Question for Aristotelians
Here is a passage from Sebastian Rödls Self-Consciousness and Objectivity:
Rödl, p. 55:In De Partibus Animalium, Aristotle asserts that nous does not fall within the domain of physics. It does not lie within that domain, not because it lies outside it, in a different domain alongside that of physics. Rather, nous does not lie within the domain of physics because it cannot be included in any domain. For, just as the science of perception includes the object of perception, so the science of judgment knowledge of the nature of judgment is at the same time the science of the object of judgment knowledge of the nature of the object of judgment. And the object of judgment is everything . . . Its object is illimitable.
I know we have several Aristotelians on TPF. Could one of you tell me, first, whether this is an accurate account of what Aristotle argues, and second, whether it is a standard interpretation of Aristotle on this point? Many thanks.
Comments (136)
Aristotle is basically saying that the study of animals requires a study of the vegetative part of the soul and the motion-causing part of the soul, but not the intellectual part of the soul, because a study of the intellectual part of the soul would implicate the objects of intellect, which would include everything.
But is Rödl correct in saying that the intellect (nous) cannot be included in any domain? I don't actually see Aristotle saying this. Aristotle is rather arguing from premises such as, "Natural science does not include everything in its province," or, "Animal nature is not intellectual." He is not arguing from the premise, "There is no science which includes everything in its province."
Can the intellect be "included in any domain"? I would say that it can be included but not contained or exhausted, but I'm not sure where Rödl is going with this.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, that seems clear. I rather see him, in the passage you quote, arriving at this as a conclusion about natural science, which strikes him as a reductio -- but that may be because natural science isn't the right science to do this, not because no science does so.
That sounds like a hard problem ;-)
What do you mean? Is that a reference to the hard problem of consciousness and the metaphysics of qualia, as David Chalmers understands it?
Or do you mean something else?
Right, and Aristotle is clearly happy to study the intellect in De Anima. It would also be within the province of metaphysics. But I hesitate to say what science or sciences Aristotle sees as proper to the study of the intellect. Rödl could be right that there is no science of judgment (as distinct from logic).
Quoting J
I think Rödl is using it correctly when he says that the science of perception must include the object of perception. So for example, the science of sight must include the object of color. So yes, something mild like "taken into account" would count as inclusion. To use Aristotle's word, sight and color are "correlated."
Note though that to study sight one does not need to study every individual object of sight or even every individual color. It's therefore unclear why an "illimitable object" precludes study. It seems to me that it only precludes an exhaustive study, and perhaps a science.
- :up:
I will just add that it's helpful to recall that physics is the study of mobile/changing being here, so to have everything under it would be to imply that everything is mutable. I don't even know if this is Heraclitus, because he at least has the Logos.
I think it's De Anima III that covers nous and the active intellect.
BTW, this topic actually opens onto a host of interesting questions. There is a really good article on this in the Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism called something like "Neoplatonic Epistemology." It focuses on Plotinus, but it also covers Aristotle a good deal because Aristotle was a huge influence on Plotinus in this area and on the Patristics in general.
One of the points Aristotle makes is that belief and knowledge cannot be reduced to mechanistic (efficient) cause and effect. If belief is just the rearrangement of atoms, then it is hard to see how it can be "false." Falsity implies a sort of judgement, it implies intentionality, etc. So how do beliefs work vis-a-vis a mechanistic picture? On a common understanding of mechanism, they don't, that's the whole impetus for res cognitans or of semiotics.
Certainly, we understand perception better now. Information theory is very helpful here. But these fundamental questions about intentionality, perspective, etc. remain major open questions in the philosophy of information and in contemporary thought more broadly (e.g. the "Hard Problem").
A second interesting point is that falsity, and knowledge, need to involve universals. If we just invented a sui generis term for each particular, we could never be wrong about our predication. If I say, particular102939940204 is term24828920299202, and term24828920299202 only applies to that particular (perhaps in that moment), then I cannot be wrong about it. Falsity shows up when we judge that x is y, but x can fail to actually be y. Borges' short story "Funes the Memorious" plays around with the problems, and ultimate incoherence, of seeing all particulars as only particulars.
This is closely related to the epistemic issues related to the One and the Many. One cannot come to know any % of an (effectively) infinite number of causes/particulars in a finite time. We're dividing by infinity here. So here too, knowledge has to deal with overarching principles, Ones that apply to a Many.
But if these universals are just, in some sense, arbitrary "representations" (a misunderstanding of ens rationis), and they too are subject to change, because all of thought and intellgibility is mutable, then knowledge will prove impossible. But we do have discursive knowledge, therefore something in the assumptions that lead us to reject knowledge is false.
The whole Plotinian identity theory of truth (which rejects knowledge as belief), a popular and influential interpretation of Aristotle and Plato, requires a nous that is in some sense immutable.
Right, and a key premise here is that the intellect/nous has the formal capacity to know everything, and that which knows all things is not itself one of the things known. Usually this is phrased in terms of materiality: the intellect can know all material things and must therefore be immaterial. Rödl may be up against some variety of materialism, which limits the power of the intellect.
For the materialist the intellect is different and lesser, and therefore knowledge is different and lesser, and I think we see this play out in a lot of discussions on TPF. For the materialist the object of the intellect is determinate and limited in a way that Aristotle and Rödl do not accept.
I have looked at a preview of Rödls book. It is an interesting challenge to the mind/object dichotomy of Descartes and Kant (and many others).
I see your quote came from page 55 and that a footnote accompanies the reference to Part of Animals. Does that note give the Bekker line number for the reference?
The preview also let me see from 118 to 123. His account of De Anima 417a 21ff is solid as well as the references to Metaphysics Gamma. The distinction between different kinds of potentiality (powers) is a helpful touchstone to the rest of De Anima.
Ive become very interested in (although not very knowledgeable about) the idea of the divine intellect in Aristotle and Platonism generally. The basic thrust is that the power of reason is what distinguishes the human from other animals - hence man as the rational animal. It preserves the tripartite distinction in Plato's diaogues of the rational element of the soul as being the highest part.
In Aristotle, that is expressed in hylomorphism. The material senses receive the material form - in other words, sense-data. But only intellect (nous) knows what a thing is. (I believe this is all from DAnima III.) In this way, the intellect becomes all things. And the reason it can do that, is because of its immaterial nature. Lloyd Gerson paraphrases it as follows:
[quote=Platonism vs Naturalism, Lloyd Gerson] Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.
.the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. [/quote]
(See also The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle's D'Anima.)
This is preserved in Aquinas' epistemology, as I understand it. And behind that, is a mysterious doctrine called 'the unity of knower and known'. If you search on that phrase, you will find many recondite scholarly papers mostly about either Thomism or medieval Islamic scholasticism. And I believe Rödl is articulating a similar theme. The underlying rationale is that of 'participatory knowing' and 'divine union' which have long since fallen out of favour in Western culture.
I haven't gotten to pp. 118 - 123 yet. Good to know he's on target with Aristotle. The book is challenging in much the same way as Kimhi's Thinking and Being is (and covers some very similar ground) but I'm finding it well worth a slow, careful read.
Yes, though as I wrote above, I'm still locating all the pieces on the board with Rödl. It's a dense book. You're reading it, right? His arguments about why objectivity is necessarily self-conscious -- odd as that sounds -- are covering the same ground as Kimhi's arguments about the unity of thinking and being. Once again, poor Frege comes in for a kicking. I'll definitely write more about the book as I go along, and I hope others will read it too.
Yes, but I'm finding it a real hard slog to maintain focus. I figure that as he has to penetrate the habitual cynicism of the current philosophical profession, he needs the equivalent of a depleted uranium ordnance. (After all as Banno never tires of pointing out, any form of idealism is very much a minority report in the profession.) My problem is I can kind of intuitively grasp the point he's aiming at, without having to do all the hard work of traversing the terrain. But as you're reading it, I will try and persist, I'm nearly up to the end of Chapter One.
I do a section a day, after coffee, when if I'm lucky I can concentrate for 30 minutes. :halo:
But please don't slog on my account . . .
