decisely in favour of the former.
There's a really interesting interpretive model by Ruth Kastner, which draws on the Aristotelian notion of 'potentia':
I think this is important because it reinstates the understanding that reality comes in degrees - that there are things that are more or less real, or, put another way, real possibilities - something which I think was lost in the transition to modernity.
(Anyway - all very deep waters, and regrettably in my timezone the day is starting and domestic duties demand my attention.)
First, as regard Kant's text, Aristotelian moderate realists do not fit the straw man definition of "transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility)." Aristotle says:
Thus, Aristotle never considers actual appearances "as something given in themselves (independent of our sensibility)." For him, being perceptible is not a stand-alone feature. It exists only relative to a perceiving subject. Specifically, space and time do not exist independently of being measured. Aristotle famously defines time as "the measure of change according to before and after." So, space and time are not independent existents (a la Newton), but the result of measuring space-like and time-like measurability, in conformity with Aristotle's general understanding of quantity:
Quoting Wayfarer
Not at all. What is called into question is the Platonic notion that numbers exist prior to counting and measuring operations. Rather, they are the result of measuring and counting operations. Measure numbers in particular are the result of an interaction between the measurable and the measuring operation. Both relativity and quantum theory tell us that measure numbers depend jointly on the prior state of the system and the type of measurement being made.
Specifically, with regard to quantum measurements, it is often forgotten that the measure number is the result of an interaction between an unknown system state, and a detector whose precise quantum state is equally unknown. Obviously, one measure number is inadequate to determine two unknowns.
I pretty much agree with your closing observations.
I wouldn't have suggested otherwise - I think the thrust of this comment is not directed at Aristotelian realism, but at the then-emerging modern empiricists, for whom the 'mind-independence' of phenomena was (and remains) an axiom. Aristotle belonged to an earlier intellectual age, which didn't share in that distinctively modernist understanding.
Quoting Dfpolis
Why then did Einstein famously ask the question, 'doesn't the moon continue to exist when nobody's looking at it?' (something which of course he did believe - it was posed rhetorically.) The whole controversy that surrounds the 'measurement problem' is precisely one concerning the sense in which the act of observation determines what is being observed. I don't think that Platonic realism has much to do with that particular problem - what is being called into question by quantum physics is whether particles exist before they're observed, and these particles had been presumed to be the 'fundamental constituents of reality'. That is why quantum physics challenges scientific realism. (I've just read Adam Becker's book on this very question, What is Real?)
Where Kant's philosophy remains relevant, it is because:
[quote=Emrys Westacott]Kant introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble [sup] 1 [/sup].[/quote]
Don't forget though, Aristotle also said that in another sense, time is that which is measured. So we really have to understand "time" in these two ways, as that which measures, and that which is measured. I don't think it is appropriate to say that the thing which is measured is "time-like" because as the thing measured, it is the real thing. It is more appropriate to refer to the thing which measures as "time-like", because this is just a representation of the real time, that which is measured. See, we make a representation of time passing, with a clock of some sort, and we use this to measure. But this measure is not the real time passing, it is a representation of it, so the measure is what is "time-like", not the thing measured which is real "time", passing.
What is the limit of a representation? If a clock is a representation of time passing, is the conscious observer a representation of some symbolic modelling? That doesn't seem to jive though. A clock is a representation of time passing for an observer- it is instantiated in the observer. What then, does the observer of the clock instantiate in? Or is it self-instantiated? If so, what is that nature of the instantiating?
I think you get biological teleology wrong. The way you describe it, teleology arises from individual organisms' striving to achieve a goal, much like Lamarck thought that when a giraffe reaches for higher branches its neck grows progressively longer with each generation (he even hypothesized a causal mechanism for this: a "nervous fluid"). We know that this is not how evolution works (for the most part). Fitness does not increase as a direct response to organisms' strivings and desires. As you say, the internal teleology of evolution is in the process itself, not in some agent's mental attitude. The process of evolution by natural selection molds successive populations to better fit their environment, and that works just as well on a moth's passive mimicry as on a giraffe's active feeding. It works even on unconscious, inanimate things that are similarly subject to natural selection!
I think the key to the controversy over biological teleology is in what Bedau called "mentalism:" psychologizing teleology, thinking of teleology only as a pattern of thought. Proponents of the concept of biological teleology argue that there is a more general pattern that manifests itself in other, non-psychological domains, and that both evolutionary adaptation and organismal functions are valid examples of this pattern.
My point was that if you want to engage those whom you want to convince, you don't want to open the discussion by poisoning the well with such an obnoxious and unfair accusation. Unfair because, your famous biologist brother notwithstanding, you don't appear to be familiar with secular thought on this subject.
Your response is... to double down on the obnoxiousness. So yes, I would rather engage with Ruth Millican, or Mark Bedau, or Pierre-Normand for that matter.
If you speak of a conscious being as an observer, then the specified act which the being is involved in, observing, is an act of representation. That is the being's function, as identified, observing, and observing requires noting and representing. Therefore to speak of the conscious being as an observer is to imply that the being is doing some symbolic modeling.
A clock is artificial, made, produced, with the intent of representing time passing. As such, it does not need to be observed to be a representation, like the written word does not need to be observed to be a representation. That assumes a realist perspective with independent existence of a physical thing, and independent existence of "what" the thing is. The meaning, what is meant by the symbol is put into the physical symbol by the intent of the author, and exists there independently of being interpreted. So what the thing is, is put there by the intent of the author. But from another perspective one could argue that the symbol must be observed, and judged to be "a symbol", in order to actually be a symbol, if one declines the notion that the thing's meaning is put there by the intent of the author.
So to answer your question more directly, I would say that from the realist perspective the limit to a representation is the mind of the author. But if we deny realism and allow that interpretation produces the limit, then there is no real limit. It is the multiplicity of interpreting minds which produces the limitless, infinite nature of a representation, whereas the one mind of the author may act as a limit. That is why the realist has an escape from the infinite possibilities of meaning, information, by assuming that it is limited by the intent of the author. But in the context of the information (meaning) within natural existence it's only just an appeal to God. .
But I am taking a step back to its ontology. WHAT is "doing some symbolic modeling" without being self-referential? What is this "symbolic modelling" in and of itself? It turns into just word-games on the concept of mind.
That makes a lot of sense. I think there are strains of modern thought that reject this "axiom" -- such as the "collapse on awareness" interpretation of quantum theory.
Quoting Wayfarer
Because for something to be measurable, it must exist. There are no abstract potencies. Rather potencies are latent in actual beings. That is why Aristotle was able to avoid Parmenides' argument against change: The new aspect that emerges from change neither comes from nothing, nor is it fully formed before the change. It is potential in actual being.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, it does. Plato, following the Pythagorean tradition, believed that the world was made of mathematical objects -- actual numbers and/or regular polyhedrons. The importance of Aristotle's insight is that, because measure numbers only result from measurements, one must reflect on measuring operations to fully understand them.
Quoting Wayfarer
These are two important but different problems.
As a physicist, I see absolutely no evidence that there are any particles in the sense of point masses or something that can be reasonably modeled by a point mass. Just as Young's experiment falsified Newton's corpuscular theory of light, so the Davisson-Germer experiment, inspired by A. C Lunn's wave model of the hydrogen spectrum and independently confirmed by George Paget Thomson's thin metal diffraction experiment, falsified the particulate theory of electrons.
Following up on the idea that one must understand the measurement process if one is to understand the results, remember that all detectors are made of bulk matter, composed of aggregations of atoms. Atomic electrons are localized by the attraction of the nucleus. Detection events occur when an atomic electron makes a certain kind of transition -- typically an ionization event. Because the atoms are localized, so are ionization events. As a result, the detection of electrons is localized, and they appear to have particulate properties. They do not. They are, however, quantized by some unknown mechanism, perhaps involving Mobius-like topology.
The idea that there are "fundamental constituents of reality" goes back to the Greek atomists, and seems unsupported by evidence. Rather, as we increase the energy of our experiments, we encounter higher and higher energy resonances. Empirically, these resonances are entirely wave-like; nevertheless, they are conventionally called "particles." There are mathematical models, such as the Regge pole model, that suggest that there are an unbounded number of such resonances.
No, the idea of a reality prior to sensation was clearly spelled out by the Greeks, and definitively by Aristotle (especially in De Anima iii). What Kant did was to maintain the existence of noumenal reality while denying that it could be known -- thus staking a fundamentally irrational position.
As for a more sympathetic reading, Kant was born into a family that followed a mystical religious tradition. It is a common place in the mystical tradition that the object of mystical experience (God, Brahman, the Transcendent) is more real than the world of empirical experience. I have no problem with that view, but the greater reality of Ultimate Being does not mean that empirical reality is either illusory or obscured by our means of knowing -- as Kant proposed.
I don't recall such a statement, which seems very unaristotelian. Do you have a reference?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, what is measured is some change, like the apparent motion of the heavens, the flow of sand, or atomic oscillations. If we stay in one place and measure only the time between two events, a different observer, moving with respect to us, will see the same two events as separated by space and by a different time interval. So, time is not a fixed thing, but depends on the relation between observers and events.
"Space-like" and "time-like" are terms of art in physics which characterize space-time intervals.
I am sorry for offending you. My remark was not personal. It was based on my experience of discussions with naturalists. Some have even rejected the foundations of science in order to maintain their faith positions.
Quoting SophistiCat
I suppose time will tell. Have I made some specific error of biological fact, or ignored some obvious rejoinder? If so, I welcome your correction.
You may, of course, engage with whom you wish.
That's ok, I wasn't really offended, and looking back, my sharp tone was unnecessary.
Quoting Dfpolis
Given that your ideas of what constitutes foundations of science are rather idiosyncratic, I suspect that what you interpret as patent irrationality in the service of "maintaining faith positions" is simply a case of disagreement over those matters.
Anyway, I am not surprised at the hostile reception from self-professed naturalists who engage with you in Youtube comments. Teleology, rightly or wrongly, is commonly associated with intelligent agency, making it a poor fit for anything that doesn't have to do with human psychology, except in the context of supernatural and theological explanations. I myself am not entirely sold, not so much on teleology, as on the importance of the controversy. Some of it is merely semantic. And some, like teleology vs. teleonomy, just doesn't present high enough stakes in my mind. But that is probably because I view the issue in the epistemological plane, more than in the ontological one, and in epistemology I favor pluralism. So it's no big deal for me to accept teleological-sounding modes of explanation where they make sense.
Quoting Dfpolis
Your mistake is to charge in like a culture warrior, thinking that naturalists would necessarily be on the opposite side of the barricades, whereas much of the conversation about teleology appears to be secular. Why would a naturalist have an issue with a complex systems analysis of teleology, for example?
The point in question was special pleading by naturalists on the principle of sufficient reason. My position, stated by Freud in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, is that if you allow any exception to the principle, you undermine the whole structure of science. For example, suppose that Becquerel announces his discovery of radioactivity at a conference, describing the observations that support his conclusion. Everyone is impressed, except for a naturalist who stands up in the back of the rooms and says, "My dear Professor Becquerel, that is all very impressive, but you forget that your observation may simply be a brute fact -- one of those phenomena requiring no explanation." What is Becquerel to say, but, "Every phenomenon has a sufficient cause"?
Quoting SophistiCat
Actually, the explicit renunciation was in the late 1990s on a discussion board sponsored by Victor J. Stenger. It occurred after no one could rebut my argument for the existence of God in a manner consistent with the foundations of science.
Quoting SophistiCat
It depends on what you mean by "supernatural and theological explanations." If you mean faith-based explanations, they do not belong in philosophy, and I do not propose to put them there. If you mean to exclude "theology" in the sense used by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, I see no reason to exclude, a priori, any rational reflection on human experience. Do you?
It is clear from physics, chemistry and biology that many systems have a potential to a determinate end. That is all it means to have a telos. It is a separate question whether the existence of teloi implies the existence of an originating mind. Of course the safe, but intellectually dishonest, move is to deny the existence of teloi, so that one need never face the origin question.
If you're a naturalist, then you see no clear demarcation between rational beings and any other being. They are all simply points on a scale of increasing complexity. So, there is no rationale for allowing goals for humans while denying them to other natural systems.
Quoting SophistiCat
I do as well with my Projection Paradigm, seeing all human knowledge as dimensionally diminished maps of reality. We each have a standpoint from which we experience and one or more conceptual spaces onto which we project our experience. We can enrich our model of reality by seeking diverse projections in an effort to overcome our cultural and historical limitations.
Quoting SophistiCat
It is a contingent fact of experience that they generally do. I strongly suspect it is because they see telloi as strong evidence of intelligence -- which they reject on a priori grounds.
I don't see the issue you're trying to point out, perhaps you could elaborate. Of course there must be some sort of "self", we're talking about intention, and intention is a property of something, it's not self-subsistent. But even "self-subsistent" implies self, intention would itself be a self..
Quoting Dfpolis
OK, I'm going to get you the reference, but we've been through this game before. Please do not dismiss my references as if they aren't really what Aristotle meant, just to support your crazy ideas about Aristotle, as you did the last time we played this game.
Read Physics Bk.4, Ch. 11, 219a:
"Time then is a kind of number (Number we must note is used in two senses--both of what is counted or the countable, and also of that with which we count. Time obviously is what is counted, not that with which we count: these are different kinds of things)"
Then read Ch.12, 220b, where it is clearly explained that time is what is counted, and we measure it with movement, while we also measure movement with time. This he says is natural, (not circular) because movement is over distance, and that (distance), is what is measured with time, while time itself is measured with movement. Movement has two aspects, distance and time. The distance aspect of movement is measured by time, while time itself is measured by movement.
So after describing how time is the thing which is counted, what is measured, but in another way it is also what measures, he then proceeds to describe how time is a measure of movement.
Quoting Dfpolis
You seem to be forgetting the fact that there is a process whereby the time which is future to us, becomes the time which is past to us. Tomorrow, in two days will be yesterday. So as I sit and write this, there is becoming more and more past, and less and less future. This process, whereby the future becomes the past, I call the passing of time, some call it the flow of time. That is what is being measured the passing of time. The measurement tool is the clock, what you call "the apparent motion of the heavens", "the flow of sand", "atomic oscillations". What these clocks are measuring is the passing of time.
I do not pretend to be an expert on Kant. I read the Prolegomena, notThe Critique of Pure Reason, so I rely on secondary sources.
Quoting T. I. Oizerman, I. Kant's Doctrine of the 'Things in Themselves' and Noumena
Quoting The Philosophy Pages by Garth Kemerling
Quoting The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
I note that what is merely postulated is not in any sense known. So, my question is, if noumena can't be know scientifically, how can they be known?
I'm not saying that Kant doubted the self-consistency of phenomenal reality -- upon which practical reason relies. I 'm saying that Kant invents noumena that necessarily stand behind appearances, while, contradictorily, are not what appears. The theory is utterly incoherent.
Quoting tim wood
The question is not one of accuracy. It is one of substantial misunderstanding. Time is supposed to be a form imposed by the mind. Surely the time Kant thought so imposed was not something that could develop a spatial component. Yet, that is precisely what Special Relativity tells us happens when we change frames of reference. So, the form of time Kant believed to be imposed on experience is not really imposed on experience. Experience has shown us that time is at least partially convertable with space.
Thank you for the reference, but note that it is not the conclusion, only a step in a two chapter analysis of the nature of time. The conclusion at the end of ch, 11, is: "It is clear, then, that time is 'number of movement in respect of the before and after', and is continuous since it is an attribute of what is continuous." "Number of movement" is "measure of change" in other translations.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not quite. Since we cannot see time, we can't measure it. We can see change, so that is what we measure to determine the passage of time.
Now there's a big statement. You're aware that Coppleson, in his chapter on modern philosophy, says that the attitude that 'all that can be known, can be known by means of science', is the essential meaning of positivism. When I first read that, forty years ago, it inspired me to enroll in philosophy to articulate what's wrong with it - I've been working on it ever since.
Certainly, there is an enormous range of things which we can know by means of science. But as you yourself say, science relies on a 'great abstraction' and also on quantification - the ability to divide, count, measure and so forth and so on. One doesn't have to deprecate that ability to say that there are intuitions and forms of understanding which it can't accommodate or explain. Even Einstein said that 'not everything that counts can be counted'.
In respect of the 'noumenal', the root of the word is 'nous' (the seminal Greek word for mind or intellect), and the etymology is as follows:
The problem is that Kant himself often equivocated about what exactly he meant by the term (something for which he was later criticized by Schopenhauer.) But the reading that I gave from Westacott is that, as he says, the idea is that we can't perceive any object as it is in itself, but only as it appears to us, as it is 'given to us in appearances'. But I don't think that it means that the world is populated by mysterious unknown objects. It seems to me, most people (even Schopenhauer) object to the implied sense of there being a mysterious domain, and want to look behind or through the appearance to see what it really is, to 'pull aside the curtain' so to speak. But the whole point is, we can't do that - knowledge is limited to appearances, given to us by the senses, judged according to the categories.*
Eric Rietan puts it like this:
Even here, I take exception to 'the noumenal world' - I think it's a misleading expression, in that it connotes some place or domain. But it's not a place or domain, it is transcendent to time and space, not locatable in their terms.
And I don't see how anything that has been subsequently been discovered by physics or any form of science, can undermine that essential understanding. And I think this comes out in (for example) philosophy of science - Kuhn's 'paradigms', Polanyi's 'tacit knowledge', Pierre Duhem, and so on.
The world *is* mysterious. We can't forget that, ever. It doesn't mean wandering around in a state of bamboozlement or mystification - it is much nearer to the Socratic intuition of 'all I know is that I know nothing' - even though I apparently know a great deal.
_________________
*The second implication of 'noumenon' is that the 'noumenal' is an 'ideal object' - again, reminiscent of a Platonic form (although still compatible with the limitations placed on that by Aristotle's 'moderate realism'.) This is that the mind can know ideal forms, such as geometrical forms, and mathematical axioms, in a direct and unmediated way that is not possible for sensory objects. I don't think Kant intended to connote that, but there's an echo of it in the word itself.
Quit playing games. Read the passage and change your opinion of what Aristotle wrote to reflect what he really wrote. It very clearly states: "number we must note is used in two senses". And, it states "time obviously is what is counted, not that with which we count". This is not an issue of translation. Furthermore, the following passages, culminating at Ch.12, 220b, clearly verify this through explanation. If you would simply read Bk.4, chapters 11&12, you would clearly see that there is no doubt as to what is meant. Your objection is nothing but a denial of what is written.
Quoting Dfpolis
By what principle must something be seen to be measured? Do you see the air temperature in your room? The passing of time is real, and it is measured, but it is not seen. It is not a physical thing.
It was a question, not a statement. I'm not a positivist. We can know some things with more certitude than the hypothetico-deductive method can ever provide. Yet, Kant denies the efficacy of any experience-based approach to noumena. So, again, how can they be known, not postulated?
Quoting Wayfarer
I have no problem with this claim in isolation if it is taken to mean that we cannot know objects exhaustively, as God knows them. Aquinas is also quite firm on this point, saying that we do not know essences directly, but via accidents (forms of appearance). The problem is that, as I and many others read Kant, he is not only denying God-like knowledge in humans, but any true knowledge of things in themselves. Yet, if noumena stand behind phenomena, 'affecting' us (as Kant says), then we certainly know that they have the power to so affect is -- to induce our experience of their correlative phenomena. So, while I sympathize with much of what Kant seems to be struggling toward, I think he has it wrong -- and disastrously so.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is where Locke got it wrong, saying we only know our ideas. As I have explained previously, this confuses formal and instrumental signs. We first know things via ideas, then, in a second movement of thought, realize that our means of knowing things are ideas. Ideas are thus formal signs -- existents that only do one thing: signify. Locke, and Kant after him, conceived of ideas as instrumental signs -- as things that must first must be discerned in themselves before they can signify -- just has we need to make out the form of letters before we can know what a word means.
So, it is not that phenomena/appearances/ideas stand between us and the ting in its self. Rather they are the means whereby we know the ding an sich.
This is either-or thinking. We don't experience either the thing in itself, or the appearance. Rather, the appearance is the thing in itself as revealed to us. As I have also said previously, the sensible object's modification of my sensory system is identically my sensory representation of the object. Thus, the thing in itself existentially penetrates me -- the same neural content is both the object's action on me and my sensory image of the object.
Yes, it does, but it gives us no more reason to believe in their reality than we have to believe in the reality of Harry Potter. On the other hand, Aristotle's insight that the object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object eliminates the epistic gap that so troubled Locke and Kant.
Quoting Wayfarer
It can't. But, it can confirm the analysis showing that it was ill-conceive ab initio. Appearances are not obstacles but means of knowing. Ideas do not stand in the way of knowing, they are the instruments of knowledge. There is no epistic gap, there is a partial identity of knower and known in the act of knowing.
While the world is mysterious, it also reveals itself to us -- often in surprising ways.
What is the mind instantiated in? Does calling it symbolic modeling somehow solve this self-arising of mind?
Sorry, but I'm not accustomed to your use of "instantiated". Could you explain?
Representations are made by minds. What is the thing that is an emergent mind? What is the emerging itself?
Well, Kantian scholarship is notoriously difficult, and I'm certainly not claiming to be a Kant expert. But I still feel as though this is an erroneous interpretation; I'm in agreement with Tim Wood on this point.
'Things in themselves' are not some mysterious bogie-man lurking behind the curtains. As Emrys Westacott says, it is simply an observation about the conditional nature of knowledge - that all human knowledge is in some sense constructed and mediated - we're not 'all-knowing', even in respect of those things that we seem to know exactly. And that actually is quite in keeping with what you then go onto say about Aquinas. I think from the perspective of Christian philosophy, we only see 'through a glass darkly' - that this is an inevitable consequence of the human condition.
Quoting Dfpolis
We can't deny that our knowledge comprises, in part, sensory impressions, and in part judgements and comparisons, right? When you perceive something - large, small, alive or inanimate, local or remote - there is a considerable amount of work involved in ‘creating’ it as an object from the raw material of perception. Your eyes receive the lightwaves reflected or emanated from it, your mind organises the image with regards to all of the other stimuli impacting your senses at that moment – either acknowledging it, or ignoring it, depending on how busy you are; your memory will then compare it to other objects you have seen, from whence you will (hopefully) recall its name, and perhaps know something about it.
And that is the understanding behind 'constructivism', and it's very different to representative realism. So in that respect, Kant is completely different to Locke - in fact, Locke was just the kind of empiricist he had in mind when he said 'percepts without concepts are blind'.
Quoting Dfpolis
The original question of philosophy was something like 'how do we know what things really are?' and 'how do we know what is real?' The ancient philosophers were exercising real scepticism - not the armchair variety, but contemplating the possibility that what we take for granted as real, might be in some fundamental sense illusory - not just this or that aspect of it, but the whole box and dice.
So right from the outset a duality or even dichotomy was posed between 'reality and appearance'. That was the subject of the grand metaphysical texts of yesteryear. In the transition to modernity, the whole subject was divided along a different axis, revolving around what was measurable and the so-called 'primary qualities' of objects which were just those attributes measurable by Cartesian algebraic geometry.
But the older style of metaphysical analysis was concerned with understanding the real essence of things - what makes something what it is, how it can change and yet still retain its identity, how it can be related to other things of the same kind. That is the background to the question 'what is the real X' and the distinction between reality and appearance - a distinction which manifests in Kant as the difference between the noumenal and phenomenal domains.
(I know that these are all really big subjects and I'm making a lot of sweeping statements but then it's that kind of subject. And by the way, the web essay I keep harking back to on the continuing relevance of Kant is really worth a read. Westacott is a professor of philosophy and knows of what he writes.)
Quoting Dfpolis
That's just as I said: your ideas about science and the PSR are idiosyncratic, and I expect that you will find few allies, regardless of their position on naturalism. And when you add boasts like this, you, frankly, sound like a crank. If you want to make a persuasive case, you don't want to explicitly hinge it on extreme foundational positions that few are likely to accept as an unconditional ultimatum.
Quoting Dfpolis
I mean the kind of explanations that hinge on the existence of a powerful and largely inscrutable personal agent.
Quoting Dfpolis
Quoting Dfpolis
That is far too general to be of much use. Any system that exhibits any regularity has "telos" in this sense, but so what? Any connection to intelligence is far from obvious.
A denial which I have no problem with. Everything science has told us is compatible with the universe being a simulation. Heck, if you say it’s a computer simulation, then many a learned scientist will smile wryly. 'Maybe', they'll say. But say 'it’s the product of a higher intelligence' and, if you do get a smile, it will be one of a completely different character.
So am I arguing for belief in a higher intelligence? Actually I'm not, because I don't think that is the role of philosophy. I do agree with Polis that science doesn't explain the very laws that make science possible in the first place. But the step from that, to saying that 'therefore, there must be a Creator', is another matter; that is where I'm more inclined to being circumspect (or agnostic, which amounts to the same). I like to say that 'philosophy drops you at the border' - it shows you that a great deal of what you take for granted about 'what everyone knows' may actually be questioned. If it evokes that sense of the unknown into which we're gazing, then it's doing its job.
What would you mean by "emergent", and is this an appropriate adjective for "mind"?
Quoting Wayfarer
I think this is very well expressed, and it is an issue which Dfpolis ought to take into consideration. Dfpolis consistently describes the sensory and neurological systems of beings as reacting to the environment, being caused by the environment to produce sensations, in a physicalist and representative way. Df does not seem to have respect for the possibility that the being is actively creating sensations, and is therefore the proper "cause" of sensations.
The problem is that DfPolis has also argued in this thread, that teleology, final cause, intent, is widespread throughout the biological realm. This appears as inconsistency in Df''s position. If we recognize final cause as a constructive element in the biological realm, we ought to also recognize its role in the construction of sensory experience.
So for an analogical example, we see that a house is built with final cause as the principal cause. It is not a case of the appropriate material, formal, and efficient causes coming together, by chance, to build a house. These other causes are directed by the agency of final cause. Likewise, if we recognize final cause as active throughout the biological realm, we ought to see the construction of sensory experience in a similar way. Sensation is not a case of the appropriate material, formal, and efficient causes coming together through some random chance, these are directed by final cause, such that sensation is a constructed experience.
I actually agree. What is emergent? I'm not sure its an appropriate adjective, because I don't really understand what/how this emerging process is, to create a whole new ontological category called "mind". Thus there are these word-games going on here with "information", "representation", and "emerging" being thrown around. All it is is tautological (i.e. mind = emerging properties of symbolic modelling, etc. etc.). It really doesn't say much about mind itself.
As I read Kant, the noumenal chair cannot be the phenomenal chair because in knowing the phenomenal chair, we know nothing of the noumenal chair. If they were the same being, in knowing one, we would necessarily know the other. So, why add a noumenal chair, when, ex hypothesis, we have no way of knowing it?
As to your specific question: To say "the chair is red" means that the identical percept that evokes the concept
We know, scientifically, that if we illuminate an object that appears red in normal light with pure green light, it will be black. Does this mean that our perception of color tells us nothing of the of the chair in itself? Of course not. It is just that what it tells us is a bit more complex than naive realists think. Both the red and black colors have the same foundation in reality: They are different manifestations of the chair's spectral response (what percentage of each wave length of light is absorbed and what percentage is scattered back). So our perception of color adds to our knowledge of the chair in itself, just not in the way we may have thought naively. The same applies to a number of the chairs other Aristotelian accidents. E.g. its dimensions and mass change with our frame of reference. This does not make them ill-defined in themselves, just more complex than we used to think.
Still, in all light conditions and frames of reference, the chair remains a chair. It is still a piece of furniture designed and built to be sat upon. That's because being a particular kind of substance does not depend on the conditions of observation. We know what kind of thing it is from experience, and so appearances can and do tell us about the substantial nature of things -- although not exhaustively.
Quoting tim wood
Distinguishing object coram intuiti intellectuali (before intellectual perception -- a phase Kant uses) and the object in the act of perception is hardly a Kantian innovation. Aristotle goes on at length on the distinction between sensibility, measurability and intelligibility one the one hand, and actual sensations, measure numbers and concepts on the other. These distinctions were well-known to Aquinas and continue to be used in the Aristotelian-Thomistic community today.
The difference is that the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition recognizes that when we actualize sensibility, measurability and intelligibility we are informed about reality, but the Kantian tradition misses this obvious point. So, how can it be that phenomena, which actualize sensibility, measurability and intelligibility, are incapable of informing us of the sensibility, measurability and intelligibility of reality?
Quoting tim wood
There is no reason why I should avoid what is "conditioned and informed by ... perception." What your formulation abstracts away is that perception is relational. We never have abstract perceptions. our perceptions are always perceptions of ..., which is to say perceptions are relational. They relate subjects to their objects. So, my question back to you is what right to I have to speak of anything I have never encountered? As doing so is utterly ridiculous, so, your question is equally absurd.
Let me put it in a different way, perception, in actualizing the sensibility, measurability and intelligibility of objects, is our standard way of knowing reality. So, your question question seems to assume that we can know reality without employing the standard means of knowing reality. That is why my question, "How do we know noumena?" is critical -- because it must be some non-standard way of knowing, if it is knowing at all.
Finally, how can it be knowing at all unless it actualizes the intelligibility of the noumenon? For doesn't knowing require making what was merely intelligible actually known?
I have no problem with this as a view of reality. My problem lies with the claim that we have no knowledge of noumena -- and that is a widely held interpretation of Kant. (As illustrated by a number of quotations I posted yesterday.) As I also observed, this seems to reflect Locke's view that we only know our ideas -- and the concomitant failure to see that ideas are primarily the means, rather than the object, of knowledge. (I'm not saying that Kant follows Locke in other respects.)
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. In daily life, we take what is given and typically fill in a lot of gaps with constructs. If we're careful, we can sort data from constructs, but usually we don't.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have no problem with your historical thumbnail. My problem is that Kant has put together an incoherent and even parochial system. I think I understand his goals and even his outlook, and obviously he has thought deeply, but he seems to have researched no further back than Descartes, Wolff and Locke. The abandonment of historical research in philosophy, of learning "the state of the question," began with Descartes and continues in Kant -- which is what I mean in saying they're parochial.
Thanks for the reference.
I was telling what happened, not boasting. The facts are what they are. It doesn't bother me that I am "idiosyncratic." It would bother me if I contradicted the data of experience or if my reasoning were unsound. If you find errors of that sort, please point them out. If you're merely saying that not many people agree with me, I don't consider that a problem.
Quoting SophistiCat
Again, I'm not running for office. I'm trying to be logical and consistent with the facts.
Quoting SophistiCat
It would be a philosophical error to begin by positing the existence of God. On the other hand, it is utterly prejudicial to exclude certain kinds of conclusions a priori, as you seem to be doing. We need to follow the facts where they lead, not exclude conclusions before investigating the relevant issues.
Quoting SophistiCat
I am glad that we agree. But, if biological systems do tend toward determinant ends and there is no immediate implication of intelligence, why do naturalists insist that their students say "turtles come ashore and lay eggs," rather than "turtles come ashore to lay eggs"? Isn't this irrational thought control? Clearly, coming ashore is a required step, a means, toward the end of testudine reproduction.
As I've pointed out, everything can't be perceptions because a perception is always perception of an object by a subject. To say "everything is a perception" is like saying "everything is higher." Both "perception" and "higher" are relational terms and can't be instantiated absent the correlative relata.
To answer you question, because I'm informed by perceptions/appearances/phenomena, I can conclude with apodictic certainty that whatever I am perceiving has the power to so inform me. What does that tell me? Following Plato's suggestion in the Sophist, I think we can agree that whatever can act in any way exists. So, anything that acts to inform me exists. Further, as I have argued previously, what an object is (its individual essence) is convertible with the specification of its possible acts. If it informs me thusly, it must be able to inform me thusly -- giving me some minimal knowledge of its essence.
Thus, perception invariably informs me about the existence and essence of its object. I may add to this actual information a lot of constructive filler and wind up thinking a pink elephant is an Indian elephant, but that error is in judgement, not in the data of experience.
Quoting tim wood
And Kant, like Locke before him, was dead wrong! There is no barrier to be pierced, no gap to be bridged. Had they only read De Anima iii, this whole debate would not be happening. I ask that you carefully consider and respond to the following:
(1) The object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object. Because of this identity, there is never a gap to be bridged. I have put this in neurophysiological terms by pointing out that, in any act of perception, the object's modification of my sensory system is identically my sensory representation of the object. In other words, the one modification of my neural state belongs both to the object (as its action) and to me (as my state). There is shared existence here, or, if you will, existential or dynamical penetration of me by the object of perception. There is no room for a gap and no barrier given this identity.
(2) A second way of grasping the unity here, is to consider the actualization the relevant potentials in the object and subject. The object is sensible/intelligible. The subject able to sense/know. The one act of sensation actualizes both the object's sensibility (making it actually sensed) and the subject's power to sense (making it actually sensing). Similarly, one act of cognition actualizes both the object's intelligibility (making it actually known) and the subject's ability to be informed (making in actually informed). Thus, in each case, the subject and object are joined by a single act -- leaving no space for a barrier or epistic gap.
The fundamental error here is reifying the act of perception. Phenomena are not things to be known, but means of knowing noumena.
Quoting tim wood
OK, you define a perception in a way that does not implicitly or explicitly include a subject and an object. Alternately, give me an example of a perception that is not a perception of something. You can speak of perceptions in abstraction from their subjects and objects, but there cannot be a perception without an actual subject and object. To forget this is to commit Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.
Quoting tim wood
When I say that a term is relational, mean that it cannot be instantiated without appropriate relata -- without additional existents that it links in some way. For example, "greater than" can be understood in the abstract without reference to concrete values, but any instance of "greater than" is a link between such values.
Quoting tim wood
I don't know what you mean by "the Humean problem" here, or even what you mean my "out there." Relations occur in reality, and we form abstract ideas of them by abstracting away individualizing characteristics.
Have you heard of teleonomy? It is teleology evolved. Teleology was left behind after the scientific revolution.
Wikipedia Teleonomy: "Teleonomy is the quality of apparent purposefulness and goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms brought about by the exercise, augmentation, and, improvement of reasoning."
Wikipedia Teleonomy vs Teleology: "Teleonomy is sometimes contrasted with teleology, where the latter is understood as a purposeful goal-directedness brought about through human or divine intention."
Teleology concerns religious endeavour. We know that religion/protoscience became modern science in the scientific revolution. So we know religion is obsolete. (For example the computer/internet occurs on modern science, rather than religion/protoscience/archaic science)
If you say so :roll:
Quoting SophistiCat
Quoting Dfpolis
As do all systems (the concept of a system already implies some degree of orderliness). If telos characterizes everything in existence, simply in virtue of the definition that you give it, then it is a vacuous concept. Your analysis of teleology is wholly inadequate, or rather it is wholly absent. Once again, I recommend that you actually read something on the subject - you may learn something interesting, even if you don't agree with all of it. It's much more fun than railing against imaginary "naturalists," at least as far as I am concerned.
Alternatively, you could argue that Kant recognised and responded to issues that are particular to the advent of modernity, which the ancients could have had no conceivable way of understanding, given the vast difference in worldviews. He recognised and was responding to implications of modern scientific method, in a way that the ancients and medievals could not.
