Dualism and Interactionism
Most contemporary philosophers of mind employ a Cartesian conceptual space in which reality is (at least potentially) divided into res extensa and res cogitans. Then, they ask: how res cogitans could possibly interact with res extensa? I am suggesting that this approach is nonsensical because reality cannot be divided into res extensa and res cogitans. Clearly, thinking depends on neural processes and neural processes depend on extended stuff. This dependence has been known since Aristotle wrote De Anima.
So, why not hope that "in due time" thought will be reduced to a purely physical or computational basis? Thought is intentional, being about its objects (cf. Franz Brentano). Since physics has no intentional effects (despite wishful thinking), it cannot effect intentional operations. Similarly, computation produces quantitative values, not intentions. So, neither physics nor computation will explain thought.
This is hardly a problem when we realize that both physics and mathematics are based on abstractions -- which is to say they are the result of attending to some aspects of reality while ignoring others. As I point out in my "The Hard Problem of Consciousness & the Fundamental Abstraction," Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research 14(2): 96-114, natural science is based on the choice to attend to the objects experienced, rather than the subject experiencing. As a result it lacks the concepts and data required to connect its third person perspective to first person experience. Mathematics is even more abstract.
So, how do thought and matter interact? They don't -- because the question is ill-formed. What we have is being, with different beings having different capabilities. Some beings are extended and can think, some are extended and cannot think, and possibly, others are unextended and can know and will. This is no more surprising than some bodies being able to interact electromagnetically and others not.
I should note that, just as dogmatists want to reduce thought to physics today, so in the first half of the 19th century, they wanted to reduce light to Newtonian mechanics, rejecting sound theories as a result. (I am thinking of MacCullaugh's 1843 theory, which is mathematically equivalent to Maxwell's equations in a vacuum.)
Once we realized that abstractions are not reality, things become easier. There is no reason to think that the laws of mindless matter should apply without modification to thinking beings.
So, why not hope that "in due time" thought will be reduced to a purely physical or computational basis? Thought is intentional, being about its objects (cf. Franz Brentano). Since physics has no intentional effects (despite wishful thinking), it cannot effect intentional operations. Similarly, computation produces quantitative values, not intentions. So, neither physics nor computation will explain thought.
This is hardly a problem when we realize that both physics and mathematics are based on abstractions -- which is to say they are the result of attending to some aspects of reality while ignoring others. As I point out in my "The Hard Problem of Consciousness & the Fundamental Abstraction," Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research 14(2): 96-114, natural science is based on the choice to attend to the objects experienced, rather than the subject experiencing. As a result it lacks the concepts and data required to connect its third person perspective to first person experience. Mathematics is even more abstract.
So, how do thought and matter interact? They don't -- because the question is ill-formed. What we have is being, with different beings having different capabilities. Some beings are extended and can think, some are extended and cannot think, and possibly, others are unextended and can know and will. This is no more surprising than some bodies being able to interact electromagnetically and others not.
I should note that, just as dogmatists want to reduce thought to physics today, so in the first half of the 19th century, they wanted to reduce light to Newtonian mechanics, rejecting sound theories as a result. (I am thinking of MacCullaugh's 1843 theory, which is mathematically equivalent to Maxwell's equations in a vacuum.)
Once we realized that abstractions are not reality, things become easier. There is no reason to think that the laws of mindless matter should apply without modification to thinking beings.
Comments (356)
Really? How contemporary is contemporary? Most people are monists these days, no?
This leads directly to criticisms like Ryle's "ghost in the machine" argument. By positing the mind (or soul) as a distinct substance, Cartesian dualism opens itself up to the critique of introducing an inexplicable, ethereal entity within the machine-like workings of the physical world.
So far, so good. But I'm not entirely on board with your description of physics and maths as being solely grounded in abstraction. Of course, abstraction is involved, but there is more to both than only that.
I've learned that hylomorphic dualism offers a different perspective. The soul is not a separate "thing" or "substance" in the way Cartesian dualism conceives it. Instead, it is the form of the bodya principle of organization, a blueprint. The rational element of this soul (nous) is dynamic, intimately involved in the act of knowing. When the intellect grasps the form of a particular, it is united with it (in the sense of knowing its essence). So in hylomorphic dualism, there's no need for an ethereal, ghostly substance to interact with the physical world because the soul, especially its rational component, is already intimately intermingled with the world through the processes of cognition and understanding. The soul's entwinement with the body doesn't necessitate a metaphysically problematic "interaction" because they aren't two completely separate realms to begin with.This makes the hylomorphic conception of the soul much more integrative and less prone to the pitfalls of Cartesian dualism.
It also depicts the intellect (nous) as that which is capable of grasping meaning. It is not a kind of 'substance' but a type of ability - unique, as far as we know, to h. sapiens (if present in rudimentary form in some other species). And it is an aspect of that intellectual faculty which enables mathematical abstraction in the first place, which is what has made mathematical physics so powerful and predictive. (On these grounds, I'm not persuaded by the various relativist or fictionalist accounts of mathematics.)
In the picture I'm drawing, abstractions (such as number) are indeed real - but they're not phenomenally existent. Rational sentient beings are able to grasp these ideas due to their power of insight and intelligence. But through that faculty, they are able to gain insight into a realm above and beyond that defined by the laws of physics alone. (This is reason why naturalist philosophers will generally deprecate platonic realism concerning number.)
So I'm in agreement in some respects, but not in others. I basically agree with your diagnosis of the shortcomings of Cartesian dualism, and its consequences, but I think there is an alternative philosophy of mind that also does justice to the power of mathematics and science, without succumbing to materialism.
If the soul, as the form of the body, is the blueprint, or principle of organization, and the living body comes into existence as an organized body, then the soul must be prior to the living body, as cause of it, and therefore a separate thing.
Or principle. Beware reifications in this matter.
If the "principle" has a separate existence can't we call it a "thing"?
But to the point of the op, @Dfpolis, doesn't this separate existence, whether its called a principle or a thing, necessitate dualism? I mean we are saying that the soul is prior to, and therefore separate from the body, how we categorize it, as "substance", "principle", or "thing", doesn't seem very relevant to the point that this separation seems to necessitate a dualism. And how this separate "principle" or whatever we call it, the soul, manages to produce an organized body would be the interaction problem in a nutshell.
I'm dubious about that but I won't divert DFpolis' thread until he's responded further.
My ideas on abstraction as the basis of science come from Aquinas's Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, Maritain's Philosophy of Nature, and Whitehead's Science and the Modern World. Please expand on why you disagree.
Aristotle defines the soul is the first actuality of a potentially living body (De Anima ii, 1, 412b28). ("First actuality" is being operational. "Second actuality" is operating.) Aquinas accepts this definition. What is ontologically prior is God's intention to create whatever He creates. No actuality can be prior to the existent of which it is the actuality.
If it were a separate entity, we would have dualism. It is not. A "principle" is the source (arche) of a concept. Consider the actuality and potential of an acorn. Its actuality (eidos = form) is being a kind of nut. Its potential (hyle = timber, poorly as translated "matter") is to be an oak tree. These are not two substances joined in some way, but one thing considered in two ways. So, human souls are actual human beings, while human "matter" is our potential to be planting soil for daisies.
This is inconsistent with Aristotle's Metaphysics. A thing is necessarily the thing which it is and cannot not be the thing it is, by the law of identity. And "a thing" is not a random disorderly existence. So when a thing comes into existence it necessarily has a cause of being the thing it is, and not something else. This cause is the form of the thing, which pre-exists in time, the material existence of the thing. Therefore the form of a thing (its actuality, as what it actually will be) must be prior in time to the material existence of the thing, as cause of it being the very thing that it is, and not something else.
Quoting Dfpolis
I think you misrepresent "potential" here. The potential of an acorn is not "to be an oak tree", because "an oak tree" is a form. Potential is better represented as the capacity to be or not be. And since potential encompasses many possibilities, it cannot be restricted by one specific thing, such as your statement, "an oak tree". What restricts the potential (matter) of the acorn in this way, such that we might say it may either become or not become an oak tree, rather than a maple or something else, is the form of the acorn. So your statement "to be an oak tree" does not represent the matter of the acorn, it represents the form of the acorn, as that which restricts the matter to specific possibilities.
Furthermore, this form which is put into the acorn, which restricts its potential in that way, is prior to the material existence of the acorn, as Wayfairer indicated with, "a principle of organization, or blueprint". So it is very clear that the form of the acorn "a kind of nut", which restricts the potential (matter) of the acorn so that the possibilities for what it may become are limited, pre-exists the material existence of the acorn. This form is derived from the parent oak tree which produces the nut.
Therefore the form of the acorn pre-exists the material existence of the acorn, and acts (as an actuality) to direct the coming into being of the material acorn such that the potential (matter) of the acorn is limited in the particular way that it is. This pre-existence of the form of the acorn, as prior in time to the acorn, therefore separate from the acorn, is what we need to deal with as implying the requirement for dualism.
I guess you refer to planting an acorn in order to grow an oak tree. (What else?) Like planting sperm in an uterus, an action that will (hopefully) result in the growing of human body.
Well, the sperm is not a potential human body. It needs to be united, combined with other organic stuff for an embryo to be created. Same thing with seeds and plants.
But even if sperm is potentially a human body, i.e. the same thing in different development stages, they are both matter. Their relation could not be considered as soul and body or mind and body, a relation from which the subject of dualism arises. Am I right?
BTW, nice handling of the ancient Greek language ... :smile:
Indeed it does, but a being's own form/actuality cannot be a prior cause because nothing is actual until it exists. What is prior is a being's matter, its efficient cause, and its telos or end. Thus, the efficient cause, working on specific matter for a specific end produces a specific form or actuality.
To defend your position, you need to explain how a thing can be actual before it is. I think you are confusing two meanings of "form." An artisan has a "form" in mind before she produces her work, but that "form" is not the "form" (actuality) of the finished product, but her intention, i.e. an end (final cause). In the same way, the laws of nature, which are intentional realities, act on prior states produce final states.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are confusing the hyle of artificial processes, where the clay or wood can become many things, with that of natural processes, which is determinate. (See my hyle paper.) An acorn has a determinate potential. It will never sprout into a pine or a stalk of wheat.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, an acorn is not an actual (operational) oak tree, but a potential one. If you never saw one spout and did not know where it came from, you would not know that its end is to become an oak tree.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Every creature has a prior creative intention in the mind of God. But, that is a metaphysical, not a physical, explanation. Physically, the form of an acorn is the foundation for the form of the oak into which it may sprout, but, being the foundation for a form is not being the form. It is being a potential.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is confused. What is ontologically, not temporally, prior is God's creative intent. But, God is simple, having no intrinsic diversity. What allows us to speak of distinct "exemplar" ideas in God is the fact that ideas are relational -- relating God, Who is simple, to creation, which is not. So, the Divine exemplars are diversified by terminating in diverse creatures, not by any diversity in the mind of God. Thus, without actual, existing creatures, there are no distinct exemplars. Since exemplars are inseparable from the actuality of the exemplified creatures, there is no dualism.
Of course, more is required. Still acorns grow into mature oaks, not pines or oats.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
The problem is that there are two traditions about souls. One is dualistic, and followed by Plato, Augustine and Descartes. The other is non-dualistic, and followed by Aristotle and Aquinas. In De Anima II, Aristotle argues against the idea of a separate soul, and concludes, essentially, that "to have a soul" and "to be alive" mean the same thing. He formulates this by defining the psyche (soul) as "the first actuality of a potentially living body." "First actuality" is being operational, which, for organisms, is being alive. Under this definition, every living thing has a soul, but not in the dualistic sense. Aristotle's psyche carries no mental implications, except in humans because human life involves thinking.
Since to have a soul is to be a living being, there is no separate addition to visible a human being (which is a tode ti = "this something" -- Aristotle's definition of a substance). In other words, one substance performs both physical and mental acts. Aristotle held that our ability to think (nous = intellect), was uniquely human, but not separate.
Still, not separate in life does not exclude separability at death, and Aristotle seemed to believe that the active or agent intellect was separable. Aquinas certainly did.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Thank you.
Right. (And I guess there are others too in both camps.)
All this is quite interesting.
(BTW, I'm leaning towards Platon. And I'm a pro-Socrates. Although I have never alalyzed or examined them from a "dualistic" point of view.)
The problem is that natural science is based on a third person perspective and the resulting data, while being conscious is only experienced from a first person perspective. Because of this, there is no way to use natural science deduce consciousness as the effect of some physical process. At best, we would have a correlation, as we do between certain types of brain states and types of qualia.
Anything a computer does, including outputting "I am conscious," can be explained physically, i.e. in terms the third person perspective. If a device were to behave in way that we could not so explain, it would not be a computer, because we know what they do and how they do it.
You could not design such a device using physics or math because physics does not predict mental effects and computations produce quantities, not ideas. It is only when we look at the results that ideas are formed.
If some device were conscious, we could never it know for sure. We only know other people are conscious by analogy -- they are structured and act like we do, so they must be like us. A device would not be structured like us, and so we could not understanding it from a first person perspective. So, how we could we know it is conscious?
Why take one human and divide her into two separate parts?
Spinoza already solved this Cartesian puzzle. There are not two substances, extensa and cogitans, but one substance seen under two attributes. This renders the interaction problem moot.
He was anticipated by Aristotle, Aquinas and others in the Aristotelian tradition.
The interaction of res cogitans and res extensa was a problem during the 17th century and before, obviously most explicitly formulated by Descartes, whom had good reasons to do so at the time.
But then Newton came along and showed, much to his dismay, that the concept of matter, not thought, but matter, was not the matter that exists in the world.
What vanished, contrary to popular history, was the machine, the ghost remained intact, and still is around for us to deal with.
So whatever remains of the world, thought is a part of that. We could call what remains ghostly matter or naturalism, it's terminological.
So, we are a creature made of world stuff, thought being one of the properties world stuff has. Gravity, electromagnetism, nervous systems, metabolism, in short everything is a different manifestation of this world stuff.
But we have this strange, maybe innate, tendency to treat mind and matter as if these were fundamentally opposite things, but they're not.
The telos or end as the intent of the designer, is actual, and prior to the material existence of the thing. This is Wayfarer's principle, or blueprint. The blueprint, or design of the thing, as a form, is actual and prior to the individual material thing. Further, there must be continuity between the form as design, and the form in the individual thing, to avoid the interaction problem. These must be one and the same form, or else we have the so-called interaction problem.
The artist who is "working on specific matter for a specific end" with the means of efficient causation, must actually put the form into the matter. Otherwise there is a separation, a gap, between the form as design and the form within the individual object. This gap denies the possibility of the telos or end being causal. If there is a gap between the form as desired end, and the form as individual object (outcome), there is no causation between the two, and the telos or end is not causal.
So the gap is filled with "efficient cause". The efficient causes are the means. But still there appears to be a difference between the form as design, and the form within the individual, the material object as outcome. The difference is attributed to accidents, and the accidents are the influence of the matter which is chosen by the artist.
Now the question is whether the influence of matter, and the resulting accidents, renders the form of the individual as a distinct form, or is it just a change of form, allowing the form to maintain its identity as the same form, in the way that a changing object maintains its identity as the same object, by the law of identity. I believe that we must allow for the temporal continuity of "the same form", or else there is an interaction problem, a gap between the form as intent, and the form as outcome. But when we allow for this continuity which I am describing, we also admit to independent forms, as the form is then prior to its material existence, therefore independent.
Quoting Dfpolis
As I said above, if we do not allow that the form in the artist's mind, and the form of the artist's finished work, are one and the same form, there is a gap between the two which produces an interaction problem. So, in common understanding, we say that the form is brought from the artist's mind, and put into the medium, through the means of efficient causes. Therefore, the intermediary, efficient causation, solves any interaction problem. However, if we deny the continuity between the form in the artist's mind, and the form in the work of art, then we cannot say that the artist takes the form from one's mind and puts it into the medium, through the means of efficient causation. And then we have an implied interaction problem between the form in the mind, and the form in the work of art.
Quoting Dfpolis
The problem here is that physics does not deal with telos, ends, and intention, but metaphysics does. So if the reality of the situation is that telos and intention are causal, and you reject the explanation as metaphysical rather than physical, you are going in the wrong direction. Physics cannot give an explanation for this, but metaphysics can. Therefore you ought to consider the metaphysical explanation , and forget about your desire for a physical explanation.
Quoting Dfpolis
What I am saying is that the oak tree has creative intent when it produces the acorn. It must, because the purpose of the acorn is to produce another oak tree, and intent is defined as purpose. So there is no need to refer to "God's creative intent" at this point, we need only look at the oak tree's creative intent. However, there will be a problem of infinite regress, or a first living being, and at this point we might be inclined to turn to God.
I believe this is the point already addressed:
Quoting Dfpolis
The form, idea or principle is not something that exists - at least, in the sense that a particular exists. The intelligible form of particulars is a universal.
Which leads me to this:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In Aristotelian and classical philosophy, the law of identity is a logical law that is general and not tied specifically to particulars.
We've argued about that many times, I'd be interested in @Dfpolis' interpretation.
OK, here is the question that has occupied my philosophical quest for decades. It concerns the reality of universals. With your background and interests, I presume you hold to realism concerning universals. Am I right in that? What interests me is what it means to say that universals are real - because they don't exist as do phenomenal objects (the proverbial rocks, apples and trees.) Do you see what I'm getting at? Is this a topic for discussion in the sources you're aware of?
Quoting Dfpolis
Spinoza's idea of substance was very different than Aristotle's. Not sure about Aquinas' since I am little familiar with his writings.
(I think you have just disclosed your gender! :smile:)
We don't divide a human into two parts. A human has two parts.
(Everyone with one's own view on the subject, of course. But mine is stronger! :grin:)
No. You cannot have an interaction between a prior intention and its instantiation anymore than a line can interact with its terminal point. First, the intention to create terminates once the object is created, and second, a form as plan is not a form as actuality. If they were, we would have an actuality whenever we had a plan.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
True, but that continuity does not make a plan the same as an actuality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We must not confuse accidents as unplanned outcomes with metaphysical accidents, which are notes of intelligibility that inhere in, and can be predicated of, the the whole. It is not unplanned accidents that make a thing actual, but the efficient cause implementing the plan. Accidents inhering in a being cannot be prior to that being. Matter as potential is prior, but once we have an actuality, all accidents belong to that actuality or form. For a human artisan, the actuality may depart from the plan because of the stuff used, but that is not the reason a plan is not an actuality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, if plans were identically actual beings, every time we made a plan, we would automatically make a reality. That would make cars and houses much cheaper.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, no. The mental form part of the process of execution. There is no gap because that process terminates in the executed reality. If there were a gap, it would mean that were were finished making the thing before it became actual, a contradiction.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It does deal with ends, it just calls them "final states"; however, it does not deal with them as intentional.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
They both explain, but at different levels. Each level involves a different degree of abstraction, and so the explanations are complementary, not contradictory or even competitive.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But, it cannot, because it has no mind. God has a creative intent. It is manifest in the laws of nature which guide the transformation of the acorn's potential into an oak.Quoting Metaphysician
Undercover
We have to turn to God immediately because oaks do not have minds, and we need a mind as a source of intentionality.
I am a moderate realist. That means I think universals do not have a separate existence, but do have a foundation in reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. There are volumes on this. I discussed my position on universals (with references) in light of the fact that species are not static but but evolve, in "Metaphysics and Evolution: Response to Critics," pp 849-857. The basic idea is that each instance of a universal has the objective potential to elicit the same idea. It is this objective potential or intelligibility that is the basis in reality for our universal concepts. As populations evolve, the kinds of ideas their members can elicit shift and, so new species concepts are called for.
You can Google "the problem of universals".
Yes, but they agreed that we did not need two substances.
When you say "most people" do you mean most "people" or most "philosophers of mind"? Either way, it seems to me that most "philosophers of mind" (including monists) accept the need to address the "interaction" between mind and entities not having the characteristics of mind.
Substituting one form of "substance" ontology for another does eliminate the issue?
If you mean biological minds, then, yes, I think a mindless universe is possible and that this was such a universe for a long time. On the other hand, the laws of nature (not to be confused with their approximate descriptions, the laws of physics) are intentional in Franz Brentano's sense, for they are about the succession of physical states they lead to, just as by intention to go to the store is about my arriving at the store. Intentions imply a source of intention, namely a Mind. So, I think a lawful universe entails an intending Mind.
Interaction requires two or more things to interact. If we are one thing, which seems pretty obvious, this mis-states the question, and bad questions lead to bad answers. We can ask what is the relation between intentional and physical actions without assuming that that relation is an interaction. That is a sensible question and has sensible answers involving the origin and nature of such relations, not interactions.
This is a misrepresentation. The idea, as design or form in the mind of the artist exists as the idea of a particular, not of a universal. The thing desired is very particular, not universal. We can characterize "desire" as a general feeling, a universal, in the way that "hunger" is a universal, as a general feeling, or urge, but when the individual human being is moved to act on a specific desire, or intent to create something, the object of intent becomes very particular, as a goal of a particular material consequence. The general "hunger" becomes the goal to eat a particular thing.
Quoting Wayfarer
The law of identity is a general law, but it applies to particulars just like any inductive law. So is tied specifically to particulars, as a statement about what all particulars have in common. It states something about all particulars which differentiates a particular from a universal. It is actually intended to represent the very difference you refer to above, the difference between a particular and an universal, in order to prevent the sophistry which follows from failing to maintain this difference, such as the tendency to allow that mathematical objects, like numbers, have the same type of existence as material objects.
The law of identity says that "a thing" (i.e. a particular) is the same as itself. It serves to differentiate the use of "same" in reference to particular individuals from the use of "same" in reference to type or category, and avoid the sophistry employed through the use of equivocation and the employment of this category mistake. When the law of identity is well understood, this usefulness becomes very evident.
When two things are of the same type, people commonly say that they are the "same". However, they are not "the same" by the law of identity, because that would imply that they are one thing, not two. The law of identity dictates that "same" refers only to a relation which a thing has with itself, not a relation with other things. Therefore being judged as "of the same type" whereby two distinct things are said to be "the same" is best represented as establishing a relation of equality between the two. They are equal according to the parameters of the type, and are said to be "the same" by those specific parameters. They are not "the same" in the sense of the law of identity which is an absolute sameness.
The law of identity allows only that a particular has that specific relation, "same" with itself making "same" absolute rather than relative. Therefore whenever someone argues that two things which are equal, such as what is represented by the left side and what is represented by the right side of a mathematical equation, are "the same" because they are equal, they violate the law of identity. I believe it was Hegel who initiated the modern trend of violating the law of identity, by insisting that it could not be useful. And we might say that this violation is always carried out for some sophistic purpose. That purpose is usually to support an untenable ontology such as Pythagorean idealism, where the potential referred to by numerical figuring is said to be the very same as the "potential" of matter. But this is a category mistake.
Quoting Dfpolis
Under Aristotelian principles, all instances of "form" are actual. Are you seriously trying to deny this, or are you proposing something non-Aristotelian? This is how the interaction problem is resolved by Aristotle, by making forms actual.. And there is interaction between the prior intent, and the instantiation, it's called "becoming". Becoming requires a period of time within which the two interact, as an artist interacts with one's work, with the intent to perfect it.
Quoting Dfpolis
A plan is a form, and a form is an actuality. That is Aristotle 101. The object of intent is an actuality, that is how it acts as a cause, final cause.
Quoting Dfpolis
The accidents are attributable to the matter's prior form. The artist chooses one's medium, as "the matter" to work with, but that matter necessarily has a form. The form which this matter has, which is not properly accounted for by the artist's plan is the reason for accidents, "form" in the created object which is not a part of the "form" of the design. In this way, the accidents are prior to the material object, and they are causal in the sense of "material cause". "Material cause" referring to that which was prior to, and persists after the act of becoming.
Quoting Dfpolis
If the form of the intended object and the form of the material object created, are not the same form, then there is necessarily a gap between the two, a lack of formal continuity which must be explained. Simply asserting "there is no gap" does not close the gap. As I described, and you seem to agree, the gap is commonly understood to be closed through the implication of "efficient cause", as the means to the end, which occurs during "becoming". However, as stated above, becoming requires a temporal duration, and the efficient causes must be directed during that time period. This is the interaction which closes the gap. But it requires either that the form of the object of intent is the very same form as the form of the created material object, or that they are distinct, and that there is interaction between the two during the process of becoming. Either way is dualist. Denying that the "form" which is called the object of intent, as plan or design, is actual, as you are doing, is not Aristotelian. Form is always actual.
Quoting Dfpolis
Anytime a plant or animal selects from possibilities, for a purpose, there must be intention involved. To say that intention necessarily involves "mind" makes mind prior to the material body of living beings. This is a problem which Aristotle addressed and I believe proposed a solution by separating the concept of "intellect" from that of "soul". At his time, "mind" and "soul" were often used synonymously and he pointed to this problem. But the soul is demonstrated to be prior to the body, while the intellect is posterior as dependent on the body. However, the soul is actual, and acts with purpose or final cause. Therefore "intent" or "final cause" does not necessarily imply "mind" or "intellect".
Quoting Dfpolis
No, we do not need to refer to "a mind" here. That is a faulty restriction of the definition of "intentionality" which has become common in the modern vernacular. However, if you check a reasonable dictionary like OED, you will see that "intention" means simply to act with purpose. This modern tendency, to restrict "intention" as you do, thereby claiming that only human acts, or acts of "a mind" can be intentional, renders all the purposeful acts of all the creatures which have no mind, as unintelligible because then you have purpose without intent. Purpose without intent cannot be understood as it makes this sort of "purpose" a sort random chance selection, which cannot be "purpose".
So in the way that this law is usually identified - A=A - what, precisely, is the difference between the left-hand A and the right hand A? Are they particulars?
Quoting Dfpolis
I've read up on it, to some extent. The paper you linked is highly specific, however.
You are misrepresenting what Wayfarer said. Ideas exist only in minds, not as particular substances, even though they may be about particulars.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The law of classical logic are abstractions, not inductions generalizing experience. If they were inductions, any new case might violate them, as happened with Newton's laws of motion, which were inductions based on a limited range of experience.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it is not limited to particulars. Universal concepts are equally self-identical.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What prevents mathematical objects from being physical is that they require a counting or a measuring operation to become actual, while bodies need not be observed to exist. So, mathematical objects are mental existents with a foundation in reality, not realities simplicitur.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Good! What makes them the "same" is that they can elicit the identical (universal) idea. They need not be equal. 1 kg of sugar is the same kind of thing as 5 kg of sugar, but they are not equal.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nonsense! They are saying nothing about the law of identity. You are equivocating on "the same." It has one meaning in identity, and a different meaning in equality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but not in the same way. An actual idea is an ens rationis. An actual artifact is an ens reale.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, he never has an interaction problem because one substance, a human being, cannot interact with itself. The interaction problem arises when you deny that we are one substance and make us two: res cogitans and res extensa.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Becoming cannot be an interaction with the product of becoming, because they do not co-exist. Once an artifact exists, its becoming has ceased. Aristotle defines change/becoming as "the actualization of a potential insofar as it is still in potency." Once the potency is actualized, it is no longer in potency, and so there is no change/becoming with respect to it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but while it is being perfected, it is not the finished (formed) product. When it reaches the intended form, it is perfected and no longer becoming. So, the imposition of mental form and the existence of the finished physical form are never concurrent. They are temporally adjacent. If Tf is the finishing time, then the becoming time is
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Okay, if you mean departures from the artist's intent, not if you mean predicables.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, because the matter is not completely suitable. So?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Okay. The plan was not executed perfectly for some reason. Maybe bad material, maybe a failure on the part of the artisan who is the efficient cause.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you mean that there are two kinds of form, one the mental plan and the other the actuality of the product, I agree. If you mean that there are two substances in the product, which is what "dualism" usually means, I disagree.
There is certainly an interaction between the efficient case and the matter in the production of a product, but that is not the kind of interaction considered in "interactionism." It proposes an interaction between body and soul.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am not denying that. I am denying that the actual plan is the actuality of the finished product, however prefect it may be. The product is made according to the plan. It is not the plan, because it is a different sort of thing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree. The problem is that there is no evidence that organisms other than humans make such choices.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You seem not to have read De Anima. Psyche is defined as the first actuality of a potentially living body. It cannot exist before there is an actual living body. The agent intellect is "divine" and separable, while the passive intellect is "perishable" and so physical.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You forget that the prime mover is "self-thinking thought." Thus, Aristotle sees thought as the ultimate source of all change/motion.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And having a purpose is an act of will. There is no concept of purpose in physics. It only occurs when we discuss psychology.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Thank you. That is why we need God to complete the quest for explanations, as Aristotle saw.
Yes, it is. But, it is a critical datum that species are not eternal and unchanging, but evolve. It means that particulars do not instantiate Platonic Ideas or universal Exemplars in the mind of God. God intends to create whatever He creates, and He creates particulars. So, there is nothing "ungodly" in not conforming to a universal norm.
Gotcha
AFAIK, Aristotle posited a potentially infinite number of substances in that he thought that the primary substances are individual objects.
This seems like pointing to a non-issue: categories are particular just as indivdual objects are.
A signifies one particular. Therefore in that expression of the law of identity there is no difference between the left and right side. However, since this is a representation of the law of identity, "=" must signify "is the same as" not equality. "Is the same as" is a very special case of equality.
So what is the case, is that when the law of identity is represented as "A=A", "A" symbolizes the thing, and "=" symbolizes "is the same as". In mathematics, "=" symbolizes equality. Therefore in the quoted representation of the law of identity, "A=A", the "=" symbol must mean something different from what it means in mathematical usage.
The issue of, and history of, how the law of identity came to be stated as A=A, instead of as A is A, as proposed by Leibniz, and how "is the same as" became replaced with equality, is actually quite complex. If you study it, you might discover a sophistic trick, which is a type of inversion fallacy. The proposition is that in all instances of A, A is equal to A. And so A is equal to A is proposed as the law of identity in formal logic. It says something about A, that it is always equal to itself, and cannot not be equal to itself. However, A is equal to A is not as logically rigorous as A is the same as A. This is because in all cases of "is the same as", there is necessarily equality, but not in all cases of equality are the equal things the same. Therefore identity is a very special type of equality, a relation which a thing has with itself, but "A is equal to A" does not signify what the special type of equality is, which is stated as "is the same as".
Here's a quote from SEP:
Quoting Dfpolis
Well, this is what is being debated, whether or not some ideas actually exist in some minds as particulars. Simply stating that they do not, does not argue your case. It seems to me, that if I see a piece of fruit on the counter, and my goal is to eat that particular piece of fruit, this is a very particular idea. Likewise, if I have a plan to put some particular pieces of lumber together with some particular nails that I have, in a very particular way, this is also a very particular idea.
What I explained above, is that intention starts out as something very general, a general desire or ambition, or in my example, the general feeling of hunger. But by the time the individual acts on one's intentions, the goal is something very particular, to manipulate very particular material objects in a very particular way. It must be that this is the case, because we manipulate particular things in the world, in particular circumstances, and we cannot move around, and work with particular material objects in a general way, because our actions are particularly shaped to the situation. Each instance of manipulation is particular, as is the thing manipulated, and the circumstances within which it is manipulated, so the corresponding ideas must also be particular.
This is the issue of moral philosophy. How do we apply general principles in particular situations. The reality is that we do not. The general principles act as a sort of guide which assist us to produce particular ideas which are suited to each particular situation in which we find ourselves.
Quoting Dfpolis
By Aristotle's Metaphysics, it is the mathematician's mind which actualizes mathematical objects, therefore they have actual existence within the mind.
Quoting Dfpolis
As each is sugar they are equal, in that parameter, and can be measured by the same laws of measurement. In the same way, you and I are equal as human beings, and are subject to the same laws.
Quoting Dfpolis
I suggest you speak to some mathematicians on this forum. There are many here who insist that "2+2=4" means that "2+2" is the same as "4", by the law of indentity. I believe it is the axiom of extensionality in set theory which gives rise to this way of thinking. Here's something Wikipedia says about that axiom: "Thus, what the axiom is really saying is that two sets are equal if and only if they have precisely the same members." Notice that under this axiom. for two sets to be equal, they must be the same. This axiom supports the claim that if two things are equal they are therefore the same.
Quoting Dfpolis
You seem to be forgetting that Aristotle distinguished primary and secondary substance. Primary substance is one individual, consisting of matter and form, but secondary substance is formal only. Since each sense of "form" is actual, we need to resolve how primary and secondary substance interact with each other.
Quoting Dfpolis
You have no grounds for this statement because "becoming" is incompatible with the states of being and not being. So when a thing comes into being from not being, through the means of becoming, you have no principles to argue that becoming cannot overlap both the not being, and the being of the thing which is coming into existence. By Aristotle's principles, "becoming" violates the law of excluded middle, neither being nor not being, but by Hegel's principles, "becoming" encompasses bot being and not being. So we really cannot say with any amount of certainty whether becoming truly overlaps the being of a thing or not.
I would say that since a thing is always changing, and maintains its identity as the same thing, despite undergoing change, according to the law of identity, we must conclude that the being and the becoming of the very same thing, do co-exist.
Quoting Dfpolis
By the law of identity it is still the same thing, during that extended period of time which it is undergoing the changes which are attempts to perfect it. Clearly, the becoming of a thing must overlap the being of the thing, and this is why there cannot be a clearly and distinctly defined "point in time" at which the not-being of the thing is replaced with the being of the thing. There can always be debate as to the precise point in time when a thing actually starts to be the thing that it is.
Quoting Dfpolis
It appears like you are just manipulating your use of "substance" to suit your purpose. That's fine, if you do not want to call the immaterial form which precedes in time the material form, a "substance", because "substance" implies matter to you, then we can proceed on those terms. Still we must account for the reality of that immaterial actuality.
Quoting Dfpolis
I've had extensive discussion on De Anima, on this forum, and I've read it multiple times. It contains ambiguity and reason for differing interpretations. By my translation, "soul" is defined as the first actuality of a body having life potentially in it. This means soul is prior to life. But you and I have already discussed the two senses of "actuality" used by Aristotle in this book, and I would be willing to further this discussion. It is an interesting topic.
Quoting Janus
I would not agree to that. A category is a universal, not a particular.
The point was that each category is particular and distinct from all other categories.
He did not posit, but recognized, that individual things were the basis of our concept of reality. That is why he said that ousia is tode ti (=this something). Ousia (translated "substance") meant true reality, not a kind of stuff, in Greek. Aristotle's word for the stuff things are made out of was hyle (=timber and poorly translated as "matter"). Spinoza used the same Latin word, substantia, but with a different definition in his writings.
Where do you think our concept of reality comes from?
A category is "specific", not "particular". This is because the parameters of the category are specified, and are not necessarily "particular", meaning of that specific category and not other categories. Call me pedantic, but logic fails when it is not rigorous.
Plato demonstrated this problem in The Parmenides. If a whole, "One" (category in this case) is defined as a collection of individuals, (particulars in this case), then One (as category) cannot be an individual (particular) because then there is no logical separation between the One and the Many. Therefore the metaphysically, or ontological acceptable, as in logically rigorous, way of proceeding is to employ a further definition which distinguishes the category from the things which exist as members of that category. So if the members are said to be particulars, then the category itself must be something other than a particular. We call it a universal.
Whether or not set theory adheres to this principle is debatable. Set theory makes a set an individual, as a mathematical object, which the members of the set also are, mathematical objects. This is a metaphysical or ontological flaw. which I believe produces the problem described above, resulting in "Russel's Paradox". I believe that the conventional solutions to this problem do not provide the required separation between the definition of "set" and the definition of "element" to actually resolve the problem. To produce the required ontological separation would annihilate the validity of set theory.
That a "set" is necessarily distinct from an "element" of a set, therefore requiring different defining terms, is evident from proofs which show the reality of the "empty set". The empty set is distinct from the set which contains zero as an element. And that it is possible to have an object (set, as mathematical object), which consists of nothing at all, no substance, demonstrates the need for a separation between "category" as specified, and "particular" as an element of the category. The latter, the particular, cannot consist of nothing, no substance, but the former the empty set is very real as a logical possibility.
Are you familiar with the law of identity? I mean do you understand its presentation and meaning, rather than just being able to copy the conventional representation of "A=A"? Did you read the SEP quote, which states that identity is a relation which can only hold between a thing and itself?
Surely you must understand that "a thing" is a particular, not the representation of a particular. And the meaning of "can only hold between a thing and itself", is self-evident. Therefore representing a particular individual with a symbol ("A "for example), does not produce an identity relation, when the law of identity is formally adhered to. The commonly accepted notion of "identity", the vulgar notion, by which a thing is identified with a name, is not consistent with the law of identity. This is a corrupted "identity" which is derived from a faulty ontology, and cannot provide for a rigorous logic.
