Anaxagoras
I only have the Third Part of Schoponhauers major work and am only on page 40. However I immediately notice that he is speaking of God when he speaks of Will, and this in a Buddhistic sense. The God is not a Godhead, but is experienced as conscious- although it is not. Will shines like light throughout creation, but it lacks intellect (contra Spinoza).
The tendency to give this Will an Intellect such that it would be regarded as truly personified goes back to Anaxagoras, the "philosopher and scientist who lived and taught in Athens for approximately thirty years" (according to the SEP). I am confused by his belief in materialism because it seems to contradict his notion of Logos. Anyone familiar with this pre-Socratic? Is he worth getting into? Thanks
The tendency to give this Will an Intellect such that it would be regarded as truly personified goes back to Anaxagoras, the "philosopher and scientist who lived and taught in Athens for approximately thirty years" (according to the SEP). I am confused by his belief in materialism because it seems to contradict his notion of Logos. Anyone familiar with this pre-Socratic? Is he worth getting into? Thanks
Comments (84)
I'm not very familiar with "The Axe", but I suspect that his notion of a single creative principle in the world is closer to Plato's "Logos", than to any Theist or Polytheist god-concept; His god-model may be similar to Spinoza's Universal Substance, which was both creative and materialistic. It's also similar to my own definition of EnFormAction as the creative principle of the world. Like many philosophers, we like to have it both ways : natural laws and freewill. :smile:
Anaxagoras :
Because of his focus on this principle, Anaxagoras has been credited both with an advance towards theism, the concept of a personal creator-god involved in human affairs, and with the first steps toward atheism, or the total disbelief in god or gods. In placing nous as the beginning of creation, Anaxagorous paved the way for believing in a single creative force, God. Ironically, his philosophical concept of nous also helped lead to a rejection of all gods, for the beginning of the world and creation could now be explained in scientific terms rather than religious ones.
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/DSB/Anaxagoras.pdf
EnFormAction : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page18.html
“I believe in Spinoza’s god, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a god who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” ___Einstein
I like what you've written. It seems to me The Axe cut the Gordian knot by separating supernatural beliefs from natural one. For him, I believe, the universe is just like one massive brain, and we individuals only comprehend a small part of what it is. It's a rather comforting idea and reminds me of dinosaurs (maybe an archetype?). I think that not only Einstein, but a sizable amount of scientists believe this idea that universe is intellect. It makes more sense than saying the world is just numbers, and presents a clear picture better than going ahead and posting Ideas\Forms like Plato did, which did not have a a mind to contain them. Again, the concept im finding interesting here is a materialist one, wherein we (assuming there are not aliens) are the highest embodiment of matter's ability to think, and the matter that thinks is a unified whole (i.e. all the universe). I hope I'm not sounding circular
2) next is if A is B, and B is C, than A is C
3) then there is the 1+3=4 and the Socrates is a bachelor syllogism
AI can go further than this, but can it mull, can it relfect? Can it mix poetry with philosophy and make mysticism. I think we just are the apex dinosaurs in our epoch of history
Remember also that all programs are just data being executed, and all data is executable in principle, most of it just does nothing interesting when executed.
Maybe there is will and intellect in everything, and there are still particular objects although they parts of the universe as a whole. What you guys are proposing (i.e. information/data as the basis of the universe) seems to me to be modern pythagorean Platonism(i.e. idealism). Information is something you garner from the world, so it is completely mental. The world is made of energy, which produces force and matter. The thesis by that one writer "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Science" may seem to support your position, however I believe in the "law of vibration" wherein everything is energy and the psychology and wishes of the scientist actually manifest themselves in their work
I think computers have made people very confused
Yes. In conventional physics, all material things are stable forms of dynamic Energy. But in cutting-edge Information Science, Energy itself is a physical form of metaphysical Information. This new understanding of the physical world is the basis of the Enformationism thesis. It combines some elements of Platonic Idealism with the modern understanding of physical Realism. :nerd:
mass-energy-information equivalence : https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794
Energy Matter Information : https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/the-basis-of-the-universe-may-not-be-energy-or-matter-but-information
PS__Energy is indeed imagined as vibrations in empty space, which is a paradox. Instead, I think Energy is an on/off series of possible/actual potential. In reality, it works something like Morse code to convey Information from one place to another. wink-wink :joke:
Quoting Gregory
No. In my view, there is Information in everything. Will and Intellect are emergent functions of highly developed brains. :smile:
The only science book I've read lately is The Toa of Physics, where it's argued everything is inter-connected energy. This energy has a weird relationship with nothingness. I really know nothing of computer language is regards to natural philosophy, but thanks for the information (wink)
You don't use these terms in the Aristotelian sense. I can tell. I was trained as a Thomist from an early age. So we are coming from difference perspectives. Hope you have luck with your enterprise :)
Yes. I also don't use the term "Information" is a strict Shannon sense. And my thesis is based on modern Science instead of ancient Philosophy. But it agrees substantially with both Plato's Idealism, and Aristotle's Realism. As it turned-out, my personal worldview is compatible with some elements of both Materialism and Spiritualism. But, I am neither a Materialist, nor a Spiritualist; neither an Atheist, nor a Theist.
I was not deliberately copying Aristotle's analysis of Potential & Actual. I was merely following the logic of my insight into Information theory (all is information) where it led me. And I was not raised on Scholastic Theology. Ironically, I am currently reading Aristotle's Revenge, by philosopher Edward Feser. It seems to be a modern update of the Thomistic interpretation of Aristotle's worldview. He immediately gets into an analysis of Actuality and Potentiality. And so far, it seems to fit my own understanding of how Eternal Potential is converted into Temporal Actual. Unlike a lot of philosophical and theological writing, Feser's book is quite easy for an untrained amateur like me to read.