Quoting Dfpolis
Quoting Dfpolis
There is no 'noumenal chair'. There are not two things, noumenal and phenomenal, but a single thing understood from two perspectives. And the point of there being two perspectives is to demonstrate the constructivist and conditional nature of knowledge, not to posit a separate unknowable entity. Hence, not a dichotomy, but a duality of mutually implicative concepts.
Quoting Dfpolis
How then is it possible that there is such deep conflict in modern culture about the nature of ultimate reality?
And doesn't the Thomistic tradition also emphasise the importance of revelation? In other words, there is a requirement to believe certain articles of faith which are themselves not established on the basis of reason, nor of direct perception, but by way of belief in the Bible. Given that you believe in them, then it is easy to argue for them, but to those who don't believe in them, no amount of argument will persuade them. Aquinas himself says this, doesn't he?
Yes, I have. Wayfarer brought it up in the 6th post of this tread and we discussed it. I suggest you read that discussion so that I don't have to go over the same ground again.
That teleology was left behind by the scientific revolution is a historical observation of no probative value.
Quoting VoidDetector
While "teleology" may be used in that restricted sense by proponents of teleonomy, that is not the general definition of the term, nor is it the definition I used in the OP. For example:
Quoting The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Quoting VoidDetector
In your mind, perhaps. To me this is a discussion about one of Aristotle's four "causes." I do not recall any previous mention of religion in this thread. So, perhaps you have missed the secular aspects of teleology.
Quoting VoidDetector
Thank you for sharing your faith position so clearly.
I am not discussing it as a concept, but as a mode of explanation -- and that makes its great extension very useful. The fact that every existent is involved in efficient causality makes efficient causality an equally useful tool of understanding.
Quoting SophistiCat
If you look at my article, "Mind or Randomness in Evolution" (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution) you'll find it well-referenced. If you read my book, God, Science and Mind: The Irrationality of Naturalism, you'll find hundreds of detailed citations. So, I have read "something" on the subject. The positions I "rail" against are specific and documented.
Of course, there is always more to learn. So, if you'd care to make a substantive criticism, or point me in a direction I've missed, that would be appreciated.
If the ancients had nothing to say on the issues we're discussing, I wouldn't be citing them.
Quoting Wayfarer
Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253) explicitly laid out the scientific method as we have it today, including controlled experiments. The problem medieval science faced was not poor methodology, but the lack of a critical mass of findings. That said, I don't see Kant's philosophy as depending, in any critical way, on scientific discoveries. (Please correct me if I am wrong.)
Quoting Wayfarer
I am not sure I understand your question, but perhaps the answer is that the Aristotelian-Thomistic view is, as SophistiCat said, seen as "idiosyncratic."
I note, with regret, that you have chosen not to respond to the arguments I specifically asked you to comment upon.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, not in philosophy, though he does consider philosophy to be a "handmaiden" to theology.
Quoting Shawn Floyd, Aquinas: Philosophical Theology
Quoting Wayfarer
This is true of his theology, but not of his philosophy. I am not using faith-based premises in this forum.
I see the goal of philosophy as developing a true and consistent framework for understanding the full rang of human experience, not persuading people.
I find your claim utterly incoherent. If I see this tree, necessarily, I see this tree. What I do not see is the exhaustive nature of the tree.
I have already explained several times, and you have totally ignored, several times, why there is no epistic gap between me and the tree I see. I will not repeat the same argument yet again, to have it ignored yet again.
The problem with this perspective is that "chair" refers to the phenomenon, so there really cannot be a "noumenal chair". All of our concepts of what it means to be a chair, as well as other things, are based in phenomena.
Aristotle on the other hand provided us with a law of identity which identifies the thing itself. His law of identity states that a thing is the same as itself. What this does is create a separation between the individuation and identity which we hand to reality (we individuate and identify "a chair" for example), and the identity which things have, in themselves. So it allows that there are actual individual things in reality, and each has an identity, a "whatness" (what it is) which is proper to it and it alone, regardless of whether human minds have properly individuated and identified the things.
You mean these?
Quoting Dfpolis
Again, I can only repeat what I have already said: that I think all of these statements try to make something out of Kant's 'ding an sich' which he never purported it to be. They all basically accuse Kant of metaphysical speculation.
As the passage I quoted from Emrys Westacott says, "The concept [of the ding an sich] was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience (which is pretty well what they all say).
But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble."
And I am favouring that sympathetic reading, and furthermore I am confident that these criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of what Kant was trying to say.
(I wrote a bunch more, but will leave it at that for now.)
No, it's not that. In your mind, you are arguing for a rational conclusion from a theistic perspective. I am open to that perspective and I too am sceptical that philosophical naturalism as currently conceived will or even can succeed in arriving at a unified vision of the Cosmos (if that is indeed the goal).
But at the same time, I think that your project clearly relies on a faith commitment. Aquinas says that faith is a prerequisite, independently of what can be established by reason. Given that one accepts the articles of faith, then certainly reason and revelation are not in conflict. So even though you say your philosophy stands independently of faith, I think the element provided by faith is implicit in what you're saying.
Quoting Dfpolis
I'll take a shot at this. If you look at the 'Analogy of the Divided Line' in the Republic, then there are different levels or kinds of knowledge (from here):
noesis (immediate intuition, apprehension, or mental 'seeing' of principles)
dianoia (discursive thought)
pistis (belief or confidence)
eikasia (delusion or sheer conjecture)
This is the epistemology of the Republic which has been subject to considerable later commentary and criticism (including by Aristotle). But nevertheless, I think that Aristotelian philosophy still recognises noesis. The basis of 'hylomorphic dualism' is that the intellect (nous) knows the forms of things (which is the exact meaning of 'noesis'), and that the form (morphe) is separable from matter (hyle). So, the 'intellectual intuition' (which Feser and Maritain and other neo-thomists write about), is an insight into the 'intelligible order'. And 'insight into the ideal forms' is close in meaning to the derivation of 'noumenal' (although it can be fairly objected that Kant himself was far from clear that he intended this reading by his use of the word 'noumenal'.)
But the main point is that there is an hierarchy of understanding. The untrained eye, the hoi polloi, the non-philosopher, will see the same things as the philosopher, but won't understand the principles and logic that lie behind them - hence, won't really see them at all, in some important sense; the understanding is occluded or impeded by ignorance - un-wisdom or nescience. And that attitude was formative with respect to modern science, with the caveat that modern science tends to relegate judgements of value to the subjective domain, and then to insist that only what is measurable in the third person, and according to agreed criteria, constitutes a valid object of knowledge.
So, of course, I agree that the approach of modern science is deficient in that fundamental sense. But what has been lost or forgotten is the original sense of there being a 'higher knowledge' (which is the subject of the 'analogy of the divided line' and also 'the analogy of the cave'.) So the general idea is that we don't 'see things as they truly are' - the philosopher has to 'ascend' to that through the refinement of the understanding.
In reply to Dfpolis, you say:
Quoting tim wood
In your example you seem to be saying "you see a tree" but also "you do not see the tree", which is a contradiction. It's not clear what you're trying to say.
I suppose it does. But the point is, what can you say about this supposed 'unknown entity'? You can't say anything about it, because all you actually know is how it appears to you. So, yes, the 'thing in itself' is in a sense un-knowable, but it's not something other than what we know as an appearance; it's just another perspective on the same thing. So there's not two things: X as it is in itself, and X as it appears to us. There's X, which appears to us in a certain way, which is what we know; we don't know X as it is in itself.
Or as I said above
Quoting Wayfarer
If you describe dianoia as working with intelligible objects, as application of them, and noesis as understanding intelligible objects, which requires an adequate approach to their very existence, you'll see that the deficiency of modern science is that by its very nature, as a method of application, it is limited to dianoia.
Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics, provides a simplified and I believe a more realistic version of the principal divisions of knowledge. He divides theory from practise, such that in comparison to Plato's divisions, theory is assigned to the intellectual realm, practise to the visible. As with Plato's structure, the divisions aren't really "there" within the knowledge, they are artificial, principles of guidance to help us understand the nature of knowledge. In reality, all knowledge consists of a mixture of the two elements, theory and practise, the visible and the intelligible. So even in the highest levels of noesis, contemplation and thinking only with intelligible objects, elements of eikasia, opinion associated with one's practise, enter into the knowledge. No theory (intelligible object) can escape the influence of practise (the visible world), and no practise (activity in the visible world) is free from the influence of theory (the intelligible realm).
So, at the two extremes of the line, the fundamental opinions of practise in the visible world, and the highest levels of theory formulation in the intelligible, Aristotle places intuition. Intuition accounts for how the two extremes of the divided line must directly intermix. This allows for the existence of the person who has good practical intuition, knows the numerous theories which are applicable to a particular situation in the visible world, and how to best apply them in that situation, and also the person who has good theoretical intuition, which is to be well acquainted with the many observances of the visible world in order to understand and produce intelligible theories of a high level.
It is only by allowing for this, intuition, that we can get beyond the realist vs. nominalist trap, which tells us that the foundations of knowledge are to be found in either eternal intelligible Forms, or the norms of society. Intuition allows us to see that it is neither of these, but something else, that which gives us intuition.
It's common knowledge that you can't see things without light. But then the expression, "I see a tree", doesn't imply otherwise. So what is inaccurate about it?
Exactly! So, the whole idea of an unknowable noumenal reality is not only superfluous, but literally meaningless.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't understand what you are saying here. Would you explain how separation can flow out of identity?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with your conclusion.
No, it was late, and I confused you with Tim Wood. (Mea culpa!) I meant these:
Quoting Dfpolis
Quoting Wayfarer
I do not think that the more sympathetic reading, which I am willing to entertain, resolves the issue that I have, viz. that phenomena do not pose a barrier to understanding noumena, but are the very means by which humans know noumena.
Let me give some of the ways I agree with Kant's objectives.
(1) I see Kant as an heir to the the mystical tradition via his family's Pietism. This justifies, to some degree, his tendency to see the physical world as less than fully real. I sympathize with this, but see it as poorly articulated by Kant.
(2) God grasps noumenal existence directly and completely, while we grasp it only indirectly and via phenomena. So, our knowledge does not even begin to approximate divine knowledge, still it is knowledge of the thing in itself, because we know part of what it can do.
(3) From the divine perspective, the whole space-time continuum is laid out in complete immediacy. I think this motivated Kant to see space, time, and Hume's time-sequenced causality as somehow dependent on the conditions of human existence. Again, I think his articulation of this tension between the human and divine views of reality is wholly inadequate.
(4) Understanding the difference between the divine and human views of causality and temporal sequence is essential to understanding how we can have free will in the face of divine omniscience. Once more, I disagree with his solution.
So, I sympathize with Kant's problematic while rejecting his solution.
Of course light is an essential means of seeing the tree -- but means facilitate, rather than being a barrier to, the end of seeing the tree. The objection here is like saying that laying bricks is a barrier to having a brick house.
Physical interactions between separate points are always mediated. A and B being at different points does not mean that A does not act on B. The tree acts on my sensory system by scattering incident light into my eyes. Does that mean that the resultant modification of my sensory system, which is my sensory representation, is not simultaneously the tree's action? Of course not! So, the action belonging to the tree is identically my representation.
Physical separation does not imply dynamic decoupling. If it did, the solar system would not hold together -- in fact, nothing would. Since information is borne by a system's dynamics, in looking at the flow of information, we need to fix our attention on dynamic coupling, not physical separation. When we do, we discover that the tree's action on me, mediated by light, is identically my neural representation of the tree.
Theism does not enter into grasping that any perception is the perception of some object by some subject. Atheists can understand that as easily as theists. If you think perception is not relational, please provide an example of perception that does not involve both a perceiver and a perceived.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, to the acceptance of the Christian faith. It is not a prerequisite to rational understanding. If it were, Aquinas would have rejected any conclusion by a pagan such as Aristotle.
Quoting Wayfarer
That is a non sequitur. Many people accept on faith what reason tell us is nonsense. For example, that the two conflicting accounts of creation in Genesis are both literally true..
Quoting Wayfarer
What element is that? Please be specific and cite some faith-based premise I used.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have no problem with the range of "knowledge/belief" in the diagram, but in the accounts of mystical experience I have read (I've read Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, pagan and atheist reports) no one has recounted the experience of any noumenal object other than transcendent being. Do you know some account in which someone claims to have encountered the noumenal counterpart of a phenomenal object?
Also, while I agree with the range presented, I don't see the enumeration as complete or adequate. Experience is immediate and certain, but is not included. By "experience" here, I mean what is immediately present to awareness, not the consequent embellishments and judgements we may have about what we are aware of.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have no problem with this concept. I only object to how Kant articulates it. I also agree with you on the biases of so-called "scientific" thought.
Quoting Wayfarer
I also agree here, provided that you admit that the little we do see can be quite real, even though it may not be the ultimate reality.
Quoting tim wood
No, I said what I mean. I am not discussing mappings, but dynamics. The tree acts on me by scattering light into my eye, pushing back when I touch it, etc. Each of these actions modifies my neural state. That modification is both my sensory representation of the tree and the tree's action on me. So, my sensory representation is identically the tree acting on me. Because this identity bespeaks joint existence, there is no epistic gap.
Of course, the dynamics justifies the mapping you're discussing, but the mapping is derivative on the dynamics.
Quoting tim wood
It is not the tree in its full existence. It is the tree as acting on my sensory system. So, it is a projection of the tree in two senses: (1) It is the tree existentially or dynamically penetrating me. The tree is literally acting within me, modifying my neural state for as long as I am sensing it. (2) It is also a projection in the mathematical sense of a dimensionally diminished mapping. The dimensions here are the logically independent things the tree is capable of doing. Of all the possible things it can do, it does a very few in acting on my senses. So, what I get is not a full mapping -- I am not exhaustively informed about the nature of the tree, about all that it can do. Still, what I am informed of is a subset of things the tree can actually do.
Quoting tim wood
This of course is where we differ. Think about the moon. It is dynamically active in the earth's oceans, causing the tides. If you enclose the moon in a tight spherical shall, and restrict your attention to what is inside the shell, you are not considering everything the moon can do, and so you're under-describing the moon. To fully describe it, you have to include its radiance of action, because much of what the moon does, it does outside the circumscribing shell. In the same way, much of what the tree does, it does outside of its circumscribing shell. It not only acts on animal senses as we have been discussing, it changes the ecology both locally and, in a small way, globally. So, if you neglect the tree's radiance of action, you are not giving a full account of what it is to be a tree.
Our sensory representation is not something apart from the tree, but part of the tree's radiance of action. Further, a tree's radiance of action is not separate from the matter of the tree. Rather, it is part of what that matter is -- because it is what that matter, organized as a tree, actually does. Remove it, and you don't have the actual matter of the tree. All you have is something you think of as matter, but which does not act like real matter, and so is not real matter. It is only an abstraction. Part of being real matter is having a radiance of action.
Quoting tim wood
Look at the part of my response to Wayfarer earlier today, beginning with "Let me give some of the ways I agree with Kant's objectives." You'll see that I've thought about why he did what he did. Even though I don't agree with his solution, I appreciate the problems he perceived.
Quoting tim wood
I agree that my representation is not the tree in its entirety. Still, it is a projection of the tree in the two senses I outlined earlier. So, I am informed about the tree: it can do what it is doing to me. If the essence of the tree is the specification of all of its possible acts, then I am informed, in a small way, about the tree's essence. That is the theoretical side.
The practical side, since I am human, I know, in part, how the tree interacts with humans. Since I, and other humans, will always interact with things as humans, all I need to know from a practical point of view is how it interacts with humans.
Quoting tim wood
Yes! And what is knowledge other than the actualization of object's intelligibility?
Thank you. Having looked over your article, I have no further interest in this conversation.
Well, it seems to me that this is a defense of naive realism. I'm sorry to say that I think the first sentence verges on the nonsensical, as it implies that you are whatever you are looking at - chair, tree, or whatever.
As I tried to argue several pages back, the act of cognition is a complex, whereby a whole range of different kinds of stimuli and judgements are integrated into a whole. And in that act there is also plenty of scope for error. Things may not be what they seem, and the often don't mean what they take them to mean. And Kant really was onto that.
A homely example I sometimes give is 'three men surveying a paddock'. One is a farmer, one a geologist, one a real estate developer. The farmer will see the paddock in terms of how much stock it will support, what kind of pasture it has, whether there's water; the geologist will be looking at rock outcrops, the underlying topography; the real estate developer will be looking at how suitable for building, zoning laws, and so on. So they're all looking at the same paddock but seeing different things; and furthermore, their differing perspectives don't really conflict - it's not as if the real estate developer's view is the right view, and the farmer's the wrong one.
Furthermore, if you go right back into the origins of the 'dialectic of being and becoming' with the Parmenides, then we will see that the Greek philosophers really are questioning our instinctive sense of the reality of sense-perception. Plato, et al, really did distrust the testimony of the senses; in that, he was more like the Vedic sage who sees the world of sensory experience as 'maya', of not being what it seems. I think actually Greek philosophy is, or ought to be, shocking, from the perspective of us modern urbans. We're well-adjusted, we're comfortable, we have a strong sense of what is real and of who we are; I think that philosophy really must call it into question. It's an inconvenient truth (and as a comfortable, well-adjusted member of the bourgeois, that's something that embarrases me. :yikes: )
So when the questions were raised about 'the nature of what is real', philosophy really did take a forensic knife to the 'act of cognition', to how we know what we think we know. And those questions didn't just concern the token chair or apple; they concerned the nature of Justice, Virtue, Beauty, and Truth. (The page from which I took the graphic has a very good analysis of the ethical orientation of The Republic; Uebersax argues that 'the Republic' is actually a metaphor for the human being.)
Quoting Dfpolis
I think the 'ultimate reality' is the only subject of interest for philosophy - again, that's why it is radical. In Buddhism, there is a term 'yath?bh?ta?' which refers to the attribute of the Buddha to 'see things as they truly are'. The implication is that we 'puthujjana' ( the Indian equivalent of the hoi polloi) do not see 'things as they are' because of the 'three poisons' of hatred, greed and delusion. These condition our every perception, so we don't 'see things truly'. Of course, in the Secular West, to 'see things truly', it is said, is to see that they're essentially meaningless and purposeless; but this, too, is a mental construct (vikalpa, in Buddhist terminology).
Clearly, the Greek analysis is very different to the Buddhist, but what they do have in common, is a sense that the normal human state is radically deficient. '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. He even seems to have suffered from a version of the more characteristically Judaeo-Christian conviction that we are all miserable sinners, and to have hoped for some form of redemption from philosophy.' (Thomas Nagel, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament.)
So, what we do see is not quite real - that's the point!
Anyway, that is enough out of me, I sit down here at the computer and can type away for hours, but am enrolled in a creative writing course and really must switch focus for a while.
Aristotle was still a religious contemplative by today's lights. Maybe he was less mystical than his teacher, but when he talks of 'contemplation of the eternal ideas', he's not talking about anything utilitarian. Another John Uebersax page, Contemplative Life is Divine and Happiest.
The first sentence is simply an example of the well-known identity of action and passion -- which differ not in their being, but only in how we conceive them. Of course it applies to every instance of sensation. That is what it is intended to do. It does not entail naive realism.
Putting aside your negative feelings, what logical objection, if any, do you have with this this identity? If you have none, we must conclude that there is no epistic gap between subject and object.
Quoting Wayfarer
And, I agreed with you. I said that in addition to the bare the act of perception wherein the object informs the subject, there is typically a great deal of constructive gap filling that can lead to erroneous judgements. Then I pointed out that the error was not in the bare informing of the subject, but in our judgement's reliance on the constructive rather than the informative elements. That is why this is not a defense of naive realism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Exactly. This is what I mean by "projections." Each person has a different projection of the paddock -- not merely because each has a different physical standpoint, but because each projects his or her perception into a different conceptual space. I wrote about this almost thirty years ago in my Metaphilosophy paper, "Paradigms for an Open Philosophy."
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, and if you read Aristotle, who took all of these concerns quite seriously, you will find them analyzed and resolved. Yet here we are, going over the same old ground because few bother to read Aristotle anymore.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, and the Aristotelian tradition, including Aquinas, generally under-values the mystical tradition. I was also undervalued it until I read W. T. Stace's work in the late 80s. If you look back at the ways in which I sympathize with Kant, you'll see that I now appreciate it as an important aspect of human experience even though it is inadequately valued in modern philosophy.
Quoting Wayfarer
I see understanding ultimate reality as a goal devoutly to be desired, but it can hardly be the starting point. For me, philosophy aims to provide a consistent framework for understanding all human experience. So that people can start where they are and progress in understanding.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't see the great mass of people nearly so negatively.
Thank you for your perspective.
The way the term "see" functions in ordinary usage is that it relates a subject (you) to an intended object (the tree). That usage pragmatically abstracts over the specific details of the underlying physical process (which can be unknown). Whereas you're drawing on knowledge of that process - that it involves light reflection - and supposing that it is the light itself that is being seen. But that would be a different use of "see" and also one that fails to reference what we ordinarily want to talk about (the tree).
Are you familiar with the two forms of identity? You'll find them on SEP referred to as qualitative and numerical. Qualitative, what logicians use, implies that a thing is identified by what it is, but this really refers to a logical subject rather than an object. The thing's identity is what we hand to it, what we say it is. In ontology we want to identify a thing itself, and ensure that the identity is proper to that thing and only that very same thing, this is numerical identity. For example, qualitative identity could allow that you and I drive, "the same" car because it is the same year and model, we can call it the same. Numerical identity allows only that my car is the same as my car, and your car is the same as your car.
Aristotle introduced ontological identity as the law of identity, "a thing is the same as itself", because the logical form of identity was being abused in sophistry. As you can see, two distinct things could be said to be the same thing, by being the same type. However, the difference between the two forms of identity is substantial. Ontological identity is based in a thing's temporal continuity, it's temporal extension, and is supported by the matter of the thing. Having temporal extension is what gives existence to a "thing". But this allows that a thing has an actively changing form, while remaining the same thing. A change to a thing does not make it a different thing. Logical identity identifies by the form, so that the identified thing cannot have a different form. A different form implies a different thing. Recognizing the two forms of identity allows us to avoid the problems of distinguishing accidentals from essentials. Every aspect of the thing itself is essential to it, making it the unique, particular thing that it is.
Quoting Wayfarer
Aristotle does not support "eternal ideas". That is his principal disagreement with Pythagoreans, and such Platonists. He assigns to ideas the nature of "potential", and demonstrates logically that anything eternal must be actual. Therefore eternal ideas are impossible. That is his famous refutation of the "eternal ideas" of Pythagorean idealism.
However, he does refer to contemplation as a divine activity. Notice though, that even contemplation, and its highest form, the divine activity of a thinking which is thinking about thinking, is an activity. And as an activity, it is direct by intention, final cause, so it must be the means to an end. This is why contemplation and divine thought do not suffice, and he must proceed onward beyond divine thought, to determine a final end, which he designates as happiness.
So the Pythagorean idealism of "eternal ideas" is dismissed because their principles cannot support "actual" ideas. This is replaced by the activity of thinking, which for Aristotle is what gives actual existence to ideas. But as an intentional activity, even thinking must be directed towards an end, so in the Nichomachean Ethics he sees the need to determine a final end.
Yes, I know the difference.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The distinction does not depend on who uses "identity," but what they mean in using it. Numerically identity refers to the selfsame object. Qualitative identity means distinct individuals have the same properties.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is yet a third meaning of identity. It is the thing as understood. For example, when we speak of gender identity, we mean what gender a person understands themself to be. If it is self-assigned, the result of self understanding, it is an intrinsic property. If it is "handed" to something, it is not intrinsic, but relational: the thing as understood by us.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Dynamic continuity allows us to know that we are dealing with the selfsame thing, but it is not the source of the thing's existence. We know this because a thing must exist before it can have dynamic continuity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is not quite right. As you point out, dynamical continuity allows me to say that I am the same individual at different times, yet many of my aspects have changed. I am no longer the same height and weight, nor is what hair I have left the same color, as when I was a child. So, some properties are "accidental" -- changing them does not make me a different individual or a different kind of thing.
So, we return to my question:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Dfpolis
1) Intentionality: the capacity to form mental representations of objects, and
2) Propositional Attitude: attitude which describes the relation between a proposition and existence.
As such, these terms belong to the domain of mind.
So:
1) I think referring to the Laws of Nature as a type of intentionality is a category error apart from an association with a Supreme Being having mind, and
2) Recognising determinate cause in both physical and mental aspects of the universe, I would prefer to define Final Cause as: constraint(s). This would comprehend the Laws of Nature with regard to physical aspects, and intentions with regard to mental aspects.
This post is golden. There is much food for thought, and for further study, there. Thanks!
I think I may be in broad agreement, although I understand Kim's principle of the causal closure of the physical to be restricted in scope (further than he acknowledges) rather in the same way in which you are restricting the scope of determinism. (Classical) physical systems are deterministic for the very same reason why they are (physically) causally closed. And that's because when they are being considered in abstraction from the formal features of their organization by virtue of which one can ascribe intentionality, teleology and/or active powers (or normative functions) to them, then, in that case, their purely physical behaviors have sufficient physical causes. Such physical systems, however, considered as such, always are generalized abstractions from real empirical phenomena that generally fall under non-physical predicates (that don't reduce to physical predicates). Physical systems therefore are of special interest to physicists but aren't ontologically fundamental.
Yes, indeed. I am not arguing that the fitness increase is a direct response to the organisms's strivings. That would characterize a Lamarckian process and would run afoul of the consequences of the separation of the somatic and germinal lines. I am rather pointing out a frequently overlooked feature of Darwinian evolution through natural selection (among independent germinal variations) that is indirectly dependent on organisms' strivings (both behavioral and physiological). Those strivings are already teleologically structured on the time frame of ontogeny. Their evolutionary consequences cross-over to the time frame of phylogeny because, while the sorting action of natural selection is, in a sense, blind to the organisms' strivings, the raw material that it is selecting amongst doesn't merely consist in variations in genotype but rather in variations in effectiveness of the (teleologically structured) phenotypes for achieving whatever it is that the organisms already are striving for.
That doesn't sound nonsensical to my ears. It might be nonsensical if the 'object' of perception were conceived as the individual (substance) that is being perceived. But if we rather consider this 'object' as the content of the perceptual experience, and this content is conceived as being propositionally articulated, then it makes sense to say that the content of the experience is identical to what it is that is being experienced, in the case where there is no illusion or misperception. That's broadly the disjunctive conception of perceptual experience (and knowledge) defended by John McDowell, among others.
The disjunctive conception of experience also dovetails well with @Dfpolis claim (following Aristotle) that, in the act of perception, the 'object' and the 'subject' are ontologically united without any epistemic gap in the sense that the actualization of the subject's power to perceive an object and the object's power to affect the subject's capacity for perceptual knowledge are the joint actualization of one single power, since those two powers can't exist separately, and neither can they be actualized separately. (This is true also in the case where the capacity for knowledge is structured in a 'constructivist' fashion, and is actualized by means of complex and protracted cognitive processes).
That is not nearly as weird as it sounds. Compare the power of a glassful of water to dissolve a sugar cube and the power of this sugar cube to be dissolved in water (i.e. its solubility). Those two (unactualized) powers can only exist together and they can only be actualized jointly. Furthermore, the actualization of the power of water to dissolve sugar and the actualization of the power of the sugar to be dissolved in water, when they are actualized jointly, are constituted by one single (numerically identical) process. (@Dfpolis's example of the builder building the house and the house being built is even better.)
That doesn't sound nonsensical, but it is also not what I was commenting on. What I took the passage I was commenting on to say was that the hypothetical tree/chair/apple, the perception of it and the subject of the perception, are all one and the same - which I take to be a naively realist analysis.
I would be interested in an opinion on a question which DFpolis and I discussed previously in this connection. I have learned from various sources about the idea of hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism, which, as I understand it, developed in scholastic philosophy, based on Aristotelian realism. And this does differentiate matter and form - hence the name! In that regard, I quoted from this blog post, which is an excerpt from Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man, by Robert E. Brennan, O.P.; Macmillan Co., 1941:
DFpolis took issue with this passage here.
So here:
Quoting Pierre-Normand
What the Brennan passage seems to say, and what I think is crucial, is that the forms of things are known directly and immediately, because of the innate capacity of 'agent intellect' to know forms (which is 'noesis'). But the sensible object is known only mediately, precisely because it is external, other, or separate from us, physically. So what is known directly is the form/type/essence which is not exactly the same as the material object of perception - hence, 'hylomorphic dualism'.
Now, there's another matter, which is the fact that objects appear to us as a unified whole, not as form on the one hand, and matter on the other. And that, I take to be the issue which Kant addresses in the 'transcendental unity of perception.'
You may have misread him, then. What he had written was: "The object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object." (my emphasis). The two items that are being identified, it seems to me, are acts of powers "...informing..." and "...being informed..." and not two individual substances. To claim that those two processes -- the act of an active power of perception, and the corresponding act of a passive power (of being perceived) -- are numerically identical may be construed as a claim of direct realism albeit not necessarily as a claim of naive realism. As a claim of direct realism, akin to J. J. Gibson's theory of perception, it amounts to little more than the rejection of representationalism. It is not naively realist since there is no assumption that the perceptual capacity that is essentially involved in the act of perception isn't richly conceptually informed and/or constitutively dependent on the biological nature of the perceiving subject. Those 'subjective' features of the perceiving subject, however, don't stand in between her and the perceived object in the manner representationalist epistemologies (such a Cartesian epistemology) conceive mental representations to stand as merely proximal ('representative') objects of perceptions.
I agree. While the form is brought to bear by the perceiving subject on the content of her experience of an object, it isn't brought to bear on it in a separate act from the perception of the accidents of this object. It is rather brought to bear to its object in the very same act in which the accidents of this object are being perceived. (Here, I am using 'object' to designate a substance rather than a propositional content).
Right, qualitative identity allows us to say that things with the same properties are the same thing. That's the way logicians use "identity". Regardless of whether temporal continuity of the object has been established, if the properties are judged to be the same we say that it is the same object. This issue is what Wittgenstein referred to when he asked how do we know that the chair in the room is the same chair that was there yesterday. The chair here today has the same properties as the one yesterday, but someone might have switched it overnight. Do you see the difference between this and numerical identity, which identifies the self-same object, through temporal continuity? Despite the fact that some properties of that object might have changed, it is still the self-same object. This is the ontological use "identity" established by Aristotle. Being the self-same object does not require having the same properties, as the properties of an object change with time..
Quoting Dfpolis
You apprehend that there are two forms of identity. Why do you not see this as a separation? Do you see the difference between a logical subject, being identified by it's properties, and an ontological object, being identified by temporal continuity?
Quoting Pierre-Normand
My pleasure.
Quoting Dfpolis
I am not talking about a third meaning of identity here, and this is the key point. To identify by properties is "the thing as understood". Properties are what we perceive of the thing. This is the Kantian distinction. the properties are not of the thing itself, they are how we perceive the thing. This is why qualitative identity, to identify by properties (to give a thing its identity), is distinct from numerical identity which is to say that a thing has an identity regardless of its properties, or whether it has been identified(given an identity).
Quoting Dfpolis
Right, that's the point, that is the way that we identify the self-same thing, not by its properties.
Quoting Dfpolis
As I said, we proceed in this way to avoid the unresolvable quagmire involved with the assumption that there is a real distinction between essential and accidental properties. These are logical divisions, applicable only to qualitative identitythe identity we give to the object. That there is no such thing as "accidentals" in the identity which an object has of itself, is key to understanding Aristotle's law of identity, a thing is the same as itself. Everything which could be identified as a property, of any existing thing, is essential to making that thing, the thing which it is. Each and every aspect is necessary or else it would be something different, and therefore have a different identity.. This is also expressed, in an inverted form in Leibniz' "identity of indiscernibles". .
So here's perhaps a better answer to your question. The logical identity of a thing is based in essential properties, this is qualitative identity. However, we also allow, following Aristotle's law of identity, that there is an ontological identity of a thing, numerical identity, and this is based in the accidentals. Do you see the separation between identity by essence, and identity by accidentals?
I only "jump" to the metaphysically certain knowledge that whatever the cause actually does, it is capable of doing. Since it informs me in the way I am informed, it is necessarily capable of informing me in that way. Further, the capacity to inform is called "intelligibility," so when I am so informed I have actualized the correlative intelligibility.
Let be clear about what intelligibility is not. It is not an actuality existing prior to informing a subject. It is only a potential -- the potential to inform a knowing subject. If it never informs a subject, it will never be actual. So I do not know the object as a non-interacting abstraction, but only as it interacts with me. Hopefully that is a token of the type of interactions it can have with other humans.
Still, with all due respect to Leibnitz, nothing is an abstract, non-interacting monad. So, in knowing the object as interacting, we know it as it is in the world. Thinking of the object as an isolated ding an sich verges on Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. As I discussed recently, the being of objects is not contained in some enclosing figure, but extends outward in a radiance of action. This radiance existentially penetrates other beings. Things are where they act. Aristotle recognized this when he called action an accident inhering in the acting substance. The moon's eccentric gravitational effect on the oceans is identically the oceans' lunar tide.
Quoting tim wood
I have no doubt that the content of knowledge defined as "(causally) justified true belief" is partly constricted by the mind. Still, I disagree with Kant's view of how this construction occurs. I see no reason to thing that the mind imposes the forms of space, time and causality. I think if it did, alternate understandings of space, time and causality would be literally unthinkable. 20th century physics' revision of these concepts shows them not be imposed a priori, but empirically derived. So, what I see is that the brain fills a lot of perceptual gaps with activated neural concepts that are not usually distinguished from sensory data.
On the other hand, if we define "knowledge" more narrowly as "awareness of present intelligibility," then there is no filler. There is just the object acting on us, and us being aware of the object acting. I am not saying that we typically distinguish the two ways of "knowing," but we can -- and we must if we are to think rigorously and analytically.
Quoting tim wood
I think this is unfair to my account. If anything, it is too theoretical -- relying as it does on the identity of action and passion and the indivisibility of the act that actualizes the objects intelligibility from that that actualizes the subject's capacity to be informed. Surely, such considerations make no specific appeal to practical knowledge. Further, the difference between practical and theoretical knowledge is not intrinsic, but in the end two which they are directed. Intrinsically, both practical and theoretical knowledge are actualizations of intelligibility. What else could they be?
Quoting tim wood
Again, this is unfair. I give credit where credit is due. It is not that "Aristotle sez so," but that he authored the arguments I'm using. Mine is not an argument from authority. The arguments I'm giving stand or fall on their own merits. It is the genetic fallacy to attack the arguments because of their source. If you want to reject them, show how they fail.
Quoting tim wood
I agree that the representation is not the whole tree. It is not the tree abstractly considered -- as though it were a Leibnitzian monad. It is the tree as acting on me. It is part of the radiance of action of the tree.
Let me ask, what you think knowledge is? How can humans know without interacting with the objects of knowledge? How can we have knowledge without representation? It seems to me that you want something that that not only does not exist, but cannot exist. What would it mean to "know," as opposed to being, noumenal reality? If you cannot say, then it is effectively meaningless to claim that noumenal reality is "unknowable."