We are debating the truth of the claim, not what Wafarer said, which we call all read for our selves.
If you think ideas exist as particulars, then you need to define "particulars," because what I see is particular humans thinking ideas. The dependence on humans makes an idea an accident in the sense of a predicable, not a "this something" (tode ti), as humans are.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No it is an idea about particulars. If I am thinking of the universal identity of action and passion that is as particular an idea as the one you offer, because it is me thinking it at a specific time. Still it is about a universal fact: all actions are identical with their correlative passions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The universal ideas are in the mind, but they are not objects because objects are particular instances. The particular quantities (mathematical objects) in reality are actualized by the operations I mentioned.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Then they are not very good mathematicians. I took courses in abstract mathematics, and addition is not identity. Mathematicians have a different notion of identity than philosophers, and say that x=x is true by their principle of identity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. It is defining "set equality," not equality in general, because quantities are not sets, but can be equal.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
They don't. Primary substances are real, secondary substances are abstractions. Only agents can act and so interact.
-- more later
Because explaining how mind "relates" to entities not having the characteristics of mind is so much easier than explaining how mind "interacts" with entities not having the characteristics of mind?
No. Because if you start with the false premise that the human mind and body are two things, you miss the fact that one thing, a human being, can act both physically and intentionally. By seeing human unity, the question of how res cogitans and res extensa interact never arises to distract us from the issue of how human beings interact with intelligible objects.
We still need to explain how knowledge, which is not neurally encoded information, but consciousness of neurally encoded information, arises. That problem is solvable and I shall publish a solution shortly.
To continue: Primary substances are the things from which we abstract the concepts of species and genera. This is done by sensation and the actualization of selected notes of intelligibility by the agent intellect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Please read Aristotle's Physics I, where he explains the relation between these concepts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it does not. There is no middle ground between being the completed thing and not yet being the completed thing (an entelecheia).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hegel was confused. He seemed not to understand potentiality and the definition of change.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, we can. What we may not be able to say is where the line is. For example, when is a fetus a human being? Still, wherever the line is, before that, we have becoming and from that point on we have the being.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
First, we are not completely identical at different times, so the law of identity does not apply. Second, we are the same being because of our dynamic continuity, not because of the same stuff or the exact same form. Third, being and becoming do co-exist, but not with respect to the same terminus. When I was 10 years old, I was becoming 11, not 10.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, no, that is not the reason. My 10 year old self was not identical to my 11 year old self.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree that applying our concepts can be fuzzy. This results from our concepts not being as clear as we would like, and perceptions being inadequate to determining sharp lines. These are epistemological, not ontological problems.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, I am applying the term in the different ways it was applied historically. Aristotle and Aquinas define a substance as "this something" (an ostensible unity). Descartes and the modern tradition see substance as a kind of stuff things are made of (an analogue of matter). These are radically different concepts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You misunderstand. I am objecting on Aristotelian grounds. Concepts are not substances because they inhere in people, who are instances of "this something," i.e. substances.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Concepts are real because they are acts of real people, e.g. the concept
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it absolutely does not. Living, and the actuality of being alive, are one and the same. There is no actuality of a potentially living body before there is an actual living being.
Contemporary philosophers of science, or at least the ones I think are worth reading, are much more likely to talk about self-organizing matter and systems than extended stuff.
Quoting Dfpolis
The material of an acorn or an oak is not timber or wood. If it were our buildings would have some very odd features.
If timber or wood is the hyle of the oak and acorn what is the hyle of the timber or wood?
Quoting Dfpolis
A great deal hinges on this for you, but it is an assertion without sufficient evidence.
Quoting Dfpolis
So, you are an ontological and epistemological dualist.
OK, I think we can start from this point. What I described as a "particular idea", you say is not a particular at all, in the sense of substance, but since it is dependent on a human being, it is a predicable. However, since this sort of idea which I was talking about, the idea which circumscribes the means to an end, or personal goal, is unique to the individual, in a particular set of circumstances, it is as you say an accident, and therefore not a universal. Would you agree with me that this sort of idea is better represented as an activity, a thinking activity, always changing according to the evolving circumstances as physical activities are carried out? And would you agree that although habit plays an important role in this sort of thinking activity, there are many ideas which stretch beyond habit, freely willed ideas, which contribute to creativity?
Quoting Dfpolis
I have, more than once, and my objection stands.
Quoting Dfpolis
There is always a middle ground, it's called "becoming", and becoming is fundamentally incompatible with being, as explained by Aristotle. There are two logical states, the being of the thing and the not-being of the thing. The middle ground between these two is what we know as "change", or becoming.
Suppose at t1 we have the not being of a particular thing, A, and at t2 we have the being of A. Between t1 and t2 there is necessarily change, becoming. If we describe the change in terms of a different being, and suppose that halfway between t1 and t2, at t1.5, we have a different being, being B, then we must account for the change between being B and being A, in the time between t1.5 and t12. Now we posit being C at t1.75. You can see that this leads to an infinite regress of different beings at each conceivable moment of passing time in the duration of change.
So Aristotle concluded that "becoming" is incompatible with the logical terms of being and not-being. He stated that sophists who adhere strictly to the fundamental laws of logic are known to "demonstrate" or prove absurd conclusions ( Zeno's paradoxes for example) by doing this. His solution was to allow that the law of excluded middle be violated in instances where potential (may or may not be) was involved and this is the case for "becoming".
Therefore we need to conclude that there is always a middle ground in an activity of change. The potential of activity cannot be described in terms of being and not being, due to the problem of infinite regress outlined by Aristotle, and there must always be something in between any two distinct states of being, which cannot be described as a state of being, because it is change, becoming.
Quoting Dfpolis
As demonstrated by Aristotle, and explained above, there is not a line, there is always necessarily a duration of change, or becoming, and this cannot be described as a line between two distinct states of being. If we try to describe this with lines between distinct states of being we have an infinite regress, of an infinite number of distinct states of being between each moment in time.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is a misunderstanding of the law of identity. The law of identity allows that the very same thing is changing as time passes, because a thing is the same as itself, not the same as any description of it. This is the beauty of the law of identity, and why it is so ontologically useful in understanding the nature of material existence. We notice that objects are constantly changing, they get chipped, dented, or otherwise damaged, or altered. If the "identity" of a thing is a description which is supposed to correspond, then at each passing moment, a thing which consists of moving parts, must have a new identity, i.e. be a new thing at each passing moment. However, we also see the need to allow that a thing maintains its identity as the same thing, despite changes to it. So Aristotle was very intuitive to clarify the law of identity to account for this reality of observed temporal continuity, that a thing maintains its identity as the thing it is, despite changes to its form, as time passes.
Quoting Dfpolis
This dynamic continuity is exactly the reality which the law of identity accounts for. And this is why I said being and becoming must overlap. A thing, such as a human being for example, is continuously changing, becoming, yet maintaining its identity as the same being.
Quoting Dfpolis
You maintained your identity as the same being when you were 10, when you were 11, and still now. You were always the same being despite many changes, and you were always "the same as yourself". That is the law of identity, "a thing is the same as itself". No specific description forms the identity of a thing.
Quoting Dfpolis
The infinite regress demonstrated by Aristotle, and explained above, is a very significant ontological problem. This is why we cannot accurately account for the nature of reality by simply assuming one substance. The substance would exist in distinct states, but there would be an infinite regress of distinct states in each moment of time. So we must accept that there is something other, which is incompatible with this one substance existing in distinct states. It doesn't matter that you do not want to call this 'other' thing "substance", so that you can avoid substance dualism, because we end up in the same situation any way. Instead of having two real substances, we now have real substance and real non-substance, so what's the difference?
Quoting Dfpolis
Again, you are adhering to Aristotle's "primary substance", and conveniently ignoring his "secondary substance", in your definition of substance.
Quoting Dfpolis
So, we're back to the top of my post. Concepts are "acts", as stated here, and as described at the beginning of this post. And, as described in the rest of this post, activity, as change, becoming, is what lies between states of being, as something incompatible with the descriptive conventions of being and not being. So concepts are very real occurrences of "non-substance".
But now we have a problem with your definition of "substance", as "this something". Every time we point to a "this something", we find that it is engaged in change, activity, so it is also non-substance at the very same time. Any instance of substance, a thing, also consists of active becoming or change, and by your exclusionary definition of "substance", this must be "non-substance". So now, instead of violating the law of excluded middle, which Aristotle recommended, you violated the law of noncontradiction, which Aristotle strongly urged us not to do in this situation of trying to account for the dual reality of being and becoming.
Quoting Dfpolis
There is necessarily an actuality which is before, that's what Aristotle's so-called cosmological argument demonstrates. A potentiality cannot actualize itself, something actual is required. So if there is a body with life potentially in it, it is required that there is an actuality which actualizes this body and makes this become an actual living body. This is "the soul", the actuality which is necessarily prior to the actual living body.
Thinking of matter in a different in terms of self-organization and systems (rather than extension) neither rejects nor replaces the dualist conceptual space.
Quoting Fooloso4
No one said it was. Aristotle took an existing word, hyle, an gave it a new meaning, namely that "out of which" something comes to be.
Quoting Fooloso4
It is based on reason applied to experience. It is just not what I am arguing in this thread.
Quoting Fooloso4
You have provided no arguments to support this strange claim.
Yes, classically, substance/ousia refers to true reality. What I mean is that for Spinoza, there is one substance, and what we see as things are its "modes." Another way of saying this is that the things of experience are "made of" his one substance. That makes it a kind of stuff. So, while his language is not materialistic, his way of thinking about reality is.
Quoting Janus
Beginning with what we can imagine and ending with reality is fundamentally unsound.
Also, "appearances" is poorly defined here. It can mean what we see, or how we see it. What we see does not depend on us in the way you seem to be thinking -- or at least you need to be more specific about what you mean. How we receive it, the qualia of perception, does depend on us.
The development of self-organizing matter gives rise to the development of organisms. No dualism.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is still misleading. What you said was:
Quoting Dfpolis
That out of which an acorn comes to be is not timber. Timber comes to be out of a tree. An oak comes to be out of an acorn. Translating hyle as 'timber' is at least if not more problematic than matter.
Quoting Dfpolis
It is at best a likely story. Plato's Timaeus has a great deal to say about likely stories (ton eikota mython). They are stories about things we do not know. A likely story is without sufficient evidence to determine whether it is true:
(Timaeus 29c)
Aristotle says:
(982a)
How far is it possible to know all things? Aristotle says that:
(981a)
Without the possibility of knowledge of beginnings and ends the wise mans knowledge falls short of knowledge of all things. Our knowledge and experience is limited. We are somewhere between the beginning and the end. We have not experience of the arche or source or beginning, only conjecture, only likely stories.
Quoting Dfpolis
What you said is:
Quoting Dfpolis
This is a dualism of God and world.
All ideas, being actions (humans thinking of something) inhere in the persons thinking them, and are therefore accidents in the sense of predicables. This is true whether we are thinking of singulars or universals.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, it is an activity, and it can change but it is not always changing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Becoming x has ceases when x complete.
Becoming is not incompatible with being. At each stage, what is becoming is what it is. For example, the developing human may be a zygote or a fetus. Let's face it, Aristotle's account of becoming is a simplified model. Most organisms continue to develop. So, there is no one entelechy.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The Aristotelian answer to this is that this infinity is potential, not actual. It is not that we have different being, but a different kind of being. "Kind" is a conceptual reality, based on the intelligibility of the being in progress at each point in time. That intelligibility does not become an actual "kind" unless the agent intellect actualizes it, and forms a universal concept by prescinding from individuating notes of intelligibility. So, while we have an infinite number of potential kinds, we only have as many actual kinds as the agent intellect is able to generate.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Give me the text and citation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Citation? His solution was to point out an equivocation.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nonsense. Aristotle did not say what you claim. There is no middle ground between being and non-being. Every potential is grounded in actual being. New forms of being come from old forms of being, not from non-being absolutely considered. In other words, the non-being of a potential being is not absolute non-being, so the new being comes from something, rather than from nothing.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Citation? The Law of Identity is "Whatever is, is and whatever is not, is not." So, you are making up your own law. Please state what you think it is.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, the self-identity of a changing being is based on organic continuity. I do not have the same description I did when I was conceived, but I have organically developed developed from that zygote into the person I am today.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Where did he do so?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We agree on this. Aristotle contributes his distinction between substantial and accidental changes to the discussion. Still, he seems to have stuck with Plato's notion of static universal forms, even though he rejected Platonic Ideas.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it is not. As I explained earlier, to have actual "kinds" requires a mental act.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Neither Aristotle nor I assume one substance. He defines each ostensible unity (each tode ti = this something) to be a substance (ousia).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This does not follow. In Aristotle's view I am the same substance I was the moment I qualified as a rational animal. What need is there for another substance?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is because secondary substances (species and genera) are derivative on primary substances. They only exist in our minds because primary substances act on our senses to form phantasms (neural states) from which we abstract species concepts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yep, they're accidents. Still accidental being is a type of being, not non-being.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is Aristotle's definition. I just accepted it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not by Aristotle's definition. He knows that things undergo accidental changes and remain the same substance. Read De Generatione et Corruptione. I have lost a lot of hair, but I am still a human and will be until I die.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but most of these changes do not break the thing's organic continuity. It is the same unity, the same "this," and so the same substance.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, there is, but it is not the actuality of a potentially living body. It is an actual efficient cause.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. As I just said, it is the actuality of the efficient cause, not of the potentially living body, which it must be to satisfy the definition of psyche.
Putting aside that matter does not organize itself (the laws of nature do), this does nothing to explain human intentional acts, such as awareness of contents. When that is considered, it is still done so using Cartesian categories. That is where dualism comes in. Even if thinking stuff is rejected, no other way of framing the problem is considered.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, and the context was an explanation of Aristotle's technical terms. As you see, I am happy to answer questions if my are explanations inadequate.
Quoting Fooloso4
Quite right. That is why I often do not translate it. It is a technical term with no good English equivalent.
Quoting Fooloso4
Not quite. We experience everything through its action on us. When we see a red apple it is because it has acted to scatter red light into our eyes, and sufficient light triggers a neuron and so on until the action has changed our brain state. The apple informing our brain state is, identically, our brain state being informed by the apple. This identity is the basis of knowledge.
The same thing (hypothetically) happens if God acts to keep us in existence -- we would be acted upon in a potentially informative way. So examining the dynamics of our existence may lead to knowledge of God. That is the framework for Aristotle's and Aquinas's arguments. This is not the place to give them, but I suggest that you be open to the possibility that there is more than a story here.
Quoting Fooloso4
I hold that God is radically different, but inseparable, from the world. Still, that is not the kind of dualism we are discussing. The dualism we are discussing has one kind of thing doing physical acts and a separate kind of thing doing mental acts.
I don't read Spinoza's idea of substance as an idea of "stuff" in any sense. His way of thinking is not materialist or idealist in my view but, if anything (neutral) monist as he understands both matter (extensa) and mind (cogitans) as attributes of something more fundamental ("substance", "nature" or "god"). These attributes are also understood as just the two attributes out of infinitely many, that we can apprehend.
Quoting Dfpolis
I don't know what you mean by saying that beginning with what we can imagine is unsound. All thought begins with what we can imagine. Also, we don't "end with reality"; what could that mean? We count things as real in contrast to fictional or imaginary. We are able to imagine that there could be, or ought ot be, an absolute reality, but we cannot say what that is.
"Appearances" as I used it just denotes that we know things only as they appear. This is incontrovertible phenomenological fact. I have not said that what we see depends on us in any intentional sense, but it does depend on our nature, on how we are constituted, and over that we have no control, which means that our nature does not depend on us in any intentional sense.
I'm not sure what you mean "how we receive it" depending on us. Perhaps how we interpret things depends on us to some degree, on culture, on genetics; is that what you mean? I don't agree if you mean it depends on us in some libertarian free will sense. We cannot even decide what we will be convinced by; we are either convinced or not.
That is your supposition not a fact. It ignores the work being done on self-organization. It is understandable that you want to put it aside.
Quoting Dfpolis
Human beings have the capacity to act intentionally. Just as we have the capacity to see and speak and think. And desire and want and move toward those things to obtain them.
Quoting Dfpolis
It may be that when you consider it you do so using Cartesian categories, but the capacity to act intentionally does not entail dualism.
Quoting Dfpolis
Material works pretty well.
Quoting Dfpolis
Whatever your theory is of how we experience apples, there is little or no disagreement that there is an apple on the counter. We can see it. We can pick it up. We can eat it.
Quoting Dfpolis
Unlike the apple your theological claims, as you said: are
Quoting Dfpolis
A story about God is not sufficient evidence of God.
Quoting Dfpolis
Some scholars, both ancient and modern understand the importance of how to read Aristotle. The contemporary scholar David Bolotin quotes Alfarabi.
Reprinted in the appendix to Arthur M. Melzer's "Philosophy Between the Lines"https://press.uchicago.edu/sites/melzer/melzer_appendix.pdf
But isn't this just saying that the one substance has the potential to be any of the things we experience? And what has the potential to take on various forms is matter. In my mind, that makes his substance a kind of matter, not in the Cartesian sense of being extended, but in the Aristotelian sense of having the potential to be formed -- which is what taking a new "mode" is.
Quoting Janus
Many thoughts begin with imagination. Knowledge begins with experience.
Quoting Janus
The notion of reality comes from experience. You can try to extend it to mean something other than what we experience, as Kant tries to do, but there is no justification for that. So, to say "what we experience is not real" is an abuse of language, as "real" means like the things we experience.
The things we experience are present to us because of the identity of action and passion. A acting on B is identically B being acted upon by A. Thus, an apple modifying/informing my neural state is my neural state being modified by an apple. The result is a kind of shared existence.
When we start with sensory experience, we start with the shared existence of some aspect of reality. Even a delusion is an aspect of reality, namely some neural malfunction. So, if we stick with experience based premises and proceed with valid logic, the results will apply to reality.
Quoting Janus
I see no difference between "absolute" reality and plain old reality. The term "absolute" adds no definable information here. We certainly do not have omniscience, but omniscience is a ridiculous standard for human knowledge. Instead, we have projections of reality -- and that in two ways. The first is dynamic: objects project their power into us by the identity of action and passion.
The second is information theoretic. Mathematically, a projection is a dimensionally diminished map. For example, one projection of a house is the front elevation. It tells us about the house, but leaves much information behind. So, we add side and rear elevations, floor plans, etc. Each adds to our knowledge of the house, but no finite number of projections will exhaust what we can learn of it.
So it is with human knowledge. When we sense an object, we learn that, of all the ways it could act, it can act in the way it is acting on us. We know something of what it is, but very little. When we experience it in different ways, say using a microscope or x-rays, we learn more, for each experience gives us a new projection. A more classical way of saying this is that objects have many notes of intelligibility, many aspects that can be known, and new experiences actualize new notes of intelligibility.
So, we can say what reality is, but not completely -- it is something that can act on us in the way it does act on us. As a result, human knowledge is about how reality interacts with humans. We have to remain open to the possibility that it can do much more than that.
Quoting Janus
But, they can only "appear" as they act -- and those actions flow out of their Aristotelian form (eidos) which is their "first actuality" or intrinsic operational capability. That means that sensory experience is inseparable from reality. Things appear to us because appearance is exactly objective reality informing us.
Quoting Janus
I agree with most of this. Knowing is a subject-object relation, and so determined by the nature of both subject and object. But it is absurd to imagine that we could know without subject limitations, so that our knowledge, or any knowledge, is subject-free.
Still, I do think that, to a degree, we can form our nature. Intentions lead to repeated actions and repeated actions lead to habits that are incarnated in neural net structures -- changing our nature.
Quoting Janus
I mean that the physical basis of red in an apple may be an absorption spectrum, but how we receive red is by experiencing a certain quale -- a contingent form of awareness.
Quoting Janus
That comes later, in judgement. First, we experience without classifying, then we make classifying judgements, projecting experience into our conceptual space. That space reflects past experience including culture. I see an elephant. Is it an African elephant or a sign of intoxication?
Quoting Janus
That is not what I meant, but I do not agree. We can and do decide what to attend to. And it is what we choose to attend to that sways us.
Wait, what kind of activity is not always a change? I think activity is always a change, whether it's change of place, or change of some quality. Activity as motion, necessarily implies change.
Quoting Dfpolis
I explained to you why becoming is incompatible with being, and this is directly from Aristotle. Plato initially outlined this problem in The Theaetetus I believe it was. Aristotle demonstrated it in a way similar to what I expressed.
Yes, at each stage of becoming, the thing is what it is, but as Aristotle demonstrated, "becoming" as change is what occurs between each stage. It must be, or else there is an infinite number of stages between each stage. So it is impossible that becoming can be described by states of being at various stages, because this would require an infinity of stages for even the smallest degree of change.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is exactly what Aristotle denies. Metaphysics BK 4, Ch 8, 1012b,5-8 "But against all such views we must postulate as we said above, not that something is or is not, but that something has a meaning, so that we must argue from a definition, viz. by assuming what falsity or truth means." See below for context.
A good representation of the law of identity is found in Metaphysics Bk7, Ch 6.
[quote=1031b-1032a] Each thing itself. then, and its essence are one and the same in no accidental way, as is evident both from the preceding arguments and because to know each thing, at least, is just to know its essence, so that even by the exhibition of instances it becomes clear that both must be one.
...
Clearly, then, each primary and self-subsistent thing is one ad the same as its essence. The sophistical objections to this position, and the question whether Socrates and to be Socrates are the same thing, are obviously answered by the same solution; for there is no difference either in the standpoint from which the question would be asked, or in that from which one could answer it successfully.[/quote]
Quoting Dfpolis
I haven't the vaguest idea of what "organic continuity" means. It's not Aristotelian and it seems that it is actually you who is making up your own laws. How would you account for the temporal continuity of changing inorganic things like rocks? Surely the rock remains the same rock, despite despite a change in location, or chipping and other changes which occur to it.
Quoting Dfpolis
You seem to be incapable, or unwilling to grasp the fact that "becoming" is what occurs between points in time, and therefore cannot be accurately described as "the being in progress at each point in time". This issue is fundamental to an understanding of Aristotle's metaphysics. As Aristotle demonstrated, if understanding becoming was a matter of grasping "the intelligibility of the being in progress at each point in time", then "becoming" would be completely unintelligible as requiring understanding "the being in progress" at an infinite number of points in time, just to be able to understand even the most simple case of becoming.
Quoting Dfpolis
This does not resolve the problem, nor is it Aristotle's recommendation.
Suppose there is assumed to be an actual number of different states of being inherent within each instance of change. So there would be an actual number of stages each consisting of a different kind of being at each stage. What Aristotle pointed out is that "change" is what occurs between each instance of existence of a different kind of being.
So, saying that at t1 there was X type of being, and at t2 there was Y type of being, does not explain the intermediary change which occurred, which is known as how X became Y, because this is what happened between t1 and t2. If we posit Z type of being as the intermediary stage, we face an infinite regress. If we say as you are proposing, that there is a limited number of actual stages, then we are right back to the very same problem as we have at the beginning which Aristotle was addressing. We need to account for what happens between each of the stages, as this is when change, or becoming occurs, how one stage becomes the next. Clearly, what you propose is not what Aristotle proposed, because this proposal produces the very problem which he proceeded toward finding a solution for.
Quoting Dfpolis
There is a number of places where Aristotle demonstrated the necessity of violation of the law of excluded middle. I think the most famous is in "Categories" where he talks about the possibility of a sea battle tomorrow.
What I believe is the best demonstration is in Metaphysics. One place is Bk 4. First, in Ch 3 he explains why the law of non-contradiction must be adhered to, as the most self-evident principle of all. Then, in Ch 5 he explains Protagorean relativity theory, and the problem involved with understanding "change". If different people perceive the same changing thing in different ways, and the truth about a thing is according to how it is perceived, then the same thing is at the same time both "so and not so". Because of this problem, it appears like many people, believed that there could be no true or false statements made about change, so some concluded that change is impossible.
The real problem Aristotle said, is that these people attribute "truth", "that which is", as being identical with the sensible world, and the sensible world is always changing. This view blossomed into the extreme position of Heraclitus, who said you could not make a true statement about anything, and finally Cratylus who criticized even Heraclitus for assuming it to be true that you cannot step in the same river twice, claiming you could not even step in it once, because "the same river" makes no sense at all. So Aristotle's conclusion is something like 'that which appears is not necessarily the truth', because the same thing may both appear to be and not be in the same way at the same time, depending on perspective.
In Ch 7 he proceeds in a discussion of the law of excluded middle. First he shows that the argument that "there must be an intermediary between all contradictories", in the same sense that grey is intermediary between black and white, leads to infinite regress, just like I've explained. This is not a problem of ambiguity, but a problem of insisting that change can be described by intermediary states of being. It is a fundamental problem of that way of speaking. It produces sophistic, or "eristical" arguments which men will concede to because they cannot refute them.
The solution is discussed in Ch 8. What is required is that the intermediary which is change, be undefined. Attempts to define it produce the infinite regress. Therefore the law of excluded middle applies only to defined terms, not to appearances as observed. 1012b,5-8: "But against all such views we must postulate as we said above, not that something is or is not, but that something has a meaning, so that we must argue from a definition, viz. by assuming what falsity or truth means."
Quoting Dfpolis
But Aristotle had two definitions of substance, primary and secondary, and you simply dismiss secondary substance as derivative. However, in his Metaphysics the substance of a self-subsistent, separate thing, is equated with the thing's essence, following Plato's Timaeus. This is not derivative, but prior.
Metaphysics Bk 5 Ch 8. " It follows, then, that 'substance' has two senses, (A) the ultimate substratum which is no longer predicated of anything else, and (B) that which, being a 'this' is also separable --and of this nature is the shape or form of every thing"
Quoting Dfpolis
As Aristotle demonstrated, and I explained above, this view you state here, cannot account for the reality of change. If we accept as true, that you are always the same substance, just having a different form at different times, then we can never understand the reality of changes which occur to you. The changes are necessarily something distinct from, and cannot be described as, substance which is a your form or essence. And since your form is constantly changing, then your identity must be something other than your substance because this constantly changes. But, change is just as much a real part of you as identity is, therefore "substance" also has the definition of matter with form. Now we have two "substances". So, as Aristotle demonstrated, change is real, actual, and substantial, but consisting of "substance" in the sense of a logical necessity but there is also "substance" in the sense of a combination of matter and form, and that is of a physical, or sensible necessity, to account for the reality of appearances. And it must be allowed, that appearances defy the law of excluded middle.
Quoting Dfpolis
That's exactly why we need to accept the reality of something other than "substance", as per the way you apply the term. However, when we start to understand this "something other", it becomes very clear that it is no less substantial, by the very definition you employ to call the other thing 'substance". So now there is a need for two distinct substances, both fitting the definition you propose, but each being very different from the other.
The work being done on "self"-organization does not falsify the existence of actual laws of nature. it applies them. It is on the basis of the laws discovered today that we explain the origin and evolution of the universe and the evolution of life. If you reject them, you reject the foundations of cosmology, physics and chemistry.
Is it not a fact that the laws we have discovered can explain past physical processes and predict future ones? Did they not predict yesterday's eclipse?
Quoting Fooloso4
Agreed. That is not in question. The questions are: (1) how can intentional acts have physical effects? and (2) how can physical operations, such as sensing, elicit intentional states such as consciousness of what is sensed?
Quoting Fooloso4
We agree, but when you start with a Cartesian conceptual space, answering (1) and (2) seems impossible. This leads many to become metaphysical naturalists and try to reduce intentional operations to physical operations.
Quoting Fooloso4
No it does not, because "matter" does not mean potential, not actual, which hyle does. When we hear "matter" we think actual stuff.
Quoting Fooloso4
I agree. The question is how do we know that there is an apple on the counter, because if we understand that, we can understand how we might know that there is a God. In that quest, understanding the identity of action and passion is essential.
Quoting Fooloso4
Little Women is a story. Showing that electric charge is quantized requires reason applied to experience. They are not the same.
-- and yes, it takes time and effort to understand Aristotle.
And I certainly look forward to your putting this centuries old issue to rest once and for all. Good luck with that.
This is not uncontroversial. https://iep.utm.edu/lawofnat/:
Quoting Dfpolis
No, you simply conceive of the foundations of cosmology, physics, and chemistry differently.
Non sequitur.
Quoting Dfpolis
Nature does not "apply" its laws.
Quoting Dfpolis
It seems as though you want to hang on Cartesian categories in order to refute them.
Quoting Dfpolis
Material does not work because "matter" ... ?
Quoting Dfpolis
How does my dog know that there is an apple on the counter? She sees it. She smells it. She attempts to grab it and eat it. The question does not arise for my dog and does not ordinarily arise for human beings either who are not confused by philosophical conundrums.
Quoting Dfpolis
Yes, there are different kinds of stories, including different stories about the laws of nature. @wonderer1 notes two different stories of the laws of nature. You and I discussed this in a previous thread. You dismiss the idea that the laws of nature are descriptive rather than prescriptive because it is problematic for the larger story of God you want to tell.
Contemplating fixed content requires no change once it has begun.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You told me what you think. You did not cite Aristotle and you did not lead me to reject being during change.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I already answered this. Describing is a mental act and there is not an actually infinite number of such acts, only a potentially infinite number.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Aristotle is giving dialectic advice, stating that the best starting point for arguing against nonsensical claims is a definition, not stating a metaphysical principle, in the quotation you cite.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To say that a thing is identical with its essence (which btw is false) is not to say anything about what happens over the course of time, which is what you are talking about. Essences only define what a being could do if it existed. So, as Aquinas saw, we need actual existence in addition to essences.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Organic continuity is continuity that maintains unity, as when an organism is transformed over the course of its life. For example, when a caterpillar, which is not a butterfly, becomes a butterfly.
As for Aristotle, I think he was a true genius, perhaps the most brilliant person in history. Still, he was a finite, historical human being -- not the final word on reality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
By the operation of the same laws of nature that account for the physical processes of organisms.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
When does a chip become a fracture into two rocks? It depends on how we define "the same rock." Rocks do not have the same kind of unity organisms do. Organisms have immanent (self-perfecting) activity. Rocks don't.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I accept that, but there is also being at each point in the process.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nonsense!
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are missing the point. Becoming is the actualization of a potency insofar as it is still in potency. What you are missing is that there is no bare potency. Potency is always an aspect of informed being.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
So you say.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree. I did not say it did. I said the actualization of potential does.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I did not say that. I said the number of kinds was always finite.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A continuum is not a regress. There is typically one efficient cause, and one potential being actualized, for the whole transformation. What do you see as a regress?
Your mental ability to divide one process does not make it many processes, it just means that you cane use a different mental representation of one and the same process.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You have to realize that the laws of logic are based on the laws of being. There cannot both be a sea battle and not be a sea battle, but given that there is not yet a reality to conform to, "there will be sea battle tomorrow" is neither true nor false. Since it is neither true nor false, the rules applying to truth and falsity do not apply.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not quite. Conceiving the same reality in different ways is a form of equivocation. When we are using different meanings for the same (nominal) concept, the same formal proposition can be true and false, not because the reality is indeterminate, but because we are not thinking the same things about it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In Plato's theory, sensible things are like images in a mirror and have no more an essence than a reflection does.
Right! But, one makes an explanation possible, and the other does not. Abandoning dualism is only removing an obstacle, not an explanation.
The reason for this is that the solution lies in understanding the relation between the intentional and the physical, and that relation is not a form of interaction, which it must be if you start with a Cartesian conceptual space.
Quoting Arne
Thank you. Message me with your email and I will send you a draft of "How the Agent Intellect Works" to comment on. I will be submitting it for publication around the end of the month.
I know.
Not quite.
Since descriptions that are not grounded in reality are fictions, we need to accept that the Laws of Physics are approximate descriptions of aspects of nature. Otherwise, physics is a form of fiction. You can call these aspects of nature "regularities," but traditionally, they have been called "the Laws of Nature." The difference would be whether the "regularities" are essential or coincidental. If you say they are essential, then there is no operational difference between saying that there are always regularities in physical processes and saying that physical processes obey the laws of Nature. If you say that they are mere coincidences, they we have no reason to expect them to new observations. The fact that they do apply in general says that they are essential.
This is a non sequitur, as additional assumptions are required for such implications. I hold that there are laws that guide the time development of physical systems, and that we have approximate descriptions of them. I also see that physics is based on what I call the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science, which attends to the objects observed rather than the subject observing. Yet, these are inseparable, for all knowledge requires a knowing subject and known objects. By fixing on the object and prescinding from the subject, natural science is left bereft of the concepts and data required to explain subjective operations, including consciousness and willing. Thus, the experiential footprint from which the laws of physics are derived is mindless matter. We must expect, then, that extending the experiential foundation to subjective operations may lead to the refinement of our present physics. In other words, our understanding of mindless matter cannot be expected to apply unchanged to conscious beings.
I said the work on "self"-organization apples the laws, not nature.
Quoting Fooloso4
It doesn't. It behaves in response to it.
Quoting Fooloso4
There is no need for you to participate in philosophical discussion. If you find it confusing, ignore it.
Quoting Fooloso4
No. I dismiss it because I am a physicist, and descriptions that do not describe reality are fictions.
:up: I think the motivation for questioning the existence of 'natural law' is because even though science assumes the regularities of nature designated as lawful, it can't explain them.
For Spinoza substance can take the various forms of matter and of mind, matter is the attribute or mode of extension and mind is the various attributes or modes of thought or affect.
Quoting Dfpolis
Knowledge results from interpreting what is experienced; and I count interpreting as one aspect of imagination. Peirce calls it abductive reasoning.
Quoting Dfpolis
I agree the notion of reality comes from experience. Further thought about this situation leads to the distinction between what is real as experienced and what is real in itself, absent any experience. So, I don't take Kant to be saying that what we experience is not real, rather it is one limited aspect of the real.
Quoting Dfpolis
The "absolute' signifies what is real despite or in addition to what we or any cognitive being experiences. Some things are unknowable to us. We cannot experience what animals experience, for example, we cannot know how things appear to them, so there is an aspect of reality which is effectively closed off to us. If we grant that things exist independently of our experiencing them and that our experiencing does not exhaust the reality of the things we do experience, then the distinction holds.
Quoting Dfpolis
There are two objections to the idea of radical libertarian free will. First, if we accept that our actions and thoughts are determined by neural activity of which we have no awareness and over which we have no control, then libertarian free will is impossible. Second when we choose, we do not choose to choose and choose to choose to choose and so on, but at a certain moment a choice arises, and we act or attend or whatever. There seems to be no way to make sense of the idea of libertarian free will.
Yes, they demand a metaphysical explanation just as the foundations of mathematics demand a meta-mathematical investigation.
The problem is that there is no way to determine whether the so-called 'laws of nature' are merely descriptive of the invariant ways that nature manifests itself to us, or whether they stand as somehow real transcendent principles of nature. The latter idea seems to be hard to coherently articulate, just as the idea of Plato's transcendent forms is.
Again, this means one thing if the laws of nature are prescriptive and another if they are descriptive.
A clear definition of self-organization:
Quoting Dfpolis
If the dog attempts to reach the apple and attempts to reach it where it is and not elsewhere then its behavior indicates that she knows it is there.
Quoting Dfpolis
A dismissive and condescending comment. The dog knows where the apple is because she can see it and smell it. It is as simple as that. Theological mystification is the kind of thing philosophy attempts to clear up.
Quoting Dfpolis
Descriptive laws of nature are descriptions. Those who think that the laws of nature are prescriptive do not deny the truth of the uniformities or regularities of the descriptions of the Regulatory Theory. You say as much:
Quoting Dfpolis
That does not change the the potential nature of his substance -- which means that from an Aristotelian perspective, it is a kind of matter, though not the normal kind.
Quoting Janus
There are at least two kinds of knowledge: knowledge as acquaintance (Russell's "knowledge of things"), and propositional knowledge. Abductive reasoning is one of a number of ways to justify a belief, not knowledge in the strict sense.
Knowledge as acquaintance can justify propositional knowledge in the following way: I see that the same percept that elicits a category concept <A> also elicits a property concept <B>. That justifies the proposition: "This A is B," e.g. "This apple is red." If I see that any instance of <A> will also be able to elicit <B>, then "All A is B" is justified, e.g. "All humans are animals."
Quoting Janus
We more or less agree, except that Kant believed that reality (noumena) is not knowable, because our mind adds content to it, such as the forms of space and time.
