There is definitely consciousness beyond the individual mind
I just posted this comment in a very short thread I found here about Carl Jung. I decided to repost it here. .....
Now that we have a better understanding of the relationship between genetics and epigenetics, Carl Jung's ideas correlate with the relationship between archetypes and semiotics. If Jung had had the insight of Charles S. Peirce, and the two had realized the genetic/epigenetic archetype/semiotic connection, we would be so much further now! But they had no knowledge of genetics and epigenetics. Consciousness is not only inside an individual brain, and this relationship explains the transition of life when the body dies. I go into a lot of detail about this in episode 4 of my podcast (A Musical Moment). Jung was ahead of his time in his understanding of archetypes and the collective unconscious. If only he had realized the semiotic connection. Biology is just now beginning to understand this amazing aspect of consciousness. It is a shame that materialists and dualist are so far behind in their understanding. Catherine Tyrrell (synechism scholar)
Now that we have a better understanding of the relationship between genetics and epigenetics, Carl Jung's ideas correlate with the relationship between archetypes and semiotics. If Jung had had the insight of Charles S. Peirce, and the two had realized the genetic/epigenetic archetype/semiotic connection, we would be so much further now! But they had no knowledge of genetics and epigenetics. Consciousness is not only inside an individual brain, and this relationship explains the transition of life when the body dies. I go into a lot of detail about this in episode 4 of my podcast (A Musical Moment). Jung was ahead of his time in his understanding of archetypes and the collective unconscious. If only he had realized the semiotic connection. Biology is just now beginning to understand this amazing aspect of consciousness. It is a shame that materialists and dualist are so far behind in their understanding. Catherine Tyrrell (synechism scholar)
Comments (212)
You may be interested in Gregory Bateson and the Evolution Of Mind.
But if you are going to bring in the biological in that way, it changes how one speaks of an "individual mind."
The perspective dispenses with a certain way to divide experience. If one accepts the new premises, one leaves behind the arguments that grew from the old. One cannot have the cake and eat it too.
It is important to include an understanding of how our brain develops and cognitively maps a model of reality, from conception on, and even prior when we include that science is now confirming that nervous systems can convey 'messages' to future generations via epigenetics. An individual cognitive model of reality is never the actual 'medium'. It is always cloaked. No matter who we are, or what opportunities we've had. The only way to get closer to a shared understanding is through dialogue. Just as synapses are not actually connected, but exchange information via chemical and electrical signals. As Bateson said, the territory never gets in due to representations, (maps of maps, ad infinitum). Consciousness extends beyond an individual brain.
"All the arguments of Zeno depend on supposing that a continuum has ultimate
parts. But a continuum is precisely that, every part of which has parts, in the same
sense." .....
CP 5.335 (commens.org)
Turtles all the way down? ;-)
Objects have matter and form in them. There is the atoms, and there is the arrangement into shape. But what of the shape of the atoms? The process goes on forever, so there IS matter and form. They are not distinguishable (enter Descartes) But the Aquinas doctrine of substances adds another, false, aspect to it. Things don't have an invisible substance of whoses' extension is an accident. Material things are defined by the the cohesion they have. Everything else is culture and psychology. This is strict materialism. Because of the marriage between finitude and infinity, everything is an indeterminate form, in the philosophical and in the mathematical sense.
Absolutely not.
I have found that when someone doesn't understand Peirce, or synechism, they resort to accusations of that nature. I hope you'll decide to learn at some point. I think it is beneficial for anyone.
If we were to try and apply a commonly understood, modern analogy to the relationship between semiotics and archetypes, semiotics might be thought of as the cognitive mapping ‘software’ that engages in an exchange of activity that is external to ‘self’, while ‘archetypes’ might be thought of as the cognitive mapping ‘internal’ hardware, that is fundamental to knowledge as a ‘collective’, and provides the platform for what arises as semiotic cause and effect. Let me explain more of how I come to this analogy, but in order to do that I will need to backtrack a little to a field of study I mentioned in episode #1; Epigenetics’. ….
Epigenetics is the study of changes in organisms cause by ‘modification’ to gene expression, rather than alterations to the genetic code itself. The Greek prefix ‘epi’ in epigenetics refers to features that are ‘on top of’ or ‘in addition to’ the genetic basis for inheritance. What’s fascinating about this field of research is how these scientific discoveries are confirming that there is ‘continuity’ in all things, and every ‘thing’ is just an aspect or ‘mode’ of the greater Whole. For example, in a December 1st, 2013 Nature Neuroscience article, located online at http://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3603, researchers found that when mice are taught to fear a particular odor, both their offspring and the next generation are subsequently born fearing that same odor. The findings indicate that environmental information may be inherited transgenerationally. And in a more recent study published in the scientific journal ‘Cell’, found at www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(19)30448-9.pdf, researchers confirmed that the nervous system ‘can’ transmit messages to future generations.
If we look at this with a parallel frame of mind regarding semiotics and archetypes, we can consider how semiotics is ‘epi’, or ‘on top of’ or ‘in addition to’ primitive archetypes. In other words, what makes our species ‘human’ in a genetic sense is our common genetic code, and what makes our species human in a cognitive sense is our primitive and collectively common archetypes. Our genes are influenced by our environment, or Medium, per epigenetics, and expressed as creative diversity manifested over and above genetic copies. Our collective, cognitive foundation (archetypes) is also influenced by our environment, or Medium, per semiotics, and expressed as creatively diverse ideas, and manifested in our verbal, non-verbal, and written dialogue.
I did this mistake too previously. It's much more fruitful to make threads about small specific things in your bigger thing even if knowing the bigger thing needs all the parts.
Everyone needs to start somewhere and very few will try this route if it is this hard to go trough.
Thank you for your insight. :)
All I can do is invite you, and I have.
I no longer debate these things. I don't have to, or need to.
I've been on enough forums to understand the nature of debate threads. I also study logic, and have been and have participated in debates. Peirce was first and foremost a brilliant logician. You should get to know him.
Have a good night.
These contrary comments posted toward me are totally irrelevant.
You’re going to have to do better than making such a statement and refusing to explain it. I’d be willing to look at your ideas if you could explain this. If it’s too much bother to answer on the third time of asking then I’ll assume you don’t have a reasonable answer.
I'm beginning to think that this forum is full of opinionated people with 'fixations of beliefs'. Sad.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I don't understand why you're here then.
You probably should read yourself other threads in this forum. They are mostly high quality enough unlike this thread and this thread isn't working because of the groundwork you demand of others and because of your low quality responses and shrugging off of people who just try to make you define your arguments to start a honest discussion.
Suggestion: make a new thread about a smaller topic with less groundwork for others and don't shrug off people who ask for you to define your arguments.
Then come back and explain it to me like I'm your child (that you love unconditionally because I'm somehow continuous with... yourself?).
What is it with this particular thread and people just saying that "read or hear this and then you will understand". That is not an argument. That is not discussion. That is just promotion. Please stop promoting and start doing what this forum is about. Arguments and discussion.
It is your job to make your sources easy enough for people in the forum to go through. And if your sources are too complex to simplify - too bad. You have to make a simpler thread or figure something else out. All the world would believe in my next level +12 magic of the Chaos Serpent if I got an infinitely long attention from everyone. There is a reason no ones attention is free and the more you want it, the more you have to demonstrate first - not afterwards.
If you are not here to discuss anything with other people unless they have gone through the things you are promoting, no one here will probably find you interesting enough to listen to.
Unless that person is here to promote something.
Probably should stop replying since the potential promoter seems to no longer be active and we shouldn't make his promotion more visible.
Perhaps it would be better if I were specifically told what it is I am requested to define. What precisely is it in my responses that is not understood?Highlight the word or phrase you do not understand. Not from my starting post, but from my response. ... I don't have time for bring toyed with. I am not leaving the forum, but I am leaving this thread.
Mapping the medium seems to be a podcast run by Catherine Tyrrell. I'm happy to be corrected.
I think maybe you don't have a lot of experience with internet forums. I looked at your homepage and am quite well-disposed to your general philosophy, but joining up and then saying 'hey everyone, just read/listen to all my lectures' does seem a lot like self-promotion.
I can see you're presenting ideas that require quite a bit of context or background to interpret. But trying to get a bunch of contrarians to absorb all that background is a stretch, in this type of medium.
What I suggest is, spend a bit of time lurking about - if it interests you, anyway - and then find some specific points or arguments that you can see relate to the kind of themes you're interested in. Everything here has to generally sound-byte size, i.e. snippets, sentences, short paragraphs. People are OK with being given references which illustrate specific points - I do that all the time - but 'unless you're thoroughly familiar with C. S. Peirce' is something else.
Hang in - well, as I said, if you're interested. But also learn to interact in this kind of medium, that's part of the challenge.
Sounds a fascinating read. Is that one of his articles for 'The Monist'? He published a lot of his more mystical stuff there, and it's a really interesting journal. It's still online.
Personally, I think Peirce's theism is important to understanding his work. He didn't labour it and he was certainly no evangelical, but I think it formed part of what he would consider the 'assumed background' of his ideas, in the broader cultural sense. If you read his work on 'agape-ism' he was plainly concerned with 'spiritual consciousness' but again, was by no stretch any kind of Christian apologist. But like his contemporaries William James, Josiah Royce, and Borden Parker Bowne, he was a kind of 'idealist-perennialist', in some ways closer to the German idealists (Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling) than many of his modern interpreters would be comfortable with. (Interesting footnote: 'semiotics' proper is said to have begun with Bonaventura, who, of course, saw it terms of 'signs of the divine intelligence'.)
Regarding the question in the OP: 'the individual mind' is in some sense contiguous with ego, the self's idea of itself. And of course there's much more to 'consciousness' than that - both in the sense of the unconscious and subconscious, as disclosed by Freud and jung, but also in the sense that there is cultural consciousness, and species consciousness, not to mention the various 'stations of consciousness' that are understood by spiritual adepts. But as we live in a primarily ego-centred and individualist culture, then all such questions are refracted through the prism of individuality, which tends to render them unintelligible.
To repeat, what do you mean by ‘consciousness existing beyond the individual mind’? Please note that the ‘collective unconscious’ is unconscious not ‘conscious’ - it is in this area that care is needed as the term ‘consciousness’ can often be mis/taken to mean ‘conscious awareness’.
Jung’s definition of this is often used by New Age types to promote woo woo, as I’m sure you’ve found, so take that on the chin and continue. I’m not interested enough to listen to your podcast yet - better things to listen to (so sell it by answer the repeated request).
Then why are you here? Just to plug your podcast? This is a place for discussion. If you are not interested in discussion, then go away before you are banned for spamming.
http://www.digitalpeirce.fee.unicamp.br/p-synesp.htm
[quote=link]
Peirce claimed that "[a]ll communication from mind to mind is through continuity of being." (CP 7.572) With this insight "the barbaric conception of personal identity must be broadened" to include a dimension of social mind and social consciousness. Philosophy cannot start with a cogito or with sense impressions. It starts with a recognition that sensation is judgment; judgment is generalization, and generalization requires generality. The next step is to link generality with significance:
[/quote]
[quote=Peirce]
ll regularity affords scope for any multitude of variant particulars; so that the idea [of] continuity is an extension of the idea of regularity. Regularity implies generality; and generality is an intellectual relation essentially the same as significance, as is shown by the contention of the nominalists that all generals are names. Even if generals have a being independent of actual thought, their being consists in their being possible objects of thought whereby particulars can be thought. Now that which brings another thing before the mind is a representation; so that generality and regularity are essentially the same as significance. Thus, continuity, regularity, and significance are essentially the same idea with merely subsidiary differences. (CP 7.535)
[/quote]
This reminds me of Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida. We we initially perceive is objects in a social context. I see perhaps a broom, which I know as 'something one sweeps the floor with.' And then regularity reminds me of iterability as ideality. Language is conventional. To speak or write intelligibly is to employ a code using words that can always be repeated and re-contextualized. They can function in my absence, and the letter I write may never arrive. So neither the sender or receiver grounds the meaning of the letter. One understands the letter. And one is anyone --a kind of structural unconscious that results from successful linguistic-cultural training. Drop a baby human in a community, and it will somehow absorb this 'structural unconscious.'
Then there's this:
[quote=Peirce]
There is a famous saying of Parmenides {esti gar einai, méden d' ouk einai}, "being is, and not_being is nothing." This sounds plausible; yet synechism flatly denies it, declaring that being is a matter of more or less, so as to merge insensibly into nothing. How this can be appears when we consider that to say that a thing is is to say that in the upshot of intellectual progress it will attain a permanent status in the realm of ideas. Now, as no experiential question can be answered with absolute certainty, so we never can have reason to think that any given idea will either become unshakably established or be forever exploded. But to say that neither of these two events will come to pass definitively is to say that the object has an imperfect and qualified existence. Surely, no reader will suppose that this principle is intended to apply only to some phenomena and not to others, __ only, for instance, to the little province of matter and not to the rest of the great empire of ideas. Nor must it be understood only of phenomena to the exclusion of their underlying substrates. Synechism certainly has no concern with any incognizable; but it will not admit a sharp sundering of phenomena from substrates. That which underlies a phenomenon and determines it, thereby is, itself, in a measure, a phenomenon.(CP 7.569)
[/quote]
This reminds me of Hegel's phenomenology. The notion of the substrate is unstable. And 'no concern with any incognizable' is an abandonment of the thing-in-itself as a kind of useless appendix. FWIW, I've been admiring Locke lately. For those interested in Locke versus Kant, I recently found this by Tomida and was quite impressed: https://sites.google.com/site/diogenesphil/lk
One last point is the 'point at infinity' implied by Peirce, which is some ideal end of inquiry that never arrives. This infects being with time, in a good way. 'No finite thing has genuine existence.' Also, 'the truth is the whole.' So Peirce is like an American twist on Hegel in some ways.
[quote=link]
Synechism, as a metaphysical theory, is the view that the universe exists as a continuous whole of all of its parts, with no part being fully separate, determined or determinate, and continues to increase in complexity and connectedness through semiosis and the operation of an irreducible and ubiquitous power of relational generality to mediate and unify substrates.
[/quote]
Granting some kind of truth to this, it doesn't free us from requiring more sober modes of thought. What we have here is perhaps a rationalizing articulation of the oceanic feeling. The increase in complexity suggests a kind of infinite progress. Instead of an end of history, we get endless ascension. Is this optimism a product of its time?
I'm here for discussion and dialogue, not debate. I love learning from others through reasonable dialogue. I wasn't trying to plug my website. If we are not allowed to mention our own website, why is it asked for in our profile? The topics involved are complex, and because of that I point to experts. But now I'm told that pointing to anything outside of this forum can be cause for removal. If that is the case, then all that is left is heated opinions and confrontations. I see no progress or learning in that, especially when I'm asked to explain something, then I do, but my response isn't even read, and I only receive more badgering. I'm not understanding the logic in that.
Thank you!
You are the first person here to logically and intelligently open a thoughtful and potentially fruitful discussion!
Your points are good ones, and I want to address them properly. Let me respond appropriately when the day finally dawns here and I am at my computer instead of my phone. Again, thank you.
Do you like Gadamer? This is a key idea in Truth and Method.