What differences do you see between Aquinas' usage and mine? I was not trying to defend any particular theistic doctrine, but my current view of the hypothetical G*D is deistic. What I call BEING (infinite potential) or LOGOS (the organizing force in evolution) serves as the First Cause and Enformer/Creator of our space-time world. But I remain agnostic about any personal properties. Anything I say about what preceded the Big Bang is speculative. I'm still developing the Enformationism thesis in the blogs. And I'll probably add a post after I finish this book. But it's over 450 pages, so it may take a while. :smile:
G*D :
[i]An ambiguous spelling of the common name for a supernatural deity. The Enformationism thesis is based upon an unprovable axiom that our world is an idea in the mind of G*D. This eternal deity is not imagined in a physical human body, but in a meta-physical mathematical form, equivalent to Logos. Other names : ALL, BEING, Creator, Enformer, MIND, Nature, Reason, Source, Programmer. The eternal Whole of which all temporal things are a part is not to be feared or worshipped, but appreciated like Nature.
I refer to the logically necessary and philosophically essential First & Final Cause as G*D, rather than merely "X" the Unknown, partly out of respect. That’s because the ancients were not stupid, to infer purposeful agencies, but merely shooting in the dark. We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why". That inscrutable agent of Entention is what I mean by G*D.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html
I am familiar with Feser's book, yes. You may be interested in the old school of Ontologism (search Google for the Catholic Encyclopedia article on this). Malebranche is also interesting (see Stanford Encyclopedia for entries). These ideas have been considered fringe for hundreds of years in Catholicism, until around the time of Benedict XV, when new schools of philosophy sprout up in France and elsewhere. I am personally a materialist, but keep some Hegelian ideas in my bag for ideas to mull over (since I don't pretend to know everything)
A big problem here is that Aristotle's cosmological argument explicitly denies the concept of "Eternal Potential" as an impossibility. This is why the Christian God, and Aquinas' God is Actual.
Plotinus argues that the One is pure potentiality that doesn't act. God comes from that (for him)
Yes. I understand that Aristotle was not comfortable with Plato's Idealism. But my worldview combines Idealism with Realism. For all practical purposes, our world is as real as it gets. But for philosophical theoretical purposes, we must look beyond the material world.
For example, the Big Bang is accepted by most modern scientists as the First Cause of physical reality. But they were discomfited by questions about what came before the Bang? This is equivalent to Atheist challenges asking "who created God?". So, hard materialist scientists were forced to expand their worldview beyond empirical Realty, into the realm of theoretical Ideality, in order to imagine the eternal regression of Bangs that they called the Multiverse. Hence, their expanded worldview combined Realism with Idealism.
I don't know what Aristotle's opinion was on the concept of "Eternal Potential". But his ontology assumed a necessary Non-Contingent Cause. Which I would interpret as a non-physical, non-temporal, eternal potential. This is equivalent to the "Necessary Being" that I call BEING. But my notion of G*D is also Actual, in the sense that our physical world ultimately consists of metaphysical Information, which is the essence of both Matter and Energy. Hence, physical reality consists of non-physical god-stuff : Spinoza's Universal Substance. That may sound weird, but it's no stranger than the Quantum theory of Virtual Particles. :cool:
Ideality :
[i]In Plato’s theory of Forms, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call Reality consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.
1. Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of “virtual” particles in a mathematical “field”, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. To measure is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]
2. Some modern idealists find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Plato’s notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, “Ideality” refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part. A formal name for that fertile field is G*D.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
BEING :
[i]In my own theorizing there is one universal principle that subsumes all others, including Consciousness : essential Ontological Existence. Among those philosophical musings, I refer to the "unit of existence" with the absolute singular term "BEING" as contrasted with the plurality of contingent "beings" and things and properties. By BEING I mean the ultimate “ground of being”, which is simply the power to exist, and the power to create beings.
Note : Real & Ideal are modes of being. BEING, the power to exist, is the source & cause of Reality and Ideality. BEING is eternal, undivided and static, but once divided into Real/Ideal, it becomes our dynamic Reality.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
Virtual :
[i]Traditionally, the term "virtual" meant possessing virtues or qualities apart from physical properties. In computer science, "virtual" refers to software apart from hardware. In Physics, "virtual" describes the mathematical or statistical state of a waveform in a field before it is actualized as a particle. A "virtual" particle is defined as . . . not a particle at all. It refers precisely to a disturbance in a field that is not a particle."
The term “Virtual” in physics is analogous to “Spiritual” in meta-physics. In the Enformationism theory, it is equivalent to Qualia, apart from Quanta. The Quantum Mechanics term "Virtual" is equivalent to "Potential" or "Ideal". For example, virtual particles are merely mathmatical definitions with no material instances, until they are Actualized by an observation. Similarly, in Ideality, a Platonic Form has no physical examples until Realized by an intention. In both cases, the will of a mind triggers the transition from nothing to something.[/i]
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page20.html
left in God for Him choosing with his nature the Good in the face of pain and suffering. Therefore
man has the ability to be greater than God! The idea of perfection which any man can imagine would be a being who chooses The Good in the face of infinite pain. The substance view of God that Aquinas makes is illogical, for how can a person be striving, working, fighting, doing, and acting in itself, if there never was an obstacle and never will be? A person can't just be those things.
As for Plotinus, he explains:
"It is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-aware Creator God." This is because the first reality (Potentiality/One) has no "ergon" (action), for him
So we have spiritual Actuality (refuted above), spiritual potentiality (defended by Plotinus), physical potentiality (defended by modern science), and materialism defended by me :)
The point is that a potential cannot be a cause, only something actual can cause anything.