Hmmm... I think that's false (Hi, excuse me, if I'm allowed to give an opinion as objectively and respectfully as possible)
Quoting J
Of course it sounds odd. That's what I've been saying since I first joined this Forum: some of the things that are discussed in professional philosophy sound odd. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that what they're saying is untrue. I mean, we -the philosophers- have become de-sensitized to theoretically strange ideas. What is Platonism if not that? What is Cartesianism if not that? We've been exposed to so much professional philosophy, that it's become quite difficult for professional philosophers to genuinely surprise us, the burnt-out readers of professional philosophers, in which some are professional philosophers as well.
"Only as it is at work" . . . I think he means that we can't find the concept of reality or facticity as the object of thought; rather, it's contained or implied in the act, the "work", of thinking that anything is so. No doubt Witt would approve.
Would it be surprising to find a Wittgensteinian interpretation of Aristotle only after Wittgenstein? Not so much. And if there were such a thing before Wittgenstein, then Wittgenstein would be an interpreter of Aristotle...
There's much of just-so stories in exegesis.
It's an admittedly strange book, in that it outlines a theory of the mind and the soul that is very remote from how we understand such topics from a modern perspective.
Personally, I never cared much for De Anima, but what makes it seem so odd to me, from a merely bibliographical standpoint, is that Aristotle's concept of the "active intellect" only appears once in the entire works of Aristotle, and it appears in one specific passage in De Anima. That's what most odd about that book, specifically.
Nevertheless, the topic of the "active intellect" was widely discussing in Medieval European Philosophy. It's just one of those strange things about Aristotle, I don't think anyone can really explain it.
Your link points to another important reference:
More important for the use of "active agent" in De Anima is the inquiry in Metaphysics of how potential and actual "energeia" relate to each other. These investigations are contiguous to the fact that Book 2 of De Anima echoes many elements of Parts of Animals, Coming to be and Passing away, and History of Animals.
As those titles suggest, Aristotle did not say that personal (or individual) lives survived death. The Neoplatonists who were popular when the "Medieval' period began did promote various versions of such personal immortality. That is the batter Augustine used to cook his pancakes.
I am proposing that he is talking about it many times but with the humility of being a mortal creature who only can remotely glimpse the divine. Note how often he uses "perhaps" in Book 3. He does not state as a matter of fact that nous is separable. In Book 2, Aristotle is more comfortable with locating the "act of knowing in the context of the individual as receiving (some of) the power from the kind (genos) they come from. The same immediacy of the actual is being sought for without the naming of the agent in Book 3.
But it's a very... "subtle" point, isn't it? If Aristotle is effectively talking about it as many times as you say, why isn't it more ... obvious? Humility notwithstanding and all that, this is Aristotle that we are talking about. Are his scholars really sure that the Prime Mover is "the same thing" as the active intellect? It seems like -pardon the expression- "a stretch of the imagination", as people say nowadays, a simple act of "stretching" or even of "reaching", if you will.
The question of causality on the cosmological scale of Metaphysics book Lambda is itself a product of trying to distinguish "active" and "passive" elements of individual things.
Your question about scholars making that connection is less important to me than looking for how nous is something we can learn about through our experiences and thinking about it. I am not arguing for a "subtlety" as much as for a difficulty.
Edit to add: The point I was making about the connection of DA Book 2' references to nous in the other works concerning life is what will make the discussion in Book 3 seem less of a one-off as you described it to be.
IDK how closely Rodl follows Aristotle (or Hegel), but in their case this has to do with the identity of thought and being (something Plotinus brings out in Aristotle in his rebuttals of the Empiricists and Stoics). This ends up being, in some key respects, almost the opposite of Wittgenstein, although I do think there is some interesting overlap in that they tend to resolve epistemic issues in ways that are isomorphic.
The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy by Christian Moevs is surprisingly the best treatment I've seen of this. It spends a good amount of time on Aristotle in the third chapter, including this exact question. Dante's role as a philosophical thinker is often overshadowed by his role as a literary figure (and how could be otherwise? He is often ranked as one of, if not the greatest). However, there is a lot of interesting stuff there.
I find this sometimes, the best succinct treatment of a topic ends up being in an unrelated topic. For instance, David Bentley Hart has one of the better treatments of classical notions of freedom in the last part of That All Shall Be Saved, and I'd recommend just that section even for people with little interest in Christian universalism (the topic of the book). It's funny how that works out sometimes.
Yes, everyone finds their own Wittgenstein! Kimhi, in Thinking and Being, claimed Witt as a fellow exponent of the monistic unity of thinking and being, which in turn he (Kimhi) derives from Aristotle. And this is very much Rödl's view as well.
I believe there is an important issue of translation/interpretation which needs to be dealt with here. This is a question of the way that we attribute "the powers of the soul", to the soul itself. In order to do this as a predication, we need to allow that "the soul" is an acceptable subject for predication. If we are inclined to deny the reality of "the soul" as an acceptable subject, then we simply move to avoid this predicament altogether by interpreting "the powers of the soul" as "the parts of the soul". The latter allows that "the soul" is simply the united living body, and "the parts" refers to a division of this body into separate organs or something like that. This latter interpretation allows for a materialist understanding.
From context, especially reference to "De Anima", we can see that Aristotle is proposing "the soul" as a proper subject for predication. "The soul" is proposed as an actuality in the sense of substantive form. And, that "form" itself, is substantive is supported by his "Metaphysics". This allows for the proposition "the soul is our subject of study".
However, we must respect the various ways in which propositions are presented. They are not necessarily offered as true, and what is very common with Aristotle is that he presents them as hypotheticals for the purpose of argumentation. So for example, he might be saying, "if it is true that the soul is a proper subject for study, what would be some of the logical conclusions we can derive from this premise". Then he judges those potential conclusions for acceptability, to determine whether or not "the soul is a proper subject for study" is a sound premise. I would say that this is the sort of interpretation we need to make of what is offered in the op. This is made more clear by the passage presented by
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I believe that the principle issue here is that prior to Aristotle it was understood that the human mind must be passive. This was assumed in order to allow that the mind receives the forms of objects. In perception and abstraction, it was assumed that the form of the material object was received by the mind. This represents the mind as passive in this event, and this is the common physicalist representation of today. The senses, and consequently the mind, are acted upon by the physical world, and the physical world is understood as causing an effect within the brain, or mind.
I believe Plato proposed an active component of the mind in (I think) "The Theaetetus". He described visual perception, seeing, as an activity extending outward from the eyes, meeting an activity coming from the object seen. You can see how this divides the active part of "seeing" into two distinct activities, the activity coming from the thing seen, and the activity originating in the mind. Aristotle furthers this distinction between the actuality of the physical world, and the actuality of the soul.
Post-Aristotelian thinkers had much difficulty, and consequently much discussion, as to how to properly locate both the passive and active parts of the intellect. If I understand correctly, the root of the difficulty was the problem of accounting for the reality of the passive intellect. Passivity, in Aristotelian principles is associated with matter, and allowing the intellect passivity is a move toward denying the immateriality of the intellect, and its assumed independent, eternal existence. So the difficulty was to allow for passivity, yet still allow for an eternal immaterial intellect. Aristotle's metaphysics denies that any potential could be eternal. This produced debate as to where the passive intellect is located, and depending on one's proposition for this, the active intellect would be assigned accordingly.
I see how this all hangs together, thanks.
That reference to De Anima in the footnote does point to a particular expression of "self-consciousness":
Aristotle's point in the quote from Parts of Animals is not an opposition to "materialism" as depicted by Gerson but a basis upon which to study material beings. While arguing for first principles and causality, Aristotle said this in regards to Empedocles:
I am curious what Rödl will make of Aristotle's enthusiasm for empirical study while formulating his concept of "Idealism".
Yep. Good post. :up:
view of it.