[quote=Gadamer]
The more language is a living operation, the less we are aware of it. Thus it follows that from the forgetfulness of language that its real being consists in what is said in it. What is said in it constitutes the common world in which we live. … The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it — what is said.
...
In fact history does not belong to us but rather we to it. Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self awareness of the Individual is only a flickering in the closed circuit of historical life. That is why the prejudices of an individual are — much more than that individual's judgments — the historical reality of his being.
...
We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said. It would be an inadmissible abstraction to contend that we must first have achieved a contemporaneousness with the author or the original reader by means of a reconstruction of his historical horizon before we could begin to grasp the meaning of what is said. A kind of anticipation of meaning guides the effort to understand from the very beginning.
[/quote]
My pleasure. I like all of these issues, so it should be fun.
Epigenetics involves genes being turned on or off, right?
Are you saying that primal imagery is turned on and off by some mechanism?
For instance, there is one prominent study showing that when mice are taught to fear a particular smell, their offspring, and the subsequent offspring are born fearing that smell.
Thank you for posting it, as I will be avoiding link postings.
If you want to engage with other members, then don't count on them listening to your podcast or reading your off-site posts. You are not my guru - you are some random stranger from the 'net. If you don't post anything of substance, then I am not going to chase after your teachings elsewhere.
(From what little you have revealed here, it looks like you are of those... impressionable individuals who got too enthusiastic about the ever-fashionable epigenetics. That's not as original as you might think. Geneticists who give popular talks dread the inevitable questions about epigenetics that they always receive, no matter the actual topic of their presentation.)
I especially like a video and books by Nessa Carey. Her video explains it so well that I added it to my educational playlist. Just search for her name on YouTube. It's great!
Consciousness extends beyond the brain but not past the surface of the skin. It’s a 1-to-1 ratio with the body, and is in fact the same thing. When we speak of consciousness we are speaking of the body in abatracto.
Does this belief stem directly from Pierce's metaphysics (Syncheism)? Why would biological mechanisms of behavioral inheritance, namely epigentics, provide any more support for this metaphysical theory? It seems like cultural evolution (memetics) is a far greater means of transmitting "what it is like to be" human between individuals.
Is it conceivable that there is only a limited number of hallucinations a person can experience?
I found it in Scientific American, too.
Much to my surprise, no duplication of the experiment has been reported.
This smells funny. Like acetophenone.
This is the chemical composition of acetophenone. Or maybe the protein sequence and its markers in the DNA.
I agree. More precisely, the universe is about corn crop futures in the nineteen-eighties, affecting oil prices in south Lebanon, which had its reverberations in Chilean grape exports to Canada. DAT's what the universe is really all about. Injustices of price cartel agreements.
The acetophenone thing is interesting.
If someone, with full knowledge and full consent, does something against their true conscience, the only way to get out of the situation is to do something good that is greater than the evil done. If you put your crime on someone else (Jesus) and sing Amazing grace, or put your crime on everyone else and watch the movie Home, you are screwed
This is a highly humanocentric view of the universe. Aside from your being right at the same probability rate as your being wrong, the thing you described is of very little concern to the universe as a whole.
While you maintain that you are materialist, this what you wrote and I quoted can't be verified as true unless you pull in some supernatural element, such as "justice prevails", or "karma catches up with you".
The first thing debateable of course is how you define evil. If it is something that is bad, then you can show of any evil deed that to someone else it was not only not evil, but a beautiful thing to create, to do, or to happen.
Barbara McClintock was ignored for decades before the mainstream scientific community came to heel.
The memory of a temperature spike can persist for as many as 14 generations in C. elegans.". .... https://www.the-scientist.com/the-literature/epigenetic-inheritance-in-nematodes-31228
It’s tiresome when you simply post links and continue to waffle, avoid direct questions, and all whilst proclaiming how other people have complimented you for simplifying complex ideas. Step up. I want more (or rather SOMETHING). I see hints yet when probed - several times - you’ve not answered. It’s boring, my sympathy is running low (stop playing the victim too ffs!)
Note: I listened to one of your podcasts, it wasn’t particularly good or in any way insightful. I do admire your ambition though - the podcast is aimed at people who arrive with empty minds and little to no knowledge of the subject matter. Also, drop the annoying ‘music’.
Why would you find that surprising? Few experimental studies are duplicated.
Anyway, epigenetics in general is not controversial, and hasn't been for a long time (even if the OP is trying to evangelize it as if it was the latest miracle cure). But popular media and various cranks have sensationalized and distorted it to the point that honest biologists cringe when they are asked about it.
Thank you.
Yes, it's been a learning curve, trying to develop audio properly, and find the sweet spot of the best way to reach the most general audience. There in lies where most of our cultural problems exist. There is a chasm between academia and the general public population of evangelicals and followers of scientism.
The intro music was only started as a recognition sound, and it will be condensed to only a few notes this Spring. The next two episodes will be 'A Bird's Eye View' (explaining how what we think of as 'universal' is limited to human perspective, and introducing the concept of 'semiosphere') and 'The Inside Out of Color'.
I've got much better sound equipment now. Thank goodness!
GL :)
so, do you think full, human level Consciousness is possible to be implemented in an AI machine? Or, only organic wet-wear can possess it? Your arguments/views seem to conclude the later.
In light of synechism (continuity), and the necessity of 'otherness' in the process of semiosis, ... 'emergence' clearly is of an organic nature. No matter how sophisticated, AI machines will never 'emerge' and be a natural processing organism of semiosis.
hogwash. there is nothing about continuity that precludes machine implemented emergent AI conscious agents. If anything, they could be more in touch with the quantum continuum via things like q-bits, quantum wells, single particle systems, etc.
Anyhow, that continuity concept seems unworthy of serious consideration b/c for it to matter the continuum chain would have to transmit a continuum of meaning, which I posit is impossible to preserve between dimensions and even between orders of magnitude in scale. For example, Peirce’s synechism concept fails in the simplest of examples like the party game where you get many people (say 10) side by side and have one at one end tell a message to their adjacent, and each repeats the same message to the next. The meaning of the message always is altered, even if subtlely, by the time it is repeated at the other end. Thus, it fails even in that ideal case, of nearly identical cognitive agents speaking the same language living in the same culture. So, we should have almost zero confidence in any kind of meaning existing in subparticles, in far remote locations, being able to communicate their meaning through quantum mechanical random fluctuations to neurons that communicate that as the same meaning to the conscious agent.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
More hogwash. My model creates a potential framework of otherness using very concreate, machine implementable means.
my hypothesis/theory/model under development, predicts otherwise. There is energy- Energy patterns as an entity in-and of itself. That is, in my model, consciousness, esp. the qualia kind, is pure energy create as a sort of new, and separate entity within the physical entity, yet part the system as a whole. In my model, the 'consciousness' entity is pure energy, being in a resonant whole with the cognitive and sensory/motor systems such that they are effectively a whole, unified entity with all parts in tune and sensing all other parts all at once. This is a physical 'thing' not a process b/c it is an instantaneous resonant wave system inseparable from the physical boundary and propagating media properties/constraints.
The closest analogy I can think of is a macro version of a Bose-Einstein condensate, so maybe a 6th state of matter. Can't say with confidence yet, but I currently see this, along with many other frameworks/mechanics, as a promising framework for me to achieve the qualia aspect of consciousness. For the access aspects of consciousness, I'm modeling that under a sophisticated non-verbal linguistic framework, which are mostly data-structures and processes and I do not expect those will be part of the 'qualia' experience.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
‘clearly’??? LOL. and the Earth is flat and the center of the universe, just because you say so... right?
I’ve presented more concreate “otherness” physical model hypothesis above that does not rely on any supernatural hocus-pocus, and showed a strong counter-example to a synechism requirement (which there is no evidence occurs in the human brain/mind), so how do you logically argue that Consciousness clearly is of an organic nature?
https://epochemagazine.org/the-continuity-of-being-c-s-peirces-philosophy-of-synechism-9fa5c341247e
"The challenge that Peirce’s synechism issues us [and Mapping the Medium], however, is this: if the universe really is found to be continuous, such that between any two things there is no unbridged gap but a gradient of infinitesimal degrees of difference — in at least potency if not actuality — if this continuity exists in fact and not only in theory (and a careful examination, I think, can only lead one to the former conclusion): what then explains this continuity, if not agapasm?"
http://www.commens.org/encyclopedia/article/esposito-joseph-synechism-keystone-peirce%E2%80%99s-metaphysics
Peirce did not explain continuity by reference to a continuous medium like space or time. He observed: “Now if my definition of continuity involves the notion of immediate connection, and my definition of immediate connection involves the notion of time; and the notion of time involves that of continuity, I am falling into a circulus in definiendo.” (CP 6.642) At times he argued that we have direct knowledge of continuity through immediate consciousness of our present feelings, (CP 1.167), and since those feelings must be past before we can interpret them, when we do so interpret them we must be in unmediated contact with the pasts continuously connected with the future. (CP 1.169; 4.641) Therefore, he argued, it is a sound hypothesis to believe that “time really is continuous.” But he also argued that “time logically supposes a continuous range of intensity in feeling.” (CP 6.132.) Unanswered in these considerations is whether time is continuous because our feelings are continuous or whether our feelings our continuous because they endure in continuous time.2
With regards to space, Peirce denied that three-dimensional Newtonian space was objectively real, adopting a Leibnizian conception over a Newtonian one. (CP 5.530) In his third letter to Samuel Clarke Leibniz argued that space as not absolute but “an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions.” As Peirce described it, the order of space is not geometrical but dynamical and even dialectical: “Space is thus truly general; and yet it is, so to say, nothing but the way in which actual bodies conduct themselves. ”
…
Peirce recognized that continuity in whatever form manifested and was governed by generality: “continuity is not an affair of multiplicity simply (though nothing but an innumerable multitude can be continuous) but is an affair of arrangement also.” (CP 4.121) He realized that “[t]here is no continuity of points in the sense in which continuity implies generality.” (CP 5.205) and that “continuity and generality are the same thing.” (CP 4.172) And finally: “Now continuity is shown by the logic of relations to be nothing but a higher type of that which we know as generality. It is relational generality.” (CP 6.190)
…
However, his eventual objection was that the system broke down in the face of the doctrine of continuity, viz., that there may be states of the universe that are not strictly units or links, but vague in-between states that are given a false precision because we may refer to such states precisely using a discrete form of language. In fact Kempe’s entire system was a form of language that defined its terms as having the power to represent but could not be said to represent anything. Therefore, Kemp’s system did not have a way of characterizing our interpretation of it on its own terms. Kempe’s diagrams do not represent anything; therefore, “it is not surprising that the idea of thirdness, or mediation, should be scarcely discernible when the representative character is left out of account.” (CP 3.423) When Kempe refers to a process as a unit “the diagram fails to afford any formal representation of the manner in which this abstract idea is derived from the concrete ideas.” (CP 3.424) In other words, Peirce was not satisfied with a system of notation that could refer to all that may be denoted, for a spot could fully refer to the entire universe; he wanted a system that was “connected with nature” (CP 3.423) and that was also linked to a process of discovery: “The difference between setting down spots in a diagram to represent recognized objects, and making new spots for the creation of logical thought, is huge,” he concluded .(CP3.424) Kempe, to Peirce’s satisfaction, could not refute the claim that Thirdness was an undecomposable element of the universe, and that if continuity was relational generality representational capacity must be part of that generality.
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Hormones and other signaling molecules circulate throughout the body to highly specific targets in order to activate through various transduction pathways other messengers that turn on or inhibit cascades of enzymes. However, such descriptions do not reach a level of relational generality that explains what is being described, and we are left to marvel at what we do not understand even while the picture may be clearly before us. What is the required level of generality—the subatomic, the cellular, the intercellular, that of functioning organs, the organism, the ecological? Peirce suggests that there may be a relatively few general algorithms that are capable of explaining the dizzying complexity of mushy biological systems. He would contend that the capacity to represent would be a part of this synechistic algorithm. Representation is a process of creating a virtual reality, a Hegelian ‘reflection’, the emergence of a Thou to an I. It is part of every physical process, according to Peirce:
Whatever is real is the law of something less real. Stuart Mill defined matter as a permanent possibility of sensation. What is a permanent possibility but a law? Atom acts on atom, causing stress in the intervening matter. Thus force is the general fact of the states of atoms on the line. This is true of force in its widest sense, dyadism. That which corresponds to a general class of dyads is a representation of it, and the dyad is nothing but a conflux of representations. A general class of representations collected into one object is an organized thing, and the representation is that which many such things have in common. And so forth. (CP 1.487)
Atomism collapses because it does not include a way of integrating itself into a theory, for example, of how biological sub-systems may ‘signal’ other sub-systems and generally of how representations could co-exist with atoms
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Thirdness
Synechism may be regarded as Peirce’s philosophy of Thirdness, the category of mediation, regularity, and coordination, as well as of “generality, infinity, continuity, diffusion, growth, and intelligence.” (CP 1.340). To say that continuity is an illustration of Thirdness is to say that no continuous process could continue accidentally and without guidance. There are many instances in his writings where Peirce describes Thirdness. For example:
By the third, I mean the medium or connecting bond between the absolute first and last. The beginning is first, the end second, the middle third. The end is second, the means third. The thread of life is a third; the fate that snips it, its second. A fork in a road is a third, it supposes three ways; a straight road, considered merely as a connection between two places is second, but so far as it implies passing through intermediate places it is third. Position is first, velocity or the relation of two successive positions second, acceleration or the relation of three successive positions third. But velocity in so far as it is continuous also involves a third. Continuity represents Thirdness almost to perfection.(CP 1.337)
Every feature of synechism requires for its explanation reference to the category of Thirdness.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I pray you are not suffering from the same mental issues as your philosophical mentor Peirce.
https://epochemagazine.org/the-continuity-of-being-c-s-peirces-philosophy-of-synechism-9fa5c341247e
Peirce’s life, as artfully depicted in Joseph Brent’s biography, fits the profile of tortured genius more than most. Born the son of a Harvard professor of mathematics, he was precocious, brilliant, unsure of himself, erratic, temperamental, by turns abstemious and lascivious. He suffered all his life from the pains of trigeminal neuralgia — which he treated by various chemical concoctions, including morphine and cocaine — and likely had bipolar disorder. He was, moreover, convinced that his left-handedness was a physiological deformity that rendered him at odds with the rest of society, and would experience agonizing paralytic spells to which no diagnosis fit. He believed in God seemingly more from philosophical conviction, and perhaps mystical (or drug-induced) experience, than from any religious habit or practice...Where his personal life was marred by interruptions — mania and depression, pain and addiction, rejection and isolation — his thought was marked by continuity. Not to say that Peirce never changed his mind or even that he was steadfast and consistent in his writings; but what more than anything else what he sought was the coherence of thought.
Perhaps it would serve us to review the definition or definitions of 'consciousness'.
Perception' and 'Responsiveness' are two words used to define 'Consciousness'. There is nothing I can find that says this is confined to an individual person. If the whole of existence and creation is 'mind' processing information (in reference to my favorite thinkers listed on my profile), ... You should be able to understand my perspective regarding epigenetics.
so, according to your definition, you would say that an AI robot machine that has Perception and is Responsiveness to that perception is presumed to be 'Consciousness'?