Quoting Gnomon
Notice that in your descriptive example, there are supposedly infinite possibilities which collapse into one reality, the reality given by measurement. But that measurement is an act, and the possibilities are not really infinite, it's just a misunderstanding attributable to the mind that measures.
Actually, it's still debatable whether a spiritual impersonal Form is effete. I should have included that in my last post
I wasn't making a judgement about whether the cosmological argument is true or not, so whether that's debatable is beside the point. That's why I didn't reply to your post.
The issue was whether Eternal Potential is consistent with Aristotle and Aquinas, as Gnomon claimed. It is not. The idea of Eternal Potential is what the cosmological argument claims to refute.
Gnomon was considering whether Enformation is consistent with Aristotle. Why not let him make up his own mind? These issues can be as nuanced as distinguishing between individualization and identity. What exactly is potential, whether it be spiritual or material? Isn't the point that we can't know it's nature? Try chewing on fog. You'll get nowhere
What kind of nonsense is this? Isn't the point to posting and participating here, to get other people's ideas? Try chewing on that.
It's just that Thomists are dogmatic about actuality and potentiality. They think they've figured it all out
Yes. Something must trigger that Potential into an Action to produce an Actual thing. In physics, the prior potential of a cause is taken for granted. But the First Cause must be activated either by Accident or by Intention. For my purposes, I assume that the First Cause is Actual in the sense of eternal BEING (the power to be and to create beings). That makes the creative act both the First and Final cause : both beginning and end of this world. I'm aware that mechanical Physics makes no allowance for Intention in Cause & Effect. But this is all about conceptual Metaphysics.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm not sure what you meant by "the reality is given by measurement". That may be the view from a human perspective within the creation. But I was talking about the view from outside this space-time world. The model I use is Plato's notion of eternal Chaos --- which I interpret to be all Potential, nothing Actual : i.e. BEING --- and it's conversion into Actual Cosmos. AFAIK, Plato didn't go into detail about the Demiurge who triggered that transformation from Unreal (Ideal) Possibilities into Real Actualities. So, for the sake of my hypothesis, I assume that the First Cause was an Actor, with the power to convert ideas into actions, and possibilities into realities, i.e. EnFormAction. :nerd:
Chaos :
In ancient Greek creation myths Chaos was the void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos. It literally means "emptiness", but can also refer to a random undefined unformed state that was changed into the orderly law-defined enformed Cosmos. In modern Cosmology, Chaos can represent the eternal/infinite state from which the Big Bang created space/time. In that sense of infinite Potential, it is an attribute of G*D, whose power of EnFormAction converts possibilities (Platonic Forms) into actualities (physical things).
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page12.html
Note : a modern name for the potential of Chaos is the Universal Field : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_field_theory
EnFormAction :
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. It’s the creative force (aka : Divine Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Demiurge : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-timaeus/
If you don't like the assumption of an Intentional Being to create our world ---
The Multiverse as Ultimate Being : http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=835
Actually, I'm not concerned to have Aristotle validate my notion of Eternal Potential. The Enformationism thesis will have to stand on its own legs. I'm aware that Aristotle was uncomfortable with Plato's "recondite" Ideals, but I find the notion to be necessary for metaphysical discussions, such as general concepts and ultimates.
As an axiom of my thesis, I assume that for something contingent to exist, there must be something non-contingent, and for something temporal to exist, there must be something non-temporal, i.e. Eternal. For me that something is BEING -- the eternal potential to be. :cool:
Cosmological Argument : On the one hand, the argument arises from human curiosity as to why there is something rather than nothing or than something else.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/
Being Qua Being : So Aristotle's study does not concern some recondite subject matter known as 'being qua being'. Rather it is a study of being, or better, of beings—of things that can be said to be—that studies them in a particular way: as beings, in so far as they are beings.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/
I don't know what you would mean by "Accident" here. Isn't an accident a property of an intentional act? So the so-called First Cause would be an intentional act whether or not the outcome is the intended outcome or an accidental outcome.
Quoting Gnomon
Your analogy spoke of "virtual particles", "that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation." So in this case, as you describe it, it is the act of measurement which gives reality. This cannot be a perspective from outside the world, because the description is of an interaction with the world.
My position is closer to Samuel Alexander's. Interpreting Anaxagoras as a materialist, I see his Logos as the mind that evolved into us, the apex of earth's evolution. Tossing in Schopenhauer, I see will and reason in everything, it all evolving towards greater consciousness. But this is all in a materialist sense. The most I am willing to reduce matter to is energy. Information? No. Something spiritual? Nop. When Schopenhauer says matter is incorpereal, I take that to mean energy. Every thing else is fairy wand imagination. The world is vibration
Some people, myself included, claim that Plato himself refuted Pythagorean idealism, before Aristotle. The modern representation of Platonic realism is Pythagorean idealism, and is not a true representation of what Plato exposed.
Quoting Gregory
The issue is in one's understanding of what the word "matter" means. If we understand the term to refer to an aspect of reality which is not understood by humanity, then matter is necessarily just an idea. This is because there can be nothing specific which is known as "matter", there's just a vague unknown which bears that name..