My answer is that representations derived from perception are not separate from their objects, but part of the objects' radiance of action -- their on-going dynamical effects.
Quoting tim wood
That Kant has missed the identity of knower and known in the act of knowing: the subject knowing the object is identically the object being known by the subject. This is the point that you continue to ignore -- discussing peripheral issues instead.
Quoting tim wood
It is the tree as acting on me. So, it is the tree itself, not exhaustively, but partially.
Quoting tim wood
In the way I described previously: The tree's modification of my sensory system is identically my sensory representation of the tree. So, this one reality belongs equally to the tree and to me. It is because this reality is shared that I know the tree itself -- just not in its entirety.
Quoting tim wood
No, Kant decoupled mind and reality making knowledge impossible.
Yes. They are abstractions with a wide range of application.
Good.
I don't see this. There is no reason we can't have two different objects with identical properties, say two atoms or two molecules.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but distinguishing the meanings of identity is not the same as physical separation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No problem.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is a result of not understanding that there can be no sensation or cognition without the ding an sich being sensible or intelligible. In sensation and cognition we become one with the object perceived and known because of the joint actualization of sensible or intelligible and of the subject's capacity to sense or to be informed.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Only at one instant in time. As I noted, over time many properties can change without a loss of dynamic identity. That is why some aspects, such as life, are essential, while others, such as hair color, are accidental.
Oh. I see. I use "separation" to mean physical distance and "distinction" to mean logical difference. What you are calling "separation" I would call "distinction."
Thanks for the reference.
From an ontological perspective that seems true, but it overlooks the role of epistemology. We do not "know" an object, rather we "know" (perceive) some of its properties in some epistemic context. We identify the object in terms of its properties, but this can be misleading. Paraphrasing Kripke, he notes that Hesperus is that which we perceive as the evening star, and Phosphorous is the name we attach to that which we perceive as the morning star. The ontological identity between Phosphorous and Hesperus is not identical to the epistemic stance because the epistemic context is different.
If you mean we do not know the object exhaustively, I agree completely.
Quoting Relativist
Of course.
The question is, are they "the same". If they are two different objects, then they are not the same, by one account of "the same". If you call two different objects the same on account of them having identical properties, then you are using "the same" in a different way. Since there is a difference between these two uses of "the same", we must be careful not to equivocate, by respecting the separation between them.
Quoting Dfpolis
Of course, but not all separations are physical separations. I was talking about a categorical separation, not a physical separation. For example, it would be illogical to class the separation between the physical and the non-physical as a physical separation. Yet there must be a separation or else we cannot have the two distinct categories.
Quoting Dfpolis
In Kantian metaphysics though, "the object perceived" is the phenomenon, it is not the noumenon. So, just like in Aristotle's epistemology, the knower becomes one with the abstracted form, but the matter, or thing in itself remains separate This is the same categorical separation as referred to above. We hand identity to the abstracted form, the perception, so the perception, the abstracted form, has an identity. Now, as Aristotle insists, we need to go beyond this, and allow that material things, what Kant calls noumena, also have an identity in themselves. Do you understand the need for this separation, or do you deny the need for it.
Quoting Dfpolis
No, it's not a case of "only at one instant in time". That's the whole point, a thing, or object, has necessarily, temporal extension. Temporal extension is necessary for real existence. There is no such thing as a thing at an instant in time. And, to be the thing that it is, any thing, or object, must have the exact same properties that it has, at every moment in time, or else it would not be that thing, it would be something else.
When we allow identity by temporal extension (material identity), we can point to something, then point to it again, a moment later, and claim that it is the same thing, without knowing any of its properties. What properties it has are irrelevant, because its material identity, as "a thing" is based in temporal extension. This is how the same thing can have all sorts of different forms, from one moment to the next. That is how energy can be referred to as a thing, with real existence, despite the fact that it is just a potential, the capacity to do work. It has temporal extension, so we can say that the same energy is transferred from one form to another, through the means of some field mathematics, all the while it maintains its identity as the same energy.
The problem is that it's not a logical difference though, it's an ontological division. That's because "the logical" is in the one category, and the other category is outside of this. So just like you cannot say that the distinction between the physical and non-physical is a physical separation, you cannot say that the division between the logical and the non-logical is a logical distinction. All logical distinctions occur within the category of "logical", and therefore cannot separate the category itself.
This is an argument from authority, and does not respond to the arguments I gave rebutting the notion of an epistic gap,Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is not at all like Aristotle's insight that in knowing, there is a joint actualization of the knower's and known's potential, and a partial unity of knower and known. Aristotle sees that for change to occur, bodies must not only be what they are now (have a form), but must also have the potential to become other (have hyle, "matter"). Of course, we can only directly know what a thing is now -- what it can do now. We can only know its potential, what it is not yet, indirectly, by analogy with similar cases.
Our inability to know matter directly is not at all like Kant's claim that we can never know the noumenon. Why? (1) Because what we know is not something separate from the object, but an aspect of what it is now. If we could now nothing of the noumenon, this would be impossible. (2) We do know object's potential to change by analogy with similar cases. Again this is impossible for Kantian noumena.
Finally, the knower does not become one with an abstraction, but with the known substance via the process of abstraction. These are very different statements.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is exactly backward. We don't hand identity to the form. The object's form informs us of the object's identity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I know no Kantian text in which noumena are restricted to material things. Rather, there is widely held that Kantian noumena, like the shadow-casting realities of Plato's cave, are immaterial. They have no intrinsic space or time, and so are very unlike the material objects of nature.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is nothing separable here. There is only the intelligible whole, and our direct, but limited knowledge of that whole.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
First, this is a very strange claim for a Kantian. In Kant's view, time is not a noumenal property, but a "form" imposed by the mind.
Second, in saying that many properties change over time, I am not denying dynamic continuity over time. I am only saying that that continuity does not guarantee the persistence of all properties, so many are not "essential" in identifying the kind of thing, or even the individual thing, we know.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have already given counter examples. I do not have the same properties I had as a child, but I am still the same person.
As energy is not identifiable, but simply a conserved quantity, the level of which changes in any individual over time, it has little to do with identity. We knew identities long before energy was ever defined.
In response to your second comment, as logic is justified by the reality of its objects, there is no reason that logic cannot be applied to logical objects, which have intentional reality.
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“Nature” is an unfortunate word to use, because, to many, it refers to this physical universe (…and you’ve used it that way). I don’t think that teleology is always meant in that way, in that context, on that scale.
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Intent as the basis of how things are—Yes.
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I agree with those who say that good intent is the basis of how things are, and that, in fact, Reality is Benevolence itself.
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People who demand evidence seem to forget that evidence needn’t be proof (and there can be no proof in matters regarding the nature or character of Reality).
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Evidence is concisely defined by Merriam-Webster as “outward sign” (which could be more wordily called “reason to believe something based on its influence or effect on something else”).
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Evidence’s convincingness is a subjective individual matter, and a matter of degree. The validity of evidence doesn’t depend on it being liked by or convincing to you.
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Of course such matters, on the scale of how things are, overall—the matter of the nature or character of Reality--aren’t provable or meaningfully assertable or debatable.
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I define faith as trust without or in addition to evidence. The convincingness of reasons or justifications for faith are at least as subjective and individual as is the convincingness of evidence.
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That objection assumes that the laws of physics rule all, and that this physical universe is all that there is, or at least that all else supervenes on it. I’ve answered that belief in other threads. But, anyway, from Merriam-Webster’s definition of Vitalism, teleological influence doesn’t depend on Vitalism.
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That depends of which meaning of the vague word “Nature” is meant. This physical universe?
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Some feel objection to the notion of Reality having intent. Presumably that objection comes from the fact that people are used to a mechanistic, intent-less physical world. But it’s a mistake to assume that Reality is necessarily like the physical world (…or even like the logic-governed, in-principle-fully-describable, metaphysical world). …or even that such an assumption should, for some reason, be more likely, or the default assumption.
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Dfopolis said:
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Yes, and all of that is something that I was arguing to Dfopolis in a previous thread of his.
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It’s desirable, if possible, to explain something at the lowest possible level of explanation, before appealing to or invoking a higher-level explanation.
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Explain it physically if possible. Or explain it via an in-principle-fully-describable metaphysical “mechanism” if possible. …before invoking the indescribable, and positing something that appears, at the in-principle-fully-describable metaphysical level, as a brute-fact with no in-principle-fully-describable explanation.
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For example, it isn’t necessary to say that God created the Earth and the human species in contravention of the laws of physics.
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Likewise, a metaphysical “mechanism” (such as I propose) for there being our lives this physical world, as inevitable and metaphysically-self-generating, is NOT in conflict with Theism.
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And, speaking of teleology, an advantage of my metaphysics is that it explains this physical world without positing that it (including its bad-parts) was created by Benevolence.
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One thing that the Atheists are right about is their “Argument from Evil”.
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Yes, as we’ve agreed, what-is, is overall good. …very good, in fact. The bad parts are temporary. So yes, there’s good reason to believe that Reality is Benevolence.
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But what about those bad parts, temporary though they may be? Do you really think that Benevolence would make there be those?
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So, it’s questionable to try to explain the (in some cases extremely) bad-parts of some lives as something created by the Uncaused Cause or First Cause. Why would those bad times be created by Benevolence? They wouldn’t.
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I’ve been proposing a metaphysics that uncontroversially explains our lives and this physical universe as inevitable and self-generated …but things are still as good as they can be, given that inevitable system’s inevitable bad-parts.
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Theists are used to the notion that God created this physical world, and that Theism requires that belief. But not all Theists agree with that. The Gnostics don’t, and neither do I.
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Michael Ossipoff
I do not believe (1) is true. There is a distinction between "form" in the sense of a thing's essence, and "form" in the sense of what is united with matter, complete with accidentals, in the case of a particular thing. This duality of form is important to understanding the philosophy of Aristotle. The form which is united with matter, complete with accidentals, in the case of individual, particular things, cannot be the same form as that which occurs in the mind through abstraction, because this form is the thing's essence, without the accidentals. So the form which appears in the mind, in knowing the object through its essence, is not an aspect of the object itself because it is not the actual form which the material object has. The form which the object itself actually has, is complete with accidentals. This distinction between the form which is in the mind, and the form which the material object has, is critical for understanding how knowledge is deficient and often mistaken.
Quoting Dfpolis
You are forgetting though, that "object" is the identity we give to the phenomenon. For Kant we can't give any identity to noumena, because that is unknowable. And for Kant time is an intuition required as a condition for the apprehension of phenomena. Time is not a form "imposed" by the mind, it is an intuition required by the mind in order that we may perceive phenomena, and objects. That's why temporal extension is a necessary aspect of being an object.
Quoting Dfpolis
You don't seem to understand. To be the person that you are, it is necessary that you had the exact same properties as you had, this morning, yesterday, the day before, the day before, the month before, the year before, and when you were a child as well. If, at any point in your life, the properties which you had were not exactly the same as the properties which you had at that point, then from that point onward through time, and therefore today, you would not be the same person as you are. Your history is your identity.
So, it is necessary that you had the exact same properties, as a child, that you did have as a child, and likewise as a ten year old, a fifteen year old, and every moment of your life, in order that you are the same person that you are today.
The example of rain is sometimes cited to illustrate the argument; it does not rain 'to' water the plant. But, looking at it from the opposite view point, we can say that the plant is there 'to' make use of the rain. That is, if the plant is evolved by an intelligence with a view 'to' make use of rain.
So the question of teleology comes down to whether there is intelligence driving evolution.
That doesn't amount to a goal, or to anything intentional (as you mention in your response to (2))
Quoting Dfpolis
No, that response is what's question-begging. You're concluding a mind in nature because you're assuming teleology (assuming goals, intentions, etc.) That's literally what question-begging is--packing the conclusion into a premise.
Yes, though that was considered heresy when the Gnostic were saying it, all the way back to Medieval times, and maybe before, and of course is still resisted by many Theists.
If someone tries to come up with some rationalization for why God would make there be lives that end early, and with excessive suffering, in the belief that God must be omnipotent, then ask them if they also want to blame God for the fact that there can't be a true-and-false proposition, or a pair of mutually-contradictory facts.
Michael Ossipoff
As I said before, there is the fact of processes tending to determinate ends, and there is the conclusion that tending to a determinate implies a mind intending that end. There is a tendency to confuse these, but they are separate issues. Clearly, there are ends in nature: physical processes tend to well-defined final states; grains of wheat sprout wheat stalks, not oaks; spiders build webs to catch insects. These processes are part of nature, even if they point beyond nature.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I must disagree. I think we can both reason by analogy and make strict deductions leading us to an understanding of the existence and general character of God. Of course, a finite mind can't know an infinite being in any proportionate way.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I agree in a general way. I see faith as justified by worthiness, not evidence. To be worth of belief, a doctrine cannot contradict what we know for a fact, it needs to resonate within us, and it must issue in virtuous behavior.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Of course.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I disagree. The problem of evil has great emotional, but not logical, impact.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Without responding in depth, evil, like darkness, has no positive existence. That does not mean we don't encounter it. It only means that it is a void where there should be some good. So, it is uncreated.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
The problem is not how the universe originated, but that it's continuing existence is not self-explaining.
Abstraction is a subtractive process. It adds nothing to sense data but awareness. So, the universal, abstracted form in the mind is just the individual form in the object of perception with the individuating notes of intelligibility left behind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is no evidence that we know forms through essences. We can explain everything we know about abstract forms in terms of selective awareness of sense perceptions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Which is precisely why noumena need to be rejected as unparsimonious constructs.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is clearly an error. The concept of time is not prior to (not intuited as a condition for) our perceptions of the changing world, but one deriving from our experience of change. Babies have no
Yes. You might want to read my paper: "Mind or Randomness in Evolution (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution).
No, I am assuming nothing. Read my paper. I give detailed arguments for the origin of the operative laws of nature and their intentional character. If you wish to criticize those arguments, I would be glad to respond.
An argument for laws of nature being intentional wouldn't cut it. You'd need empirical evidence of laws being intentional. (And this isn't even mentioning that apparently you're committed to realism for natural laws.)
Evidence doesn't need analysis to show you what is.
There is no evidence of intentionality in "natural laws."
:roll:
... teleology ... "ends in nature" "final states" ruled by the lonely photon in deep cold, for unfathomable amounts of time (even compared to 14 billion years). Heat death, where perhaps even black holes have "evaporated".
Life, as we know it, has a window, somewhere between formation of solar systems and the beginning of the degenerate era, with ever ongoing energy dispersion, marching towards heat death.
Quoting Dfpolis
Cart before the horse?
One day it's "greatest", another "infinite", the next "simplest", the day after that "triune", ... One for each occasion. What gives?
How'd you came up with "infinite being" anyway?
"Simplest" is typically an assertion in response to an infinite regress (sometimes humorously called "simpleton").
It's almost like anything goes.
Personification fallacy.
Hi. I'm not a theist myself, but I have enjoyed reading your posts. Others have also responded well, and this is generally an exciting thread. Thanks!
Not giving the details of an argument does not mean that there is no argument. Clearly, I was asserting there are arguments, and referenced my paper in which I give some of them. You are welcome to read and criticize the arguments I give. Judging them before reading them is not reasonable.
Yes, because we’re used to things happening for inanimate reasons in the physical world, some people have a natural tendency to want to assume the same, or at least call it the default or parsimonious assumption about Reality too. But of course theres no justification for such a claim.
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Of course a Materialist is committed to that claim by his belief that the physical world is all that there is.
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Sure, there are valid discussions about reasons to believe that there’s good intent behind what-is, and that Reality is Benevolence. …reasons that suggest an impression about that. I like the general idea of the Scholastic arguments, though I prefer the word “discussion” to “argument”, and though their reasons, from their discussion, aren’t the same as mine.
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But I don’t think matters regarding God are a matter of logic or proof. That’s why I always refuse to debate it with attack-Atheists (…well, there’s also that I don’t like talking to them).
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I agree with Aquinas, and people long before him, about there being nothing (or at least pretty-much nothing) that can be said about God, other than Benevolence.
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Yes, there’s evidence (“outward-sign”, or reason-to-believe something based on influence or effect on something else). There’s also reason for faith--trust without or in addition to evidence.
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I suggest (It’s my impression…) that there’s reason to believe that what-is is, overall, good, and that there’s good-intent behind what-is.
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That impression comes from metaphysics, but also from considerations (...at least some of which are suggested in some Buddhist writing) that would apply even under Materialism.
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That’s “outward sign”, also called “evidence”.
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Evidence and reason for faith are individual and subjective. No person can validly say that something called evidence isn’t evidence unless it’s evidence to that person. …or that something called a reason for faith isn’t a reason for faith unless it’s a reason for faith to that person.
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One reason for faith that Reality is Benevolence is this:
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Arguably, benevolence is good. Arguably, good is right. Arguably best could only be good.
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Within a physical world, a thing (of which there are many) can randomly be good or bad, obviously right or otherwise. If “Reality” is defined as “All that is”, then there’s only one of it, and so there’s only one way that it can be. Reality reasonably would be of some character or nature. Would its character or nature, the way that it is, be other than good? In fact, would it imperfectly be other than best? …when there’s only one of it, because it’s all that is?
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As I said, the notion that parsimony calls for Reality being neutral and inanimate, as the parsimonious default assumption, because we’re used to that attribute in a physical universe, amounts to an unjustified conclusion. …because Reality isn’t a physical universe (…except to a Materialist, of course.), so why expect it to be like one?
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The (as definitionally goes without saying) subjective nature of our experience, with experience being the center and source of what we know about our physical surroundings, suggests that there’s no more reason to believe in the Materialist’s inanimate and neutral Reality than in is his objective Realist metaphysics.
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I emphasize that these reasons for faith, as well as the “outward sign” that I’ve spoken of above, are a matter of subjective personal impression, and needn’t be evidence or reason-for-faith for anyone else, and I don’t claim that they are or should be.
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Fair enough.
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Okay, and I’m not saying that it’s created either. And all the bad parts are temporary, and Nisargadatta pointed out that what’s temporary isn’t very real, overall in the long-run. Arguably what isn’t real can’t really be very bad. Anyway, I’ve been admitting that I don’t claim any reality or existence for the physical worlds, each of which is a temporary part of a temporary sequence-of-lives, which is a blip in Eternity. Increasingly-deep sleep at the end of lives is final and timeless.
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…which is why it can be said that what-is, is good, in spite of the bad parts in lives (which can sometimes mar and become the nature of entire lives).
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But neither what I’ve just said, nor what you said, answers the question about why Benevolence would (in some lives) put us through a pretty horrible experience. …even though it’s temporary, arguably not real, and not-itself-created.
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That isn’t part of Benevolence.
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Benevolence wouldn’t do that.
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It’s something that sometimes happens in lives in worlds, making it arguable that Benevolence didn’t make there be those lives or those worlds.
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…hence the Gnostic position, which I agree with, that God didn’t create the physical universes, or make there be them.
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Just as there can’t be a true-and-false proposition or a pair of mutually-contradictory facts, so there couldn’t not be the inevitable logical systems that are the lives and the physical worlds that are their settings.
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Well, it could be argued that the lives can be justified because their protagonists want them. …but, when those lives are sometimes extremely bad experiences, why would Benevolence want there to be those protagonists and their wish for life, in the first place?
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Isn’t continuation inevitable for each timeless, inevitable logical-system? …and for the experience-stories in time, and the universe-chronology implied by that experience.
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Michael Ossipoff
As I've said several times, evidence isn't, and needn't be, proof.
The convincingness of evidence is subjecttive, individual, and a matter-of-degree.
Convincingness for Terrapin Station isn't a requirement for evidence. It might not be evidence for you. that doesn't mean that it isn't evidence.
By the way, I don't think anyone has said that the laws-of-physics are evidence in support of Theism.
Michael Ossipoff
Of course, since empirical claims can't be proved in the first place. No one is asking for proof. Just any evidence.
Is this necessarily a religious idea, by the way? I wasn't thinking of it that way. Although if some people are seeing it that way, the assertion that there's evidence of intentionality in natural laws in conjunction with the complete avoidance of providing any of the supposed evidence makes a lot more sense.
For example, bananas:
[hide="Reveal"]
As for the nature of good, I think we're in general agreement. Following Aquinas, I see "good" as an analogous, not as a univocal term. It means different, but analogous, things in different contexts. What makes automotive grease "good" is not what makes non-slip flooring "good." What makes anything "good" is suitability to its correlative end. This makes the issue of teleology fundamental to ethics. Teleology allows us to bridge the is-ought gap. It nullifies arguments for a "naturalistic fallacy."
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
As I have said before, experience is inescapably both objective and subjective. There is necessarily both an experiencing subject and an experienced object. Materialists forget this -- focusing on the experienced object to the exclusion of the experiencing subject -- thus committing Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Yes. This is a profound question. The best I can come up with is, as you suggest, it is a small thing in the "big picture" -- a side effect that will be made up for in other ways. But, I claim no certainty here.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I see this solution as ruled out by the need for a sufficient explanation -- which must terminate in one, self-explaining source. Perhaps the answer is that we see things too anthropocentrically -- as though everything needs to be judged in terms of what is goof for us, instead of what is good for creation as a whole.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No, I don't think so, for two reasons. First, from an Aristotelian perspective, the persistence of a being through time is the ongoing actualization of its potential to exist in the next instant. As it does not already exist in that instance, it can't act to actualize its own potential. From the perspective of a space-time manifold, just as existence here does not imply existence there, so existence now does not entail existence then. Thus, we need something outside of the space-time manifold to effect the continuity we observe.
No. There are three related issues.
1. Are there observable instances of teleology:
a. Do natural processes tend to determinate ends?
b. Are there means-ends relations in nature?
2. If there are observable instances of teleology, can they reasonably be called "intentional"?
3. If there is intentionality in nature, is it reasonable to see God as its source?
Each of these is a philosophical, not a religious question. Religion comes into play when, after affirming the existence of some god or one God, one relates to it with more than bare assent.
That does not make sense. If the "individuating notes" are left behind, then the form in the mind is not the same as the form in the object. Necessarily, it is a different form. Whether the process subtracts or adds, or does some of both, is actually nonsensical, because the mind never has the proper form of the object within, it has something different. So it cannot use this as a base to add or subtract from. It must create the form, using whatever information it has, but the created form is clearly in no way the same form as that which is in the object, it is created separate from the object..
Quoting Dfpolis
If you read Kant's Critique of Pure reason, you will see that time and space are intuitions. Further, space is an external intuition while time is an internal intuition. These intuitions are not derived from our experience of change, but necessary conditions for the possibility of experiencing change.
Fixed that for you.
Right! As I have said many times, it is a projection of the object's form in two senses: (!) it is a projection in the sense of an existential penetration and (2) it is a projection in the sense of a dimensionally diminished map. In other words, it is the object as acting on our cognitive system, not the object in its entirety.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We have the form partially, not exhaustively. I fail to see how admitting this is nonsense.
Information is the reduction of possibility. We are informed because prior to our experience, it was possible that the object could not at on us as it does. Once we have experienced how it acts on us, that possibility is eliminated. So we do not create the form in the mind. We only add awareness.
Our experiences are complex and contextual. In fixing attention on the object, we remove notes of comprehension that are irrelevant. We do not add notes in the act of perception, but we may add them in a second movement of mind in which we use past experience to fill in gaps. In adding these supplemental notes we may create an enhanced form that is not fully justified by the current experience.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have not read more than selections from the Critique. I have only read the Prolegomena and secondary sources. That said, "intuitions" is such a vague term, I have no idea what it means. I do know what it means to impose a form on experience, and that is what Kant says we do with the forms of space, time and causality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Repeating the claim does not justify it.
What did I say about evidence? Let me repeat it yet again:
If someone wants to debate the matter with Mr. Station, then they can tell him about some evidence.
Station can demand evidence all he wants to. He'll get it from such Theists who want to debate Theism with him. That doesn't include me. I don't care what Station believes, and I'm quite willing to let him win his debate.
Teleology in Reality? What else would that be other than a religious question?
I guess it will be necessary to, again, repeat what I'd just finished saying:
Then evidently other Theists, other than just me, are not willing to debate Theism with Mr. Station or other attack-Atheists
So yes, maybe there's a complete lack of Theism evidence (or faith-justification) provided to Station.
Alright, then the conclusion is simple. If Theists aren't providing any evidence to attack-Atheists, then attack-Atheists win their debate by default.
Congratulations!
Subject closed?
Michael Ossipoff
The point I've been trying to make, is that the form in the mind is a different form from the one in the object. You have been insisting that they are the same form. They are not, and the differences you refer to indicate that you ought to respect this fact. We do not have "a part" of the form in our minds, because that would require taking a part away from the object, so we do not have the form "partially" within or minds. What's in our minds is a completely different form from the form which the object has.
Quoting Dfpolis
You still continue to deny the necessary conclusion. Since the form in the mind is completely different from the form which is in the object, you cannot describe the act of perception as the mind taking the form of the object, and subtracting things from it. In reality, the mind is creating a form, which is a representation of the object. Since this act is an act of creating something to represent something else, there is no necessity that the two are at all similar, in reality. The form which is in the mind might be just a symbol of the object, and as in the case of words, a symbol doesn't have to have any similarity to the object represented, it just needs to represent.
Quoting Dfpolis
Well, I could quote a passage to justify that claim, but I know from my experience with you, that you will just turn around and say "that's not what the author meant". So what's the point? If what the author said is not what the author meant ( according to you), then how could I justify my claim of what the author said, by referring to what the author said?
Come again?
Should I repeat what I said again, too? Would that be helpful?
Here you go:
Of course, since empirical claims can't be proved in the first place. No one is asking for proof. Just any evidenceQuoting Michael Ossipoff
The TC just said it's not necessarily a religious question in his view.
That's what she said.
1. No one is claiming that all evidence will appear to you as evidence. Evidently it's necessary to repeat to you again that the convincingness of evidence is subjective, individual, and a matter-of-degree.
...and likewise for non-evidence justifications for faith.
2. And maybe it's also necessary to repeat that, from what you say, for some reason, Theists aren't interested in debating Theism with you.
Evidently Theists have forfeited the debate to you, and you're the default winner of your debate.
To repeat what I already said:
Congratulations!!
Ask for evidence all you want. I suggest that, when you next ask for evidence at some other forum where you aren't known yet, you might try asking a with a bit more modesty and humility, and with a lot less arrogant assurance that you're right.
Has this discussion devolved to pure repetition? Are we done with it yet?
Michael Ossipoff
For example, if someone says "there are no trees" you can point out a tree to them. That thing you're pointing at is the thing that you're calling a tree.
We can worry about people who say "I dont see any tree there" later. Let's at least do some pointing first.
Evidently you can't find any Theists who are interested in debating Theism with you.
Congratulations! You win your debate by default.
Oh wait--I already said that :D
Michael Ossipoff
Again, Dfpolis said that this isn't necessarily a religious thing in his view.
It isn't a matter of objective correct and incorrect. It depends on what someone means by "religious".
To me, intentiionality, teleology, in Reality is a religious matter, by definition. I suggest that that's what is meant when people speak of God.
That, itself, would be a good definition for the religion topic. A broader definition, suggested by Merriam-Webster, would be anything about Reality--all that is (...about which, many agree, very little can be said.). Of course that broader definition would encompass the matter of intentionality in Reality.
So Dfopolis is including in philosophy and not in religion, discussion that I'd call religious.
No one is wrong. Definitions can differ.
Michael Ossipoff
That's fine. You see it necessarily as religious. Dfpolis does not. So when Dfpolis says that in his view there is evidence of teleology, and then I ask what he considers evidence of it, I ask him to point at the stuff in question, and he doesn't bother, from our perspective, not yours, it's not a matter of getting into a religious debate or not.
In fact, I'm not even looking to debate anything at the moment. I just asked what he considers evidence of teleology, since he claimed he believed there was evidence of it.
Whatever you call the topic, you might have gotten discussion if you'd approached the matter with a lot more humility and modesty, and a lot less arrogant assurance that you're right.
I don't (continually or otherwise) ask Atheists why they believe as they do. Why should I care? Why should I take the time to start threads to ask them? (...and spend more time complaining if they don't answer me.)
I have nothing against Atheists or their beliefs. Some of my favorite people are Atheists. Some Atheists aren't preachy or aggressive about their beliefs. I have no complaint about them.
Michael Ossipoff
The guy presented an argument for something that I think is obviously wrong. I pointed out a problem with that argument. He said he could meet that problem. It's up to him whether he wants to bother actually attempting to meet it or not. It's no skin for me either way.
I should have seen that comin, like a freight train. Oh baby! Don't stop me now!
It is different in the sense that the part is different from the whole.is different from the part. It is not different in the sense of having a separate existence for in so far as it is the object acting within us, the form in our mind is part of the form of the object.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We do not have a "part" in the sense of a physical part, but in the sense of an aspect, which is to say limited notes of intelligibility belonging jointly to the knower and known. This does not require taking the part away form the object, as things are where they act.
Aristotle was well aware of this issue, and points out that experiential knowledge involves shared existence. This is why he points out that the actualization of the object's intelligibility is the same as the actualization of the subject's capacity to be informed. As they are one and the same act, these actualizations share a common existence. So, while we may think of these actualizations separately, thye are ontologically inseparable.
Thus, no part of the object's form is taken away. In fact, as the form is not material, but the object's actuality, it has no parts outside of parts that would allow for such a division. The only possible division is mental -- apprehending this note of intelligibility, but not that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You have not argued for a necessary conclusion. If you think you have, put it in the form of a syllogism.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am not describing it hat way. "Perception" can mean either the sensory act, in which there is no separation or subtraction, or the mental act, in which we are not taking aspects away from the the form, but fixing on the object to the exclusion of its context. In doing that we apprehend, we are aware of, the individual object as something that can be distinguished form its context. So far we have taken nothing away from the form, we have only ignored the contextual noise.
It is when we go on to form a universal concept that we start taking away notes of comprehension. What we take away are the notes that individuate the the object, e.g. the time and place of our experience, the exact size, color, etc. We see, for example, that though Jane is freckled, a person does not have to be freckled to be human. Still, if we form our concept of
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have already acknowledged that as part of experience, there is a final, constructive phase. In it, we take elements from previous experiences, and add them to the intention existence of Jane within us. Aristotle likens this to the formation of a military unit: as each soldier assumes position, the formation emerges. We have seen Jane before, and so know that her ears are pierced, even though we cant see them now. We have seen other women before, and so we know what they look like naked, even though Jane is clothed. It is this constructive phase that can lead to errors. Perhaps Jane is a pre-operative trans-woman and her anatomy does not conform to our construct. If so, our construct has failed us.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As I have pointed out before, thoughts are formal signs, while words are instrumental signs. So, they do not signify in the same way. In the present case, our perception of Jane is identically Jane operating within us to inform our mind. The word "Jane" has not such ontological connection. It indicates Jane by convention, not by its intrinsic nature as our perceptual awareness does.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't usually rest arguments on what an author meant, but on the reality the author was considering. Of course, sometimes an author is misunderstood, but that then the issue is interpretation, not reality. Here we are concerned with facts, not texts.
I am sorry, did I not provide you with evidence on some point? I thought I did: determinate final states in physics; grains of wheat growing into wheat stalks, not oaks; spiders building webs to catch insects to eat. In my article I also point to the preferred (end) forms revealed by convergent evolution, punctuated equilibrium showing that evolution does not drift aimlessly, and refractory toolkit genes evolving before there is any pressure to fully express them as evidence of means preceding ends.
How is any of that evidence of intentionality?
As I pointed out, there are a number of questions to be considered successively. This is evidence of teleology. The arguments for intentionality are given in my paper: (1) the discussion of logical propagators, (2) the discussion of intentionality as characterized by Brentano and (3) the recognition of intentionality by other, naturalistic authors.
How does that response answer how something like "grains of wheat growing into wheat stalks" is evidence of intentionality?
You're saying that it's evidence of intentionality only with respect to a discussion of logical propagators, for example? What would that even mean?
By referring you to the arguments in my paper. What advantage is there to my retyping the arguments here when you can click on the link? (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution). The intro to the arguments begins on p. 4, the arguments proper begin on p. 5.
It's a bunch of irrelevant stuff to read through.
Insofar as that goes, though, even though this has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm asking you, re "Mary now intends to s!eak in the room tomorrow" It doesn't follow that anyone will hear Mary in the room tomorrow, because she might not carry through what she intends to carry through.
So whenever you'd get to the relevant point of all of that, the analysis is already wrong anyway.
I am sorry that you don't feel this discussion is worth the investment of your time. Given that you are unwilling to commit time to the discussion, there is no point in me committing time to further responses.
Nothing like what I said. What you're referring me to is a bunch of stuff irrelevant to what I'm asking you. Maybe just simply address what I'm asking you. The stuff in your paper about logical propagation is not only irrelevant to what I'm asking you, but your analysis is incorrect as I just pointed out.
Because it's sometimes the case that x obtains in the wake of S intending to x
that implies that:
If x happens, someone/something intended x to happen.
It should be painfully obvious, though, that the fact that sometimes x is the result of an intention to x doesn't imply that any arbitrary x is the result of an intention. It would be possible for some x to obtain where it's not the result of an intention at all. You'd need an argument that supports that any x can obtain if and ONLY if x was intended.
(Which is again not to mention that for some weird reason you were assuming that if S intends to x, then S will x. That's obviously not the case. And because it's obviously not the case, it's not at all a valid argument to posit that S intends to x, and then assume that x later obtains. It's not valid because it's possible for "x later obtains" to be false despite S intending to x . . . I see you later acknowledge that S can intend to x where S does not do x, yet despite acknowledging that, you still go ahead and said that an argument is valid where you're assuming that if S intends to x, then S will x. Validity and "ceteris paribus" where ceteris paribus amounts to "we're just going to assume that S will x if S intends to x don't actually cohere. You'd have to not understand what validity is to say the argument is valid)
That's nonsense. We have distinguished the form as it is in the object, as different from the form in the mind. You do not argue against this. But the form in the mind cannot not be a part of the form in the object, nor is the form in the object a part of the form in the mind, for the following reasons. In sensation, the object might act on us, being external to us, but it is not "acting within us". if it were acting within us then the whole form of the object, not just a part, would be within us. We already agreed that this is not the case. If a part of the object were within us, this implies that the whole of the object would not exist without the mind which apprehends it, it would be missing a part. The object would be incomplete without being apprehended by a mind. If a part leaves the object to act within the mind, then the simple act of seeing an object would change that object. How would seeing the moon change the moon?
Quoting Dfpolis
Oh, I thought I already made this very clear. P1: To take the form of the object means to have the very same form. P2: The form which exists in the mind is not the same as the form which is in the object. C:Therefore the mind does not take the form of the object.
Now, all you are doing is trying to validate this proven wrong position through some odd qualifications, saying that the mind takes a part of the form of the object, instead of taking the complete form of the object. But this qualification is subject to the problems described above. Why not accept the obvious, and simple solution, that the form in the mind is distinct from the form in the object, just like a representation is distinct from the thing represented?
Quoting Dfpolis
Are you claiming that in sense perception there is no separation, no medium, between the object perceived, and the perceiver? If so, how do you account for the fact that we see things, like the moon, which are far away?