Quoting Janus
Only if you start by thinking plain old reality is only what we experience, which is not the common understanding. Let's say it adds emphasis.
Quoting Janus
Yes, we can never be another subject or kind of subject. Whether animals experience or merely respond is a different question.
Quoting Janus
Yes, not A precludes A. So what?
There is no reason to think that neural processes are completely determined by physics. If they were, consciousness would be epiphenomenal. If it were epiphenomenal, we could not speak of it any more than Galileo could speak of the moons of Jupiter if those moons did not modify his brain state. So, the very fact that we can speak of consciousness shows that it modifies our brain state, and that means that physics alone is inadequate to determine our brain state. This is because consciousness is intentional in Brentano's sense, and physics has no intentional effects.
Quoting Janus
There is no reason to suppose that such a recess exists. What happens is that we attend to experience, and sometimes the data stream calls for a choice. So, we do not decide to make a choice, although we can choose not to decide and so drift. We are called upon to respond and must choose how. This can happen because what we value is threatened and that requires an action. Nor is our choice determined by some prior utility, because we are the source of value and decide what to value more and what less.
Is there a real difference? If they are invariant, they are necessary. It is irrational to suppose that processes have invariant ways of acting without there being a reason for their doing so that might justly be called a principle.
It is not hard to articulate the nature of the laws. As my committed intention to go to the store is about my arrival at the store, so the laws of nature are about the succession of states that they determine. Thus, they satisfy Brentano's definition of intentionality. So we can see that they are intentional realities. This does not mean that all physical systems have minds, but it does imply that there is a source of intentionality.
In my paper "Mind of Randomness in Evolution," I offer an independent argument for the intentional nature of the laws, based on the concept of logical propagators.
If the laws are intentional, then it is easy to see how human intentions can perturb them.
Only in behavioralist terms. It is not evidence that your dog is subjectively aware of what it is doing.
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
My account of consciousness has no theological premises.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, and we call those aspect "the Laws of Nature."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82309-x
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-dogs-body-awareness-consequences-actions.html
Quoting Dfpolis
You said:
Quoting Dfpolis
Quoting Dfpolis
We do. The question is whether the laws of nature are descriptive or prescriptive. "Approximate descriptions" do not tell us how things must be, only approximately how they are. This is quite different from your claim that:
Quoting Dfpolis
and:
Quoting Dfpolis
They have been observed to be invariant, but it does not follow that they are necessary;
as implausible as it might sound there is no logical reason they might not change.
Quoting Dfpolis
I guess that's one way of framing it, but I doubt it is what Spinoza had in mind.
Quoting Dfpolis
I agree there are different kinds of knowledge. In relation to knowledge as acquaintance, I'd say that we become acquainted with things by learning to understand them and I think this process of coming to understanding involves imagination. Also, I understand abductive reasoning to be more about conjecturing. imagining possible hypotheses, then it is about justifying beliefs.
Quoting Dfpolis
As I understand him, Kant believes that empirical reality, appearances or phenomena are knowable. The in itself is unknowable by definition. For me it's hard to escape the conclusion that the empirical is a manifestation of the in itself, and real as such, but it does not exhaust reality, only the reality available to us.
Quoting Dfpolis
The point is that if neural processes determine thought and action, which seems to me highly plausible, then there can be no libertarian free will, regardless of whether physics is deterministic or indeterministic. And we have no way of knowing which is true, in any case.
Quoting Dfpolis
My point was precisely that no such recess exists. Choices are made because we feel compelled to go one way or the other at the moments of decision, and we don't really know what determines that. It is hard to believe that there is some non-physical entity which is the person, and which stands outside of the causal order of nature. I find the idea impossible to make coherent sense of. I don't flat out deny it could be the case, but if it is it seems to be incomprehensible. All that said I certainly feel free to choose, when there are no external constraints on my acting in accordance with my own nature, my desires and/or beliefs. But I don't see myself as some entity outside of the greater nature that has produced that personal nature with its desires and thoughts.
Indeed. That is not a theological premise. A premise is a starting point, not a conclusion. I am happy to say that the most uncontroversial starting points can be used to deduce God's existence, but that does not make them theological in the sense of being faith-based.
Quoting Fooloso4
You seem confused. I said the Laws of Physics are approximate descriptions of the actual Laws of Nature that guide the evolution of physical systems. It is the laws of nature that I said were intentional realities.
Quoting Fooloso4
A conclusion, not a premise. The premise is that physics has found that systems develop in determinate ways.
Why think a mind is something that can exist without an information processing substrate to supervene upon? I.e. why think that a belief that God is metaphysically possible is not faith based?
One problem I see with the Laws metaphor is related to whether or not there are real physical properties of things. Does an electron have charge, spin, and mass, or do laws dictate the behaviors of things such that electrons having charge spin and mass is only an illusion.
My working hypothesis is that subatomic particles actually have properties that determine how they interact, and to add Laws on top would be overdetermination. The notion of Laws of Physics seems to fit better with the notion that we exist within a simulation rather than within a physical world.
Yes, you are right. Logically, they could change. Physically (in other words from a scientific perspective), they do not change and are the basis for the concept of physical, vs. logical, necessity. For example, if you step off a cliff, it is physically, but not logically, necessary that you will fall.
Thus, physical necessity is based on how nature works, not on how we describe it. It was as physically necessary that you would fall in paleolithic times as it is in the era of general relativity. What this shows is that there is a difference between the laws of being, on which classical logic is based, and those of nature. So, the laws of nature are contingent, and thus require a sustaining cause.
Quoting Janus
I am almost positive it was not. My point is that after Descartes, many Europeans developed materialistic thought patterns, not that they became materialists. Augustine was a dualist, but he would never have said that the soul is thinking stuff (res).
Quoting Janus
I am asked "Do you know that strange object?" I say "Yes," because I have seen it, not because I understand it. That is not to say that I don't try to understand what I see, but that I know it with the first flash of awareness.
Quoting Janus
Perhaps. My correspondents often use "the best explanation" for justification.
Quoting Janus
As I understand Kant, he does not believe that phenomena are real. They are just how things appear (very like Plato's "shadows"). His noumena are real, but they are not accessible.
Quoting Janus
I think we agree. I would add that phenomena are the contingent forms of knowing. It is like Kant wants to know reality, but not employ the means of knowing reality. When we employ the means, which are phenomena, what we know is the ding an sich (thing in itself), but not exhaustively.
Quoting Janus
I find it entirely implausible that "neural processes [completely] determine thought and action.
I agree in my current paper that neural representation and processing is essential to conscious, rational thought. So, that is not the issue. The issue is whether neural processes are sufficient to explain experience. You can find many ways of showing they are not in my "The Hard Problem of Consciousness & the Fundamental Abstraction." So, I will not give them all here
Your argument only works if neural processes can be reduced to purely physical processes. If they have a partial dependence on intentional processes, our thoughts and actions would be partially determined by prior thoughts and not by prior physical states alone. This dependence must exist.
Physics has no intentional effects. Its dynamics only tells us how prior physical states evolve into later physical states. Since physical states lack intentionality (they are not about anything beyond themselves as knowing, hoping and willing are), we will never be able to reduce intentional operations to physical operations.
Similarly, the computational theory of mind fails because computations produce quantities, not intentions. Computational "logic" does not involve thought, but the manipulation of physical states representing 0 and 1.
This would not rebut your claim if consciousness were epiphenomenal. It is not. If it were, it would have no neural effects. If it had no neural effects we could not form the neural precursors of written or oral descriptions of consciousness, just as Galileo could not describe the moons of Jupiter if they could not modify his brain state. So, consciousness, and indeed all describable intentional states and operations, have neural effects.
In sum, physical operations cannot produce intentional effects, but intentional operations can produce physical effects. So, your premise is false.
Quoting Janus
We have no way of proving a theory in a hypothetico-deductive science. We can show that there is no need to invoke indeterminism to explain present data.
Quoting Janus
Of course we do. Biological (in a large sense) drives. There are situations that call for a response. We can respond automatically, or thoughtfully. If the thoughtful response is not the automatic response, our mind has taken control. How can you deny that thought makes the difference?
Quoting Janus
Exactly!!!!! You see how you framed this? (1) You assumed the person is a non-physcal entity. I deny that. (2) You assumed that events are not caused. I deny that. (3) You assumed that it is outside the order of nature. I deny that as well. This is framing the problem in terms of Cartesian concepts, even though you are not a Cartesian dualist. It is the conceptual space into which you have projected the problem, rather than the facts, that leads to your conclusion.
Quoting Janus
Neither do I. We are natural beings, but natural beings who can act both physically and intentionally. Why would anyone want to deny that it is natural for humans to be intentional as well as physical?
I almost agreed. The problem is "supervene" instead of "depend." "Supervene" is a weasel word used to avoid discussing causal relations. Like correlation, it avoids, rather than addresses the dynamics.
I have no problem saying that rational thought depends on the neural representation and processing of data. Aristotle and Aquinas both insisted that thought depended on physical representations (their phantasms).
Quoting wonderer1
Because I have read Aristotle, who was not a member of any faith I know, as well as ibn Sina and Aquinas, who were. Their proofs are sound: based on true premises and valid logic.
Quoting wonderer1
When things act on us in a particular way, which is what an appearance is, it shows that they can act in that way. That gives us a partial knowledge of their operational capabilities, traditionally called their "essence."
Quoting wonderer1
The difference between the laws and properties is that properties are possessed at each instance of time without reference to other instants, while the laws say how systems will evolve over the course of time.
Quoting wonderer1
I fail to see how.
Mincing words. God is a premise that underlies your claim, which is not an argument, that:
Quoting Fooloso4
You can develop an argument which leads to the conclusion that there is a God, but without the prior belief that there is a God there would be no reason to develop such an argument. Without the belief that there is a God, you would not make the claim that:
Quoting Dfpolis
Any argument you make that leads to the conclusion that there is a God, follows from your belief that there is a God.
Quoting Dfpolis
What is the distinction you are making? Is the distinction is between what is actually going on (laws of nature) and what we think is going on (laws of science)? In that case, when talking about what is going on we are talking about what we think is going on. This would hold as much for your claims about God's intent as it does for scientific laws.
Quoting Dfpolis
Again, God's intent is a hidden and unstated premise that underlies the arguments you make that are designed to lead to your intended conclusion. If you object to the term premise here call it a belief.
This warrant no further response
"Supervene" is a pragmatic word for considering things from a more simplistic but useful view. For example I can usefully discuss the workings of logic gates without concerning myself with whether the logic gates are instantiated with transistors and resistors, or vacuum tubes, or relays. Logic gates don't exist without some sort of physical substrate to supervene upon, but there are contexts where consideration of the substrate details is relatively unimportant.
It simply isn't feasible for us to discuss the physical behavior of a whole brain at the level of particle physics. So talking in terms of supervenient properties is simply a pragmatic necessity
Quoting Dfpolis
The question is, will you be consistent and agree that the mind of a god has an isomorphic dependency?
Furthermore, will you recognize that a god dependent on some sort of information processing substrate is not in itself an unmoved mover?
It is not that it does not warrant response but that you choose not to respond. You begin where you hope to convince others to end, that is, with your belief in God. The pretense is that the belief is derived from the argument, as if it is a conclusion and not the reason for making the argument.
Yes, I agree that as long as nature behaves invariantly then it would seem that behavior is physically necessary. As far as we know nature has always behaved invariantly. We agree that nature's behavior is
not logically necessary, but that might not mean much more than that we are able to think counterfactually.
Quoting Dfpolis
Yes, as you say it was Descartes who introduced the idea of two substances, understood in the human context as separate body and soul. Spinoza saw the soul as the idea of the body.
From SEP entry on Spinoza:
According to one interpretation, God is indeed material, even matter itself, but this does not imply that God is or has a body. Another interpretation, however, one which will be adopted here, is that what is in God is not matter per se, but extension as an essence. And extension and thought are two distinct essences or natures that have absolutely nothing in common. The modes or expressions of extension are physical bodies; the modes of thought are ideas. Because extension and thought have nothing in common, the two realms of matter and mind are causally closed systems. Everything that is extended follows from the attribute of extension alone. Every bodily event is part of an infinite causal series of bodily events and is determined only by the nature of extension and its laws, in conjunction with its relations to other extended bodies. Similarly, every idea or mental event follows only from the attribute of thought. Any idea is an integral part of an infinite series of ideas and is determined by the nature of thought and its laws, along with its relations to other ideas. There is, in other words, no causal interaction between bodies and ideas, between the physical and the mental. There is, however, a thoroughgoing correlation and parallelism between the two series. For every mode in extension that is a relatively stable collection of matter (an individual body), there is a corresponding mode in thought (an idea or mind).
One of the pressing questions in seventeenth-century philosophy, and perhaps the most celebrated legacy of Descartess dualism, is the problem of how two radically different substances such as mind and body enter into a union in a human being and cause effects in each other. How can the extended body causally engage the unextended mind, which is incapable of contact or motion, and move it, that is, cause mental effects such as pains, sensations and perceptions? And how can an immaterial thing like a mind or soul, which does not have motion, put a body (the human body) into motion? Spinoza, in effect, denies that the human being is a union of two substances. The human mind and the human body are two different expressionsunder thought and under extensionof one and the same thing: the person. And because there is no causal interaction between the mind and the body, the so-called mind-body problem does not, technically speaking, arise.
Quoting Dfpolis
If you know an object then you must have an idea of what it is, and I would count that as being possible due to imagination, We have 'images' of things, of their patterns or forms, which enable us to recognize them.
Quoting Dfpolis
I think that is a misunderstanding of Kant. Remember that he classed himself as an "empirical realist". How things appear to us is a function of how they and we really are. Appearances are relational, the thing in itself is not; it is what the thing is apart from all its relations.
Quoting Dfpolis
If all thoughts are preceded by neural processes, then those prior thoughts would also have been. Note Spinoza's "parallelism" as explained above ion the SEP quote. For Spinoza there is no real separation between thought and neural process, it is not that thoughts are caused by neural processes, but that "thought" and "neural process" are the two ways we have of understanding the one thing. We are not aware of our neural processes, but we can become aware of our thoughts.
Does our explicit awareness of our thoughts come as we think them or after the fact? My experience tells me that I do not decide what to think prior to thinking it, and that my explicit awareness or consciousness of what I have thought comes after having thought it, via the "echo" of memory, wherein I can "hear" my thought repeated as a "silent locution" in my "mind's ear".
I'm out of time at this moment so I'll have to address other points you made later.
I did, Metaphysics Bk 4 Ch 7-8, where he discusses change and the applicability of the of excluded middle . You refuse to address it. What's the point in asking for the citation if you refuse to go to the text and read the context for your own sake of understanding
Quoting Dfpolis
You continue to deny the relevance of the two senses of "essence" and "form", saying that this statement is false while adhering to one sense, and not considering that it may be true in relation to the other sense. Essence is form, and form is actuality.
You keep doing this, trying to present some forms as non-actual, but this is completely unAristotelian, and makes a mess of his conceptual structure. So your statement "we need actual existence in addition to essences" is nonsensical, "essence" as form, is what gives actuality to existence.
That is the point of the passage I quoted. There is no difference between Socrates the individual, primary substance, and the essence of Socrates, what it mans to be Socrates. You can disagree, and say it ought not be expressed like this but then you step out of Aristotle's conceptual structure. This is how Aristotle makes matter accidental, and Form separable and prior to matter as cause of material existence, which is the basic, guiding purpose of his Metaphysics. You deny this point because you are not willing to accept independent Forms. Therefore you say it is false, and remove yourself from being Aristotelian.
Quoting Dfpolis
But you were denying my insistence that being and becoming must overlap. Do you now accept this, that there is a duality of being and becoming within each material particular, or individual? And, the further point you need to apprehend is the fact that the aspects which are "becoming" cannot be described in the terms used to describe the aspects which are "being". And whatever aspects are described as "being" cannot be described in the same terms as those used to describe "becoming", because of the fundamental incompatibility, or incommensurability demonstrated by Plato and Aristotle. This is discussed in Plato's Theaetetus, and Aristotle Met. Bk4 Ch 7-8.
Quoting Dfpolis
You accuse me of "nonsense", then you make a statement like this. If a potency is actualized, then it is no longer in potency. You argued this yourself. Now you are saying that the potency might still be in potency, in the actualization of that very potency. Which is it that you believe? Either there is overlap between the actuality and the potency because they are distinct categories, which is what you seem to be saying now, or one simply replaces the other, as you said before.. Don't you think? But you don't seem to grasp Aristotle's guidance for violation of the law of excluded middle at all. Read Bk4 Ch 7-8 please, and get back to me when you have something sensible to say on the issue of becoming.
Quoting Dfpolis
Why though,? We can make up whatever imaginary "kind" we want. So there is infinite possibility for kinds. That's demonstrated by set theory.
Quoting Dfpolis
I explained the infinite regress, twice now. Between each supposed different state of being which marks each stage in a change, there is necessarily another state of being to mark that stage of the change. This goes on ad infinitum, i.e. an infinite regress.
Quoting Dfpolis
Right, so this is the case with "matter" in general, being designated as the aspect of the world which is "potential", the rules applying to truth and falsity do not apply to matter.
Now matter is that part of reality which we cannot understand because the rules of truth and falsity do "not apply". So this produces a very real interaction problem. We have two senses of "form", "actuality" or "essence". One is the essence of the thing itself, which is the same as the thing itself, the other is the essence we assign to the thing, through our use of sense, intellect, and understanding. Each is equally "actual", but what separates these two are the accidents, and Aristotle posited "matter" to account for the accidents, as the aspects which the intellect does not grasp. So "matter" becomes the intermediary between these two very distinct types of actuality, therefore it is the medium of interaction between the two types of actuality. But since it is what the intellect does not grasp, the interaction is not grasped. Therefore an interaction problem.
There are different ways of interpreting this situation. The materialist will assume that "matter" represents something real in the universe, and therefore conclude that there are real aspects of the universe which are impossible for the intellect to grasp. So we have ontologies like dialectical materialism which allows that the reality of matter violates the law of non-contradiction, therefore matter is something real which is impossible for us to understand. But from the Aristotelian perspective, "matter" does not represent anything real, it is just a name used to refer to that part of reality, "potential" which the intellect of man, at that time, could not understand. It is that part of a particular thing's essence which the human mind does not grasp. You will probably insist, as most others do, that Aristotle intended for "matter: to represent something very real, and I would reply that a lack of understanding of the human intellect is something very real. It is just not what we tend to think of as the reality of matter., because it is a type of nothingness rather than a type of something.
Quoting Dfpolis
Aristotle is not talking about using different meanings for the same concept. He is talking about "relativity" as proposed by Protagoras. In this case, since the world is said to be as it is perceived, or "appears" to be, and it appears to be different to different people, we are faced with the possibility that there is no such thing as truth. This is similar to, but clearly not the same as giving different meanings to the same words. Read the referenced section please.
Quoting Dfpolis
It seems you have not read Plato's Timaeus.
I myself can't help but see a connection between necessary truths, the domain of a priori, and an implicit order in the Cosmos (although I remain agnostic in some basic sense). But the likely response to such sentiments will be that because this sounds like natural theology or religious apologetics, then it ought to be rejected on those grounds. Just the admission of belief in God is sufficient to call an argument into question, as it is said to automatically consign it to the realm of faith, which is definitionally subjective and not amenable to empirical proof. It is flourished as a kind of rhetorical trump card. (See! A believer!)
I think this is all a manifestation of what (atheist philosopher) Thomas Nagel describes in his essay Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. He begins by quoting a paragraph by C S Peirce:
Nagel then comments that Peirce's comments
This is the point where Nagel confesses to the 'fear of religion', which, he says, he and many others suffer from, and which, he says,
I see this writ large in many a debate on this forum, which is why I frequently hark back to this essay of Nagel's. Science itself throws up many metaphysical questions which it is not equipped to deal with; but then, because it's not so equipped, it relegates them to the domains of personal faith or unverifiable speculation. Consequently, in the end, the only kinds of causes that today's naturalism will countenance, are those which science itself can replicate and have control over. As one Cardinal Ratzinger, a well-known Catholic philosopher, put it:
[quote=Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity] (Renaissance philosopher Giambattista) Vico....following formally in Aristotles footsteps ... asserts that real knowledge is the knowledge of causes. "I am familiar with a thing if I know the cause of it; I understand something that has been proved if I know the proof". But from this old thought something completely new is deduced: If part of real knowledge is the knowledge of causes, then we can truly know only what we have made ourselves, for it is only ourselves that we are familiar with. This means that the old equation of truth and being is replaced by the new one of truth and factuality; all that can be known is the factum, that which we have made ourselves. It is not the task of the human mindnor is it within its capacityto think about being; rather, it is to think about the factum, what has been made, mans own particular world, for this is all we can truly understand.[/quote]
Hence the transformation (or devolution) of man from h. sapiens, 'wise man', to h. faber, 'man the maker', for whom the technologically-buffered ego is the sole arbiter of truth. It is that kind of thinking that nowadays rules culture.
Quite likely, so let us think factually. Really, no matter how we think, we are not going to have exhaustive knowledge.
Quoting Janus
It depends on what you mean by imagination. I know that it can act as it acts on me when I sense it. Say, it can scatter light, or make a strange sound. That action modifies my brain state, causing a presence we can be aware of as an "image." That is Aristotle's phantasm. We can also imagine things not so caused. If an image is not caused by an object, it cannot be our means of knowing an object, because it is not the dynamic presence of an object.
Quoting Janus
Yes, or others of their kind. But, on the first encounter with a new type of thing, we have no such image.
Quoting Janus
I agree with this statement. I don't think it is what Kant meant, but I am not a Kantian and so no expert. As I understand him, the mind adds forms of understanding, rather than basing concepts such as space, time and causality on reality.
Quoting Janus
Being preceded by is not the same as being determined by. My passing through a signal is preceded by the signal turning green, but determined by my decision to go. Yes, that decision is partially determined by neural processes, but in the end, it is determined by my valuation of various factors, and valuation is an act of the will.
Quoting Janus
If you mean, as Spinoza did not, that thoughts and neural processes are two activities of a single person, I agree. But, being two ways of understanding, of of acting, does not explain the correlation of neural processes and the contents of awareness. We are aware of information encoded in neural processes. This cannot be an accident, and so calls for an explanation grounded in the relation of subject and object, for otherwise, our thoughts cannot put us in touch with reality.
Parallelism does not put us in touch with nature. It is a ridiculous theory because if true, it could never be justified. We would have no way of knowing what extended reality is actually doing to compare it with our thoughts and see that they are parallel. Extended reality could be doing not-A while we think it's doing A.
Further, since physics has no intentional effects, neural states need to inform mental states via an intentional operation. That is the subject of the paper I am finishing, should you care to see it.
Quoting Janus
Clearly, this is not completely true. I wanted to know how physical processes engender knowledge, so I decided to study authors who had written on cognition, such as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Bucke, James, Stace, Suzuki, the Churchlands and Dennett. Clearly, I decided what to think about before I analyzed their arguments. As I read, my neural net activated related contents, giving me the means of testing what I read. Yet, even there, I valued some contents more and other contents less, and that valuation determined the amount of time I spent thinking about various points in light of various facts.
I certainly agree that we cannot understand contents until we have properly disposed contents to be aware of. But, I also see, that thinking, unlike processing, is impossible without awareness. Processing can lead to activation sequences, experienced as change of association, but it cannot judge that though the setting sun is associated with an orange, it is not an orange.
Churchland is clear that there is no neural structure corresponding to propositional knowledge. His conclusion is that there is no propositional knowledge; mine that there is more to thinking than neural structures. Dennett is clear that there can be no naturalist model of consciousness. His conclusion is that consciousness does not exist; mine that this falsifies the hypothesis of naturalism.
Yes, we use language to articulate our thoughts. Still, there is more to thought than language because we often find it difficult to find the right word to express our thoughts. If thought were fundamentally linguistic, this would never happen. Indeed, we would have little language indeed, because language grows in response to our need to express thoughts current language cannot.
Quoting Janus
As am I. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Because the essential requirement for thought is a subject and an object. The object of thought need not be material, as we can think mathematical concepts that do not involve matter. So, while content may be encoded in matter, that presents more of a problem (how does the physical inform the intentional?) than a solution.
Aristotle used no faith based premises to deduce that God was "self-thinking thought." Greek religion at the time was pantheism.
Quoting wonderer1
How is it useful to know that my thoughts supervene on celestial motions? If you take supervenience seriously, you have to take astrology seriously.
Quoting wonderer1
That is abstraction, not subservience.
Quoting wonderer1
True, but irrelevant to the philosophical question of how physicality and intentionality relate. To study that you need to inspect, not ignore, their relation.
Quoting wonderer1
Since philosophers were able to discuss this for millennia without the concept of supervenience, it can hardly be necessary.
Quoting wonderer1
No, because mind of God is not a human mind, but only analogous to our minds. God does not now in the same way as humans do. Aquinas discusses this at length. You may not agree with Aquinas, but unless you know his theory, you cannot have an informed opinion.
Quoting wonderer1
Sure. That is why it is "a god" and not God.
There is a difference between God as a denied premise that claims to be a conclusion and a rejection of that premise.
For Aristotle not all causes fall under the four causes. There are accidental causes and chance (tyche), which means that in addition to teleology there is indeterminacy. Not all acorns become oak trees. In addition, there can be no knowledge of the whole or cosmos without knowledge of the arche or source. We can speculate and make arguments about it, but we have no knowledge of it.
Quoting Wayfarer
The wise man according to Socrates is the man who knows when he does not know. Aristotle is a Socratic skeptic and dialectician, an inquirer who knows he does not mistake argument for truth.
You haven't established that thinking of mathematical concepts can occur without supervening on matter. You seem to simply be considering a "subject" as a pure abstraction without recognizing the subject's supervenience on matter. I'm not seeing how the fact that the object of thought need not be material is of much relevance.
Quoting Dfpolis
The physical informs by developing intentional outputs. See this video on neural nets producing outputs that are about numerals in a visual field. Intentionality shows up at a relatively low level of neural network processing.
Quoting Dfpolis
I'll leave discussing Aristotle to Fooloso4.
Quoting Dfpolis
With a well informed perspective on the matter, a person understands that the physical effect of celestial objects on the functioning of our brains is generally so negligible that we are justified in ignoring it. It is disappointing to receive sophistry like this as a response.
Quoting Dfpolis
Superveniences are a class of abstractions. It's not a case of being one or the other. This from Joshua Greene might be helpful:
Quoting Dfpolis
To think that you have done a serious inspection while ignoring neuroscience is just fooling yourself.
Quoting Dfpolis
Fallacious appeal to tradition.
Quoting Dfpolis
Do you recognize the special pleading?
You didn't qualify "informed opinion". I certainly can and do have opinions informed by much that Aquinas didn't understand. Why try to change the subject to Aquinas' uninformed opinions?
"Faith based" is misdirection. Aristotle certainly did use theological premises. But as I interpret him these are not premises he holds to be true.
From the thread I started on Aristotle's Metaphysics:
Yes. Abstractions only exist in the imaginary world of Minds. So, they are Ideal, not Real. And physical laws can only be used as metaphors for metaphysical relationships. :smile:
Quoting Dfpolis
I assume that by "non-sensical" you mean : from the perspective of Realism & Materialism. You may be correct, that many-if-not-most posters on TPF identify as materialists or physicalists, to the exclusion of psychological or metaphysical views. But not all.
Atomism/Materialism was an ancient philosophy, that was later confirmed in terms of physical laws in the 17th century. However, some of Newton's assumptions have been called into question by 20th century sub-atomic Science. So now, there are good empirical reasons to doubt*1 the evidence of the physical senses, and to apply the 6th sense of philosophical Reasoning. The "science" I'm referring to is Quantum Physics, not Spiritualism.
Res Cogitans is literally non-sense in the sense that mental phenomena cannot be perceived via the 5 physical senses. But commonsense led ancient thinkers to conclude that Life Functions and Mental Phenomena are not explainable in terms of their material substance. Fictional Dr. Frankenstein injected Life into his creature with a jolt of natural Lightning. But real-world scientists have not been able to cause inert (dead) matter to become a living person by means of electrical Energy. The Miller-Urey experiment, almost a century ago, didn't even come close to creating life from non-life. So, it seems that there is still a missing element or force in the Matter + X = Life or the Matter + Life + X = Mind equations. Moreover, Reality still seems to persist in presenting a dualistic face to life-seekers and mind-finders.
It's obvious that Minds are always Embodied ; unless you give credence to invisible intangible ghosts. But that simple eyeball observation does not explain the emergence of Anima or Noumena from Materia. Cartesian dualism was merely a compromise, intended to allow Science to proceed without interference from Religion*2. A more pertinent observation in the 21st century is that Mind is the Function of physical brains. But, is a Function Res Extensa or Res Cogitans, or something else, perhaps Res Causatio?
I'm not proposing a Triality, but merely that both space-occupying things, and thinking things, might be merely various products of evolutionary Causation. Not just boring linear mechanical causation, but the holistic non-linear Interactionism of quantum entanglement. I won't attempt to explain that conjectural hypothesis in this post. But I've been exploring the multi-faceted roles of Causal Information (e.g. physical Energy or mental Intention) for several years.
That Information-based notion does not displace Materialism for the practical purposes of Science, but it does provide a new way to understand the impractical unrealistic subjects of Philosophical investigations : the immaterial Mind Objects we call "Ideas" and "Concepts". And ultimately, it's a Monistic worldview. :smile:
*1. Uncertainty Principle :
The uncertainty principle presents a philosophical challenge to one of our basic assumptions about the nature of physical objects, namely, that physical variables have precise and definite objective existence.
https://www.quora.com/Does-Heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle-have-a-philosophical-interpretation
*2. Descartes's Dualism :
Thus, the concept of metaphysical dualism served to be a compromise between religion and science. Descartes suggested that immaterial substances such as the soul are the locus of free will and it tends to last beyond the death of the physical body and thereby, are immortal.
https://www.studocu.com/en-us/messages/question/2491582/how-does-descartess-dualism-allow-for-a-compromise-between-science-and-religionhow-does
Indeed. :up:
Great OP. Your paper also looks interesting.
But presumably your opinion has no textual warrant, and can therefore be safely ignored. In short: eisegesis.
Thank you. As I said, I am revising one on how the agent intellect works. If you would like to read it, and possibly comment, message me with your email.
With kind regards,
Dennis Polis
I think it is rather the case that this goes against your own opinion and what might be regarded as the standard interpretation.
The problem of what counts as textual warrant cannot be adequately addressed without acknowledgement of the practice of exoteric and esoteric writing. The distinction was once widely known and accepted, but from the 19th century forward has been, with few exceptions, ignored. Arthur Melzer 's Philosophy Between the Lines does a good job of helping to rectify this.
With regard to Aristotle, we might begin by acknowledging that his works are dialectical. We should not read him to simply presenting doctrines or to be rejecting Plato, but to be in dialogue with him. See, for example, Ronna Burger's Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: On the Nicomachean Ethics
This means that we cannot simply open a text, point to something, and claim that this is Aristotle's settled opinion of the matter. Or do you think that it is not an opinion but that he has knowledge of the arche or source or ultimate roots of the cosmos? That he is in possession of a divine science?
Earlier I posted this:
Quoting Fooloso4
In An Approach to Aristotle's Physics David Bolotin says:
You of course disagree, but it is not the case that there is no textual, and I might add, scholarly warrant. For a detailed discussion available free online see Christopher Utter's dissertation .
Maybe that is because I think that empirical knowledge is informed by physical action via a modification of our brain state. However, since the same thoughts supervene on astronomical motions, saying that they supervene on brain states is not at all helpful. Saying that brain states encode the information we become aware of is.
Quoting wonderer1
No, I see subjects only in subject-object relations. There is no being a subject without having an intentional relation to an object known, willed, hoped for, etc. All of this is essentially intentional. Nothing about it demands physicality.
That the objects human subjects typically relate to are physical does not mean that all objects are physical and, if they are not physical, they will not be physically encoded. The essence of knowing is the union of the mind with its objects. The object informing the mind is, identically, the mind being informed by the object. Noting about this demands a physical substrate. So, what you are doing is generalizing from a single form of knowing, to all knowing. Clearly, there is no logical justification for this kind of induction.
Think about information. While it can be physically encoded, it is not physical. What computers process is not information in virtue of any physical property. Label a bits physical states a and b, and ask what the byte aababbab means? Reading left to right and interpreting a as 0, and b as 1, the byte means 00101101. Interpreting a as 1 and b as 0, it is 11010010. Reading right to left, it means 10110100 or 01001011. Thus, a, an arbitrary physical state, lacks intrinsic meaning.
Since information is not it's encoding, there is no contradiction in having intelligibility without a physical substrate.
Finally, your assumption that human intentionality supervenes on brain states is demonstrably false. Consider my seeing an apple. The same modification of my brain state encodes both my seeing an apple and my retinal state being modified. So, one neural state underpins two distinct conceptual states.
Quoting wonderer1
It is relevant because it shows that matter is not essential to all objects of thought. Ask yourself how physical states can determine immaterial contents. For example, what kind of physical state can encode Goedel's concept of unprovability? Physical states interact physically, producing physical, not intentional results. So, how can a physical state interact with immaterial contents? It can't.
Instead, we have neural states encoding examples from which we can abstract concepts. Clearly, producing concepts is an intentional, not a physical operation.
Quoting wonderer1
That does not happen. Neural nets only produce physical activation states. As with my computer example, the meaning or intentionality of these states is not intrinsic, but imposed by human interpreters.
Being a response to something, however complex that response may be, is not being about (in Brentano's sense) what is responded to. Believing that it is is an example of anthropomorphic thinking. Is a ringing bell about the bell puller's act? Of course not. It can, however, be used to infer that there is a bell puller acting.
Quoting wonderer1
As you will. Still, it rebuts your claim.
Quoting wonderer1
My point exactly! Supervenience alone is worthless. You have to look at causality, which supervenience theory was designed to avoid. And why? Because there is no possible reduction of intentional effects to physical causes. Dennett recognized that explicitly in Consciousness Explained and Chalmers recognizes it in discussing the hard problem. I showed why it impossible in my January article.
Quoting wonderer1
Yes. That does not make every abstraction an instance of supervenience.Quoting wonderer1
That is rather gratuitous! Where have I ignored neuroscience? I find it useful, but limited. It is like a street lamp's light. The light being under it does not mean that's where you lost your keys. It is better to think about what you did with your keys.
Quoting wonderer1
No, a counter-example to the claim of necessity.
Let's face it. When you needed supervenience to rebut my claim about astrology, it failed you. You had to abandon it, and bring in causality -- the very move it was designed to avoid.
Quoting wonderer1
It would be special pleading if I held a general principle that this violates. I hold no such principle. Since you have insufficient evidence to generalize from some minds on a peripheral planet to all minds, neither I am not violating a universal principle you have justified. I merely reject your hypothesis.
Quoting wonderer1
Because, that is what a truth-seeker should do. I did not read the Churchlands, Dennett, Chalmers any number of other naturalists because I expected to agree with them, but because I hoped to find insights -- and I did. It always helps to see things from a perspective very different than your own.
I do not agree 100% with Aquinas. The paper I am writing is quite critical of his theory of knowledge. Still, I have not found any glaring errors of fact, and he is one of the great minds in philosophy -- well worth reading even if it is only to clarify your own position.
As for changing the subject, it was you who brought up the mind of God without researching it.
Quoting Fooloso4
Well, you certainly haven't presented any. You claimed that Aristotle makes use of theological premises while at the same time holding that these premises are not true. Then you presented all sorts of quotes and sources that have nothing to do with your theory.
No, I mean from the perspective of anyone who takes science seriously. (I am not a materialist.) It is nonsensical because it has been known since Galen (129-216 AD) treated gladiators that thinking depends on the brain. Any well-grounded theory of mind has to take that into account. So, we cannot divide extended reality from human mental reality.
Quoting Gnomon
As one with a doctorate in theoretical physics, I do not think that the facts support the far-reaching quantum interpretations that astound people. Some come from confusing the particle model with real particles (for which there is no irrefutable evidence). Some come from inconsistently treating measuring processes classically instead of quantum mechanically. Some comes ignoring entanglement over large distances, or accepted but little discussed trans-temporal symmetry principles, and some come from ignoring the nonlinearity of interactions.
There is a tendency to think that because quantum theory and consciousness are both mysterious, they must be related. The theories I have read trying to do so have not stood up. The wave function does not collapse in the brain as von Neumann and Wigner proposed, but in measuring devices because interactions with them are nonlinear and do not support superposition. So, the collapse of the wave function has nothing to do with consciousness.