Please explain how. I'm much interested :)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well you define matter as "prime matter" which is a mystery. I see matter as res extensa and still regard it as a mystery
No. In this context, "accidental" is the opposite of "intentional". In modern terms, an Accident is caused by random forces, and does not involve the property of Teleology. Aristotle contrasted Accidental change with Substantial change. But that is not what I was talking about.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's what I thought you were referring to. But I was looking at change from the perspective of the First Cause or Creator. I suppose you could still call that Intentional change an act of measurement, in the sense that it is a mental comprehension. But I would hesitate to say that human measurement creates Reality. To me, it's more like the "measurement" is a choice of which aspect of reality the observer wants to see : location or motion. :smile:
I'll start with a bit of an outline. Traditional idealism has a deficiency which becomes evident when the theory of participation, which supports it, is analyzed, as Plato did. He noticed that individual things must participate in the ideas which describe those things. For example, a thing of beauty must participate in the Idea of beauty if there is any truth to its beauty. But this representation makes the thing participating active, while the Idea which is partaken of, is passive. And so this representation cannot explain how the Idea of beauty imparts beauty to the beautiful thing, because it does not allow that the Idea is active. Notice that the Idea of beauty needs to be active, as the cause of beauty, if the Idea is to account for the existence of beauty within the thing.
This is why Plato turns to "the good" in The Republic. The good is said to be what makes the intelligible objects intelligible, just like the sun makes visible objects visible, by lighting them. So the good provides the principle of activity, inspiring human beings to act, and also allowing them to grasp the intelligible objects.
This produces a separation between the intelligible object as apprehended by the human mind, and the intelligible object as independent from the human mind, just like the separation between the visible object as lit by the sun, and the visible object as perceived by the seer. In Plato's system, "the good" is the medium between the intelligible object and the apprehension of it, just like the sun is the medium between the visible object and the image of it.
Plato explored the separation between divine ideas and human ideas in The Republic. He describes a double layer of representation. The carpenter has an idea of a bed, and produces a material bed which is a representation of this idea. But the carpenter's idea of a bed is itself a representation of the divine Idea, which is the best, or ultimate bed. So the carpenter attempts to make the best possible bed, but that carpenter's mind, with its idea of a bed does not really grasp the Ideal, and the bed is made to the best of the carpenter's ability to conceive of the ideal bed.
This refutes the Pythagorean idealism by demonstrating the necessity of a separation between the human ideas and the divine ideas. That type of idealism does not provide for such a separation, as the mathematical objects which are grasped by the human mind are said to be one and the same as the eternal Ideas. After this wedge is driven between the Ideals, and the human ideas, Aristotle attacks the human ideas, demonstrating that their existence can only be in potentia prior to being discovered by the human mind, and he demonstrates with the cosmological argument that no potential can be eternal.
Quoting Gregory
Either way, the point was that if it refers to a mystery, "matter" can't be anything more than an idea.
Quoting Gnomon
I don't see how there is such a thing as the opposite of "intentional". But for the sake of argument, I'll assume that there is such a thing, and I'll call it "non-intentional". And we'll say that this would be a random force. But such a force makes no sense whatsoever. It would have to spring from nowhere, as uncaused, to be truly random, and a force just springing from nowhere, uncaused, doesn't make any sense.
Matter is only a mystery because it can be broken down into energy. You say The Good must be what makes things intelligible. So... God. Of course you can say he is necessary, but I can respond that matter is dualistic and both contingent and necessary. You would counter with arguments of passivity and actualiy, but I'm never impressed when Feser and the crowd try this. I don't think they thought it through all the way to nowhere's end
Also, in the future when you write in the Thomistic method, know you are making illegal moves all over the chess board
I'd like to know how you decide what is legal and what is illegal in this context.
It's when you stretch someone's thought in a way were you can slip in an idea (a seed) which they would regard as true
You must have in mind a different definition of "Intentional". The antonym of Intentional (planned, willed) is given as Accidental or Un-intentional or Un-planned.or Un-willed. Are these definitions not oppositions? Perhaps "Accidental" is not a physical Thing, but as a concept it is the negation of "Intentional", is it not? Or are all actions Intentional in some sense? :smile:
Accidental : 1. happening by chance, unintentionally, or unexpectedly.
Intentional (metaphysics) :
[i]3.a. pertaining to an appearance, phenomenon, or representation in the mind; phenomenal; representational.
b. pertaining to the capacity of the mind to refer to an existent or nonexistent object.
c. pointing beyond itself, as consciousness or a sign.[/i]
PS__Sorry, I wasn't aware that "Intentional" had a special metaphysical meaning.
Intentional means colloquially "by intent". As opposed to a river running down a mountain
I see your definition, but as I explained, philosophically it doesn't refer to anything real. Intention is a cause, and chance is not a cause. So chance and intention are two distinct categories, not opposites. When we say an action is intentional, we mean that it was caused by intention. When we say that an act was by chance, we do not mean that the cause of it was chance, nor do we mean that the act was not caused. We generally mean that we do not know the cause of it. If we assume that a chance event has no cause this is an unintelligible idea, as I explained.
So we allow a category of physical activities which are not caused by intention, and are also not by chance, and are therefore not accidental (in that sense). The sun shines and evaporates the puddle of water for example. This is not an intentional act, nor is it by chance, so it is not accidental in that sense. It is a different category, or type of activity, a type of activity where the designations of intentional/unintentional, are not relevant. In the other category, the type of activities which are human activities, the intentional/unintentional designation is relevant, and within this category the two are opposed, as "what I intended", and "not what I intended". But here, an accident, "not what I intended", is actually an off shoot of an intentional act, the unintended consequences of an intentional act. And that is because it doesn't make sense to talk about a human act which is not an intentional act, but a chance act.
Quoting Gregory
Right, these are two distinct categories, or types of activities, which Gnomon conflates into one category, to say that the act of a river running is the opposite of the act of a human running, one is intentional and the other is the opposite, unintentional. Then Gnomon applies the definition of "accidental" which is normally applied to an accident in an intentional type of act (not what I intended, therefore chance occurrence), to the other category, the unintentional act of the river running, and tries to argue that actions like the river running are accidental, or chance acts.