Quoting Dfpolis
But you cannot form the concept of "human" from one individual, Jane, because such a concept is a generalization of many humans. And so the concept "human" extends to all human beings. Therefore even if the human beings which one has met already "partially exist within us", this does not account for intentionality, which gives one the capacity to designate a person not yet met as human. So this explanation "partially exist within us" must be dismissed as inadequate to account for intentionality, and therefore necessarily wrong.
(Maybe I should apologize that this reply couldn’t be brief. Often it just isn’t possible to adequately answer briefly.)
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Proof, or good reason to believe--we don’t significantly disagree.
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Yes, the experiencer and hir (his/her) surroundings are mutually complementary.
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I said it, but that answer didn’t entirely satisfy me.
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Can major injury, misery and horror, followed by early death be “made up for”?
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It can certainly be argued that risk, and sometimes hurt, suffering, loss and the most extreme suffering and horror, are an inevitable aspect of life.
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Who’s to say whether the good things about life mean that we should be conceived and born, when, for many persons’ and animals’ lives, that means undergoing tremendous injury, loss, and sometimes the worst misery and horror.
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Is it necessary to be in a life? Only for enjoyment and (sometimes intolerable) suffering. Someone who wasn’t in a life in the 1st place wouldn’t care a bit. Of course it isn’t even meaningful to speak of someone who isn’t in a life, and whether they’re worse off than someone who is conceived and born.
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I’ll repeat the Mark Twain quote that I mentioned in a previous thread:
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“Before I was born, I was dead for millions of years, and it didn’t inconvenience me a bit.”
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I agree with Barbara Ehrenreich, who said that death doesn’t interrupt life; life interrupts sleep. Sleep is the natural, normal, rightful, incompletion-less, discomfort-less, dis-satisfaction-less, state-of-affairs.
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Someone who comes into being is always getting something overall net-positive? For one thing, it isn’t a meaningful question, because there’s no such thing as someone who isn’t conceived and born. But many lives are very prematurely cut short, and filled with horror, injury and misery. Need I supply details? Check out current-events. Benevolence didn’t make there be those lives.
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But would it even mean anything to say that what’s happening to those people is somehow later (if there’s reincarnation) “outweighed” or “cancelled-out”? How does that change anything when it’s happening to them? When it’s there, it’s there, and that isn’t a good thing.
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Is there any such thing as “making up for” or “canceling out” horrors like that?
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(But I emphasize that I don’t agree with those who complain about having come into being, because 1) There’s no such thing as someone who doesn’t come into being, making it meaningless to speak of hypothetically being better-off if not conceived and born; and 2) I believe that it was inevitable (not made-to-be by intention), and therefore complaint about it is meaningless; and 3) Most such people don’t know what a bad life is, and have nothing to whine about.)
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Anyway, no, I don’t believe that Benevolence made there be those lives of extreme injury, misery and horror.
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…which leads to the next quote:
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Do you mean “Tough luck for the unfortunate war-maimed civilians, because what matters is the greatest good for the greatest number?” That doesn’t sound like a situation that Benevolence made there be.
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It isn’t about anthropocentricity, because the same misfortunes happen to the other animals too.
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Time is only within a physical world, a property of a physical world. I’m talking about inevitable timeless logical relations and inter-reference among timeless abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things.
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Referring to the situation _within_ a physical world:
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First some brief background:
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A set of hypothetical physical-quantity values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a “physical law”) comprise, together, the antecedent of an abstract implication.
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…except that one of those hypothetical physical-quantity-values can be taken as the consequent of that abstract implication.
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Our physical universe, in our experience, seems to have some conservation-laws, such as:
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Conservation of mass-energy
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Conservation of momentum
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Conservation of angular-momentum
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…and some newer conservation laws regarding quantities observed in more recent modern physics.
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Additionally, Newton’s laws of motion (though they’ve been shown to only approximate a more general physics) include a first-law-of-motion that says that a moving object will continue its same motion unless and until acted on by a force.
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(…and let’s not have a relativity-quibble here. Newton’s laws only approximate, under special conditions, a more general physics.)
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So, within this physical universe, there are a number of laws that require the continuations that you referred to.
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…and the whole system, a physical world that’s the setting for your hypothetical life-experience-story, is inevitable because your life-experience-story, as a complex system of inter-reference and relation among abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things, is inevitable.
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Those relations and inter-reference in those logical systems are inevitable in the same way as it’s an inevitable tautology that there’s no true-and-false proposition.
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Michael Ossipoff
Everything in biology has a function. Brains think, lungs breathe, hearts pump and so on.
Is function the basis of teleology? Perhaps, as you say, teleology assumes a non-physical ingredient. I don't know.
If we do assume such a thing then the basis is some form of spiritualism with or without a deity.
If we don't then we can still work with limited teleology restricted to the physical. Right?
There's too much uncertainty in spiritualism and the nothing-but physical is unpalatable.
We're in some sorta fix I guess.
Function is not the basis of teleology, because it generally refers to an activity, while teleology is based in final cause, the end to the activity, the activity's purpose. The activity is the means to the end. So all these examples, brains thinking, lungs breathing, hearts pumping, and so on, are activities which are purposeful toward further ends. The activity is a means, and is not the final end, or purpose.
Quoting TheMadFool
Do you think that there's no uncertainty in the physical?
I think you're confused here. Forms are not material objects that can be different because they are in different places. They are what informs matter. That information can be entire, as it is with the the material object, or partial, as it is in the mind of the knowing subject.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course it is. It acts on my retina to form the image by which I see it. It acts on my eardrum so that I hear it, etc. These lines of action continue in the neural signals distributing the information to the brain's various processing centers which present the information of which I am aware.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why? When I mow the lawn, are all my capabilities revealed? Of course not. I am much more than a lawn mower. When things act, they reveal only part of the actuality, and forms are the actuality of a being.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is quite true. As Aristotle notes, the object would have an unactualized potential -- its intelligibility.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is the reason I said you were confused above. There is no "part" that leaves. There is a form that informs both within the sphere we draw around the moon and with in us.
Objects do change when we observe them. All observations are interactions, with action and reaction. We can usually ignore that fact because the changes to the object are negligible, but occasionally, as in quantum observations, they become pivotal. We could not see the moon were light not scattered off it. That light changes the moon, but in a small way we can ignore from a practical point of view.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
P1 is ambiguous. "Very same" can mean numerical identity, which is present in experiential cognition, or it can mean having the identical set of properties, which is not the case when only some notes of intelligibility are apprehended.
P2 is true if you mean that we do not apprehend all the notes of the object's intelligibility, but false if you mean that we are not informed by the numerically identical form that informs the object. We could not possibly know anything if one form informed the object, and a numerically different form informed our mind -- for then we would know the second form, not the from of the object.
C is a non sequitur.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because a representation is informed by the artist, while my perception is informed by the object perceived.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, actions can be mediated; nonetheless, mediated acts are still their agent's acts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Abstractions are not generalizations. For example, there are deep ocean species that have only been seen once. Still, if another individual were observed, we would recognize that it was the same kind of creature as the first. Thus, only one individual is needed to abstract a universal concept.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What accounts for the universality of concepts is the objective capacity (intelligibility) of many individuals to elicit the same concept.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
If you believe in some form of eternal bliss.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I have never understood how reincarnation makes sense. How can one be the same person/being, when there is no physical or intentional continuity between the old and the new self?
What does make moral sense to me is the idea that death is not the end, so that this life is the birth pain of a new stage of existence.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No, that is not what i mean. What I mean is that each kind of being has its own good, and we need to bear that in mind if we are thinking objectively. As a matter of belief, supported by probable reason, I think that the good are rewarded and the evil punished, not by divine fiat, but by the ontological structure of reality.
What do I mean by that? In a context in which love means willing the good of the beloved, morally good acts are loving acts, and morally evil acts are unloving acts. As God necessarily wills the good of His creatures, God is identically love. Those who live a life of love, necessarily have an intentionality that will lead them to a life of bliss (a life intentionally linked to God). Those who live an unloving life will also find what they have chosen: a life of eternal alienation and frustration of their natural end. These final states trivialize any suffering that has come before.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I take the unpopular view that the reactions of creatures without intellect and will are fully explained by their mechanics and they are aware of nothing. In saying this, I am not saying that humans are the only creatures with intellect and will, even on this planet.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Agreed.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Yes. I missed that. I responded too quickly. My apologies.
Logical relations have no actual existence apart from the minds that think them. Independently of such minds, they are only possible, not actual. So, they have no being of their own to persist.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Yes, there are. I address this exact question in my paper. These laws are not self-conserving. For example, the law of conservation of mass-energy conserves mass-energy, not itself. So there has to be a meta-law conserving it. To avoid an infinite regress of meta-meta-meta-...laws, we must come to a self-conserving law, God.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
The fact that we use observed data to decide questions shows that this in not the case.
That means that is is not completely mysterious. Even though intentionality is deeply subjective, it is something all humans experience. While it does not belong to the realm of physical objects, it can be and is an object of knowledge and reflection.
So, teleology, in pointing to a deep intentionality in nature (at the level of its operative laws), shows that nature is not exhausted by its material states, but also has an intentional, and so a spiritual, aspect. That does not end the story, but is a fact requiring further reflection.
I like this approach to the spiritual. It exists 'within.'
Quoting Dfpolis
Right. And the 'object' of this knowledge and reflection might just be a 'how' of living, a way that cannot be fully formalized or publicly confirmed like the reading of a thermometer.
Where we might differ is that I don't see how God apart from this 'how' is central. I'm not saying that it's not of interest, but just not of primary interest. For instance, I could say that I'm 'not a theist,' but that would be to distance myself from 'external' conceptions of God. I could just as easily call myself a theist and specify that 'God' is experienced 'subjectively, ' with 'God' being a mere name among other possible names for an important mode of being or the 'who' of that mode of being or a symbol for that mode of being (Christ).
Thank you.
Quoting macrosoft
Right. Certainly not something measurable.
Quoting macrosoft
I am not sure exactly what you are driving at in this paragraph. I think what is of interest varies from person to person, and there is nothing wrong or regrettable in that. I do not see God as in any way apart from us. We are divine activities. (God holding us in being is identically us being held in being by God.) And, in mystical encounters, we become aware of this union. In the Eastern tradition, if is expressed in the central insight that Atman (the True Self) is Brahman (the Transcendent). We are all and only what God holds open to us. Still, we do not exhaust the reality that is God.
Thanks for the answer. I can relate to what you wrote. I might tend toward a different terminology, but maybe we have a similar grasp of the idea of God in some more important and less explicit sense.
*What I was driving at in the passage you weren't sure about was the [potential] priority of something other than concept and propositional truth when it comes to religion. I can conceive an 'atheist' and a 'theist' being tuned in to the same hazy thing, merely with different words for it. The words they had for it would of course make it less hazy, but perhaps these words (themselves not crystalline) approach something still more elusive.
In Aristotle's philosophy "form" refers to "what a thing is". There are two distinct senses of "form". One is the essence of a thing, how we know a thing, and this is without the accidents which we do not observe. The other is the form of the thing in itself, the complete "what a thing is", including all aspect which are missed by us. In his physics, a thing consists of two aspects, the matter and the form. This form is complete with accidents. So we have two very distinct uses of "form", the what the thing is, proper to itself as described in his physics, the form that a thing has, and the what the thing is which is proper to the human knowledge of the thing, the form that we know. Since we are often mistaken in our knowledge of things, these two "forms" are distinct.
I don't know what you mean by forms are "what informs matter". This is not Aristotelian, but more like Neo-Platonist, perhaps. The Neo-Platonists assumed independent Forms which may act to inform matter in the act of creating objects. Aristotle assumed no such independent Forms. For him, the form was either within the mind as the essence of a thing (what the thing is to us), or else the form is united to the matter (as what the thing is, in itself). So for Aristotle form is strictly "what the thing is", and there is no such act of informing the matter.
Quoting Dfpolis
I do not believe that the moon is acting on your retina when you see the moon.
Quoting Dfpolis
"Form" refers to actuality, what is actual, not "capabilities", what is potential. A thing's potential, or capabilities is not part of the thing's actuality (it's form). So it would be incorrect to say that a thing's potential, or "capabilities" is part of that thing's actuality.
Quoting Dfpolis
But the issue is the "form" that the moon has independently of the sphere we draw, and what exists within us. These two are really reducible to the same. The sphere we draw, is really within us. For Aristotle the object has a form which makes it the object which it is, independently of how we perceive it, and the sphere we draw.
Quoting Dfpolis
I think you are wrong here. Light scatters off the moon. The light changes the moon. But whether or not that light is received into the eye of an observer on earth, has no effect on the moon. So simple observation, in itself, does not affect the object.
Now, if we consider "reactions", then the object at a later time might be affected by an earlier observation, through a reaction, but the object as observed, is the earlier object, and the object affect by the reaction is the object at a latter time. So as much as there may be interaction in this way, we can still differentiate between the object observed (earlier time), and the object affected by the observation (later time).
Quoting Dfpolis
The ambiguity of P1 is created by you, not me. I clearly mean numerical identity. You introduce ambiguity, suggesting a different meaning of "very same", in order to dismiss the argument by equivocation. The equivocation is yours, not mine, created with the intent to reject the argument.
Your objection to p2, I cannot even understand because you are talking about informing this and that, which as I explained above, I don't understand this usage. We are talking about the form of the object, what the object is, not "informing the object" whatever you mean by that.
Quoting Dfpolis
Here is a good example of a non sequitur argument. Your conclusion here "only one individual is needed to abstract a universal concept", does not support your claim "abstractions are not generalizations". The universal concept is a generalization regardless of whether it is based on one individual or not. The problem is that the generalization based on only one instance of occurrence is much more likely to be faulty, though it still is a generalization. So if I only saw one instance of grass growing, I could still make the generalization that all grass is green, but it might not be correct.
Quoting Dfpolis
Huh? What is "objective capacity' supposed to mean?
Yes, I think you are right. I think that is what Augustine was expressing in defining theology as "faith seeking understanding" (fide quaerens intellectum).
Quoting macrosoft
Agreed. I think what a lot of atheists reject is not what I understand by "God." When they tell me what they reject, I often agree with them.
As I argue in my hyle paper, in Aristotle "form" refers to what a thing is now, while hyle refers to its tendency to be something else. Classically, "what a thing is" (its quidity) is not its form, but its essence. Essences are the foundation in reality for essential definitions. In De ente et essentia Aquinas explains that form and essence are different. As it would be an error to leave out a body's materiality in defining it, the essence of a material thing includes both its form and matter.
"Form" can mean mean either a thing's entire present reality, which includes all of its accidents, or it can mean "substantial form" which is what it has in common with other instances of its species, and which excludes variable accidents.
"Accident" also means two things: (1) An aspect that is not essential, and so can vary both between individuals of the same species, and in the same individual over time. (2) What can be predicated of a substance (of a ostensible unity). As we cannot truly predicate anything of a being that is not an aspect of it, accidents in this second sense can be either essential or accidental in sense (1).
It is certainly true that we do not know all that a thing is. Still, the object as known is not what Aristotle means by "form."
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is nothing Neoplatonic in saying that form informs matter, unless you mean that forms exist without matter -- which I do not. Matter can be many things, but at any point in time it has one determinate form, which can be said to "inform it." Just as information is the reduction of possibility, so informing matter selects out of its possibilities the one it actually has. It does not mean that the form exists prior to matter being informed.
As to what informs matter, it is a determinate intentionality rather than a Platonic form. That is the role of final causality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If there were no moon, I would see no image of the moon. So, clearly the moon acts (via mediation) to form its image on my retina. In the same way, if I knock over a row of dominoes, I knock over every domino in the row, even though I only push the first.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are confusing two kinds of potential here: the proximate potencies inherent in being the kind of thing a being is (which is its form), and the remote potential to stop being what it is, and become something else (which is its matter). The form of a thing is what it is now, defined by its present powers -- a living person, not a dead body; or an acorn, not an oak tree. What something is now is defined by all the things it can do now, even though it is not doing them. Thus, human beings are rational animals even when they are acting irrationally.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course objects exist (or not) independently of how we think of them. My point about the sphere was that thinking of the moon only as that within the sphere does not mean that the moon is only within the sphere. It has a radiance of action that extends to everything it influences. The moon as an object with a tidy boundary is an abstraction. The real moon is that, and every effect it has. We can see this because if we remove the effects, say the tides, then we are no longer thinking of the moon as it is, but an abstraction that does not act like the real moon. Removing any effect diminishes the reality of the moon.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is because your idea of the moon is a circumscribed abstraction, not the real being with its web of interactions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But, I affirmed the sense of numerical Identity, which is what you intended.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is a question about how to count. I count one form, you count two forms. Let me explain why there is one, not two forms. Clearly, there are two informed beings: the object and the subject. Does that mean that there are two forms? No! Why? Because the basis of the twoness is the different matter of the subject and the object. But, we are not talking about the informed matter of the object, or the informed matter in my brain, but about the form in abstraction from matter.
Because the form is specifically immaterial, we cannot use different matter or places to multiply its count. We have to count based on properties intrinsic to the form the form(s) we are counting. What are these properties? Notes of intelligibility or of comprehension. So, the only basis for saying one form is not another is if they have different notes of comprehension. In the same way, the only basis for saying one note of comprehension is not another is if they have different information.
I've said that the form in the subject does not exhaust the form in the object. So, they differ in light of having different notes of intelligibility/comprehension. Still, as the notes of comprehension we do have are identical with notes in the object, they (the notes we have) are one with those of the object.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I seem to have erred in interpreting what you were saying. I apologize. I was thinking of the Hume-Mill model of induction, in which generalization is the result of repeated experience, not abstraction. That is not what you were saying.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This confuses generalization on the Hume-Mill model, in which we constructively add the hypothesis that future cases will be like past cases with abstraction in which we add nothing, but subtract notes of comprehension that are individuating.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It means that each instance has the objective notes of intelligibility required to elicit the concept.
Quoting Dfpolis
In Aristotle though, quiddity is a sense of "form". Aristotle doesn't make the clear distinction between form and essence which you refer to in Aquinas. In Aristotle this is just two senses of "form".
Quoting Dfpolis
You ought to recognize that the word "essence" did not exist for Aristotle. And so, for Aristotle "form" (what a thing is), had multiple senses. One being what the thing truly is in itself, the other being what the thing is known to us as. It is wrong to take one of these senses, and say that the other is not what Aristotle means by "form", because we'd have to look at the context of each instance to decide. And clearly there are many instances when "form" is used to indicate formula, or essence.
Quoting Dfpolis
I still don't understand how you can say that form informs matter without assuming separate forms. Are you saying that matter selects a form from possible forms? Wouldn't the possible forms which the matter chooses from, necessarily have separate existence? Otherwise that matter which is choosing, would already have all these different forms at once, and that's contradictory. So if the matter selects from possible forms, then these forms must have separate existence. Otherwise the matter would either have multiple forms at once (contradiction), or else these multiple forms would have no real existence at all, and there would be no forms for matter to select from.
Quoting Dfpolis
Your logic is faulty here. You do not have the required premise to say that if you see something, that thing is necessarily acting. So you beg the question by assuming that if you see something, that thing is acting. However, according to accepted grammar, the seer is active in seeing, and the thing seen is passive. You might argue some sort of premise which states that to see requires that something act on your eyes. But this thing acting on your eyes might not be the object at all, as you note, it might be a medium. If the medium is acting then there is no need to assume that the object is acting. The moon might be completely passive, with an active medium, and then it would be wrong to say that the moon acts.
Notice that if light is such a medium, we do not even see light. So we do not even see the thing which is active in seeing (light), we just see the passive object. All the other sensations are similar. We sense "things", sounds, tastes, smells, density, etc.. And all these sensations are based in activities. But we do not sense the activities, we sense the things. I agree that there is activity involved in sensation, but the activity is proper to the medium, not the thing sensed. And the medium might just as well be within the human body as external to it.
Quoting Dfpolis
It is you who is confusing things. We describe a thing as "what it is", it's form. If that thing has the potential to be something else, or has "potencies" (the ability to act), then we must refer to something other than the thing's form to validate this potential. So if you want to define a thing by "its present powers", then to account for its ability to act, which require a specific type of temporal relation, you need to refer to something other than "what it is". "What it is" refers to an existence now, but "ability to act" requires a relationship between past and future. So "form" as "what the thing is", cannot account for a thing's "present powers" and we must refer to "matter" for that.
Quoting Dfpolis
You're begging the question again, with your assumption that objects act, when really they might only be passive, acted on. So you say that the tides are caused by an act of the moon. But we know that the tides are an effect of gravity. And gravity is not an activity of the moon nor is it caused by an activity of the moon.. If we assume that gravity is an activity, then it appears like the existence of the moon, as an object, is more likely the effect of this activity.
Quoting Dfpolis
Right, my assumptions concerning activity are not the same as your assumptions, but I think mine are more realistic. You think an object like the moon is active, and interacting with other objects, like the sun and the earth. I think that these objects themselves are passive, and there is a medium between them which is active, and the activity of the medium is what accounts for "interactions". We do not sense the active medium.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is contrary to the fundamental laws of logic. There are two beings, "the object and the subject". You are claiming that these two distinct beings have one and the same (numerically identical) form. That contravenes the law of identity. You are saying that two things, the subject and the object, which have different matter, can nonetheless have the exact same form, on account of them having different matter. But the very principle (the law of identity) which allows us to say that two distinct things have different matter, disallows us from saying that they have the same form. It is only by the fact that they have different forms, that we can say that they have different matter. Matter is only distinguishable as this or that particular matter by its form, so you cannot say that the subject and object have different matter without respecting that they have different forms. So the subject and object can in no way share have same form.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is where you do not appear to grasp reality. No single "note of comprehension" is the same within the mind as it is within the object. No note is a perfect, ideal, or absolute understanding. Each is in some way deficient. Each aspect of the form, in abstraction, is different from that aspect in the material object. You look at a horse for example, and see its eyes, nose, head, legs, hair, etc., and each one of these, as a property, is different within your mind from what it is within the horse itself. So there are absolutely no identical notes. There cannot be, or else our understanding of that particular aspect would be absolute, ideal and perfect. And no aspect of human understanding obtains such perfection.
Nice! I haven't got to Augustine yet, though he comes up in some of thinkers I value.
Quoting Dfpolis
Indeed. To me it's almost a matter of context which word I pick, if any. Once thinking becomes sophisticated, it's exactly crude categorization that's no longer appropriate. This isn't the thread for it, but I think the idea that meaning significantly lives in individual words is still fairly dominant --which contributes to lots of uncharitable interpretation.
What hazy thing do you have in mind? (I realize the answer will have to be hazy, by the way.)
We are concerned with reality, not with what may or may not have been anyone's historical position per se. I am only citing these authors to credit them and to define terms.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting SEP: Aristotle's Metaphysics by S. Marc Cohen
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but this does not advance you case that the form of the object is not also partially in the knowing subject.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am sorry that you do not see this. Consider a piece of abstract art. It's form occurred first in the mind of the artist, then in the work. The artist takes material and informs it according to the intended form. In natural bodies, the prior state of the matter is informed by the laws of nature, which play the intentional role. There is no reason in either case to assume a separate form.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Matter is not intelligent and makes no choices. As I just said, the intentional role is played by the laws of nature.
There is no contradiction in having multiple possibilities. The artist can give the stone whatever form is desired. It is only a contradiction if something actually is and actually is not at the same time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am not arguing a priori, but a posteriori. We know of no instance in which we see an object in which the object does not act on us by scattering light into our eyes. If you have a counterexample please give it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Whatever might be, a priori, what actually is, is an active moon. I studied electrodynamics. It shows that scattering occurs because incident light oscillates the atomic electrons (of the moon) and they re-radiate light as a result. If the moon's electrons did not act to radiate light, we would not see the moon. So, whatever grammatical form you use, the moon acts in being seen.
The medium is an instrumental, not an efficient or formal, cause. It is absurd to argue that the sculptor does not sculpt because she uses a hammer and chisel to cut the stone.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. A human being is not an abstract human form, but a material body with human form.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, I don't. As I said, humans are rational animals even when we are not being rational. Our essence is our nature, which defines the kind of things we can do, even if we are not doing them at the moment.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, I am arguing from the data of experience. Nothing can be purely passive, for if it did not re-act when we act on it, then, however much we exerted ourselves, we would not be acting on it at all.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is not an assumption on my part, but an empirical fact that the moon acts in many ways here on earth. It scatters light into our eyes and it acts on the oceans to produce tides.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Specifically?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not the same form in the sense of having all the notes of intelligibility, but the same in the sense that they notes they do share are numerically one. That is the nature of universals. Every instance of a note of intelligibility is an instance of the identical note or it would not be an instance. The instances (tokens) are different, but what they are instances of (their type) is identical. For example, the abstraction
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How? Further, I do not see that the law of identity ("What ever is, is") enters into differentiating individuals.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I can't agree with a word of this analysis. We can have two quite indistinguishable objects and still know that they are two, not one, in light of their relation to each other and to us. One is on the right, the other on the left. One is closer, the other further.
Of course they would not be objects if they had no form. That is why they are countable, but the reason they aren't one is relational.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No human understanding of being is "perfect, ideal, or absolute" because we apprehend some notes and not others. Still, the notes we do grasp are notes in the object.
Yes. I think we can be more charitable if we try to stand beside our dialogue partner and try to see what he or she is seeing, rather than taking their words on face value. I have to admit that I often fail in this.
Well, the point is that "form" in the sense of what is in the knowing subject is "form' in the sense of essence, and "form" in the sense of what is in the material object is a different meaning, of "form", including accidentals. Therefore your claim that the form of the object is the form in the knowing subject is nothing but equivocation.
Quoting Dfpolis
But the form in the mind of the artist is not the same form as the form in the work. That's where you equivocate. The artist proceeds with a plan or a purpose, a form in mind, and creates a form in the work material. The two are not the same form. There is a medium in between which is the act of creating in the material. It is not the case that the artist takes the form out of the mind and puts it into the matter. A different form is created in the matter, from the one in the mind, and this is evident and obvious from the existence of accidentals.
Quoting Dfpolis
So this description is incorrect, wrong. The artist does not take the material and inform it with the form in the mind, the artist takes the material and changes the form which it has, to correspond with what's in the mind. The forms "correspond" rather than being one and the same. This is a very important difference, because the artist's act of creation is an act of taking an existing form and producing a new one, an act of change. Because it is an act of change, the artist's work is limited by the existing form. If it were a matter of the artist "informing" the material, there would be no way to account for these limitations, as the matter would not already have a form, being able to take any form. But this is not the case, the matter already has a form, and the artist must change that form, not inform the matter.
Quoting Dfpolis
See here is evidence of that very mistake. The artist cannot give the stone whatever form is desired, being limited by the form which the stone already has. Once you deny the fact that what the artist is doing is changing the existing form, in favour of your principle, that the artist is informing the matter, you exclude the capacity to account for the restrictions placed on the artist due to the existing form.
Quoting Dfpolis
The notes are not numerically one though, that's the point. Each note is different between the object and the mind, one having accidentals, the other not.
Quoting Dfpolis
Each note of intelligibility in the mind is an abstraction, therefore not the same as the intelligibility of the thing abstracted from. So in relation to your example, the "humanity" in me is not the same as the "humanity" in you because of the differences in accidentals. And none of us are the same as the concept of humanity because we are particular instances, and that is a universal.
Quoting Dfpolis
Do you not know the law of identity? A thing is the same as itself. The purpose of the law of identity is to ensure that every individual has its own unique identity.
Quoting Dfpolis
That description is a formula, it is part of the form, not the matter.
Quoting Dfpolis
"Relational" is formal.
In a word, something like a feeling that accompanies the doing of life. If 'God is a spirit and must be worshiped in spirit and in truth, ' the maybe what is referred to is beyond all mere pictures and concepts. The wind shakes the leaves on the trees. While the wind is partially manifest by the movement of these leaves, the leaves themselves are never the wind. An 'atheist' can agree that God does not exist (as a dead leaf), and a 'theist' might agree. To be sure, there are plenty of crudely dogmatic atheists and theists who both think of religion as a kind of alternative natural science.
You mentioned being an artist, and I think that's connected. Art has a kind of inherent grasp on the sacred to the degree that I'd call it 'serious' art. There's nothing wrong IMV with clever or self-referential art, but I don't think such clever art (with clever 'explanations' affixed nearby on the all) really speaks to us with the same ambition to share what is deeply beautiful and terrible about life.
Well, I certainly have a lot of feelings, but I don't think you're talking about that flow of different feelings there, and if not, I'm not sure what that would be. I don't think I have some more overarching/abstract "feeling that accompanies 'the doing of life'" (what's different about saying "The doing of life" so that we couldn't just say "living," for example?)
Re "serious" art, I hate any sort of distinction like that. Art is art. I hate hierarchies that people try to impose.
I have explained in detail why it is not an equivocation. Repeating your claims does not help. You need to show why the arguments I have made are unsound.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Only to the extent that the work is poorly executed. To the extent that the work is well-done, it embodies the very form in the mind of its maker.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But, it is, except it need not leave the mind of the artist in being embodied in the work.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And the difference is? In any change, the matter is informed with the new form.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You're right, but you're taking my claim out of context, The context was that the matter is proportionate and suitable to the desired form. Obviously, you can't make the Eiffel Tower out of a hair pin. However, given that amount of metal Eiffel could have made many other things.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, the notes are things that can be predicated of the object, and so accidents, not substances that can have accidents predicated of them.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is exactly wrong. As Aristotle observed the mind being inform by the object is identically the object being informing the mind. The notes of comprehension in our mind are our awareness of the notes of intelligibility in the object. What else could they be?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is confused. You and I do have different accidents, but they are what is left behind in abstracting our common humanity. Accidents belong to individuals, not to the universals they instantiate.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but not the form of one thing in isolation.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Well there is the idea that God is love. I would mention a creative play also that dissolves the ego. I could also speak of 'eternity' existing only within time. The incarnation myth symbolizes that God exists only as mortal human being, who is moreover a criminal with respect to state and church. This criminality is the surplus of being a particular human being. No human being quite fits into the system.
We can just say 'living.' Why not? But why do you dwell argumentatively on triviality like that and ignore the better part of my post?
Quoting Terrapin Station
I am skeptical. I highly doubt you approach all art the same way. Or is a jingle about hot dogs as good as a rock band's most transcendent and authentic work?
You have made no such argument, only repeating your assertions that the form in the mind is in some way the same as the form in the object. I have produced multiple arguments showing why this is unreal. You have shown me no argument to defend your claims, but I have definitely shown your claims to be unsound.
Quoting Dfpolis
So let's see your argument then. Prove that the form in the mind is the very same form as the one in the artist's work, rather than just a corresponding form. I think that all the incidents when the work is poorly executed is evidence that the two are not the same. And, when the work is acceptable, it is simply acceptable, and never perfect. Therefore never the very same form.
Quoting Dfpolis
That the matter is proportionate, and suitable to the desired form, says that the matter must already have a suitable form. So it is clear that the artist is changing an existing form, not informing the matter with a form from one's mind. The artist uses the mind to determine how to change an existing form to produce a desired form. The artist does not take a form from one's mind and inform the matter. The matter is already formed and the artist simply changes that form.
I'd never use "transcendent" and especially not "authentic" to describe any artwork.
I don't think there's anything inferior about jingles, production music, etc.--and I've done some of both myself.
OK. That may connect to some of our variations of perspective. To be clear, it's not about shaming jingles. It's about paying tribute to the feelings we are capable of as human beings. 'Stairway to Heaven' is itself a Stairway to Heaven if one is in the right mood for it. Sadie, Coltrane, Patti Smith, Warpaint, Bach, and others you might name are definitely offering something to me that this is not:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNddW2xmZp8
I would not say that some fixed system of categories is ever going to do the situation justice. But I've been writing against naively held fixed systems of categories for many posts now. Loose categorization can usually succeed given enough shared experience. It's the same with God. An 'atheist' and 'theist' may very quickly discover that they have more in common than two 'atheists' or 'theists.' This can happen because they aren't trapped in that particular categorization. And sophisticated religion has perhaps even been profoundly aware of the sterility of certain categorizations before philosophy proper was. (The distinction of religion and philosophy is itself questionable in certain cases.)
When we're talking about people reacting to music, visual works, etc. any arbitrary person could have any arbitrary response to any arbitrary work. So someone who does use "transcendent" to describe their aesthetic reaction to some works could feel that way about the Volkswagen fahrvergnugen jingle while they get basically nothing from Patti Smith.
Sure. Anything is possible. But we know from experience that there is a vague spectrum. Just because our sense of the situation is vague does not mean it is absent. The demand that everything be clear is reasonable, but taken to extremes it excludes everything. We live most of our lives using language in an inexact way. There's something questionable about philosophers insisting on standards than they can't actually live by. It's not that they are lying but only that they take their theoretical mode for life itself. Within that theoretical mode they forget how it all usually goes down, lost in the 'ought.'
My experience with people is actually that there's a really wide, really varied range of opinions about the same stuff, a range that doesn't at all resemble the consensus of communities like rateyourmusic users, or SteveHoffman regulars, or gearslutz regulars, etc., and each of those communities has very different consensuses, too.
Maybe I should lighten my thesis to this. I think individuals find some music more important than other music, and that they can grasp the idea of the continuum in this way.
I'm taking it that you aren't thinking of "more important" as "they like it/value it a lot more," but something else?
No, that's it. They like some stuff more than others, sometimes a lot more. Ask yourself which artists/musicians/philosophers you would most regret never having discovered. I'm just saying something simple. We understand that 'great' applies to what most deeply moves us.
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Eventually things are timelessly better, and I agree on that. But I’m just saying that, at the time when the horrors are happening, that’s still pretty bad, isn’t it? And it likely seems like a long time. I’m saying that Benevolence wouldn’t and didn’t make there be that.
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The Gnostics agree. They answered the “argument from evil” a long time ago.
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You won’t be the same person in every regard, but you will still be you, because there’s continuity of experience, as I answer about directly below. Among the infinity of hypothetical experience-stories, there’s one whose protagonist and his experience are the same as you and your experience at that time.
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But there is intentional continuity. There’s continuity of experience. And there isn’t a new self. Among the infinity of hypothetical experience-stories, there’s one whose protagonist and his experience are the same as you and your experience at that time. Though you’re unconscious at that time, you still have subconscious perceptions of need, want, inclination, predisposition, future-orientation and Will-to-Life. …like someone who is in (some part of) a life.
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Of course the hypothetical version of you who actually dies, who just continues into increasingly deep sleep—That person, for one, is the protagonist of one of the infinity of stories. But is that your story? The one that matches your subconscious feeling?
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No--Though you’re unconscious at that time, you still have subconscious future-orientation, perceived wants, needs, inclinations, predispositions and Will-to-Life. …like someone who is in (some part of) a life.
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Among those infinitely-many life-experience-stories that match you and your experience at that time, there’s also one in which you aren’t dying, but are instead at the beginning of a life. That hypothetical life-experience-story is the one that matches your subconscious feelings, perceived wants and needs, inclinations, predispositions, future-oriented-ness, and Will-to-Life.