Quoting Gnomon
No, one need only give credence to logical analysis such as that by which Aristotle established the existence of an immaterial unmoved mover, described as "self-thinking thought."
Quoting Gnomon
Have you read Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution? No one interfered with his physics, which btw was atrocious.
Quoting Gnomon
How does one observe this?
Quoting Gnomon
As I explain in my January paper, for this to be so, mind must have physical effects.
Quoting Gnomon
This is a non-problem for Aristotelians who see that measured values do not exist befoe measuring operations.
There is a distinction between mere ignorance - not knowing specific facts - and learned ignorance, an awareness of the limitations of knowledge in exploring fundamental questions such as the nature of justice or the idea of the good. The latter approach is apophatic - which ties in with your philosophy between the lines thesis, as apophaticism gestures towards what cant be simply stated in plain speech, knowing that any propositional formulation will miss the mark.
Quoting Dfpolis
Schopenhauer also affirms this.
Quoting Dfpolis
But it definitely has something to do with the act of measurement, does it not? No phenomena is a phenomena until it is observed, said Bohr.
If you do not understand that Aristotle's art of writing requires an art of reading Aristotle, then we will not get very far. In large part that requires that we not read passively or expect him to tell us what is true and what to think. Like the good Socratic skeptic we must ask questions and make connections, look for contradictions and try to reconcile them.
Quoting Fooloso4
Do you think Aristotle is wise? What does that mean? Does he know all things? If not, how far is it possible to know things? What limits him and us?
He says that it is through experience that men acquire science and art. Does he or anyone else have experience of the arche of the cosmos?
I'll pause here to await your response.
Yes, but I think you conflate Plato and Aristotle in this way. You are accustomed to reading Plato and then you apply the same hermeneutic to Aristotle, despite the fact that the genre and medium is different.
Quoting Fooloso4
I think Dfpolis already pointed out your error of confusing a conclusion with a premise (link). Relevant here is Aristotle's distinction between what is better known to us and what is better known in itself. We only come to the latter through the former.
Is the problem simply that we cannot say it or that we do not know? If as you say there is:
Quoting Wayfarer
then it is not simply the latter but the former.
If, along with Aristotle Quoting Fooloso4
what suspicions or conclusions follow from an awareness of the limitations of knowledge in exploring fundamental questions? I think the answer is: human beings are not wise.
That explanation of the relationship between the substantial (res extensa) Body and the insubstantial (res cogitans) Mind (processor of Information) is very close to the reasoning behind my own Enformationism thesis. But, the Dualistic metaphor is only for convenience in communicating about Abstractions in a Materialistic society. A Realistic worldview can have no beginning or end, no preface or denouement ; only a never-ending meaningless in media res.
Ultimately, my thesis is Monistic, in the sense of Plato's hypothetical eternal universal "Form" {as the source of all space-time configurations} or Aristotle's "Prime Mover" {as the First Cause of all subsequent transformations}. Metaphorically, Eternal Form functions like a computer program with universal definitions & instructions (laws governing interactions), which are combined in various ways in the calculations of Evolution. Nature's program produces interim solutions to some (unbeknownst to us mortals) original question. Philosophy is the Quixotic quest for the meaning of this mundane routine.
The hypothetical Program of Evolution is pre-set with "principles of organization" and with the "dynamic" power to reorganize basic Matter into a myriad of unique forms (objects & organisms). This worldview is Monistic though, only if you assume that the physical computer (Cosmos) is running an a priori program that was "designed" by a hypothetical singular Programmer. Since the speculative Enformer exists metaphorically outside the physical computer world, S/he is not a real thing or person in the usual sense, but merely an postulated solution to a perennial philosophical quest for the First Cause.
This worldview does not have to be taken on Faith in some human document. The evidence is the real world of the senses, and the testament is the ideal product of Reason. Unfortunately, the Universal Cause or World Programmer has revealed He/rself only by means of the limited perception and fallible reasoning of meat brains. So, a statistical Bayesian confidence interval is the closest we can come to certainty of opinion about a Principle that is empirically unverifiable. Therefore, we may never completely agree on the name or characteristics of that ultimate Unity. Hence, as Arthur C. Clarke expressed the conundrum : "the nine billion names of God". :smile:
But wisdom is the aspiration, surely. Otherwise, whats the point? I would put it in more traditional terms - that there is really such a thing as the philosophical ascent, that there is a way of knowing that requires a way of being, but that this is something that has to be done (praxis) not simply spoken (theoria.) So the philosopher (better still the sage) points the way but the aspirant has to walk it, and wont really see what it is, until that is done. Thats why it cant be explained in plain language and also why a lot of Platos teaching was said to be verbal only. (Compare with the meaning of Upani?ad, Hindu philosophical discourses - the etymology of the word is from sitting up close, i.e. the chela (student) attending closely to the instruction of the guru (teacher)).
One more point - I dont know Aristotles view, but in respect of knowledge, Plato and Socrates both seemed to strongly endorse innate knowledge possessed by the soul prior to birth, which could be recovered by anamnesis. They certainly werent empiricist in the modern sense of attributing all knowledge to sensory experience. Plato and Parmenides were the originators of rationalist philosophy.
No, not at all. I simply do not make what has become a common assumption, that Aristotle rejects Plato. We should give some thought to the significance of Aristotle staying in Plato's Academy for 20 years.
Quoting Leontiskos
I said specifically:
Quoting Fooloso4
I agree they are very different.
Quoting Leontiskos
Here are the premises:
It is through experience that men acquire science and art.
No one has experience of the arche of the cosmos.
What is your conclusion?
Quoting Leontiskos
A good way to proceed but when it comes to first philosophy do we come to the latter? How do you know?
I agree but I think we disagree as to how high we can ascend. I think we also agree that is not something we should argue about since neither of us knows
No, I agree that it is an error to read Aristotle against Plato. This doesn't justify a conflation.
Quoting Fooloso4
The conclusion is that knowledge of deep causes comes through reasoning, not direct experience.
I agree with what you say, but I see imagiation as involved in both interpreting or undertsnding something as something and in imagining something that does not actually exist. Note that this latter function of imagination relies on the combining of preformed images of objects that do exist.
Quoting Dfpolis
I do read Kant that way, but then even Kant scholars disagree about certain aspects of his philosophy. I agree with you that Kant seems to think, or is often interpreted as thinking, that concepts of space, time and number are not based on experience, but are given by the mind as a priori forms of intuition or categories of understanding. I don't agree with that take myself.
Quoting Dfpolis
Spinoza did not think in terms of neural processes (as far as I know) but I think he would agree.
Quoting Dfpolis
Right, what I said was based on my own reflection on my experiences. Of course, if I read other authors I will be moved to agree or disagree depending on how what they say accords with that experience or not. I don't see any of that as saying anything about libertarian free will, though. I don't experience myself as being able to freely decide what to value or agree with; I experience that as being determined by what I have, through my own experience, been led to think.
So when of comes to deep causes you disagree with the first premise?
I applaud your dogged patience. :clap:
No. Knowledge of deep causes comes through experience, but mediated by a fair bit of reasoning. As I said, not through "direct experience." But the point here is that Aristotle's theological claims, such as the one about thought thinking itself, are conclusions and not premises.
Thanks for the time Df, I do not think it was wasted. I know you've helped me to reconsider and better understand some things in the past, and I'm looking forward to more of the same in the future. Anyway, despite my criticism I do like your work. As a novel variety of science based metaphysics, it's like a breath of fresh air. That's why I'm quick to engage you when you post a thread, I like you.
Im not putting myself up as an exemplar. Like you, Im citing sources - for instance, Pierre Hadot's, whose interpretation varies considerably from yours, I think. Exclusive emphasis on negation, that nobody can know anything like a higher truth, neglects the sapiential dimension of ancient philosophy.
See e.g. these excerpts from the Nichomachean Ethics on 'contemplation as the highest form of happiness'. Also the entry under Hadot on 'the askesis of desire'.
Not your intention, but that does sound like elitist, status seeking dogma.
It's incompatible with //some aspects of// democratic liberalism. That's why most of the exponents of the various forms of the perennial philosophy are hostile to modernism. In modern culture, the only arbiter of truth is what is objectively measurable and subject to social consensus, but that's also the source of the 'meaning crisis' that Vervaeke is constantly webcasting about. This shows up in the fact/value dichotomy first elaborated by David Hume (not coincidentally.) The motto of modern culture is 'nihil ultra ego'.
As a democratic liberal and (for the most part) a modernist I guess I am cursed to forever find fault.
When I was involved with the Theosophical community one of the things you heard most often was how this or that doctrine or set of teachings was 'only for those who have done the right initiation, and are truly sensitive' which was generally a way of dealing with any differing point of view. Everyone who did not agree in full was deemed 'less developed'.
Curiously, those who understood and were sensitive were also subject to identical substance abuse issues, anxieties, jealousies and status seeking as those who weren't, so it was hard to see what substantive difference any of these word games made to a life. It seemed more like it involved collecting a set of putative virtues and participating chiefly in a self-congradulatory abstract dialogue with those who shared the perspective. This could be true also for postmodernists, Pentecostal Christians.. or fans of Taylor Swift.
The question is how can we tell if someone has the right virtues or attributes?
Its a shame you see it like that but I dont want to derail the thread any further. I suppose I could say that Im a moral realist, I believe there is a vertical dimension, the dimension of value, and not just as a matter of subjective opinion.
That seems like a rather cynical take. Are you of the opinion, then, that everyone is equally virtuous? Equally reasonable? Equally knowledgeable?
Oh, and speaking of Hadot, just acquired this splendid volume.
I think this rather misses the point.
I am outlining how certain elitists can employ an elusive criteria of value to exclude certain folk from being seen as fully human or fully sentient. Are you of the view that this doesn't happen in religion and spirituality? My experience has demonstrated this is fairly common.
But as has said this is derailing the thread.
As I said, the the wave function collapses because the detection process (used in measuring) is nonlinear and cannot sustain superposition.
Quantum mechanics provides a very good example of the incompatibility between being and becoming I've been talking about, which Plato and Aristotle exposed. "Being", is represented here as the describable state of a fundamental particle. It is what is, at any specific point in time, what you call a stage of becoming. But change, "becoming" is what occurs between these points in time, how the particle gets from A to B, etc., and this is represented as a wave function.
So the wave function, as a representation of a form of becoming, must be expressed as linear or else it would be completely unintelligible to us, as totally unrelated to our points of observation. However, the points of observation (providing the states of being) must be adapted, manipulated artificially to match up with the information we have about what occurs between these points, rendering the representation as nonlinear, involving substantial unknowns. Therefore each, the representation of being and the representation of becoming, are left compromised due to the attempt to bridge the underlying gap of incommensurability, as the incompatibility between being and becoming manifests itself in particle physics.
Experience of what? Does reasoning discover the truth of first things? Why doesn't he teach it to us? He does say that the sign of knowledge or ignorance is the ability to teach.
Quoting Leontiskos
Mind was a well know and frequently discussed topic in the Academy and Lyceum. It is not as if it was a reasoned discovery.
I have read Hadot and found it instructive. If I remember correctly, he had an early interest in mysticism but later moved away from Plotinus Neoplatonism. In any case, I have no experience of a transcendent reality and so for me, whether such exists or not, nothing turns or rests on it.
It is often difficult to determine whether it is worth it. Although where someone has entrenched beliefs and views they are not likely to change them, there may be some reading the thread who have not made up their mind and are willing to evaluate based on the text and arguments.
We agree.
Quoting Janus
My point was that I chose what to read and, implicitly, what to think about, even though I was not yet neurally informed by the printed word. So, my later neural state was, to a degree, a result of my prior intentional state.
Quoting Janus
Suppose that your experience leads you to a fork in the road. On one fork is said to be a place of great natural beauty, on the other a person you have texted with and are interested in, but not met or made any commitment to. I am saying that your choice of which fork to take is based on how you choose to value these incommensurate goods. On your theory, how is this valuation made?
Thank you for the kind words.
Quantum observations are completely explainable without invoking the "particle" concept. Modelling the physics using the concept of particles works in many, but not all cases. Modelling it in terms of waves works for all the observations.
No, "thought thinking itself" in chapters 7 and 9 of Metaphysics 12. It's what Dfpolis spoke of <here>. It is Aristotle's famous description of God's activity.
Quoting Fooloso4
I would suggest that you try actually reading him. As in, beyond the first few sentences of the Metaphysics. :wink:
No, I don't think so. Wayfarer made a very obvious and rational comment. Do you actually disagree with it? If not, why are you objecting?
The "dogma" here seems to be on your part. Someone says there are "insights that require virtue and reason to obtain; not commonly found amongst the uneducated or untrained," and you object. I don't see how yours could be a rational objection. Usually such knee-jerk reactions have to do with quasi-religious or ideological indoctrination, where any time anyone says that
If this is right, then this is just the Theosophical community in a new key, where instead of being "less developed" the one who has spoken contrary to the creed is an "elitist." Neither charge is able to be substantiated; both are identity markers.
Quoting Tom Storm
I am outlining how Wayfarer's words imply no such thing, and that to read them in such a manner is cynical. I don't think such an interpretation is defensible.
I have never understood what "modernism" means, because I have never seen it precisely defined. As I read it, it seems to mean whatever recent changes the author does not like. Instead of discussing them pro and con, they are labeled and dismissed.
Similarly, "liberalism" is another ill-defined label. As I read history, American liberalism grew out of (1) disgust for British government inaction in response to the Irish potato famine and (2) the abolitionist movement. Neither of these roots seem poisonous to me.
Of course, there are abuses labeled "liberal" as there are abuses labeled "conservative." Unless these abuses can be shown to be a consequence of the principles of these movements, which I have rarely seen, condemnation by label only serves to divide people. Wanting to preserve the true values of the past does not mean you are a racist unless you view past racism as a "true value." Wanting to advance human freedoms and dignity does not mean you reject the true values of the past.
What actually happens is that people who want to preserve privilege or free themselves of moral constraint dress themselves in one of these labels as a disguise. Which one is a matter of convenience, because there is no real difference between continuing in immorality and seeking to be free of moral restraint.
One question here asks what relation equality mongering has to modernity. Why have we become obsessed with equality in modern times? Even to the point that we feel obliged to assert that people are equal in ways that they are manifestly not?
For me the answer lies in secularization. The older Judeo-Christian culture had an anchor for equality, namely the imago dei and a "balancing" afterlife, which was thought to reestablish justice. The religion and the anchor were lost, and at that point equality became an all-or-nothing affair. E.g. A Rawls-or-Nietzsche affair.
Descartes categorically "divided" Soul from Body ; which in more modern terms might translate to a conceptual distinction between Mind and Brain. So it does seem possible to think of them as two different but inter-related Things. Since we can and do "divide" the world into conceptual categories, from what perspective do you conclude that we "cannot divide" Res Extensa from Res Cogitans?
A Monistic Materialist might assume that ultimately Mind is just a different kind of Matter, so the distinction is artificial, not natural. But philosophers use such artificial analysis as an essential tool of their trade. Or, a Monistic Idealist might make the opposite argument : that Brain is merely a tangible form of ethereal Mind. Yet both feel justified in making conceptual sub-classifications underneath the umbrella of their preferred fundamental substance. Apparently, you have either a different meaning of "divide", or a different Prime Substance, in mind. Please explain. :smile:
Quoting Dfpolis
I agree that we can reason from sensory evidence (specific things) to non-sensory conclusions (generalizations ; principles). But Aristotle's "Self-Thinker" sounds like a dis-embodied Mind, and for a Materialist, would fall into the same nonsense category with Ghosts and Circular Logic.
Like you, I am not a Materialist, except for commonsense practical purposes. Yet, for philosophical reasons, I accept that all of the Minds in my sensory experience have been associated with meat Brains. However, I can cogitate from other evidence (e.g. Quantum Physics) that Mathematics (e.g. Fields) may be more fundamental than Matter. And Mental Information can be defined in terms of both Math and Logic.
So, the question arises : what is the relationship between Math and Mind? My answer is that both are subvenient (dependent) forms of the universal Power-to-Enform (Energy + Information = EnFormAction). That unconventional notion is not a derivative of pure Idealism, but a conjugation of Idealism & Physicalism. Or, as I like to call it Enformationism. :smile:
PS___ Are you familiar with the Mass-Energy-Information Equivalence postulation in physics?
Enformationism :
A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to ancient Materialism and Spiritualism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's a Theory of Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Yes, I know. That which thinks itself is Nous or Mind or Intellect.
In the Phaedo Socrates says:
(97b)
In the Apology he says the books of Anaxagoras are sold in the marketplace and can be bought for a drachma. (26d).
So, the idea of Mind as the arche was well known.
When at Metaphysics 1075a Aristotle says:
he is referring to Socrates criticism of what he finds in Anaxagoras. [Edit. Socrates] continues the quote above:
A divine mind is a premise or endoxa not a conclusion.
Quoting Leontiskos
I have. He does not provide such an argument.
You say:
Quoting Leontiskos
and yet rather than proceeding from what is better known to us you jump ahead to what is unknown to us and treat it as if it is known.
You have not said what experience or reasoning is involved that leads us to knowledge of the truth of first things. You downplay experience and are unable to provide the reasoning that leads to this knowledge. If it were a matter of reasoning then, as is the case with mathematics, Aristotle could reach clear, definitive, undisputed, and necessary conclusions. But he does not, and neither has anyone else.
My translation by Ross contains no such thing. What translation are you using, and what Bekker line are you talking about?
Sorry, I should have made it clearer.
The quote is a continuation of the quote from the Phaedo. 97b I just edited it.
Quoting Fooloso4
So I thought you were giving that quote in favor of this claim. But the quote is from Plato, not Aristotle, and therefore it seems you have not given any evidence in favor of your claim.
The interesting thing to me is that Aristotle himself answers many of your objections, which is what leads me to believe you have not read him at any length. It is also hard to believe that you are reading him with sympathy. For example:
Quoting Fooloso4
Aristotle complains about the modern mathematization of philosophy (Metaphysics, 992a33); he speaks specifically about the differing precisions of different sciences (Nicomachean Ethics, 1094b12); and he even speaks about those who incessantly question authority and require demonstrations ad infinitum (Metaphysics, 1011a2).
So clearly you are missing the point. I did not disagree (or agree) with the observation. I pointed out that this is exactly the kind of comment elitists make when they want to marginalise alternative views. As in: "Your criticism is not valid because you are not sensitive enough or have not read the right works to understand." A secular variation of it might be, "People shouldn't be able to vote at elections unless they have the right qualifications and educational standard." You'll note, I specifically said that I didn't think it was Wayfarer's intention to be patronising, but this kind of argument can easily been understood that way.
Now is the argument rational? Sure. But a whole lot of bigotry and elitism can be rational too so that's hardly relevant.
I think you are missing the point, but my last post is clear enough so we can leave it there.
My claim is that:
Quoting Fooloso4
This is supported by reference to Plato. But if you are looking for specific reference in Aristotle by name:
(Metaphysics 984b)
Quoting Leontiskos
What does this criticism have to do with the ability to give an apodictic reasoned argument leading to knowledge of the truth of first things?
Quoting Leontiskos
The degree of precision is based on the subject matter. Are you saying that the science of first things necessarily lacks precision? In the paragraph cited he says:
What is the amount of exactness to be expected when the subject matter is first philosophy? However imprecise the reasoning must be, shouldn't it accomplish what you claim it does, that is, give us knowledge of the arche of all things?
Quoting Leontiskos
What he says at 1011a is:
Surely if there is a line of reasoning leading to the arche of all things such reasoning would not be without reason. It may be unreasonable to expect to find it at the starting point but by the end it is reasonable that it must lead to knowledge of the source or arche of the whole.
Blessed are those who do God's work.
I understand modernity as the period between the publication of Newton's Principia and Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (or more precisely, the legendary 1927 Solvay Conference where quantum theory was introduced). That marks the beginning of post-modernism. As for liberalism, I mean 'liberal democracy' as practiced in Western Europe, UK, Australia, Canada, etc (not 'liberalism' as distinct from 'conservatism' in the US sense.)
My observation was that there is often a tension between liberal democracies and modernism and classical/traditional philosophies. Hardly a novel observation. More on that below.
Quoting Fooloso4
He immersed himself in Plotinus' philosophy when writing his first book on that subject, but afterwards came to see it as overly other-worldly and ascetic. But his emphasis on 'philosophy as a way of life' and the principle of the transformation of the understanding remained constant throughout the remainder of his (and his wife, Iseltraut's) career. He has found a new fanbase amongst modern-day enthusiasts of stoicism. 'According to Hadot, twentieth- and twenty-first-century academic philosophy has largely lost sight of its ancient origin in a set of spiritual practices that range from forms of dialogue, via species of meditative reflection, to theoretical contemplation.' :clap:
Quoting Fooloso4
Says you! There are many quite unambiguous declarations of the signficance of wisdom and the contemplation of the first principles in the Nichomachean Ethics:
Quoting Nichomachean Ethics
Which, according to you, neither Aristotle nor anyone else has ever had!
Quoting Tom Storm
I didn't take your comment pejoratively - but at the same time, there's a cultural dynamic at work in this topic. This goes back to one essential plank of liberal democracy, namely, that everyone is equal. In practice, this is often taken to extend to value judgement as well. Secular culture tends to level everyone in that sense - it questions any form of charismatic authority or any sense of there being a higher truth. Even the expression 'higher truth' is generally a red flag on this site, it invariably provokes not just criticism but often overt hostility. And it's because, in our culture, the individual is the arbiter of values, and science the arbiter of truth. (As I said, 'nihil ultra ego' - 'nothing beyond self' ;-) ) Ethical truths are subjective (decided by the individual) and relative (pertaining to cultural context. See Does Reason Know what it is Missing?, Stanley Fish, NY Times.)
I don't disagree. I am an elitist when it comes to art, literature and movies. I consider that there are better and worse texts - this is, of course, subject to some criterion of value and can get nebulous.
I do think everyone is equal in terms of rights and status as human beings. Not everyone is equal in terms of talent or ability. I don't have an issue with that. But good points like these can be made to do bad jobs.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm not sure what secular culture consists of. From what I can see there are a range of cultures and sub cultures which revolve around secularist notions and they don't always share presuppositions.
I do think when people reach for the term 'higher truth' we should question this as it can be used in a range of ways. And it can be used to shut down discussions. As in, 'There are higher truths you don't understand, Son.' All this aside, I particularly value your insights on these matters, even if we don't share some presuppositions.
He is not speaking from on high, does not possess divine wisdom, and is not pronouncing revealed truths for us to accept and spread.
To read him sympathetically is read him as he reads others, that is carefully, critically, and not to regard him as an unquestionable authority.
Well, true, it's a magnet for abusers of all kinds, as we seen amply and tragically demonstrated many times over. But as Rumi said 'there would be no fool's gold if there were no actual gold'. The subtle principle at work in any real philosophical spirituality is in the transformative value of insight. Seeing how things (your life, what you hold dear, the world) really are. The kind of understanding Carl Jung was always concerned with. Spinoza was mentioned earlier in the thread: he said 'After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in daily life [ ], I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good [ ] whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity. (Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, para.1) He's referring to knowledge of higher truth.
Yes, that is my position. It is possible that I am wrong, that I do not recognize wisdom because I am not wise. By the same token, unless someone is wise they may be wrong when attributing wisdom to Aristotle or anyone else. Is there anyone here able to make that determination?
I have to say I don't really know. I will choose that which motivates me more, and what motivates me more is a characteristic of my nature (my nature at the specified time, since it might change). So, for example, presuming that you were referring to someone of sexual interest, the choice I make might depend on the strength of my libido at the time.
I don't think one has to claim to be enlightened (as I certainly am not) in order to see evidence of what it comprises in the literature.
I agree with this, and this is where faith comes in. For those who believe in higher truth it can only be a matter of faith, and even if there is a possible state of knowing higher truth, what that could mean is not clear, since it cannot be a truth in the discursive sense.
I think altered states of consciousness are certainly possible wherein one feels that one knows a higher truth, but that knowing cannot be expressed propositionally.
I don't see wisdom as a binary matter. I see degrees of wisdom, in different ways, in a lot of people. Was Aristotle committing a nirvana fallacy?
Yes, and I think this is the serious danger in censoring that sort of language for fear of abuse. If we pressure people to stop talking about gold because of the danger of fool's gold, then we deprive many people of the search and possession of real gold.
But there is also a lesser reason, and it has to do with inquiry. Propositions have a material sense and a formal sense. For example, the material sense of "2+2=4" is strictly mathematical. Yet capitalists could co-opt the expression as a rhetorical response to socialist economics, in which case it would become vaguely associated with capitalist economics. At that point someone might respond to a use of the expression by saying, "This is not your intention, but that does sound like capitalist propaganda." Well, the material sense has nothing to do with capitalist doctrine. The formal sense depends on the speaker's intent, but if there is no reason to believe that the intent is capitalist-inspired, then raising the spectre of capitalist propaganda is not only going to be a distraction, but it is also going to prevent people from discoursing about mathematics.
That is the practical effect: we are not able to discourse about higher truths, virtue, specialized knowledge, etc. Or rather, in order to discourse on these topics we are forced to overcome a great deal of resistance, even when there is no good reason for putting up such resistance.
Is that negation based on a distinction between Real Things and Ideal Beings?
In a previous reply, you called Descartes' dual categories "non-sensical because reality cannot be divided into res extensa and res cogitans". Yet, you say that "thought and matter" have different (dual?) "capabilities". If "capability" is taken to mean the ability to affect other "beings", how would you characterize that innate power? Extensa is a 3D spatial quantity, while Cogitans is a non-space-time quality; perhaps more like a capability? Extended Matter interacts with other things via exchanges of Energy. Do you think that Thinking Beings interact via Intention? If so, is Intention analogous to Energy in that it has effects on other minds?
The OP is titled Dualism and Interactionism. If you defined the latter term above, I missed it. So I Googled, and found that it is defined in terms of "Dualism" and "Causation"*1. Apparently, your objection to the Dualistic (proximate appearance) aspect is based on a Monistic (ultimate Ideality) worldview, in which Mind & Matter can be traced back to some primordial Origin, with the potential for both Material things and Mental beings. Is that summary anywhere close to your understanding?
If so, I can agree, although I typically use different terminology, drawn partly from sub-atomic Physics , Information theory, modern Cosmology, and ancient Philosophy. In my thesis, the Ultimate Origin (First Cause) is neither Mind nor Matter, but the Potential for evolving a plethora of material Things & living Creatures & Thinking Beings in the Real world. And I use physical Energy as a metaphor for the "interactions" between those offspring of Plato's hypothetical ideal FORM*2 (configuration ; manifestation ; design), and Aristotle's original Prime Mover (causation ; creation).
From those different aspects of Monistic Potential, I can trace Cosmology from an initial Bang of omnidirectional Causation, which transformed into the dual aspects of Energy & Matter, and thence into the manifold Darwinian "forms most beautiful". Some of those sub-forms have material Properties and some have immaterial Qualities, such as Life & Mind. Does any of that conjecture make sense from your non-dual perspective? :smile:
*1. Interactionism (philosophy of mind) :
Interactionism or interactionist dualism is the theory in the philosophy of mind which holds that matter and mind are two distinct and independent substances that exert causal effects on one another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactionism_(philosophy_of_mind)
*2. Form :
[i]noun --- Structure : a> the visible shape or configuration of something ; b> a particular way in which a thing exists or appears; a manifestation.
verb --- Creation : a> bring together parts or combine to create (something) : b> make or fashion into a certain shape or form.[/i]
and was surprised to come across this remark, without there being any further elaboration or comment by the author:
Quoting Leontiskos
It's not so much about censoring it - there's no prohibition on discussions of it, it's more that there's a kind of tacit disapproval because of its association with religion and or with cultic ideas.
I notice in the IEP article on Pierre Hadot, whom I've already brought up, says that 'Hadot acknowledges his use of the term spiritual exercises (in relation to traditional philosophy) may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion.' That's why I made a point of mentioning Nagel's essay on the fear of religion.
My view is that the process of secularisation in the West is a major factor in many of these debates. But it's like a tectonic plate movement - hard to detect on the surface but still capable of producing violent effects. I'm still working through it, and will probably never succeed in coming to a conclusion, all the more so as I'm very much a product of the very forces that I'm critiquing. :yikes:
I take it that tacit disapproval is a kind of soft censorship; censorship as suppression. Or at the very least, this is what it necessarily effects.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but is secularization inherently tied up with strong notions of egalitarianism? If not, then where does the strong egalitarianism come from?
But when you say you are an elitist with respect to literature, are you only saying that you think there are better and worse texts? Because I don't think that's elitism.
Well do you yourself think they are right or wrong? I'm wondering what you mean when you use that term, 'elitism'.
I am egalitarian in believing that every individual should be treated equally by the law. The issue I was getting at was the denial of what I described as the 'vertical dimension', the axis of value (as distinct from the horizontal axis of quantitative measurement). That is required to make the sense of the idea of there being a higher truth, as without such a dimension, there could be no higher or lower.
Case in point - an excerpt from an article on the Catholic philosopher, Joseph Pieper, apparently very well-known (although not to me):
I'm not mentioning that as an exhortation to a specifically Catholic philosophy, but as preserving what I think of as a kind of universalist insight. Firstly the idea that there's a kind of understanding which also requires a transformation in order for it to be meaningful. Secondly that this is not easy or painless. I don't see an equivalent of that in much of secular philosophy.
So you would say that elitism means believing that there is a hierarchy of competence? Would not the person who believes there is a hierarchy of competence, and that they are at the very bottom of that hierarchy, then be an elitist?
Okay, so the idea is that secularism denies this vertical dimension?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, great point. And this touches on that idea of askesis.
I agree that secularism presents a flatness, and that this flatness results in strong varieties of egalitarianism. But there seems to be an additional element at play, which is egalitarian in itself and not only as a result of the flattened secular space. This additional element seems to be much more intentionally ordered towards strong egalitarianism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Good quote. Pieper is great. Well-respected in scholarly circles and simultaneously accessible, which is rare. Ratzinger was the same way, although Pieper was a Thomist and Ratzinger was not.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/846860 Amen! :halo:
Well, the issue is, as I keep saying, the 'vertical dimension', which is the domain of values, the qualitative dimension. In traditional philosophy, like the Aristotelian, this was assumed - eudomonia, virtue ethics, and so on. As these became absorbed into or incorporated with the Christian ethos, so correspondingly the decline of the Christian ethos often entails the decline of those kinds of principles. Do you know McIntyre's book After Virtue? Said to be one of the cardinal texts in modern ethical theory. McIntyre started out as a Marxist but ultimately converted to Catholicism mainly as a consequence of this analysis. That massive doorstop of a book, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor, also a valuable reference. But I don't want to over-egg the pudding. I definitely value living in a secular culture, as distinct from a proscriptively religious culture. But secular philosophy, as a kind of self-conscious philosophical outlook, is lacking in that 'dimension of value' in my opinion.
I think the word must at least convey a sense of superiority, and generally a form of superiority that implies an unbridgeable gap, such that the elitist is a person who considers themselves superior in a definitive way.
So I don't think that merely forming comparative judgments of persons implies elitism. For example, if I think Michael Jordan is a superior basketball player when compared with Scottie Pippen, this does not make me an elitist. I think everyone believes that there are hierarchies of competence, but I am sure that not everyone is elitist.
Quoting Tom Storm
Okay, sounds good.
It's this:
I tend to agree but the implications of this are one can become a snob and eschew certain people and popular culture on the basis that they are not worth our time. Hasty judgements can be made. I think this counts as elitist, but isn't as bad as some expressions of it.
When I was young, I might have responded to your Michael Jordan comment with, "I don't really know what you're talking about, I find sport trivial and boring." I would not say such a thing today, but it would be true to say I have never really watched any sport, except for a few minutes by accident on TV's in waiting rooms. :wink:
I think this is a good point. I wonder where the line is.
Competence in many areas is, at least in principle, publicly demonstrable. For example, technical proficiency, if not aesthetic command, is demonstrable in music, the arts and literature. Competence in science and mathematics is demonstrable to one's peers, if not the public. Competence in the trades, crafts and all kinds of practical pursuits is easy enough to demonstrate. Competence in religion or spirituality is not, and hence there is no way to determine whether a purported master or man of God is the real deal or a charlatan.
This seems a reasonable hypothesis, although I suspect that there are other factors as well.
I don't agree with this. The reason for modeling "particles" is to account for the waves' interaction with physical bodies. This is exemplified by the photoelectric effect. In this example the wave activity is a form of "becoming", understood as a continuity of change through a duration of time. The physical body is a form of being, is understood as the continuity of an unchanging subject with changing predicates.
The obvious issue here is that we do not understand the medium (substance or aether) within which the waves are active. We know that waves are an activity of a substance, but we do not know the substance which these waves are an activity of. It is often argued that the Michelson-Morley type experiments have demonstrated that there is no such substance, but as I just argued in a different thread, this is a faulty conclusion drawn from those experiments. In reality, what those experiments show is that the relation between physical bodies and the waving medium is not as premised.
With this way of looking at the medium which the waves are active in, the photoelectric problem is better exposed. The relationship between the waving medium and the physical body is not properly understood or represented. The body needs to be represented as a property of the medium, negating its supposed independence from its environment. This means that Newton's first law of motion which represents a body as an independent thing with a necessary continuity complete with "identity" as per the law of identity, with changing properties, is a faulty representation.
Therefore the body, individual, or particular, must be stripped of its identity as a thing in itself with a temporal continuity of sameness (law of identity), and be represented as changing properties of an underlying substratum, the waving medium or aether. This would allow that any body, in its entirety, could come into being, or cease being, at any moment in time, as we normally allow contrary premises. The temporal continuity, which in Aristotelian physics is assigned to matter as the supporting substance, is then passed to the underlying medium.
This has been made necessary by the advancements in physics which have seen the need to represent the continuous (existing as a temporal continuity) "potential" of the world as "energy" rather than as "matter". Aristotle represented this potential with "matter", and provided a guideline for restrictions to it with the law of identity, representing the potential as inherent within individual bodies. This supported the Newtonian concepts of mass, inertia, etc.. But the modern concept of "energy" allows that this underlying potential readily transfers from one body to another. Now we see that this underlying potential cannot be properly represent as inherent within individual bodies because the interaction between bodies cannot be adequately represented in this way. So that entire conceptual structure which assumes the temporal continuity of a body as having an identity as a body, must be deconstructed and rebuilt based on the underlying medium having an identity as the temporal continuity of potential, with the bodies being properties of the medium.
In general I agree, it is not all or nothing. But we also need to consider what it is that one is said to be wise about. Aristotle says, for example,
(Metaphysics, 981a)
He goes on to say:
And to your point:
(982a)
In Proverbs we are told that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is both a starting point and a terminus. The Biblical God is a willful God.
There is another sense, which is what I think you have in mind. Perhaps you intentionally left open the question of whether one comes to know or only feels they know a higher truth.
The ancient Greek concept of a Quintessence, Fifth Element, or Aether to serve as space-filling medium for physical processes, such as light propagation, has been raised and discarded several times over the centuries. Newton postulated a Luminiferous Ether ; others imagined a Gravitational Ether ; Einstein used the term "ether" as more of a metaphor than a material substance ; but Dirac described the quantum vacuum (zero-point energy) as ether-like ; and deBroglie imagined Pilot Waves in a "hidden medium" to serve as a universal reference frame. So, the metaphysical notion of Nothingness (Vacuum : Gk -- emptiness) has always been difficult to reconcile with our physical sciences.
Consequently, I have wondered if we could take Nothingness seriously, and eliminate the perceived necessity for a mysterious ethereal substance. Take a typical atom for example, and watch as an electron (point particle) jumps up, and then back down, between energy levels (orbits). This up & down -- maximum to minimum -- action produces waveforms on an oscilloscope. But the actual jumps seem to occur almost instantaneously. So, what if we imagine them as quantum leaps without passing through the space (nothingness) in between. In that case, the pattern would look more like a series of dots than a sine wave curve. {see image below}
In this scenario, with no medium except nothingness, the path of propagation would be a series of measured isolated dots with no curved line connecting them. So, what we would perceive (or measure) is on/off or max/min blinks/winks/twinks over time, but nothing in-between. This would eliminate the inferred interpolation*1, and the unbroken graphic curve. What's left is just instantaneous oscillations (vibrations) of energy from min to max, with no energy in the interval*2 : zero energy, zero momentum, zero particle, no continuity, just blips in nothingness over time.