My contrast of "Intentional Cause" versus "Accidental Cause" is basically a pragmatic scientific distinction, not an abstract philosophical category. For the practical purposes of Science, all physical events are either Intentional (artificial; experimental) or Accidental (natural; intrinsic). Intentional acts are deterministic & teleological, while Accidental events are random & probabilistic, caused by Chance. But you implied that "chance" means, not calculable mathematical probability, but merely ignorance of the effective Cause . . . a shrug of the shoulders. Then you admitted that an event without a (known or inferred) cause is "unintelligible". So, why place natural Accidents into a separate category from cultural Intentions? That would seem to be a resignation to the incomprehensibility of Nature.
Accidents in nature are usually attributed to statistically deterministic Natural Laws as the Cause, which originally referred back to the Will of God as the Prime Cause. Hence, even apparently random events were presumed to be Teleological and Intentional. Scientists still use the term "Law", but dispense with the notion of an intentional Lawgiver. That's because, unlike some philosophers, to admit ignorance of the chain of causation would undermine the validity of their theories. Unfortunately, their logical chain has no beginning, no First Cause --- only infinite ignorance.
According to Hume though, we have no way of knowing for sure that an effect is caused by its precedent. Instead, we merely assume that there is some (lawful) link between the before and after states. In other words, the Cause of an Effect is inferred rationally, but not observed empirically. Is that what you mean by, "it doesn't refer to anything real"? And yet modern Science would not work without Causal Inference, and the term "law" implies a willful deterministic Cause of some kind : perhaps the vague notion of Philosophical Necessity. Chance may not be a clear-cut Cause, where the intention can be ascertained by asking the intender. But, for the purposes of Science, Chance is the causal power of Nature, not some spooky fickle force like Fate. :smile:
Chance :
[i]1, do something by accident or without design.
2. in the most general sense of the word, is the negation of necessity and the opposite of determinism.
3. Probability theory, a branch of mathematics concerned with the analysis of random phenomena. The outcome of a random event cannot be determined before it occurs, but it may be any one of several possible outcomes. The actual outcome is considered to be determined by chance.[/i]
Probabilistic Causation : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_causation
Correlation does not imply causation : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
Statistical Determinism : https://dictionary.apa.org/statistical-determinism
Transference theory of causation : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01918271/file/Why_is_the_transference_theory_of_causat.pdf
Well I do think that chance can be a cause
We can know we are the cause of picking up a ball because we can feel the causality in action. But seeing an avalanche is different. We can't sense what is causing what. In developing my materialistic version of cosmology, I've totally disregarded the idea of time. Time is a mental thing, something Bergsonian. It has nothing to do with matter. There is simply the first pull of gravity on matter and the following actions after that. Everything is mechanistic. There is nothing before the first pull of gravity because time doesn't exist outside our brains. What physicists call "time" is really a form of energy
Again, I think you are conflating categories, making category errors. Let's make two categories, as you propose, artificial (intentional), and natural (chance). We cannot say, as you do, that intentional acts are deterministic, because the evidence is that we have freedom of choice. Likewise, as I already explained, we cannot say that natural occurrences are caused by chance. In fact, it makes no sense at all, as I told you already, to say that chance is a cause. To say that something happened by chance is to say that it is uncaused.
Quoting Gnomon
This is not true at all.
Quoting Gregory
Perhaps you can explain these thoughts? Let's say for example, that I'm in a shopping mall and happen to meet an old friend I haven't seen in many years. That's a chance meeting. How do you think that chance caused me to meet this person? Or suppose a person wins a lottery. How does chance cause that person, rather than another person, to win?
Isn't that obvious??
Clearly each ticket has an equal chance to win. It doesn't cause one to win rather than another, because each has the same chance. What causes one to win rather than another, is the draw.
If you want to argue that this specific example is deterministic, that's fine. You don't seem to understand what the word random even means though. This is typical of Thomists
I'm not arguing that it's deterministic. Nor am I arguing that it is not random. I'm arguing that chance cannot be a cause. If there is such a thing as a random occurrence, then the occurrence is uncaused. If we say that it happened by chance, in no way does this mean that chance is the cause of the occurrence.
Word salad paragraph. You don't know what random is! So you think you know it's relation to spontaneity?....
This is contradiction, plain and simple.
Quoting Gregory
There's no point in trying to figure out contradictions. Give it up! It's simply wrong.
Apparently, you are looking at causation from a different perspective. When I say that Intention is a deterministic cause, I mean that the human Intender had the power to determine a specific effect. That's why most people believe they have enough Freewill to overrule the Common Cause of random events. You may be thinking of determinism in terms of Divine Will. Theists tend to believe in divine fore-ordination, by analogy with human design and programming. That is what we call the First or Primary Causation, which is reflected in the teleology of Natural Causes. Hence, human intentions and creations are secondary causal acts.
Common Cause vs Special Cause : Common Cause is also known as Chance Cause (natural pattern). Special Cause is a non-random, unpredictable causation, such as an intentional human act (un-natural cause).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cause_and_special_cause_(statistics)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I've been using the term "Chance" as a shorthand for "Random Probability". So I assume you have some important philosophical reason for denying that natural events are caused by random Chance. Since "Chance" is an ancient notion of natural agency similar to Fate, perhaps we should use the more scientific "Probability". Note, in the definition below, "Chance" refers to Causation that is unpredictable, or random, instead of Intentional. Therefore, when we can't attribute an effect to any particular (special) cause, we say it was "caused" by Chance, meaning a natural random event (or an act of God), instead of an intentional willed effect by human agents. Therefore, our disagreement is not a category error, but merely the failure to properly define our terms for this context. :smile:
Chance : the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood, or controlled: often personified or treated as a positive agency:
Probabilistic Causation : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-probabilistic/
Chance and Causality : http://home.uchicago.edu/~jlmartin/Chance%20and%20Causality.pdf
PS__I forgot how we came to disagree on the use of "Chance" pertaining to natural events. Please describe what difference it makes to your understanding of Causation in general.