It's often said that Aquinas was a realist, not an idealist, but his Aristotelian realism is very different from today's forms of realism, whether scientific or metaphysical. Why? Because the contemporary criterion of objectivitythe "mind independence" of justified knowledgewould have been foreign to him. Aquinas' epistemology was based on assimilation, where the knower and known are united in an intellectual act:
[quote=Cognition - identify/conformity;https://aquinasonline.com/cognition-identity-conformity/]The Aristotelian-Thomistic account... sidesteps indirect realism/phenomenalism that has plagued philosophy since Descartes. It claims that we directly know reality because we are formally one with it. Our cognitive powers are enformed by the very same forms as their objects, yet these forms are not what we know, but the means by which we know extra-mental objects. We know things by receiving the forms of them in an immaterial way, and this reception is the fulfillment, not the destruction, of the knowing powers.[/quote]
Modern Thomist philosophers are often skeptical of Kant, but by the time Kant arrived on the scene, the idea of the "mind-independent object of sense perception"the modern criterion of objectivityhad taken hold. Berkeley's idealism was aimed squarely at rejecting this concept of mind-independent material bodies, while Kant advanced a more sophisticated transcendental idealism. His critics, however, saw the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason as a reiteration of Berkeley's thesis, leading Kant to add the famous "Refutation of Idealism" in the B edition.
In Aquinas' culture, though, the notion of "mind-independence" would have seemed alien. Creation itself was understood as the expression of the Divine will, and knowledge was an act of participation in this intelligible order. Of course there are major differences: for Kant, the mind actively structures experience through categories and intuitions, while for Aquinas, the intellect passively receives forms from the world. Despite this difference, both philosophers share a commitment to explaining how the mind and world are fundamentally relateda link that modern empiricism, with its emphasis on mind-independence, tends to deprecate. This shared concern might explain why some analytical Thomists see potential in engaging with Kant's transcendental idealism, even if significant differences remain.
Could you recommend any work or scholars who explore this intersection? My own knowledge of Aquinas is fairly rudimentary, but I find this line of analysis intriguing and wonder if you see its merit.
In my opinion it seems correct in large part. When we talk about "realism" and "idealism" and such things, we really need to set out what exactly we are talking about, because such terms mean different things to different people. Depending on how you define idealism, Aquinas could be an idealist.
Quoting Wayfarer
I suppose I would want to understand the nemesis here a bit more clearly. What does this "mind-independence" mean, and who are its proponents?
Quoting Wayfarer
A short piece that might be helpful is Gyula Klima's, "Intentional Transfer in Averroes, Indifference of Nature in Avicenna, and the Representationalism of Aquinas," which begins on page 33 of volume 5 of the journal, Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics (my post <here> has some background information).
The other thing that comes to mind is what I pointed to here, although it is longer and more difficult:
Quoting Leontiskos
I haven't looked at this issue in some time. There are probably better resources that I am either not thinking of or unaware of.
[quote=Metaphysical Realism, SEP;https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/realism-sem-challenge/]According to metaphysical realism, the world is as it is independent of how humans or other inquiring agents take it to be. The objects the world contains, together with their properties and the relations they enter into, fix the worlds nature and these objects [together with the properties they have and the relations they enter into] exist independently of our ability to discover they do. Unless this is so, metaphysical realists argue, none of our beliefs about our world could be objectively true since true beliefs tell us how things are and beliefs are objective when true or false independently of what anyone might think.[/quote]
I think this is the attitude of a sizeable majority of contributors.
Quoting Leontiskos
That's what I'm getting at. It's often said that he was a realist philosopher, but scholastic realism is worlds away from today's scientific realism. But I'm trying to analyse it from the perspective of the history of ideas, rather than philosophy as such.
Thanks very much for your remarks, I shall peruse those sources you recommend.
If one is mistaken about what one perceives and this mistake leads to establishing a neural network which we would experience as a belief, then the said neural network would be false in the sense of "missing the mark" like the arrow that misses the target.
He quotes Richard Weaver's 'Ideas have Consequences':
Later, he makes the point:
Hochschild's closing remark is 'The fact that this loss remains so hard for us to see and to accurately explain is itself evidence of how momentous it is, and how much work of recovery we have yet to do.' Mind you, I don't expect that such a 'recovery' is at all likely, or even possible. But I least I think I have an idea of what has been lost.
Well, this is the point at which you tend to lose me. I don't have any real problem with that SEP quote, and I don't really understand the critique you have of that quote. Aquinas would probably have said, "Yeah, that seems right, but I would never have thought to phrase it in that way."
The easiest way to set out a disagreement is to say, "Patrick says X is true, but I say it is false." The methodological difficulty I have seen with your approach is that the clear distinction never gets made. Usually X is said to be something like "mind-independence," but then we have to ask what mind-independence means, and the meaning of that term seems to slide around as if on ice.
One motive I have identified is your desire to rebut scientism; another is your preference for wisdom over superficial knowledge. But then when we get down to concrete propositions it becomes more difficult. The critique of scientism seems to cash out in a predilection for idealism, but then once again we run into the difficulty of the ambiguity of 'idealism'.
That's not to say a critique of a cultural current is easy. I have deep reservations about Analytic philosophy, but it's difficult for me to put my finger on a precise critique. @J seems to take issue with something or another in Frege, but he is still working out exactly what that is.
If I were to critique scientism I would more or less follow Edward Feser's critique of mechanistic philosophy. I think Hume creates a stark division between mind and reality which alienates mind from reality and leads to a worldview that is mechanistic and quantitative. This leads to a diminished, superficial, and fragmented intellectual culture. What you like about Aristotle and Aquinas responds well to this alienation of the mind from reality, but I don't see Hume's form of empiricism in the SEP quote you presented.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well what is the opposite of scholastic realism? It is nominalism. What is the opposite of modern realism? It it usually either idealism, subjectivism, or eliminativism. So they are somewhat different forms of realism.
I also think many forms of Indian thought tend in the direction of a non-Thomistic idealism. Buddhism and Hinduism are allies of Thomism (and Christianity) in some ways, and opponents in other ways. In dialogue with a strongly idealistic thinker Thomas is going to emphasize the autonomy of creation, and I think this is something you underestimate a bit. He is going to tell the Hindu that creation is more autonomous than they think, and he is going to tell Hume that creation is less autonomous (or less alien) than he thinks. For Hume the external world is too alien to really be known; whereas for a strong idealist (say, a pantheist), it is too immanent to really have its own separate existence. Thomas is going to say that it has its own separate existence and yet can really be known (and this is in line with Christian theology, where God is wholly other and yet is not remote or unknowable - it is the precondition for authentic revelation).
Quoting Wayfarer
Yeah, I should look at that again. The reason I prefer Feser is because he is more accessible and his thesis is less contentious. In comparison with at least that article of Hochschild's, Feser is less subtle, and this relative lack of complexity aids the cogency and staying power of Feser's argument. But at least in the early part of that article, where Hochschild lays out the big picture, I think it is good and useful. Towards the end he ends up in subtle internecine disputes of scholasticism, if I remember correctly.
(This makes sense as Hochschild's has been at a Catholic university and seminary his whole career, whereas Feser has taught at a city college. Hochschild doesn't focus on that topic in many other places, and he probably doesn't encounter secular thought in the same way that Feser does. The paper you reference was a web essay for Anamnesis that grew out of Hochschild's opening address for the 4th Annual Ciceronian Society Conference (CV) (link). Incidentally, Feser canvassed it when it came out).
Well, that's what I'm often trying to do, apparently without much success, even though it seems quite clear to me. 'Metaphysical realism' is really just philosophy-speak for direct or naive realism, which phenomenology criticizes as 'the natural attitude' - the world just is as it seems, and if we can learn more about it, it can only be through science. By idealism I'm referring to the usual advocates - Berkeley, Kant, German idealism, and nowadays Bernardo Kastrup. I think there's a reasonably clear core of tenets, isn't there?
I was drawn to Hochschild's essay not because he is Catholic, but because I am interested in the ontology of universals. He does go into that quite deeply in that essay, discussing the 'inherence theory of predication', the fundamental importance of final causation for the 'mechanisms of meaning', and the destruction wrought by Ockham's razor on coherence of the Western metaphysic (I guess you could say he slit its throat and it bled out.) Hochschild mentions Richard Weaver's book, Ideas have Consequences. And there's another title on a similar theme, The Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie. Feser - I first noticed his 'The Last Superstition' and have read some of his online essays. I often quote his blog posts this being one of my favourites.