Is it possible that this is actually what we perceive, and the continuous curve is an interpolation by the brain to make sense, in view of our commonsense concept of time as continuous*3? Hence, the Ether is inserted into our models as a place holder (medium) for the empty space between ticks of discrete Time. We can count discrete elements, but we can only imagine continuity*4. Maybe that Medium is "hidden" because it is metaphysical instead of physical : Ideal instead of Real. :smile:
*1. Interpolation : the insertion of something of a different nature into something else.
*2. Do particles with exactly zero energy exist? :
The complete absence of energy is only possible for a massless particle of zero momentum.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/193996/do-particles-with-exactly-zero-energy-exist
*3. Is time discrete or continuous and why? :
Although time is theoretically continuous, and many mathematical models (like geometric distribution) model continuous time, in an empirical setting, events or states are measured at selected points in time. Because of this measurement structure, we often have to use discrete time models.
https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/218426/when-is-time-treated-as-a-discrete-variable
*4. Philosophical Continuity :
The principle of continuity asserts that the universe is composed of an infinite series of forms, each of which shares with its neighbour at least one attribute.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/priniciple-of-continuity
SINE WAVE : red dots = On - Off - On ; blue curve is imaginary interpolation
ELECTRON JUMPS between energy levels
I think it's <here>. :wink: For example, Merriam-Webster: "2: The selectivity of the elite, especially: Snobbery. 3) Consciousness of being or belonging to an elite."
I think that if one does not believe oneself to be superior, then they are not an elitist. Such a condition is necessary, but not sufficient. Not everyone who believes themselves to be superior is elitist, but you need that aspect to be an elitist.
---
Quoting Janus
True, but I think there is also an inverse correlation between public demonstrability and intrinsic value. That which must be publicly demonstrable tends toward utility, as a means rather than an end. That which is not publicly demonstrable tends toward intrinsic value, as an end in itself rather than as a means. For example, the technical proficiency you speak of is a means to the end of aesthetic enjoyment and aesthetic contemplation. The former is publicly demonstrable while the latter is not, and it is the latter that is the truly valuable thing, the reason why the technical proficiency exists in the first place.
So an overemphasis on public demonstrability tends to invert means and ends, and this is a very deep error. If a musician possesses technical proficiency without the ability to enjoy or contemplate music, they end up in futility as a circus monkey. ...Or perhaps they are a mercenary musician who simply plays for the money, and uses money as a means to X. But the same issue immediately arises, for if X is another means and not an end, then the futility persists. There must ultimately be a recognition of, valuing of, and ordering towards, ends in themselves. This will simultaneously represent a decreased focus on public demonstrability.
---
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, and this seems especially pronounced in America, not only because of current religious aberrations, but also because of past religious aberrations (e.g. Puritanism and an excessive emphasis on work ethic and utilitarianism).
That may be true in some cases but certainly not all. Above all, it should not be framed in terms of theism vs anti-theism.
For example on the thread Heidegger's Downfall I said the following:
In a thread on Nietzsche, How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?, I said:
I also quoted the following in that thread:
Interesting. I can see how this might work as a definition of nihilism. But by this account then quite a range of people who believe in transcendent entities, such as gods, might qualify as nihilists - Islamic State faithful, some Christian apologists, for instance, who do not have any conception of the good but only a divine command theory which holds death to apostates, applied misogyny, homophobia and sundry ani-human beliefs.
I always understood nihilism as a lack of belief in ultimate purpose or some ultimate transcendent reality. I certainly don't beleive in these and do not see how an idea of 'the good' can be more than a human construction which changes over time, however useful and beneficial such a construction might be.
You seem to simply beg the question that intentionality can exist without physicality. The problem is that you can't provide any evidence of intentionality without physicality, so it seems you take the possibility of intentionality sans physicality on faith.
Quoting Dfpolis
There is no deductive justification, but it remains an unfalsified hypothesis (that knowing depends on an information processing substrate). Feel free to try to present some evidence falsifying the hypothesis.
Quoting Dfpolis
Meaning depends on a physical interpretive context. The fact that aababbab doesn't have any clear meaning outside a physical interpretive context isn't relevant to anything. To treat it as an eight bit number, something would have to translate whatever a and b are to valid bits (binary digits) which can only take the value 0 or 1. As soon as a physical interpretive context is assigned to aababbab then aababbab will have the meaning it has within that context.
Quoting Dfpolis
As far as I can tell there is no intelligibility outside a physically interpretive context so I think that you need to provide some reason to believe that there can be intelligibility outside a physically interpretive context.
Quoting Dfpolis
You seem to be getting inputs and outputs confused. Your retinal state supervenes on the physical effect of an apple reflecting light from a light source into your eye. Your brain state supervenes on your retinal state. When you are thinking about the apple you see, you will have a different neural state than when contemplating light striking your retina. so I don't know what you have in mind when talking about one neural state underpinning two distinct conceptual states.
Quoting Dfpolis
Physical ink arranged on physical paper serves just fine for encoding Godel's theorems. Neural states can encode the concept. You are just presupposing without supporting evidence that "objects of thought sans a physical information processing substrate" refers to anything.
Anyway, I don't expect saying this to make any appreciable difference in your thinking in the short term, and I'm quite confident that you aren't going to be able to provide any evidence supporting your view. So this seems like a good place to agree to disagree. I'm not very inclined to get into long winded discussions like this, so I'll likely let you have the last word.
I think the quote from Nietzsche cited above speaks to this:
What matters is that things matter.
A fatal abstraction.
Agree it might be a generalisation, but it is an observable tendency.
Quoting wonderer1
'Physical' meaning what, exactly? I can encode information - a recipe, a formula, a set of instructions - in all manner of physical forms, even in different media, binary, analog, engraved on brass. In each case, the physical medium and the symbolic form may be completely different, while the information content remains the same. So how can the information be physical?
Yes, faith is very much emphasized in Christianity, but I think it is also important in other religions like Buddhism; one of the seminal texts is The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana. Religious practice cannot but be sustained by faith, even in religions like Buddhism where it is the 'living' insights that come with practice that are considered to be the most important.
But as you seem to imply in your second sentence, even in relation to "spiritual experience" it is faith that grounds any interpretation or propositional exposition of that experience, despite the protestations of those who want to claim that direct knowing is possible. (If you ask them whether what is directly known is anything propositional, I've found that you will not get a straight answer).
That said, faith plays an important role in almost every aspect of human life, so it comes as no surprise that it should be pivotal in all religious and spiritual practices.
So, in answer to your last sentence I would say that one, even an enlightened one, could only be certain of their conviction that they know anything propositional (such as claims about previous lives. karma, God or the afterlife and so on, to be the case); even the enlightened, being mere humans, could not be infallible.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'd say it is more of a tendentious observation.
The point is, theology and religion do not have exclusive rights to the "domain of values".
Clever turn (around) of phrase.
Agree. My reading is, though, that historically, much of what was valuable about the pre-existing (so-called 'pagan' philosophers) was absorbed into (some would say 'appropriated by') theologians in the early Christian era. I'm thinking in particular of the Greek-speaking theologians such as Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, and others of that milieu. Much of the 'intellectual superstructure' of Christian theology was developed this way, with particular reliance on Plotinus and the late neoplatonists. That is still visible in Aquinas and the medieval mystics, and to some degree in scholasticism. With the abandonment of metaphysics, the advent of nominalism and the ascendancy of empiricism, the philosophical content was discarded along with its theological trappings. So it's not a co-incidence that David Hume's 'is/ought' distinction comes along with the Enlightenment rejection of religious philosophy, with the ascendancy of science and positivism.
That's a succinct way to describe the general slant (tendency) of this forum toward Physics (quanta), and away from Metaphysics (qualia). Originally, Philosophy studied both aspects of reality (mind & matter), but since the Renaissance secular split, philosophers have been forced to distinguish their observations from religious dogma, by providing empirical evidence. Ironically, Relativity and Quantum physics seem to have re-introduced Subjectivity (observer's framing perspective & qualitative prejudices) into Science and Philosophy. :smile:
I read once an excerpt from the Charter of the Royal Society in the late 1600's, the first scientific foundation, that a boundary was to be set demarcating their subjects of enquiry from anything metaphysical, which was the province of priests. This is understandable, considering the extraordinary violence and conflict that marked religious wars in the Europe of that period. Then you have Descartes, also around this period, himself very interested in science, positing his mysterious 'thinking thing' that somehow interacts with the body through the pineal gland. You can see how this, allied with the astonishing subsequent development of science, leads to the deprecation of anything deemed spiritual. Which leads conveniently back to the main idea of the OP.
I think this is more or less correct. :up:
Yes, I agree with that. The important aspects of life are precisely those which cannot be publicly demonstrated. The aesthetic dimension in architecture music, literature and the arts is of more value, or at least consists in a different kind of value, even though aesthetic quality, like any form of "direct knowing" cannot be rationally demonstrated or couched in propositional terms.
So, I agree with Hadot's characterization of some of the ancient philosophies as being (like the Eastern religions and some later Western practices) about personal transformation and not about establishing definitive metaphysical truths. As Hadot says in Philosophy as a Way of Life, the ideas in those kinds of ancient philosophies were not to be critiqued or discussed, but to be used as aids and inspiration to practice "spiritual exercises". Altered states of consciousness are to be realized not by argument and critique but by praxis.
I think it also needs to be acknowledged that if such transformations are ever achieved it is exceedingly rare, and mostly (perhaps always) transient, and given that those most likely to achieve such altered states are renunciates, I think it has little practical significance for general human life apart from possibly being a relatively minor (compared to the arts and popular religion) enriching aspect of culture.
But can they be subject to philosophical discourse? The whole point of the remainder of your post is to uphold a taboo - these things ought not to be discussed, they're subjective, they're transient and basically inconsequential. Hadot himself doesn't say that. He says that philosophy as understood in the contemporary academy has lost sight of its original motivation, to its detriment. By writing his books, he was seeking to re-instate that original purpose. Not declare it out-of-bounds.
I read a little of Kierkegaard's 'Concluding Non-Scientific Postscript' recently. A major thrust of that book is that philosophical insight does have an intrinsically subjective nature, but that doesn't imply that this is not something that can be understood or conveyed. Rather, that it can't be reduced to the procrustean bed of the objective sciences.
We can talk about the practices themselves, but ideas like Karma, God, the afterlife and so on are too nebulous and underdetermined to be able to form subjects for philosophical discourse, in the form of arguments at least, in my view. I'd say the same about aesthetics and metaphysics. I mean, there's nothing wrong with speculating; the problems come when people think the purported truths of such speculations are in any way rationally (not to mention empirically) demonstrable.
I see such speculations as good and potentially enriching exercises of the imagination; arguing about them; like arguing about poetry is a waste of time. For example, you might think T S Eliot is great, and I might think he is mediocre; or Osho was a sage and Sri Aurobindo was deluded or a charlatan, there is no point arguing about it; so, I don't think such things have a significant place in philosophy; philosophy considered as argumentation, at least.
Hadot's point, as I understand it, is that the older kind of philosophy, which was not about argumentation and asserting anything, has been lost. I don't know if that's true; there may be practicing Stoics, Neoplatonists and Epicureans for all I know. To repeat, the point of such philosophies is about practice and not about proving any metaphysical theory. I'm not saying they have no value; obviously they have value to those who want to practice them.
I see what you mean.
Can you say some more about why?
What do you mean by 'exactly'? I've grown to think more and more like Feynman:
I think you most likely have an intuitive sense of what people mean by physical, and you'll just have to work with your intuition, because I can't give you mine. I also think you know enough about physics to know that any exact claim would be unjustifiable.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right. You have a variety of ways of interpreting things, which can be applied to a variety of ways information can be encoded in the structure of physical stuff. That's one of the more interesting things about homo sapien brains.
Quoting Wayfarer
By being encoded in the structure of physical stuff.
Why think there is information available to us, other than that which can come to us via configurations of physical stuff?
I don't think that, "Because once upon a time someone said he had it all figured out, and other people believed him.", amounts to a good reason.
What's encoded in configurations of physical reality is that we are all social primates here. As Plantinga points out (though I think more unintentionally than intentionally) the likelihood - that there is good reason to question the reliability of our cognitive faculties - is high. Just look at the Israel thread to see how often people jump to wrong conclusions.
Right.
Quoting Janus
Okay, interesting. This is a fairly large topic. We could phrase it as, "Are deep transformations accessible to the laity?" I don't want to get into that here.
Quoting Janus
I tend to think there is a complex interrelation between ideation and experience.
Quoting Janus
Like , I do not read Hadot this way. I think Hadot sees discourse and practice as two poles that mutually influence one another, and he critiques the undue emphasis on discourse in modern philosophy, but I don't see him claiming that practice subsumes or displaces discourse. Or in other words, forms of philosophical practice are in some ways as vulnerable to argumentation as philosophical discourse is. The renewed emphasis on practice creates a more holistic philosophical environment; but it doesn't make argument futile.
As you've made a claim that 'Meaning depends on a physical interpretive context' so I'm asking, what do you mean by that? If it's a 'vague notion' then presumably it doesn't mean anything in particular.
Quoting wonderer1
But how does it come to be so encoded, what is it that does the encoding and what interprets the code? I think you will find that they are very big questions, so I'm not trying to elicit an answer - like Feynmann says! - so much as a recognition that the answer is not obvious, and also not something that can be understood in terms of physics. As far as I can discern, the only instances of codes are the biological code - DNA - and in languages. In other words, part of the attributes of life and mind, and also part of what makes living things and minds not reducible to physical laws.
I don't know if I can... The separation of reason from the good is something like the snuffing out of practical motive. It leads to the idea that, ultimately, there is no reason to do anything. There are only hypothetical imperatives. We could argue about whether that results in nihilism per se, but in any case it seems to come very close.
But this idea must first be understood:
Quoting Fooloso4
Once that is understood then it becomes clear why separating reason from the good entails that there is no ultimate reason to do anything at all. "The good" is the psychological motive force for human beings, if you will (but not only that).
Quoting Tom Storm
Divine command theory has a conception of the good. It conceives of the good as that which is divinely commanded.
Quoting Janus
It seems crucial to assert that the intrinsically valuable (ends in themselves) are a proper subject of argument. I think that is where we disagree. I think we must argue about the highest things.
So take for example the end of appreciating music. I think we can speak about this end, argue about it, learn about it, teach it, seek it, honor it, etc. Once we understand this end we can then speak/argue/learn/teach/seek/honor the proper means, such as technical proficiency, discernment of quality, etc. Nevertheless, the act of music appreciation is not publicly demonstrable in any obvious way, largely because appreciation is not the sort of thing done for the sake of demonstration. It would be incongruous to try to demonstrate appreciation (because demonstration pertains to means and appreciation pertains to ends).
So at the end of the day you seem to subscribe to the idea that we can argue and discourse about means, but not ends. That is a very common modern approach, but it is also precisely the point of disagreement.
(This also relates to Hadot's project in different ways.)
I can kind of see that, but I would be one to argue about it. I guess it all depends upon how we understand nihilism and whether it comes in various degrees.
Quoting Leontiskos
I guess in your "not only that" space you might come at this from a more platonic perspective? For me The Good is an artifact of human experience and reasoning and can only be contingent, even if there are large intersubjective communities of agreement. The experience of being human doesn't differ all that much in terms of most people wanting to flourish and avoid suffering.
Quoting Leontiskos
I guess it does. But from my perspective this isn't actively engaged with the good as such and is merely following orders. But then my take on Yahweh/Allah is that he is an evil monster. So while a presuppositionalist Christian or Muslim theologian might hold that goodness emanates directly from the nature of god (thereby perhaps avoiding the Euthyphro dilemma), I would say this god, by Biblical accounts is a genocidal anathema.
But perhaps I am unfairly cobbling together philosophical points with specific literalist interpretations, so there's that...
It's also associated with claims of horrendous things being divinely commanded.
Yes, but this is an argument about what is good, and presupposes a desire for the good in both parties. You are saying to the divine command theorist, "You see divine commands as good, but they are not truly good. This other thing is truly good, and it is this that you ought to seek instead." Now if the divine command theorist had truly separated reason from the good then you would not be able to reason with them about what is good. You are right that the divine command theorist will reject a certain form of reasoning, but nevertheless they will not reject reasoning per se. They are liable to try to convince others that divine command theory is correct, and that divine commands are good (i.e. worthy of observance and honor).
(I will respond to the rest later.)
I don't think this concept of nothingness works, because it renders what you call the quantum leap as unintelligible, impossible to understand. It may be the case that it actually is unintelligible, that is a real possibility, but we ought not take that as a starting premise. We need to start with the assumption that the medium is intelligible, then we'll be inspired to try to understand it, and only after exhausting all possible intelligible options should we conclude unintelligibility, nothingness.
The state of a brain seems a pretty key factor.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yeah, a lot of other sciences besides physics are important in developing understanding. So yes they are big questions with complicated explanations. Work on answering them is ongoing.
Quoting Wayfarer
We can apply our ability to interpret to things other than codes. For example fossils.
I can see this. But I'd not be saying that. I'd be asking questions: "Do you accept something as good because you think good wants it? Then how do you know God wants it? How do you demonstrate that this is the correct interpretation of God's will? Did you consider your thinking about this or did you merely accept what you were told by a priest or family member?
The questions are really endless and this last perspective seems close to nihilism to me. There is a total disengagement between making a decision to do good as opposed to following some instruction which you don't even know to be true. But yes, I get that there is still rudimentary reasoning happening, even if it is fallacious and, perhaps, complacent.
My quip about god being evil need not enter into this and in most discussions would not. It's enough to be getting on with trying to demonstrate how anyone can know what god/s wants. Whether good nature is goodness itself is for a separate line enquiry.
I don't doubt that.
Quoting Leontiskos
I haven't said that discourse and practice don't influence one another, and I don't take Hadot to be saying that practice subsumes discourse, either. I see the relation between discourse and practice as being something like this: for each kind of spiritual practice there will be some discourse appropriate to, and supportive of, that practice.
I think this is unarguable when you look at the different discourses associated with, for example Stoicism, Neoplatonism, Epicureanism, Buddhism, Vedanta, various kinds of Yoga, Daoism, Zen and so on. Of course, there will also be commonalities, since the altered states of consciousness will, being human phenomena, necessarily share some commonalities.
It is the interpretations of the significance of those altered states vis a vis the different metaphyseal ideas like God, karma, rebirth, resurrection, Brahman, Boddhisatvas that show the various culturally mediated contexts that shape those metaphysical ideas that I find questionable.
My claim is that those altered states and their various cultural interpretations underdetermine the various metaphysical beliefs associated with them.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is where we disagree because I see no reason to believe that there are any intrinsically valuable things. I think there are certain values which reflect necessary pragmatic concerns for any community, the main moral principles which are to be found in almost any community, but that is about as far as I would go. I cannot see any demonstrable or decidable otherworldly criteria that could justify believing in intrinsic overarching metaphysical values.
So, I think it all comes down to faith, and I have no argument with that. Why must we argue about "higher things" when it is not rationally, logically or empirically demonstrable that there are in fact any higher things? This would seem to be just your and other believers' preference or intuitve feeling, which is fine, provided it is acknowledged that that is what it is.
If believers discuss such things with other believers of like mind, then there will be little argument, and the participants may benefit from discussion, but that is different than arguing with those, whether unbelievers or differently oriented believers, about whose metaphysical beliefs is right. That is what constitutes fundamentalism and would seem to me to be at best "pouring from the empty into the void" and at worst stoking the fires of divisiveness.
I agree with this. Are you not also saying that the altered states are primary or prior, and the metaphysical beliefs are derivative or posterior?
Quoting Janus
I gave the example of music, and the appreciation of music. Do you hold that this is not intrinsically valuable, and is instead only a means to an end?
Yes, I would agree with tthat.
Quoting Leontiskos
There are people, perhaps not many, who don't like music. If we accept that almost everyone likes some kind of music, althought their tastes may vary considerable, then I would say that for those people liistening to (their preferred) music certainly has value for them.
Here is where I say that you echo positivism. You tend to set the limitations of your own personal worldview as the yardstick for what others might or should think is reasonable.
"Not only that" in the sense that good is not man-made. For example, food is good for man, and this truth is not man-made. But I realize you disagree with this and that it will lead us off on a tangent, which is why I bracketed it.
The primary point is that good relates to psychological motive. Maybe it could be put this way: if someone believes that there is no reason to do this or that or anything, then they will be without purpose. That is the separation of reason from the good.
Quoting Tom Storm
Well, there is reasoning occurring and generally in this case the good and reason will not be divorced. That said, fideism does separate reason from the good, and some divine command theorists are fideists.
Trying to dismiss what I say by associating it with a philosophical position I don't hold is both a red herring, and a strawman. If you want to take issue with what I said, then present a rational, logical or empirical argument that purports to show that there must be, or at least that we should believe there are, higher things, higher things which can be determined to be such and such, not merely an ineffable experience or feeling.
Your dislike of positivism (which I share, although probably not for the same reasons) and your preference for the idea that there must be higher things do not constitute such an argument.
Got ya... Yep, I don't think this can be demonstrated. But let's explore this in a more appropriate place some other time. Thanks for the chat. :up:
Quoting Janus
Quite the question. I think the primary reasoning or justification available would be some kind of appeal to tradition - Platonism, the perennial philosophy and what not.
Right, but appeal to authority is universally regarded as a philosophical fallacy. Even Gautama said so, reportedly.
Okay, so that's where I think we would end up disagreeing. I don't think that phenomenon is absent from religion, but I don't think it explains all metaphysical beliefs. I am also not convinced that such is Hadot's view, but that is somewhat arguable.
Quoting Janus
Okay good, and I conclude that listening to music is intrinsically valuable (for some, or most). Obviously this also exists at a cultural level, from Gregorian chant, to Beethoven, to Radiohead. Such composers aim to produce something that is intrinsically valuable, and which will be chosen as an end in itself.
Music, then, becomes a value and an object of discourse, even when conceived as an end:
Quoting Leontiskos
The idea here is that there are two kinds of human acts: acts which are instrumentally valuable (means), and acts which are intrinsically valuable (ends). So if someone tells me that there are no intrinsically valuable things, I must infer that there are also no instrumentally valuable things.
I think this is actually what is happening on a large scale: the culture tells us that there are no intrinsically valuable things, and the logical conclusion is that there are also no instrumentally valuable things (and this leads to a form of nihilismmore or less the form that I have been discussing with @Tom Storm).
A relatively weak argument, not a fallacy. This is a rather important distinction, even though the argument from authority has little to do with the topic at hand. One needs no argument from authority to see that music is intrinsically valuable, or that ends are "higher things" than means.
---
Quoting Tom Storm
Sounds good. :up:
The statement quoted already was right out of the positivist playbook.
Positivism: a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism.
More about Hadot:
[quote=Philosophy as a Way of Life;https://iep.utm.edu/hadot/#SH4b]Hadots founding meta-philosophical claim is that since the time of Socrates, in ancient philosophy the choice of a way of life [was] not . . . located at the end of the process of philosophical activity, like a kind of accessory or appendix. On the contrary, its stands at the beginning, in a complex interrelationship with critical reaction to other existential attitudes . . . (WAP 3). All the schools agreed that philosophy involves the individuals love of and search for wisdom. All also agreed, although in different terms, that this wisdom involved first and foremost . . . a state of perfect peace of mind, as well as a comprehensive view of the nature of the whole and humanitys place within it. They concurred that attaining to such Sophia, or wisdom, was the highest Good for human beings. [/quote]
Also, in response to your frequent argument that 'as all religions differ, and all make exclusive claims to truth, then how can you say that any of them might have a hold of it?', see this paper by John Hick, well-known philosopher of religion and defender of pluralism, Who or What is God?
[quote]What does this mean for the different, and often conflicting, belief-systems of the religions? It means that they are descriptions of different manifestations of the Ultimate; and as such they do not conflict with one another. They each arise from some immensely powerful moment or period of religious experience, notably the Buddhas experience of enlightenment under the Bo tree at Bodh Gaya, Jesus sense of the presence of the heavenly Father, Muhammads experience of hearing the words that became the Quran, and also the experiences of Vedic sages, of Hebrew prophets, of Taoist sages. But these experiences are always formed in the terms available to that individual or community at that time and are then further elaborated within the resulting new religious movements. This process of elaboration is one of philosophical or theological construction
Right. :up: This gets into Liberalism debates, such as Peter L. P. Simpson's "Political Illiberalism." It is similar to 's point about political philosophy vs. political science. The English philosophical tradition is reticent to discourse about ends, and especially political ends.
(Links to Simpson's <website>, <academia page>)
All kinds of things. A lot of what we nowadays take for granted, or at least, see around us all the time, not long ago only existed in the domain of the possible, penetrated by the insights of geniuses who navigated a course from the possible, the potential, to the actual, by peering into that domain, which at the time did not yet exist, and then realising it, in the sense of 'making it real'. One parameter of that is physical, and it's an important parameter, but not the only one.
Superb piano music on that site. (That's as far as I've gotten.)
Quantum leaps seem to be inherent in the foundations of the physical world, as revealed by 20th century sub-atomic physics. In the 17th century, Isaac Newton assumed that physical processes are continuous, but the defining property of Quantum Physics is discontinuity. When measured down to the finest details, Energy was found to be, not an unbroken fluid substance, but could only be measured in terms of isolated packets, that came to be called "quanta"*1. Yet, on the human scale, the brain merges the graininess of Nature into a smooth image. There's nothing spooky about that. If you put your face up close to your computer screen, you will see a bunch of individual pixels. But as you move away, those tiny blocks of light merge into recognizable images.
So yes, until the early twentieth century, scientists had always "assumed" the material "medium" they were studying would be "intelligible" --- no philosophical speculation required. But the quantum pioneers --- using technological extensions of their senses --- began to "put their faces up close" to material objects. And they were perplexed by the non-mechanical nature of the microcosm of the material world. Bohr, Planck, etc found the observed quanta & quantum leaps to be "unintelligible", and characterized by inherent Relativity & Uncertainty*2.
This nonsense flew into the face of their traditional authority on Physics : the commonsensical, deterministic, and absolute concepts of Newtonian mechanics. Ironically, in their efforts to understand what they were seeing, they reintroduced previously banished Philosophy into the laboratory*3. Subsequently, Science experienced a split --- Practical vs Theoretical --- similar to the Protestant rejection of the authority of the Catholic Church. In this case, the Authority was Newton. Even today, philosophers tend to take sides : favoring either Classical Determinism & Materialism or Quantum Superdeterminism*4 & Idealism. Yet on the whole, reality may actually be a confusing admixture, similar to oil & water, that combine to form a smooth cream.
Due to the "spooky action at a distance" that annoyed Einstein, sub-atomic physics defies common sense. But pragmatic physicists gradually learned to accept that Nature did not necessarily play by our man-made rules. So, unlike impractical philosophers, they decided to "just shut-up and calculate". Consequently, post-quantum physics became mostly theoretical and mathematical, and little one-man labs were replaced by billion-dollar cyclotrons with thousands of mathematicians attempting to interpret the cryptic evidence produced by smashing particles together in intentional traffic accidents. {see image below}
Regarding, "exhausting all possible intelligible options", I recommend the book summarizing Werner Heisenberg's Nobel addresses : Physics and Philosophy, The Revolution in Modern Science. There, he reviews many of the alternative interpretations that quantum pioneers sifted through in their attempts to make sub-atomic reality "intelligible". :smile:
*1. Quanta : a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents. ___Oxford
*2. That Old Quantum Theory :
Einstein's two theories of relativity have shown us that when things move very fast or when objects get massive, the universe exhibits very strange properties. The same is also true of the microscopic world of quantum interactions. The deeper we delve into the macrocosm and the microcosm, the further we get away from the things that make sense to us in our everyday world.
https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/space/universe/theories-of-the-universe-that-old-quantum-theory
*3. Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science :
Quantum Philosophy is a profound work of contemporary science and philosophy and an eloquent history of the long struggle to understand the nature of the world ...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n407
*4. Superdeterminism :
Quantum mechanics is perfectly comprehensible. Its just that physicists abandoned the only way to make sense of it half a century ago.
https://nautil.us/how-to-make-sense-of-quantum-physics-237736/
Note --- This approach to quantum weirdness is essentially holistic, in the sense that everything is entangled with everything else. The parts are quantized, but the whole system (e.g. Cosmos) is integrated and interactive, functioning as a unity.
IS THIS PIECE OF REALITY INTELLIGIBLE ?
Strange pattern found inside worlds largest atom smasher
I assume that the "older kind of philosophy" referred to those like Aristotle, who wrote the book on factual Physics. But even he wrote a book on speculative Metaphysics. Today, modern Science is dedicated to understanding material Reality, and disdains philosophical attempts to understand mental Ideality. Even the "soft" science of Psychology is based primarily on an empirical model, and eschews theoretical models. Except in cases where the mechanical models don't work : the neural-net model is a dead-end*1. In which case, Mathematical models like IIT, or Information models, are used to go beyond mechanics to understand the mind philosophically as a whole system.
A common answer to the question : "what is the point of philosophy"*2*3 is "to find the truth". Hence, the Greeks posited Universal Principles, which are in practice unverifiable, but are in principle provable, just as mathematical theorems can be proven to be consistent with Logic. Mathematical "truths" (e.g statistical probabilities) cannot be empirically confirmed, but scientists typically accept them as authoritative. Since physical experiments are always limited to a narrow selection of instances, the universal application of mathematics serves to generalize their subjective interpretations of empirical observations. Generalizing is the point of Philosophy ; what it does.
Your practical definition of "the point" of speculative Philosophy sounds more applicable to pragmatic Science. Philosophy seeks What's Logical (math ; meaning : values), while Science seeks What Works (instrumental). Newton's mechanical physics (transfer of force by contact) was workable, in the sense that it opened up a new path for the Industrial Age. But Bohr's non-mechanical physics (spooky action at a distance) opened-up a path to the Information Age. Computers are useful tools, even though they have no gears transmitting force from cog to cog. Instead, it transmits ideas from mind to mind, by means of immaterial bits chaining together only by logical relationships (math). Therefore, modern seekers can take a hint from Aristotle, who followed his Physics, with a separate addendum on Metaphysics*4. :nerd:
*1.A. Minding the Brain: Models of the Mind, Information, and Empirical Science :
Their provocative conclusion? The mind is indeed more than the brain.
https://www.amazon.com/Minding-Brain-Information-Empirical-Science/dp/163712029X
*1.B. Contemporary Artificial Neural networks are a (very profitable) dead end.
The dead end in neural network research . . . .
https://floriandietz.me/neural_networks_dead_end/
*2. What Is Philosophy's Point? :
What is philosophy? What is its purpose? Its point? The traditional answer is that philosophy seeks truth. But several prominent scientists, notably Stephen Hawking, have contended that philosophy has no point, because science, a far more competent truth-seeking method, has rendered it obsolete.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/what-is-philosophys-point-part-1-hint-its-not-discovering-truth/
Note --- The practical Facts of Science are only "true" in specific physical contexts. But the Truths of Philosophy are universally applicable to general metaphysical (immaterial) contexts. Science has eminent domain for practical "How" questions. But Philosophy is the go-to method for speculative "Why" questions. So their authority is limited to "non-overlapping magisteria".*4
*3. What's the point of Philosophy? :
Philosophy is about finding truth. It deals in absolutes. Science deals in probabilities, tentative speculation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/3dybao/whats_the_point_of_philosophy/
*4. Science versus Philosophy :
Premise of Gould's position is NOMA: Non-Overlapping Magisteria (domains). Conflict between science and religion is FALSE - science covers empirical realm (what the universe is made of, or fact) while religion extends over the ultimate meaning and moral value of life.
https://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/sac/examples/gould.html
Note --- In the context of this thread, "religion" is applied philosophy, which uses universal truths to control minds by means of beliefs. By contrast, Stoicism assumed a universal law (Zeus) immanent in Nature, and applied that belief to personal questions, such as "how ought one to live". And it taught self-control to independent-minded persons, requiring no political institutions or organizations to rule the minds of men by Faith. Was it a Religion, or a Philosophy?
Note 2 --- See Science is not "The Pursuit of Truth" https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14720/science-is-not-the-pursuit-of-truth
So, apart from the interpretations of altered states by individuals who experience them, and the prevailing prior cultural accretions of such interpretations that might influence new interpretations, what else do you believe explains metaphysical beliefs?
Quoting Leontiskos
What about pop music, or heavy metal? Also, is music chosen as an end in itself or a means to enjoyment and/ or elevated feeling?
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, I've said the same about appreaciation of art and literature in general. I say the same thing goes for appreciation of religion or metaphysical ideas.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't see it. I think people value things because the things them pleasure, inspire, them, uplift them or whatever. This could be art, music, literature, going to the gym, a spiritual discipline, watching sport, reading phislsophy etc,. etc.
How could intrinsic value be determined? Why would a lack of belief in intrinsic vale lead to nihilism, when people still value things? I'm not seeing any argument.
Quoting Wayfarer
You've reached a new lowthis is not worth responding to.
For example, remember that the Buddha cautioned against metaphysical views.
Yes, but Plato and Aristotle also taught "philosophical schools", and they included both physical and metaphysical topics, with the end in mind of training young Athenians to become wise and virtuous citizens. Are Wisdom and Virtue physical or metaphysical concepts? Ironically, even the Buddha taught that the ultimate goal of his philosophy was the attainment of metaphysical Nirvana.
I was merely trying to point out that the "point" of Philosophy and of Science are proximately different, but ultimately compatible : what's "good" for humans in a complex and dangerous world, with both physical and metaphysical Goods. :smile:
It depends on what you mean by wisdom and virtue. Aristotle spoke of phronesis usually translated as 'practical wisdom'. Wisdom and virtue can be understood to be pragmatic virtues.
What Gautama thought nirvana consists in is a matter of debate, as he would not give a straight answer to those who wanted to settle on some metaphysical viewpoint concerning its nature.
Kant pointed out that metaphysical knowledge as transcendently conceived is impossible. We cannot know whether there is a God, we cannot know the "absolute truth", we cannot know whether there is an afterlife, rebirth, resurrection, heaven and hell and so on. All these ideas are matters of faith, not of knowledge.
What we can know is immanent, phenomenologicalaltered states of consciousness and personal transformation and not what the "ultimate" metaphysical, transcendent implications of those phenomenologically knowable human possibilities might be.
Note, I'm not saying people shouldn't believe, just that they should be intellectually honest enough to admit that what they believe is faith-based whenever there is no empirical evidence or strict logical warrant. It follows that it is pointless to argue about faith-based beliefs, because there is no way to demonstrate their truth or falsity.
Everetts Many worlds theory might get around the collapsing wavefunction problem. Not saying its the right theory, but it accounts for a sort of reason behind the becoming (each probability is really a separate world that did actually happen).
Poetic, but it doesn't come across to me as a response coming from having seriously considered the question.
"Domain of the possible"? Is that a metaphor, or something reified in your thinking?
The bolded part doesn't seem to make sense if taken ontologically. Are you conflating epistemic with ontic?
The first thing I need to correct you on, is that energy is not measured it is calculated. Measurements are made, a formula is applied, and the quantity of energy is determined. Because of this, it is not accurate to talk about energy as a substance, it is actually a property, as a predication.
Quoting Gnomon
Since a quantity of energy is calculated through a formula, and uncertainty arises from application of the formula, this suggests that the formula being applied is in some way deficient, and this is the cause of the appearance of uncertainty.
Quoting Gnomon
This is especially the case when the "man-made rules" are not well crafted.
Quoting Gnomon
Strong evidence that the formulas being applied are deficient.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't see how you can make such a leap from future to past. If the wave function deals with possibilities of what might be measured, that's a prediction for the future. But I see no reason to believe that when that predicted point in time moves into the past, we ought to believe all those possibilities have actually happened. If there are many possibilities as to what you will be doing in an hour from now, and that time moves past, there is no reason to believe that all those possibilities actually happened.
Sure.
Quoting Janus
A reductive hedonist might say that only pleasure is sought and all pleasure is commensurable. My point here isn't to get into that debate, but to note that the enjoyment represents an end in itself. Ultimately, we act for ends in themselves. Or at least we should if we are rational.
Quoting Janus
Okay, sure. It seems to me that this fact will significantly undermine an overemphasis on public demonstrability, as well as the idea that ends are not proper objects of discourse (or that ends cannot be argued about, for example).
Quoting Janus
In this case the pleasure is of intrinsic value.