PPS__ I may have answered my own question in the next post.
I should clarify my statement to include "Natural Selection", which is the complement to "Random Chance" as the Cause of Natural Evolutionary Change. By itself, randomness is destructive, so you are correct to say my shorthand assertion is not true. Yet, combined with Selection, Chance can be creative. Moreover, so-called "Natural Selection" covertly implies a Selector, or Intender, or Creative Agent, who created the program of progressive evolutionary change.
Since most scientists deny the necessity for a First Cause of the subsequent sequence of natural events, they put the emphasis on Randomness as the creative power behind the upward arc of Evolution. But that doesn't make sense to me. So I assume that Nature functions like a computer program, which was designed to reach some ultimate solution via a heuristic searching algorithm. I don't know what that teleological goal is, but increasing Intelligence seems to be a stepping stone on the path to the Big Finale. Will the output of the program be an ideal world?? Maybe; maybe not. :cool:
Natural Selection Algorithm : There is a form of evolution, called a genetic algorithm, that takes place in a computer
https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA14217688&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00368075&p=AONE&sw=w
PS__What I refer to as "The Programmer", may be a modern term for Anaxagoras' notion of the rational power of Logos, which causes dumb matter to evolve into thinking beings.
By "faulty" do you mean imperfect? One essential "imperfection" in the evolutionary program is that it may permit self-reference. Which allows causal feedback loops. But that apparent "fault" may be the secret to evolving intelligent beings from dumb matter : the ability to learn from experience and feed that information back into the ongoing process. :nerd:
The Baldwin effect : . . . . in evolutionary developmental biology literature as a scenario in which a character or trait change occurring in an organism as a result of its interaction with its environment becomes gradually assimilated into its developmental genetic or epigenetic repertoire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_effect
Strange loops in learning and evolution : Scientific theories typically make sense of phenomena at a given level of explanation. Occasionally, phenomena that seem to belong to one level unexpectedly influence an entirely different one. These interactions are strange loops.
https://homes.luddy.indiana.edu/rocha/publications/embrob/wiles.html
In the regular uncapitalized natural selection, it is the 'selection' that is the scientific alternate to ID, meaning, too, that evolution doesn't work by chance, which is the same as you said about chance not being able to drive it.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, I think you have answered the question in the next post. Chance is not actually a cause at all, in evolution, natural selection is the cause.
Quoting Gnomon
It appears to me, like you are still making the same mistake. "Chance" is the word that we use to describe the situation when we apprehend no particular reason for one outcome or another. So the word refers to how we, as human beings, apprehend or describe the situation, it doesn't refer to something active in the world.
Take a coin toss for example. A human hand takes the coin, tosses it, and allows it to land. That is a description of the activity involved. The hand is the cause of the coin toss. However, we can say that there is a 50/50 chance of heads or tails. That "chance" is the way that we describe the possible outcome of the potential toss. If the action is initiated, there is a chance that the outcome will be one thing, and a chance that the outcome will be something else. So "chance" is a word that describes the effects of an action, not the cause of the action.
Even when a person is considering what action to take, and the person decides to "take a chance", "chance" relates to the potential outcome of the possible action. The person is not sure what the outcome will be, and so takes a chance. Chance is not the cause of the action, because the person intentionally chooses the action, but the word "chance" refers to the person not being sure what the outcome will be.
Imagine your example of evolution. One might say, that there is a chance mutation of the being. This does not mean that the mutation is caused by chance, it means that whether the mutation might make the being more or less capable, is a matter of chance, just like flipping the coin creates a chance of heads or tails. Natural selection is the end result, what validates the effect as better or worse. So "chance" is something created by an action, like flipping a coin, or throwing the dice, and the word refers to the fact that the outcome (effect) is indeterminate. But chance is not a creative power in itself, it's how we describe the effect of a creative act when there is more than one possible outcome of the creative act.
Quoting Gnomon
You demonstrate a logical intuition, to say that this does not make sense to you. Randomness is just like chance, it describes a created situation, like tossing the dice, it does not describe a creative power. We create randomness, like a random number generator, or tossing the dice, but randomness cannot create anything itself. If there was such a thing as pure randomness, it would just continue on as pure randomness forever and ever, without creating anything. If it actually did create something, then by that very fact it would falsify the designation of randomness, and we'd have to say that it really wasn't random.
Some research somewhere I can't remember suggest that the wave function collapse isn't instant or random, it becoming only after a gradual build-up.
'Random', though has a tough time of going away, although I'd like it to. Anton Zellinger claims to have proven that "randomness is the bedrock of reality" to many sigma, through experiments.
"A sense of spatial immensity, in greatness and smallness, disarticulating and spacing out, within a speed of indefinite radius, the orbits of the objects which press around us;
A sense of depth, pushing back laboriously through endless series and measureless distances of time, which a sort of sluggishness of mind tends continually to condense for us in a thin layer of the past;
A sense of number, discovering and grasping unflinching the bewildering multitude of material or living elements involved in the slightest change in the universe;
A sense of proportion, realizing as best we can the difference of physical scale which separates, both in rhythm and dimension, the atom from the nebula, the infinitesimal from the immense; A sense of quality, or all novelty, enabling us to distinguish in nature certain absolute stages of perfection and growth, without upsetting the physical unity of the world;
A sense of movement, capable of perceiving the irresistibly developments hidden in extreme slowness -extreme agitation concealed beneath a veil of immobility-the entirely new insinuating itself into the heart of the monotonous reputation of the same things;
A sense, lastly, of the organic, discovery.physical links and structural unity under the superficial juxtaposition of succession and collectivities."