Two words used to describe living consciousness.
For such a bold, sweeping conclusion, you need to define what you mean by Perception and what is Responsiveness. Otherwise, sounds like self-serving, dogmatic nonsense.
You know, I'm really perfectly fine with you having the last word. I am not a competitive, confrontational person. So go for it. I promise I won't respond.
that is obviously a cop out... if I call your prior answer hogwash that is discounting what you reply as being nonsense, not being confrontational. you should expect that your extraordinary claims require your extraordinary evidence (plausible logic or at least holding your claims/definitions up to scrutiny). I'm sure you know very well you cannot define consciousness well enough to avoid it applying to AI machines yet still capture 'living' consciousness as your dogma needs to. Thus, seems like you have a cult...
Perhaps my post in the Lounge might help clarify some of these discussion points.
I hope you and others here have stayed safe and well with all of the recent turmoil in the world.
I disagree with the last comment you made. I think some people are put off by threads which leave a lot of scope for discussion but if anything I believe they can be used very creatively if used well.
I am extremely interested in the whole tradition of thinking stemming from Jung's ideas. This has given rise to the archetypal psychology of James Hillman. It also links in with ideas of Joseph Campbell, which have been useful for understanding the symbolic dimensions.
In relation to science, one writer who I would recommend, who I have not seen mentioned on this site so far is Rupert Sheldrake. He wrote from a biological point of view, coming up with a idea called morphic resonance, which was an inherent memory in nature, which links the processes of evolution with Jung's idea of the collective unconscious.
Anyway, I wish you all the best in developing threads. I think I have been the mistake of being too vague at times and it is useful to ask specific questions. I have been using the site for a couple of months and still learning not to get despondent. I feel that there are many writers on the site who prefer to shut down thinking rather than open up the most creative possibilities.
I have a few ideas for threads, including one on Freud and one on Jung's contribution to the understanding of the problem of evil. But I am trying to put a bit of thought into them so that they do not get dismissed and rejected in short responses of text babble.
Hello Jack :)
Thank you for your very well written response. You mentioned being too vague. I think what the challenge is here is in trying to converse more generally in a forum very saturated with nominalists who only want to converse in particulars. It's one of the reasons I have been so enamored with Peirce's categories of inductive, abductive, and deductive reasoning. People can easily talk past one another if it's not clear that they are examining a subject with the same tools of logic, and in a logical sequence. Hence, Peirce's scientific method.
It's a pleasure to meet you. I hope we can have many great discussions. :)
Yes, I am glad to meet you on this site. I see that you have started a few conversations.I decided to dive in and write one on Freud.
The only thing is that this forum can be a bit addictive. I nearly missed getting off the bus because I was busy writing on my phone...
I will try to look up Searle's ideas. But I miss libraries so much as in England they have been shut since March. The Universities have reopened but not the libraries and if they never reopen I do fear the impact on philosophy if physical books become buried fossils of the past.
Cathy
I must have missed this topic 10 months ago. I'm sorry you have been getting the "religious nut" treatment on the forum. I think you are correct about the predominance of Nominalists, who may also be Materialists and Atomists. But in order to converse with them, you will need to try to speak their language, which may not include much Piercean metaphysics.
Although I have no formal philosophical or scientific training, my mature thinking is more grounded in Pragmatic (William James) Materialism, as opposed to the Spiritualism of my youth. That may be why my attempts to read Pierce, and to follow your threads, tend to bog-down. Many of the words used are not in my vernacular vocabulary. For example, his "Synechism" (continuous) seems to be close to my understanding of Holism --- as originally defined by Jan Smuts in terms of Evolution, not as loosely used by New Agers. So, even though most posters are not interested enough to read voluminous links, It's OK to link to "expert" definitions as an extension of your personal opinions. But your key point must be made in the current post.
Another loaded word that gets gored in this forum is Consciousness, especially "Universal Consciousness" and "Panpsychism". That's one reason I try to avoid those latter terms. Instead of implying that every atom in the world has a human-like perspective, I say that serious scientists are coming to the conclusion that mundane Information is universal. And Consciousness is a later emergent development in the evolution of fundamental Information.
Personally, I am not so sure that human-like Consciousness is universal. But since planet Earth is over-populated with inter-communicating conscious creatures, some have speculated on the emergence of a Global Mind. It's a neat idea, but I don't know how to communicate with such a being. Plus, taking into consideration the chaos of the constituents, the whole system (Gaia?) might be half-crazy. :nerd:
“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” ___ Socrates?
Holism : https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_holism.html
Ubiquitous Information vs Universal Consciousness : http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page13.html
Note : a non-expert opinion
Is Information Fundamental? : https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/is-information-fundamental/
Well, history is filled with people who when they don't understand something automatically jump to thinking that it must have something to do with the 'supernatural'.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, this is the disappointing aspect of trying to have conversations here. It is common for nominalists to not realize that they are just as dogmatic in their perspectives as 'spiritualists'. Peirce (P-e-i-r-c-e, pronounced 'purse') is by all means not the 'whole ball of wax' for me. That's an important aspect of the expanding nature of the continuity that he termed 'synechism'. For me, there are several other thinkers that branch out the understanding into biology, physics, aesthetics, language, psychology, thought, and philosophical dual-aspect monism. There is a list of thinkers on my profile that I also draw from for my writing and teaching. What attracts me to Peirce is that he was a brilliant logician, and when one takes the time to learn some of the details of his logic, it is very helpful in understanding these ideas.....
SYNECHISM is the name, from the Greek synechismos, syneches (continuous), Charles Peirce gave to a set of related ideas:
(1) "the doctrine that all that exists is continuous" (CP 1.172);
(2) the rejection of atomism and the existence of ultimate elements;
(3) the view that continuity of being is a condition for communication (CP 7.572);
(4) the view that to exist in some respect is also to not exist in that respect (CP 7.569);
(5) the view that "all phenomena are of one character" consisting of a mixture of freedom and constraint that tends in a teleological manner to increase the reasonableness in the universe (CP 7.570);
(6) the view that consciousness has a bodily and social dimension, the latter originating outside the individual self (7.575);
(7) "the doctrine . . . that elements of Thirdness cannot entirely be escaped" (CP7.653);
(8) a theoretical synthesis of pragmatism and tychism (the doctrine that chance events occur);
(9) the fallibilist view that our scientific facts are continually subject to revision;
(10) "a purely scientific philosophy [that] may play a part in the onement of religion and Science" (CP 7.578).
Quoting Gnomon
The key point is that in severing the continuity, it breaks the relational aspects.
I am not here to preach ideas, promote anything, or even 'win' debates. I need the perspectives of others to help me grow in my understanding so that I may become a better writer and teacher. Nominalism is what ails our world, and talking with nominalists helps me learn how to help them broaden their perspectives.
I do think my other post (Thirdness, Induction, Top Down and Bottom Up, .. and symbols) answers most of the questions posed to me on this one, but I can't help the fact that many here have no interest in reading it. It is certainly much shorter than an opening debate in Congress. ;-) Ha!
A couple of things mentioned by others in this thread that I would like to respond to are these, but they have to be responded to in a synechistic context...
1) Peirce DID NOT believe in the existence of God. However, Peirce did believe that God (as in Thirdness, Logos) is 'real'.
2) Agapasm IS NOT the same as agape-ism.
Quoting Gnomon
Ah.... 'universal' to whom? ;-)Quoting Gnomon
Lol .... You and I are on the same page regarding that, for sure!
It's exactly why I have taken on writing about the tragic effects of nominalism.
please point me to your post in "the Lounge". I do not know how to find that.
thanks, and doing well in the WFH model and avoiding indoor crowds, etc. be well.
I have several new posts, but here is the only recent post I have in 'the Lounge".
Lounge post
I'm always glad to hear that others are doing well in these difficult times. :)
I just realized that this is the post you may have been referring to. It ended up not being in the Lounge. ..
Thirdness, Induction, Top Down and Bottom Up, ... and symbols
yes, Nominalism was off topic. the 3rdness is very long, but I'll scan it over for anything that catches my eye/mind.
thx.
Being on this forum, and trying to converse with "the predominance of Nominalists, who may also be Materialists and Atomists" would be very helpful for me to try and learn from their perspectives, and hopefully add to making me a better writer and teacher. However, after several attempts of trying to get into deeper discussions of emergence and continuity, and being shut down or having my posts deleted for not being brief enough or not parsing out statements for nominalistic analyzation, there's no reason for me to stay here. It seems that those are the only perspectives that this forum exists for, and just as nominalism does so well in its divisiveness, I am severed away from really being able to participate.
I am in total agreement with Peirce when he said.....
"If the captain of a vessel on a lee shore in a terrific storm finds himself in a critical position in which he must instantly either put his wheel to port acting on one hypothesis, or put his wheel to starboard acting on another hypothesis, and his vessel will infallibly be dashed to pieces if he decides the question wrongly, Ockham's razor is not worth the stout of any common seaman. For stout belief may happen to save the ship, while Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem would be only a stupid way of spelling Shipwreck. Now in matters of real practical concern, we are all in something like the situation of that sea captain."
I just have more effective things to do with my time than to go nowhere in nonsensical back and forths with nominalists.
See you around, Gnomon! I'm sure we'll bump into each other again somewhere. :wink:
As someone with nominalist inclinations, I still find this charming, right down to the note of pragmatism:
Quoting Paul Grice
Not everyone who reads this site posts, or even if they do, they don't participate in every conversation. Thus one of the points of posting is to explain to lurkers the alternative you offer. An excellent model for this is @Andrew M, who has been patiently, succinctly, and graciously explaining his worldview to the rest of us for years. Search up any of his posts explaining hylomorphism and you'll find a model for how to be on this forum among people who either disagree with you or, more often, don't even know about or understand the alternative on offer.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
There is Peirce's pragmaticism, and then there is what was 'parsed out' from it by William James and perverted into nominalistic pragmatism. The difference is precisely why I shouldn't stay here.
Thanks again for conversing. :)
That's so ironic.... That's precisely how I feel about nominalists.
I think I would be remiss if I also didn't point out that nominalism and Cartesianism were born out of the Catholics wanting to justify God's Will, and then the Humanists taking the 'man being formed in God's image' view to justify the Will of man, and the "I think therefore I am" close-minded mirror perspective, ultimately elevating man to a self-centered, exceptionalist status, and subsequently causing some of the daunting challenges we face today.
Peirce's logic is not born out of any religious dogma. That's the whole point, and possibly why you run across some 'differentness' in those who have actually taken the time to understand it. It's extremely freeing to be rid of the religious monkey that dogmatic perspectives carry, whether they be religious or nominalist.
Ooh, burn!
Just curious, what does "nominalist" even mean to you? You don't seem to use it in its usual meaning, but more like "motherfucker."
Not at all. Although, that's not a word that I would ever use, I would think that a 'm-fer' is informed enough to be intentionally destructive. On the contrary, I think that our culture is so immersed in nominalism that most people don't even realize how their perspective negatively affects others and our biosphere.
The founders of modern materialistic Science deliberately limited their investigations to Specific and Reductive elements of reality. In doing so, they abandoned Universals and Wholes to "feckless" philosophers, who deign to dabble in Metaphysics (First Philosophy). From the nominalist perspective, the human Mind is just a name for brain-work. And that's OK, if you are studying Physiology, but not if you study Psychology or Ontology.
So a "nominalist philosopher" seems to be a misnomer, doing non-empirical word-processing instead of Hard Science. They appear to be motivated by "physics envy" in their search for particular Knowledge instead of universal Wisdom. They speak of Time & Space as-if they are real things, instead of just names for general concepts. :cool:
Nominalism : the doctrine that universals or general ideas are mere names without any corresponding reality, and that only particular objects exist; properties, numbers, and sets are thought of as merely features of the way of considering the things that exist. Important in medieval scholastic thought, nominalism is associated particularly with William of Occam.
Metaphysics :
[i]1. the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space.
2.abstract theory with no basis in reality.[/i]
Yes, this sounds like where I am at as far as ontology is concerned, though I could never put it as gracefully as Grice does here. I'll have to dig up this paper.
I look to Peirce for logic. He was a brilliant logician. Many people have a difficult time following 'logic' as a discipline, and that's ok. But the point is that people really shouldn't jump to conclusions about things they don't understand.
I look to many other highly skilled, highly admired thinkers for other angles of perception on Being and Reality. Along with Peirce, I think it's extremely important to examine any worthwhile topic from different angles (as long as they are not immersed in nominalism or religion). Emergence, chance, and continuity certainly demand that we do that.
Quoting Gnomon
I personally think this is the biggest misunderstanding about Peirce's logic. For Peirce, there is a very big difference between what exists and what is real. I also think this is a chasm between Peirce and Philosophy of Mind. This is why I tried to broach the subject of Thirdness, cognitive archetypal forms, Induction, Abduction, and Deduction on this forum, but even though the thread was active and had a real conversation going, it has been deleted. I received a message that I had a comment to reply to there, but when I went to read it I found that the whole thread no longer exists.
Perhaps another person who also understands these features of logic will have more time to devote to this forum than I do.
Thanks for the shoutout. And a great Grice quote.
Along Grice's lines, a value of the forum is that one gets to try out one's tools on a variety of interesting problems and either improve them further, or learn about other tools that might do a better job.
The trick is to be actually using the tools to do the work (and, one hopes, making progress on the problems), and not just admiring them as they sit all shiny and untouched on the shelf.
amen to that. It's one of the principles I've been sporadically arguing for since Day One of my participation on forums. My main argument for it, is that intelligible objects (such as mathematical proofs), are real, but not existent; that their existence is purely intelligible, but they're real, albeit in a different way to material existents. It's an argument found in Augustine and is at odds with both materialism and nominalism.
I'm reading from a book called Pierce and the Threat of Nominalism. Not far into it yet, but the introduction contains a succinct summary of what 'nominalism' comprises, and why it's a false doctrine.
I just found your thread on Gillespie's book, Theological Origins of Modernity. Agree that it's an important and under-rated book.
I don't know why your threads would have been deleted, it seems a shame they were.
Absolutely, and I want to say your use of "shiny" is not coincidental.
Let's call a concept (method, habit, algorithm, whatever) robust if it is improved by use, and a concept (etc.) brittle if it breaks when you try to use it. In between would be concepts that are "okay", adequate within a quite limited domain perhaps, but not leading past themselves much.
Considering the material to use a tool on, or its field of application, I find myself reminded of Wittgenstein's remark about ice: because conditions are, in one sense, "perfect", no progress is possible -- back to the rough ground!
Now imagine a hiking boot with a glass sole: you can "demonstrate" how remarkable it is by sending the unoccupied boot all the way across the frozen pond with one push. This is one way of doing philosophy.
That's a demonstration of something, but not of something anyone really needs. Back to the rough ground, and to tools that will improve with use on rough ground, and that means no glass-soled boots.
Can you elaborate? I'm not very familiar with Pierce's writing. What little I've tried to read is way over my head. But I too, make a distinction between "what exists" and "what is physically real". For example, mental Abstractions are a prominent component of human experience, even though they have no physical instances. In what sense do they exist? :smile:
Not fair, Gnomon. ;-) You know I am trying to bow out.