In all of this, there is an underlying theme, but I agree it is hard to see all the connections. But then, one thread running at the moment has provoked many pages of argument on the meaning of a five-word sentence. I'm a 'meaning of it all' type, not someone interested in hair-splitting minutae.
And thanks for your feedback, I will take it on board.
Okay, and that would be a good starting point for a discussion. :up:
Quoting Wayfarer
When I arrived here I had given up for the moment on starting my own philosophy forum. Part of the difficulty is that philosophy forums have a tendency to become analytic, and it's fairly hard to inculcate a deeper and more contemplative culture. So I share your concern about "wisdom," and I'm not even convinced that anything I do here will have much effect in that regard. Similarly, I am not sure if arguing with proponents of scientism creates wisdom. It might, but it might also just be the wrong modus operandi. Like teaching someone how to stop arguing by winning an argument. Sometimes I go off script, but am only met with blank stares.
Tonight I finished a lecture by Rowan Williams. There were three consecutive questions in the Q&A that you might enjoy listening to, beginning <here>.
Well, I notice it. But then, I too get my fair share of blank stares. (I was amused to read something on Rupert Sheldrake's website. As you probably know, he has suggested the idea that animals and humans can detect when they're being stared at, by way of a kind of ESP - not something I'm at all convinced of - but in reference to one of the hostile reviews his book about this attracted, he headlined his response 'the sense of being glared at'. I know how he feels.)
I like Rowan Williams, will give that a listen. (I'm kind of surprised how much of Augustine's philosophical prose - not so much his doctrinal views on original sin - resonates with me. But then, I suspect a kind of anamnesis might be at work.)
:lol:
Quoting Wayfarer
Sounds good. Those questions of the Q&A reminded me of you.
---
Edit:
I have noticed a lot of secularism from the Australians, both on this forum and others. Here is the newest recruit from your country:
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Maybe you are a cultural outlier?
False. I was born in Argentina, not Australia. I've never even been to Australia. I did live in Seattle, Washington State, for a few years, so I can talk to you in your "Northamericanese" dialect, if you prefer... "dude".
EDIT: Talking to @Leontiskos be like:
Him: "You're an Australian recruit."
Me: "I was born in Argentina, mate."
Him: "So you're Australian?"
Me: "No, I was born in Argentina.
Him: "Are you saying that you were born in Australia?'
Etc., ad nauseam.
True enough, and the closest I've gotten so far to "what that is" would be: propositions seem to have to be uttered by someone; they aren't "in Nature"; and yet the Fregean treatment of them wants to point us the other way, to something called "p" which has an independent existence in some intriguing but unspecified way; they can be separated from their assertions. People like Kimhi and Rodl are aware of this too, and give differing accounts of what's going on. The line I'm pursuing at the moment involves trying to get a grip on the difference between "thought" understood as essentially 1st-personal, and the notion that "thought" is best understood as an item in Popper's World 3. Driving me fairly nuts . . .
I read the SEP and it makes distinctions between concepts that are conflated by your saying:
Quoting Wayfarer
The article says:
Quoting SEP 1
Your comments about phenomenology are inverse to the articles references to behaviorism as a challenge to 'metaphysical realism" on the basis of it being merely a product of language:
In the context of your theme of a reality lost in history, the conditions for it are closer to the claims of this realism than to any method of behaviorism. I understand your dissatisfaction with the isolation of the thinker from what is thought but find this formulation of realism does not conform to your history of philosophy.
Nice post, Paine. :up:
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@Wayfarer, In some ways I want to see a spectrum:
Quoting Leontiskos
On the far left of the spectrum we have a conception where mind and reality are alien to one another and reality is largely inscrutable. This is "mind-independence" in the extreme, where reality is so independent of the mind that it can hardly be known at all. On the far right of the spectrum we have a conception where reality is perfectly intelligible to mind, even to the extent that it is not other than mind. When mind knows "reality" mind is just knowing mind. This is "mind-dependence" in the extreme, where reality is so dependent on the mind that it is not anything other than mind.
Now first notice that pretty much everyone wants to steer a middle course. Aquinas would be one example of a middle course, and one which is more moderate (in my opinion) than either Scientism or Berkeley's idealism. For Thomism matter is inscrutable and form is intelligible, and reality is a combination of the two.
The difficulty for me is that when you hammer on "mind-dependence" you are pointing to the right. But I don't think we can just point in a direction. I think we need to find a mean between left and right.
From what I have garnered so far from his references to Aristotle, Rödls book is not trying to frame "idealism" against a "materialism". In the footnote reference I quoted above, the key moment is:
Rödl also references:
The actual existence of thinking in both passages is a confluence of circumstances. A living person must come from a particular kind of matter and become capable of actually knowing and thinking. I agree with Wang that the "activity" is not outside of the creature but think he is looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope. All coming-to-be is from agency beyond the particular organism. That particular kinds of material are required is a rebuke to the Pythagorean view that Forms shape purely undetermined goo.
Maybe I will get Rödls book and find out what he makes of these texts.
Fair enough. That is helpful. This is such an age-old question and puzzle of philosophy (the problem of universals) that I think many people have despaired of a perfect answer. So Frege's imperfect answer is sort of par for the course.
There was a long tangent in the recent thread, "Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong." Originally it wasn't about the ontological status of propositions, but rather the ontological status of true propositions.
It started:
Quoting Leontiskos
It moved explicitly into considerations of truth-Platonism and sentence-Platonism (with Michael taking the lead):
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
And it spawned Michael's thread, "Mathematical Platonism," as well as Srap's thread, which had to do with fdrake's approach rather than Michael's.
---
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Okay, my mistake. I thought you were from Australia given the way you call everyone your 'mate' and given the fact that you only recently filled in your biographical information.
Will you allow me to point another mistake that you made, here? "Mate" is a term used in British English in general. In England, for example, people call each other "mate". Not so much in Scotland, and not so much in Ireland. One of the schools that I went to, in Argentina, was a Catholic school in which everyone spoke British English. I went there for two years, right after I got back from Seattle, Washington, where I spoke American English. So I understand the differences between American English and British English quite well. Where did you think that Australians got the term "mate" to begin with? They didn't invent it, the British did. And these fine Australian folks here are technically subjects of the British Crown. You, as a North American, and I, as a South American, are not subjected to any Crown in the world. BTW, I'm not going to call you "American" simpliciter , you can kindly fuck off with that, and I say it as a South American.
So, back to the main point: "mate" is a British English word, not an "Australian" word, mate.
Quoting Leontiskos
What? I filled it in after like, 2 or 3 days, at most, after joining this Forum. I think you are mistaken on that point as well.
Anyways, are you going to explain Thomism to the rest of us or not? Stop being so secretive about it and just spill the beans already. I say that, from one Aristotelian to another Aristotelian. In other words, get to the God damn point already, mate.
It's well known that the word is most commonly and strongly associated with Australia, but that is helpful to know that it flows out of British English.
I've put you on ignore given that you're a dumbass. Good luck with that.
"It's helpful to know". Glad that I could give you some knowledge then, mate. You're welcome.
Quoting Leontiskos
Perhaps, but I'm evidently less of a dumbass than you are, as Caesar would say : )
Quoting Leontiskos
Good luck with what? With talking to you? I don't think that I'm interesting in talking to you to begin with. You clearly can't explain Thomism.
EDIT: Oh and BTW, I've just flagged your most recent post, and I will report you to the moderators as well.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
That's not the point, but OK.
Quoting Leontiskos
That's fair, I take that back then. I apologize. Will you accept my apology, yes or no?
Sure, I will accept your apology, but know that I am not planning to engage you on the forum.
Thanks for accepting my apology, then. You need to apologize yourself for calling me a "dumbass", but I can't force you to do that, nor would I want to. That's on you.