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At that time, you aren’t ready for or inclined to the quiet and peaceful rest at the end of lives. You’re still inclined to the striving and experiences of life.
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There’s no difference, at that time, between you and that protagonist of that hypothetical story, and there’s no difference between your experience and his.
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But you’re physical and that protagonist is hypothetical? Are you sure about that distinction?
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Even right now, during this life, in waking-consciousness, it’s all real in its own context, but you can’t claim any proof that it has some kind of absolute, noncontextual, context-independent reality. And so it doesn’t provably have any kind of reality that a hypothetical experience-story doesn’t have.
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Such a hypothetical story has the requirement of consistency. That requirement is satisfied if the continuation of your experience is consistent with your current experience, including your subconscious feelings.
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If that sounds like something made up, or unsupportedly believed-in, I’ll just say that reincarnation is a natural and expected consequence of my Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism metaphysics.
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But I emphasize that it isn’t part of my metaphysics, and that my metaphysics doesn’t depend on it. I can’t prove that there’s reincarnation. I only say that there is because it’s consistent with and suggested by my metaphysics.
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If there’s a reason why you’re in a life, and if, at the end of this life, that reason remains, then what does that suggest? It suggests that you’ll again be in a life.
I should add that the Gnostics, too, say that there’s reincarnation, until such time as we sufficiently perfect our lifestyle.
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The reason why you’re in a life?:
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There’s an infinity of abstract implications. Abstract “If….then….”
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…and infinitely many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things.
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That’s uncontroversial. I’m not making any claim about their reality or existence, but those abstract implications are related by inter-reference. …the logical and mathematical relational-structure that Michael Faraday referred to in 1844.
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So, among that infinity of abstract logical systems, one of those, with suitable renaming of its things, has a description that is the same as a description of the experience of someone who is just like you—someone who is you. ,,,duplicating, indistinguishable from, the supposed, alleged, absolutely-existent person that you are, and the supposed, alleged, absolutely-existent physical world in which you live.
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I claim that, among the things of the describable realm, there’s no such thing as absolute-existence. In that realm, it’s meaningless to speak of existence or real-ness other than in and with respect to a specified context. Your hypothetical life-experience story, and the physical world that is its setting, of course can be said to be real and existent in their own context.
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That, too, is uncontroversial. That person/story-protagonist, and that person’s “Will-to-Life” is a necessary complementary part of that hypothetical life-experience-story.
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So, that’s why you’re in a life, and that’s why it’s reasonable to suggest that you’ll again be in a life if, at the end of this life, there remain the subconscious feelings of want, need, inclination, predisposition and Will-to-Life.
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You’re different from how you were at the beginning of this life, due to your experiences, and subconscious habits different from before.
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Because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, consistency is the requirement of your experience-story. So, the physical world that is the setting of that life-experience story will of course be one that is consistent with the person that you are. For example, it will be one whose inhabitants include the kind of people who would beget someone like you.
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(I’ve been capitalizing “Will-to-Life”, because it’s a borrowed term that people have been quoting from the metaphysics of a classic philosopher.)
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There’s no such thing as an experience of a time when there’s no experience.
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At the end-of-lives (or at the end of this life, if there weren’t reincarnation) of course there’s sleep, increasingly deep sleep, timeless because eventually there’s no knowledge that there is, ever was, or ever could be, such things as time or events.
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Death is the end of (only) this life. (Or, if there weren’t reincarnation, death would be the end of worldly life for you)--though, rather than being something new, it will be no different from the familiar and usual nightly sleep. Either way, life is a temporary blip in timelessness, as I’ve been saying. A temporary anomaly, from sleep that’s the natural, normal and usual state-of-affairs, and which eventually becomes timeless.
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That’s a good way of saying it. The experience of the full, free of lack and incompleteness, restful and easy end-of-lives, happens only because there was a life in the first place. Likewise for what’s good during one’s life or lives.
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…except that that new stage of existence is the genuine, natural, normal and usual nature of our existence and state-of-affairs. At the end-of-lives, it’s the experience of approach to the natural and normal Nothing, and arrival to nearly Nothing, when there’s no knowledge that there was supposedly something.
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There’s the natural question: Did this whole thing have to happen in the first place? Only because there’s the hypothetical experience of being someone with Will-to-Life, and the “if…then” that goes with that. …and away the story goes…
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…and the life (or sequence of them) ends with a forgetting about the needs, wants and inclinations that were the basis of it.
So, why would Benevolence send us on that anomalistic, illusory, sometimes quite horrible, life-experience that we eventually no longer perceive need for, and don’t miss at all when it’s over? I say that Benevolence didn’t make there be that.
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But there’s temporary unnecessary experience of suffering. Temporary? Yeah, but most likely, at the time, it seems quite long. …and that’s an imperfection that wouldn’t be made to be, by an omnipotent and benevolent God. Reality is benevolent, but I question the omnipotence notion that would blame everything on God.
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You once spoke of God having the power to do anything logically possible. Exactly. But, (if I may repeat it) just as there logically can’t be a true-and-false proposition, so there logically couldn’t not be the abstract facts that comprise our hypothetical life-experience-stories.
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Of course. Quite so.
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Harmful acts are more and worse than just unloving.
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Certainly. Aquinas said it too.
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Yes, to the extent that we, at least to a degree within our ability, reflect and at least partially act the Benevolence.
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When, eventually, we’re life-completed and life-style-perfected (which includes how we treat our fellow living-things), the conflicts, needs, wants, predispositions that were the basis of our birth won’t be there.
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Correct.
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…except that “unloving” is an understatement for the worst people. But yes, people get what they are, and people are what they do.
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I don’t think there’s a sharp demarcation like that. Most nonhuman animals, especially the ones that don’t harm, embody the best that is in all of us.
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Spiders? I suggest that, in natural-selection and evolution, the inclination to prey on one’s fellow living-things preceded the detailed evolution of body-forms specialized for that purpose.
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But, not only among the animals, not only among the biological organisms, but also among all of the purposefully-responsive-devices (…from future robots that can fully duplicate human capabilities, to such things as mousetraps, refrigerator lightswitches, thermostats, and electric pencil-sharpeners) – where exactly would you draw the “consciousness” line?
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I suggest that the elusive “consciousness-line” is a matter of chauvinism. It’s more meaningful, definable and philosophically-supportable, to speak of us as purposefully-responsive devices.
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I emphasize that I don’t claim any existence for them. As I said:
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I’m talking about inevitable timeless logical relations and inter-reference among timeless abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things.
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I’m not claiming “existence” or “reality” for those abstract facts or their propositions or hypothetical things.
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I’m not claiming existence for anything in the realm of contingent, interdependent, dependently-originated, things interdependently related by logic and facts.
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But I’m not claiming existence or reality for the logically interdependent things. The physical laws, and the things that they describe, are figments of logic, and, as such, need no explanation.
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God, Benevolence, is why things are good overall. …and as good as they can be under the circumstances of the (apparent) worldly lives that there inevitably are.
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Which is better, to commission the breeding of a dog, so that you can treat it well, or to rescue a dog from the animal-shelter, and treat it well?
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I suggest that God didn’t create us, didn’t and doesn’t make there be the inevitable apparent worldly-lives, but, rather, made there be overall good, with the apparent worldly lives as good as possible under their inevitable circumstances.
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We use observed data to determine “physical” facts within the logical/mathematical relational structure of our experience-stories.
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That doesn’t mean that the whole experience-story is other than a hypothetical story, consisting of the relational-structure among a hypothetical complex system of inter-referring abstract-implications about propositions about hypothetical things.
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Michael Ossioff
This conversation between you and Terrapin Station interests me, in that I had to learn how to listen to some music while others felt like I had been expecting it without knowing that I did. I have become leery of a lot of comparisons because my primary goal is the experience without qualification. A desire for immersion.
So, many of the things I value most highly are avoided most of the time because I am not ready for them. I need a grammar lesson for some things but I cut it off if interferes with my exposure to it.
I can't quite understand everything you are saying here, but it sounds positive, and we share a goal: the experience without qualification, a desire for immersion. I suppose that I am also looking for words that betray pure experience as little as possible. The point (as I see it) is to intensify this immersion with words that point the way. While philosophers do enjoy arguing, a higher goal is to exist in a better way. We don't need to frame philosophy in terms of propositions that eschew a poetic charge. We can think of philosophy as a set of existential tools that happen to be made of words. How do you feel about that?
*As a nod to the OP, teleology seems almost the essence of being human, which is to say being the future as possibility directing our doings now.
Maybe we don't have to frame philosophy that way. I have some sympathy for Socrates pouring cold on the idea. He did it in the context of forming an ideal curriculum for teaching children.But he was also challenging people who knew by heart what was being proposed to be separated. Their agreement to the argument as given didn't mean they were agreeing to remove narratives written into their lives with indestructible threads. It is kind of an argument that removes its strongest points of justification if the proposed action is taken.
So, I don't have a good answer to your good question. I do have a few questions left in me.
i agree on the pain. As I said, I don't see God as the author of moral evil, but moral agents who can choose evil acts. As for physical evils, yes, it is a problem, but the Gnostic solution does not work.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
But, I have no continuity of experience with a former life. If I did, I would agree that reincarnation is real.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Hypotheticals have no cognitive value beyond being notions to consider and test. If they are confirmed, they have practical value, but no intrinsic certainty. On the other hand, my life, and everyone else's, is an experiential reality.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I do not see either innate or learned inclinations, etc., as evidence of a former life. There are much simpler explanations. I can see that they might motivate a faith commitment, but that is not a conclusion.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I am happy to agree that reality is contextual. The difference between what I judge to be real and what is merely hypothetical, is that the real acts (directly or indirectly) on me, while that there is no reason to think the merely hypothetical does. That is a manifest difference.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No, it is not. There is nothing inconsistent in rejecting previous lives.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
How does that help convince others who do not agree with your metaphysics?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
That I am who I am, is no reason for me to have other lives. Also, there is no separate "me." I am a single, unified being (body and soul). If I survive death, it will not be the whole of me that survives, but only my subjectivity -- my intentional core.
The reason I am who I am is that I was created a unique person, individuated by the network of relationships into which I was conceived. I am the one who relates to my correlative relata -- you are the one who relates to yours.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Yes, and I know that one is real because I experience it. The overwhelming majority of the others are completely unparsimonious and irrelevant. Why create this vast structure, when experiential reality is ever so much more compact and relevant?
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
You may claim whatever you like, but the rest of us need evidence and analysis.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Think about this. Our “Will-to-Life” cannot be the reason we are alive because, absent life, we can't will anything. Also, as evidenced by suicide, many people do not have a “Will-to-Life."
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I think you have this backward. Consistence is not a requirement, but a consequence of the nature of reality, of being. No putative thing can both be and not be at one and the same time in one and the same way. On the other hand, hypotheticals, as mental constructs, can have implicit inconsistencies. We can imagine living in a world with slightly different physical constants, but, as the physics behind the fine tuning argument shows, such a world would not support our life.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
How do you know? Mystics claim that there is an experiential state of non-empirical awareness that isw not sleep.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Pain is not evil in itself. It is a warning that something is wrong and a motivation to take corrective action, and so good in itself.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I have no idea what this means.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I agree, the term is not forceful enough.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Doing so ignores our experience of being subjects,which is how we know we are conscious.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
But, there are no relations except existential relations.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Not quite. The laws of physics are not fictions, but describe an aspect of reality. They are approximate descriptions of laws observed to be operative in nature, and so quite real. It is continued operation of the laws of/in nature that requires an explanation.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Sound reasoning requires that God sustain the continuing existence of all finite being. This is the classical creatio contunuo. So, your solution does not work.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Of course it means exactly that it is more than hypothetical. Once we observe a reality, it ceases to be merely hypothetical.
This reply is late because it’s long. I wrote it in daily installments. But, though I often post long messages, and many of my posts are long even if they aren’t replies, in this case I was _replying_ to a long post.
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Edit added December 3 & December 4, 2018, after writing and just before posting:
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I’m not saying that, regarding what’s real &/or existent, I’m right and you’re wrong. I’m just saying that it isn’t even a meaningful question or issue, given that no one seems to have a definition for it.
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Yes, you spoke of things being real if they act on you, but that definition includes the physical world as I explain it, because in your experience-story, your physical surroundings act on you, and you act on them.
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The notion and belief in “real” and “exist” have caused a lot of philosophical confusion over the millennia.
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Without those, there’s no need to ask why there’s something instead of nothing. No assumptions, no brute-fact.
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I emphasize that:
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1. Reincarnation isn’t part of my metaphysics, though it plausibly follows from it
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2. I’m not promoting or forcefully-advocating reincarnation. I merely mention it when the matter of the end of a life comes up in conversation. And, then, I mention it matter-of-factly (…instead of forcefully-argued), merely mentioning that reincarnation plausibly follows from my metaphysics, a metaphysics that claims or assumes nothing other than a few quite uncontroversial premises.
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And then, when there’s discussion about it, I (also matter-of-factly rather than argumentatively) tell what I mean by it, and how it plausibly follows from my metaphysics, Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism,.
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3. I’m the first to admit that metaphysics doesn’t cover all of Reality. An example that I often use is that metaphysics is to Reality, or even everyday reality, as a book on how a car-engine works is to actually taking a drive in the countryside.
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In my household, we recently watched a movie entitled _Shutter Island_. In that movie, it turns out that the story’s initial premise isn’t really true in the story’s reality. After the movie, I mentioned that wrong premises are a common feature of philosophy, and it’s as if the movie is an allegory for that.
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Of course there are other such movies, such as _The Others_. They can be regarded as allegories for how we don’t know what’s going on, or have any way of knowing why or how we’re in this life. What happened?
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Sure, there are metaphysical explanations, such as the one that I propose, but for such astonishing unexplained things, metaphysics doesn’t really explain anything. Metaphysics only talks about a logical-framework, a mechanism and verbal description. That doesn’t change the wonder about the astonishing fact that we’re in a life.
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Metaphysics, logic and argument don’t even come close to explaining Reality, or even everyday reality.
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Metaphysics is valid as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far.
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But you’re saying that God made or maintains a physical world in which bad things (temporarily) happen to people. Why would that be so?
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Do you mean the Gnostic explanation? I don’t know if they offer an explicit explanation. They use a lot of allegory. Their allegory for that is that this physical world was made, not by God, but by a demiurge (subordinate deity) who was acting without authorization.
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Even if they didn’t have an explanation, the Gnostics knew that it was problematic to assert that God made this physical world, with its horrors (though temporary).
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Most likely, that demiurge is an allegory for an inevitability that isn’t part of Benevolence.
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Continuity of experience, during any particular duration, doesn’t require that you later remember everything in your past. Do you remember the day that you were born? Does that mean that you didn’t have continuity of experience on your first day, or that you weren’t born?
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If not remembering reincarnation means that you weren’t reincarnated, then not remembering birth, and the day of birth, means that you weren’t born.
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I wasn’t expressing any evaluation of their cognitive value.
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If you’re using the assumption that experience and its physical-world setting don’t consist of hypotheticals, then I suggest that an assumption can’t be used as an argument for itself.
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Anyway, I don’t claim that the hypotheticals, or anything else in the contingent, logically-interdependent realm, “exist” or are “real”, whatever that would mean. But a complex system of inter-referring abstract facts, and the propositions that they’re about, and the hypothetical things that those propositions are about--whatever you think about their “existence” and “reality”--have inter-relation and inter-reference. That’s all I claim.
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…and that, inevitably, among the infinity of such systems, there’s one such that the logical relations among its hypothetical things, propositions and abstract implications, with suitable naming, fit a description of the logical relations among the logically-interdependent things and events of your experience.
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That’s uncontroversial. If someone claims that this physical world is other than, more than the setting of an experience-story consisting of such an inevitable system, then the burden is on them to explain what else this physical world is, and in what regard it has reality and existence that isn’t had by what I describe.
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…and to explain what he means by absolute (not just contextual) existence.
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…and to explain why there is that physical world. God made or maintains it? Why, when it sometimes includes extreme horror, even if temporary?
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I emphasize that I don’t claim that any of the antecedents of any of the abovementioned abstract implications are true.
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What is this “intrinsic certainty” that you want this physical world to have? Some sort of absolute (more-than-contextual) existence?
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As I said, I don’t claim that anything in the logically-interdependent realm is real or existent, whatever that would mean. …or that any of the abovementioned abstract implications’ antecedents are true.
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Of course. Your experience, and its setting, are quite real in their own context.
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**Context is the critical consideration here.**
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What experimental evidence is there to believe that this physical world is, in some way absolutely, more-than-in-its-own-context, “real” and “existent” (whatever that would mean) . Yes, what would that even mean???
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…and, if it isn’t, then why would it need any explanation about being created or maintained in (some undefined) “existence”?
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…thereby relieving us of the impossible task of explaining why God would make there be (or continue to be) a physical world in which there are horrors, even if temporary.
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Of course not, and I didn’t say that they were.
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What I said was that one’s subconscious perceived wants and needs, inclinations and predispositions remain for a while during the unconsciousness during death, and that those subconscious perceived wants and needs, inclinations and predispositions plausibly (by my uncontroversial metaphysics) would draw someone into a next life, in the manner that I described.
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…consistent with the Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism metaphysics that I’ve proposed.
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The belief that just-one-life is the natural-presumption and the default-assumption is a sacred article-of-faith of the religion of Science-Worship.
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You’ve said that you have no reason to believe that there’s reincarnation, and maybe you don’t. But do you have reason to believe that there’s eternal waking-consciousness in a Heaven or Hell?
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There’s no reason to believe in eternal waking-consciousness. …or waking-consciousness that isn’t part of worldly-life. Waking-consciousness is inextricably part of worldly-life.
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I’ll repeat here that reincarnation is a plausible consequence of the metaphysics that I propose, which, unlike Materialism, doesn’t need, use, or have any assumptions or brute-facts.
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If you’re referring to the reality of our physical universe, then that eliminates our disagreement.
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Of course Reality itself isn’t contextual.
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I’ve answered that before.
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In your life-experience-story, the other elements of that story act on the physical, biological animal that is the “You” in that story. Of course your physical world, the setting of your life-experience-story, acts on you. That’s the nature of the experience of being an animal in a physical world, which is what your life-experience-story is about.
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We agree that this physical world doesn’t necessarily have any absolute (more than contextual) existence, and that, therefore, you don’t attribute to it any existence or reality other than the kind that is had by a hypothetical life-experience-story consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things.
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As I said, we have no disagreement.
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Yes, it is.
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The consistency requirement is undeniably satisfied if experience isn’t provably inconsistent with previous experience.
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I didn’t say that there was something inconsistent in rejecting previous lives.
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I’m not trying to convince anyone. …just stating a few obvious facts, and doing so for no particular reason, other than maybe to find out how people will try to argue against conclusions that follow from uncontroversial premises.
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(…and maybe I should re-clarify here that I’m not asserting that my metaphysics is true—only that there’s no particular reason to unparsimoniously assume that this physical world consists of more than what I’ve suggested. )
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…but that isn’t what I said.
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I said that, if there’s a reason why you’re in a life, and if that reason remains at the end of this life, then that suggests that you’ll be in a life again.
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That’s right. Your “intentional core” refers to what I referred to when I spoke of your subconscious feelings, perceived wants and needs, inclinations, and predispositions.
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Undeniably those subconscious attributes “survive” during death for a while, even when there’s no waking-consciousness. That’s all I was talking about.
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You say you were created. I say (uncontroversially) that there (inevitably) timelessly is a life-experience-story (consisting of a logical system such as I’ve described) of which you’re the protagonist/experiencer. That is the original, primary, “You”.
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You’re in a life because that “You” is protagonist/experiencer in that life-experience story. You’re there because there’s that story. That story is an experience-story because it has an experiencer—You.
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There are, complementarily, you and that story, of which you’re protagonist/experiencer, because of eachother.
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In that experience-story, you and your physical-world surroundings are the two complementary components.
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And so yes, of course those surroundings act on you in the story.
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Of course. …real in its own context and that of your life.
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Only one of them is “actual” for you, if “actual” means “consisting of or part of the physical universe in which the speaker resides”.
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Yes, and, as you agreed above, you don’t claim other than contextual existence and reality for it. You don’t claim absolute, more-than-contextual, existence and reality for it.
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…thereby disavowing, for it, any kind of reality or existence that isn’t had by the hypothetical physical universe that I propose.
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As I said, we don’t disagree.
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No, they aren’t.
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Something is unparsimonious only if it requires (at least more than necessary) assumptions or an avoidable brute-fact.
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Uncontroversial inevitabilities aren’t unparsimonious.
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They don’t require any assumptions, brute-facts, or un-supplied explanations.
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But, what is unparsimonious is the assumption that this physical world has some special (unspecified) kind of absolute (more-than-contextual) existence.
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Such an assumption is an unparsimonious, unnecessary assumption, and is pre-Copernican in spirit.
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Hardly, since there’s no evidence, no reason to believe, that your life-experience-story is other than one such.
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…certainly not irrelevant to metaphysics. But you might not be interested in metaphysics. Lots of people aren’t. If you aren’t interested in metaphysics, I’m not saying that you should be interested in it.
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Each person is free to choose for hirself (himself or herself) what is relevant to hir.
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Of course this is a philosophy forum website which has a topic-designated forum about metaphysics.
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I didn’t create it. It’s an uncontroversial inevitability.
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Remember that I’m not claiming that any of it has absolute “existence” or “reality” (whatever that would mean).
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A complex system of inter-referring abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things, and its inter-relations and inter-reference, needn’t “exist” or be “real” in any context other than its own inter-referring, inter-relating context.
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I claim nothing more than that for it.
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I haven’t said anything to deny experiential reality. …only some unspecified absolute, more-than-contextual reality or existence assumed (…and which you’ve correctly disavowed) for this physical universe.
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Of course your experience is real in its own context. …and undeniably fully relevant to you.
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There’s no physics experiment that can show, prove, imply or suggest that this physical world has absolute existence, existence other than in its own context and that of the life of any particular experiencer.
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As I’ve said, Michael Faraday pointed out, in 1844 that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world is other than a complex system of logical and mathematical relational-structure.
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Since then, Frank Tippler and Max Tegmark have made similar statements.
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Because of great popularity of Science-Worship in our society, I’ll point out that Michael Faraday, Frank-Tippler and Max Tegmark are/were physicists.
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Additionally, Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of your own, said that there are no things, just facts.
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(By “things”, he surely meant “things other than facts”.)
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No, evidently not, if you firmly believe the brute-fact of the absolute, more-than-contextual, existence of this physical world. …but you’ve renounced that belief, above in this post that I’m replying to.
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Anyway, the claim that there’s such a thing as absolute existence in the realm of logically-interdependent things, requires, on the part of someone making that claim, a definition of absolute existence and justification for the unparsimonious claim that there is such a thing.
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…and what’s your evidence in support of your belief in eternal waking-consciousness in a Heaven or Hell?
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…or waking-consciousness independent of worldy-life?
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You’re circularly using your assumption to support itself.
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This planet, in reference to its human-population, can be fairly referred to as “The Land-Of-The Lost”
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(…though, of course, “A” would be more accurate than “The”)
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Someone making a conscious choice that they (no longer) want life, doesn’t mean that they never wanted life. Do you think that every suicide rejected life, wanted no part of it, at every stage of their lives, even in infancy, even in hir (his/her) fetal time?
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But yes, this world has existential-angst-ridden Absurdists and Existentialists who are indeed very lost. But were even they always like that, even in childhood? Infancy? Fetal existence?
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Yes, consistency is a logical requirement. There can’t be a true-and-false proposition, or a pair of mutually-contradictory facts.
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I’ll assume that you mean Reality, the whole of what is.
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You can call the consistency-requirement for facts “the nature of Reality” (I’d say, instead, that it’s a subset of the nature of Reality), but it’s still true. It’s certainly, obviously, part of the nature of Reality, an inevitable subset of Reality, a subset consisting of logic and facts.
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Is the Reality, as a whole, Benevolent? Of course. Does that mean that there can’t be any inevitable subset that, while part of Reality, isn’t part of Reality’s Benevolence? Of course not.
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Did God make logic be as it is? No, because it has consequences that can (temporarily) be very bad for some people and other living-things. Sometimes one of the infinity of logically-implied lives can consist of horror and serious injury for someone’s entire short new life.
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As I’ve pointed out, that isn’t something that Benevolence would make there be.
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Alright, that’s a re-statement of what I said about the consistency-requirement for facts.
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The good news is that our timebound lives, and the whole logical system of which they’re a part, are of questionable reality and relevance. God didn’t (and doesn’t) make there be those things, and their “reality” is doubtful.
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No doubt some of them do. But mutually inconsistent propositions aren’t facts. There are no true-and-false propositions or mutually-inconsistent facts.
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No, but it hasn’t been determined that there couldn’t be other, completely-different, physical worlds that, too, could support biological life of some kind.
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It has been shown that life would seemingly be impossible with more than, or fewer than, 3 large-scale spatial dimensions.
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Chemistry requires consistent and discrete atomic properties. One way to achieve discrete values is via standing-waves, and one way to achieve those is via wave-mechanics. Hence, quantum-mechanics.
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It goes without saying that the physical world that is the setting of your life-experience-story is inevitably one that can support life.
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What else would you expect if, as the body shuts down at death, reincarnation doesn’t occur?
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Ever-deepening sleep. …an approach to Nothing and an arrival at near-Nothing.
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“To sleep, perchance to dream”
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I don’t claim knowledge of what that ever deepening sleep will be like, other than that (at the end-of-lives when, after many lives, there aren’t the predispositions that lead to another life—or if you’re right and there isn’t reincarnation) there eventually won’t be any such things as identity, perceived needs and wants, or hardship, lack, incompletion, time or events. …or any knowledge that there ever were (or seemed to be) , or even could be (or even could seem to be), any such things.
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You’re confusing pain’s biological evolutionary natural-selection adaptive value—with the desirability of pain, horror and major injury in a life (sometimes a short life consisting of nearly nothing else).
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That can’t be called desirable. Benevolence wouldn’t and didn’t make there be (or continue to be) that.
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Within logic, there can’t be true-and-false propositions or mutually-contradictory facts.
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That can be and sometimes is called an “axiom” or “rule” of logic, along with the transitive and substitution axioms or rules-of-inference, when they’re mentioned with regard to logic (…as opposed to just in mathematics). But call it what you want—It’s part of logic, the relation among facts and propositions.
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There are propositions that can be shown to imply a true-and-false proposition. Because such a proposition can’t be true, then a proposition that such a proposition isn’t true is a fact.
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It’s inevitable that there are such facts, just as surely as (and because) there can’t be a true-and-false proposition.
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What’s that you say? All of that is just human-discussion, and not real? Who said anything about it being real?
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Of course, because that’s a different topic.
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But, though it ignores it, it isn’t at all incompatible with it.
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Your experience is an experience of being an animal, a biologically-originated purposefully-responsive device.
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Where’s the contradiction or disagreement?
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Objectively, from a 3rd-person point-of-view, consciousness is the property of being a purposefully-responsive device.
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Subjectively, it’s your experience. You might want to define it the having of that experience.
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…relations about existence?
Not so at all. “Exist” doesn’t even have a consensus metaphysical definition.
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There are certainly relations, such as implications, in logic that aren’t about claims of “existence”. There are abstract logical facts about things that aren’t claimed to exist, whatever that would mean.
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Of course. What isn’t an aspect or part of Reality, the whole of all-that-is?
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A figment is an aspect of Reality, but that doesn’t make it other than a figment.
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As for physical reality, as opposed to Reality:
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To say that physical laws describe aspects of physical reality is a tautology.
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Can we assume that, by “nature”, you mean this physical universe? …just for the purpose of interpreting what you’re saying there.
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…with respect to physical reality. Of course. This physical universe is real and existent in its own context and in the context of your life. …as I’ve been saying all along.
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You’ve agreed (above in the post that I’m replying to) that this physical universe isn’t real other than in its own context.
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Those laws and the continuing operation of the physical world can be explained in terms of abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things. You can’t show that it’s other than that. You’ve agreed that this physical universe needn’t be real or existent other than in its own context.
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And, as I’ve said before, the word “continuing” implies time, and time is just an attribute of a physical universe, something within a physical universe. So continuing-ness can’t be meaningfully spoken of outside the internal context of a physical universe.
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Above in this reply, I spoke of Reality including logical inevitabilities that aren’t part of the Benevolence of Reality. …inevitabilities with bad consequences for living-things. Yes, those logical inevitabilities are part of Reality. No, they aren’t part of the Benevolence of Reality.
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**Overall, Reality is Benevolent. That’s true even though there’s an inevitable subset that isn’t always Benevolent.**
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There were all sorts of mutually-contradictory schools, positions and claims during the Classical Period.
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This is part 1 of 2. Part 2 will be posted next, and is only a few paragraphs long.
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Michael Ossipoff
Part 2 of 2 (brief):
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Call it what you want, but, regarding the things and events of your experience: There’s inevitably an abstract logical system of abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things, such that the relations and inter-references among its propositions and implications are the same as the relations and inter-references among the things and events of your experience.
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And you’ve agreed that this physical universe needn’t exist or be real in any context other than its own. In other words, it needn’t have any existence or reality that the abstract logical system described above doesn’t have.
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We observe that one thing or event is a consequence of another. Who’s at the door? If you get up and open the door, you’ll find out. Every fact about this physical world corresponds to part of an “If”. …to a proposition that is part of an abstract implication.
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Every observed “fact” in your experience-story corresponds to an abstract proposition that is the consequent of an abstract implication.
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…and is (at least part of) the antecedent of other abstract implications.
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There’s a completely abstract logical system such that the relations and inter-references among its abstract implications and propositions, and hypothetical things are the same as the relations and inter-references among the things and events of your experience.
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Making it moot, and experimentally in-determinable, whether your experience is other than such as system. If so, then how is it different?
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Michael Ossipoff
I do not know what this means. The existence of the universe has no a priori necessity, so, it is contingent. A posteriori, it is necessary.
The universe is what we abstract logic and its relations from. Thus, it has priority over logic. In other words, if there were no universe, there would be no logical relations because logic would not exist.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Yes, but our experience of the events comes first, then we abstract the relation, and finally find other instances of the same relation.
The question is one of the order of dependence. In that order, logic comes after the physical universe.
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Then you shouldn’t have agreed to it.
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Anyway, which part of “needn’t exist or be real in any context other than its own” don’t you understand?
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But yes, if you don’t know what “real” and “exist” mean, don’t feel bad, because I, too, have no idea what they’re supposed to mean in reference to the things of the logically-interdependent realm. Belief in the meaningfulness of those words have caused millennia of confusion and befuddlement in philosophy.
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We definitely agree about the questionable-ness and dubiousness of the meaning of “real” and “exist”.
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Okay.
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Well, it’s necessary component of your life-experience story, of which you and your physical surroundings are the two complementary parts. So yes.
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There you go, with “exist”. I don’t make any claim about logic “existing”, whatever that would mean.
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Yes, I get that you believe in the priority (within the logically-interdependent realm) of this physical universe.
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We’re both Theists, but a lot of Theists are Materialist Theists. Though you aren’t a Materialist proper, you, along with the Materialists, believe that this physical universe is fundamental, prior and primary with respect to the logically-interdependent realm. It’s a Materialist belief, though you aren’t entirely a Materialist.
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Quite so. Experience is primary in the logically-interdependent realm. That’s why I call my metaphysics Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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First there’s experience, and it implies a story. If there were experience of a life, then there would be various relations among various hypothetical things. …and away it goes, with the story’s many abstract logical implications. …starting with “If there were experience of a life…”, the starting antecedent in the logically-interdependent realm.
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Why is there experience? I said “If there were experience of a life…” A chain of “If “s has to start somewhere.
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I get that that’s the belief of you and the Materialists. You believe that this physical universe has some kind of unspecified precedence, priority, primary-ness in the logically-interdependent realm.
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…some sort of “existence” and “real-ness” that neither you nor the Materialists specify.
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(Yes, the universe acts on you, and that doesn’t in any way mean that it has any “existence” (whatever that would mean) other than as one of the two complementary parts of your life-experience-story, a hypothetical logical system.)
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I agree with the Gnostics about two major issues. (That God didn’t create (and doesn’t maintain) this physical world, and that there’s probably reincarnation (No, I can’t prove it, but it seems a natural metaphysical consequence) ).
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I realize that we don’t agree on everything, but that’s how it always is with different people. I’ve just been clarifying my position, without any claim that you should agree with it. We agree on much, but not on everything.
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Michael Ossipoff
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December 18th (Roman-Gregorian Calendar)
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I don't think I did.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I have no idea what the limitation "any context other than its own" means. Obviously, if we exclude the datum of actual existence, we have no basis for talking about actual existence, but that hardly seems fruitful
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I have a good idea of what it means to exist. To exist is to be able to act in some, in any, way. Whatever can act necessarily exists, and what cannot act cannot act to make its existence known. If a putative thing can not act in any way, it is indistinguishable from nothing, and so is nothing. Clearly acting on us in experience is acting, so whatever acts on us exists, and is not merely hypothetical. How it exists depends on the details of the revelatory act(s).
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No we do not.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
While not denying that I have a life-experience story, "story" is an ambiguous term, for stories can be real or fictional. As life experience involves inter-actions, it necessarily places us in touch with existents, which alone are capable of acting.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
It's your call to make or not make claims, as it is mine. Logic exists, not as a separate being, but as a set of mental norms, in the minds of rational agents.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
No, that is not my position. I hold that the the universe has a derivative, dependent and participatory existence -- deriving its existence, on a continuing basis, form God Who alone is "fundamental, prior and primary with respect to the logically-interdependent realm" (creatio continuo).
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Since there is the experience, we are no longer dealing with a hypothetical. Once the antecedent is affirmed, the conclusion is categorical by the modus ponens.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
I think you are mis-reading me. Logic is a human tool, existing in human minds, and abstracted from the nature of being as found in the experienced universe, which is ontologically dependent on God. God, knowing all reality at once and eternally, has no need of ratiocinative thought, and so no need of logic. Of course God does know the nature of being, and it is from that nature that we humans abstract logic.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and positions.
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Yeah here’s what was said:
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I assume that by “reality”, you meant “physical reality”. Materialists use that word in that way, to express their belief that this physical world is all of Reality.
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You continued:
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It’s no difference.
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As I’ve answered many times:
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By definition, in an experience-story, the protagonist’s surroundings act on the protagonist, and the protagonist acts on his or her surroundings. That’s just the defined nature of the mutually-interacting complementary pair consisting of the protagonist and his/her surroundings in a life-experience story.
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That interaction between you and your surroundings is inevitable in your experience-story, just by the definition of an experience-story. …so it hardly distinguished between a hypothetical experience story and whatever else you think this physical world is.
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In the purely hypothetical story that I’ve spoken of, your surroundings, and the physical world as a whole are “real” and “existent” by your definition (because they act on you). So that leaves the question of in what way the physical world that you believe in is different from the one that I propose, and in what way it’s “real” and “existent” in a way that the one that I describe isn’t.
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That’s what I’ve been asking you, and that’s what you haven’t answered. But I’m not pushy, and I’m willing to accept that you don’t have an answer.