Quoting Gnomon
Don't you actually mean "In what sense are they real?
We abstract information provided in our surrounding medium by signs that we interpret. Triadic sign systems flow throughout the existence of all life forms, even within our bodies as genetic and epigenetic coding and decoding. This is in essence 'biological dialogue'. Does it exist? As in can you touch it? Can you measure it? No. ..... But isn't it real? Absolutely.
Peirce focused on laws and habits regarding the difference between what exists and what is real. Laws of nature. Laws of mathematics. Laws of physics. Laws of logic. ....etc..
The term 'Synechism' is what Charles Peirce gave to a set of related ideas:
(1) "the doctrine that all that exists is continuous" (CP 1.172);
(2) the rejection of atomism and the existence of ultimate elements;
(3) the view that continuity of being is a condition for communication (CP 7.572);
(4) the view that to exist in some respect is also to not exist in that respect (CP 7.569);
(5) the view that "all phenomena are of one character" consisting of a mixture of freedom and constraint that tends in a teleological manner to increase the reasonableness in the universe (CP 7.570);
(6) the view that consciousness has a bodily and social dimension, the latter originating outside the individual self (7.575);
(7) "the doctrine . . . that elements of Thirdness cannot entirely be escaped" (CP7.653);
(8) a theoretical synthesis of pragmatism and tychism (the doctrine that chance events occur);
(9) the fallibilist view that our scientific facts are continually subject to revision;
(10) "a purely scientific philosophy [that] may play a part in the onement of religion and Science" (CP 7.578).
Even though I fully understand each of the above.... For me, I also interpreted #4 to be akin to Heraclitus's Unity of Opposites. Think of Herclitus's example of the bow or the lyre. The tension that exists in the opposing forces. It is that tension that is inherent in all of life, and it is what causes life to strive against entropy. Life ceases in stagnation. Opposing forces exist as a law that encourages life to strive. Also, an individual identity is dependent on others and differences. We only understand 'self' in relation to that which is 'not self'.
Peirce found in his work on these fascinating results of logic (akin to Heraclitus's 'Logos') that the 'whole' of life is striving 'towards', and when following the logic step by step, it really is a fascinating journey.
Quoting Gnomon
Abstraction is only one step in the process. Alfred Korzybski focused on abstraction, but without understanding the steps that lead up to abstraction, and also what follows, the idea of abstraction can fall into bed with nominalism. We mustn't 'parse out' abstraction.
I am very familiar with that book. :smile: Some of the reviews say that Forster's position and argument are lacking, but I suggest that you keep in mind while you are reading it that more and more of Peirce's work has been examined and become better understood even in the last decade. That, and the fact that nominalists are always going to pounce on any book expressing how their view is a 'threat'.
Yes, Peirce was a fierce 'anti-nominalist', and after decades of research and study, I am right there with him. :brow:
I should be thanking you. My subject matter is not exactly mainstream. When I happen to come across someone I can converse with about it, I just can't help but smile. :grin:
Sorry to interrupt your exit. Maybe, like a stage performer, you can take a second and third bow. :joke:
Quoting Mapping the Medium
OK. I'll bite. In what sense are mental Abstractions "real", as opposed to "existent"? I suppose that Pierce intended to reconcile Realism & Idealism in his philosophy. But his explications are so complex and technical, that I get lost in a labyrinth of enigmas. Maybe you can 'splain it to me.
In my attempt at a common-sense answer to that query, I simply point-out that our meta-physical ideas are as much a part of our "reality" (our worldview) as our physical sensations. But that doesn't imply that they have the same ontological status. They "exist" in different senses : Objective and Subjective. These distinctions are as old as Philosophy. So, it's not a question of Either/Or, but of BothAnd.
However, the advent of Modern Science began to drive a wedge between objective "Facts", and mere "Beliefs" -- which were banished, to reside in an imaginary never-never-land of Platonic Ideality. That flip-flop of primacy for Facts over Faith made sense when early scientists were seeking to escape from bondage to Church hegemony. But that rebellion never succeeded in completely overthrowing the role of Faith in the popular mind. So, perhaps "hard" Nominalists are still fighting that old revolutionary war against the power of political/religious dominance. But today, even staunch Catholics accept the validity of most empirical facts. Yet, the Cold War of Real vs Ideal may never be over for some.
I assume that a "hard" Nominalist would have to say that Ideas are un-real, so un-important. However, I don't know many people who go that far with their worldview of Materialism. The theory of Evolution is merely an Idea, but is has some physical evidence to support its generalization from specific fossils to an elaborate "myth" of Life's struggle to survive. Yet, the act of synthesis is itself an abstraction from real things to essences.
The human mind abstracts concepts from percepts by "sucking-out" only their logical structure (essence or meaning), and leaving behind the physical husk that our senses detect. So, which is real, and which is ideal? I don't have a problem with making that distinction, when it serves a purpose. That's why my thesis has a technical definition for the term "Ideality" to supplement the usual notion of "Reality". So yes, mental concepts are "nominal" in the sense that they are beliefs about Reality -- not objective reality itself. But without such beliefs, how could humans make sense of the world? :smile:
BothAnd-ism :
An inclusive philosophical perspective that values both Subjective and Objective information; both Feelings and Facts; both Mysteries and Matters-of-fact; both Animal and Human nature.
Yes, tools not sullied by having any practical use in the world. Yet, as ideals, often attractive and tempting...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That's it. And I think this is an insightful way to think about ordinary language. It's often written off as naïve, pre-scientific, imprecise, plain wrong, and so on. But it has traction on the rough ground of everyday life. It's been thoroughly tested by constant use and evolution, and continues to get the job done. To riff off Austin, it may not be the last word, but it's worth taking the time to understand why it qualifies as the first word.
You are one of my favorite people to converse with on a forum, so I'm sure you realize that this could end up being a long and productive discussion. If you will be patient with my limited time to devote here, I will continue our dig and excavation into these topics.
Your last post has many things in it that I would like to respond to and elaborate on. Please give me a little time. I'll be back. :cool:
Something I should have included in my last response to you. It might help to ponder on this in the in between time. As simply as can be stated, and to kick off how I will most likely approach my responses to you, think on this....
Peirce's three categories frame his entire work. They are the three irreducible modes of being.
Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.
Possibility, Actuality, and Law.
Peirce assigns habit to Thirdness.
I'll be back, but that's a starting place for my responses and elaborations. Later. :wink:
What would non-individuated self-awareness be? Doesn't seem right.
Maybe just consciousness without self-awareness then?
Isn't consciousness conscious of something? (Didn't someone once comment on that, maybe Kant, Hume, Descartes?)
I think that one of the biggest difficulties others have in understanding Peirce is that nominalists are approaching him from a distorted, distant view of the end of his path, without taking the time to see how he traveled there. Being a logician, he wanted to get down to the bottom of the problem and then walk forward with very deliberate, highly skilled, logical steps. Misunderstanding negation is another problem many people have in understanding Peirce. I think that's also a skewed, nominalist perspective. I think that any person who wants to get serious or even dabble in philosophy should start with a very clear understanding of negation. <<< I'll get back to that later.
In my episode 5, I talk about how Peirce focused quite a bit on the era of Scholasticism and how he began by talking about one of its pioneers, Peter Abelard. Peter Abelard was really the beginning of the out-of-control nominalism we have today. It was the beginning of ontological individualism. It's fascinating to research and learn about how it was seeded during that time.
One of my heroes is a man/physician who lived during the mid 17th century named Henry Stubbe. I only learned of him by really devoting the time to the research that it takes to fully understand how we got to where we are today. Armchair philosophers can sit in the here and now, and throw opinions around about what's what, and what's wrong, but there won't be any real progress accomplished by wallowing in a series of wrong turns unless one is willing to follow the breadcrumbs all the way back to the beginning and be aware enough to avoid those wrong turns. Around the time of Scholasticism, Muslim and Jewish Scholars were also analyzing Greek philosophy, and the goal of each of these religions was to reconcile Aristotle etc., with their own holy books and cultures. .... Henry Stubbe was a brilliant man who loved research and learning. He had read Greek philosophy, and he understood in the mid-1600s what John Locke later in the 1600s explained in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, that the three classifications of the sciences were physics, semiotics, and ethics. Henry Stubbe was so concerned about what he learned and understood from his own research, and how British society viewed Muslims, that he took it upon himself to try and teach people about the history of the Medieval perspective wrong turns, and how it was causing humanity to become more and more divisive. I purchased a copy of the book he wrote, which is listed as a culturally significant artifact. The title is 'An Account of the Rise and Progress of Mahometanism'. ..... Henry Stubbe was not a promoter of Islam. He was a brilliant scholar and teacher, who just wanted to make a difference in the wrong turn he saw humanity making. It wasn't about religion in any way. It was about understanding humanity's place in the natural course of existence.
My point is that nominalism/materialism/ontological individualism dropped the third crucial aspect of natural understanding to focus on the physical sciences and the ethics that promoted 'individual' human rights. This was the major wrong turn that began in the 14th century and developed over time. ... America was founded at the height of this frenzy. Charles Peirce followed a path without the religious influences that split Western Civilization into extreme Conservative Christianity and Cartesian Scientism. ........
Ok.... that's a start for my response. I'll be back with more. :smile:
?
https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/439/locke0421.htm
'1800s' was a typo. I am editing it.
Nominalists and followers of Descartes are steeped in religion. Most just have no clue.
.
Here's a bit on Descartes and Voluntarism......
"From 1630 to 1649, Descartes endorses theological voluntarism, the claim that God's will determines aspects of reality typically thought independent of it." ....... "an exhaustive look at the texts shows Descartes affirming voluntarism unambiguously from 1630 right to the end of his life."
Springer Link .... Is Descartes’ Theological Voluntarism Compatible with His Philosophy?
Thank you. :smile:
Yes, I've read that one. Many good points in it.
I refer to nominalism as a 'thought virus'.
This is one of my favorite paragraphs in that essay. I have an interesting relationship with the philosophy of David Hume. I like his style. :cool: ..... This tidbit is something that @Gnomon might also want to comment on.
"It is commonly said that modern science neglects formal causes but attends to efficient and material causes; but classically understood, efficient and material causes cannot function or even be conceived without formal causes, for it is form which informs matter, giving concrete objects their power to act on other objects. The loss of formal causality is thus in a sense the loss of efficient and material causality as well—an implication that is not quite fully realized until we see it brilliantly explored in the philosophy of David Hume"
To my mind, the high point of that essay is:
You will notice that an 'ordering grasp of reality' is almost entirely absent from the modern scientific picture, which has splintered into a trillion conjectural worlds, which only the mathematical literati can even comment on.
Quoting Gnomon
A neo-scholastic analysis:
From here
IN this picture, the intellect ('nous') is what grasps the form of things - which is their essence, meaning, or type. The physical senses receive the physical signals but the mind, nous, apprehends the form, and thereby knows what it is seeing, in a way which non-rational creatures cannot.
Nowadays, due to the influence of empiricism, we generally take the sensory domain as possessing an inherent reality, indeed as being the yardstick against which all judgement is validated. However, reason itself, which is the basis of judgement, is grounded in the recognition of the universal forms of things, which in no way can be accounted for by experience alone.
[quote=Lloyd Gerson] Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.
….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. [/quote]
So what is 'real' is the form or idea of the individual particular, and the ability to discern that form is the basis of rational thought.
There are a couple of other things I would like to hone in on in the essay about Ockham and nominalism.
First, this...
"If Gregory and Dupré can condemn Ockham for such polar opposite theological exaggerations—elevating God above the reach of reason, or demoting Him to the realm of creatures—we should wonder whether we should start our investigation somewhere other than in theology."
I couldn't be more in agreement with that statement. Although you make some excellent points in regard to Thomism, I have always preferred not to dwell long in any of the thought camps that have such strong ties to religious doctrine. I definitely take Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and other religious histories into account when doing my research, because I think it's very important to understand how splits in thinking and cultural changes took place as new information and ideas have presented themselves, but my intentions in all of my studies is to stay on a path of natural science. I see it as a sort of hypocrisy to criticize nominalists and Scientism followers of Descartes for being so grounded in religion, only to argue their points with more theology based philosophy. Please don't misunderstand me on this. A human is a human, and no human walking this earth is without having been affected in some way or another by how religion has influenced cultures all over the world. To a certain degree, it is unavoidable. ... But the thinkers I find most compelling in their research, writings, and logical rationalities are those who approach their studies with similar intentions as my own.
Second, this...
"“No universals, only individuals, exist outside the mind, and it is from those extramental realities that knowledge has its first beginnings.”
It is easy to see in the above statement how nominalism (and its voluntarism) is a direct descendant of theology. As if each individual was separately formed of clay by God's hands. This nominalism has instilled an exceptionalist attitude in humanity, and actually into each individual person, creating a world saturated with narcissism.
"And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, land crawlers, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that crawls upon the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it."
Our actual reality though, is that each human being develops their identity only in relation to others and their environment. An individual child recognizes their uniqueness because of the inherent aptitude to differentiate. Yes, it is true that we each carry a uniquely combined genetic code, but it is one that is influenced by our environment and experiences (epigenetics), and now science has evidence that these epigenetic changes (nervous system memory) can be carried into subsequent generations. The point is that there is continuity, and all life is dependent on other lifeforms, not only for what other lifeforms can 'supply' as in 'resources', but for personal identity itself. There are no detached individuals, and nominalism is a destructive thought virus that has wreaked havoc on humanity and our biosphere.
I have some other thoughts I would like to expand on in regard to Locke and the relationship between rationality and voluntarism, and at some point I want to get back to the topic of Peirce and continuity, but my day is tugging at me. I will have to post again later.
I have noticed your aversion to religion. I think it's unfortunate. A distinction needs to be made between reflexive, inherited religious belief and an understanding of the symbolic meaning of religious symbols and ideas.
One of the major undercurrents in today's thinking is the Enlightenment attitude to religion, shaped as it was by the preceeding centuries of religious conflict and the upheavals of the 30 Years War and other such horrors. Consequently Western culture proceeded to draw a line around anything deemed a matter of religious belief and exclude it from their reckonings. This is the background to the modern conception of naturalism.
However, I say we don't know enough about nature to know what is 'super' to it. Accordingly, that line, that boundary, which excludes anything deemed religious, is itself a matter of social consensus, there's nothing either scientific or natural about it. It's artificial and historical.
Furthermore, many of the fundamental ideas of Greek philosophy became absorbed into theology over the course of centuries, and rejection of theology often results in exclusion of those perspectives as well. 'Naturalism' becomes defined, often unconsciously, in opposition to those ideas. For example, I notice that in all of the primary traditions of philosophy, East and West, there is a place accorded to the concept of the 'unconditioned', 'unmade', 'unborn'. This is not necessarily a theistic conception. But there is no longer anything corresponding to that conception in modern philosophy.