Quoting Leontiskos
Then don't engage me. It's as simple as that. I won't engage you either. But please understand that if you just say that I'm " ", and then you cite as evidence for your case that I embrace five personal philosophies (realism, materialism, atheism, scientism, literalism), then I will effectively engage you, @Leontiskos. Like, why are you using my name in your discussions? Keep my name out of your discussions, or expect to be engaged by me. It's real simple.
(Edited for technicality)
Fixed. Ciao.
Don't misquote me either, that's not the way to argue about anything.
Bella ciao.
Which is an adaption of Aristotelian hylomorphism. I can really see the sense of that. I think it's an awareness that is overall lacking in Eastern philosophy. (I wonder if we would have templates, a concept so ubiquitous in modern manufacturing and industrial organisation, had we not had the Forms to begin with.)
Quoting Paine
I get that, but in practice they are often not differentiated.
The point of the phenomenological article I referenced is pertinent. It begins:
Today's culture is inclined to view the natural attitude - call it direct realism for argument's sake - as normative, and the questioning of it an imposition on basic common sense. Whereas classical philosophy East and West understands the human condition as fundamentally imperfect or flawed - the myth of the Fall, or of Avidya/ignorance (not to be conflated, although with some common grounds.) That is even present in Heidegger's 'verfallen' albeit shorn of any religious undertone, foreshadowed by the last paragraph of that passage. But then existentialism and phenomenology recognise this, in a way that Anglo philosophy generally does not.
That really resonates with me. Mind as the unmanifest until actualised by sense-contact.
Quoting Paine
Here's an earlier (and briefer) essay Categories of the Temporal: An Inquiry into the Forms of the Finite Understanding
I hope you do!
Thanks for this. By now I almost speak Rodelian -- his diction is surprisingly simple, if his ideas are not -- but this looks helpful.
(I've been doing a house-sit over the Christmas period which ends Sunday so hopefully will be able to make more headway with the text from next week.)
Where?
Except Hegel was never such a heart-throb. Gotta say, though, that for me the toughest sell so far in S-C&O is the connection to something genuinely Hegelian. I haven't finished the book yet and was interested to learn -- if the above-mentioned Peter Hanks is right -- that there's actually very little in it about Idealism, which was my impression so far.
https://www.academia.edu/110564586/Self_Consciousness_and_Objectivity_An_Introduction_to_Absolute_Idealism
In respect of why there's not much mention of idealism per se - his book is not about idealism as an historical doctrine or school of philosophy. It's more focussed on demonstrating that the very structure of thought and self-consciousness entails idealism. Implicit rather than explicit, you could say.
But I will go through the front door and buy the book. I have read enough primary text of both Aristotle and Hegel to make swimming through a bunch of conflicting opinions before trying the book itself more work than I was afraid of taking on in the first place.
Pardon me. The only way for him to be correct, is if he is indeed the reincarnation of Hegel, in a literal sense. Otherwise, he's interpreting Hegelian Idealism in a figurative, metaphorical way. But Hegelianism can only be true if one of the following is the case:
1) It ended with Hegel himself (Absolute Idealism, that is).
2) It did not end with Hegel himself, because Absolute Idealism can be turned into Dialectical Materialism.
3) It did not end with Hegel himself, because reincarnation exists, so Hegel has reincarnated and is alive today, just with a different name. But the photograph of that man looks a bit like Hegel himself, doesn't it?
What option do I choose? The first one: Absolute Idealism ended with Hegel himself. Absolute Idealism cannot be turned into Dialectical Materialism. Those are two different philosophies. And there is no such thing as reincarnation.
I am curious if you meant to link to Gerson's article rather than Wang's with the same title. If so, there is a comment I would like to make about past conversations between us on the topic.
I do not want to mount up for a new Anabasis against Gerson. But I will read Rödl to see how his view of Aristotle matches up with Gerson's concept of self-reflexivity and his Plotinus point of view of Aristotle that I have highlighted in the past.
The idea of a mean between extremes is interesting. I need to sit with that for a bit in order to avoid saying something off the cuff.
These are some of the papers from Rödl's Academia.edu page that popped out at me. Some of them are extremely closely related to @J's interest in Frege. All of them are written by Rödl himself:
And the book review that J pointed out:
I did intend to refer that article by Hua Wang 'The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle's D'Anima'. As I said, I found it searching for the theme 'the unity of knower and known' which as mentioned returns many articles on ancient and medieval philosophy about that theme which I think is an important subject in philosophy both East and West.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
I said that Rödl is like the 'current incarnation of German idealism'. 'Incarnate' means 'in the flesh'. He's representing Hegelian idealism for the current audience. That's all I meant.
A lot of material there, but then, these are online and relatively brief so probably good introductions to Rödl.
Historical context
* The idea of the knower and the known has been a philosophical problem for a long time
* The metaphysics of Descartes contributed to the modern form of this problem by separating the knower from the known
* Science has also contributed to this problem by insisting that subjective knowledge is not real knowledge
I haven't read your guys' entire exchange, but based off of my horrible interactions with @Arcane in this thread I can guess how it went down. Either way, I don't know why @Arcane keeps quoting that given the real irony is that @Arcane originally told me I was too nice and to tone it down; and then, when I did, they said I am too mean :lol:
You give me green stop-sign vibes @Arcane. **sigh**
I mean, have you read my pseudonym for this Forum?
But then I have to ask: am I breaking the law here? I don't think so. So, you can't say that I'm completely chaotic. I'm not causing a disturbance, or at least I think not.
And this one replies to the Hanks review I mentioned -- they make a good pair to read:
https://www.academia.edu/110564453/The_force_and_the_content_of_judgment
Sure, and all I'm saying is that Absolute Idealism, as Hegel himself understood it, entails that whoever believes in Absolute Idealism in a literal sense must also believe in reincarnation in a literal sense. Hegelianism without reincarnation is like decaffeinated coffee: it's not the real thing.
This quote is from Rödl's response to the Hanks review. It presents an unusually succinct (for Rödl) explication of one of his basic positions:
Now this strikes me as correct. Or, backing up just a little, I think the distinction he is drawing is meaningful, and correct to draw. I wish he had filled out "a different determination" at the end -- what exactly is the structure of "I judge a is F" if it is not understood as predication? But his larger point, I believe, is that the two statements -- "I judge a is F" and "a is F" -- have two different subjects. Rödl uses the term "object" rather than "subject," in the sense that Frege would use "object" or "argument" rather than "subject," but if my reading is correct, he's referring in each case to what we would loosely call the subject of the proposition. In the first instance, if it is a genuine predication (which Rödl denies), "judging that a is F" would be predicated of "I". In the second instance, F would be predicated of a.
This is only the first hill in Rödl's campaign to convince us of where and how Fregean logic fails, but I thought it was worth laying out as a preliminary and interesting thought.
Sounds good. The idea is a little bit off the cuff itself. I'm just trying it on for size. Whether or not it holds up to rigor, that basic model of "a mean between extremes" is the heart of the constructive criticism I would offer to @Wayfarer. If he can demonstrate a thesis that involves some kind of triangulation I would find it more persuasive.
That seems right to me. In fact I was recently quoting Aquinas saying something very similar in 's thread:
Quoting Aquinas, ST I.16 Article 2. Whether truth resides only in the intellect composing and dividing?
1. a is F
2. I know that a is F
Aquinas is saying that, supposing (1) is true, to judge (1) is to have an intellect which is true in relation to proposition (1). But to know the truth (per se) one must see (2) and its basis. This is easier if you have the student judge (1) and his teacher judge a variant of (2), namely, "He knows that a is F." When the intellect rightly corresponds to reality it is true; and when the intellect sees that it rightly corresponds it sees that it (the intellect - itself) is true.
The only difference seems to be that Rodl wants to talk about judgment rather than knowledge:
1. a is F
3. I judge a is F
Following Aquinas, what is judged in (1) is different than what is judged in (3), and therefore the conclusion that Rodl wants to avoid is simply true. But the trick is that this is comparing, "I judge (1)" to "I judge (3)," where the latter evaluates to, "I judge that I judge a is F." Nevertheless, it really is possible to predicate judgment in a way that is different from merely judging. The intellect possesses that power of recursivity.