Quoting Janus
But you are back to this question of public demonstration, are you not? I don't see why people are so obsessed with this question (well I do, but that's another story). As humans we all believe in and seek intrinsically valuable things. Whether or not these things can be "proven" to be intrinsically valuable is beside the point. To deny the existence of intrinsically valuable things makes no sense to me. If there are no intrinsically valuable things, then you must only ever carry out instrumental acts. Instrumental to what end? None, apparently. For example, if the hedonist denies that pleasure is intrinsically valuable, then their account of action collapses.
Quoting Janus
Metaphysics: reason. Religious doctrine: revelation. But this is for another thread.
Try this. Suppose your impression of things as valuable is like your impression that things have color - an aspect of how your brain models the world. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that I see things as valuable, like I see things as red?
People often claim that nothing has intrinsic value while simultaneously believing that things have intrinsic value. What they mean to affirm is, "Nothing can be publicly and scientifically demonstrated to have intrinsic value." Yet the conflation is serious and problematic, for the honest point of departure for reasoning is always what we believe to be true, even though provability also has its place.
Sure, since means are pointless, they are not even means, without ends.
Quoting Leontiskos
I see the pointlessness of arguing about ends as being entailed by the fact that ends are subjective; it depends on what we care about. It's like taste; if I prefer to listen to Beethoven than I do Mozart, and you prefer the opposite; what could be the point of arguing about it. Not to say we might not get something from hearing each other's reasons (if we have reasons) for preferring one or the other, but ultimately,
as the old saw goes "there's no accounting for taste".
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, but the source of the pleasure cannot be of universal value, and that is really my only point.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't think this is true; I think we all seek things that we find valuable to ourselves. Maybe we are simply talking at cross purposes, since you seem to have quite a different notion of "intrinsic" value than I do.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is a good example; the hedonist only needs to argue that pleasure is valuable to her in order to justify, or at least offer a rational reason for, seeking it. That said, someone addicted to hedonistic activities might explain that they don't think that what they seek is really valuable to them, but that they cannot help pursuing it because they are addicted to it.
Quoting Leontiskos
Reason is involved in all "giving of reasons" whether the reasons given are strictly rational or not. I see metaphysics (if the ideas are novel) as consisting in exercising the creative imagination in thinking of possible scenarios that could explain why the world appears to us as it does.
I don't believe things have intrinsic value, though I understand that I see things as valuable like I see things as yellow. It is an aspect of the sort of creatures we are, to see things as valuable.
Quoting Leontiskos
Why do you think that? Could it be you aren't as good a mind reader as you think yourself to be?
Quoting Leontiskos
Sure. So I believe value is something our minds project on the things in the world, rather than that things in the world have intrinsic value. Certainly there is much in the world that I see as valuable, because I'm the sort of creature that models the world that way. Do you have more than a naive intuition, that value is 'out there' rather than in the eye of the beholder?
You have to see that something is either publicly demonstrable or its subjective. Intellectual honesty demands it.
That's true, but I was not asking about the practical application of those philosophical principles. My question was about how Aristotle would categorize those topics. Would he include them in the Physics section of his books, or in the section that later came to be known as The Metaphysics*1.
Ari covered both under the general title of Nature (phusis), but he covered what we would now call "Natural Phenomena" in the first books, and what we might call "Human Nature" (Reason, Essence, Noumena) in a separate book from his discussions of non-human Nature. Today, we pay little attention to his primitive-but-practical encyclopedia on the physical world. Yet, 2500 years later, we continue to argue about the immaterial philosophical concepts that he defined so succinctly.
Although he spoke of nature gods, they were more like Spinoza's deus sive natura than the anthro-morphic gods of Greece*2. That's why I interpret Metaphysics in terms of abstract philosophical concepts*3 instead of socio-cultural religious precepts*4. For similar reasons, I make a fundamental distinction between pragmatic technological Natural Science and theoretical intellectual Human Philosophy. When we discuss Universal Principles, such as Dualism vs Monism, on this forum, we are not doing Science, and we don't play by the physical rules of non-human nature. :smile:
*1. Aristotles Metaphysics :
Many of the issues Aristotle deals withsuch as existence, essence, individuation, identity, Universals, . . . . . just to mention a feware certainly issues that we would comfortably describe as metaphysical
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0278.xml
*2. Aristotle on Religion :
Aristotle is a severe critic of traditional religion, believing it to be false, yet he also holds that traditional religion and its institutions are necessary . . . .
https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/philosophy/classical-philosophy/aristotle-religion?format=HB&isbn=9781108415255
*3. Concept : an abstract idea. It is understood to be a fundamental building block underlying principles, thoughts and beliefs
*4. Precept : a general rule intended to regulate behavior or thought.
I agree with your conclusion, but I'll stipulate that Energy is "measured" in terms of consumption, not substance. :nerd:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The quantum pioneers considered the possibility that their calculations were somehow "deficient", but the "uncertainty" remains a century later. In fact, the Copenhagen Interpretation is based on that admission of the inherent "limitation" due to the statistical nature of the non-particular wave-function. So, the "appearance" of subatomic (i.e. fundamental) Uncertainty and Unpredictability appears to be a natural fact. :cool:
Uncertainty principle :
It states that there is a limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
Copenhagen Interpretation :
The Copenhagen interpretation refers to concepts such as Bohr complementarity and the correspondence principle, Born statistical interpretation of the wave function, and nondeterminism.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/mathematics/copenhagen-interpretation
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you aware of some better-crafted or non-man-made rules that will make the non-mechanical quantum actions less spooky? Do you know of alternative formulas that are more efficient? :smile:
Here is something I jotted down last night after shutting off my computer:
Public demonstrability is not an end in itself. For this reason, the person who always responds with, "but your claim is not publicly demonstrable!," is not being rational. Not everything needs to be publicly demonstrable. Indeed, some things need to not be publicly demonstrable, and included in this group are the most important things of all.
The idea that everything needs to be publicly demonstrable is a bit like a novice bricklayers idea that every brick needs to rest on two other bricks. But this leads to an infinite regress, for there must be a foundation which itself supports the lowest bricks. "Every brick needs to rest on two other bricks," and, "Every claim needs to be publicly demonstrable," are false presuppositions which represent the generalization of a useful but limited rule.
Quoting Janus
Okay, agreed.
Quoting Janus
I don't know why you would think that ends are subjective like tastes.
Quoting Janus
Do you have any arguments for these claims you are making? That ends are subjective, or that a source of pleasure cannot be of universal value, or that intrinsic value does not exist?
Quoting Janus
I have been very clear about what I mean by it: .
Quoting Janus
Hedonism is a theory that aims to do more than explain one's own actions. It is a moral theory of human action, not a theory of a single human's actions. The intrinsic value of pleasure is an axiom of hedonism.
What I would say is that instrumental acts have no value if nothing is intrinsically valuable, and I think we agree on this. Further, public demonstration is an instrumental act, a means to an end. So if nothing is intrinsically valuable, then public demonstration has no value.
I've grown fond of that bricklayer analogy given in the post above. The problem comes up in so many different areas nowadays, with relative value being mistaken for absolute value. It also applies to the epistemologies of scientism, which have no way to ground themselves or provide a foundation. But that's another tangent. :grin:
I don't at all believe that everything needs to be publicly demonstrable; what I would count as the most valuable things in life cannot be. My point is only that if you want to argue for something, then you must appeal either to evidence or logic.
Many things get their rational support by consensus, by the fact that whatever the claim is commands wide or even almost universal support. I think this is the case with valid phenomenological claims. I see phenomenology as being the attempt to explicate how things seem to humans in general. It is reliant on assent not on strict public demonstrability. The point is that even such claims as enjoy virtually universal assent may nonetheless be mistaken or superceded.
Obviously, this goes for science too. The truth or falsity of scientific theories is not publicly demonstrable. As I keep repeating only direct observations and mathematical and logical truths are strictly demonstrable.
When it comes to metaphysical matters, we find ourselves even further away from anything that can be demonstrated or even find any kind of universal consensus.
Quoting Leontiskos
Ends are subjective because they are based on what is valued. Some people value some things and others other things. There may be some intersubjective agreement of course; a lot of people like the Beatles or Mozart for example, heavy metal not so much. So, it's not an all or nothing thing but a spectrum from purely subjective to comprehensively intersubjective as I see it.
Of course, what I am arguing here is not publicly demonstrable, so I am happy to admit that what I am arguing is subjective, how things seem to me. But that is phenomenology.
So to this:
Quoting Leontiskos
I would answer that if something can be shown to be universally valued or agreed upon then we could say that it is as close as possible to being objective. But even if all humans valued something that still does not show that the thing valued has intrinsic value, it would only show that is has universal human value.
Quoting Leontiskos
Hedonism explains not only my own actions but the actions of others. It seems that all organisms seek pleasure or comfort or ease or whatever you want to call it, but it does not seem to me that pleasure seeking is generally, or at least universally, considered to be the most important aim in life. I think this is shown by Robert Nozick's 'Pleasure Machine' thought experiment.
You say that instrumental acts have no value if nothing is intrinsically valuable, but I don't see valid reasoning in that. If something is a means to an end I value, then that means has value to me. It doesn't need to be shown to be intrinsically valuable in order to be valued by me. I don't even say you have to value public demonstration, but if you want to rationally convince someone of something being unquestionably true, then you need to appeal to public demonstrability in either empirical, mathematical or logical form. That is not to say you cannot convince someone to believe that what you claim is unquestionably and universally true by rhetoric; it seems obvious to me that that happening is commonplace.
You're asking the wrong person: I'm no scholar of Aristotle's philosophy.
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, agreement about metaphysical theories is unlikely since their truth or falsity cannot be demonstrated. By the way, I think of philosophical concepts as being material, but obviously not in the sense of saying they are physical objects.
Quoting Gnomon
I don't agree with your first sentence; I don't see Spinoza as an animist or a pantheist. And I don't know what your second sentence is attempting to say; surely metaphysics is to be found both in philosophy and in religion, no? Are you just saying that you personally prefer to focus on the philosophical context of metaphysical ideas rather than the religious context?
Okay, that is helpful. :up:
What's interesting here is that your theory of truth seems bound up with intersubjective agreement, which is nothing more than a form of consensus, but I leave this aside for now.
Quoting Janus
If you conceive of intersubjective agreement as the contrary of subjective, then it seems to me that the intrinsic worth of pleasure is not subjective (because it possesses intersubjective agreement). Thus the end of pleasure is not subjective, according to your theory.
Quoting Janus
So given the way you define reality, intrinsic value cannot exist. That is to say, it is tautologically true that on your system nothing can have intrinsic value, no?
Quoting Janus
Okay, but something can surely be intrinsically valuable without being the most important thing in life. Again, it seems to me that on your own system the intrinsic value of pleasure has as much a claim to objectivity as anything else.
Quoting Janus
Only because the end is believed to have intrinsic value.
Quoting Janus
Rather, it doesn't need to be shown to be intrinsically valuable in order to have intrinsic value, because by "shown to have intrinsic value" you mean to denote something that is literally impossible.* Further, you believe things have intrinsic value, even though you do not believe they can be proved to have intrinsic value (see my post <here>). This means that you yourself implicitly accept that things have intrinsic value, even though you cannot show it. Is that a contradiction?
Quoting Janus
I rather doubt that we will arrive at the "unquestionably true" as opposed to merely arriving at intersubjective agreement. Do you have a notion of truth that transcends intersubjective agreement?
* This is more or less the knot, as I see it. When I say that something is intrinsically valuable, I am saying that it is an end in itself. When you say that something is intrinsically valuable, you are saying that it is an end in itself, and it is able to be demonstrated that it is an end in itself. But I would maintain that this is confusing things, and that "intrinsically valuable," and, "demonstrably intrinsically valuable," need to be kept conceptually separate if we are to avoid question-begging.
My initial argument is simple: Ends are the most important things in human life, therefore they should be the object of discourse and scrutiny (and argument). I am going to try to construct your own argument to the contrary in my post following your next reply, but feel free to set it out yourself if you like. You've already given a number of the pieces of that argument.
True it is a form of consensus, but in relation to simple observations of phenomena and mathematical and logical truths there is really no room for disagreement.
That's why I said intersubjective agreement versus subjective belief is not a rigid dichotomy but is on a sliding scale, so to speak.
Quoting Leontiskos
I wouldn't say they are contraries. Obviously subjective opinion is a component of all intersubjective agreement, although where there is no scope for disagreement as I indicated in my previous response, one might want to say there is no subjectivity at all involved. Even if all humans are bound to agree about something, though, this would still be a truth assented to be all human subjects and it might be claimed to have no provenance beyond that context.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think we've already been over this. If by "intrinsic value" you mean "universally valued (to some degree) by all humans" then I would agree.
Quoting Leontiskos I don't find that I need to believe that something is universally valued by humans in order to value it myself. But even if I did need to believe that in order to value something, humans believing something has intrinsic value and something actually having intrinsic value (whatever the latter could mean) are two different things.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't believe in context-transcendent truths if that is what you mean.
Quoting Leontiskos
This confuses me because I cannot see how I would be justified in claiming that something has intrinsic value, as opposed to my claiming that it seems to me to have intrinsic value (which is not arguable), unless I could show that it was demonstrable or somehow could not fail to be self-evident.
Quoting Leontiskos
The argument over ends, it seems to me, will of course be inevitable and necessary in human life, since some peoples' ends (and the means they use to achieve them) may have consequences for others or even for the whole of humanity. So, it would not be the purported intrinsic value of the ends being argued over, but their likely consequences, and this is where it becomes an empirical, pragmatic issue, and good evidence for and/ or against the end in question might be presented.
Well to say that "there is no room for disagreement" is different from saying "there is intersubjective agreement."
Quoting Janus
My conclusion that they are contraries comes from your own words. For example, "[it's] a spectrum from purely subjective to comprehensively intersubjective." The poles of a spectrum are contraries. Or, "if something can be shown to be universally valued or agreed upon then we could say that it is as close as possible to being objective," where objective is the contrary of subjective. Presumably your point about tastes is similar, where tastes are subjective because there is no intersubjective agreement.
The point here is that if intersubjective is the contrary of subjective, then the intrinsic value of pleasure is not subjective, and this is what your words seem to imply. If this is not correct, then you should present the alternative contrary of 'subjective', so that we can understand what that concept means when you use it. From what you have said so far, I am forced to believe that the intrinsic value of pleasure is "as close as possible to being objective."
(Note that if nothing is not-subjective, then the claim that something is subjective can have no force or meaning.)
Quoting Janus
Okay, good. It seems that we have discovered an end which is not subjective. Remember: I asked why ends cannot be argued about, and you replied that ends are subjective. But the end of pleasure is not subjective, and therefore not all ends are subjective.
Quoting Janus
Here arises the question of whether there are universal human ends. If one answers negatively then they will say that we should not argue about what those ends are, whereas if one answers affirmatively then they will say that we should argue about what those ends are (or their priority, or how to achieve them, etc.).
Quoting Janus
Well above you spoke about points on which there is "no room for disagreement," or that "all humans are bound to agree about." Surely not all intersubjective agreement is like this, and therefore there are at least two different kinds of intersubjective agreement. The stronger kind apparently points to a notion of truth that transcends intersubjective agreement, because in that case the intersubjective agreement is merely derivative on some other, more foundational, fact.
Quoting Janus
Well, look at it this way. You speak about what you are justified in claiming. I am wondering what you are justified in believing. Are you allowed to believe things that you are not justified in claiming? (Apparently you believe things that you cannot demonstrate. What is the status of these things? And do you believe them rationally?)
Quoting Janus
Okay, so you are saying, a la Liberalism, that we will inevitably end up arguing about individual ends, and the arguments will be presented in terms of means. That's not actually an argument for the thesis, "Ends are not a proper object of argument," but let me respond.
I am thinking of humans as a communal species, with common ends. For example, the curriculum of a school will reflect certain ends, but more than one child attends a school, and therefore the parents (and society) will need to argue about which ends the school should favor. Some parents will think that the end of education is better represented by the liberal arts, others the hard sciences, others religious teaching, others a community that prepares for civic life and civic involvement. These educational ends reflect the parents' ultimate ends. This is only a microcosm, and the first sentence could also have been, "For example, the policies of a nation will reflect certain ends, but more than one citizen belongs to a nation."
So maybe we agree that arguing about ends is inevitable. Let me say that I think it is also good. It is good that a school argues about its curriculum, or a nation about its ideals and laws. It is good that religious people argue about their religions. Then thinking of discourse rather than just argument, it is good that a grandfather introduces his grandson to the music that he believes to be intrinsically valuable. It is good that a coach teaches children how to play basketball, or piano, or chess. The idea that we spend our time and effort discoursing only on means and not on ends is backwards. What is most important deserves the most attention.
I don't think it is necessarily different. There is universal intersubjective agreement that 2+2=4, and no room for disagreement (excluding insanity or perversity), for example. In fact, I would say "no room for disagreement" is equivalent to saying, "necessary intersubjective agreement".
Quoting Leontiskos
I'd agree that in one sense purely subjective and completely intersubjective would count as contraries, but in a different sense all intersubjective agreement consists in agreement between subjectively held opinions. Or in other words the intersubjective is comprised of the subjective.
Quoting Leontiskos
Perhaps not all people seek pleasure, some may prefer pain or enjoy being depressed. You might object that then those are sources of pleasure, but if everything people do, whether painful, depressing or whatever is stipulated as being pleasure-seeking, then it will be tautologously true, but uninformative that all human activity is pleasure seeking.
So, it depends on how broadly you define 'pleasure'. Anyway, to be honest, I'm not getting much sense of where you want to go with this discussion; what conclusions are we supposed to draw from the idea that all human activities are pleasure-seeking in some sense of other?
The other question that comes to mind is whether you think there are other ends which are not subjective.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't disagree with anything here, but I'm still wondering where you want to go with this.
Quoting Leontiskos
As I've said I see it as a spectrum or continuum, so there are (in prinicple at least) degrees of intersubjective agreement from zero to one hundred percent.
Quoting Leontiskos
What I believe and what I choose to claim are two different things. For example, I don't believe there is a God, but I don't choose to claim that there is no God because I think the truth or falsity of that statement cannot be demonstrated or even really coherently argued for or against. Another example is that I believe there are real aesthetic differences of quality in the arts, but I cannot mount a rational argument for that, so I acknowledge it is a matter of faith.
The main point for me in this is that what I might personally feel intuitively convinced of does not, on account of that conviction, constitute a reason for anyone else to be convinced of its truth. You ask whether I believe such things rationally. The conviction, if not based on empirical evidence or strict logic might not be counted as rational, but then it might be pragmatically rational for me to believe those things I find intuitively to be true, even if I cannot give empirical or logical reasons for that intuition.
I think Kant makes a similar distinction between pure and practical reason when he says that there is no purely rational justification for believing in God, freedom and immortality, but that there are (or, as I would rather say, "may be") practical reasons for believing in those things. In other words, if Kant means to say that there are universal practical reasons for believing in those things then I would part company with him.
Quoting Leontiskos
I would agree that it is good that such things be discussed, and that people seek to understand the views of others and realize that there can be no arrival at definitive answers to the questions motivating such discussions or the truth or falsity of competing claims.
I think polemical argument "you're wrong and I'm right" is never a good thing and is based on the failure to understand that in regard to metaphysical, ethical and aesthetic matters, if not empirical and logical matters, there will inevitable be a diversity of subjective opinion. Everyone does not have to agree about everything, and the very idea of a society wherein everyone did agree about everything makes me shudder.
If not Pantheism, how would you describe Spinoza's concept of "deus sive natura"*1, which equates Nature with god-like creative powers? I agree that Spinoza's notion of an animating power in nature is far more sophisticated than primitive "attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena". But my reference to Aristotle & Spinoza was intended to make a distinction between philosophical Meta-physics and dogmatic Religion*2. Meta-Physics, with a hyphen, is about Mind, while Catholic metaphysics is about Soul.
That religious association came almost a millenium later, when Catholic theologians looked to Aristotle as an authority on both Natural science and the Cultural science we now know as Philosophy. Because their Bible had little to say about those abstract topics. As I interpret his works, Aristotle's Metaphysics was philosophical, not religious*3.
But several posters on this forum seem to prejudicially equate them, and denigrate speculative Philosophy of Mind in deference to empirical Science of Matter. Hence, I use Meta-Physics in reference to immaterial abstract subjective philosophical topics --- such as this thread --- by contrast to the material concrete objects of scientific study. So, my "personal preference" is to dissociate Catholic Metaphysics from Aristotle's Meta-Physics*4. :smile:
*1. Deus sive natura :
The slogan of Spinoza's pantheism : the view that god and nature are interchangeable, or that there is no distinction between the creator and the creation.
https://www.oxfordreference.com display authorit...
*2. Deus Sive Natura :
The first point is that in the Aristotelian conception, nature is in no way a transcendent notion . . .
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3751565
*3. Philosophy vs Religion :
Philosophy is the most critical and comprehensive thought process developed by human beings. It is quite different from religion in that where Philosophy is both critical and comprehensive, Religion is comprehensive but not necessarily critical.
https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/phil_of_religion_text/CHAPTER_1_OVERVIEW/Philosophy_of_Religion.htm
*4. Meta-physics :
[i]The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
1. Often dismissed by materialists as idle speculation on topics not amenable to empirical proof.
2. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled physics - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was labeled metaphysics - what we now call "Philosophy" .
3. Plato called the unseen world that hides behind the physical façade: Ideal as opposed to Real. For him, Ideal forms (concepts) were prior-to the Real substance (matter).
4. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the formal cause of the thing designed.
5. I use a hyphen in the spelling to indicate that I am not talking about Ghosts and Magic, but about Ontology (science of being).[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
But "necessary intersubjective agreement" is also different from "intersubjective agreement," so the difference persists. Some intersubjective agreements contain room for disagreement.
Quoting Janus
Well first you claimed that ends are subjective, and not intersubjective. I pointed out that some are intersubjective, and you responded by saying that that doesn't make them non-subjective. Again, if nothing is non-subjective then "subjective" has no meaning.
Quoting Janus
The hedonist's claim is synthetic, based on experience and data.
Quoting Janus
You made an implicit argument with a crucial premise that ends are subjective and not intersubjective. You haven't spelled out what that argument actually is, but given that some ends are intersubjective, the argument must have failed.
Quoting Janus
Sure, but we are discussing your argument for why we can't argue about ends. Your argument was something like, "Ends are like tastes. They are subjective, not intersubjective. Therefore they cannot be argued about."
Shortness of time is making me want to find a stopping point, but at this point you're not even standing behind your arguments. You made an argument that depends on the contrariety of 'subjective' and 'intersubjective', and then you met an objection by claiming that there is no contrariety to be had. If there is no contrariety to be had, then your argument has failed. But you are trying to get off scot-free, as if it makes sense to give such an argument while simultaneously holding that the contrariety does not exist.
Quoting Janus
It seems like you're not quite sure whether your beliefs are rational. To be blunt and pithy, I would say that if your beliefs are rational then they can be argued about. If they are not rational then you should not believe them.
More panentheist than pantheist; I think Spinoza understood God to be both immanent to and transcendent of nature, and by that, I mean transcendent of nature as we know it; knowing which is exclusively under the attributes of extensa and cogitans. Spinoza believed those are just the two of God's infinite attributes that we humans can know. Have you read Spinoza's Ethics?
Quoting Leontiskos
Individual ends are subjective, I haven't denied that there are collective ends. But even collective ends, insofar as they are desired by the individuals who form the collective, are also individual and thus subjective. I don't think it's hard to understand: intersubjective agreement relies on the agreement of individual subjects. There are things we can all agree about, things we all must agree about (absent perversity or gross stupidity) and things where there will inevitably be disagreement.
Quoting Leontiskos
I have acknowledged that the consequences of holding particular ends can and should be discussed, and I would add with the majority ruling in a democracy. Nonetheless individuals may disagree about the ends that become mandated, as some significant proportion of the populace often, even usually, does. People are not often convinced by rational argument to change their opinions in my experience.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think we all believe many things which are not arrived at by rational argument. The foundational presuppositions and also just general beliefs about economics, politics, other people, religion, race, culture and so on that people commonly hold are very often rationally undecidable.
Rationality consists in consistency and coherency; the principle of valid argument that the conclusions should follow from the premises. It seems you continue to misunderstand what I am saying, the consequence being that I haven't found your objections and counterpoints to be relevant.
"Appears to be a natural fact", doesn't get us anywhere. it always appeared to be a natural fact, but that's irrelevant. The fact is that "uncertainty" is a property of the subject, not the object. And, it is always caused by the subject's mode of understanding not being properly suited to the reality of the object which it is attempting to apprehend. It makes no sense to blame the object here, therefore the subject's mode of understanding needs to be scrutinized.
Quoting Gnomon
There's obviously a basic problem here. If something is moving it cannot truthfully be said to have a position. And if something has a position it cannot truthfully be said to be moving. Since only moving things can have momentum, a thing which has a position cannot also have momentum.
Therefore it appears very obvious that this type of "uncertainty" is the result of a faulty human ontology which allows the contradictory premise that a moving thing has a position, or the converse, that a thing with a position could be moving. Clearly the uncertainty here is the result of faulty concepts.
No, I haven't read any of Spinoza's writings. Most of what I know comes from books and articles about his life & philosophy. And the general impression I got was that his deus sive natura description was intended to avoid attributing any transcendent or super-natural characteristics to his nature-god, hence Pantheism or more accurately PanDeism.
But centuries later, we now have a more comprehensive and detailed understanding of the natural world, including scientific evidence that our physical cosmos is not eternal, but had a sudden, something-from-nothing beginning, not in Time, but of Time. So, with that additional information, I have developed a PanEnDeistic worldview, that postulates some kind of Causal Power and Logical Laws that existed before the Big Bang beginning of our little bubble of space-time.
Beyond that logical implication, I know nothing of the interpolated deus super natura, that Plato called First Cause, and Aristotle labelled Prime Mover. So, it's just a philosophical conjecture, not the kind of god that would require human worship or sacrifice. I think even Einstein would have approved, once he became adapted to the then-emerging notion of an expanding physical universe, gradually evolving from a mathematically defined creation event. His next question would be : "what caused the bang?" :smile:
I agree that our subjective "mode of understanding" is suspect, but in the expression "natural fact", I was referring to the scientific evidence that Nature is inherently statistical (random chance) in its fundamental behaviors*1. Some might interpret the statistical nature of waveforms as a sign that coin-flipping Luck is a feature of natural processes. Hence, a smidgen of doubt smudged the surety of classical physics.
But another way to look at it, is to see that the indeterminate structure of quantum nature provides degrees of freedom*2 for the creative non-linear development of evolution. Quantum nature has been proven to be probabilistic (uncertain) instead of deterministic (certain). Einstein objected that his Spinozan nature-god didn't play dice. But Heisenberg's quantum-nature-god begged to differ. And Bohr answered, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do."
So nobody is "blaming the object" ; merely accepting that statistical probabilistic uncertainty is inherent intrinsic immanent in physical Nature. So, if we are going to blame anybody, pin the puzzlement on Newton, who defined physics in no uncertain terms*4. Or on Heisenberg who pulled-up the rug to reveal the squishy dicey foundations of physics. :smile:
*1. What Is Statistical Significance? :
Statistical significance helps quantify whether a result is likely due to chance or to some factor of interest, says Redman. When a finding is significant, it simply means you can feel confident thats it real, not that you just got lucky (or unlucky) in choosing the sample.
https://hbr.org/2016/02/a-refresher-on-statistical-significance
Note --- Heisenberg defined the lack of confidence in quantum interpretations as Uncertainty on the part of the observer. But the source of that feeling in the observer is the unpredictability of the object being observed.
*2. Quantum nature not absolutely deterministic :
The wave function is a function of the degrees of freedom corresponding to some maximal set of commuting observables. Once such a representation is chosen, the wave function can be derived from the quantum state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function
*3. Quantum Universe: Fundamentally Probabilistic, Not Deterministic :
Einstein believed that the universe and its laws must be strictly deterministic. He felt that there could be no role for probability or chance, in nature's foundation. This is why Einstein didn't accept or agree with the theory of quantum mechanics.
https://www.wondriumdaily.com/quantum-universe-fundamentally-probabilistic-not-deterministic/
*4. Determinism vs Probability :
Determinism in the West is often associated with Newtonian mechanics/physics, which depicts the physical matter of the universe as operating according to a set of fixed laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
We have to be careful here. Saying that body and mind are different things (res) is more that making a conceptual distinction. The distinction pre-dates Descartes. Aristotle and Aquinas distinguished intellect from sense as "a bodily process." That does not divide[ them. It is just saying that one being can act in different ways. They also knew that we needed physical representations (phantasms) to think and Aquinas knew that brain trauma interfered with thinking.
quote="Gnomon;846788"]from what perspective do you conclude that we "cannot divide" Res Extensa from Res Cogitans?[/quote]
Thinking of different aspects of one being does not require positing different things. An apple may be red and taste sweet. That implies that it can act in two ways, not that it is a sweet thing joined to a red thing.
As I tried to explain before, since rational thought requires physical representations,i.e. brain states, the aspect of us that thinks (Descartes's res cogitans) includes an extended, material part (res extensa), namely our brain. So, there is no clean division between being a physical organism and being a thinking one. That is why we are rational animals, not ghosts in machines.
Quoting Gnomon
That would involve equivocating on "matter." In dialoging with such a person, I would ask for a clear definition. We can give words technical definitions to articulate our thought, but it is a sign of confusion to use common word with uncommon intent, and not define what we mean.
Quoting Gnomon
I have explained why we cannot divide res cogitans from res extensa. The current use of substance is not one to which I subscribe. Instead I follow Aristotle in taking the primary realities (ousia = "substance"), to be ostensible unities (his tode ti = this something), like electrons, viruses, bacteria, cows and people. Different systems can have different sorts of unity so people, the earth, the solar system, our galaxy and so on are all unities, and so substances, in their own way.
We can analyze unities in different ways, but the products of such analysis are not substances unless they have their own unity. Since human thought depends on the human body, the power to think is not a unity standing apart from the body, as Descartes believed.
Quoting Gnomon
Thus, materialists need to rethink their fundamental beliefs. For example, Daniel Dennett starts Consciousness Explained by saying he is a metaphysical naturalist. He then proves, to his own satisfaction, that there can be no physical reduction of consciousness. When I studied science, that was called the falsification of a hypothesis. For Dennett, it is a reason to discard data, for he concludes that there is no consciousness.
As for circular reasoning, I have no idea why anyone would think that Aristotle's proof of the Unmoved Mover is circular. It starts form the fact of experienced change, and employs valid logic.
Quoting Gnomon
As do I.
Quoting Gnomon
It sounds like a kind of hylomorphism, which is conceiving of bodies in terms of matter (hyle) and form (morphos). Aristotle sees form, not as shape, but as a thing's actuality (energeia). Similarly he thinks of matter, not as extension, but as the potential to assume form.
As for supervenience, it seems to mean dependence, but actually does not. For example, my writing this supervenes on the motion of Jupiter's moons. Let's go back to causality, which is more specific and so more demanding.
Modernism is not modernity. It is a modern worldview, or some aspects of that view, that some find offensive. I do not understand exactly what they are offended by. Neither do I understand what you object to about liberal democracy.
The problem is that there is can be no more and less in comparing commensurates. That was the point of my question and is the fundamental flaw with utility theories. You cannot value a liter of oxygen against a liter of water. You need both, and no amount of one will meet your need for the other.
You can say that Jane (or John) excites you more than Mary (or Martin), but you cannot say that being with Jane or John is more valuable than 11 views of Yosemite Falls, but less than 12 views. To say that one is "more motivating" explains nothing. It just says the motive associated with the choice you actually make is more motivating -- rather like saying that this medicine makes you sleepy because it is a soporific.
No. There are no Ideal Beings. There are only real and imaginary beings. We have different ideas about things because they can act in different ways. Red apples can cause us to experience red qualia. Sweet apples can cause us to experience sweet qualia.
Quoting Gnomon
Things are defined in terms of their operational capabilities. Acorns can sprout into oaks, non-acorns cannot. When a thing acts on us in a certain way, we learn that it can act in that way. When I was a child, I learned that the thing that caused the image of a bee in me could also sting. Thus, my knowledge of the operational capabilities (the essence) of bees increased, even though it remains imperfect to this day.
Organisms have immanent activity -- activities like growth and nutrition that are self-perfecting, and so not directed at others. Theoretical, vs, practical, thought is self perfecting. It satisfies our innate desire to become one with the rest of reality.
Quoting Gnomon
Bodies also also exchange momentum and angular momentum in interacting. Also, how much energy a body has depends on the frame of reference in which it is measured.
Intentions are modes of relating. There is no knowing, willing, hoping, etc. without something known, willed, hoped, etc. Some intentions, such as willing, result in physical changes, others, such as hoping and knowing, have no direct physical effects, but have many indirect physical effects.
Quoting Gnomon
Well, if you mean do think there is an ultimate cause, yes, I do. I am not a neutral monist, because I do not think in terms of substance as a "stuff" which is formed into experienced objects. That, view, even in Cartesian dualism, is fundamentally materialistic. It conceives of everything as "made of" one or more kinds of "stuff." Maybe that stuff is matter, or energy, or res cogitans, or a Spinozan substance than can become material or spiritual things.
My philosophical starting point, like Aristotle's, is experience, and the things experience reveals. Most of what it reveals is extended. Some of it can think. Some depends on being observed or measured, some does not. Some is natural, some the expression of human creativity.
Quoting Gnomon
It cannot be. Things that are purely potential are not actual, and things that are not actual cannot act. Evolving is an action, and so requires something actual to effect it.
Quoting Gnomon
Aristotle showed, in many ways, that Plato's concept of Ideas lead to many inconsistencies, and could play no role in becoming. So, these two pieces of the puzzle don't match.
Quoting Gnomon
I am fine with this, except to say that the theory of evolution must be mute on consciousness because it explains adaptation physically, and physics has no intentional effects. No one has reduced intentional realities to a physical basis.
This is an Augustinian insight I touch upon in my current paper.
To know the truth, we must be open, and being open can be painful in many ways. It can rip away the mask hiding our true self. It can destroy the rationalizations excusing our immorality. It can destroy the premises on which we have built a career, or make a career difficult because what we see is rejected by our peers. Since we may see our beliefs as part of our core self, letting go of them can be a small death.
This is not the place to argue this. Let's just say that my education puts me in a better position to judge.
Quoting Gnomon
No, they do not. They generate the light pulses we call photons, which have a finite duration in order to have a well-defined frequency (because of the uncertainty principle). So, we can tell how long the transitions take. Further, the transitions are much better described as wave phenomena than as particle phenomena. The electrons in each level have a well-defined energy and so a well-defined frequency.
The way at this problem is to see what it is to be intentional, and then ask does being intentional require being physical.
You can see the fallacy to this way of thinking by considering the concept of energy. When it was first developed, every known case involved mechanical motion. Then we discovered potential energy in mechanical systems. Subsequently, we discovered thermal energy, chemical binding energy, mass energy, and now dark energy. It is totally irrational to say that because all the cases we know are of one type, no other cases are possible.
Another example is calling the standard model "the theory of everything" (TOE). It is now the TOE-96 -- the theory of everything except 96% of the stuff.
Also, if you read my "Mind or Randomness in Evolution" you will find argument for the existence of God and His being a mind.
Quoting wonderer1
A "a physical interpretive context" begs the question. The interpretive context depends on the minds of human interpreters. Meaning is not physical. No application of physics will show that X means Y. So, the interpretive context is essentially intentional, not physical except incidentally.
My example is highly relevant, because a and b are arbitrary physical states and neither has an intrinsic meaning. Your response does nothing to show that they do, but admits that they do not.
Quoting wonderer1
If you mean by "a physical interpretive context" that people with brains interpret, I agree. That does not mean that what they know is material.
The reason we need brains is because what we normally think about is neurally encoded. But, not everything we experience is. I suggest you research mystical experience. Some authors you might start with are Richard Bucke (an atheist), William James, W. T. Stace, and D.T. Suzuki. You will find that humans can be aware of non-physical intelligibility. Such intelligibility cannot be neurally encoded for reasons that I do not have time to explain now.
Quoting wonderer1
My brain state also supervenes on the orbital motion of Halley's comment. Supervenience has absolutely no explanatory power. Tell me something that matters. Like what causes what.
As for input, it is the action of the apple in scattering light into my eye. The output is two distinct concepts. This is a one-to-many mapping. It cannot be explained on physical principles. If materialism is right, one brain state should only one concept.
Quoting wonderer1
The result of my thinking will lead to different articulations, and they will be encoded differently. That is not the issue. The issue is how do I generate these thoughts, not how do I formulate them.