Of course all of these are massive historical and philosophical issues and I don't expect ever to find any kind of consensus on it. But both the Michael Allen Gillespie book which you've mentioned previously, and the Joshua Hothschild essay we're discussing, pinpoint the abandonment of the acceptance of the reality of universals as the watershed that ultimately leads to today's barren philosophical materialism, of which medieval nominalism was one of the main precursors. My understanding of Peirce is rudimentary, but I do know that he felt obliged to adopt scholastic realism, that is, acceptance of the reality of universals. And the kind of reality they posses is central to the issue. So rejecting metaphysics because of its association with religion is precisely to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
//incidentally found this article on Peirce 'synechism'.//
I completely agree with you. However, my goal is to write and teach in a manner that is as easy as possible to understand by the broadest possible audience that, more often than not, has a limited education. Just as in what happened when I joined this forum, readers/listeners latch onto the concepts, words, and references they are most familiar with, and then attach their 'already ingrained cognitive map' meanings to them, often overlooking the actual intended meaning. I have to be very careful in my writing if I am to get my intended message across. These kinds of topics are aggressively scrutinized by people who are just itching to label me a 'holy roller' or 'atheist'. Most people are only used to two general worldviews, theism and atheism. Of course, there is now a huge population of 'spiritual, but not religious'. .... So there are 'beliefs' in spirituality, and there are 'beliefs' in the scientific community. As a very intelligent friend of mine titled his book, 'A Third Window', there are even differences in those. You might enjoy that book, if you would like to do a search for it. He and I aren't perfectly in sync in our perspectives, but his book is definitely worth a read. :nerd:
Quoting Wayfarer
As you get to know me better, I think you'll find that there is a lot more to Peirce's views on Scholastic realism than appears on the surface, and that my metaphysical perspectives are much more involved than what might appear at this point in our discussions. :halo:
I think it actually encouraged them to dig in their heels! In the Humanists' desire to hurriedly free their 'Will" from Church bondage, they unknowingly created a much more complicated dilemma.
Quoting Gnomon
Are you speaking only of Darwin? Or are you including Lamarck?
Quoting Gnomon
Have you read Charles Peirce's The Fixation of Belief?
My other reference to this was just highlighting specifics of 'belief'. This is where the full text can be most easily accessed. It was the very first of his papers that I ever read. Written in the style of the brilliant logician that he was, it captured my attention, and made me want to read even more. ....The Fixation of Belief
Pointing to what I posted previously about Peirce's three categories (irreducible modes of being), in paragraph 3 you will find this statement.... "The particular habit of mind which governs this or that inference may be formulated in a proposition whose truth depends on the validity of the inferences which the habit determines; and such a formula is called a guiding principle of inference." ..... Note how this is what Peirce would assign to Thirdness (since 'habit' is assigned to 'Law').
A perfect example of ignorance is how someone could possibly think I have something against 'individual rights'. Yep, some people get nasty when they don't take the time to learn. This is what happens when one of the three crucial aspects of human understanding is dropped from our culture. If that discarded aspect (that even John Locke had referred to) had been kept and properly taught and incorporated into Western Civilization's culture, so many of the challenges we are dealing with today would not have come about.
Our culture should teach ALL children how to apply critical thinking, logic, an understanding of triadic semiotics, and proper dialogue beginning in elementary school.
But I do disagree with Locke's voluntarism, and his last nominalist words in his essay below: "wholly separate and distinct one from another". They are not, and it is why we are in the shape we are in today. :sad:
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
This also reminds me of Gregory Bateson's comments at 3:02 in this video about 'Ecology of Mind'.
I have now. Or at least, the linked synopsis. Ironically, I assume that Nominalists take the fourth method as their guide. But they interpret the intent to mean : reject Ideality. Ideas about reality fall into the Aristotelian category of Metaphysics. So, if they can't see, hear, touch or smell it, it ain't admissible as evidence for the "fixation of belief".
Unfortunately for them, Philosophy is all about Ideality. It doesn't study real physical objects, but human ideas & opinions about the real world. That's what Aristotle called "First Philosophy". Maybe Pierce should have added a fifth method for confirming beliefs : Reasoning from all forms of evidence to Logical conclusions about Reality. :smile:
Four Methods for Fixing a Belief : 4. Scientific: test your beliefs against reality.
https://users.manchester.edu/Facstaff/SSNaragon/Online/texts/201/05-PeirceClifford.pdf
Note -- Beliefs about Reality are ideas abstracted from sensory information. Beliefs are inherently metaphysical -- ideal, not real. That includes "grounded" Nominalist beliefs.
Reality : the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.
Ideality : The mental aspects of Reality. Ideas as contrasted with Objects. Metaphysics, as contrasted with Physics. Mind, as contrasted with Matter. Memes as contrasted with Genes.
Aboutness : Knowledge of relationships. Intentionality.
" Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness-features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. "
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691144955/aboutness
i pray this is a purposeful misinterpretation, no? because that’s not what “we are all one” means when one is talking about it within a spiritual context.
This does point to where nominalists make a real error in reasoning. They don't realize that they are 'jumping' ahead, bypassing the continuity in reasoning that emerges up from instinct to induction, to abstraction, and then to deduction and a fully, well thought out, rational belief. This is what I meant when I said previously that 'abstraction' should not be 'parsed out'. That's just not how our biology works.
Inductive reasoning is where evidence of 'habit' lies, but is not fully conscious (an example of Thirdness, as a Law). We can see this in how we respond when driving a car. We are not fully conscious of every action. Induction is the bridge between instinct and abstraction. The momentum of continuity moves us back and forth between instinct and abstraction by way of inductive reasoning. We may be driving along, casually using inductive reasoning, and then suddenly abstract something in our environment, and depending on the amount of time we have and the severity of the information we abstract, we may either take the time to apply deductive reasoning, or we may just react via our 'less than fully conscious' inductive 'habit', perhaps swerving to miss something in the road.
This reverting back to inductive 'habit' might save us from something in the road if we are driving, but when our existential beliefs feel threatened, the negative effect could be that it prevents us from engaging in the better method of taking the time to apply deductive reasoning. And when an entire community of inquirers engages in this better method, actually challenging those habitual beliefs, errors can be averted, and the entire community can move forward with a better understanding of each other and the world in which they live.
Thirdness/law, and the example of 'habit', explains that there are 'tendencies' in Being. This is an innate feature of the continuity that is inherent in all of existence.
As in what I posted about synechism...
(7) "the doctrine . . . that elements of Thirdness cannot entirely be escaped" (CP7.653)
Thirdness, whether as in the tendency to take 'habits', or as in other manifestations of natural laws, is very real, even if you can't see, hear, touch, or smell it. This 'habit' as tendency is a feature of formal cause, both physically and cognitively.
I took these excerpts you wrote in another thread because I'd like to touch on our commonalities and differences.
Quoting you...
"In my Enformationism thesis, that "underlying something" is mundane Information." ..... "For humans, Information is Knowledge & Awareness. For me, it's a monism that unites the dualism of Mind & Matter."
Like you, I also refer to myself as a 'dual-aspect monist', but not specifically because it unites mind and matter, although I do see mind and matter as two expressions of the same continuity. The dual-aspect in my monist perspective is because I have always agreed with what I read in number 4 of Peirce's set of related ideas regarding synechism...
(4) the view that to exist in some respect is also to not exist in that respect (CP 7.569);
As I mentioned before when I referred to Heraclitus's Unity of Opposites, a child develops a personal identity of self only in relation to that which is not self. Recognizing short or tall, blonde or brunette, skin color, personality traits, and even where one lives on a map, all of these differentiations contribute to individuation. You may call this 'mundane' information, but from my perspective, there is nothing mundane about it.
I suppose your 'information' could be seen from a different perspective on Charles Peirce's 'triadic semiotics'. In my episode 3, I used sounds to illustrate how we can each interpret meanings differently, depending on the context in which they are used, and depending on the listener's previously ingrained cognitive building blocks of inference.
Here is an excerpt from episode 3......
"What all of these types of signs have in common is that they are all relative to a person’s experience, and how those building blocks of inference have shaped the cognitive mapping in an individual’s mind as an ‘extension’ of the person’s culture. To reference Gregory Bateson again, you may think you’re thinking your own thoughts, but you’re not. You’re thinking your culture’s thoughts. Biology and the understanding of emergence, process, and relational dynamics is quite clear on the matter of ‘thought and extension’. There is no detached individual, and it is through our observance of ‘otherness’ that we develop a sense of ‘self’ in relation to that which is ‘not self’. Sign observance is inference processing of the otherness that is the medium we are navigating, and it is how we orient what we know of ‘self’, and recognize that among others we too are alive. It is the mechanism by which everything is born, interacts, grows, and dies. In essence it is biological dialogue… that begins simply and develops into more complex systems. In human beings it has reached the level of complexity that has become language. This being the reason dialogue is so crucial to a healthy society. … And by written word, one human being can express and communicate to another human being the types of signs that are icon, index, and symbol into a quick to communicate package consisting of only a few letters. The power in that can have much more impact than we often realize, and can be either nurturing or destructive. … So it was that, in the beginning, there really was the Word, as in ‘sign’, and creation cannot exist without semiosis. It is an innate aspect of our being. Charles Peirce held that “The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs.” Semiotic causality is what we cognitively experience as the flowing, universal momentum of cause and effect determinism. And as Mikhail Bakhtin said, “The better a person understands his determinism (his thingness), the closer he is to understanding and realizing his true freedom.” … When we realize that what we ‘think’ is our individual mind when we hear, read, or encounter something with our senses, is actually inferences we make based on cognitive, semiotic cause and effect scaffolding within our own mind (and that of other minds that by way of extension we have incorporated into our own), we can better understand how our expressions and reactions are then received by others, ultimately creating a more responsible culture."
End Quote from episode 3.
You see, for me, matter is the fossil record of life's activity within this medium in which all life forms engage and interact. The signs that we interpret and create are expressions of the flowing biological dialogue throughout our universes of experience. I have noticed in philosophy how the term 'universe' mostly refers to man's universe of experience. Understanding how triadic semiotics really works opens us up to better understanding the universes of experience of all life forms. Charles Peirce devoted many years to developing extensive definitions of the signs, and to explaining how triadic sign systems work.
At the end of episode 3, I asked the listeners to listen to a sound that referred to a previous episode, and to try to separate the sound from the inference of its meaning as it was in the previous episode, making it purely sound with no meaning at all. It's a very difficult exercise. I then suggested that they practice doing this a few times each day with something they see, read, or hear. Engaging in this exercise definitely opens the world up to being bigger, more colorful, and much more dynamic. Not mundane at all. These information vessels (signs) are everywhere.
I think our culture would be much more responsible if these aspects of human understanding had not been neglected in favor of nominalism, dualism, and materialism.
And on another note of interest regarding my reference above to 'thought and extension', ... In the last decade of his life, Peirce repeatedly praised Spinoza, saying that they were akin in their works and understanding. Spinoza was also a dual-aspect monist. And along with Peirce and a few others, he also holds very high ranking among my favorite thinkers. :smile:
I suspect that a major difference between our worldviews is our jargon. My Enformationism thesis is primarily derived from Physics, and is only secondarily related to Metaphysics. That's one reason I refer to "Information" as "mundane", as opposed to "spiritual" or "otherworldly".
Although I am posting on a philosophical forum, I am not very well-informed about abstract & abstruse modern philosophical worldviews, such as Semiology and Synechism. I am somewhat familiar with ancient philosophy, such as Platonic and Aristotelian views. So, your posts are often like a foreign language to me. For example, "the view that to exist in some respect is also to not exist in that respect", simply sounds like a contradiction. Yet, I suppose that to you it may be merely an apparent paradox, which makes sense in terms of Synechism (Holism??) or Semiology (Semantics??).
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I agree. Although I was not familiar with Nominalism, until you brought it up.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I too, relate to Spinoza's worldview, except that I update it with our current understanding of the Big Bang origin of the world, and the immaterial Quantum foundation of the world.
Okay :smile: I'll switch my language to Physics. I'll write more in the morning when I have some time and quiet.
Quoting Gnomon
I get a bit on edge when it comes to Semantics, mainly because it is not the same as Semiotics, and because there is Saussurean semiotics and Peircean semiotics. There are major differences. ... I mentioned Alfred Korzybski previously. He launched General Semantics in 1933 with his book Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. I have had some strenuous forum discussions in the past about what I see as nominalism in General Semantics. This was before I became a little more skilled at stating my case. General Semantics focuses on abstraction, which, as I've mentioned previously in this thread, should not be 'parsed out'.
The Difference Between Semantics and Semiotics
Anyway, let's change our language for now and focus on Physics. After all, Peirce was a scientist, and he had plenty to say about Physics. :grin:
Quoting Gnomon
Before I switch to the language of Physics, and since the original purpose of this thread is to discuss Consciousness, I want to point out the differences between Saussurean and Peircean semiotics (dyadic vs triadic thinking). This really shines a light on another symptom of the 'nominalism thought virus', and how it has affected the way Western Civilization thinks. It is also my hope that you will eventually see how this even connects back to Physics.
After so much time that I've devoted to studies to uncover these wrong turns in branches of thinking, that I liken to the difference between following a singular line in an intricate math pattern, or actually understanding the underlying Law (Thirdness) that causes the pattern to blossom (by the way, Peirce was also a brilliant mathematician, and often used diagrams to illustrate his work), I've gotten to the point where whenever I see the word 'General' in a coined term (General Semantics, General Linguistics), I become a bit suspicious. It often points to nominalism in a desperate attempt to try and capture generality after having travelled too far down the wrong path. Saussurean semiotics is dyadic (dualistic). Whereas Peircean semiotics breaks away from that dyadic, dualistic, wrong path. I could delve deeper into the differences here, and anyone reading this is free to look further into the two, but I do want to switch our language and discussion to the topic of Physics.
Regarding semiotics, keep in mind what I said previously about signs being 'information vessels'. They can present to our senses in many ways (icon, index, symbol, sounds, chemical signals, etc), but the complexities brought about by evolution have taken what originally and fundamentally is 'biological dialogue' to a level that has become words and writing in human culture. So semiotics is the study of the 'delivery method' of meaning (In other words, the 'delivery method of information' (and even the delivery method of 'Enform'ation). As I mentioned previously, Thirdness/Law, as represented in the 'habit' we see in Inductive reasoning, is a feature of Formal Cause, both Physically and Cognitively.
That was a good segue into Physics, which I will pick up on in the next post. :nerd:
Okay....
I plan to walk through this part of our discussion somewhat slowly, because anyone else reading this (not necessarily referring to you) may have difficulty following this, and it is my hope that they may want to, or at least try.
It's important to remember that C. S. Peirce was first and foremost a brilliant logician, and he approached all of his work with that mindset.
Quoting Gnomon
What some might read as a 'contradiction' when I referred to "(4) the view that to exist in some respect is also to not exist in that respect (CP 7.569); " and you referred to as possibly being a paradox, is actually a 'polarity'. .... This also relates to Heraclitus's 'Unity of Opposites' that I mentioned in a previous post.
More on 'Polarity'
Peirce reached his conclusions by way of his correct understanding of negation, and the Law of the Excluded Middle. As a matter of fact, the misunderstanding of this by some of his 'Logic' students at Johns Hopkins (Dewey, James, and others) due to their immersion in the popular nominalism of the day, was of great frustration to Peirce.