I don't know whether it should be called a "propositional attitude." And depending on what Rodl means by a "predicative determination," one could dispute whether it is a proper predication. The recursive case is certainly an odd and rare kind of predication (and judgment).
The deeper problem I see here is exactly what came up in the Kimhi threads. The discussion inevitably turns into an academic exegesis of Frege, and to what end? Rodl seems to have a better grasp of Frege than Kimhi, but even if Rodl emerges victorious from the contest for Deutungshoheit, the thesis becomes tied in a precarious way to abstruse Fregian interpretation. If the thesis is significant, then it must be significant beyond Frege, in which case Rodl should be willing to say, "Even if I've got Frege wrong, my work is still important because _____." The fact that Banno thinks Frege is largely obsolete is another way into this conundrum. There is a danger of hyper-focusing on Frege without first showing that Frege matters, and this is particularly true on TPF where the relevance of the thesis is to the front of everyone's mind.
More simply:
Rodl says that these are both false, but commonsense would say that they are true, and this was borne out in your other thread, at least regarding the first claim.
Regarding the second claim:
Rodl seems to be claiming that these are all the exact same judgment. Or more precisely, that "what is judged" in each is exactly the same. That strikes me as understandable but also implausible. Odd as it may seem, we can make judgments (and predications) about our judgments. For example, when one conscientiously "doubles down" in the midst of an argument, this is what they have done. They have examined their judgment and judged it correct (and in the midst of that process they indeed "judge that they judge," especially in confirming the interlocutor's interpretation of their claim).
If it makes you feel better, Rodl would be correct when it comes to angels. Self-judging judgments require temporal-discursive reason. That might be my response to Kimhi and Rodl: I see your dissatisfaction with excessively compositional reasoning schemes, but it is true that we are not angels. There is a strongly compositional aspect to the way we reason. Reducing our reasoning to ratio makes no sense, but it is also wrong to reduce it to intellectus. We are involved in both.
I wouldn't be so quick to make that judgement. But I don't see what this has to do with whether or not there is a reincarnation of Hegel.
I guess this depends on what "be turned into" means. There is a break in the continuity of identity which is implied by that phrase. And there is a special term for such a break in the continuity of identity, it is generally known as a "transformation". "Reincarnation" also implies a type of transformation, as does "transubstantiation". The concept of "transformation" has been a great gift to creative philosophers. Now there must have been some jealousy from the mathematicians, because the concept "transformation", has now been adopted into mathematics and physics, enabling lofty sophistry.
I don't see how you can make the leap from "I think like this" to "we think like this". You can judge "I am not an angel", but what validates "we are not angels"? Angels may walk amongst us, like Jesus did.
The process known as evolution is dependent on substantial differences within the multitude designated by "we". This difference demonstrates the faultiness of general conclusions concerning "the way we reason".
Rödl replies to this head-on in S-C & O. He says, of recursive, 1st person cases:
Rödl goes on to argue that the problem can't be contained this way, that regardless of how "odd and rare" this sort of (attempted) predication is, it reveals problems that infect all attempts to apply the force-content distinction. That's a whole other topic, of course, but I just wanted to affirm that Rödl is well aware that one way out of this problem would be to mount a successful argument that there's something special about recursion.
Yeah, but what folks are telling me about that, is that to discuss the topic of reincarnation is to go Off Topic in this Thread, since it's about Aristotle and something that Sebastian Rödl said about De Anima. In other words, if I or anyone else wants to talk about reincarnation, we need to do that in another Thread. And after careful consideration, I have arrived that the conclusion that such is indeed the case.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This, on the other hand, might have something to do with Aristotle. A transformation is just a change of form. The question would be, can an Aristotelian substance change its form and still be the same substance? That's a tricky thing to disentangle, you see. For several reasons. First of all, an Aristotelian substance is composed of matter and form. Arguably, it can change its matter and still be the same substance, but it can't change its form and still be the same substance, because its form is its essence. It helps to use a somewhat scholastic vocabulary here to interpret what Aristotle is meaning to say. But not only from the point of view of medieval realism, as exemplified by Thomas Aquinas, but also from the point of view of medieval nominalism, as exemplified by William of Ockham. I don't see how there can be middle ground between Aquinas and Ockham, as far as philosophy goes. Perhaps Peter Abelard, the medieval French scholastic, could be in some sense a middle ground between Aquinas and Ockham, but I've never actually seen the case spelled out in detail, I've only seen it mentioned or otherwise implied or suggested. So, back to the main point, I would say that an Aristotelian substance cannot change its form and still be the same substance, because the form of the substance is its essence, and if its essence changes, then its identity has changed: it is no longer the same substance, it is instead an entirely different substance. For example, a gold atom has 79 protons in its nucleus. That is the essence of gold, as far as I'm concerned, and it's a curious thing because that's what Kripke said, and I agree with him on that point (thought I don't agree with him on other points). If a gold atom loses just a single proton, it turns into a platinum atom. And if a gold atom gains just one proton, it turns into a mercury atom. At the level of ordinary objects, surely we can distinguish a solid gold bar from a puddle of liquid mercury. Why? Because they have different essences. Why? Because the essence of gold is to have 79 protons in every one of its atoms, and the essence of mercury is to have 80 protons in every one of of its atoms. When a gold atom turns into a mercury atom, what has happened is not the mere addition of a little bit of matter, but rather a change in essence, and consequently, a change in form (solid versus liquid), and consequently, a change in substance (gold is not the same chemical substance as mercury).
Well without those arguments I have no reason to assent to their conclusions.
Again, Rodl is giving a reductio, and I am pointing out that no one sees any problem with the so-called "absurdity."
You could phrase it this way, as a true/false question:
[/list]
Most people would answer, "true." So why believe Rodl when he says "false"? Again, what are needed are arguments for the implausible position. Recursive thought is odd and rare, not impossible.
Now that I have decided to read the book, I will not be reading reviews of it. I will be looking for what I gleaned from Hegel.
Chief amongst them will be the connection to Self-Consciousness as a process of development as depicted in the Phenomenology of Geist. The movement from initial states of mind and the actions they motivated to the emergence of greater awareness. Hegel is making a statement about establishing a new method equal in spirit to Aristotle claiming that:
The issue here is that we reason discursively, and we do not (strictly speaking) ever simultaneously engage in more than one judgment. So when there is at least a temporal distinction between the two instances of judgment, and in this case there is also a logical priority issue, i.e. one of the two judgments must be logically prior to the other.
So if Rodl wants to read that proposition as a non-temporal angelic intellection, it won't make any sense. That is, if we try to make both instances of 'judge' temporally and logically identical, it won't make any sense.
One way for Rodl to dispute true recursivity would be to say that the only way to interpret in a non-vacuous way is to interpret it as .
I think you misunderstand. According to , Rodi is differentiating between the judgement of "a is f", and the judgement of "I judge a is f". The former is a proper predication. The latter, in which the subject would be a self-conscious being, and the predicate would be a belief, cannot be accurately characterized as a predication.
This is the issue I argued in another thread, we cannot represent an idea as the property of a human subject in the way of predication, because this would require that we violate the fundamental laws of logic. (Peirce does this with universals.) For example, when a person deliberates while making a choice, one holds both of two contrary ideas in one's mind at the very same time. If we predicate those ideas of the subject, there would be violation of the law of noncontradiction.
This points back to what I said about how we would represent "the soul", earlier in the thread.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/958098
First, we determine that we would reject the idea that the soul is like a physical object with parts. (This was accomplished by Plato's argument against the soul being a harmony.) However, Aristotle demonstrated that "the soul" is an actuality, a substantive form. So it appears like we could represent "the soul" as a primary substance, and proceed to describe its properties in the way of predication. But because this procedure would lead to absurd conclusions, we must reject the idea that "the soul" is like an object which we can represent with subject/predicate relations.
So, the soul has "properties" of a sort, represented by Aristotle as potentia, capacities, or powers, but we see now that these capacities cannot be described by proper predication, because this creates a situation in which the fundamental laws of logic would be violated. This is the issue Aristotle came across with the proposal of "matter", and "potential" in general. To properly understand these concepts, violation of the fundamental laws of logic was required. He proposed we adhere to the law of noncontradiction, but allow for violation of the law of excluded middle.