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And, by the way, action isn’t a good definition of or standard for reality, because actions are time-bound; they take place in time. Reality is timeless.
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Events in time are of this physical universe only (…likewise for each of the other such universes, of course).
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…which is why Nisargadatta said that, from the point of view of the sage, nothing has ever happened.
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If “actual” means “part of, or consisting of, the physical world in which the speaker resides” and if that’s what you mean by “actual existence”, then this physical world and every physical part of it is “actual existence” even if it’s nothing other than the setting of a purely hypothetical story, someone’s hypothetical life-experience story consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things.
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Again, your meaning for “real” and “existent” or “actual existence” wouldn’t distinguish between the hypothetical life-experience story that I refer to, and its hypothetical setting--and whatever you think this physical world is.
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In other words, you haven’t answered my question. But that’s ok, I accept that you don’t have an answer to it, and I won’t continue to bother you for one.
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I’m not talking about “excluding” “actual existence” (if that means this physical world and its things). I was just asking what, exactly, specifically, you think it is that makes this physical universe different from what I suggested that it is.
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Your answer was that, unlike what I propose, this physical world is real and existent because it acts on us. I’ve answered that many times, including an instance above in this reply.
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See above. By your above-expressed definition of “exist”, this physical world, as nothing other than the setting of a hypothetical life-experience story consisting of a system of inter-referring abstract facts about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things—exists. …because it acts on you and you act on it, even if it’s only an an experience-story. …acts on you inevitably, just by the definition of an experience-story.
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Certainly what acts on one’s body in this physical world is physical and actual (as I defined “actual” above). But, as I said, by the definition of an experience-story, your surroundings act on you in that story. That’s the definitional nature of the hypothetical complementary-pair (you, and your experience of your surroundings) that I call an “experience-story”.
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Of course you can say that you don’t believe that this life and this physical world are just a hypothetical system. But it isn’t valid to say that it must be more than that because your surroundings act on you. …because they do that in the hypothetical story too.
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A scene in a movie:
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Colonel arriving at a checkpoint in a car in WWII England, talking to sergeant guard: “Which way is it to Greensbury?”
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Sergeant: “I can’t give information to people who show up in a car. You might be a Nazi.”
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Colonel: “I’m not a Nazi!”
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Sergeant: “That’s what you’d say if you was a Nazi, isn’t it.
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…not if you think that your definition of “real” and “existent” distinguishes the physical world of my proposal from the physical world that you believe in.
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…or can come up with a (so far unspecified) useful or meaningful definition for “real” or “existent”.
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But, before you try to come up with one, I’ll suggest that you not try, because if there were one, surely we’d have all heard about it before now.
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See above, about “real”. Stories can indeed be hypothetical.
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See above. Any hypothetical life-experience-story is, inevitably, by definition, full of interactions between its protagonist and his/her physical surroundings.
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Suit yourself. As I said, I make no claims about its “existence”, whatever that would mean.
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No disagreement about God, Benevolent Ultimate Reality, as what is really fundamental, prior, primary and Real.
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But you want to blame this physical universe on God.
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I, and the Gnostics don’t.
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Einstein asked if God had a choice about “creating” the [physical] universe. I say 1) God didn’t “create” it; and 2) No, there was no choice about there “being” it. (I put “being” in quotes because there are spiritual traditions that say that this physical world has a low order of “is-ness”, in philosophical discussion.)
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If God didn’t create it, but it isn’t really so “real” anyway, then there isn’t the question “If God didn’t create it, then why is there it??”
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No one denies that this physical universe, as a system of inter-referring abstract-implications, is a (low-order, illusory) part of Reality. But it’s something inevitable and not a result of the Benevolence.
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Traditional, non-Gnostic, Theism is a bit simplistic, with its lumping of all things together as part of the same intentional creation.
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Just as we should try to explain physical events in terms of local, scientific physical explanations, instead of not trying to explain them and just bumping them up some levels to attribute them directly to God, then likewise so we should try to explain this logically-interdependent realm in terms of inevitable logic before we give up and resort to bumping it up to a higher level for direct attribution and explanation there.
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In other words:
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We should explain as much as we can, at the lowest level at which we can.
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Theism is not incompatible with Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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Experience, and the experiencer, are about as fundamental, prior and primary as a part of the ethereal, existentially-whispy logically-interdependent realm can be.
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The matter of the hypothetical-ness of the whole system comes up when we ask what metaphysical basis it has.
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Expect to find something solid under it?
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There “is” every hypothetical, as a hypothetical.
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I don’t claim the truth of any of the antecedents of any of the abstract-implications in the hypothetical logical systems that I describe.
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…nor can any of them be proved true.
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I get that you believe that. Your assertion above is an assertion of belief. …a belief that this physical universe has some (unspecified and unverified) sort of “existence” or “reality” (whatever that would mean) that the abstract logical system that I describe doesn’t have.
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No one denies that logic is all of that. You’re additionally saying that logic doesn’t “exist” (whatever that would mean) other than that. I’ve repeatedly said that I make no claims about the “existence” (whatever that would mean) of logic, or the abstract logical systems that I speak of.
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So: No disagreement there.
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This universe is part of Reality, yes, but a low-order part, inevitable rather than intended by Benevolence.
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Yes, Benevolence implies knowledge.
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Yes, logic doesn’t begin to address Reality, or even everyday experiential reality, other than a limited set of facts about experiential reality, of which consists one’s necessarily-consistent experience-story.
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Benevolence implies knowledge.
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By “nature” you and the Materialists (aka “Naturalists”) mean “this physical universe”. Sure, I won’t quibble about where humans get logic. Logic has no “real-ness”or “existence” (whatever that would mean) other than that? Fine. I make no claim about the “existence” or “reality” (whatever that would mean) of logic, or the abstract logical systems that I’ve been speaking of.
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You want to believe in some sort of concrete, absolute “existence” or “reality” (whatever that would mean) for the things of the logically-interdependent realm—in some (unspecified) way more than that possessed by the abstract logical-system that I speak of.
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That’s the big error of academic philosophy, and it goes back millennia in Western philosophy.
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In fact, in general, when people can’t come up with a useful metaphysical meaning for a metaphysical term that they use, then you shouldn’t assume that it has one.
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Of course it isn’t for me to want to change your belief in that. Beliefs never change at these forums. I’ve just been stating the difference between what you’re saying and what I’ve been saying.
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December 21st, 2018 (Roman Gregorian Calendar)
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Michael Ossipoff
Your reading of Kant seems wrong.
Kant didn’t say we “impose” form to the world.
Kant didn’t say we can’t know the noumenon — we can know it negatively.
Kant didn’t decouple mind and reality, nor make knowledge impossible.
As I see nature, in current scientific theories, everything seems made for each other like the perfect marriage. This condition can be explained by both mechanistically and teleologically and if I'm correct this wedlock is going to get better and better and all pieces are going to form a perfect interlocking picture of nature - everything fulfilling it's purpose as it were.
What do we do?
Ockham's razor is in order.
Which theory is simpler?
Teleology has one more ''entity'' than the mechanistic explanation viz. purpose.
Yes.
Quoting TheMadFool
The application of Ockham's razor would only apply if mechanism and teleology were alternate, incompatible views. One of my main points is that they are not. We need means (mechanisms) to effect ends. Also, any determinate mechanisms will yield determinate states (ends). So, rather than being incompatible, mechanism and teleology are mutually implying.
Given that there is no intrinsic conflict, and that both are derivable from known facts, the only conflict here is mental -- having one's mind closed to projections of reality other than the one a person is fixed upon.
My understanding:
You're claiming that as an explanation, teleology is as good as the mechanistic.
Am I correct?
If yes, then it must be a choice between the two explanations. Ockham's razor directs us to choose the simpler model.
Teleology has one extra, unneeded assumption - that of purpose.
So, we reject teleology because it's more complicated than the alternative mechanistic explanation.
I probably misunderstood you.
Perhaps you mean that any mechanistic explanation entails teleology. How so?
In the sense that both are equally true, they are as "good." But, being equally true does not mean that they provide us with the same information. So, depending on what you want to understand, one is better than the other. If you want to harvest wheat, then you need to understand that the end of a wheat grain is a mature wheat plant. If you want to predict an eclipse, then you need to understand the laws of celestial motion.
Quoting TheMadFool
Nonsense! As I said Okham's razor (the Principle of Parsimony) only applies when we must choose between alternate hypotheses. That is not the case here. For you to justify the application of parsimony, you need to show that mechanism is logically incompatible with teleology. Of course, it is not, as they are related as means and ends. How can we employ means without effecting ends? How can we attain ends without employing means?
Quoting TheMadFool
This is equally nonsensical. Consider how complicated it would be to calculate mechanically the growth of a grain of wheat into a mature plant, or the response of a spider to a fly caught in its web. These calculations are so complicated and require so much data, that no one even attempts them. Given the fact that these processes can be nonlinear and so chaotic, it is not even clear that the calculation is possible. On the other hand, the outcomes are obvious when we consider the ends of seeds and of webs.
Thus, you case falls apart on two grounds:
1. The teleological and mechanistic approaches are not incompatible, but related as ends and means.
2. It is often the case that teleologically based predictions are simpler and more reliable than mechanical calculations. (I say more reliable because in chaos theory any small error in the initial conditions can lead to huge erros int he final state.)
I don't think that's correct. Newton's theory of gravity isn't incompatible with Einstein's relativity. In fact they explain the same observations, relativity more accurately than Newton's hypothesis. The choice between the two in favor of Einstein was, in part, based on the simplicity of Einstein's which explained away the force of gravity as a curvature of space due to mass.
So, no, hypotheses don't have to be incompatible to use Ockham's razor.
It applies to your argument. Mechanism is simpler than teleology as it's not complicated by purpose.
Of course it is. That is why we have general relativity. Newton's theory assumes instantaneous action at a distance, because it has two masses attracted to the each others present location, not their location in the past (as delayed by the speed of light). This violates the principle that no signal can travel faster then the speed of light.
Newton's theory is approximately correct, but does not predict the precession of the perihelion of Mercury properly, which Eistein's does.
Quoting TheMadFool
If you studied both theories, you would find that Einstein's is much more complex -- so much so that Einstein himself needed the aid of a mathematician in formulating it. Its equations are nonlinear and require a thorough understanding of tensor analysis. As late as 1920 Eddington bragged (falsely) that he was one of only two people in the world who understood it. So, accuracy of prediction, rather then simplicity is the reason for accepting Einstein's theory over Newton's.
I am sorry that you think we must choose between views that are logically compatible.
Furthermore, the noumenon isn't known positively. That is, we can't consider it as a positive, existing entity, but we can consider it negatively:
When Kant says we can't know the noumenon he means we do not have the capacity of an intellectual intuition. Which is a type of non-conceptual, non-sensory intuition of the world as it is that God would supposedly have.
As for texts, the best defense of Kant is Henry Allison's Kant's Transcendental Idealism.
1. Why would the complexity of mechanical explanation be a reason to then opt out for teleological explanations? Wouldn't that be a form of appealing to consequence because our mechanical explanations as of now under-determined the relevant facts? Many mechanists claim that there have been advances in biology/evolutionary theory that replace teleological explanations before. Could it not just occur later?
2. How do you generally answer people who offer the argument that we couldn't differentiate between something in evolution as being a by-product of selection (spandrels), or an actual form of adaptive selection? That is, what is adapted for, or what can be a suppose end of adaption, is not falsifiable?
3. Similar to (2), how do we differentiate between seemingly teleological events, and teleological events? Such as a snowfall rolling down a hill isn't going down the hill because it's end is the bottom. But it seems like, say, metabolism is directed towards converting food for-the-sake-of energy.
4. How do you generally response to the statement that, "Given that things are set up in a certain way, x just happens." I know you could theoretically offer a compatible teleological explanation, but why would one want to even begin to do so?
5. What books do you particularly feel are the best for getting a handle on teleology?
If there were "pure concepts of understanding," then synthesizing them with what is sensed before we are aware of it would leave us confused as to what belongs to the "pure concept" and what belongs to nature as we are sensing it. Thus, they would be projected upon our understanding of nature.
As there is no evidence whatsoever for any "pure concepts of understanding," there is no reason tor believe that the object of awareness is other than nature. Of course to say that it is nature is not to say it is nature exhaustively, but only that it is nature as interacting with us as subjects.
Quoting Marty
To consider them to be anything, we must first have evidence of their being. Kant's authority is not evidence.
Quoting Marty
There is a difference between a valid conclusion of questionable premises and what follows from a sound argument.
If noumena cannot be known by sensory experience, if they are "not an object of our sensible intuition," then the only way of knowing them is by some direct, mystical intuition ("the intellectual"). But, Kant tells us that "we cannot comprehend even the possibility" of this. (This is a most peculiar claim, for if he cannot comprehend the possibility, he cannot sensibly write about the possibility.)
What cannot be known by the only two ways we have of knowing (sensory and mystical experience) cannot be known in any way. So, Kant's noumena are epistemologically indistinguishable from nonbeing. How is it rational to take as a principle of one's theory, of one's understanding, the existence of something you claim to be absolutely unknowable?
Quoting Marty
Clearly, we do not know as God knows. God knows by knowing His own act of sustaining creation in existence (creatio continuo). We know by interacting, in a limited way. with a portion of creation. It does not follow from this that we do not know some of the same objects, the same noumena, that God knows. Indeed, if we are to know at all, we must know the being God knows Hew holds in existence.
So, I can grant that "we do not have the capacity of an intellectual intuition," taken as "a type of non-conceptual, non-sensory intuition of the world as it is that God" has, without denying that we know, in a limited way, what God knows exhaustively.
I meant texts written by Kant.
This question seems to assume what I deny, i,e, that mechanical explanations are opposed to teleological explanations. So, in employing teleological reasoning, there is no denial of the necessity of mechanisms to attain ends in the natural world. Choosing one form of explanation has nothing to do with denying the relevance of the other. When we do choose, we typically whatever is the simplest or most efficient mode of explanation. If you want to know how a spider will respond to a fly caught in its web, it is much more efficient to ask what is the end of a web than to model the neural state of the spider and its response to visual inputs and vibrations of its web.
I am unsure what you are asking about evolution, but as I show in my paper (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution), one can fully accept the mechanisms of evolution while concluding that it has targets (ends). Nor is evolution based, as is often claimed, on pure randomness. So, it is not an example of order emerging from mindless randomness.
Quoting Marty
Falsifiability applies to hypotheses. The relevant hypothesis is that evolution is random, not deterministic. This is incompatible with the mechanistic position that evolution is fully compatible with physics. In physics, the only random process is quantum measurement -- which cannot have occurred before the emergence of intelligent observers. So, if one holds that evolution is compatible with physics, then it is not random, but fully deterministic. In other words, at least up to the advent of intelligent life, the species that have evolved are fully latent in the initial state of the cosmos and the laws of nature.
How are these determinate ends achieved? By applying the laws of nature, microscopically and macroscopically, to initial states. The microscopic application is relevant to the mechanisms of genetic mutation, while the macroscopic application is relevant to the mechanisms of natural selection.
So, there is no need to choose between the existence of determinate ends and the operation of fixed laws. They are different ways of conceptualizing the same reality.
Quoting Marty
Not every event is teleological in the sense of being "for the sake of" something else. Every event is teleological in the sense of being determined either by the laws of nature in general or by some rational agent. As Aristotle points out, some events are accidental in the sense of resulting from the coincidence of lines of action directed to other ends. You and I might meet at the store because I need eggs and you need peas, and then become friends, but our becoming friends was not the end of either of us in going to the store. So, snowballs might roll down hill because gravity is necessary for life to evolve (as shown by the physics behind the fine-tuning argument.)
Let me add that the existence of ends, even for the sake of something else, does not imply that we understand, or even can understand, the ordering of the proximate to the final ends.
Quoting Marty
The fact that things are determined to x means that x is the end of the system. So, the problem is not whether there is an end, for that is a given. The problem is why should we think of x as an end? Often there is no reason to think of x as an end, as there is often no reason to think of an end as effected by detailed mechanisms. We humans have limited powers of representation, and so we abstract those features of a situation we consider to be most relevant. If we do not consider the attainment of x as important, we will generally not consider it as an end. If we see its attainment as important, we are more likely to see it as at least a proximate end.
Quoting Marty
I have developed my views of teleology by comparing Aristotle's views (scattered through the corpus. usually in connection with the four causes) with modern discussions. The question I had in mind in reading critiques is: Does this really rebut the idea of ends, or does it merely offer a different way of conceptualizing the same reality?
I think this misunderstands my question. I'm not saying mechanistic and teleological explanations are at odds. I'm asking why even have teleological explanations at all? You said earlier because the complexity of certain phenomenon would be too complex to explain mechanistically, but that seems to appeal to the under-determination of the relevant facts. That isn't enough to then say that we ought to have teleological explanations.
Let me put it another way. How do we know the heart was selected for too circulate blood throughout the body, as oppose to it being a by-product of another form: the heart going "bump-bump-bump". How do we devise a hypothesis that can test for which was selected instead of merely being a by-product?
But the question was not whether or not somethings are teleological or not — clearly I said as much. The question was how do we differentiate between non-teleological ends such as the one I mentioned, and teleological ones? What is the criterion to discriminate between them?
How do we know whether something has a result of x, rather than x is the intended consequence of certain processes?
The pure concepts of understanding don't "exist". They are transcendental. They merely create the conditions of possibility for us to understand/experience nature. We realize the form of the concepts in the possibility of any experience whatsoever being constitutive of them. They are natural insofar as nature is just merely the phenomenal character of these concepts applied. The argument to prove this is just transcendental: X is a necessary condition for the possibility of Y—where then, given that Y is the case, it logically follows that X must be the case too.
They have no Being. They are ideal. Being isn't a real predicate in Kantian metaphysics. We reason from existence, and not to it. That is, we don't apply it.
We know it as a form of limitation of our understanding — as something that we're not. It's known in that sense negatively. I sometimes think of it in the way Aquinas conceived of what God is by what he's not. The difference is that Kant just bars the idea of any positive description.
I wasn't talking about divine psychology. I'm merely stipulating that subjects do not have the power to know in the same way that a God would — that includes intellectual intuition. Which if we don't, we run back towards the noumenon for Kant.
Now I'm only defending Kant from a misunderstanding. That's not to say I am a Kantian.
The relevant texts I'm drawing from here are all in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The more general question is why have any explanations at all? Aristotle is on the right track in beginning his Metaphysics by observing that "All humans by nature desire to know." To be human is to be knowledge-seeking. That is the reason that many young children tire parents out with incessant "Whys?" Aristotle, after years of studying his predecessors, found that there are four basic types of explanation: material, formal, efficient and final. What stands before us, the given (datum), is because it is made of this stuff, in this form, by this agent, for this end.
Of course, not everyone notices, or cares, about the same projections of reality. If you go to a good movie with articulate friends, the conversation after can turn to plotting, character development, set design, costuming, cinematography, scoring or a myriad of other aspects which integrate to give the movie its impact. Not everyone will notice or care about many of these aspects, but they are still part of what is given in the movie. What anyone notices or cares about will depend on their nature and experiential background. It is the same with modes of explanation.
Quoting Marty
I did not say that some phenomena yield more readily to a teleological approach to prediction than to a mechanistic one to justify teleology generally, but to rebut the often-heard objection that it has no predictive value. Of course it does. Most predictions of human behavior are based on understanding individual goals.
While increasing predictability gives theories (modes of understanding) utility and evolutionary survival value, there is more to the human desire to know. We not only seek utility, but intellectual satisfaction. That is why humans study fields such as theoretical physics, mathematics, metaphysics and theology without hope of application.
Quoting Marty
As I just said, it was not intended to be. "Ought" is based on the relation of means to ends. If we are ordered to some natural completion, to some end, then we ought to effect adequate means. (This is, itself, a teleological argument.) As we have a natural desire to know, then we ought to employ the means of satisfying that need. Aristotle's study of his predecessors can be seen as an empirical study of the modes of explanation that satisfy human curiosity. Among them is the teleological mode.
Quoting Marty
Not all knowledge is the result of the hypothetico-deductive method. Much results from abstraction. The difference is this: hypothetical reasoning adds an unknown thesis to the data. Abstraction removes irrelevant notes of comprehension from the data. For example, in abstracting natural numbers, we come to see that what is counted is irrelevant to counting.
If you accept the theory of evolution, the only reason the heart evolved as it did, why greater pumping capacity was selected over lesser pumping capacity, was that the pumping capacity contributed to the success of the organism as a whole -- and it did so by circulating blood, and with it an energy supply. So, if the heart did not circulate blood, it would not have evolved as it did.
Thus, the evolution of the heart is essentially, not accidentally, related to the circulation of blood. To say that it was a mere by-product of some unpredictable mutation is to ignore this essential relation.
In my article, I point out the analogy between the artificial intelligence strategy of generated and test and the evolutionary mechanism of mutate and select. If you know that there will be so many mutations that you are certain of getting the one you are seeking, then determining the selection process determines the outcome. Here the selection of pumping capacity is determined by the laws of survival.
Since the laws of nature are essentially intentional, the results of their operation, the result of natural selection, bears the same intentional character.
Quoting Marty
If we have an end (telos), how can we not have teleology? The idea of teleology is that the end is latent in a prior state because the on-going operation of some intentionality (e.g. a human commitment, or the laws of nature) will bring it to fruition. How can we even speak of an end if this is not so?
Quoting Marty
I assume you meant to write "the unintended consequence of certain processes."
Because determination to a definite state is, by its very nature, intentional. I make this argument in detail in my paper. The short version is that intentionality is characterized by aboutness. Thus, my intention to go to the store is about arriving at the store. In the same way, determination to a definite state is about attaining that state. So, any determinate process is essentially intentional.
Perhaps the question you have in mind is: does teleology imply an intending mind? I offer what I think is a sound (deductive, not hypothetical) argument that it does in my evolution paper.
Taking my lead from Plato in the Sophist, I understand "to exist" as convertible with "to be able to act.". If "pure concepts of understanding" do not exist, they can do nothing. So, we can safely ignore them in all contexts. On the other hand, if you insist that they do something, it is a corruption of language to say that they do not exist.
By the way, existence is transcendental, applying to all reality.
Quoting Marty
Nothing can "create" anything unless it is operational -- and nothing can be operational unless it actually exists. Thus, it is incoherent to say they do not exist. How can anyone say anything relevant to reality about what does not exist?
Quoting Marty
I can't relate this sentence to anything in my experience. Perhaps you could illustrate it with an example?
Quoting Marty
Which is to say that nature is derivative on concepts, and so immaterial. But, if it is immaterial, we are faced with Parmenides' argument that change is impossible -- for the possibility of change is dependent on matter as a principle of continuity.
Quoting Marty
This is called petitio principii or begging the question. No one doubting the existence of "pure concepts of understanding" would grant that they are the necessary condition for anything. You need an argument based on premises accepted by people not sharing your faith in Kant.
From a logical perspective, since you deny that "pure concepts of understanding" exist, it is hard to see what you want to convince us of. I already agree that they do not exist, but I am at a loss to what it means to say that a non-existent conditions anything, or that such conditioning "is the case" (given that "is" does not apply).
Quoting Marty
This is a contradiction in terms. To be ideal is to have intentional existence.
Quoting Marty
It is not a predicate in Aristotelian metaphysics either. That does not mean that we have no concept of existence. The concept of existence reflects an indeterminate capacity to act. The specification of a being's capacity to act is given by its essence.
Quoting Marty
I have no idea what this means. We reason to the existence of God. And, we can reason hypothetically, prescinding from the question of actual existence. I will grant that we cannot reason to existence except from existence.
Quoting Marty
This sentence is incoherent. To know something specific (a tode ti -- a "this something"), we must have some means of ostentation, of identification, of pointing "it" out. If we cannot do that, and Kant says we can't with noumena, then we can't know "it" vs. something else. We can know, by analogy with our continuing experience of novelty, that there are things we do not know, but absent some means of identification, we cannot say it is a this rather than that that we do not know.
The same sentence assumes facts not in evidence. We do not know that there are any intrinsic limitations to our understanding, nor is it clear that we ever could know that there were such limits. To know that there were such limits we would have to know that there were facts we could not know -- a contradiction in terms.
Quoting Marty
Yes, Aquinas says we can only know what God is not, because finite minds are not proportioned to infinite being. So, we can know, for example that God is not limited, and so has unlimited being, knowledge, good and so on. This is not analogous to what Kant is doing because we have a reasoned identification of God as the Source of necessity, actualization, order and so on. In Kant's case there is no reasoned identification. There is only a de fide division of phenomena and noumena and the unparsimonious positing of "pure concepts of understanding" that do not exist, and therefore can effect nothing.
Quoting Marty
Perhaps, but not to the separation of noumena and phenomena that Kant posits. I know of no sound argument that would lead us to reject the notion that phenomena are how noumena reveal their reality to us. Do you have even one?
I accept that you are not a Kantian, but I do not see that I am misunderstanding Kant.
Yes, that makes Relativity simpler than Newton's theory. No gravity acting instantaneously but mass deforming space-time.
Quoting Dfpolis
Not more complex than necessary.
Teleology is more complex than necessary.
Really? How?
Well, I am no longer familiar with what Plato had in mind in the Sophist, but I'm guessing "the be able to act" just probably means" causally efficacious" unless you mean something else? Sometimes "being able" to means something like capacity-of without ever acting. But I'm not sure why I would have to accept this. Some deflationist view could just say "to exist" is used in a variety of ways depending on what you mean. For example, numbers "exist" in some sense, idea exist in some ways, middle earth in the LOTR "exists" in some other way — it's relevant on context and our understanding of the situation, but we seem to affirm this predication non-trivially. However, numbers, idea, nor middle earth is causally efficacious in our space-time continuum. Ideas and reason would be conceptual tools to use in the logical space of reasons, but I don't know why I'd make them causally efficacious.
However, Kant had already demonstrated causation to be ideal at the point he addressed the idea of existence not being a real predicate. If indeed existence wasn't a real predicate, then the application of concepts like, "the ability to act" could have applied to existence, but not derive from existence — that would have just been another property in addition to it. It is not "the ability to act" in a being that's existence, it's merely existence itself separate from any predication for Kant. That is why in order to form knoweldge, we cannot have concepts alone but also use our sensibility in receptivity.
The question is worked backwards for Kant: how can their be a reality at all to experience, unless we have transcendental tools to experience it in the first place? You would have to somehow create a theory in which we readily just receive the world without any cognitive tools. Such things like intuition. However, Kant has already told us that intuition without concepts are empty, as concepts without intuitions are blind. Such content could never get us any form of justification without the other, and never enter into the logical space of reasons.
The categories of space-time are constitutive of all experiences, as all experiences will include them. In terms of the pure concepts of understanding: quality, quantity, modality and relation are also contained as forms of existence.
It's not only that we have no concept of existence, it is that existence isn't a concept! For the concept of "existence" adds nothing to an object. For even you yourself changed the prediction of "existence" to mean "the ability to act" — something, in which for Kant, would have been independently applied to existence.
It means what I have now written above.
That seems odd to me. Let's say a cat could reason in some sort of way — which presumably it can. You think it could know the limitations of it cognitive capacities? Do we not believe it to have some? Like do you really think it could in any way understand a laptop? But why would we believe we have the cognitive strength of realizing everything? If we do have such humility, it would already seem to point out some utter limitations. Thus creating the Noumea.
Quoting Dfpolis
You say you aren't misunderstanding Kant, then you proceed to say that the phenomena appears from the noumena. It appears from the world. The noumena/phenomenon are just two aspects of the world. As I take it the only reasonable interpretation of Kant is the dual-aspect interpretation.
I'm not asking the general question. I'm asking the specific one: why teleological explanations at all? I'm not talking about a universal skeptic, just a teleological one. For there could be the possibility of someone inventing a fifth form of causation. One compatible with the others, yet used specifically because the other forms of causation under-determine it's form of explanation. However, the form of causation is used ad-hoc. The person then can't appeal to "I'm just asking questions! Just the facts, please!"
I think Andrew Woodfield made this argument in his book Teleology. However, I'm also looking for a reason why future mechanical explanations could not replace teleological predictions. Some prior telo-biological explanations (so I've heard) have already been replaced. Why does under-determination stand as an argument at all?
Yes, but then one could just tailor teleological causation to things agents have and not the entire world. One could imagine another saying, "Let's grant that the human-being, with a mind has intentional (and therefore normative) goals. The form of these are teleological." Not many have denied this. The further question is whether or not we should apply this to the natural world.
Well in the example of the snow ball, the end of it's motion will be when it reaches the bottom of the hill. But that isn't it's telos. So there are at least some ends that aren't teleological. How do we form a criterion to know which one is teleological and the other one not to be?
We are speaking of existence in a metaphysical, not an intentional or fictional context. Yes, "existence" can be applied analogically in non-metaphysical contexts to numbers (which have intentional existence) and to Middle Earth (which has fictional existence), but say that these analogical usages mean the same as metaphysical or ontological "existence" is to equivocate.
Factually, it may very well be that every existent is actually acting, but logically, nothing can act unless it exists, so, it suffices to say that (metaphysical) existence is convertible with the capacity to act.
Quoting Marty
Claiming to have demonstrated a thesis, is not the same as actually demonstrating a thesis.
Quoting Marty
Quoting Marty
It is absolutely uninformative to say that existence is "merely existence itself."
I am not defining "existence," because to define is to limit, and existence is unlimited in se. I am saying what it is convertible with rather than what it is. I am explicating existence by pointing out that it is dynamic, rather than passive. Nor am I saying the capacity to act is a "property" of existence. Properties are not convertible with whatQuoting Marty
they are properties of.
Quoting Marty
Concepts are not knowledge because they make no assertions that can be true or false. To know something is to realize that what you are aware of is adequate to reality. Of course, this is exactly what Kant denies (that our awareness is adequate to noumenal reality). So, for Kantians there is no real knowledge.
So, we can have knowledge as acquaintance (e.g., "Yes, I know that house") because we realize that the subject sensing the object is the object being sensed by the subject. We can predicate properties of substances because we know that the same percept that elicits our concept of the subject elicits our concept of the predicate.
Quoting Marty
Simple. We are beings able first, to sense, and second, to be aware of what we sense. There is no need for an unparsimonious transcendental superstructure. Reality acts on us, and we are a of a part of its action -- and so informed of how it can and does act.
Quoting Marty
We have cognitive tools (sensation and awareness), but they add nothing to what is perceived.
Quoting Marty
If by intuition, you mean awareness, then yes, every act of cognition has an object which provides the intelligible contents we are aware of and a subject who is aware of that intelligibility. There is no need for the addition of any forms of understanding -- only an intelligible object (the noumenon) and a subject able to actualize that intelligibility.
Quoting Marty
1. Space and time are not fundamental -- extension (parts outside of parts) and change are fundamental. Space is an abstraction based on the fact that reality has parts outside of parts, and time is the measure of change according to before and after.
Now if noumena had no parts outside of parts we could never have a partial encounter with a noumenon, for all our encounters would be of unextended wholes. There would thus be no ontological basis for our experience of extension. The same is true for time. If there were no real changes, there would be nothing to measure according to before and after -- and no ontological basis for the concept of time.
Think of it this way. We exist, and so have a noumenal aspect. We can only be the basis (as Kant believes) for the concepts of space and time if we have parts outside of parts and are subject to change. Thus, some noumena have parts outside of parts and are subject to change. In other words, it is untrue that the forms of space and time never have a noumenal basis. But, if they sometimes have a noumenal basis, then there is no need to posit that they are more forms of understanding.
Thus, Kant's theory is self contradictory.
2. categories are not constitutive of experience. Categories are conceptual while experience is preconceptual. It is only by reflecting on experience and focusing on this or that note of intelligibility, that we forms concepts which can be used to categorize experience. So, the claim that "The categories of space-time are constitutive of all experiences" involves a category error.
3. Not all human experience involves space and time. Introvertive mystical experience is devoid of sensory contents that could form the basis for the concepts of space and time -- thus showing the claim to be based on a false premise.
Quoting Marty
This depends on how you define "concept." If you require definable contents, the
Quoting Marty
Showing that Kant does not understand existence. If the capacity to act were a property that can be added to existence, then hypothetically, we could have an instance of existence which cannot act. Such a thing could do nothing, including making itself known to us, and so it would be indistinguishable from nothing. But, what is indistinguishable from nothing is nothing. Thus, the hypothesis that it exists is false, and so there is no existent which cannot act in some way.
Quoting Marty
You have not written above why we cannot reason to existence.
Quoting Marty
Noumena have nothing to do with humility. Obviously, human knowledge is limited and I willingly affirm that there are things humans may never know -- may be incable of knowing. For example, if there are other universes in a multiverse that are dynamically disjoint with our universe, then we have know way of knowing them.
This is not the case with noumena as the source of phenomena. Any noumenon that acts to make itself appear to us (as a phenomenon) must have the capacity so to act, and we know that it has this capacity. No matter how much hypothetical spaghetti Kant inserts between the knower and the noumenon, we still know that the noumenon can act to effect the phenomena we perceive. Thus, his reasoning, with all of its hypothetical convolutions, is doomed to fail.
Quoting Marty
Such an interpretation leaves Kant utterly irrational. Why posit something (noumena) that has no role in forming our thought in a theory whose aim is to explain human thought? It would be as if I went on for pages about Winkies and then said we cannot know them or even the possibility of them, but we must still consider them in discussing human experience.
I think you do have to be very skeptical indeed to deny that some things are done for the sake of other things. Trump shut down the government for the sake of getting funding for his wall, which he did for the sake of maintaining the support of his base, which he did for the sake of protecting himself ...
So, are you taking the position of an eliminative materialist and denying that there are intentions? if not, I am unsure what point you are making.
Nor do I understand how any form of explanation does, or even can, undermine the others. I worked at Lockheed in the Spring of 1970 when the L-1011 prototype was being constructed. I saw in detail the mechanics and logistics of its construction. Did, or could, that detailed knowledge of means substitute for a knowledge of the end of constructing a prototype -- which I also saw when I worked in Corporate Planning?
So, it is not a matter of asking pointless questions, but of seeking different aspects of reality. Ends require means and means effect ends.
Quoting Marty
Mechanically, there are at least two sound reasons: the impossibility of adequate data acquisition and the intractability of the required calculations. If we assume that the brain is fully determined by physics (which I do not), then you might think that you could predict its outputs from a detailed knowledge of brain state. To do this you would need to know the initial state of every neuron. I show in my book (pp. 11ff) that to acquire the raw data in reasonable time would fry the brain, and to calculate the actual state from the raw data would take many times the age of the universe.
Ones you have the brain state, you need to make a predictive calculation. We know that the brain is has nonlinear dynamics and so neural models are subject to chaos theory. This means that small errors in input data can lead to wildly divergent outputs. Further, digitization errors, which are inescapable with digital computers, can have the same effect.
Non-mechanistically, it is statistically certain that human intentions can exert a small, but measurable, control effect on physical processes. So the deterministic premise of the preceding two paragraphs has been falsified. the brain evolved as a control system, and the nature of control systems is to generate large-scale responses from small-scale inputs.