Peirce's Law allows one to enhance the technique of using the deduction theorem to prove theorems. This work points to 'inference' in consciousness, and what I spoke of previously about 'habit' as law (Thirdness) as evidenced in Inductive reasoning. .... Let me know if you want to delve into this topic in more detail at any point in our discussion, but for now I'm moving on to Physics.
Peirce's Law
Peirce asserted that "the continuity of space so acts as to cause an object to be affected by modes of existence not its own, not as participating in them but as being opposite to them. . . . So again, when a force acts upon a body the effect of it is that the mean of the states of the body not actual, but indefinitely approximating to the actual, differs from its actual state. So in the action and reaction of bodies, each body is affected by the other body's motion, not as participating in it but as being opposite to it. But if you carefully note the nature of this generalized formula you will see that it is but an imperfect, somewhat particularized restatement of the principle that space presents the law of the reciprocal reactions of existents." (CP 6.84)
Take a look at the attached link on Peirce's Law, and then please tell me what you've written in your thesis about Polarity. This may be where our jargon polarities come together. :grin:
One more thing to add....
Here is an excellent video explaining the sequence of events involving Peirce, James, Dewey, and the different perspectives and splits.......
Who Founded Pragmatism.....
I don't know what the point of such a statement might be. What is he really trying to say? That there is no such thing as a paradox? I sometimes say that all paradoxes are resolved in Enfernity (eternity & infinity). But that has nothing to do with the real world. :smile:
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Again, this statement makes no sense to me. Is it referring to "modes of existence" other than reality? What other kinds of existence are there? Do ghosts exist in a parallel universe? Are entangled particles a polarity of different modes of existence? What is the point of such an abstruse assertion? :cool:
Okay, Devil's Advocate. I'll play. :naughty:
No, Peirce is not saying that there is no such thing as a paradox, but there is a very clear difference between a polarity and a paradox. A polarity has external relation influence. A paradox does not.
Here is how Peirce explains this using the Liar's Paradox (links below excerpt) ....
"In Lecture 1 he discusses the sentence, "This very proposition is false."; in Lecture 3 he examines the sentence in the form "What is here written is not true." This sentence, as we know, leads to paradoxical conclusions. I will first consider Peirce's analysis of the problem and then his solution to it.
1.1 The Problem Stated
S1 This very proposition is false.
S2 What is here written is not true.
Peirce argues that the problem with this sentence is that it is logically meaningless or logically nonsense, where nonsense is defined as "that which has a certain resemblance to a symbol without being a symbol. "Each genuine symbol is subject to three systems of formal laws; these are the laws of (1) grammar, (2) logic, and (3) rhetoric. Each symbol to be meaningful must satisfy the formal conditions of grammar, of logic, and of the intelligibility of symbols. This symbol is grammatically correct but
fails to be a genuine symbol because it does not satisfy the formal conditions of logic.
In the case of the above sentence, SI, a logical law, the law of the excluded middle, does not apply. Peirce says,
This is a proposition to which the principle of the excluded middle, namely that every symbol must be false or true, does not apply. For if it is false, it is thereby true. And if not false, it is thereby not true.
A logically meaningful sentence will satisfy the laws of logic. Peirce argues that this logical law does not apply to SI because this symbol has no object. Logic, Peirce says, is concerned with assertoric propositions. He says of assertoric propositions, "Propositions which assert always assert something of an object, which is the subject of the proposition."In the case of SI, however, the proposition "does itself state that it has no object. It talks of itself and only of itself and has no external relation whatever." That is, the subject of the proposition being the proposition itself, the predicate makes no assertion of an object to which the proposition refers. An assertoric proposition, then, makes reference to an external object, but this proposition "talks of itself and only of itself and has no external relation whatever." "Logical laws," however, "only hold good as conditions of a symbol having an object."
Similarly concerning S2 Peirce says that we get an infinite number of
propositions:
What is here written
The statement that that is false
The statement that that is false
The statement that that is false
and so on to infinity." <<< There is your infinity that has nothing to do with the real world. :wink:
As you read further into the essay, you will see that Peirce also points out that there is a difference between what is explicitly asserted versus what is tacitly asserted.
Liar's Paradox
Peirce's Paradoxical Solution to the Liar's Paradox
Quoting Gnomon
The part of his statement that you are leaving out is "So in the action and reaction of bodies, each body is affected by the other body's motion". He is not referring to ghosts. :razz: .... Whether or not this can be applied to parallel universes is left for the quantum physicists to figure out. One of the reasons there has been such interest in Peirce (and renewed interest in Spinoza) is because the most recent findings in physics have pointed to how correct and far ahead of their time these brilliant men were, and all by working these things out by using highly skilled logic. ... And again, 5 centuries BCE, Heraclitus was on the right track with his Logos.
I will write more later, but for now Happy Thanksgiving. I am thankful to have a friend like you that I can banter with about such things. :blush:
I have empathy for anyone who wants us to read a book so it can be discussed. Complex concepts are not easily put in simple posts and it can be futile to discuss some things when others do not have an adequate background for understanding.
Gnomon,
Upon re-reading some of this thread's posts, I realized that I somehow overlooked this. Try switching these when contemplating our discussions. I think it may help you get a better grasp of Peirce. Switch them to making a distinction between 'what is real' and 'what physically exists. :nerd:
A paradox is also a relationship to external factors : truth and falsity. It asserts that a statement is True, when it is conventionally known to be False. True/False is a polarity. So, is Pierce saying that there's no such polarity as True/False? That all propositions are Maybes? I can see that in Enfernity (eternity/infinity) there is no such polarity as True/False, because everything exists only in Potential. But in the Actual world, we usually assume that all statements can be compared to some verifiable Fact, or axiomatic Truth. :smile:
Quoting Mapping the Medium
That sounds like my own BothAnd Principle, which assumes that all Paradoxes are ultimately resolved in Enfernity -- the ideal realm of G*D (imagined as the Whole, of which our world is a Part). But in the real space-time world, for ordinary humans, paradoxes must be resolved by Logic and Data. And we don't usually spend much time contemplating such circular thought-problems as Russell's Paradox, the Liar's Paradox, or Zeno's paradoxes. So, what's the point here? What is the real-world application of "Polarity", as opposed to "Paradox"? :chin:
Both/And Principle :
[i]* My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
* The Enformationism worldview entails the principles of Complementarity, Reciprocity & Holism, which are necessary to ofset the negative effects of Fragmentation, Isolation & Reductionism. Analysis into parts is necessary for knowledge of the mechanics of the world, but synthesis of those parts into a whole system is required for the wisdom to integrate the self into the larger system. In a philosophical sense, all opposites in this world (e.g. space/time, good/evil) are ultimately reconciled in Enfernity (eternity & infinity).
* Conceptually, the BothAnd principle is similar to Einstein's theory of Relativity, in that what you see ? what’s true for you ? depends on your perspective, and your frame of reference; for example, subjective or objective, religious or scientific, reductive or holistic, pragmatic or romantic, conservative or liberal, earthbound or cosmic. Ultimate or absolute reality (ideality) doesn't change, but your conception of reality does. Opposing views are not right or wrong, but more or less accurate for a particular purpose.
* This principle is also similar to the concept of Superposition in sub-atomic physics. In this ambiguous state a particle has no fixed identity until “observed” by an outside system. For example, in a Quantum Computer, a Qubit has a value of all possible fractions between 1 & 0. Therefore, you could say that it is both 1 and 0.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Yes. That's always a problem in human communication. But usually, we can only infer the "tacit" meaning. Does Peirce's "Polarity" allow us to read minds? :brow:
Quoting Mapping the Medium
So, how is that obvious fact, a "mode of existence"? Actor and Reactor are factors in causation. Are those factors the modal difference? Perhaps Positive and Negative modes of existence? How does that distinction affect our understanding of True Reality versus Apparent Reality? :confused:
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Materialists usually assume that "what is real" is "that which physically exists". So, how does Peirce distinguish those "modes of existence"? :cool:
"we must acknowledge the role of energy in the brain. Energetic activity is fundamental to all physical processes and causally drives biological behavior. Recent neuroscientific evidence can be interpreted in a way that suggests consciousness is a product of the organization of energetic activity in the brain. The nature of energy itself, though, remains largely mysterious, and we do not fully understand how it contributes to brain function or consciousness."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6225786/
It is not hard regarding what we actually know to dismiss that consciousness is beyond the individual mind. see group consciousness for example and the studies there. The universe is full of energy and no one can prove that there is not a mass consciousness outside of Earth. i maybe leaning slight of topic now but I could not ignore this point you make.
It is like in death, energy can not be destroyed and it is common knowledge the human brain is full of energy it is highly likely to be converted elsewhere. Such as the atomists theory on the body being dispersed atom by atom to create something else.
Great article! Thank you for sharing it. And what the paragraph above states makes perfect sense. "Energetic activity is fundamental to all physical processes and causally drives biological behavior." ... I think this follows well with the topic of this thread. What we need to stay focused on in this discussion is the continuity of formal causality, and the fact that just because we can't hit our head on it, punch it, or otherwise manipulate it with a tool of which the idea came to us from formal cause within our consciousness, doesn't mean that it's not real.
My favorite part of your article is this .....
"There are, however, signs that attention is turning again to energetic or thermodynamic-related theories of consciousness in various branches of science and in philosophy of mind.
The present paper builds on this work by proposing that energy, and the related properties of force and work, can be described as actualized differences of motion and tension, and that – in Nagel’s phrase – ‘there is something it is like, intrinsically, to undergo’ actualized differences. Recent neuroscientific evidence suggests that consciousness is a product of the way energetic activity is organized in the brain. Following this evidence, I propose that we experience consciousness because there is something it is like, intrinsically, to undergo a certain organization of actualized differences in the brain."
BINGO! This pointing to thermodynamics is precisely why Ilya Prigogine is in my list of favorite thinkers. Ilya Prigogine discovered that importation and dissipation of energy into chemical systems could result in the emergence of new structures due to internal self reorganization.
And as Gregory Bateson said....
"What we mean by information - the elementary unit of information - is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continuously transformed are themselves provided with energy."
http://faculty.washington.edu/jernel/521/Form.htm
It's all the same thing! CONTINUITY
In my Enformationism thesis, the common denominator between Energy & Consciousness is Information. As noted in the quote from Bergson, "the elementary unit of information is a difference". In mathematics, a difference is indicated by a colon (X : Y) or a division slash (X / Y). And the difference is interpreted in the human mind as Meaning or Proportion.
In Thermodynamics, Energy is a ratio between Inputs & Outputs (100% In / 75% Out ; Difference = 25%). It's the proportional relationship between Hot & Cold. Human senses perceive the difference, and conceive it as meaning. Einstein revealed that invisible & intangible Energy can transform into Matter. (E = mc2). But now it seems that Energy can organize the brain to produce the meaningful process we call "Thinking" or "Mind". And thought processes yield what we call "Consciousness" or "Awareness" (what it's like to think, perceive, and conceive). Energy, Matter & Mind are all emergent properties of Natural Evolution. Emergence is a Phase Transition like water to ice.
One sense of the verb "To Enform" is to organize in a meaningful pattern. So, I view information as both Physical Energy (Causation) and Metaphysical Mind (Knowledge). But, I also distinguish (differentiate) between General Information (power to enform; to evolve), and its most organized (highly evolved) form in the world : Consciousness. Like Energy, Information is everywhere, but Consciousness emerges only at the highest levels of evolution. Hence, no need to assume that energy-exchanging atoms are conscious of "what it's like" to be a fundamental particle of matter. :smile:
Difference : inconsistency, variation, diversity, imbalance, inequality, divergence, contrast, contrariety.
Note -- these synonyms a various ways of looking at relationships between things. In mathematics, it's a Ratio (Rational ; Reason). In Minds, it's a Meaning -- relationship to me.
The Meaning of Diffference : perception is more basic than conception, given that perceptual states are a significant source of information about the world, and conceptions ultimately depend on the information provided by experience in order to get off the ground, but not vice versa.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12304-013-9170-z
Is Information Fundamental? : What if the fundamental “stuff” of the universe isn't matter or energy, but information?
Agreed.
The words I used in the title of the original post were chosen for a reason.
An energy exchange does not necessarily account for awareness, and there is often a residual left behind after an exchange of energy (fossil record of the interaction).
But what about an 'exchange of awareness'? Can that be measured as one would measure energy? It certainly seems to import, as in love.
[i]import
transitive verb
1: to bring from an external source[/i]
What about dissipate?
[i]dissipate
verb
PHYSICS
cause to be lost, typically by converting.[/i]
[i]definite
adjective
having exact and discernible physical limits or form
Definitely is first recorded in English around the early 1580s. It is a combination of the adjective definite and the suffix –ly, which makes adverbs out of adjectives.[/i]
[i]beyond
preposition
happening or continuing after[/i]
[i]individual
adjective
single; separate[/i]
[i]mind
67 examples of definitions
https://www.yourdictionary.com/mind[/i]
And of course, this one...
[i]"Consciousness, at its simplest, is "sentience or awareness of internal or external existence".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness[/i]
It kind of gives one a sinking feeling in the gut to think about and realize all of the time that's been wasted over centuries because of semantics. It's one of the reasons, along with the others I mentioned previously, that I really dislike thinking about semantics. :shade:
I'd much rather think about 'information delivery vessels' (semiotics). :grin:
Energy is correlated with frequency and thus wavelength. Energy is also correlated with mass. In an atom, mass is correlated with shape. In visible electromagnetic radiation, wavelength/frequency synthesis or "superposition" is correlated with color. So maybe the structure of mass alongside its energies in matter are associable with hybrid wavelength phenomena, which would also explain the capacity to generate qualia, in this definition a sort of qualitativity intrinsic to matter, out of which first person experience in organic lifeforms is constructed. Adding superposed wavelength theory to atomic theory might allow a table of the perceptual elements.
There is much more explanation at the bottom of this post. ..... But after mulling this over a bit, I was thinking that perhaps it would be helpful to consider this discussion parallel with Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. The language of mathematics is a bit more challenging for me than the language of semiotics, but examining these topics along with the perspectives of Kurt Gödel or Eric Temple Bell may be a way for us to more easily dialogue about them. I'm all about finding ways for people of different perspectives to engage in dialogue. That's sort of my 'thing'. :cool:
"The liar paradox is the sentence "This sentence is false." An analysis of the liar sentence shows that it cannot be true (for then, as it asserts, it is false), nor can it be false (for then, it is true). A Gödel sentence G for a system F makes a similar assertion to the liar sentence, but with truth replaced by provability: G says "G is not provable in the system F." The analysis of the truth and provability of G is a formalized version of the analysis of the truth of the liar sentence.
It is not possible to replace "not provable" with "false" in a Gödel sentence because the predicate "Q is the Gödel number of a false formula" cannot be represented as a formula of arithmetic. This result, known as Tarski's undefinability theorem, was discovered independently both by Gödel, when he was working on the proof of the incompleteness theorem, and by the theorem's namesake, Alfred Tarski."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems
Quoting Gnomon
Yes. That is Peirce's Firstness (Potential)
Quoting Gnomon
This relates to Peirce's Secondness (Actuality)
Your comment also points to Peirce's Pragmaticism,
differing from standard Pragmatism because it includes the addition of chance (Tychism).