Aristotle's law of identity, allows that a material object has a changing form, yet maintains its identity as the same thing, through a temporal continuity assigned to the matter. A thing's identity may be its "essence", but its essence is ever changing, as form is "actual". This is why we can represent a thing as a subject for predication, and as time passes, contrary predications are true of the same subject. That is how Aristotle represented becoming, or change, as contrary predications to the same subject.
Ok. What would be an example of that, so that I can get a clear picture of it? I would think of a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly. The caterpillar, arguably, does not have the same form as the butterfly that it turns into, but it still has the same essence, because it's the same individual creature, it just happens to have a different form. Is that what you're saying?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure, I agree.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Indeed.
The form of a material thing, in the strict sense of the word "form", in hylomorphism, includes all the accidental properties of that material thing. That's what gives the thing its unique "identity", as the particular thing which it is. However, the accidents are always changing, therefore the form of the material thing is always changing. Nevertheless we say that the thing maintains its identity as the same thing despite the scratches and dents that it receives.
We have to be careful with our use of "essence" because the "essence" of a particular, "what the thing is", as a unique particular, is different from "essence" as a type, "what type the thing is". This is the difference between primary and secondary substance, the unique individual being primary substance, the species being secondary substance..
From the other thread:
It's worth noting that for Aristotle thought is far broader than judgement. Judgement comes in two forms, one involving affirmation and negation and the other definition. "Knowledge" comes in many more forms than in most other thinkers (a good thing IMO, we use "know" in many different senses).
Thought is necessarily as broad as can be, since the mind is "potentially all things" (Aristotle draws the comparison to a blank slate upon which anything might be written in De Anima, although this cashes out in a way that is radically different from Locke's later invocation of the same image). Thought is, in this sense, a parallel of prime mater, although it is also, as determinate, the parallel of act/eidos.
Rödl's point on the self-awareness of assertion reminds me of Plotinus and co.'s interpretation and expansion of Aristotle. Except that for them this self-awareness only applies to knowledge, and really only to that knowledge that is most properly called "knowledge," which involves the co-identity of the intelligible and the intellect, as opposed to mere (informed, true) belief. All knowledge of this sort is, in a sense, self-knowledge, whether that be through the "undescended intellect" of Plotinus, or later attempts to put this capacity "within" embodied intellect. St. Augustine, for instance, has all (true) knowledge coming through a process of turning inward and upward. The mind is a "microcosm" of being (St. Bonaventure) and knowing is a sort of conformity, but also a sort of self-knowing; however, the microcosm is not a representation (which would open the Neoplatonists to all the charges of the Sextus and the other Empiricists).
I think Rödl is on much shakier ground though, because it's less obvious that this sort of self-reflection is either implied in all judgements, nor does it seem impossible in recursive judgements.
For one thing, in the broader English sense of "judge," we do things like judge where a line drive hit to us in baseball is going to land and run to catch it without any obvious self-reflection.
But more importantly, we often do seriously reason about our own judgements when it comes to practical reason. If we are continually courting lust, gluttony, and wrath, we might seriously question if we truly judge these to be bad. Do we really believe what we think we believe? We might affirm it with good justification, but do we know it, do we [I] understand it[/I], do we possess a noetic grasp of it?
Perhaps we do [I]judge[/I] such vices to be bad, but perhaps we do not know this, or perhaps we only know it in a muddled in unclear way (consider here Plato's dual contentions that the person who truly knows Justice does not act unjustly, and that knowing Justice requires turning the "whole person" towards it in the first place).
As mentioned earlier, all knowledge is knowledge of eidos and of universals. If we predicated unique terms of unique sensations we could not be wrong, and no meaningful knowledge of an unbounded number of causes can be had but through a grasp of finite, unifying principles. But Aristotle tanks the idea of subsistent forms (and it's unclear if Plato even intended this, although he was certainly interpreted this way) and later commentators tank the idea of totally subsistent natures, leading to the idea that all knowledge is ultimately knowledge of the Logos/One/God. Or for Hegel, it is knowledge of the Absolute.
And self-knowledge is implied here. For Hegel Spirit is an essential moment, not contingent. However, it's also a moment that needs to be attained. You have to [s] suffer[/s] read through PhS and the Logic to get to Absolute Knowing, which is itself historically situated. But it isn't a facet of every moment. It's decidedly absent from the moment of sense certainty where PhS begins.
Another way to look at the distinction is the difference between "first person declarative" and "informational" statements. Robert Sokolowski's very interesting phenomenology-centered approach to these same questions (also through the lens of St. Thomas and Aristotle) in "The Phenomenology of the Human Person," plumbs this distinction. In the former, our "I" statements involve us as thinking, agents of truth. However, we can also make merely informational statements about the world and ourselves without asserting ourselves as agents.
What Sokolowski gets right in the tradition is that demonstration is a means of grasping the intelligibility of things, of knowing, not what knowledge, much less thought, wholly consists in. For instance, science is a virtue, not a set of demonstrations. The idea that to "think p" is to judge p, and also to judge that one judges p, seems to court the reduction of thought to judgement (which does happen in many philosophies, there is a sort of Cartesian theater of sensation and imagination that the "buffered self" thinks [I]about[/I], which is more along the lines of what I think Kant is getting at).
It may be worth pointing out that this recent tangent on judgment comes not from the OP nor from Rodl's book, but from <an article that Rodl wrote in 2020> (linked here).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
and
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm about to post something in the "p and I think p" thread that touches on the reduction of thought to judgment.
Hmm, this is exactly what Sokolowski tries to disambiguate. For one, we can fail to be proper "agents of truth." We can live into our nature in this respect more or less well. We can side with Machiavelli over Cicero as respects the practicality of lying and deception. We can attempt to simply abdicate our role as agents of truth. Indeed we can do so [I] self-consciously[/I], essentially refusing to take on Rödel's notion here.
This is exactly what lands Pilate in Hell in my preferred reading of the Inferno (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/959841).
Now, in a certain sense, I feel like Rödel is simply getting at the "agent of truth," idea from a different angle, which isn't surprising because there is a confluence of historical influences here. The resemblance to Neoplatonic readings of Aristotle I mentioned does not seem off-base given: "We need to understand how judgment can be knowledge of what is in such a way that, precisely as knowledge of what is, it is nothing other than self?knowledge of knowledge, or knowledge knowing itself. This is a formula of absolute idealism."
However, either this reviewer has missed the mark (which is possible, because I agree that Rödel writes confusingly) or Rödel seems to be collapsing knowing and judgement, while also assuming that all knowing reaches the status of Absolute Knowing (noesis). Maybe it's just the reviewer, but the mutable, contingent fact that "Obama lives in Chicago," is not the sort of thing that is really the proper object of noesis.
I always read PhS as sort of suggesting, like Aristotle, that Absolute Knowing is more a sort of a virtueand I suppose it might make more sense if the recognition of the self-conscious nature of knowledge is an ideal we are removing road blocks to attain, as opposed to something clearly applying to all human thought.
This is how I read something that @Wayfarer said. But the funny thing is, I'm not convinced it's a virtue. Or perhaps it is, up to a point. I think the younger generation's fixation on self and self-consciousness perhaps pushes beyond the virtue into the vice, and so I'm a bit wary of these younger scholars pressing so hard into self-consciousness.
In an intellectual sense we see the same thing with excessively self-scrutinizing epistemologies, as if having perfectly clear knowledge of our act of knowing will justify our knowledge. When it is done in this way it has gone too far - a kind of intellectual incurvatus in se.
Consider from the Nichomachean Ethics:
Quoting source
In all the axial-age philosophies, what is 'higher' is also more real and more virtuous. That is the axis of quality which has generally been occluded by modern philosophy.
I suppose it depends on how it is approached. But Rödl maintains the ultimate proper orientation of the individual towards the Good (at least in Wallace's treatment of him). Some of the quotes sound largely consistent with (if not necessarily suggestive of) a more Platonic/Patristic notion of knowledge as self-knowledge.