Quoting Marty
An argument for what? It is not under-determination that is central, but determination to an end. Take the spider example. Over a wide range of initial states the spider will respond in the same way to a fly in its web. So, the explanatory invariant is not the mechanical initial state, but the end of eating the fly.
Quoting Marty
But isn't the entire would subject to the laws of nature and/or the committed intentions of intelligent beings?
Quoting Marty
Yes. This is the main disputed question. But we do see goals in nature. Seeds generate plants of their species and not another. Squid eject ink to escape. Spiders construct webs to catch flies. Animals secrete pheromones to facilitate mating and reproduction. One can deny these facts, but unless one has some dogmatic agenda, there is no rational basis for doing so.
The counter strategy is not to rebut the existence of goals, but to invent (largely hypothetical) origin stories. Rationally, this is no more than a distraction -- for there is noting in the nature of goals that says they cant have an origin story. If they have such a story, they exist -- and that is the central question with regard to teleology: do there exist means-ends relations in nature. If there are, then teleological reasoning is adequately based.
Quoting Marty
A good question. Aristotle suggests three signs:
1. The existence of Means-ends relationships (Physics ii, 8, 199a8ff).
2. The existence of target states (Physics ii, 8, 199b15-18).
3. The preparation of means in advance of need (Physics ii, 8, 199a10ff).
Teleology = mechanism + purpose (extra weight)
Teleology does not entail mechanism. Given an end, there are a whole range of means (mechanisms) available. That is one reason free will is possible.
No but teleology = mechanism + purpose
No, it does not. The concept of teleology is that agents act for ends. It does not presuppose any specific mechanisms (say classical or modern physics). So, it does not entail what is required to give a mechanistic explanation.
So, teleology = purpose and nothing else?
Then why are you putting mechanism and teleology in the blender - trying to mix it so we can't tell the difference?
I do not see that I have. No one else seems confused. Is there some specific thing I said that you think confuses the two?
Yes. To be precise, the principle is that no signal can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. The term "speed of light" means speed of light in a vacuum unless it is qualified in some contrary way.
Teleology means things are goals driven. It would amount to saying things like evolution is aiming at self-aware, intelligent beings like humans. On that topic I'd say there would not be one, single goal for evolution because there are multiple goals depending on which organism we're discussing. For example the goal of a pathogen would be to acquire drug resistance and the goal of a fish would be to streamline its body, etc. So, if every living thing has its own goal then isn't the one single purpose, which I think would vindicate your claim, missing?
Imagine two worlds of fish and water, A and B. World B has a God but world A doesn't. World A corresponds to only mechanism and world B corresponds to teleology.
In world A, random mutations in genes colliding with the environment would be able to produce streamlined bodies for fish.
In world B, God would purposefully make fish bodies streamlined.
To an observer from outside the two worlds would appear indistinguishable but, in the absence of knowledge about God's existence or non existence, the observer would choose the simpler theory and say mechanism, not teleology.
I discuss the evidence for the existence of goals in evolution in my paper. There is no claim that the goal of the cosmos is a single species.
That means the universe has no teleology. Shouldn’t it be having one if your theory is true?
Except you ignore biological evidence for evolutionary changes within cells, DNA and genes. If you only look at the physical form, you would assume mechanism due to Ockham's razor, but the evidence is far deeper than just an observation of form.
I also have the argument that evolutionary changes are the optimal form to create complex perfection in my counter-argument to intelligent design. Modern engineering is moving over to iteration-based development in which we abandon trying to figure out the optimal design for something in favor of evolutionary processes.
Have you seen the design for common drones?
Its form wasn't designed by a human or by a computer, it was designed by evolutionary methods. They couldn't create the optimal form for weight balance, wind turbulence etc. so they programmed the physics of its function and let a computer test them on a form over and over, just like evolution. The end result was the above design, something no one can claim to be a designer of. Because the design was evolutionary, based on the physics of our world.
If applied to the idea that a God designed things, it actually makes no sense for something to be designed directly for its function. If a God was to design the world, it would be like ourselves trying to design something with an advanced optimal function. Specific design fails, but evolutionary design optimizes itself without a designer. If there was a God, that god would most likely just have "started the universe", the simulation argument. We haven't been specifically created, we would be the result of the evolution of the universe. In that case, our known universe, in which our laws of physics etc. exist, would be its own and the existence of a God is irrelevant to us because we are most likely irrelevant to that god. We are the unintentional bacteria that evolved on the lab sample, oblivious to our existence but also our existence invisible to the scientist.
The logic here is that the most optimal way of creating something is through the process of evolution, rather than specific design and because of this, it's illogical that a God would specifically design something over letting it evolve itself. If a god is a higher intelligence, it would then not choose the less intelligent choice of creation. If there was a god, it would exist outside of this universe and wouldn't care for the internals of this universe. Therefore the internals of our universe, everything within our realm of physics is its own thing; with its own rules, detached from any type of other realms, dimensions, and gods. We have no reason to view our existence as deliberate or in connection with anything else, we are on our own.
Also, to an evolutionary paradigm, teleology is redundant isn't it? I don't know how to say this but imagine a world with certain rules and we're in it. It's to be expected that our form and function would be shaped by the rules in that world. It would ''appear" as though we were designed for that particular world. Yet, there is no purpose or teleology as such. Just an inevitable result of constraints (laws/rules) shaping matter and energy. I guess I'm saying evolution would be indistinguishable from teleology. If so, Ockham's razor would have us accept simple mechanistic evolution over teleology.
Can you explain the motivations of a higher being? It's like explaining how dimensions we cannot perceive looks, feels and behaves like, on a perceptive level. I'm a constant skeptic so I would never accept the idea that there is a god even outside our universe, but as we don't know anything of what's outside our universal bubble we cannot know and perhaps its irrelevant to us since everything that is us and this universe probably breaks down and "existence" as a concept might even be wildly inferior to whatever is outside of everything.
In general, logic still points to there being a physical reaction or change that made the big bang since the mathematical statistics points to dead matter being the majority of our universe and organic matter or thinking creatures/beings to be in so low quantity that it's illogical that its likely there to be an intentional creation and more of a reaction.
Even then, if we view the outside as a "lab" and "god" as a scientist who conducts an experiment, our universe might be one particle in a test tube that "blink" in and out of existence within a fraction of that god's framework of time. Our existence being of such low relevance that he doesn't even know about there being a chance of us existing at all. This concept is why I reject any notion that God has any link or guidance towards us humans because it's a self-indulgent, narcissistic delusion of grandeur about ourselves and our meaning to the universe. Any logical reasoning about our existence points to the universe being dead cold in caring for us. If the sun explodes we're gone and the universe doesn't care, just like there might have been another planet in the universe which featured life and prospering beauty (per our sense) that was swallowed up by its own sun. If we, humans, believe there to be any god who knows about us and guides us, the most logical conclusion to that, based on all that we know about the universe and also about psychology, is that we are delusional, narcissistic and self-indulgent in our sense of meaning. If there was a god, he logically and statistically wouldn't know about us, at all and he wouldn't care. We are on our own and that is the most optimistic view about the existence of a god that I can rationally give outside of the more logical conclusion of it being a physics-based event without an intentional cause.
Quoting TheMadFool
What final static form does a liquid have that never becomes solid or gas?
Nothing around us, within us, outside of us have a static form, we are like liquid, always changing and with that physical change, we also have a change in function. Energy moves into new energy until depleted and therefore it has no final form but so dispersed into heat-death that time essentially stops. If that is the final form, it has no function and is nothing.
Therefore teleology essentially ends up in arguing against itself, the final form has no existential reason or function, it has lost any essential existential meaning by the time it reaches its final form. So the function, existence and meaning only exists in processes of change so there is no finality and when finality happens, there is nothing.
You are still confused about the nature of teleology.
First, teleology does not assume the existence of God, though it can be used as evidence for the existence of God. We observe spiders building webs and using them to catch insects, and conclude that spiders build webs to catch insects to eat. We plant grains of wheat and observe that they germinate into wheat plants, not oaks. So, we conclude the the natural end of wheat grains is the propagation of wheat. This reasoning does not assume the existence of God.
Second, if the mechanisms in a world are deterministic (as those in ours are), they will result in determinate ends, Therefore, you cannot separate mechanism and teleology as you are trying to do. Ends require means and means culminate in ends.
Third, on-going existence is an adequate factual basis for the proving the existence of God. So, the assumption of a world without God is logically inconsistent.
Quoting TheMadFool
What do you mean by "random"? If you mean that the mutations are not the result of ontologically random laws, then there would be no determinate laws by which streamlined forms could be selected. Clearly, this was not the kind of "randomness" contemplated by Darwin, who lived in an age of Laplacian determinism and explicitly subscribed to the notion of "designed laws." The other meaning of "random," and the one underlying Darwin's theory, is that genetic mutations are unpredictable. Predictability is related to the limitations of human cognition, so that randomness as unpredictability does not imply a lack of determinism.
So, there is no conflict between the assumption of deterministic mechanisms and that of determinate, even mentally intended, ends. On the other hand, there is a conflict between the assumption of ontological randomness and that of natural selection.
Quoting TheMadFool
First, the principle of parsimony only applies when one must choose between hypotheses, which is not the case here. Teleology and mechanism are related as ends and means. Second, the existence of God is not an assumption of teleology. Third, the existence of God is not a hypothesis, but the conclusion of a strict deduction.
Quoting TheMadFool
The goal of the universe is its to develop holistically as it does. It is not confined to a single species.
This is the well-known generate and test strategy of AI, which I discuss in my paper.
Quoting Christoffer
The problem is that physics tells us that there are no random processes except possibly quantum measurement. That means that before the advent of intelligent life, the evolution of the cosmos and its biological species was completely deterministic (as is the design program you cite). The generate and test strategy only works because the range of acceptable designs is implicit in the preprogrammed test criteria. So, there is no question of having ends, there is only a question of how those ends are encoded.
As for the simulation argument, it has many logical flaws. One of the most glaring is that whether or not the universe will evolve life depends on the precise values of its physical constants. The chance of a simulation having the right combination is minuscule (cf. the physics behind the fine-tuning argument.)
Quoting Christoffer
This is a faith claim, the truth of which is, at best, unclear.
Quoting Christoffer
On what assumptions? Please note that I see evolution as an excellent and well-founded scientific theory. My question if why it would be illogical for God to choose other means to effect His ends? This seems like the kind of a priori reasoning that is antithetical to empirical science.
Quoting Christoffer
Sound arguments demonstrating the existence of God do so on the basis of His concurrent, ongoing operation within the universe --on His immanence rather than on His transcendence.
Quoting Christoffer
I find this attitude troubling, for it is unscientific. A scientific mindset requires openness to the data of experience -- to what is given -- not being closed to possibilities a priori.
Quoting Christoffer
So, the fact that a bulk of a pyramid's substance is not in its capstone is an argument that the capstone is not intentionally placed?
Quoting Christoffer
I do not think that seeing God as relevant to human existence requires a grandiose self image. First, data-based arguments show that God continually maintains our existence. Thus, it is merely acknowledging truth to see ourselves as utterly dependent on God. Second, as human self-realization can only occur under laws of nature maintained by God, any successful human ethics must be based on an adequate understanding of that reality. It is not that God makes up arbitrary laws for us to follow, but that God has authored our entire ontology
Your view would seem to require a God Who cannot but attend to a single species -- so that attending to us would occupy God's entire attention and make us the center of reality. Mine sees God as capable of more than such tunnel vision and concern. In short, you have constructed and rejected a straw man.
Quoting Christoffer
Again, this only applies to your straw man god, not to the infinite and omniscient God of classical theism. You method seems to be to replace the God whose existence has been proven by Aristotle, Ibn Sina, the Buddhist Logicians and Aquinas with one that virtually no one believes in, but which you can easily reject.
Yes, I worked out methods for A.I researchers on this as well, so I'm familiar with the process in A.I research.
Quoting Dfpolis
I'm aware of the flaws because I'm not anyone who accepts either simulation or ontological arguments as logical reasoning for their conclusions, only that there is a conclusion we don't know the specifics about. What I was referring to is that if I were to play devil's advocate with the idea of a god, it would in that case, most probably, be one who has no idea of our existence.
The generate and test strategy is an example of one process being more efficient and the other inferior. However, a set of mass which are flying through the cosmos will at the end of its journey have the form that is most optimal for a journey through cosmos, if not coming across any obstacles. The problem is however if you view things to have an end with a purpose. In the case of the drone design, that design is for the purpose of flying through the air that has the density, humidity, and temperature of a basic range for habitable conditions on earth. As soon as things change, the design needs to be changed.
In the "devils-advocate" scenario I had, if there was a god with the specific intention of our design, then that would mean evolutionary changes work better to create the optimal human design, not creating us from a pre-set of design, only out of what our function would be. However, because I do not believe in god since there is no evidence for there to be, the problem even with this optimal way of creating humans is that we are still evolving. The argument is then that we might not even be the final form that a god set out to do, but a form still in change. Maybe millions of years from now, our biology has evolved into what the final form is. Either way, we, as we are now, are not the final form and not intended because we are still evolving. This means that even if there was a god aware of us, we would essentially just be the seed this god is waiting to be what that god intended.
But, the optimal function of a system or object can still reach its optimal form within the system it exists within at the moment. That, however, doesn't mean it has reached its final form. The final form is heat death, meaning, the function and identity of everything is nothing. The final form as a final goal is irrelevant when taking universal entropy into consideration since that would mean that the final form has the purpose of being nothing. The evolving state of an object or system is happening within the system it is existing in, outside of that, it does not exist within the parameters of our universal laws of physics.
Quoting Dfpolis
It's a devils-advocate claim, I have no reason to claim it true. It's for the point of my argument. I recommend that you try and understand the conclusion drawn from my entire text instead of deconstructing singular sentences, that is not how the text should be read.
Quoting Dfpolis
I refer to the most logical conclusion of it. If a god has the all-power knowledge to create at an instant, knowing what is the optimal form of anything, that god would have created that form directly and not allow for evolutionary processes both in biology, energy and through other matter in the universe. So the logic is that evolution is what was intended. Then, if our research in engineering come to the conclusion that iteration-based evolutionary processes are superior in order to design a form for a specific purpose than it is to try and figure out an optimal design with our intellect, then how would that not apply to a higher intelligence? If combining the logic between these two, then if the god didn't choose to design everything to its final form directly and iteration-based evolutionary creation is better for creating a final form, then on the scale which a god could have the power to create, we are reasonably more likely to be in such a process, but have not reached our final form. It's the more logical conclusion, if we were to accept there to be a god at all.
Quoting Dfpolis
There are no sound arguments for god in the first place. If there were, we would have proven God to exist. What I refer to in my argument is that if there was a god, it would most likely be something else than what people want that god to be. And that god would probably be outside of our universe and have no knowledge of our existence, or is still waiting for our final form. If someone could present a sound argument for the existence of God and that god's "ongoing operation" within our universe, that doesn't fall flat with fallacies and lack of logic in its reasoning, then I welcome it. But people seem to be too biased in their own faith and will only argue within their realm of comfort.
So far, there are a lot of teapots floating around the sun. A new one every time someone makes a flawed argument about the existence of god.
Quoting Dfpolis
Openness is not the same as being skeptical of the answers given or the observations made. To be skeptical is more scientific than any other way of thinking. Just being "open" means you are never critical and if not, you never try and test your own ideas. Most people are open, but just don't care to test their own knowledge. I think you misunderstand what I meant about being skeptical. In relation to the existence of God, I will never accept the existence of a god if we can't prove it. If there's one thing that is unscientific, its to allow things to exist according to fantasies of what we want to exist, just because there aren't clear answers telling us otherwise. This is exactly why there are so many teapots in space.
Quoting Dfpolis
I see no relation with this example since I was talking about the massive scale of the universe compared to our existence. If we were the point of the universe, by a creator, there's a big lack of logic in creating that scale of the universe just to have us in it. Had we existed a few billion years later, then we would not even see stars and galaxies since the expansion would make light sources too far away from each other. Which means that we wouldn't even be able to measure the scale and be isolated in a dark corner of the universe. You compare that scale to the foundation of a pyramid. If you add nearly an infinite scale to that foundation, then it would show just how irrational that shape would be. Intentionally placing a near infinite foundation of the pyramid would make the shape of the pyramid no longer visible as a pyramid and the whole idea of a pyramid with a tip, high point would become absurd. So the example of the intention becomes mathematically absurd. It would more likely be the almost infinite shape of the foundation that was the purpose and the tip an evolutionary result. If the shape was allowed for it. However, the example of the pyramid becomes absurd in relation to what I said.
Quoting Dfpolis
Historians, anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists all point to how gods, God, religion and so on, formed based upon an inability to explain the world around us at the time we couldn't explain through facts and science. It took us to the 20th century to truly be able to explain the world through the methods we came up with. The concept of a God is a descendant from times when we couldn't explain things in any other way. Because religion created institutions that have been in power in some form or another throughout human history, up until now, it's easy to see how people still try and argue for the existence of God. But it's irrational, illogical, unsupported by evidence and in psychology, it's easy to see how the concept of no purpose or external meaning to our lives frightens us into holding on to a belief that gives us purpose and meaning. But that doesn't mean it's the truth.
No data-based arguments show anything that prove God in any way. Sloppy logic in all these arguments that does not work when deconstructed. There have never been a working argument in favor of a god, ever. Try and find one that is rock solid in its logic and reasoning. Even the closest to such a logical argument does not conclude with anything related to God at all which just becomes an assumption and conclusion made before the argument, not after it.
Quoting Dfpolis
I argue around God within the concept and ideas that humanity invented about this God. I have argued about what would be the most logical conclusion with that concept, playing a devils-advocate to the idea that a God exists. But you cannot call it strawman when you use your own belief of a God within your argument. Your belief is irrelevant, unfounded, unsupported by evidence, have no rational argument attached to it. To call my breakdown of the concept of God within the realm of science to be a strawman because it doesn't include your personal perception of the concept of God is seriously flawed as an argument.
Quoting Dfpolis
It applies to the most logical conclusion based on what we know in science. The theistic concept of the classical God has changed over and over every time science proved something to be something else than what that religious belief thought at the time. The classical kind of God as a concept fails, over and over, the more we know about humanity, nature and the universe. So my thought experiment here was about the most logical form of a god within our knowledge about the universe, not religious fantasies.
Quoting Dfpolis
What proof? There are no proof of any God or Gods. All those arguments fail in their conclusion or assume the conclusion to be true before the argument is done, or they draw unfounded assumptions out of a conclusion that has no relation to the concept of a god.
Philosophers before we established scientific methods, worked within the belief of those times and within the history of science, there was a lot of progress shut down by the church if they couldn't apply the science onto the religious concepts at that time.
I can easily reject any concepts of god through a proper philosophical deconstruction of those arguments. Which has been done by many philosophers throughout history. But it's convenient to ignore them in order to support your already established beliefs, right? Isn't that a biased point of view?
Only religious apologists with a cognitive bias to their beliefs, accept illogical and irrational arguments filled with fallacies. I can accept that old philosophers had trouble with their biased conclusions, but that's because we didn't have the methods to falsify and cross-check our findings or proper dialectic methods with logic and rationality. No philosopher today would accept flaws in logic when reasoning, so no philosopher today can accept arguments for god which features flawed conclusions or assumptions that lack links to that conclusion.
If you have a rock solid argument for the existence of God, go ahead and present it.
I have qualms with the idea of teleology being intrinsic to objects [this is a sub issue I suppose not directly relevant to OP though it could be construed as relevant since you are using it in the aristotelian sense of final cause. And aristotle makes final cause intrinsic to objects; either way I don't have issue in principle for teleological explanations, if they are qualified by context]. For the simple reason that it just seems short sighted to ascribe one specific goal [or even a set of goals] to a physical object or biological entity [it's something like functional fixedness]. Say there's a blanket... sure it was made for a particular purpose - to keep a person warm if it's cold. But in the summer when you're on a picnic that thing is just as well a mat for food.. or if you've gotten dirt on your toe, it can be used to clean the dirt off, or if their's an armed robber in your hose, to hide your belongings or you.
Secondly, different objects can perform the same function -- sure there exists a particular receptor for chemical A but there's also this other receptor B [who tends to bind chemical B] but which can also bind chemical A. When you take out that receptor A, receptor B can stand in for A enough to rescue the deficiency. You can use a heater instead of a blanket to keep you warm. Or a sweater.
The point is the goals seem separable from objects [1] and objects seem separable from specific goals [2] which I think points to a relational dependency of goals. It's not the object that intrinsically has an end or goal, its the context with the object and their relationships that makes the object repeatedly reach a particular end.
I think I'd be fine with the idea of ends if they're restricted to a given contextual relationship [given the context: the setting of cold weather, the man who is cold, the blanket in the room -- the blanket will reach end of keeping man warm].
I also think you're conflating coincidence with teleology. Let me refer to the example of the spider web you gave in the last post. To say that spiders build webs to catch insects would be question begging - you're already assuming telos in that statement.
I think a more unbiased observation would be that insects get caught in the spider web. Then on we may look into various explanations for this situation like ''is it teleology or not?''
One explanation for spider webs and their ability to catch insects is simple coincidence. It is a trait or characteristic that matched well with a food source. So, while other spiders became extinct, web weavers survived and that's what you see. I sympathize with you though because it's very easy to make this mistake. Even I had a difficult time understanding it. Coincidences can be meaningful (Jungian synchronicity).
In a given situation, to predict a person's motives is to predict their behaviour. And to predict their behaviour involves interpolating memories of that person and the world in general. Teleology should therefore be considered true, or at least meaningless.
As the unmoved mover, uncaused cause, ultimate meta-law, etc., philosophically, God is the-end-of-the-line of explanation. To be the-end-of-the-line, God needs to be self-explaining. As things are explanations in virtue of what they are (their essences), what God is must entail that God is. Essences are the specification of what a thing can do, of its possible acts, while existence is the unspecified ability to act. So, God's essence can only entail His existence if the specification of His possible acts (His essence) places no limit on His possible acts. Thus, God, as the-end-of-the-line of explanation, must have an unlimited ability to act. If God were ignorant of some reality He could not execute well-informed acts on that reality. So, for God to do any possible act, He must know all reality -- including us.
Quoting Christoffer
That is a very peculiar claim, given that we can only know that there is no evidence for x is to know that there is no x. Before we understood finger prints and DNA, a crime scene might be rife with evidence identifying the culprit, but investigators were unaware of it. Evidence is only evidence for those able to recognize and use it. So, if you know of no evidence for x, and do not know, independently, that there is no x, the most you can only claim rationally, "I see no reason for believing in x." Thus, using the non-recognition of evidence to categorical deny x is an argumentum in cirulares.
In the present case, the continuing existence of any and all reality is definitive evidence for the existence of God for those able to see its implications. What is here and now cannot actualize its potential existence at another space-time point, because it is here, not there. Thus, on-going existence requires a concurrent, on-going source of actualization for its explanation. This source is either explained by another or is self-explaining -- the end of the line of explanation. If it is explained by another, then, to avoid an infinite regress, we must have a self-explaining end of the line. This has been explicitly known for two and a half millennia -- since Aristotle formulated the unmoved mover argument in his Metaphysics.
Quoting Christoffer
The concept of a telos (end) is that of the reason a process is undertaken. This could be a final state, or it could be for someting that occurs before the final state, with the final state occurring only incidentally. Thus, spiders spin webs to catch prey, not to have the broken by random events.
As we do not have a workable quantum theory of gravity, it is premature to say, definitively, what the final physical state of the cosmos will be; however, if present indications are right, physically, the cosmos will end in a state of heat death. Still, knowing creation's final physical state says nothing of what will become of its intentional aspects. I have shown in another thread that physics has nothing to say about intentionality.
Quoting Christoffer
This makes the assumption that intermediate states are unintended. Do you have an argument for this?
It seems clear to me, from reflecting on the art of story telling, that as much thought and intentionality can be put into the early and intermediate chapters and acts as into the climax. In fact, when I write, I am more interested in the psychology and dynamics that set the characters on a track than I am in where that track leads them. As a result, I have many unfinished stories.
An even more telling example is the work of a machine designer. She may well know that, eventually, her machine will on the scrap heap, but that is not her purpose in designing it. Her purpose revolves around what the machine can do between its production and its decommissioning.
Thus, there is no reason to think the purpose (telos) of the cosmos is its physical heat death.
Quoting Christoffer
Yes, this is the point of the Punctuated Equilibrium view of evolution.
Quoting Christoffer
I agree, texts should be read as a whole. Still, the reasoning behind a holistic movement of thought is found in individual sentences. So, we need to examine its parts.
Quoting Christoffer
I think that this assumes something you are the verge of rejecting -- namely, the existence of an optimal state. The generate and test strategy finds solutions that satisfy multiple criteria programmed into its tests. This is what H. A. Simmons calls "satisficing," and is generally how humans decide given our bounded rationality. We have a number of independent, incommensurate requirements to satisfy in finding a course of action. There is no guarantee that multiple criteria can be traded-offs -- or even that they are commensurate. How much vitamin C is a liter of oxygen worth? This is a meaningless question because vitamin C cannot do what oxygen does. If we are unable to make such trade-offs. we cannot define an optimal solution.
(This is the problem with all forms of utilitarianism -- the assumption that there exists a well-defined utility function that can be optimized.)
So, in order to make sense of this claim, there must exist an single optimum. What, precisely, is being optimized? And, how are the required trade-offs done?
Quoting Christoffer
How did you reach this conclusion?
I conclude that there are sound proofs by working though their data and logic, answering all the objections I read as well as my own.
Quoting Christoffer
This is an ad hominem. You have presented no rational objection to any specific proof, let alone a methodological argument that would rule out any possible proof. You have only made the faith claim that there is no evidence for the existence of God.
Quoting Christoffer
To be skeptical is to require adequate reasons for believing a proposition true. To be open is to require adequate reasons for believing a proposition false. So, to any fair minded person, they are one and the same mental habit -- what is called a scientific mindset. Such a mindset requires us to reject a priori commitments such as your faith claim that there is no God.
Quoting Christoffer
It has been proven for two and a half millennia. What rational objection do you have to Aristotle's unmoved mover argument? What objection do you have for the meta-law argument in my evolution paper?
Quoting Christoffer
The analogy is:
Mass of humans : Mass of supporting cosmos :: Mass of capstone : Mass of the supporting pyramid.
Quoting Christoffer
There are two errors here: (1) there is no claim that we are the sole point of creation and (2) there is no reason to think that God needs to skimp on existence to effect His ends.
Many see the elegance of a few simple laws causing a singularity to blossom into the complex beauty of the cosmos.
Quoting Christoffer
You miss the point: mass ratios are not an argument against intentionality.
Quoting Christoffer
There is no doubt that this is a reason some people believe in gods. There is no evidence that it is either the sole or the main reason. The prophet Jeremiah believed in fixed laws of nature as well as a God relating to humans. Aristotle based his philosophy on empirical observation, but saw the logical necessity of an unmoved mover or self-thinking thought. Cherry picking explanations, instead of acknowledging the complexity of human thought, is an indication of bias.
Quoting Christoffer
Really? What is so unique about the 20th century? Was not the recognition of fixed laws by Jeremiah, the foundation of mathematical physics by Aristotle, the discovery of inertia and instantaneous velocity by the medieval physicists, the astronomical work of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Laplace, and Darwin's theory real contributions to our understanding of nature? Or are you claiming that we now have a final understanding of physics? How can we when we have no theory of quantum gravity and do not understand ~95% of the mass of the cosmos?
Quoting Christoffer
So, you think matters of fact should be decided by examining the motives leading people to study a subject? While you claim that "the existence of God ... [is] irrational, illogical, unsupported by evidence," you have offered no rational argument, logical objection or shred of evidence to support your faith claim.
Quoting Christoffer
I'm still waiting for an actual logical objection. Where and what is yours? I have suggested two simple arguments for you to "deconstruct" -- Aristotle's unmoved mover, and the argument in my evolution paper. Have at it and forget the ad hominem hand waving you seem to find comforting.
In the next bit you falsely accuse me of giving no logical argument for the existence of God. I give one in my evolution paper, and add another in my book. I have also referred you to a number of arguments by other thinkers.
Quoting Christoffer
You are confused. I called the concept of God you reject a straw man because it is not that of classical theism, but your personal construct -- which I reject as well. A straw man argument occurs when one ignores the actual opposing position and substitutes one more easily attacked. That is what you have done.
Quoting Christoffer
Really? Have you any documented examples of this? You seem operate in a Trumpian faerie land in which facts don't matter or are manufactured on whim. When I studied natural theology, God had the same attributes Aquinas demonstrated in his Summa Theologiae. How has the understanding of God as given by Aquinas changed over time?
Quoting Christoffer
Here is another example of manufactured facts. The scientific method, including the need for controlled experiments, was fully and explicitly outlined and applied by Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), Oxford professor, teacher of Roger Bacon, and later bishop of Lincoln, in his works on optics (c 1220-35). He emphasized that we needed to compare theory with experiment. So, Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) did his work long after the scientific method was established.
In his The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, James Hannam makes clear that that the Church not only tolerated but promoted science -- seeing God as revealing Himself not only in Scripture, but in the Book of Nature. Thus, by better understanding nature, we better understand God.
Quoting Christoffer
My, my. The ad hominems continue. In my evolution paper I cite well over 50 authors, many of whom are atheists -- some quite militant. The bibliography of my book is 24 pages of 10 pt. type and contains works by many who strongly disagree with me. You would be more credible if you verified your facts before attacking my character and methods.
You are welcome.
Quoting aporiap
I don't think that the idea that agents act for ends requires that they only act for one end.
Also, I think part being a free agent is our ability to confer new value by re-purposing objects and capabilities. It is part of what Aquinas calls our participation in Divine Providence by reason. That is why I object to a narrow natural law ethics that does not allow for the legitimate creation of new ends.
Quoting aporiap
Of course. That is one reason free will is possible. There are multiple paths to human self-realization.
Quoting aporiap
This has to do with physical determinism vs. intentional freedom. If no free agent is involved, physical systems have only a single immanent line of action and so act deterministically. If there are agents able to conceive alternative lines of action, then multiple lines of action are immanent in the agents, and so we need not have deterministic time development.
Quoting aporiap
Are you thinking that the existence of ends entails determinism? I don't.
There is a difference between the epistemological and ontological orders. We need make no assumption that God exists in order to understand that agents act for ends. On the other hand, as Aquinas argues in his Fifth Way, the fact that mindless agents act for ends is evidence for the existence of a guiding mind.
So, epistemologically, it is quite possible to conclude that agents act for ends without assuming God, but ontologically, mindless agents cannot act for ends without the existence of a guiding mind. So, you don't need to assume that God exists, but you can, but may not actually, conclude that God exists.
Quoting TheMadFool
No, there is an observable invariant connection, not a variable coincidence. When spiders weave webs, they don't then go away and do something else. The stay near by, usually in contact with the web, and respond to entangled insects by treating them as prey. If they have no webs, the web weaving species will die of starvation. Aristotle points out that one sign of teleological action is the preparation of means in advance of ends. Here the weaving of webs, the means of catching insects, is done in advance.
Of course, we understand the end of webs by analogy with our own experience of human ends. We see how we prepare means in order to accomplish ends, and understand that spiders are doing the same kind of thing. Those who reject teleology will say that this is anthropomorphic thinking, but why should that be objectionable? We and spiders are equally natural, so why should we not act in analogous ways? It would be anthropomorphic in a bad way if we concluded that spiders think in that same way as we do, but that is not our conclusion. To have an analogy is to have a situation that is partly the same and partly different. Here what is the same is acting for ends, and what is different is the mental wherewithal of the agents.
Quoting TheMadFool
I think you are confusing how a means-end relation comes to be with the actual existence of the relation. It is not a coincidence that, however it came to pass, right now the building of webs is for the sake of catching insects.
Maybe some early spiders developed a mutation that caused them to secret a sticky substance and some insects were slowed by it long enough to be eaten. That might be seen as a "coincidence," but it is not. It is completely deterministic that the laws of nature, acting on the initial state of the cosmos, caused that mutation and give it survival value.
Each formulation projects the same fact set into a different conceptual subspace. As these conceptualizations do not contradict each other, there is no reason to reject one in favor of the other.
Is there a reason to keep both? I think there is. It is not merely that "survival tends to follow eating," there is a dynamic reason that not eating leads to death. "Tends to follow" speaks of correlation, not causality -- ignoring the dynamics of starvation. What it adds is the fact that survival is a correlate of nutrition.
"Animals eat in order to survive" speaks to a dynamic relation between eating and survival, telling us why eating is a "good thing." What it does not make explicit is that survival is an actual correlate of nutrition.
Quoting sime
I must disagree. We may have desires whose satisfaction we choose either to defer or not to satisfy at all. So, while motives and behavior my be correlated, there is no determinate relation between them.
Also, I am unsure how one would even start to predict all of a person's motives.
Quoting sime
I do not understand this sentence. Is there a misprint?
The conclusion of the uncaused cause could mean anything, it could be a substance of particles that are unbound by spacetime and in that higher dimension produce our dimensional universe. It could therefore just be a dead "nothing". In order to draw the conclusion of the ontological argument, ignoring the general objections to it, you must also prove that the conclusion isn't some "dead nothing" or accept that this "dead nothing" can be defined as God.
In this case, God means nothing and you proved nothing to be God. How then is that different from "there is no God"? You can arrive at that conclusion as well with the ontological argument.
Quoting Dfpolis
Therefore, by the most logical conclusions of the only arguments that try to point to a God with pure deduction, the ontological argument, it doesn't point to there being any God aware of us. There is no other evidence for any interaction between God and us or God and the universe.
Quoting Dfpolis
Teapots in space.
Quoting Dfpolis
We can only conclude what can be proven. If we yet have the capacity to prove there is a God, we have no reason to conclude there is one otherwise... there would be teapots in space.
What you are also saying is that because crime scenes had evidence that we earlier couldn't see, your analogy is that there is, therefore, evidence for God that we have not yet found and ignoring this not-yet-found evidence means concluding there is no God based on not seeing this evidence. This is flawed in its reasoning. You cannot have "not-yet-found" evidence as the evidence for the existence of God.
The burden of proof demands that people prove the existence of something before someone can start attempting to disprove it. Otherwise... there will be Teapots in space.
Quoting Dfpolis
No it is not, in what way is this in any form evidence for that conclusion? This is ridiculously flawed reasoning, no evidence at all.
Quoting Dfpolis
And it proves nothing of the existence of God. Because God as an entity is not defined and the conclusion also assumes there to be an unmoved mover. But what if time is circular? What if after heat death we have a collapse that restarts time at the big bang? Then there is no unmoved mover, only circular time.
Aristotle didn't have modern physics and even so, the conclusion doesn't have data about where it ends up, meaning that it proves nothing, only the process of causality and existence after big bang.
Quoting Dfpolis
As I was saying, there can be a final form within the current system, but the maximum final form isn't what spiders are now, its where all energy ends up at heat death. Until then, everything is changing, through evolution and distribution of energy through entropy. There is no final form applied outside of closed systems and those systems are defined by us in order to understand form and function around us.
Quoting Dfpolis
You cannot prove any intention of a creator without proving there to be a creator with intention. First things first.