Yes. I emphasized "Natural" selection, because scientists, and many philosophers, are uncomfortable with the idea of "Super-natural" selection. But then, who or what programmed the rules for Selection Criteria into the the evolutionary algorithm? As I said before, randomness alone is destructive, so we must somehow account for the creative powers of our universe. Science says "Chance did it", while Religion says "God did it". But, my alternative to Intelligent Design is Intelligent Evolution, imagined as an information processing computer program. But even that begs the question of a Programmer.
For many years I was agnostic about the supernatural powers that were taken for granted in my religious raising. But as I matured, and began to study philosophical concepts, in addition to scientific theories, I began to realize that some kind of Pre-Natural First Cause is a necessary assumption. And since Evolution now seems to be equivalent to a computer program, I can't deny the implications for a Programmer. So, in my current worldview, this world is a combination of Chaos (randomness) and Cosmos (organization). "Chaos" is imagined as an infinite source of Un-Actualized Potential (possibilities), while "Cosmos" plays the role of the Intender or Selector or Logos or Craftsman, who Chooses which possibility to actualize.
I'm still agnostic about the exact "nature" of a Pre-Natural First Cause. But, even a material Multiverse would have to possess some god-like powers in order to create a world of random atoms, swirling in the void, from which Life & Mind, and accelerating human Culture emerged. :cool:
Pre-Natural : before the Big Bang
Intelligent Evolution : http://bothandblog5.enformationism.info/page2.html
Designed To Evolve : http://bothandblog5.enformationism.info/page8.html
Atheist First Cause : http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=835
PS__I apologize for all the capitals. It's just my little quirk for stressing certain words that might otherwise be overlooked (due to preconceptions) on the way to extracting the meaning of a sentence.
I still view Randomness as a necessary source of novelty, which supplies open possibilities, for Selection to choose from.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's where we differ. "Chance" also means Opportunity. Choice may have its reasons, but Chance supplies the substance to be rationalized --- the objects to be ordered.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. But Choice (the power to choose) without a Menu (options) is impotent.
PS__That description of Evolution as a Menu of options for thinking beings to choose from, may mean that humans have Freewill, but that our choices are limited to those that Serendipity presents. In other words, we can't choose our choices. :cool:
Enformationism does imply PanEnTheism. Yet it's not about pixels, but Bits of meaning. :smile:
Bit : the smallest increment of information, of meaning
It from Bit : https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09/02/it-from-bit-wheeler/
If we found that instead of strings, there were tiny photons that rule the world, I think the German idealists and romantics would sing from their graves
What would the Idealists think about a world composed of Bits of Information? Maybe all those zillions of bits add up to one really big Idea. :joke:
You are obviously a process philosopher and a very modern type of that as well. There are Christians versions of these ideas i've come accross: https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Immortality-Modern-Cosmology-Resurrection/dp/0385467990
The source of novelty need not be randomness, it only needs to be possibility. Possibility means that there are options, but possibilities might exist without a being which can choose between them. And, a being like the human being might not adequately understand the extent of the possibilities, such that they could appear as if they were based in randomness. But all possibilities are really limited in extent, possibilities are restricted. Therefore the underlying mechanism which allows for the reality of possibility cannot actually be randomness, because randomness cannot account for the reality of whatever it is which restricts possibility.
Quoting Gnomon
OK, I see how you are using "chance" now. You use it as somewhat synonymous with possibility. If there is a possibility of a certain event occurring, there is a chance of that event. I look at this as the human perspective on possibility, we judge possibilities in this way, as chances, or probabilities. But only when we look at possibilities as having real ontological status, then the possibility, (what you'd call the chance of something), becomes an opportunity. We can make that possibility actually occur by proceeding with the required actions. I find that "possibility" is a better word to use here than "chance", because chance will often imply randomness in a common interpretation, but as I described above, there is no need to associate randomness with possibility or opportunity. If a person apprehends opportunity, as provided by possibility, then as I explained above, there is no need to conceive of this possibility as being provided for by randomness. If I offer you a choice of this or that, there is no need to assume that these possibilities are provided for by randomness.
My Enformationism thesis does have some parallels with Whitehead's Process Philosophy. Unfortunately, I had difficulty following his arguments in Process and Reality. Besides, my theory was pretty well developed before I heard of Whitehead.
My worldview is not a Christian theology in any sense. And I find The Physics of Immortality, by Tipler, to be even more far-out than my own out-of-this-world speculations. I am agnostic about immortality. :cool:
You have a strange sense of "substance" and thus must logically subscribe to the theory that everything is determined except free will. Modern science wouldn't generally agree to that
Esoteric cosmology is fun, and physicist are tempted to it often. Schopenhauer says there is a secret will in the universe. First off, I'm a materialist when it comes to earth, consciousnesses coming from matter and usually if not always from a brain. It is possible for will and intellect to be separate. Will would choose in a random way, and intellect would just think without choosing which mental direction to go in. I think of the evil will(s) of Schopenhauer as Archons that lack intellect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon_(Gnosticism)).
I don't mention a Demiurage because they has to do with a personal Creator of the world. Matter is not bad. It is at least neutral, and when formed into organism it is a great good. Matter has emergent forces such as friction. Nothingness is pure Yin and energy is potential. Matter is emergent, formed energy. Gravity would be the first mover of matter, but not "in time". There is no time outside of consciousness. I adopt the "relational" theory of time from Leibniz. Matter has evolved into intellect, and if reason is "a
whore" as Luther said it was, this is not wholly a good thing. (My view does not contradict Aristotle's formation of "causality") The two fundamental forces of action in the universe are the archons and gravity. I would consider myself more of a pagan because I think we are greater than the Archons, even though and because of the fact that we are animals. Many animals are like gods compared to earlier phases of evolution. We are organism and intellect.We can't, or maybe it's just hard, to outsmart Archons because of the complete random spontaneity of their wills (i.e. their nature) I know someone might bring up Satanism. But from what I know, Crowley was for searching out the Higher Will of the person. And Anton Levay was simply more into being as much of an animal as one could be (in a gothic sense I guess). I've never heard of someone saying "the Bible is true but I want to join the devil."