Quoting Gnomon
Peirce's Thirdness (Law, which also includes habit, as in what I explained previously)
Polarity (or Unity of Opposites) pulls, pushes, influences change (this points to the chance I referred to above), etc..
From a human reasoning perspective, it is the momentum that helps us differentiate. We perceive differences in the polarities (opposites). We reach conclusions habitually in inductive reasoning, as we go about our lives on autopilot. It is also the momentum that creates the 'tendency' to take habits, and because of that, it propels evolution forward by taking on that growth direction.
Thirdness works in tandem with Firstness and Secondness.
Quoting Gnomon
No. Of course not. .... But, understanding these irreducible modes of being can certainly help us understand our own mind, how the minds of others may reach seemingly polar opposite conclusions, and how the 'biological dialogue' works that is always taking place within the Medium as we individually and together go about the very natural mapping of our way.
Ha! I guess you really dislike philosophy forums, which are mostly wrangling about Semantics. Maybe you can teach us to think in terms of Semiology (sign, object, interpretant). Apparently, Semantic meanings differ depending on the "interpretant". Which is why the threads on this forum often go-off in different directions. I haven't read-up on Semiology, partly because most of what I've seen appears more academic than realistic. But, in the Enformationism thesis, words, signs & symbols are not the only "information delivery vessels". :smile:
The relation between semantics and semiotics might seem straightforward: semantics is the study of the meaning and reference of linguistic expressions, while semiotics is the general study of signs of all kinds and in all their aspects. Semiotics comprises semantics as a part.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=semiology+and+semantics
No. I can't teach anyone to think in terms of Semiology. As I mentioned previously, Semiology is the semiotics of Ferdinand de Saussure, not C.S.Peirce.
Quoting Gnomon
You are correct Saussurean semiotics IS NOT realistic!
I seem to have to keep repeating myself.
I have a very full day, and this is clearly not a productive use of it. If no one here reads, well... so be it.
Temporal Synechism: A Peircean Philosophy of Time
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10516-020-09523-6
And I LOVE how this part of Peirce's manuscript mentions Heraclitus!
"20.
Peirce explains:
"Indeed, so far is the concept of Sequence from being a composite of two Negations, that, on the contrary, the concept of the Negation of any state of things, X, is, precisely, a composite of which one element is the concept of Sequence. Namely, it is the concept of a sequence from X of the essence of falsity. (R 300:52[51], 1908)"
This is why, in his system of existential graphs (EGs), he derives a cut for negation from a scroll for implication with its inner close containing the pseudograph (“the essence of falsity”) and reduced to infinitesimal size (CP 4.454–456, 1903; CP 4.454n, c. 1906). Further explaining EGs is beyond the scope of this essay, but I recommend Pietarinen (2015) for a concise introduction. Peirce’s text continues:
"The question will here pop up, Why does not this show that the concept of Sequence is a composite of three concepts; that of some antecedent state, that of some consequent state, and between them, that of a state of Heraclitan Flux? It will suggest itself that if a state of motion is sequent upon a state of rest, then before the instant of starting, there is a state of rest; after that instant, there is a state of motion; but at the very start, there is neither rest without motion, nor motion without rest, but equally or indifferently neither rest nor motion, or else, and likewise, both rest and motion. Your question answers itself, since it proposes an analysis that cannot be stated nor distinctly thought, without absurdity. For, to pass over as unspeakable your “or else, and also,” your supposition assumes that there is what we conceive of as Time … (R 300:52–53[51–52], 1908)"
The concept of different prolonged states with a gradual state between them presupposes the concept of time, which already involves the concept of sequence.
What does that "incompleteness" (shortcoming, fallibility) have to do with "modes of existence". The fact that humans are not omniscient, does not deter us from shorthand thinking in terms of True vs False. Is Non-omniscience (human) a different mode from Omniscience (G*D)?
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Why doesn't he just call it "Potential", as Aristotle did? I guess Potency must always come before Actuality.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Ah! Now I'm beginning to see the sequence.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
How does Chance affect the practical application of theories? We usually assume that to put a theory into practice, either it will work or it won't. But of course, the test may also be inconclusive (incomplete). But why dwell on the Maybes, instead of the Yes or No results? Is there something to be learned from our misses?
Quoting Mapping the Medium
I assume that, by "habits", he doesn't mean pre-conceived notions? Perhaps, he means "Patterns", which might fit into the Potential - Actual - Pattern sequence? Some refer to Natural Laws as merely "habits" or "regularities or "tendencies" or "inertia", rather than absolute binding unbreakable Rules handed-down by God. Is Peirce implying that Nature accidentally falls into certain un-planned grooves? Is that the same as Random Chance? Perhaps that's a Non-law, or Law-breaker. In my thesis, I see an important role for Randomness, to allow for some freedom from Determinism, from Destiny. There are meaningful Patterns, even in Random Chaos.
Chaos theory helps us to understand patterns in nature. . ... Chaos theory states that, under certain conditions, ordered, regular patterns can be seen to arise out of seemingly random, erratic and turbulent processes.
http://www.patternsinnature.org/Book/Chaos.html
Quoting Mapping the Medium
To me, that sounds like Hegel's Dialectic, which synthesizes opposing forces. Two prior vectors are merged into a third vector, which becomes the new "growth direction".
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Are you referring to Pierce's three laws as "modes of being". Please elaborate. :smile:
For anyone here who may be serious about learning, and they are suspicious that I am only here to promote my educational site, you can find a lot of information here that is separate from my work. Very brilliant people discussing this in detail....
https://youtu.be/gbvkNPiYPuI
You may find this interesting, as Yagmur Denizhan discusses the difference in information compared to Shannon. This is a live stream, and she just finished her presentation. If you don't access until a later time, you can find her in the line up.
https://youtu.be/vssNEELP2VQ
Semiology - Semiotics - Semiosis ; Pragmatism - Pragmaticism ; Synechism - Cynicism ; Structuralism - Deconstructionism ; Semantics -Sheemantics! It's all post-Greek to me. :joke:
Quoting Mapping the Medium
In what sense is Semiotics more realistic than Semiology? How are these extremely abstract analyses of Signs & Symbols, and deconstructions of Texts & Meanings applicable to concrete reality? Since I'm rather lazy, I have skipped over these tedious texts in my reading of philosophy. I need a translation into the vernacular to dumb it down to my level. Teach me! :cool:
Semiology // Semiotics : All believed semiology is the key to unlocking meaning of all things.
https://people.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/semiolog.htm
linguistics-as-a-science : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9282/linguistics-as-a-science
Applied Communicology in Organizational
PR and R&D: Peirce on Synechism, Fuller on
Synergetics, Gordon on Synectics, and Alinsky
on Socialism
Richard L. Lanigan
International Communicology Institute, USA
http://lass.suda.edu.cn/_upload/article/files/cd/45/137ed7c24aa3b38b19539d0e4154/818d85db-9a0e-45f3-b9ed-e96d3a4d0c71.pdf
I found this excerpt from page 23 to be relevant to the original post topic, and to my most recent writings.
" that view of consciousness based on Freud and Jung was necessary. This model holds that the
(1) Conscious mind, and (2) the Unconscious mind, are mediated by (3) the Preconscious
mind, wherein cultural habits constitute a “censor” on the preconscious; censors prevent
creativity, synectics methods (based on metaphor) overcome the censors."
I am also very interested in the references to Foucault. I recently had a listener/reader ask me to do an episode on Foucault, and I will, after I get past the next planned writing of 'The Inside Out of Color'.
@Gnomon
This is on page 2 .....
"Research often reveals the fascinating conjunction of activities thought to be
inherently oppositional, yet they often constitute the very apposition of creativity
choice (similarity; both/and) that escapes the paradox of polar opposite dilemmas
(difference; either/or). "
This brand new video that was just recommended to me delves into semiosis and 'information behavior'.
I was especially happy to hear them mention 'birds', as that was the focus of my last episode.
SOME NOTES ON THE REPRESENTATIONAL ASPECT OF LOW-LEVEL SEMIOSIS
https://youtu.be/8Y_glNZ0D0o
Thanks for the citation. I posted some of my thinking that appears in the paper a while back in a thread on "The Reality of Time." Here is a link to a complete online version that anyone can view: https://rdcu.be/b9xVm
You are very welcome. :smile:
I'm not at all surprised by this news. This is precisely why David Bohm is also featured on my educational website. ....
"To be more precise, their analysis argues information could be transferred between two points without an exchange of particles." ..... "We found it extremely interesting – the possibility of communication without anything passing between the two people who communicate with each other," Aharonov explained to Anna Demming at Phys.org."
https://www.sciencealert.com/schrodinger-s-cat-gets-a-cheshire-grin-in-a-mind-bending-quantum-physics-analysis
Elementary particles part ways with their properties https://phys.org/news/2020-12-elementary-particles-ways-properties.html
Rocco Gangle PhD
Yep. :smile:
Thanks for bringing up the topic. One of the biggest difficulties I run into is that so many people read something someone else has written about Peirce, and that writer may have only read something that someone else has written about Peirce, and so forth. It's kind of like a gossip chain. By the time the story goes 'round, it is completely incorrect.
The most important thing to know about Peirce is that he was a very independent thinker, and that he did exhaustive historical research before reaching conclusions. He even humbly admitted when he did make errors, realizing that he was somewhat blinded in the beginning of his pursuit of truth because of still being somewhat afflicted with the nominalistic thinking that surrounded him.
By the way, I came upon this book today, and I do plan to purchase and read it. I am very intrigued. You might also find it interesting. I admire you for your willingness to dig past the nominalist lines of thought, all the while being sure to employ logic and the willingness to hold up a light to often dismissed history in pursuit of your research. Just as it happens today, gems of thought were tossed aside for the politics of the day, and we are still paying the price.
Here's that book info......
"Kojin Karatani questions the idealization of ancient Athens as the source of philosophy and democracy by placing the origins instead in Ionia, a set of Greek colonies located in present-day Turkey. Contrasting Athenian democracy with Ionian isonomia—a system based on non-rule and a lack of social divisions whereby equality is realized through the freedom to immigrate—Karatani shows how early Greek thinkers from Heraclitus to Pythagoras were inseparably linked to the isonomia of their Ionian origins, not democracy. He finds in isonomia a model for how an egalitarian society not driven by class antagonism might be put into practice, and resituates Socrates's work and that of his intellectual heirs as the last philosophical attempts to practice isonomia's utopic potentials. Karatani subtly interrogates the democratic commitments of Western philosophy from within and argues that the key to transcending their contradictions lies not in Athenian democracy, with its echoes of imperialism, slavery, and exclusion, but in the openness of isonomia."
https://www.dukeupress.edu/isonomia-and-the-origins-of-philosophy
May well be true, but what I was commenting on was the resemblance between the 'triadic' structure found in Eriugena's neo-platonism, and Peirce's much later 'triadic' schema, and its possible connection to the 'trinity'.
And there's a feasible connection - Dermot Moran, who wrote the book on Eriugena I'm referring to, says there was a definite influence of Eriugena on the German idealists, who in turn were an influence on Peirce - even given Peirce's independence of mind. 'Triadicism' or 'three-ness' is an archetypal theme in various cultures. That doesn't undermine Peirce in the least, but it does provide a wider context in which to interpet that fundamental idea of his.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
That's for sure. Untangling it all is like one of those forensic pathology TV shows where they try and reconstruct the scene of the crime from bone fragments.
Quoting Mapping the Medium
Intriguing!
In order to examine this, you would need to look at what the archetypes of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have in common with Peirce's Firstness (potential), Secondness (actuality), and Thirdness (law/including habit). Peirce reached the understanding of these three categories of being because they are 'irreducible'. Perhaps it is true that when humanity tries to understand what is universal from a human perspective, an irreducible triad continues :wink: to be as irreducible as we can get, whether it is examined through a religious perspective, or a logical scientific one.
It is true that Peirce did discuss the trinity with an Episcopal priest he knew, as he wanted to understand the religious perspective on the trinity as part of his overall research in understanding the human perspective, but this was in addition to the work he had already done on his three catagories of being. .... It is extremely important to remember that Peirce was very against the idea of organized religion, and for what I also think are very good reasons.
I also want to mention that Peirce's perspective on God was his understanding of a guiding principle in the Universe, not that of a 'man in the sky' (as in what he said about God being 'real', but not 'existing'). He really felt that if enough people understood synechism, that there was a potential for those who are religious to understand this guiding principle in a more logical light.
In any case, one of the essays I frequently quote on this forum, Thomas Nagel's Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, opens with a passage from Peirce, which Nagel says are generally Platonist reflections on the order of nature. And that is very much in keeping with Peirce's outlook. //also note his conception of 'agap?' as a driving force in evolution.//
Quoting Wayfarer
This is an excellent example of what I mentioned previously about the gossip chain. So many people latch onto that word and then jump to the conclusion that Peirce's 'agapasm' is the same as the Christian version of 'agap?'. I myself have read how various writers interpret this so differently!
I think it's also very important to remember that Peirce often used cultural analogies that others could understand in order to try and get his points across. He did occasionally point to religious examples to illustrate them, and I think that haunts his work to this day, but I can't imagine what other option he had at the time. I can relate to that dilemma! Again, semantics! Ugh! :roll:
I personally discovered that it takes exhaustive readings of his work to see that he did this out of necessity, and it's certainly one of the reasons why some scholars have devoted so many years to deciphering his manuscripts.
http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/agapasm
Leaving aside that 'agapasm' is a most ungainly word - sounds something like a hernia or spasm! - I think it's unarguably influenced by, or an expression of, a generally Christian sentiment. It is thoroughly teleological in orientation, envisaging nature as working towards some end, which is completely rejected by current evolutionary theory as being a form of 'orthogenesis'. (And for that matter, looking at the next entry on that page, it ends with 'for it [agapasm] is due to the continuity between the man’s mind and the Most High.')
As for what Nagel says about Peirce, in relation to a passage he quotes from his 'Reasoning and the Logic of Things', ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner (Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 112.
[quote=Thomas Nagel, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion]Far from being a pragmatist in the currently accepted sense, [Peirce] seems much more of a Platonist:
Belief is the willingness to risk a great deal upon a proposition. But this belief is no concern of science which has nothing at stake on any temporal venture, but is in pursuit of eternal verities, not semblances to truth, and looks upon this pursuit, not as the work of one man's life, but as that of generation after generation indefinitely.[
Here we may have some indication of the familiar Peircian idea of convergence at the end of inquiry, but if so, it is certainly not presented as a definition of truth, but as a hope that rational inquiry will lead us to truths that depend not on our minds but on nature:
The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds . . . that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to [i]il lume naturale. . . . The value of Facts to it, lies only in this, that they belong to Nature; and nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real,--the object of its worship and its aspiration. [/i]
And one final Platonic morsel:
The soul's deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with will, by slow percolation, gradually reach the very core of one's being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities.