Quoting Dfpolis
You must first prove there to be an intention by a creator and before that the existence of a creator with intention, before putting forth an argument that intermediate states are intended before I can create a counter-argument.
My conclusion there is based on normal biology and evolutionary science about how we evolve. No biologist would say that we have a static form as we are now, we are constantly evolving, like the rest of nature. So there is nothing that points to our existence and form now to be intended in any way, biology points to evolution being constantly in progress. You must prove the above about a creator and creator intention and then disprove biology in order to conclude us as we are now to be intentional.
Quoting Dfpolis
I am a storyteller by profession so I also know storytelling.
There is no evidence for any purpose to the cosmos and just saying there is purpose to the cosmos is not proof for there being one.
Quoting Dfpolis
Your entire answer here does the same thing again. You babble around specific sentences and you drift in thought without a solid formulated argument. This means that your entire writing falls apart.
Trust me, from a storyteller who works with storytelling, to someone who rarely finishes stories, you need to clean your text up and make clearer arguments because right now I'm paddling through incoherent text that muddies that water and makes most of it incomprehensible.
Quoting Dfpolis
You do understand that I criticized the notion that God would allow evolution if he had the power to create perfection and final forms directly. The oxymoron of him.
Quoting Dfpolis
This has nothing to do with what I said.
Quoting Dfpolis
You don't seem to understand in what context I wrote that, so you take it as a statement in of itself. This is what happens when you take everything in a text line by line and not care for the entire argument as a whole.
Quoting Dfpolis
There is no proof. Where is the proof? Do you think that there would even be a discussion if there was proof of the existence of God? All deductive arguments about God reach a conclusion that is then formed into assumptions based on what the person in question "wanted" the conclusion to assume. The conclusion to all deductive arguments only points to a truth that has no relation to the existence of God.
The relation between the conclusion and a concept of God is invented by those who want the argument to prove the existence to be true. There is nothing within the actual argument to conclude any relation to the concept of God.
You are making assumptions about logic and data, they are in no way proof of any creator, god or intentions by any creator. That is your invention, your assumption and it is flawed reasoning to use that as your "proof".
Quoting Dfpolis
I cannot object to any proof that isn't there, because there is no proof. Burden of proof demands you to have real proof but all you have are assumptions. I can agree with the ontological argument for example to logical through a deterministic view, but it never proves any existence of God, therefore I don't have to disprove anything.
You have faith in God and argue that I use faith against it. Flawed reasoning.
Where is the proof?
Quoting Dfpolis
It is not a faith claim when you base your argument about the existence of God on faith in the first place. You have not presented any, and especially not in any scientific method, proof of Gods existence.
Do not point out flawed reasoning when you have flawed reasoning yourself.
Quoting Dfpolis
No it hasn't. Aristotle's argument doesn't prove a thing about the existence of God. There is no relation between the conclusion and God, the relation isn't there, how do you even see a relation between the concept of God and Aristotle's conclusion? It only proves there to be "something" in the beginning and it also assumes that there are no chance for circular time and great collapse hypothesis.
So there is no deductive conclusion that has any truth value because the reasoning is flawed. You assume a conclusion based on another conclusion without relation.
Quoting Dfpolis
What does this prove?
Quoting Dfpolis
Exactly, so you counter your own point from earlier about intentional form and purpose.
Quoting Dfpolis
Seeing elegance in anything proves nothing.
Quoting Dfpolis
Then write so people don't miss the point, because you are all over the place, seemingly not even coherent with your own writing.
Quoting Dfpolis
It is more proven than any other idea about how religion raised up. Backed up by the sciences and analysis of those texts, by how we function psychologically in groups. It is more solid than anything you are presenting and yet you are dismissing it because... you simply don't agree.
Quoting Dfpolis
So? Proves nothing.
Quoting Dfpolis
Aristotle also didn't have modern methods of science which exclude the subjective from the process. He also was influenced by the time he lived in and while some of his arguments have valid points and are still relevant, there are many flaws because we know things now in science that he didn't. And ignoring this, taking it word by word as truth is ignoring everything we know about the world and universe today. If you can't realise that your process of argumenting has serious flaws because of this then you are stuck in your own reasoning ignoring anything outside your own assumptions.
Quoting Dfpolis
And what are you doing? You aren't biased towards the idea that God exist and you twist the conclusion of arguments in order to fit your narrative. Get of your high horse, your argument is full of holes and you cherry pick sentences out of a whole and dissect things without caring for the context they were written in.
Quoting Dfpolis
Are you for real? Are you seriously saying that we haven't reached a much more effective way of studying the facts of the world today because of things like, say, falsifiability?
Do you think the device you are writing on is the result of no progress in science and our understanding of the world and universe? Doesn't the sum of the knowledge we now know about the world and universe, that we've been able to gather with modern scientific methods, have an impact on how to much more truthfully reach conclusions than people before this time-period who were influenced by their limitations in their time? Just the fact that dissections were done on animals in order to draw conclusions on human anatomy shows just how distorted knowledge was before more modern methods. If you can't see how things changed drastically during the enlightenment and 20th century, then you seem blind to the history of science and philosophy. There has been a lot happening since Aristotle and Aquinas you know, should that be ignored? Should all science be ignored because you are "right" in your assumptions about your conclusions?
No, I pointed out theQuoting Dfpolis
I'm saying that everything has led up to a sum of knowledge in which we dismiss the errors, modify when finding new evidence and work with scientific methods far more effective and immune to corruption today than we have ever done in the entire history of man. I am not dismissing anything but you are cherry picking old conclusions to fit your narrative and ignore everything that is problematic for your argument throughout history.
If you cannot use the knowledge that you have and through modern methods that exclude your opinion from your conclusion, reach a conclusion that is valid, you are biased towards the assumed idea of an existing God.
Quoting Dfpolis
Stop making things up in order to counter them, you are doing serious fallacies all the time. I said that it's easy to see how ideas that have no scientific truth, form out of the comfort of needing meaning and purpose when the notion of it not existing appears.
What you are saying is about motive in studies. Why are you answering in a way that has nothing to do with what I wrote, it looks like the ramblings of a delusional man.
Quoting Dfpolis
You have not offered any rational argument, logical conclusion or shred of evidence for the existence of God. If you really had that, bullet proof, you'd be on TV right now and people and scientists would study your findings, but you aren't because you haven't proved a single thing.
Therefore, I cannot argue against anything that hasn't been proven.
The burden of proof is on your shoulders, just because you think you have proven something doesn't mean that you have. Do you get it?
Quoting Dfpolis
I'm still waiting for a logical argument for the existence of God. You need to provide it first, burden of proof. You need to get in the game of modern scientific methods or live in your fantasy land.
You assume the existence of God out of the conclusions. That is not evidence or proof.
Get it?
Quoting Dfpolis
I will not read your book just because you say that I cannot argue against the existence of God because I haven't read your book.
If you cannot present your argument here, plain and simple, the logic behind it, without convoluted drawn out text that makes your entire point incoherent I cannot counter argue it.
Right now you make the argument like this: "You cannot prove that I'm wrong because you haven't read my book".
Make the argument here, right now. What is the argument plain and simple. So far you have incoherent text and make connections between conclusions and premiesses that have nothing to do with eachother before making a conclusion that comes right out of your assumptions. If this is how you try and communicate your argument in your book, then it's Depaak Chopra level of arguing.
X is Y because of the fundamentals of X has been proved by Z to correlate with Y in such ways that no one can object because of T.
Quoting Dfpolis
No, you are, a lot. If you weren't, as I said, you would be on every television with the news "God proved to be real". If you sit on the high horse believing you have proven Gods existence and you reject objections by saying "you are confused", while not convincing anyone of any rational mind that you are in fact proven right, it is you who are confused.
Quoting Dfpolis
Like you straw man every line I've written in my argument? Substituting your own convoluted interpretation of what I wrote instead of what I actually wrote in the context of my entire text?
While not proving any concept of God other than one that is so open to interpretation that there isn't any definition that can create a precise concept at all. The arrogance when you try to explain what a straw man is, without looking at your own text and how you change my text into twisted interpretations.
Really?
Quoting Dfpolis
And you talk about Ad Hominems? Are you for real?
Church and institutions have changed their stance on everything from where the sun is in the solar system in relation to earth, how we are created by God to trying to shoe-horn in evoution into explaining creation. Do you not know about the history if science?
Lay of the Trump-like Ad Hominems, it's downright disgusting and an insult to my intellect. Maybe you should look in the mirror and realize that you write exactly in the way you try and criticize others for.
Quoting Dfpolis
You describe the historical development of scientific methods. Stop making straw man arguments as you don't want others to do it.
Do you have falsifiability established there somewhere? You know, the most important part of modern science that we have? And the one which took us from the problem of not seeing what is pseudoscience and what is real science, uncorrupted by the scientist's influence.
Quoting Dfpolis
The historical process of how we ended up with our modern science does not counter the enormous improvements that happened from the enlightenment period to our modern day.
This is why you can't prove the existence of God, because we have much more strict ways of demanding falsifiability and peer review to such claims. If you can't prove exactly the conclusion you make, then you haven't proven anything and if someone counters your findings you cannot just dismiss it and tell them they are confused.
Quoting Dfpolis
And you aren't making Ad Hominems?
You haven't proven the existence of God and you haven't provided an actual argument for the existence of God.
Your reference is your own book and if we don't read your book, you are right. That is essentially your argument.
I want you to present your argument for the existence of God. Right now. Aristotle's unmoved mover does not conclude with "God exists" because that is an assumption and invention out of the actual conclusion. So what is left is your argument and you have not presented it. You have straw manned my text into shreds while calling out straw mans on me, you have conducted ad hominems yourself but complained about getting them yourself.
Your text is incoherent and lack a thread of thought, so it's impossible to track your actual argument or line of thought.
Make the argument, plain and simple instead of demanding people to read your book and if they do not you are right. That is not how you conduct a dialectic.
Aristotle speaks extensively about the ideas of Democritus, and with respect. Plato never cites Democritus, but scholars suspect today that this was out of deliberate choice and not for lack of knowledge of his works. Criticism of Democritus's ideas is implicit in several of Plato's texts, as in his critique of 'physicists', for example. In a passage in his [I]Phaedo[/I], Plato has Socrates articulate a reproach to all 'physicists' which will have a lasting resonance. He complains that when 'physicists' had explained that the Earth was round, he rebelled because he wanted to know what 'good' it was for the Earth to be round; how its roundness would benefit it. Plato's Socrates recounts how he had at first been enthusiastic about physics, but had come to be disillusioned by it:
[I]"I had expected to be first told that the Earth was flat or round, but also that, afterwards, the reason for the necessity of this shape would be explained to me, starting from the principle of the best, proving to me that the best thing for the Earth is to have this shape. And if he had said that the Earth was at the centre of the world, then to show me how being at the centre was of benefit to the Earth".[/I]
[B]How completely off track the great Plato was here![/b][/quote]
Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. He has worked in Italy and the US, and is currently directing the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de physique théorique in Marseille, France.
'The world's most inspirational physics teacher'
[I]Daily Telegraph[/I]
Yes, in own case I cannot understand my desires in terms my personal behavioural history. But if my attribution of motives to others is considered to be objective , then the motives of others must be describable in terms of behavioural regularity, for the personal feelings I have regarding other people's behaviour is subjective.
So I can accept the reason/cause/motive distinction, but only if the subjective-objective distinction is rejected. Otherwise I cannot see how these distinctions can be maintained.
Not if you are logical. To be the end of the line of explanation, something must be self-explaining. That means that what it is entails that it is. Consequently, its essence cannot limit the unspecified ability to act which its existence. So, the end of the line must be omnipotent, which means it is not limited by space and time, or in any other way. It must be able to perform any possible act.
Quoting Christoffer
This is an irrational hypothesis. To be an explanation, it must act to effect what is explained.
Quoting Christoffer
You are confused. When we speak of lines of explanation, there is an empirical datum to be explained. For example, Aristotle's unmoved mover is the end of the line of explanation for observed change. My meta-law argument explains the observed persistence of physical objects.
Ontological arguments use no data, and therefore can only show how we must think of something to be consistent, and not that what is thought of actually exists.
Quoting Christoffer
You may repeat your faith claim as often as you wish, but doing so is irrational unless you are going to argue you case.
You did not look at either Aristotle's argument for an unmoved mover or mine for a self-conserving meta-law. Thus, you objections do not address either the truth of the premises or the validity of the logical moves. These are the only two ways to show that a proof fails. When you address one or the other, I will continue the discussion.
Obviously, Carlo Rovelli is not very familiar with Aristotle. Aristotle explicitly states that not everything that happens, happens for an end. Rather he sees final causality as one of four distinct modes of explanation, and does not shy away from any of them. Among his many achievements was being the first mathematical physicist. (He correctly formulated the power law, P=Fv, and had a better understanding of motion in viscous media than Newton.)
That is the stance that behaviorists took. It shows the limits imposed on natural science by its Fundamental Abstraction. I discussed the FA in detail in https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4732/intentional-vs-material-reality-and-the-hard-problem.
We know subjectivity in others by analogy with our own experience, not by any sort of direct observation. Observing their behavior leads us to hypothesize their intentional state in analogy with our own. The problem with this is that there may be no analog for mental aberrations in our own subjective experience, and so we may utterly fail to understand irrational behavior.
Quoting sime
Knowledge is inescapably a subject-object relation. There is invariably a knowing subject and a known object. However, the object is more complex than one might think. In experience we are informed not only of the objective object, of what we are we are looking at, but of the subjective object, of ourselves as looking at the objective object. For example, in seeing an apple. we are not only informed by and about the apple, but by and about ourselves, e.g. that we can see, be aware of what we see, etc. These are facts about the knowing subject, given to us as objective.
This is a point completely missed by Ryle in The Concept of Mind when he criticizes the notion of introspection. He fails to see that there are not two separate acts in knowing the other and in knowing our self knowing the other. Rather there is one act of knowing with a complex object that can be resolved by subsequent reflection.
Or, have I completely missed your point?
(Source).
That's consistent with what Carlo Rovelli was talking about. He was talking about explanations. Both Plato and Aristotle were wrong on this one.
You are attaching attributes to what's at the end which is assuming you know what it is and how it works, which isn't a logical conclusion to the argument. And if there's a possibility that time is circular, if the cosmic collapse has a probability of being true, then there is no first mover or cause. A deductive logical argument cannot be false and if it can be false you cannot claim it as truth, evidence or logic. Period.
Any attribute you attach in your reasoning does not have any logical argument for them. Nothing of what you say here proves any God whatsoever.
Quoting Dfpolis
No, because you don't know the answers physics is trying to answer. You don't know the unification theory. You cannot conclude anything about what came before the big bang without knowing and you can't do it with your deduction.
Stop just believing your own words and flawed reasoning and put your argument in front of falsification methods.
Nothing of what you say prove any form of God, that is your invention out of confusing yourself with the logic. You don't seem to see the forest burning because you only look at individual trees.
Quoting Dfpolis
Then stop being confusing, you are confusing yourself into not even seeing your own flawed reasoning.
Let me ask you, have you put your argument to peer review among physics? Because your argument seems to involve a lot of physics in its reasoning, so you need to put your argument through falsification methods. Aristotle's unmoved mover isn't God. That is your invention, that is not the conclusion. There is nothing confusing about this.
If you are using data, then you are making a scientific theory, if so, I'd like to look at the peer reviews of your theory. I'd like to hear what physicists have to say about your use of the data.
Quoting Dfpolis
You haven't presented a logical argument yet, burden of proof is on you, and you haven't presented a solid argument for the existence of God. You think you have, but you haven't. I've pointed out the flaws and you ignore them and say that I'm confused and that I have a "faith claim".
You have no argument, so stop pushing convoluted empty arguments. As I said, if you had proven the existence of God, you would now be a celebrity, but you haven't, because only you think you are correct.
Quoting Dfpolis
Aristotle's argument for the unmoved mover as support for the existence of God has been refuted by me and many more, much more brilliant minds than mine and you ignore them all. I did it many times and you just ignore it.
I will tell it again. The unmoved mover is the conclusion, it does not have any relation to the concept of any God. That is truth, that is fact. You CANNOT take that conclusion and say it concludes there is a God because there is nothing that connects between unmoved mover and God in any logical way. To connect that conclusion with God, means that you need to assume that God is the unmoved mover, there is nothing in the argument that logically deduce God to be the unmoved mover.
Your logic in trying to connect them has no connection. It also assumes that other hypothetical explanations for what happens before Big Bang, like that the end of heat death ends up in a cosmic collapse and that time starts over, or that multiverse models are true or that Big Bang was a quantum anomaly from nothing because of infinite possibilities within infinite nothing.
You cannot conclude with deductive logic, a truth if there are any possibilities outside that conclusion and you cannot apply attributes to the conclusion outside of the logic. This is the whole reason why Aristotle's argument has never been accepted as any proof for the existence of God, no one takes that assumption seriously because it is flawed in its reasoning. Just because you want it to be true doesn't mean it's true. Your argument must be hundred percent logical and the deduction must mean it cannot be false but it can and therefore you cannot say it's proof. Period.
Now, present your argument as a bulletproof logical deduction that God exists. Stop convoluting your writing into an incoherent mess. I want the argument, plain premisses and the conclusion, like everyone else does it. If you have a scientific paper on it I want to see the peer-reviewed comments on it. You are aiming for undeniable proof of the existence of God, act like it. I cannot put forth an argument if I only have your self-confused logic as a source.
Well so conferring new value via re-purposing is something different than instrinsic purpose/teleology. Are you implying here that the ends of things [e.g. the end of an enzyme - to catalyze reaction, the end of a seed is to become a plant] are human designated?
I don't understand this since we are speaking about objects here and not people. I also think, if anything, a teleological framework would necessarily be limiting compared to a teleologically blank humanity since it rigidly identifies some set of ends as natural to an object/person. Humans wouldn't have the freedom to not self realize if their nature was to self-realize, for example.
I'm unsure what free will has to do with teleology. Secondly this is a human specific thing, free will doesn't have anything to do with physical systems, they cannot choose actions because they lack brains
Well my point in that excerpt was to just highlight that ends are not intrinsic to objects alone. A gene, for example, can NOT give rise to a protein all by itself, despite the function [or end] of a gene being to give rise to a protein. It's the gene plus the cellular machinery which gives rise to a protein.
But I think teleology definitely entails determinism or at least 'probabilistic determinism' [given initial conditions + context A --> 80% chance of P]. How else would ends be reproducibly met?
Now imagine a person A who comes across T's. What would be the rational thing to do? To consider two explanations:
1. Coincidence
2. Teleology
You're ignoring option 1 in favor of 2 and that's a mistake. Isn't it?
It is quite true that, when there is a final cause, it is, as the Scholastics insist, the cause of causes. If I chose to build a house, all of the other explanatory factors (form, materials and workers) are contingent on my end.
None of this contradicts the point I made, namely, that Aristotle explicitly states that some events have no final cause. He gives as examples an eclipse, and the meeting of a lender and debtor in the market where each has come for other reasons. You would have seen this if you read a few more sentences in the SEP article:
Somehow, you missed the part of the article rebutting Rovelli. Note also that this corrects the misimpression created when Andrea Falcon wrote (without textual reference), that "an explanation which fails to invoke all four causes is no explanation at all." Clearly, this is not to be taken literally, but in the sense that such an explanation is defective.
Quoting S
You have not made your case. Let's revisit Rovelli's text.
I have no desire to defend Plato, only to show that Rovelli's view of Aristotle is quite mistaken. Democritus was wrong, and wrong, inter alia, for the reasons Aristotle gave. Democritus argues against Zeno that we cannot divide distances in half indefinitely because there are atoma, "uncutable" particles. This confuses a mathematical operation, which Zeno is considering, with a physical operation. Even is there were atoma, they would not prevent us from reflecting on line segments shorter than their diameter. So, Democritus hypothesis fails in its primary function, which was to rebut Zeno.
Having made the atoma hypothesis, Democritus goes on to postulate that atoma are separated by nothing. Aristotle correctly showed that (1) Zeno's problem was mathematical rather than physical, and (2) that if there were atoma separated by nothing, they would be in contact.
Modern physics has vindicated Aristotle and rejected Democritus. The locality postulate of quantum field theory is a restatement of Aristotle's principle that remote action requires mediation because agents only act where they are. There are no indivisible atoma. The atoms of modern chemistry are composed of divisible parts. All of the elementary quanta of high energy physics can be transformed into other kinds of quanta. Space is not nothing. Rather, it is, in Dirac's electron theory, a plenum of negative energy electrons; in quantum field theory, filled with all possible quantum fields; and in general relativity the bearer of observable fields described by the energy-momentum and the metric tensors.
Thus, Democritus was wrong on every essential point, while the continuous media and local action views of Aristotle command the field.
Now for Rovelli's claim that some of Aristotle's ideas "were later, for centuries, to create obstacles to the growth of knowledge." The text you cite gives no examples, so I will address the commonly cited example, which is the idea that bodies fall with a speed proportional to their mass. A fair reading of the text shows that the context for this claim was the behavior of bodies in viscous media -- not in a vacuum. Further, the equilibrium speed of a similarly shaped body in a viscous medium is, according to Stoke's law, proportional to its mass -- just as Aristotle said.
Of course, later physicists over generalized Aristotle's physics just as they later over generalized Newton's.
So, it is unclear which, if any, of Aristotle's ideas created "obstacles to the growth of knowledge."
No, I am deducing attributes from the little that the proof shows us about the end of the line. We know that it is, In Aristotle's proof, the ultimate cause of change, or, in my meta-law argument, the ultimate conserver of the laws of nature. We also know that, to be the end of the line, it must explain itself. These are things the respective proofs allow us to know for a fact. So, no assumptions are involved.
Quoting Christoffer
You seem to have no idea that the proofs involve concurrent, not time-sequenced causality, so that the nature of time and/or the history of the universe are totally irrelevant. If you read the proofs, you may be able to make relevant objections.
Quoting Christoffer
I have no idea what this sentence means. Deductive arguments can be unsound if (1) they have false premises, or (2) they involve invalid logical moves. If they have true premises and valid logic, their conclusions are invariable true. So, if you think the proofs fail you need to show either (1) they have false premises, or (2) they involve invalid logical moves. As you refuse to read the proofs, you can do neither.
Please get back to me when you've read at least one of the proofs and think you can do (1) or (2).
You are making conclusions based on data that proves you "to know the truth", when in physics we still don't have data to complete a unification theory. You claim a deduced truth when there is no data that can support your concluded truth. We know that the universe expanded quickly, referred to the Big Bang, we don't know what came before, we have no data to conclude what the cause was so we don't know what was before. This is facts, real facts about the current state of knowledge about the causality of the universe. Your deduction is based on the interpretation of some data, cherry-picked to fit the narrative of your argument and its logic.
If you are going to prove, without a doubt, a truth about the causality before Big Bang, you need to solve the physics that has not yet been solved and you need data that hasn't been gathered yet about Big Bang.
Before this, you don't have an argument that can claim itself to be true, because you don't have the facts that support it.
Quoting Dfpolis
What proof/data in physics are you using for your conclusion? I want references to the science that support your definition of proof. Without it, you are doing pseudoscience nonsense.
Quoting Dfpolis
Do you have data to prove something beyond what current physics don't have data to prove? If so, that is your flaw. You shoehorn some data into fitting your narrative, you do not have a deductive argument, you have a belief and you use flawed logic and insufficient data to support that belief.
Quoting Dfpolis
Please get back to me when you can combine your concluded truth with current understanding of the physics data we have to explain the universe at this time. You also need to prove what came before Big Bang in such a way that it combines all theories of physics into a unification theory.
If you do not do that, you cannot claim God to exist, because you don't have sufficient data to explain what came before Big Bang, therefore you cannot explain the start of causality or the attributes of it. And you can also not dismiss other possibilities because you cannot prove any possibility without a unification theory and data that proves which possibility is true.
What I said here, breaks your argument. You have burden of proof on your shoulders. You need to prove, without a doubt that your conclusion is true. If physics cannot prove it because of insufficient data at this time, then you cannot do it either. Period.
I'm not disputing your point, I'm disputing its relevance. I think that your interpretation of Rovelli was uncharitable.
Quoting Dfpolis
More uncharitable assumptions. Thanks. But you're mistaken. I did read further, and I didn't miss anything.
Quoting Dfpolis
I have made a point emphasising a particular part of the quote, a point which you haven't addressed, and I notice that you've conveniently left that part of the quote out of your "revisit".
Quoting Dfpolis
And you've attempted to do so with an uncharitable interpretation of the Rovelli quote, which counts against you, not him.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is way off topic. My intention wasn't to discuss the general ideas of each philosopher, but only those ideas relevant to the topic of teleology.
Quoting Dfpolis
That's no big deal. Within philosophy, the connection between teleology and Aristotle is well known, and its faults are well known also. In particular, the oak tree and bronze statue examples are well known, just like the apple with Locke, the shades of blue and golden mountain with Hume, the evil demon of Descartes, etc.
Quoting Dfpolis
The misguided emphasis on seeking teleological, or "final cause", explanations. The key word here is "explanation", by the way.
Yes, it is different because insensate nature acts deterministically, while free-will creatures do not. Still, the new purpose also instantiates final causality
No, I am saying that we can take something with an intrinsic purpose, like an eagle, which has its own finality, and make it a symbol serving the end of natural unity; or sexuality, which is naturally ordered to reproduction, and make it an expression of love.
Quoting aporiap
I am speaking of natural, empirically accessible, beings. Some have a deterministic finality, others do not.
Quoting aporiap
It is not that we can't reject our natural end, it is that doing so is ultimately self-destructive. Some people choose self-destructive behavior, which can be implicitly or explicitly suicidal.
As an aside, I see the notion of self-realization as fundamental to a natural law based ethics. What contributes to self-realization is morally good, what runs counter is morally bad. As social animals, self-realization has a strong social component.
Quoting aporiap
They are intimately related. Purely physical systems acting deterministically means that they are ordered to a single end. Free agents have a choice of ends. Most of the ends we choose are means to further ends, but ultimately we have a fundamental option that our intermediate ends are ordered to. We can opt for our natural (God-given) end of self-realization -- or we can opt against it, choosing an end that is (naturally) disordered -- for example, to acquire the greatest possible wealth.
A brain is a physical organ, subject to the deterministic universal laws of nature unless it is augmented by a subsystem capable of intentional operations such as awareness and commitment. (See my OP in https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4732/intentional-vs-material-reality-and-the-hard-problem.) So, animals that have brains, but lack an intentional subsystem also act deterministically.
Let's think about this in a different way. Teleology has been criticized for supposedly seeing a future state (the telos) as acting backward in time, pulling the present state into its future realization. Of course, that is not how it works. Rather, it works concurrently. My intention to get to the store acts at each moment of progress to guide my action in that moment. In the same way, the telos of a seed is a potential, not an actual state, and so not yet operational. So, it can not act here and now. Rather, the telos is immanent in the laws of nature operating on the present state. So, the laws of nature act like committed intentions.
The parallel structure of laws of nature tending to a determinate end and human intentionality tending to its committed end is the key to understanding problems ranging from the mind-body problem to Divine Providence.
Quoting aporiap
Of course. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Aristotle would seen substances (ostensible unities) as having ends, not their potential parts. He would see the potential parts of organisms as being ordered to the good of the whole.
Quoting aporiap
As intrinsic, the accomplishment of ends are subject to the vagaries of accidental interactions with other beings working toward their own ends. Aristotle makes this point in his discussion of accidental events, using the example of a lender and debtor meeting, not because they intend to, but as the result of each going to the market for his own ends.
That said, a common objection to teleology is that it is anthropomorphic -- projecting human experience into mindless nature. You seem to be taking a contrary position, seeing ends in nature, but not in free human positions. Am I misreading you?
I am not ignoring coincidence. I agree that there are coincidences in nature. The question is, what constitutes a coincidence? If we are to apply the term objectively, we need a good, empirically applicable definition.
It is clear, both in your example and in nature that the coincidences we see are not ontologically random, but deterministic. In nature, physics is deterministic with the possible except ion of quantum observations -- and they could not occur before the advent of intelligent observers. In your example, the machine is constrained to act according to the set of rules y. Thus, in neither case are the "coincidences" ontologically random.
Another possible approach to distinguishing coincidences from end-driven events might be to look at success rates. This also fails. In the generate and test strategy of AI, "random" solutions are generated, many of which fail. Still the generation of every solution serves the end of finding one that will satisfy the test criteria.
So, what makes events coincidences? It seems to me that what makes an event a coincidence is quite subjective, namely that we are unable to predict them. Our inability to predict them is not an objective property, and does not mean that they are not part of a larger plan. It is logically possible, for example, that the engineer who wrote the set of rules y did so intending that some pieces would fit and others not.
So, unless you can provide an objective definition of "coincidence" that logically excludes the possibility of more complex ends, it is unclear that being a "coincidence" is logically incompatible with serving an end.
That is possible. What would a charitable reading be?
Quoting S
I was being charitable -- assuming you did not read Andrea Falcon's rebuttal of Rovelli's claim.
Other than saying that I am uncharitable, in some unspecified way, in my interpretation of Rovelli, what point do you wish to make?
Quoting S
I understand that that was your intention, but your execution was much broader. The Rovelli quotation did not focus on teleology, but on broad and unnamed errors, somehow related to the rejection of Democritus, that slowed, in some unspecified way, the advance of knowledge. And, as it turns out, Democritus was wrong, and Aristotle right.
Quoting S
Alleged faults. I dealt with many in my OP. If you wish to argue some, have at it.
Quoting S
An actual, historical example of which would be? I am fairly conversant with the history of medieval and modern science and I can think of no glaring example. Rather, what I see is that with once the non-logical works of Aristotle became available in West in the latter 12th c., there were rapid advances in physics. Grosseteste studied optics and laid down the canons of the scientific method by 1235. Others developed the ideas of inertia and instantaneous velocity, developed the vector decomposition of forces, discovered what we now call Newton's first law and wrote standard texts on mathematical physics.
So, precisely who was delayed by this alleged "obstacle"?
This is a very confused claim. First, physics uses the hypothetico-deductive method, not strict deduction. So, physics never knows with the kind of certainty that strict deduction brings. Second, we are not doing physics, so what physics does or does not know is totally irrelevant.
As I keep repeating, there are only two valid forms of objection to a strict deduction: (1) show that a premise is false, or (2) show that a logical move is invalid.
Quoting Christoffer
Again, if you read the proofs, you would know that this entire line of objection is equally irrelevant. As I said last time, these proofs use concurrent, not time-sequenced, causality. So, as I also said last time, the nature of time and the history of the cosmos are irrelevant. If you actually read the proofs you would see that no assumption is made about how the universe began, or even that it did begin.
Since you are still not making proper objections because you have not read the proofs, I will wait until you have read the proofs to continue.
Physics has proven theories and they haven't proven anything to support any unification theory.
If you can't combine physics with your conclusion, you are essentially ditching science for your own belief. Physics is not irrelevant, your claim is irrelevant since you are supporting it with your belief, nothing more.
Quoting Dfpolis
Your logic is invalid since you base it on an assumption that hasn't been proven yet, i.e what happened before Big Bang.
Quoting Dfpolis
No physicist will agree with you because you are working with belief, not science.
You cannot prove anything because science demands much more strict focus on actual proof and logic, but you act within the realm of belief. So there is no truth to your argument, you claim there to be but have nothing to back it up with.
Quoting Dfpolis
You are not making proper arguments that actually proves a truth so there's nothing to object to. You cannot demand counter-arguments to arguments you haven't proven.
Prove that you know what happened before the Big Bang before demanding counter-arguments. You say you have the truth about the start of causality but you haven't shown it and no physicist would ever accept your claims just because you "say you are right".
You cannot demand people to object to you before you have followed burden of proof. You need to realize this fact first. You cannot prove your conclusion because people can't object when you haven't even presented a clear case for your argument and science shows you are wrong.
Prove your argument first and stop avoiding your obligation to do so, jeez.
Coincidence means an absence of causality. Teleology requires a causal connection.
What has this to do with what we are discussing? Nothing!
Quoting Christoffer
You continue to wander in the wilderness of self-imposed confusion. My meta-law argument is based on the laws of nature studied by physics, but you do not realize that because you are not open enough to even read a proof.
I am tied of wasting my time on someone who refuses to make any effort to inform themselves.
As physical determinism requires that all purely physical events be caused, by this definition, there are no coincidences.
You've heard of the maxim "correlation doesn't mean causation".
Yes, I have. We do not have mere statistical correlation between initial and final states in physics. They are completely determined (caused) by the laws of motion.
The laws of physics govern everything. Do you mean to say that everything is causally connected? I once read a book on logic that showed, as an example of coincidence, the correlation between priesthood and murder rates - both seemed to have increased. The author then went on to say that this is simple coincidence i.e. there was no causality in the data.
So, coincidences do happen even in a deterministic world. Teleology would have that there be no coincidences - the beak is meant for the nut, the web is meant for insects, etc. in a way that is purposeful and therefore NOT a coincidence.
It has everything to do with this. It has been pretty clear that we've been discussing proving God's existence and to do that you need to apply scientific facts and theories. If there are none, you can't prove anything with a logic that then has assumptions slapped on top of the conclusions.
Quoting Dfpolis
I'm unable to see your proof within published scientific papers. Can you link to publications in which your "proof" has been peer reviewed?
At the moment you are doing an appeal to authority fallacy, with the authority being yourself. And as I said, if you base your argument on physics, your proof need to have gone through a peer review, verification and falsification process before it can be considered proof for anything.
It's easy to write a book and refer to it as proof, it's an entirely different beast to have actual proof that can survive verification and falsification through peer reviews. You need to step down from that high horse and realize this fact. But if you have links to your scientific publications, go ahead and link them, please.
Or else you are just doing pseudoscience and that's it.
Recall that I asked you to define "coincidence," and you replied that "Coincidence means an absence of causality." So, we're discussing what "coincidence" means.
Since you brought up correlation, I assume that you do not mean that no causality is involved, but that two events are coincident if neither causes the other. I don't think that's enough. Many species of flowers bloom in the Spring with no species causing another to bloom. Still, this is not a coincidence because they all bloom in response to common causal factors. So, for events to be coincident, it is not enough for them not to cause each other, they can't result from a common cause.
The problem is, all purely physical events are the result of the laws of nature operating on the initial state of the cosmos. Futher, quantum entanglement shows that they continue to be related. So, strictly speaking, there are no coincidences. Still, it is meaningful to speak of "coincidences" because we do not mean to trace events back to their ultimate causes, but to more proximate cases that are apparent to us.
This means that being "coincident" is inescapably subjective. We decide how far back we wish to trace the causal chain. If the common causes are not apparent to us, then we call events "coincident." While this is fine for common purposes, it is inadequate for philosophical analysis -- for we know that all purely physical events are the result of common causal factors.
No, we don't. If you had read either of the proofs I suggested, you would know this.
This I find hard to believe. You mean to say that the asteroid that hit the Earth 65 million years ago and annihilated the dinosaurs was not a coincidence? You'd have to say no because you think teleology is truth and that means the asteroid had a purpose - the purpose of making mammals, more specifically humans, the dominant species on the planet.
Can you explain further...