There is no Super-Father in a supernatural realm who sends his Son to become our death and sin on a
cross. No, we stand alone
Yes. That infinite source of Possibilities is what I call BEING (General Potential; the power to be). My imaginary creation scenario has Chaos (random possibilities) merging with Logos (Reason & Order) to create Cosmos (an organized process of becoming).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes. I suspect that many scientists tend to think of pure Randomness (Chance) as the source of creativity in Evolution. But, without the organizing choices of Natural Selection, random changes (mutations) would go nowhere. So it's the combination of Chance & Choice that makes the world go around, so to speak. Consequently, we need to figure out how the Darwinian process of Evolution came to have the power to choose its direction into the future. That's why the notion of a Cosmic Program appeals to me. :smile:
Here is a specific audio video you might find quaint. Long before computers..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIGrAg6vuMA
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+hidden+djinn&rlz=1C1OKWM_enUS867US867&oq=the+hidden+j&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l6j46.5289j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
I don't think the Argon/Djinn have intellect though, nor do I think they are intentionally malicious. They are simply random, purely undetermined will. Like a black rider whom's mind you can never know (since we are rational)
Quaint indeed! Berkeley's Idealism was, in part, a justification of Christian Catholic theology --- yet, influenced by ancient Pagan Platonism. My own thesis is similar to Plato's Idealism, but it is grounded in the strange conclusions of modern Quantum theory, that the foundation of material reality is immaterial. As one physicist exclaimed, "A quantum particle is nothing but Information"! He was referring to the frustrating fact that the localized particles they hope to study tend to vanish into a fog of non-local mathematical waveforms --- neither here not there, but floating aimlessly in a Field of probabilistic Potential.
However, most scientists are not comfortable with the notion that the foggy foundation of our material world is actually mathematical, instead of material. Yet, since Mathematics has no physical properties, but only mental qualities (ratios, proportions, equalities), I --- along with physicists Tegmark, Davies & Lloyd --- conclude that the world is essentially mental. But then, the question arises, whose mind : the local observer or the universal observer? Hence the poem about the tree in the quad.
Personally, I don't go to the extreme of Tegmark's Mathematical Universe. And I don't dismiss "immediate experience as unreal". Instead, I think that, for all practical purposes, the mental picture of the world, in the mind of each observer, is as real as it gets. However, for impractical philosophical purposes, we can imagine what our world would look like to an observer outside of reality. It might look something like Plato's Ideal world of abstract potential Forms. Now, isn't that Quaint? :joke:
Quaint : having an old-fashioned attractiveness or charm; oddly picturesque: a quaint old house. strange, peculiar, or unusual in an interesting, pleasing, or amusing way
Mathematical Universe : the physical universe is not merely described by mathematics, but is mathematics (specifically, a mathematical structure). Mathematical existence equals physical existence, and all structures that exist mathematically exist physically as well. Observers, including humans, are "self-aware substructures (SASs)". In any mathematical structure complex enough to contain such substructures, they "will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically 'real' world".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis
Mathematics & Reality : [i]The easiest way to see what is wrong with this extreme mathematical realism is to examine actual examples of mathematical physics. . . .
The challenge of metaphysics must be to see how these different kinds of truths relate. This does not mean either on the one hand siding with the deliverances of immediate experience against those of mathematical physics, or on the other hand dismissing immediate experience as unreal.[/i]
https://philosophynow.org/issues/102/Mathematics_and_Reality
Are you saying THE WORLD is corporeal consciousness or simply information? We might not be anything
No, I'm suggesting that since reductive Quantum scientists have sliced the material world down to nothingness, and never found the holy grail of a final foundational uncuttable Atom (Leucippus), the understructure of reality may not be made of solid Matter. That immaterial bedrock of reality now appears to be the same stuff that creates ideas in your mind, and calculates mathematical answers in computers. Information may superficially appear to "not be anything", but it is the substance of everything.
Raw Information is not corporeal, but it is capable of becoming solid bodies. To wit : Quantum Fields are described as pure mathematical Potential (virtual particles) that are capable of becoming Actual (physical particles). Mathematics consists of Ratios & Relationships, and all Meaning in a Rational Mind is likewise relational Information.
Quoting Gregory
What color is the number Four? No answer?
Yes, there is something "prior to math" : the unformed cosmic Potential that I call BEING . . . or G*D, if you prefer.
If you are a high level mathematician, go ahead and interpret Enformationism. I'm not. So I resort to carefully chosen words, and even some coinages of my own. Tegmark is not alone in his interpretation of Reality as ultimately Mathematical, hence, for all practical purposes : Mental. My thesis came to a similar conclusion from philosophical reasoning, rather than abstruse mathematical calculations. But they are both in agreement that Information is the best current candidate for the long sought invisible & indivisible Atom. :smile:
Mathematical Universe hypothesis : In physics and cosmology, the mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH), also known as the ultimate ensemble theory, is a speculative "theory of everything" (TOE) proposed by cosmologist Max Tegmark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis
Your ideas are interesting and consistent
Thanks. But some people on this forum think my thesis is airy-fairy religious nonsense. And others think it's quantum-weirdness atheistic nonsense. But, if anything makes sense in this world, it should be the Information that forms meaning in your mind. :nerd:
Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". That comparative distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html