Now I find these declarations not only eloquent but entirely congenial; but they have a radically anti-reductionist and [scholastic] realist tendency quite out of keeping with present fashion. And they are alarmingly Platonist in that they maintain that the project of pure inquiry is sustained by our “inward sympathy” with nature, on which we draw in forming hypotheses that can then be tested against the facts. Something similar must be true of reason itself, which according to Peirce has nothing to do with “how we think.” If we can reason, it is because our thoughts can obey the order of the logical relations among propositions — so here again we depend on a Platonic harmony.[/quote]
I think at Peirce's point in history, this kind of Platonism was simply assumed, it was part of the intellectual background of any educated person. It wasn't until during the 20th century that this kind of sentiment began to be questioned by today's cultural relativism.
I think you need to disentangle religious ideas from religious traditionalism or dogmatism. No, Peirce was not the least religious or deferential to religious organisations, but again, he's still part of the idealist philosophical tradition and as such, no stranger to a broadly Platonist outlook - as Nagel demonstrates.
Oh, I'm by no means saying that he was a stranger to a Platonist outlook, but I definitely understand him to be more complex. In the last decade of his life, he stated that he and Spinoza were kindred in their perspectives.
I was recently reading a philosophical response by a philosopher named Jasper Reid that I stumbled upon online when I was doing some research on Spinoza. I think this is fitting for our conversation as well, and I think you'll appreciate some points in it. I have always understood Spinoza, Peirce, and Bohm (referencing the enfolded and unfolding in the statement below), to be 'pan-en-theists' rather than pantheists due to the 'active information' of Bohm, Peirce's tychism, and many aspects of the relativities involved in polarities per Heraclitus, Spinoza, Peirce, and others in my list of thinkers.
"There certainly is a strong Platonic (or, perhaps more accurately, Neoplatonic) flavour to Spinoza's metaphysics. One way of characterising the general philosophical outlooks of Plato and Aristotle would be to say that Plato focussed on an eternal and intelligible reality while Aristotle was more down to Earth, instead concerning himself with temporal and sensible things. Spinoza's substance was, first and foremost, supposed to be eternal and intelligible, and, as such, it would be likely to appeal to a Platonist. When Spinoza said that God was extended, a lot of his contemporaries took him to be saying that God was corporeal: but what he had in mind was really much closer to the uncreated and immutable Platonic Form of extension than to the created and ever-changing extensions that were commonly ascribed to bodies.
In many respects, Spinoza's God is a lot like the Neoplatonic concept of The One, which the Neoplatonists themselves would normally equate with God. And this is not just true of Spinoza's God as considered purely in its own right, but is to some extent also true of it when considered in relation to the sensible world. Although Spinoza perhaps pressed a little bit further in the direction of pantheism than the Neoplatonists themselves did, that theme was present in their writings too. It was standard for Neoplatonists to claim that the world was an emanation from The One and, although this notion of 'emanation' can be variously interpreted, what is pretty clear is that it was not to be understood as the sort of voluntary creative act that more orthodox theology would require. And some Neoplatonically-inclined authors did go some considerable way in undermining the ontological separation between The One and the sensible world. In such Medieval authors as John Scottus Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa, for instance, one finds the notion that God is the 'enfolding' of all things, while the universe is the 'unfolding' of God. This is a notion with which Spinoza would have been entirely comfortable.
However, one should always treat these 'either/or' claims with a certain caution. To say that Spinoza's philosophy had a Platonic character in some respects in no way entails that he could not also find considerable common ground with Aristotle. For an example, I'd say that Spinoza's theory of the relation between mind and body is extremely Aristotelian. Spinoza believed that, to every mode of extension, there would correspond a mode of thought. The former would be a particular body, the latter the idea of that body. And he claimed that, in the special case where the body in question happened to be a living human body, the corresponding mode of thought would be that person's mind. (See the early propositions of part two of the Ethics). Aristotle, meanwhile, felt that any ordinary object would possess both matter and form. In the special case where the object in question happened to be a natural, organised body, its form would qualify as its soul. (See the first chapter of book two of De anima). The two theories boil down to much the same thing."
As David Bohm said, "Whether or not you want to call it God..." (semantics :roll: ), and again, as Peirce said, the understanding of synechism has the potential to be the 'onement' of science and religion. .... The scientists who want to argue against it will call it too religious, and the theologians who want to argue against it will say it isn't close enough to the divine. There will always be contraries, but that's an integral part of what gives it its identity. :blush: :cool:
Fred Alan Wolf
https://youtu.be/a1A2xdv-X6k
I would argue against this point.
Although the word 'orthogenesis' is taboo, here are some things to consider......
The science of epigenetics has taken a turn somewhat toward the ideas of Lamarck.
Per Wikipedia.... "but the notion that evolution represents progress is still widely shared"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogenesis
And here is a very new finding that I just read last night....
"The idea that mass extinctions allow many new types of species to evolve is a central concept in evolution, but a new study using artificial intelligence to examine the fossil record finds this is rarely true, and there must be another explanation."
https://scitechdaily.com/artificial-intelligence-discovers-surprising-patterns-in-earths-biological-mass-extinctions
My own theory is that we may eventually discover that this is due to 'double bind', being that it has to happen in order for the 'whole' to continue its progress 'towards'. ...... My favorite Gregory Bateson lecture excerpt explaining evolutionary double bind ...... https://vimeo.com/15492840
I personally think that because of nominalism, humanity has for some time now been moving itself toward a double bind.
Excellent point!
What is the 'sweet spot' of evolution, where an organism becomes aware of 'self', and recognizes that its reflection is not that of another, but doesn't go to the nominalist extreme of ontological individualism, and narcissism so engulfing that it stares at itself on its cell phone all day, constantly contemplating how its image reflects back onto the world? We are certainly at a point where dialogue is breaking down, as more and more people are only waiting to speak rather than sharing time in an interaction to actually listen.
I think it would be a big mistake to regard reflection upon our consciousness as being narcissistic. That is because consciousness is the core and depths of our being. Surely, narcissistic is looking at ourselves and our image at a surface level, independently of whether or not there is consciousness underlying our individual minds.
Just thinking out loud here, but if we consider this question in light of what physicist Fred Alan Wolf said about 'willful intention' in that video I posted previously, I have to wonder if 'intention' might be the determining factor about whether or not reflecting upon consciousness, individually or collectively, could be considered a form of narcissism.
"Research participants found that they could apply statements of the Collective Narcissism Scale to various groups: national, ethnic, religious, ideological, political, students of the same university, fans of the same football team, professional groups and organizations."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_narcissism
Yes, I see your point and agree that 'wilful intentionality' may be important for determining what is considered to be narcissistic
And I would agree! I think the rejection of the idea of purpose is one of the profound mistakes of current evolutionary theory. I only made the point because it's the kind of criticism a lot of current evolutionary theory would have of Peirce's 'agapasm' - not because I myself agree with them.
:up: :blush:
:up: :blush:
Can you explain how do you imagine consciousness outside of a brain?
While we are conscious the brain receives information from the eyes, ears, touch, etc. If you imagine surviving without these it will feel pretty scary, unless you think this mind has access to some information. You may claim anything, like some sort of vision without actually having eyes but still seeing images the the eyes capture them?!
In life the fittest survives. I don’t see why would some lifeforms like us would have more chances if the consciousness survived beyond the body. Or you may think it the same way, like the fittest conscious minds survives. Anyway, I don’t see how a conscious mind could survive the physical destruction of the brain.
During general anesthesia we know people don’t remember anything. So claim they do. So the conclusion is the mind can work without a brain? Or that the anesthesia didn’t stop consciousness completely. The last one seems plausible because it doesn’t assume anything other that what we already know. The first is just a claim nobody can prove.
My opinion is that not only the conscious cannot survive without a brain but in fact we only live an instance in a series of conscious individual experiences that the brain generates. But the last one always feels it has lived ever since it has born.
One description of exo-individual consciousness might be that of distributed cognition.
The article talks about this being a framework for studying cognition, rather than a type of cognition, but i'd take it the step further myself.
The dissociative identity disorder may be an example where multiple regions of the brain generate separate identities while sharing or exchanging information. The difference from a set of different brains in different bodies is the speed of communication between the individual conscious minds is much slower and can be less accurate. The feeling of an extension of your body when using some tool for example can enhance your experience. Communicating with others doesn’t feel so direct because it slow but sometimes I think it can be felt almost like sharing the other person’s sensing organs when they can communicate fast. Anyway consciousness requires something physical to produce it in my opinion. Brains are very complex machines so I can’t imagine it occur in some much simpler system.
I got through half of the IEP article on Peirce's logic. I didn't get anything out of it. Any resources?
Yes, some of those articles seem almost as if they are trying to confuse people with complexity. I think the most important thing to remember is that Peirce really tried to explain these things simply, but he sometimes had to invent words to express what he meant. This can scare some people away if they are the type to be intimidated or judgmental of something new, or else they may take the nominalistic reductive approach and dissect the terms to such an extreme that it becomes overwhelming (I would liken that to the story of the goose that laid the golden egg).
Anyway, this link expresses some of these things in his own words..... Logic and Habit
And subscribing to Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society is very helpful for understanding Peirce. Excellent articles!
Here's a better link for 'Transactions'
Thanks
You're very welcome. :blush:
Joining the conversation late so bear with me. A few questions.
1. Can you define consciousness as you understand it in your first post. Do you mean the individual consciousness or the collective?
2. Do you see the mind as something immaterial? If so, how is this different than any mind / body dualism argument? For a physicalist, there is no evidence that the mind is anything other than matter.
Cheers!
Hmm... I suppose the only way to directly answer that is to say "neither?". If you are coming at this topic as a nominalist, you will probably only get frustrated with me.
Quoting avalon
I suppose the answer to this question would involve a discussion about what you think is 'material'. Here is a link that might be of interest to you. In a Mind-Bending New Paper, Physicists Give Schrodinger's Cat a Cheshire Grin
Hello Avalon :smile:
You are basically asking me to start over with this thread. I'm afraid I cannot devote the time to doing that for every person who joins the conversation late. I'm sorry. Please consider reading through the thread. Thanks for understanding. :blush:
If you're right, where does consciousness reside?
Asking where it 'resides' is a nominalist perspective (see my previous views on nominalism).
My perspective is more akin to this perspective and this perspective.
"Information" is a quality or "accident" (in the old usage) and needs matter in order to emerge. A lot of stuff spoken of in quantum mechanics could be private interpretation. They have two principles for example: (1) a particle can be two places at once, and (2) a particle can pop out of nowhere (through teleporting into a work hole or whatever). Now, if you are studying a new particle, how can you possibly determine if it came from the wormhole or if it is really a neighbouring particle in superposition? THAT is a matter of perspective, so be cautious when people try to prove their points by the philosophical implications of quantum physics
I'm not trying to prove anything other than precisely that... perspective. Everything I have talked about in this thread expresses that.
You use the word: "Consciousness" as if it actually exists, not just metaphorically but physically as real matter in the real universe. (whatever the hell that is.)
Ok, I emphatically agree with you that Consciousness does indeed exist.
Where does it exist? In the conscious mind.
So my definition of Consciousness is - "Arrangements of human brain cells located physiologically within the conscious mind which is known to exist within the prefrontal lobes just above the eyes."
If that statement is accurate then your statement cannot be accurate.
An interesting related idea. Consciousness can be amputaded and occasionally has been amputed with an operation called: "A prefrontal lobotomy. The entire prefrontal lobes are removed and the scar sewed up.The patient is deprived of a conscious mind and has no Consciousness which is the only part of the mind that can talk. The patient can no longer talk but he is normal in all other ways and can still communicate using shouts or grunts or pointing or laughing or crying or learning to use Indian sign language.
Video...
Law and Justice
I've been reading 'Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy' by Kojin Karatani (also excellent), and it seems so unfortunate for humanity that the origins of nominalism and the birthing of human-constructed dualism are not better understood by everyone. Here is a link to his book..... https://www.dukeupress.edu/isonomia-and-the-origins-of-philosophy
I think that to really understand synechism means to understand the difference between this human-constructed dualism and the propensity for living organisms to take on habits in nature (the difference between what is human-constructed convention and what is natural emergence and habit). ... I also think that our ignorance on this matter is what may be leading the human species into a double bind (Gregory Bateson excerpt link below). Our species is certainly far from being as intelligent as it thinks it is.
https://vimeo.com/15492840
Where is consciousness in all of this? It is in the connectedness of observation that is clear in this understanding (for those who can see and are not lost to mere convention).
"There is a convergence point in Peirce, the isonomia concept, and Bateson’s butterfly example (Alice in Wonderland is about logic in language)—all are a point about logic (about which I am currently writing). Double bind, or paradox [either/or choice] is always after Triple Bind, or ambiguity [both/and choice]. The problem is Culture, where “convention” [habit] is the “forgotten rationality” [G. m?m?ra].
Culture makes this time consuming process more efficient as Double Bind [“x /either-or/not-x], obviously you forget that y or anything else is possible as a new context. Choosing a new context is creativity or learning. Children are not constrained by cultural habit, so their answer to an either/or choice is simply “Both!”. People discover that another Culture [language] allows them to see at least one other context (rediscovery of “both”). Here is where psychologists talk about the mirror [“through the looking glass”]. Double Binds are always one’s perception, so the corrective is self vs. other, or the communication distinction of Addresser (speaker) and Addressee (listener). In a mirror, "self vs. other" adds "same vs. different". This is all Peirce, quadratics [self/other//same/different] becomes triads [Western Rule: self/other/same = double bind; aphorism = Others are the Same”], only because the new context [Eastern Rule: self/other/different; aphorism “Others are Different"] is not allowed by cultural convention (aphorism). I am assuming that for Kojin, the Eastern rule is Ionia democracy [Plato, monarchy], and the Western rule is Athenian democracy [Aristotle, democracy](!).
Of course, the USA is the grand "mirror" experiment where Republlc = "monarchic [representative] democracy as democratic monarchy [the people]”. This is why the "founding fathers" resorted to Latin “E pluribus unum” in good English is “One from Many, from Many, One” [basic chiasm concept = A:B :: b:a]. A Latin aphorism (two concepts = double bind) is reduced from the English “reality" of four concepts in the analogy. Aphorisms always derive from reduced Analogies; the Sophists called them a chiasm (mirror cross-over of values)."
If you have taken the time to fully read these posts, and you do understand them, you should now understand why I am neither Left nor Right, Republican nor Democrat, Conservative nor Liberal. .... As a synechist, I do not subscribe to that house of mirrors cage. This 'understanding' also reveals similar insight into religions, atheistic scientism, generational gender expectations, and so much more. My eyes are fully open to what is real. Nominalism is not real.
Well wishes on your willingness to be open to learning, exploring others' perspectives, and sharing in kind dialogue. Take care.
Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy
The problem is you sporadically post on a year old thread. Why not start a brand new one and get into discussion with those interested by some fresh ideas? You're kinda being "smarter than thou" in how you berate nominalists as if they were your children
Like others who come here to post, I am only hoping to find others who are familiar with these topics so we can engage in productive dialogue. I mistakenly thought that was the intention of this forum
I really don't think I've been rude, even though I was treated very rudely when I first came here. My intentions have been genuine and sincere. I apologize if I came across as anything other than that.