Let's try this again. The same neural inputs signal (1) something is seen, and (2) my retinal state is modified. No amount of neural processing can separate (1) from (2) because there is only one signal for both. Think of a neural net. The signals that that train it to activate "a retinal modification is occurring" are exactly the same signals that train it to activate "something is being seen." So, there is no way to physically differentiate these intentional states.
Quoting wonderer1
Not alone. A human mind that understands the language is also required -- both for endoding and decoding. Without that intentional capability (the ability to transform marks into meaning and vice versa), there is no encoding. There are only weird ink stains.
Quoting wonderer1
How does it get decoded into a concept when required? We do not perceive the pulse rates or neurotransmitter concentrations. So, how do we know what is encoded?
Quoting Gnomon
Sure, but this 'first cause' kind of argument is old stew reheated. I find no need to posit any such thing.
Quoting Dfpolis
Being with someone I am sufficiently attracted to may indeed be more valuable to me that any number of views of Yosemite Falls. If am more motivated by one than the other then, absent addiction, the more motivating one is more valuable to me.
Of course, I am not claiming that what I or anyone values justifies claiming that those values are universal.
I have no problem with this, but it does not support determinism, because it does not point to a source of value beyond your own agency.
I think it follows that blaming or praising others has no rational warrant, although of course if we are determined by our natures to blame and praise then of course we will do that. This can change, though, if we come to see that people are no more responsible for their actions in any libertarian moral sense, than are animals or the natural elements like rain, lightning, and fire.
I think it is inevitable that we will feel responsible for our decisions, even if we are not really responsible. Imagine you ask your teenage daughter to go to the corner shop for milk and she is run over and killed. Surely you will feel somehow responsible for her death, and this will add to your agony, even though you are not really responsible.
I feel perfectly free to choose what to do in most instances, but this just means that there are no abnormal external constraints on my actions, and I can act freely according to what I want to do. I will be constrained sometimes by empathy for others, but if I could feel no empathy then I might act on desires that hurt others, provided I was confident I would not be caught and held to account.
The point is we may know where our own self-control begins and ends, more or less, but it is not rational to project that same awareness and knowledge onto others or blame them when they fail to live up to our own standards.
That said, a functional and more or less harmonious society must restrain those who cannot but act in ways that transgress its foundational values.
I wouldn't use the term 'offensive'. It's simply the emphasis on the sovereignty of self or ego, on the one hand, and the consensus view of philosophical or scientific materialism, that is associated with political liberalism on the other. There are many philosophical beliefs or social attitudes that form around these core ideas which I think are problematical and unsatisfying. I would have thought that not too far from your own view of the matter.
I see liberals as supporting the value of each individual, not their "sovereignty." And, I do not see materialism as a consensus view, although I do see it as a powerful intellectual and social thread.
The whole idea that coin-flipping is evidence of natural random chance is fundamentally flawed. The production of this random chance type of event is intentionally designed, as are all examples of such random chance generators, so these examples do nothing to support the claim of naturally occurring random chance events.
Quoting Gnomon
This is a faulty conclusion, based in the unsound premise described above, that there could be a naturally occurring generator of random chance events.
Quoting Dfpolis
Again, I disagree. Instead of addressing the valid points I brought up, points which are very relevant to the subject, "interactionism", you retort with an implied 'you're wrong because I'm more highly educated than you'. You demonstrate childishness rather than education, and that's why I disagree with your claim "my education puts me in a better position to judge". If you really have the education which you claim, you could very easily show me why you think I'm wrong. Therefore I conclude that whatever education you do have, indicates to you that you are actually wrong, and you have not the gumption to address this problem.
Quoting Dfpolis
The problem here is that without a medium (aether or whatever), a substance to support this so-called "wave phenomena", it is fundamentally immaterial. There is no substance to these supposed waves, no material to their existence, The wave function is simply an immaterial, mathematical representation. And all it represents is something like the probabilities of how that supposed immaterial activity might interact with a material body. Clearly, what we have here is an interaction problem between the immaterial waves (with no material substance), and the material bodies (instruments of measurement).
Quantum field theory and the standard model of particles are composed of immaterial ideals which have no direct correspondence in the physical world. If you have the education you claim, you know this. The truth of this is evidenced by the reality assigned to symmetry in the models, when such symmetries are simply not discovered in nature. Symmetries are ideals which may be artificially synthesized to an extent, in a lab, but have no true occurrence in the natural world.
The interaction problem involves the question of how such ideals could interact with the true natural physical world which we live in. And this manifests as the problem of how the ideal world of symmetries described by the standard model could interact with the world of material bodies which we live in. The proposed solution, random chance symmetry breaking, suffers the problem I described in my response to Gnomon above. There is nothing in our experience of living in the world of material bodies, which would indicate that nature consists of any sort of random chance generator. Such implements are all known to be artificially created.
No, that is not the reason you are wrong. It is a reason to trust my views more. The reasons you are wrong are outside the scope of this thread.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, I can, but I choose not to here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Philosophically, I agree that waves are modifications of something; however, saying that contributes nothing to the goal of physics, which is to describe the behavior, and not the ontology, of physical systems. For physics, it is enough that the waves can be described in space and time. If a hypothesis about what they modified, say that it was made of particles or strings, led to a better description, then it would be relevant to physics.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This misconceives measurement. The instruments are also wave structures.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quantum field theories, like all scientific theories, are hypotheses to explain observed facts. To the extent that they do so, they are adequate to reality and so true. Their truth is not absolute, but limited to how they actually reflect reality. So, it is open to refinement and revision.
Symmetries are observed in nature. We observe temporal translation symmetry when we see that the same laws that operated in the past operate now. Similarly, spatial translation symmetry means that the same laws that operate here, operate there. Rotational symmetry means that the laws do not involve a preferred direction, etc.
Symmetries are known by ideas, but so is everything. The question is whether these ideas are adequately grounded in reality, or simply imagined. So far, it looks like symmetries ideas are.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It does not because physical symmetries are not interacting things, but properties of interactions of things.
OK, but I was using the term "coin-flipping" metaphorically, not literally. Einstein used the similar metaphor of God playing dice, to ridicule the quantum evidence that Nature is inherently indeterminate*1*2. Also, I was not talking about un-natural Random Number Generators. Instead, I was referring to the innate Quantum Indeterminacy that provoked Heisenberg to define his Uncertainty Principle in terms of statistical Probability*3.
Since you found my implication that Nature is not rigidly Deterministic problematic, are you a strict classical Determinist*4 like Einstein? Newtonian physics was based on the, mathematically convenient, assumption of rigid laws controlling all actions in nature*5. But Quantum Physics demonstrated that Nature is more flexible than that*6. I even use the malleability of Nature as an argument in favor of FreeWill, and against Fate*7, for those who can manipulate the natural system culturally*7. But that's a topic for a different thread. :smile:
*1. Einstein's Determinism :
Like Spinoza, Einstein was a strict determinist who believed that human behavior was completely determined by causal laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein
*2. Does True Randomness Exist? :
Randomness as a fundamental property of nature: Also called True randomness, is when a phenomenon is intrinsically random and not dependent on our knowledge of the phenomenon.
https://medium.com/illumination/does-true-randomness-exist-5d2fc7f413dd
*3. Uncertainty principle :
The uncertainty principle, also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, is a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
*4. Statistical Determinism :
According to classical determinism, the laws of nature are all strict rather than statistical, . . .
https://uh.edu/~psaka/sylla/stet.htm
*5. Quantum indeterminacy
Quantum indeterminacy is often understood as information (or lack of it) whose existence we infer, occurring in individual quantum systems, prior to measurement. Quantum randomness is the statistical manifestation of that indeterminacy, witnessable in results of experiments repeated many times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_indeterminacy
*6.Bayesian Belief-based Probability :
Bayesian statistics mostly involves conditional probability, . . .
https://statswithr.github.io/book/the-basics-of-bayesian-statistics.html
*7. Randomness :
In ancient history, the concepts of chance and randomness were intertwined with that of fate. . . .Although randomness had often been viewed as an obstacle and a nuisance for many centuries, in the 20th century computer scientists began to realize that the deliberate introduction of randomness into computations can be an effective tool for designing better algorithms. In some cases, such randomized algorithms even outperform the best deterministic methods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness
Did you notice that I qualified "instantaneous" with "almost". We're talking about Planck Time here. I suppose your definition of "instantaneous" is more rigidly rigorous than mine. Do you have a good reason for picking nits about metaphors? :joke:
Instantaneous :
The adjective instantaneous means happening very quickly, in a single moment.
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/eb/qa/instant-or-instantaneous-what-s-the-difference
No, the times are much longer than the Planck time. Different spectral lines have different frequency widths. The transition time is proportional to the inverse of the associated frequency width. See http://www-star.st-and.ac.uk/~kw25/teaching/nebulae/lecture08_linewidths.pdf
Quoting Gnomon
Yes, because the transition times can be calculated using the wave model.
OK. I am duly chastened. I'm guilty of using physical concepts as philosophical metaphors . . . without doing the "calculations". :joke:
This is incorrect. If you take any time to study the physics of waves, you'll know that waves cannot be described simply by space and time. A wave is an activity of the particles of a substance. This is Physics 101.
Furthermore, the subject of the thread is an ontological topic, so an appeal like 'it's enough for physics' has little if any bearing on the subject of the thread, which would be whether it's enough for metaphysics. There is no logic to the implied premise, that if it is outside the goal of physics it is not significant to the ontological subject of the thread.
Quoting Dfpolis
Again, this is blatantly wrong, and I'm sure you know it. Energy is not measured by waves structures, it is measured by electrical voltage. And calculations are done in terms of inertial frames and "rest mass" which is essential. These are concepts of classical mechanics of bodies, not waves. I'm sure you know this, and this is why I was so frustrated by your refusal to attempt to justify your claim, and the reference to a higher education. It's as if you believe that a high education can magically make what you know to be false claims, true. What kind of instruments are understood to be wave structures?
I greatly appreciate your perspective, and I would probably agree if you said that the instruments and their measurements ought to be represented as wave structures. But they simply are not, under the principles and theories currently employed. So it doesn't make sense to claim that they are, and it would make a lot more sense to look at the reasons why they are not. And the reason is that we understand energy and all movement in terms of massive bodies existing in space, and the movement of light waves is understood as relative to that fundamental understanding. So the movement of massive bodies is foundational, and the movement of light waves is layered on top as relative to this. So the certainty of this understanding of light waves is dependent on the certainty of the theories which relate it to the foundation, the movement of massive bodies, and ultimately the foundation itself, our understanding of the movement of massive bodies.
You might insist that these concepts are archaic, and even be able to demonstrate how problems arising from the theories which relate the activity of light waves to the activity of massive bodies indicates that the foundational understanding of the activity of massive bodies is deeply flawed, but still it's simple fact that these are the concepts which underly our understanding of energy. None other are employed. Even a quantum of wave energy, a photon, must be assigned a "relativistic mass" to make the wave energy consistent with he momentum of moving bodies. This is because "energy" as a concept is fundamentally a property of the momentum of mass (kinetic energy being 1/2mv2).
Quoting Dfpolis
Symmetries are not observed in nature. Each thing that we observe as a near-symmetry is not actually a symmetry, which is an ideal balance. Laws are artificial, and created as universals so your examples are irrelevant. That the Pythagorean theory is true here, and also over there, does not indicate the existence of a natural symmetry because these laws are artificial and intended to state something universal. Natural things are particular, and there is an interaction problem involved with trying to demonstrate how the particular partakes of the universal.
Quoting Dfpolis
Exactly, properties do not exist independently of the things that they are properties of, except as abstractions in the mind. Natural, "interacting things" do not exist as symmetries, the mind creates the symmetries in an attempt to understand these things. But the artificial symmetry does not grasp the accidentals which inhere within the thing, so that the natural things do not actually exist as symmetries.
To explain this in a different way, let's say that "a property" is a part of a thing, but not the whole thing. We represent the property as a symmetry. But that representation does not show how the property is related to, or inheres within the thing itself. Since the property is a part of the thing, and is necessarily connected to the thing, as it does not exist independently, there is something more to the property which is not represented by the symmetry, i.e. how it is connected to the thing. This "something more" necessarily breaks the symmetry as the means by which the assumed symmetry must be united to the whole. This indicates that symmetries simply do not exist naturally.
Quoting Gnomon
My point still stands, all known instances of random chance occurrences are artificially created. Something natural may appear to be a random occurrence, but a claim to know it to be a random occurrence could not stand up to epistemological scrutiny. This is because the reason why the occurrence is designated as random, is that its cause is unknown. And "unknown cause" does not justify "no cause", or randomness. From the position of not knowing the cause we cannot conclude that there is no cause.
Artificially, we can create the conditions for chance occurrences, the coin flip, the dice roll, etc.. Likewise, in a lab we can sufficiently isolate the conditions as required to produce an approximation of a symmetry. But all of these are not naturally occurring situations, they are fabricated. The randomness of the coins and dice dependent on the design, and the lab-created symmetry depends on the lab. Therefore these instances do nothing to support the claim that there could be an independent, natural random chance occurrence.
Quoting Gnomon
No, I'm definitely not rigidly deterministic. I just find that the method you use to reach your conclusion is deeply flawed.
I suspect you are confusing volts with [url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt]electronvolts:
I do not say "by," but "in" space and time.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but not the ontology of quantum waves.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, I know that material things are wave structures. I did not say what the units of energy are. They are not volts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Some are. Some are not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Both electromagnetic and matter waves have energy and momentum.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Objectively, all physical instruments are wave structures. Subjectively, many people fail to understand this.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It makes perfect since once you realize that the electrons and nucleons composing atoms are waves.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Once you realize that electrons are waves, you need to rethink your understanding of massive bodies.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
They underlie the classical understanding, not our quantum understanding. Now we understand that energy depends on the frequency at which elementary structures vibrate. E = h where h is Planck's constant and is the frequency.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is only a non-relativistic approximation. It was how the concept was first glimpsed, but it is not how it is understood now. Now we understand energy as the dynamic variable conjugate to time. To explain that, I would have to explain the conceptual framework of theoretical physics, and that is why I ask that you trust my opinion based on my education. If you wish to pursue this, look up Hamiltonian and Lagrangian formalism, and Emmy Noether's theorem
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All observations are imperfect. In observing you, I do not gain perfect knowledge of you. Nonetheless observation is the basis of all human knowledge. It may well be that energy is not perfectly conserved. Still, that is very approximately conserved is a real feature of nature and points to nearly perfect time-translation symmetry.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. They point to real features of nature. Omniscience is not a rational standard for human knowledge. We know as humans know -- incompletely and approximately in matters involving measurement.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There are no universal beings to partake in. Aristotle rebutted Platonic Ideas in Metaphysics I, 9 and universal exemplars ideas are incompatible with the simplicity, omniscience and omnipotence of God.
That symmetries are properties does not mean that they do not exist. It only means that they do not have independent existence.
Yes. Symmetries are not observed, but deduced. Like constellations in the sky, the inferred patterns are mental, not material ; subjective, not objective. It's good to be aware of that distinction when engaged in metaphysical discussions. Symmetries are, however, handy tools for mathematical analysis of topological transformations. :smile:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Hmmm. What "method" was I using to reach the conclusion that Nature is not rigidly deterministic?? Actually, I'm not qualified to derive such a conclusion. I was just accepting the opinions of the scientists referenced in the quotes [s]above[/s] below*2*3. I assume their reasoning was some combination of induction & deduction from experimental evidence or theoretical inference. :smile:
Quotes from my last post :
*2. Quantum nature not absolutely deterministic :
The wave function is a function of the degrees of freedom corresponding to some maximal set of commuting observables. Once such a representation is chosen, the wave function can be derived from the quantum state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function
*3. Quantum Universe: Fundamentally Probabilistic, Not Deterministic :
Einstein believed that the universe and its laws must be strictly deterministic. He felt that there could be no role for probability or chance, in nature's foundation. This is why Einstein didn't accept or agree with the theory of quantum mechanics.
https://www.wondriumdaily.com/quantum-u ... rministic/
Quantum waves, or more properly called "wave functions" are ideals, mathematical constructs. They have no physical existence. We ought to start with this clearly stated.
Quoting Dfpolis
I accept that the electrons and nucleons of atoms are composed of waves. The problem is that physicists tend to represent these as bodies with mass. And then of course there are the quantum waves which you refer to above. These so-called waves are ideal constructs composed of mathematical axioms. So, there is an interaction problem between the bodies with mass representation, and the ideal (immaterial) waves representation. The solution I proposed is to determine the substance which the waves that compose electromagnetism, as well as electrons and nucleons, exist in. This would allow us to speak of waves with physical existence. Then all activities, electromagnetism and the activities of massive objects, would be activities of the same substance.
Quoting Dfpolis
Nice try Df, but Planck's law is based in the emission of electromagnetic radiation from bodies (black-body radiation). This is the activity of a body with mass, not the activity of waves. The simple fact of the matter is that physicists do not have the required theories, or principles, to measure the energy of wave activity directly, without converting this energy to the activity of a physical body. And, like I've been explaining, this is done through the precepts of relativity theory which pays no respect for the true medium, or substance, which the waves and the bodies are a part of. Instead, it dogmatically imposes unsubstantiated ideals, like the constant speed of light.
Quoting Dfpolis
I understand this, it is derived from the Fourier transform. And, our inability to make measurements of high energy in a very short period of time is the reason for the uncertainty of the uncertainty principle, in general.
However, stating that energy is understood as "the dynamic variable conjugate to time", does not in any way state what energy is. That's like saying "hot" is understood as the opposite of cold, that says nothing about what hot is. The only difference in your expression is that you use fancy jargon to make it look like you're saying something important.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is the physicalist perspective, and the perspective of scientism, the idea that observation is the basis of knowledge. "Observation" is understood as the collection of data from external sources through the use of sensation. The alternative perspective is that internal experience is the basis of all knowledge. If we compromise and say that both are a requirement for "knowledge" as we know it, then we can't say either one is the basis of all human knowledge.
Quoting Dfpolis
OK, you may call it "nearly perfect", but "nearly" is a subjective judgement. So, do you agree then, that a good ontology must respect this fact, that natural things are not perfect, as sometimes modeled, but are actually "nearly perfect". This is represented by Aristotle as the reality of accidents. The material world which we represent with forms, formal models etc., is not actually as we represent it because we cannot represent the material aspect. All we have as representation is forms, and "matter" refers to those accidents which always escape the formal representation.
Quoting Dfpolis
What they point to, is the fact that the real features of nature are not perfect symmetries, as modeled. You might say, reality is "nearly" like it is modeled, but to me that is just an admission that it is not like it is modeled. And if it is not like it is modeled, then the models are wrong, the theories and principles need to be revisited, and improved upon.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is exactly the point of the interaction problem. Symmetries are perfectly ideal balances, just like the eternal circular motion described by Aristotle. If that perfect ideal has any interaction with anything else, then by that very interaction, it loses its status as a perfectly ideal balance. Therefore these ideals cannot play any role in the real physical world, because they could no longer be perfectly ideal.
So, what I explained about designating these symmetries as properties, is that they cannot be properties, because a property is only a part of the thing it is a property of. And anything which is a part of something else, has some sort of interaction with the rest of that thing. So it is impossible that a part could be a symmetry because this interaction would break the symmetry. By the very fact that a part has a relationship of interaction with the thing that it is a part of, the proposal that the part is a symmetry is made impossible. Therefore it is impossible that symmetries are properties.
Quoting Gnomon
If these symmetries were deductions, then they would be faulty deductions, just like the ancient ideal that the orbits of the planets were perfect circles, therefore eternal circular motions. However, I do not think that such things are deductions. I think that they are mathematical principles or axioms which are not properly applied. So they are handy tools, as you say, but when they are applied where they ought not be applied, they become misleading.
Quantum waves constitute matter. Wave functions are the mathematical functions describing these matter waves and their interactions. The concept is an ideal, but it is based on the observation of real wave properties, specifically, interference of the type demonstrated in Young's experiment.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We do not represent the structures (they are not bodies in the classical sense) with mass. Rather, mass is a quantity associated with them.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. There are no bodies -- only waves and waves mischaracterized as "particles" because people apply Newtonian concepts without adequate justification.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We have learned a lot since Planck proposed his Black Body Radiation law 1900 and Einstein his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, we use material instruments. That does not make the instruments classical bodies instead of quantum wave structures.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is no such interaction. The interactions observed are between the waves being measured and the wave structures (instruments) used to measure them. These interactions are purely physical. The representations are how we conceive of these physical structures and do not involved in the measurement interactions -- only in how we come to know the results.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You need to read the history of modern physics if you want to think about these things. It was assumed that we could measure different speeds of light as the earth passed through the either. In 1887 Albert A. Michelson and Edward Morley attempted to do so, and failed. They measure the same speed in each direction and at different orbital positions of the earth. So, we were forced, experimentally, to conclude that the measured speed of light is invariant. Contrary to popular belief, their experiment did not show that there is no aether, but that one aether theory was false.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, it is not. Fourier transforms enter into the derivation of the uncertainty principle.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Whether or not the energy is "high" is irrelevant.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It does. It is a definition in terms of more fundamental concepts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
By observation I mean fixing on or attending to experience, whether internal or external. I am not a physicalist. Read my January paper.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Let me be more precise. I mean we have been unable to detect violations of conservation of energy.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But, we can. That is what physics, chemistry, biology, etc. do.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is not what anyone else means by "matter."
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We cannot say that. We can only say that in some cases, we are unable to observe possible imperfections, so, we have no reason to believe that the symmetries are imperfect.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You do not understand the meaning of "symmetry" in physics. It is not the kind of thing that can interact. Rather it is a property of the way things interact.
Quoting Gnomon
This is confused. We make observations and then deduce the consequences. As long as the logic is sound, the conclusions are justified by the observations. If the observations were objective, so are the conclusions.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ive noticed that there is a peculiar fact about the interference patterns observed in the double slit experiment. I asked this question on Physics Forum also.
One of the interesting facts about the double-slit experiment is that the interference pattern that appears on the screen doesn't seem to be affected by the rate at which electrons are fired through the slits. So, even if particles are fired one at a time, an interference pattern still occurs, which doesn't vary with the rate at which they're fired, at least up to a certain point. This means that if time ( where time = rate of firing) is not a factor in the formation of the distribution pattern, which implies that time is not a variable in the generation of the interference pattern.
The outcome of the experiment, the interference pattern, is a result of the quantum probabilistic nature and the interaction of particles with the double slits, but it does not depend on the specific timing or rate at which individual particles are fired. In that sense, the outcome can be considered independently of the specific time parameters of the experiment. It's a manifestation of the inherent probabilistic behavior of quantum particles. In that sense, the wave function is not a function of time, in a way that is very different from physical waves, which are obviously time-dependent.
Does that make sense?
I'm not a physicist or topologist, so I'm not qualified to argue the question of "faulty deduction". Are you?
Symmetry is not very high on my list of philosophical subjects. So, I wonder what difference it makes to you whether such relationships are directly objectively observed or subjectively deduced/induced from other observations. Your strongly-worded opinions --- "faulty" ; "properly" ; "ought not" --- imply that it's a moral/ethical or true/false question for you. Are you suggesting that physical symmetry --- or its "application" to philosophy --- violates some higher rule of reality?
Now that sounds like a philosophical topic. Since symmetries are related to natural laws & physical structure, they may qualify as elements of cosmic ethics : e.g. real vs unreal ; observation vs illusion. Does your worldview imply that physical symmetries not just are, but ought to be one way or another? Does physical symmetry have a philosophical role in the Dualism vs Monism question? :smile:
The role of symmetry in?fundamental?physics :
Einsteins great advance in 1905 was to put symmetry first, to regard the symmetry principle as the primary feature of nature that constrains the allowable dynamical laws. . . . Symmetry principles play an important role with respect to the laws of nature. They summarize the regularities of the laws that are independent of the specific dynamics.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.93.25.14256
The is-ought fallacy occurs when the assumption is made that because things are a certain way, they should be that way
It is not a variable in describing the final pattern, but it is a factor in describing the dynamics that bring the pattern about. It takes time for the electron wave to arrive, and time for it to interact with the electron waves in the detector's atoms.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, that is what people say. Yet, it is not the case. It is an accepted fact that all unobserved processes are deterministic. So, put the whole experiment in a box and do not observe it. (You could even include an observer in the box.) Then you can only conclude that the interaction with the detector is deterministic. (If you included an observer, that would also include her observations.) Looking at it after the fact will not change this. So, the hypothesis that observations are random is inconsistent.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is an experiment in which a beam of neutral kaons interferes with itself, because the neutral kaon has two different states that have different masses and so different frequencies. This can be observed because different combinations of these states decay in different ways. As you move the detection apparatus along the the length of the beam different decay modes are detected, showing that the different mass states interfere with each other in real time.
Being determined by what, exactly? Isn't the whole point of uncertainty that it's.....uncertain?
Confirmed, yes, but 'deterministic' is questionable. Quantum mechanics is not a deterministic theory in the classical sense. In classical physics, if you know the initial conditions of a system with perfect precision, you can predict its future state with certainty. In quantum mechanics, this determinism is replaced by inherent probabilistic behavior. The Schrödinger equation describes the time evolution of a quantum system. It gives the probability distribution of where a particle is likely to be found at a given time. The outcome of measurements in quantum mechanics is probabilistic, meaning that you can only predict the probability of obtaining a particular measurement result, not the specific outcome for a single measurement (per Quantum (Manjit Kumar) and Uncertainty (David Lindley)).
Is the determinism replaced, or is it simply the case that you can't know the initial conditions of a system with perfect precision?
It's controversial but as conveyed in both those references I gave, it is non-deterministic - uncertainty is real. That is why for example you have the wave-particle duality - in some contexts, a wave is observed, in other contexts, a particle. Whether it's 'really' a wave or 'really' a particle is impossible to ascertain.
From Brian Greene, Fabric of the Cosmos, in relation to a discussion of uncertainty and the measurement problem, and whether that problem arises because of interfering with the object:
Quoting Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos
Fig 4.6
Do you think you can know the initial conditions of a system with perfect precision? Is this something you have done?
It seems to me as if you are aren't really engaging with my question, and are instead presenting a red herring.
No, it is not. Not being able to determine the exact value of classical variables does not mean that the system is intrinsically random. It only means that classical variables are not the best means of defining its state.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you insist that quanta are particles, you will suffer the logical consequences of the error you have made. There are no "particles," only wave structures. Wave structures are not point-like and insisting that they are will cause you to think that your non-existent particles are in random places.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you are ignorant of the exact initial state, you will be ignorant of the exact final state, no matter how deterministic the dynamics are. Further, quantum measurement is a nonlinear process, which is mathematically chaotic, subject to the Lorenz Butterfly effect.
Uncertainty arises from thinking of waves as particles. The wave structure is perfectly well-defined, but it you insist it is a particle, which it is not, you will be unable to assign particle properties with precision. Similarly, if you insist that a pig can fly, you will have difficulty explaining how.
Without an underlying substance which is waving (the proposed aether for example), these are not real "waves", and cannot constitute matter. Being "ideal", there is no representation for the accidents of "matter". There is simply "uncertainty", with no matter/form distinction to isolate the uncertain aspects from the certain. The result is that uncertainty permeates the entire conceptual structure. It's a type of formalism whereby the content is incorporated right into the form, to produce the illusion that the conceptual structure is entirely formal, thereby eliminating the unintelligible content (matter), but this is just an illusion. In reality though, the unintelligibility of content (matter) is incorporated right into the form from the premises, allowing it to permeate the entire conceptual structure as uncertainty.
You may insist that the idea of immaterial waves, waves without substance, is good enough for physics, but it's not good enough for metaphysics. It would seem like physics allows contradiction then. "Wave" is defined in physics as a disturbance moving in a medium. Allowing contradiction into the premises by premising a wave with no medium, is what allows uncertainty to permeate. "Matter" as the designator of the unintelligible is lost as being incorporated into the form.
Quoting Dfpolis
Now we have ambiguity as to what "mass" is. In some cases it's the property of a body, and in other cases, it's "a quantity associated with them". This is further evidence of allowing the unintelligible into the premises as the result of formalism. What does that "quantity" represent then, if it is not a property of a body?
It seems like "mass" has become just a variable, a number assigned arbitrarily, but according to rules, to make the equations balance. What is the mass in X set of circumstances? It is whatever quantity is required to balance out the equation. No wonder symmetries are all over the place, they are created whenever desired, by assigning a quantity for "mass" which is required for upholding a symmetry. "Mass" is based in nothing other than the quantity required to fulfill the needs of the physicist. to maintain the invariance prescribed by laws such as conservation laws and the invariance of the speed of light in relativity.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is exactly what I argued in another thread recently, "Contrary to popular belief, their experiment did not show that there is no aether, but that one aether theory was false". But your stated conclusion "that the measured speed of light is invariant", is equally inaccurate. What the experiments demonstrate is that the substance of the physical body, and the substance of the aether, are not distinct substances, but they must be one and the same substance. The experiments involved a very narrow range of type of physical body, so there is insufficient evidence to extend the supposed invariance to other types of bodies, like atoms and the parts of atoms, and in the other direction, galaxies and large things like that.
Quoting Dfpolis
Conjugate variables are the pairs which bear the uncertainty relation of the Fourier transform. It is because of this uncertainty relation prescribed by the Fourier transform, that the relation has the name you gave it . Energy, as "the dynamic variable conjugate to time", denotes an uncertainty relation. According to "Quora", this is what ChatGPT said"
So, yes it is true that defining energy as ""the dynamic variable conjugate to time" puts "energy" into a wider context, just like defining "hot" as the opposite of cold puts "hot" into a wider context, but you now need to respect the context which you have placed "energy" into. You have placed it into the context of having any uncertainty relation with time, as determined by the Fourier transform. This is unlike the certainty relation created by defining "hot" as the opposite of cold. If it is hot it is not cold, is a relation of certainty created by that definition.
Quoting Dfpolis
Violations of conservation of energy are detected anytime an experiment is carried out. All of the energy can never be accounted for. There is always a quantity which is lost as time passes. Within a "system", the energy loss may be written off to entropy, and then some people might assume that the energy remains within the system but is unavailable to it. But this is not actually implied, the energy is simply lost. And, it's rather nonsensical, to think that the energy is still in the system when it has been lost to the system. To support the nonsense one might simply adjust the amount of mass assumed to be in the system so that it appears like conservation is upheld. That's the problem with mass being an associated quantity rather than a property of a body, the quantity may be variable, and allowed to be manipulated so as to conform to the theory, providing for the appearance of symmetry.
Quoting Dfpolis
Are we adhering to Aristotelian terms or not? What is represented is always form. "Matter" names the aspect of a thing which does not enter into the understanding. Science produces a formal understanding, and there is always something at the bottom which escapes the formalization, this is the "matter".
However, the modern conception of "matter" has been altered by Newton's laws which name "mass" as a property of matter. But properties must be formal. This move by Newton allows the unintelligibility of "matter" into the formal representation, an example of the problem with formalism which I explained. Now the unintelligibility inheres within the concept "mass". Further, an equivalence has been established between mass and energy by means of Einsteinian relativity and the supposed invariance of the speed of light, such that the unintelligibility of matter, through the means of the concept of "mass" manifests as the uncertainty of the uncertainty principle.
Quoting Dfpolis
Symmetries are not imperfect. I am not saying that symmetries are imperfect. What I am saying is that they are ideal, and represent nothing real in the natural, physical world, due to the assumed perfection of the ideal. Current use of "symmetry" is analogous to the ancient law of perfect circular motion criticized by Aristotle in "On the Heavens". Aristotle demonstrated how a thing moving in a circular motion must be a body, and the body must consist of matter, and by this fact it is generated and corrupted, therefore not eternal. So what was demonstrated is that as much as eternal circular motion is logically consistent, and therefore a real logical possibility, the reality of matter in the physical world makes this ideal physically impossible. There must be something material, corruptible involved in that activity, rendering the eternality as impossible, therefore the entire concept as a false representation for anything real.
The very same thing is the case for modern symmetries. The "invariance" described by the laws is ideal and logically consistent, but not truly representative of, or corresponding with, the physical reality of material existence. This problem is covered by Hume's discussion of the incompleteness of induction. The laws of physics have limits to their applicability such that the "invariance" implied by them is not a true, or real representation, because it breaks down at these limits, and the idea that "invariance" is a true or real aspect of the physical world is a faulty conclusion drawn from the fact that the range of applicability appears to be broad, and everything outside this range is ignored. This issue with the supposed "invariance" of the laws of physics is explained well by physicist Lee Smolin, in his book "Time Reborn"
Quoting Dfpolis
The above paragraph ought to demonstrate that this is incorrect. The laws which describe the way that things interact suffer from Hume's problem of induction. And, the invariance presumed, which makes the law a "law" is evidenced only by observations made within the confines of the limits of applicability of the law (ref. Smolin). The invariance, therefore symmetry, of these ideal laws, is not a true representation of the way that things actually do interact.
And it's not a matter of some interactions are consistent with the laws and some are outside the laws. What is the case, is that all interactions have aspects which partake of the extremely micro, and aspects which partake of the extremely macro, so all interactions have aspects which fall outside the range of applicability of the laws. This means that the symmetry expressed as "a property of the way things interact" is not a true representation of any interaction at all, just like an eternal circular motion is not a true representation of any motion at all.
A good example is the law of conservation of energy which you mentioned. Empirical data, observational evidence indicates that energy is never completely conserved in any interaction. This means that any symmetry derived from application of this law is not a true representation, because energy is not actually conserved.
The obvious implication is that we need to determine why energy is never completely conserved in order to have a true understanding of the nature of material existence. The faulty conclusion is that this slight imperfection in the law is simply a difference which does not make a difference. To identify something as a difference, and then insist that it hasn't made a difference is contradictory. Therefore we need to take account of these slight imperfections which demonstrate that the ideal symmetries do not truthfully represent material existence.
Quoting Gnomon
Deductions are logic, which is part of the discipline of philosophy, not physics. Philosophers are trained to determine whether deductions are faulty or not. So if a physicist makes a faulty deduction, being poorly trained in philosophy, it is the task of the philosopher to identify the faulty deduction and bring it to the attention of the physicist.
Quoting Gnomon
I am suggesting that the symmetries of physics are highly useful principles (like my analogy of perfect circular motion which is eternal, was highly useful thousands of years ago, and variations actually remain in many concepts employed in physics), but they are ideals which do not truthfully represent anything existing naturally. So, when we take these ideals, and try to represent them as what is fact, or true in nature, or reality, we are making a mistake of misunderstanding the true nature of reality, which has none of these symmetries in any part of its existence.
Quoting Gnomon
Ideals such as "symmetry" play a key role in demonstrating the interaction problem. If way say that a symmetry such as perfect circular motion is in any way a real part of the physical material world, then that perfect symmetry is necessarily isolated from the rest of the world. If it interacted with the material , world which does not consist of those perfections, in any way, the symmetry would, by that interaction, be broken. So, for example, the body engaged in the perfect (ideal) circular motion described by Aristotle would necessarily be eternal. If that body interacted with anything else in the world this would break the perfection of the circle, altering the body, and rendering the whole concept as not applicable. Therefore if these ideal symmetries described anything real within the world, the real things described by them could not be interacting with anything else in the world.
Quoting Dfpolis
The uncertainty principle is not so simple. What I believe is that the concept of "mass" incorporates the unintelligibility of "matter" into the formal description of a body. "Mass" as representing "matter" is something unintelligible, which is disguised as being understood in the conceptual structure. When compatibility between mass and electromagnetic radiation is attempted, the limits to our capacity for understanding rapid wave activity described by the uncertainty relation derived from the Fourier transform, is transferred, implanted, and disguised in the unintelligibility inherent within the concept "mass". The uncertainty produced by our limited capacity to understand these waves, is absorbed into the unintelligibility of "mass", hence the tendency to think of waves as particles, particles being understood as things with mass. So the uncertainty is more properly assigned to the attitude of thinking that bodies have mass.
While it is absurd to call matter waves "immaterial," physics is not the science of being, but of changes in space and time. So, you are right, metaphysics has different concerns.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No one is denying this. Physics merely abstracts the aspects of reality it can deal with.
As I have already spent a lot of time trying to teach you what physics tells us, and this whole area is off-topic, I am going to stop here.
however that analogy has weaknesses, because electrons really can appear as particles.
Seems that you and are looking at different parts of the same elephant : equations or experiments. Maxwell's classical wave equation was clearly deterministic. That's why Schrödinger was perplexed when quantum measurements didn't confirm his classical expectations. The inescapable indeterminacy of quantum non-particles was famously illustrated in his Cat in the Box paradox. :nerd:
PS___ The general question of Determinism may have some bearing on the question of genetic or social Interactionism. But I'm not qualified to pursue that angle. Maybe you can "teach" me. :joke:
What exactly is deterministic in Schrödinger's equation?
In quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation, which describes the continuous time evolution of a system's wave function, is deterministic. However, the relationship between a system's wave function and the observable properties of the system appears to be non-deterministic.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/400162/what-exactly-is-deterministic-in-schr%C3%B6dingers-equation
Are quantum processes deterministic? :
[i]Does Quantum Mechanics Rule Out Free Will? - Scientific American
In quantum mechanics, she explains, we can only predict probabilities for measurement outcomes, rather than the measurement outcomes themselves. The outcomes are not determined, so quantum mechanics is indeterministic. Superdeterminism returns us to determinism.[/i]
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-quantum-mechanics-rule-out-free-will/
Is superdeterminism a real thing?
In general, though, superdeterminism is fundamentally untestable, as the correlations can be postulated to exist since the Big Bang, making the loophole impossible to eliminate. - Wikipedia
Well, I will defer to dfpolis judgement on the basis that he is qualified in physics and I'm not. I'm interested by his response above, that:
Quoting Dfpolis
The question this occasions for me (and I can't think of a more subtle way of putting it) is that, if particles don't really exist, then what is everything made of? :roll:
OK, in truth, I forgot the topic. I'll have to reread the op, because the title doesn't seem quite consistent with the op.
Quoting Dfpolis
The problem is that there is no conventional definition of "matter" which allows this "wave-like" feature of reality to be called "matter waves". "Potential", as the Aristotelian defining feature of matter is insufficient because the wave functions are clearly understood as referring to forms, actualities, therefore not consistent with Aristotelian "matter". And "mass", as the defining feature of matter in conventional physics is obviously insufficient. So the only way to represent what the wave function refers to as something material, is to produced an intentionally designed definition of matter.
This violates your statement in the op: Quoting Dfpolis
Obviously, the physics of wave functions has effected the way you look at matter, and influenced you to create an intentionality driven conception of "matter". Physics has affected your intentions, such that you conceptualize "matter" in a way such that you may call these waves "matter waves", when in reality wave functions are formal structures, consisting of ideals which have no true bearing on "matter" by convention conceptions of matter.
You even alter the definition of "physics" to suit your purpose. Instead of the conventional definition, as the discipline which deals with the interactions of matter and energy, which refers to real particular instances of interaction, you define it as dealing with "changes in space and time". Space and time are universals, abstractions which may or may not have been derived from the discipline of physics.
So you actually reverse the role of the discipline. Instead of recognizing that physics is the science of particulars, instances of matter and energy, you cast it as the science of the universal abstractions, space and time. In reality though, metaphysics is the discipline which deals with such abstractions.
Quoting Dfpolis
This mischaracterizing of "physics" is evident here in the op. Physics is not based in abstractions. It is an empirical science, based in particular instances of observation, from which abstractions may be logically induced and deduced. This is a very significant difference ontologically, and consequently epistemologically, which you ought to respect.
When you respect this difference, you will understand that abstractions, universals, and ideals, are necessarily prior to any empirical science, as the means by which the particular instances of the physical world, are grasped and understood by the intellect within the activities of the empirical sciences. The faculty of the intellect, or soul which produces these abstraction cannot be an empirical science like physics, because these abstractions are necessarily prior to the activities of those science. The empirical science must not be allowed to be based in the abstractions themselves, or else the objectivity of the science will be overcome by the subjectivity of the abstraction. The science therefore is based in the particular instances of observation, and this may be used to override the preexisting (therefore prejudiced) abstractions
So for example, the scientific method is said to proceed from hypotheses to try them in experimentation. These hypotheses are necessarily prior to the method of sciences which seeks validate them, therefore they are not themselves "scientific". That word can only be affixed posteriorly, after they been tested through experimentation. Therefore the hypotheses must be produced through some other means than science. And if you look into this, you will discover that the production of such hypotheses is very much purpose directed, driven by intentionality. The science itself though, must be based in the particular instances of observation, in order that it may be used to rid the abstractions of subjective prejudice.
Quoting Dfpolis
This statement then becomes rather ironic. The "modification to thinking beings" which you recommend turns out to be the need to dismiss the proposition which leads to this, "abstractions are not reality". Once it is realized that abstractions are at the very base of our understanding, prior to observation, as the means by which observation is made, we must realize that abstractions are the only reality which we have, and everything else is understood in relation to this assumed reality. When observation indicates mistakes within "reality" (being the abstractions) modification of reality is required.
You see, the particular instances of observation utilized by the empirical sciences, do not provide any sort of "reality" to us. Nor do they provide us a window into reality. All they do is give us the information required to make judgements, against or for, the preexisting reality (the prejudices), which form our reality, the world of abstractions.
Our concept of reality is based on what can be experienced, aka what can be observed.
Some of what electrons do can be interpreted as particle behavior. All of what electrons do can be interpreted as wave behavior. That means that the particle hypothesis is falsified, while the wave hypothesis is not. What makes the waves appear to be localized is that they interact with atoms in which the electron waves are localized.
Schroedinger's cat was designed to show the absurdity of the probabilistic interpretation, not support it. It is not a fact. It is the consequence of a hypothetical interpretation, based on thinking of detectors as classical devices. If you think of detectors properly, as composed of atoms behaving quantum mechanically, there is no need for randomness. Indeed, assuming it is contradictory.
Quoting Gnomon
Only if you assume that electrons are particles. If you drop that assumption, there is no need for them to have either well-defined momentum or well-defined positions. All you have is a complex, extended wave structure.
Quoting Gnomon
This is a non sequitur. Being unable to predict the exact result of a measurement does not mean that it is not determined. We cannot predict turbulent flow and everyone agrees that it is deterministic.
Also, free will is not indeterminate will. It is will determined by the agent willing.
Yes, there is. Matter is what composes bodies. They are composed of wave structures.
The wave-particle duality does not falsify either the particle or wave hypothesis. Instead, it suggests that particles like electrons exhibit properties of both particles and waves depending on the experimental context. Quantum mechanics doesn't choose between the particle or wave nature of particles; it incorporates both aspects into its mathematical framework.
Quoting Dfpolis
While it's true that matter at the quantum level can be described by wave functions, I understood that the wave functions themselves are mathematical representations that describe the probability distributions of finding particles like electrons in certain states or positions. Matter is composed of particles (like electrons, protons, and neutrons) that exhibit both particle and wave properties. I think it's fallacious to claim it is purely one or the other, or that bodies consist of 'wave structures'.
Quoting Dfpolis
In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is not about the inability to predict measurement outcomes accurately; it's about inherent limits on how precisely certain pairs of properties (like position and momentum) can be simultaneously known (which is the uncertainty principle.)
In the context of turbulent flow, while it can be challenging to make precise predictions due to the complex nature of the system and its sensitivity to initial conditions, it is still considered deterministic in classical physics. However classical determinism is fundamentally different from the quantum uncertainty principle, which arises due to the probabilistic nature of particles at the quantum level.
This is where we disagree. "Wave structures" refers to conceptual structures composed of mathematical ideals. They are mathematical descriptions without substance, as Wayfarer describes above. So they are descriptive 'forms', not the 'matter' of physical bodies, evidenced by the fact that they only reference the possibility of a body. Saying that matter is wave structures is like saying that matter is a collection of properties. But this annihilates the Aristotelian distinction between matter and form, and leaves the collection of properties without substance.
I believe that what you are proposing is a simple Pythagorean idealism. As such, it suffers from the interaction problem. Like I explained, the ideals (symmetries) of the wave structures, if they were the real matter, could not possibly interact with the world of physical bodies which we observe in experience. This interaction problem has two principal manifestations in quantum physics, first the problem of nonlocal causation, and second, the need to assume random chance activities.
The solution I outlined is the need to identify the true substance of the waves, the medium which is waving, as the proper "matter" which the wave structures are the formal representation of. Without identifying this substance as "the matter", the "wave structures" representation will always suffer from this interaction problem.
Further analysis of the wave function representation will show the interaction problem involved with this type of idealism much more clearly. Space is represented as points in a coordinate system. Because each point is represented as having commuting observables, uncertainty is inherent within the representation of each point of the space represented. The uncertainty is represented by the Fourier transform, as the fundamental inability to accurately determine spatial activity (frequency) over a duration of time. This uncertainty leaves a gap between the mathematical ideals of representation, and what is actually occurring in the space being represented. It is an "interaction problem" because the ideals employed have incorporated within themselves, the inability to accurately represent the spatial-temporal relation (the uncertainty of the Fourier transform), and therefore cannot provide the means for bridging this gap. In other words "the ideals" are compromised to allow uncertainty to inhere within them, rendering them as less than ideal.
The difference between the representation of the Fourier transform, and what is actually happening in the physical reality can be approached here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_mechanics
Since I made the reference, I know what I am referring to, and I am not saying that bodies that are made of mathematical structures. They are made of waves that may be described by the Schoedinger equation, and more accurately by the Dirac equation. The fact that waves may be described mathematically does not mean that they are mathematical abstractions. Things are not their descriptions, and refusing to admit that is irrational.
What kind of substance (e.g. matter ; math ; other) are "wave structures" made of? :smile:
The problem being that these equations do not describe waves, and you know this. A description of the medium, and the restrictions placed on potential wave movement due to the composition of the medium, or substance which the wave exists in, is replaced with "degrees of freedom". Even if we assume real underlying waves, as what is being described, not one of these equations can provide an adequate description of what is going on, because the "degrees of freedom" are formulated according to the circumstances rather than according to an understanding of the medium itself, and the restrictions intrinsic to the nature of that medium. That's why a synthesis of many such equations is required for quantum field theory, to account for the various ways of determining degrees of freedom.
Furthermore, the fact that a representation of a temporal continuity may be produced which is very similar to how waves would appear if represented in this way, is insufficient evidence to make the deductive conclusion that waves are being represented. This is because the essence of "waves", by definition, is "disturbance in a substance", and that is not what is represented by those equations which describe degrees of freedom. Simply, the substance has not been identified.
What are light waves made of? We do not know. That does not stop us from knowing that light is a wave. The same is true of matter waves. I should add that there are no mathematical substances, only mathematical concepts, based on abstraction form physical reality. We know some properties of the medium, namely, that it obeys, to a good approximation, the equations currently in use.
I am sorry, but you don't know what you are talking about.
Well you got me there Dfpolis, I really don't know what you know so I clearly do not know what I'm talking about. But that's because you're not very forthcoming with your principles. Can you explain how you conceive of a "matter wave"?
I mean don't give me a mathematical formula, give me the principles. How do you make the kinetic energy of a single moving body which necessarily has mass to have kinetic energy, and therefore a center of gravity at a point, consistent with the energy of a wave which is necessarily spread out over an area? The momentum of the body could be provided by an energy equivalence with the energy of the wave, but the uncertainty principle would render the position of such a body, with a determined momentum, as having no determinable location.
I suggest that what is the case, is that data from many similar circumstances is collected to together, and from statistical analysis probabilities are produced. Hence the "matter" wave is better known as a "probability" wave. And, there is no real consistency produced between the energy associated with the mass of a body, and the energy associated with the wave, because the particular wave in the particular set of circumstances is not ever actually represented. All that is represented is the energy of the wave derived from application of theory, and the probability of location, which is a conclusion drawn from the statistical analysis.
So for example, if we make a statistical analysis of the rising of the sun over many years, we can make a very accurate projection of where and when the sun will rise tomorrow. However, this statistical analysis does not represent the movement of the sun relative to the earth, it represents the sun's appearance at a multitude of specified times. The likelihood of where it will appear tomorrow is deduced. Likewise, the statistical analysis used to produce the probability wave (matter wave) does not represent the movement of the supposed underlying wave, it represents the locations of a multitude of instances of the detection of a body with mass.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the uncertainty relation between momentum and location is overcome in that way. The momentum is derived from wave observations and theories of energy equivalence. And the position is determined by probabilities derived from statistical analysis. But what is represented by the statistical analysis, as the "probability" or "matter" wave, is not a wave at all. It is not a representation of the wave, because it represents possible locations of the body with mass. The wave is actually represented by what is on the other side of the uncertainty relation, the momentum of the body.
In the late 19th century, electrons were discovered. We came to understand that they are part of every atom of matter. At first, for historical reasons, it was thought that they were particles. Because of that assumption, it was decided that there must be light particles (photons) as well. In 1923, it was shown that electrons interfere with each other and with themselves -- something only waves can do. So, electrons, an essential constituent of every atom, are waves. Every property previously explained using the particle assumption can be explained by their wave nature. On the other hand, no wave property is explained by the particle assumption. That means the particle hypothesis is falsified.
We have since found that wave mechanics also applies to protons and neutrons, the constituents of atomic nuclei. Every part of atoms, which constitute both ordinary and ionized matter, behaves like a wave. None is a point particle, or a hard object with a well-defined edge. That physics has nothing more to say about what is vibrating does not mean that the constituents of matter do not oscillate in both space and time in well-defined ways. So, ordinary matter is made of waves. That is what I mean by "matter waves."
We have known that there is electromagnetic field energy and momentum, permeating all space, since the late 19th century. As a result, Newton's third law is violated when electromagnetic forces are involved.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But, if there is no body, why would we expect it to have a well-defined (point) location or arrival time? Wave packets are spread out in space and time. Because of Fourier's theorem, which applies to all waves, to have a single wave length, a wave must be infinitely long, and to be at a single point, it must have all wave lengths. When you insist that we are not dealing with waves, but particles, this translates into indeterminacy. Since a quantum's energy is proportional to its frequency and its momentum is inversely proportional to its wave length, finite wave packets have neither well-defined energy nor momentum.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is no objective randomness. Randomness is a measure of our ignorance. The more we know, the less random processes are. In the quantum case, we know neither the exact initial state of the wave we are trying to measure, nor the exact initial state of the detector that will interact with it. So, all we can predict is a probability -- just as with a dice roll.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is exactly what the wave equations do represent. The problem is that you cannot pick the one actual solution out of an infinity of possible solutions without knowing the initial conditions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Again, there is no "body."
I agree. But Determinism/Fatalism denies that a willing agent can find a causal gap to fill with her own intentions. Whatever will be will be, regardless of human desires.
The situation is similar to the Materialistic assumption that intangible Consciousness has no causal role in the real world. Yet, I have come to a different understanding of Causal Consciousness, based on Quantum randomness and unpredictability, which implies that Nature has inherent openings (or soft spots) in the chain of events that allow for radical departures from Destiny : such as the advent of Life from dead Matter, and of Mind from dumb Matter.
If otherwise random Evolution did not have innate selection criteria allowing for departures from causal inertia and inexorable entropy, no significant change of direction would ever happen. And the Big Bang would become a Big Cataclysm : instant Entropy. Instead, what actually happened was inexorable advancement in complexity and organization, sufficient to produce Intelligent Matter and Willful Agents. :smile:
So, you fill the gap in physical understanding with a label : out there in the darkness of ignorance are "matter waves". Like medieval maps, in uncharted territory, you add a cautionary note : "here be [s]dragons[/s] waves. But you leave the key term undefined. Is that an accurate assessment? :smile:
I agree. :cool:
The medium is not a key term. Physics is not philosophy. It does not aim to tell us what is, but what we can expect to observe in the physical world. Then, philosophers try to place those observations in a larger context -- one that provides a consistent framework of all human experience.
OK. So, why are we discussing "matter waves" on a philosophy forum. Does the distinction between Particles and Waves have a philosophical significance regarding Dualism & Interactionism?
No. It does not. I am responding to questions about it as a courtesy.
Endorsed with the Latin contraria sunt complementa, "opposites are complementary"
The quip by Oscar Wilde comes to mind, The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
I know it is true that electrons may simply be represented as waves, and electrons are also designated as having mass, but the quantity of mass of an electron is so tiny relative to the overall mass of a an atom, this need to assign mass to a wave feature (electron) may readily be attributed to possible faults in the mass/energy equivalence theory. It may be the case that it is a mistake to say that an electron has mass. A slight fault in the theory, along with the customary procedure of assigning quantities of mass according to what the theory predicts, would produce the need to assign mass to that wave phenomenon which is called "an electron", when electrons really ought to be represented as pure wave features without any mass.
From this perspective, I'll point to a few spots where I have criticism of your explanation.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is a conclusion made about electrons only, not the other parts of an atom, being the massive nucleus. So what has been falsified, by your argument, from my perspective, is the theory that electrons are particles with mass. This supports what I have said above, that electrons ought not be represented as having mass, and should be represented entirely as waves. This would imply that the interaction between radiant energy and electric energy is completely an interaction of waves. And it would force the need to further analyze the relationship between the atom's nucleus being expressed with a positive charge, and it's electrons having a negative charge.
The current need to assign mass to the electron appears to be the result of a lack of understanding of the relationship between the massive nucleus and the wave features. I propose that the waves of electromagnetic radiation are affected, altered, by interaction with the nucleus (rather than to conventional representation of an interaction with electrons), making electrons and electromagnetic radiation one wave structure instead of interacting waves, and the characteristics of this wave phenomena is the result of, effect of, the activity/inactivity of the nucleus.
The nucleus causes changes to the electromagnetic field, and vise versa, and we understand these changes as electrons. Accordingly, all electron phenomenon would need to be understood in terms of relations between massive nuclei and electromagnetic field. Radiation would be an extension of this, eliminating the need for complex and unnecessary electron/photon relationships.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is where I find the most significant fault with your proposed theory. I believe it is simply not the case that wave mechanics can explain the massive nucleus of an atom. And "mass" is what is most properly related to "matter". Mass is what provides the stability for the temporal continuity of sameness manifesting as "inertia" in common physics. The fact that wave mechanics cannot explain the existence of mass ,may be understood through a glimpse into the mechanics of the strong interactive force. This force accounts for the vast majority of "known" mass, and the rest of "known" mass may be dismissed in the way described above as applicable to the mass of an electron, simplifying calculations. Here's a passage from the Wikipedia article on the strong force. After considering the reality of this force, please reconsider whether you truly believe that the nucleus of an atom can be represented with wave mechanics. If you still do, maybe you can explain it to me.
[quote=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_interaction]The strong force acts between quarks. Unlike all other forces (electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational), the strong force does not diminish in strength with increasing distance between pairs of quarks. After a limiting distance (about the size of a hadron) has been reached, it remains at a strength of about 10,000 newtons (N), no matter how much farther the distance between the quarks.[7] As the separation between the quarks grows, the energy added to the pair creates new pairs of matching quarks between the original two; hence it is impossible to isolate quarks. The explanation is that the amount of work done against a force of 10,000 newtons is enough to create particleantiparticle pairs within a very short distance of that interaction. The very energy added to the system required to pull two quarks apart would create a pair of new quarks that will pair up with the original ones. In QCD, this phenomenon is called color confinement; as a result only hadrons, not individual free quarks, can be observed. The failure of all experiments that have searched for free quarks is considered to be evidence of this phenomenon.[/quote]
Quoting Dfpolis
The particle is understood to behave under the principles of Newtonian mechanics. Therefore it has momentum, and mass is a requirement for momentum. And the reality of mass is observed through the effects of gravity which constitutes empirical evidence for the concept of a centre of gravity, therefore a point of location which marks the centre of the mass. When the electron is represented as having mass, then the Newtonian conceptual space applies, including momentum etc.. It has a rest mass, a point of location, an inertial frame applies, and all that follows for a body of mass.
If we rob the electron of its mass, take it away, and deny that it has any mass, then that discrepancy in total mass, and violation to conservation laws needs to be accounted for. But we know from experimental data, and the need for "entropy", that the conservation laws are ideals which are not completely applicable as the true physical reality. And the supposed mass of an electron is so tiny that the only real reason why it is assumed is the need to maintain the conservation laws. Therefore there is no good reason to maintain the principle that an electron has any mass, consequently no reason to represent it as having momentum, or any well-defined point of location. That need is simply the desire to maintain an untrue ideal, the conservation law, and follow traditional conventions of calculation. But it's a misleading path, and like a vector, the further away you get from the starting point, the further you get from the true path.
Quoting Dfpolis
See, the fault here is to assign momentum to a wave. This implies that the electron has mass and a stable, inertial centre required by Newton's first law. But if mass truly converts to wave energy, then the centre point of an electron which is radiating or absorbing wave energy would actually be an unstable, decaying or increasing mass, and this is not consistent with the first law. The atom's mass would decrease as it emits radiation, or increase as it absorbs. Therefore the electron really cannot be represented by the Newtonian mass/inertia/momentum conceptual space.
So, we can transfer this mass to the nucleus, and the instability which exists as the radiation and absorption (interaction) of energy represented as electrons, is in most cases a very minimal instability, as a proportion of the total mass of the atom. However, there are features of the nucleus, which result in the various electron shells for example, which represent critical thresholds in the stability. The key point is that the Newtonian stability assumed by the first law of motion (which is itself an ideal symmetry) must be forfeited in order to adequately account for these minute change to physical bodies, by allowing that changes inherent within and originating within the nucleus, may alter the wave field.
Quoting Dfpolis
I think that this is incorrect. "Probability" is produced from a comparison of what is known about many instances of particular circumstances, with a statistical analysis of a set of similar particular circumstances. The crucial point is the judgement of "similar". That is why the probabilities of the wave equations do not actually represent the particular circumstances, these probabilities represent a conclusion drawn from numerous particular circumstances, which are categorized as "the same" by a judgement of similar.
Quoting Dfpolis
There is mass, and mass is what constitutes the matter of a body. I strongly believe that wave structures cannot account for the mass of a body, and I will continue to believe that, unless you or someone else, can answer my question above, and show how waves can explain the strong interactive force.
Then you need to study nuclear physics and the behavior of the quarks in high energy physics.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It was not before the advent of Newtonian physics and has not been since the advent of modern quantum physics. Mass is proportional to the frequency of a quantum in its rest frame. This applies to all known quanta and is consistent with special relativity.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No physical theory has explained the existence of mass. We can explain our observations of the quantity of mass, but existence is a metaphysical problem. It was solved by Aquinas, who concluded that it is contingent on the continuing creative act of God.
I am well aware of the strong force. It is described using wave mechanics. Its range is related to the time an intermediating boson can exist (which is inversely proportional to its mass). That time is calculated using Heisenberg's indeterminacy relation. The same is true of all the forces known to physics.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Which has been falsified. Why would anyone want to do that?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And, why would we want to discard this, or any other, fact? The mass of the electron is known with great precision. It is not zero.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All known waves, even ocean waves, have momentum. The momentum of sound waves moves your ear drum. It can be and has been measured in quanta.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Then, you need to study differential equations.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You may believe what you wish. I constrain my beliefs by what has been observed. We can and do have energy, which is equivalent to mass, in space free of all "particles." This is known as a field's "energy density" and is proportional to the field strength (e.g. the electromagnetic field) squared.
Once one sees that quantum mechanics is actually just describing the random behavior of particles (without the need for collapse), almost all of the quantum strangeness dissipates.
Wave mechanics does not explain the behaviour of quarks. I believe the proper terminology is "field theory". And, there are many aspects within quantum field theory which break the laws of wave-type representations, such as those very important aspects known as spontaneous symmetry breaking.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is what I've identified as a self-contradicting concept, 'a quantum of energy in its rest frame'. Ideas like this are what distort and render the concept of mass as completely unrealistic, regardless of whether it's consistent with special relativity. As I explained, "mass", as "relativistic mass", or variable mass, or whatever you want to call it, has become the tool which physicists use to coverup flaws in the theories they apply.
Quoting Dfpolis
So the boson does not explain the existence of the quantity of mass then. Therefore it does not explain the strong force, nor the existence of matter either. Why do you think mass is explained, or described by wave mechanics then?
As I understand it, the colour charge of a gluon cannot represent a wave, because it is solely time-like and non-spatial. It appears like you have stretched your imaginary conception of "wave" far beyond reasonable limits, to include non-spatial conceptions as "waves". Since you say "the same is true of all the forces known to physics", I conclude that none of the forces can actually be described as waves. "Force" is the term used for how things, including waves, interact, but the interaction occurs in a medium between.
Quoting Dfpolis
Nor is the mass of a photon zero, "in its rest frame", by your statement above.
Other than displaying the inconsistency in the physicist's use of "mass", you appear to be mainly just circling back now. Unless you want to try and describe to me how you think the concept of the boson, represented as a wave feature, can provide an adequate description for the strong force and the reality of mass, we might be best off to just leave the discussion at this point.
You claim you have been trying to teach me, but you really don't seem to be making much effort. I know that I am of the very skeptical sort, and as such I am a very difficult and trying student, but you often don't seem to be trying very hard yourself. You simply make random statements, assertions which to me often seem either inconsistent with other assertions you've mase, or are simply mistaken.
For example, you said:
"All known waves, even ocean waves, have momentum. The momentum of sound waves moves your ear drum."
Now, that in itself is a satisfactory statement, because the momentum of waves is attributable to the movement of the mass of the medium. The particles of the medium have mass, and the movement of these particles is constitutive of the momentum of the wave.
However, if I couple this with your statement that electromagnetic radiation is known to exist as waves, and these waves are known to have momentum, then I see inconsistency. How can the momentum of these electromagnetic waves be known, if the momentum of waves is attributed to the movement of the mass of the particles of the medium and there is no known medium for these waves?
Therefore I assume that the momentum, which you "associate" with a light wave must be derived from some completely different principles. And, since you accept that the light wave has no medium composed of particles with mass, the "mass" which is an essential aspect of momentum must also be derived from some other principles.
What I've suggested is that there is inconsistency, ambiguity, perhaps even equivocation in your use of "mass". And I've supported this proposition with an explanation as to why "Mass is proportional to the frequency of a quantum in its rest frame." appears to be a self-contradicting statement. "A quantum in its rest frame" appears to contradict itself.
So if you are at all willing to teach me, maybe you could demonstrate how the conception of "mass" in that statement, as "proportional to the frequency of a quantum in its rest frame", is consistent with the conception of "mass" as a property of a particle of water, in an ocean wave. I suggest that you start with the proposed concept of "a quantum in its rest frame", because that is what causes a roadblock for me from the very outset.
From what I understand, you might have a rest frame for a collection of photons, quanta, as a "system", so the momentum and therefore mass of the whole system might be determined by giving the system a rest frame, as a sort of ideal, a contrived and unrealistic equilibrium. However, it is impossible that a single quantum could have a rest frame. Since the mass of a collection of water particles is divisible amongst its members, and this cannot be the case in a photonic system, this indicates to me, that the "mass" assigned to a system composed of photons is fundamentally inconsistent with the "mass" assigned to a system of water particles.
The former is derived from a contrived, artificial, and unrealistic ideal, while the latter is derived from observations of naturally existing bodies. Because these two dissimilar conceptions of "mass" are inconsistent with each other, and fundamentally incommensurable, I apprehend an interaction problem. I would be very pleased if you could try to dispel this apprehension through the effects of teaching.
It took 10 years of college and post graduate education to lay the foundation for my understanding, and many years of reflection after that to integrate the pieces into a consistent whole. I do not have that kind of time to spend here. You can look at my (dfpolis) youtube physics videos if you wish. There I have corrected a number of common misunderstandings. You might also look up my paper "Does God Gamble with Creation?"
Your OP seems to be challenging conventional dualistic philosophical and scientific categories, such as Mind vs Body, or Wave vs Particle. But your (radical?) alternative perspective is difficult for conventional thinkers to follow --- in part, because it doesn't seem to fit into traditional compartmental worldviews, such as Realism vs Idealism. Nevertheless, I am beginning to see that you may have a good point, but I don't know exactly what it is. Perhaps because it is wishy-washy wavelike instead of hard-point particular. Is that a fair assessment?
I get the impression that you might be one of those geniuses who doesn't "suffer fools gladly". For example, calling your fellow genius Descartes' categories of being : "nonsensical". I view his separation of Magisteria as a political compromise, to avoid conflicts between Religion & Science, not as an absolute philosophical principle. Nevetheless, his notion has been interpreted to imply an impassible barrier between res extensa and res cogitans. Which makes sense from a Dualistic perspective, but non-sense from a Monistic stance. Is your view ultimately monistic?
One clue to where you are coming from is the statement : "I am a moderate realist. That means I think universals do not have a separate existence, but do have a foundation in reality." But, does that mean your position is midway between the exclusive extremes of Realism & Idealism ; hence, allowing some common pathway for Interaction? If so, it may be close to my own philosophical worldview of Both/And. Yet, you seem to have come to your Neither/Nor position via a different path from mine.
I think, unlike our perceived mundane reality, ultimate Reality has the Potential for both Mental & Physical expressions. And evolution was like a computer program processing Causation (energy) over time into both Matter and Mind. Does any of that make sense from your cosmic perspective? :smile:
Quoting Dfpolis
You didn't deign to answer my request for a dumbed-down definition of "matter waves". So, I'm still not sure if you are referring to physical waves in a compressible substance, or metaphysical waves in an ethereal medium. I have a notion that light waves propagating in empty space are actually on-off alternations that are interpreted by the mind in terms of sinuous waves in a material substance. With no inertial mass to push off of, light has nothing reactive to act upon. But oscillations between something & nothing or potential & actual might be a clue to some of light's mysterious properties. This is not a developed theory, just a hunch for further investigation. :nerd:
Ok, thanks for the references Dfpolis. You know my principal interest, as I've developed it in this thread, the concept of mass in physics. Can you direct me toward anything specifically related to the ideas I've expressed here.
Probably the easiest thing to grasp is the concept of fields' energy density. Since mass and energy are interchangeable, fields increase the mass of systems. Imagine positively and negatively charged parallel plates. Because they are attracted to each other, pulling them apart takes energy. That energy is stored in the electric field between the plates -- in space. When the plates are released, that energy becomes kinetic energy. The same is true of magnetic fields.
The separation of electromagnetism into distinct electric and magnetic fields is something I've never really been able to understand. But I know it's essential to the concepts of polarization, and the supposed spin of particles.
Since most natural light is unpolarized, I think that this is not a real representation of the associated wave phenomena. I think it is just an artificially created part of the mapping system, in the same way that a coordinate system is. This produces an unnecessarily complex representation, which instead of having a proper 3D representation of waves emitting from a source in all possible directions, requires a moving, generally rotating coordinate system. Needless to say, the moving coordinate system is very problematic, because motion is understood as relative, and the motion of the coordinate system is therefore arbitrary, related to nothing other than the intention of the mapmaker.
So I believe that this practise of representing an electric field as distinct from the magnetic field is nothing but a coordinate system used for mapping the waves. In natural occurrences, waves are going every which way, as they propagate out from a mass consisting of a variety of parts. This would require a vast multitude of distinct fields to represent the natural waves coming from what would appear to be one united source. This requirement of a multitude of distinct fields, to map the most simple natural waves, I think is very strong evidence that "fields" are completely unreal, and just a coordinate system.
Why though, did you ask me to imagine "parallel plates", when the convention for producing the coordinate system of distinct electric and magnetic fields is to make them perpendicular? Are the positive and negative fields you propose supposed to represent the positive and negative aspects of the atom? If so, how does the neutron get represented, which is mass without electric charge? And how would you make both the electric field, and the magnetic field, which are perpendicular to each other by convention, parallel to the proposed positive field?
That is fine. They are the components of a tensor of rank 2 in special relativity. That means that they can transform into each when we change reference frames.
No matter what I tell you, you disagree. I don't have time to tell you why you are wrong. You asked for something you could understand, and I gave it to you. But, instead of researching it, you want to argue about it. I do not.
You gave me something which I could not understand though. The problem is that I've already researched, and what you say often seems inconsistent with what I've already found out. So to me it appears like you alter basics principles of physics, in an attempt to hide faults in your metaphysics, and attempt to disguise this by refusing to elaborate. So you prove to be unwillingly to explain, and I have to flatter you with reference to your superior education in order to encourage you to divulge all that knowledge of the discipline of physics, which you conceal within. You pretend that you haven't got the time, but we have no deadlines or time constraints here.
For instance, I said that I have never been able to understand the separation of electromagnetism into distinct electric and magnetic fields, and you replied that the two are transformable in special relativity. But that does not explain why they were separated in the first place, which is what I said that I did not understand.
Our understanding of electromagnetic waves consist of both aspects, the electric and the magnetic aspects. The division into separate fields, I assume is based on the observations of distinct effects, electric effects and magnetic effects.
You asked me to "Imagine positively and negatively charged parallel plates" as a method toward understanding the relation between mass and energy. I assume that the positive represents the mass, and the negative represents the energy, but "parallel plates" implies an image of two dimensional planes, instead of a three dimensional body, which an atom with electrons and protons is. So I really do not understand how this image which you are proposing is applicable, or how it is in any way a representation which I can understand.
Here's an example of why this "parallel plates" representation seems unreasonable to me. Suppose an electron orbits a nucleus, and we have an observational perspective which sees the electron approaching us on the right side of the nucleus, and moving away from us on the left side of the nucleus. The electric and magnetic fields are represented as perpendicular. However, every time that electron moves 180 degrees around the nucleus, the relation between the negative electron, and the positive nucleus has to flip 180 degrees, to represent the change between coming toward us in relation to the nucleus, and going away from us in relation to the nucleus.
Further to that, the turning of the electron, in the interim, must be represented. Then the electron appears to have a spin, when there is really no spin at all, the apparent spin is just a product of applying a 2 dimensional coordinate system to an assumed 3 dimensional activity. The assumed 3 dimensional activity is the orbiting of the electron. But if it's just a wave, there is no orbiting electron, there is no need for flipping, nor spinning, just the opposing crests and troughs in a 3 dimensional representation. The need to separate electric from magnetic fields was produced from the assumption of an orbiting electron, and is completely unnecessary if electrons are properly represented as wave phenomenon.
That is a problem with your proposed "parallel plates" image, along with the 2 dimensional coordinate system of distinct electric and magnetic fields. The further problem, which cannot even be approached because these spinning coordinate systems obscure it, is your claim "that they can transform into each when we change reference frames." The problem being that we cannot actually change reference frames without creating falsities in relation to a wider environment. Therefore the claim to be able to change reference frames is a falsity.
The apparent spin of the electron is a product of the coordinate system which maps the electron as an object moving relative to the proton. If we try to transform, and attempt to map the proton as moving relative to the electron (change the frame of reference), then the positive field which is mapped as parallel to the negative (parallel plates) must flip to account for that spin of the coordinate system. But this flipping would produce problems of contradiction in the wider context of multiple electrons and multiple protons. Therefore the change of reference frames which you propose would actually be impossible.
The issue of course, as I indicated earlier, is that the reference frame of a single quantum of energy, an electron, or a photon, cannot be a true inertial reference frame. So any attempt to produce a rest frame for such an object, whether it's by separating the electric field from the magnetic, or some other means, will always be fraught with difficulty, compromised, and ultimately producing a false representation. The electron is simply not an orbiting body, as you know, it is a wave phenomenon, so assigning it an inertial frame is a falsity which creates problems. Therefore the only way to get a true representation is to produce a rest frame around the nucleus, and map the quanta of energy accordingly, accepting that there is no possibility of reference frame exchange, therefore no truly transformable properties. This requires disregarding the false ideal of an inertial frame for an electron, which is exchangeable with the inertial frame of the proton, because this implies that the electron is a body with a location relative to the proton, determinable by spatial coordinates.
I think there are ways around this. Lack of a single joint probability distribution doesn't mean that same information cannot be represented in multiple separate ones. In a Bell experiment, there may be no single joint probability distribution, but you can construct ones for each underlying context of compatible pairs of observables. There is no joint probability for incompatible pairs but perhaps we can do the same with these - represent them in terms of multiple underlying contexts. Work by Andrei Khrennikov has suggested that, starting from classical descriptions of different underlying contexts, when assuming different contexts cannot be combined / co-occur (like heisenberg uncertainty) then various features occurring in quantum mechanics seem to be consequences e.g. interference, violation total probability, complex amplitude, non-commutativity: e.g.
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=9998752293294842918&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1
Importantly everything is still coming from normal classical probability spaces in principal. So this is partly what gives me the motivation for believing that quantum mechanics just essentially describing the random behaviour of particles (which common sensically would always have definite properties) through probability distributions. From the kind of view I just cited, quantum contextuality in effect is about classical context dependent joint probability distributions which cannot be integrated into a single joint distribution. The strange extended wigner "quantum mechanics cannot describe itself" thing also would also come down to this, not strange subjective epistemic differences in agent perspectives. Bell violations are also just a necessary formal consequence of the context dependence, as stipulated by Fine's theorem - not requiring some spooky force.