Not surprising, he's a Hegel guy and Hegel was deeply inspired by Meister Eckhart and Boheme, who were very influenced by the whole Augustinian tradition.
Anyhow, I tend to agree with Kierkegaard that the more common risk in Hegelianism (if not present for Hegel himself, properly understood) is not the elevation of the self and of human particularity/authenticity, but of washing it out and ignoring it.
Yes, especially if Hegelianism is reduced (as it apparently was when Kierkegaard was writing) to a weird version of scientism, and a complete collapse of the subject/object distinction.
A car gets dented, it still retains its identity as being the same thing, despite that change of form.
After spending a couple days, those linked papers/articles/essays give me a better understanding of Rödls general philosophy. Im actually beginning to appreciate his neo-Kantianism in expression, if not so much in theory.
He leads us below the language barrier, re: .Quoting Wayfarer .whereas Kant had no choice but to put his speculative metaphysics to word. He expected the reader to understand the system as its articulated is not how the system works on its own, the only reason for its articulation is because it is not known.
Rödl attempts to show this, by saying were not being told anything we dont always already know, but of course, we dont always already know that, e.g., I think must accompany all my thoughts.
Yeah, I'm not happy with that either. But I don't like that move in general -- too gnostic for my tastes.
Sure. It's like my example of the caterpillar that turns into a butterfly.
Yeah, others tastes as well. Still, there are those insisting we gain nothing by deleting epistemological gnostic mysticism in order to make room for pure logic, and gain even less by inserting (gasp) a transcendental qualifier.
Another thing: in the text, 9.3, he talks about principles as they relate to and condition judgement. Its a worthy exposé, but very far from Kantian, insofar as he treats the primacy of first judgement as conditioned by principles derived from experience, or, as he calls it, the power of knowledge, when in fact, these belong to pure reason. You can get to empirical judgements related to science from principles of experience, but you cant get to judgement itself, as such, from there.
(Caveat: I skimmed; but the gist is pretty close I think. Open to deeper consideration if youve got some)
The problem though, is your interpretation. You say "it still has the same essence". It doesn't have the same essence because the essence of an individual material object, as an individual material object , consists of all those accidentals which are changing. The object however, retains its identity despite changing. This implies that the identity of the object is associated with its matter rather than with its form. The matter is what persists through the change, as does the thing's identity.
How do you solve the problem of the Ship of Theseus, then? Unlike an inorganic object, the identity of an organism arguably requires the spatiotemporal continuity of form under a sortal.
The name of the object "Ship of Theseus" is not the thing's identity, nor is anything we say about the object, "what it is". So the purported problem is not an issue of identity at all, that's a ruse. The thing's identity inheres within the thing itself.
Neither, because dividing a thing into parts creates distinct objects with distinct identities. That's why the problem is a ruse, it associates "identity" with the name for a thing, rather than with the thing itself. If we divide a thing, remove a part, and wish to maintain the same name for one of the parts rather than another, that's a matter of convention, not identity.
Think of it this way. Imagine that you have a watch. Suppose that you disassemble it. Has the watch ceased to exist? Some metaphysicians say "yes": there is nothing there, other than the parts of a watch, which used to compose it, and now they compose nothing at all. Other metaphysicians say "no": the watch itself has not ceased to exist, it has merely ceased to be unified: it now exists as a scattered object.
No matter what position you take in that debate, in the example of the watch, the problem with the Ship of Theseus still stands: it is not self-evident that when you divide an object into parts, the original object ceases to exist, even if new objects with distinct identities are created in such a case.
That's why the correct answer is neither. The issue you sight is not a problem of metaphysical "identity", it's an issue of naming conventions.
So you have a deflationary approach to metaphysics? Is that it?
I don't think so, but I don\t know.
Yes it's what I believe. I also just noticed that I spelled "cite" wrong.
Ok.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No one cares, except for Grammar Nazis. Your point was understood despite your grammatical mistake.
This relates to your recent post as well (), but I am going to place it in this thread. (And I realize Arcane Sandwich will disagree with this.)
I was listening to an interview with Rachel Coleman on her recent paper, How is it with the nothing?, Her emphasis is a Thomistic critique of Heidegger. It reminded me of the way that you oppose Scientism or J opposes Frege, and it helped crystallize some of my thoughts on the subject.
As I see it, the modern period is characteristically domineering rather than receptive. It is a kind of grasping at being God, which is the antithesis of Philippians 2:6. Everything is in our hands; everything is up to us; knowledge is primarily something we do; we are the occupants of the view from nowhere; and making-knowledge is the highest form of knowledge. Now Scientism is a kind of grotesque epitome of this attitude, and one which is widely recognized to be aberrant. But it is only an epitome. That is, the basic mindset is much more widespread than Scientism. For example, if there were a harsh drought then Scientism would be the place where the fire starts. But the drought is a problem even apart from the fire, and it is precisely what gives rise to the fire.
Now when I see your response to Scientism (or Js response to Frege), it reminds me of antinatalism as an analogy. On this analogy everyone recognizes that suffering is a problem, and also that antinatalism would technically solve the problem of suffering, but also that antinatalism is a kind of overreaction or over-correction to the problem of suffering. In just the same way I would say that Idealism (a denial of mind-independent reality) is an overreaction or over-correction to Scientism and the surrounding drought.
Now perhaps the most effective response to Scientism has been Heidegger. Heidegger sees that what is ultimately at stake is not a doctrine or theory, but rather a posture, and in particular a posture towards being. But for Catholics Heideggers response is flat-footed in its own way, and here I am thinking of Catholics who critically engage Heidegger, such as Cyril ORegan, John Deely, Ferdinand Ulrich, and to a lesser extent, John Caputo. Essentially the idea is that Heidegger is right to emphasize a receptivity to being and a shedding of that domineering attitude (which comes to a breaking point in Scientism), but that Heideggers thought ultimately leads nowhere. It over-corrects into, and over-relies on, nothingness. This is similar to what Colemans paper on Ulrich seems to argue (note: I do not have access to the paper itself).
In any case, what is required is an attitude toward reality that is receptive and not merely domineering and activistic; an attitude that does not pretend that one can exhaust reality but nevertheless recognizes that reality can be truly known. That our interaction with the real is not just running quantifiable scientific experiments on inert matter, but that being nevertheless does possess its own character and subsistence that meets us as a true, mind-independent interlocutor.
The difficulty with over-correction is that it fails to give the devil his due. It fails to see what is right and true in Scientism, or in Frege, and instead wants to fully negate the thought. Instead of looking at the problems that Scientism or Frege address, it is only willing to look at the problem that itself wants to address, and when only one problem is considered the answer will inevitably be one-dimensional, like antinatalism.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on Scientism.
Agree. I've often remarked that the mentality of modern culture can be summed up in the motto 'nihil ultra ego'. The Cartesian ego becomes the fulcrum, the arbiter, of truth, buttressed on the ramparts of scientific truth. And this is fundamental to liberal individualism. (Not that I would prefer any kind of social collectivism per Asiatic cultures.)
[quote=Remi Braque;https://firstthings.com/the-impossibility-of-secular-society/]Democratic space must remain inside itself. To put it in Latin: It must be immanent. Tocqueville noticed that aristocratic man was constantly sent back to something that is placed outside his own self, something above him. Democratic man, on the other hand, refers only to himself.
The democratic social space is not only flat but closed. And it is closed because it is has to be flat. What is outside, whatever claims to have worth and authority in itself and not as part of the game, must be excluded. Whoever and whatever will not take a seat at the table at the same level as all other claims and authorities, however mundane, is barred from the game.[/quote]
(I'm a bit disquieted to find myself in agreement with these sentiments, as part of me sees it as reactionary conservatism, but it can't be helped.)
However - the post of mine that you quoted from, while related to all of the above, attempts to analyse it from a specific perspective: that of the history of ideas, and the decline and fall of classical metaphysics. There's a quote given in the Joshua Hochschild lecture that we've discussed previously:
[quote=Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences]Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.[/quote]
For what it's worth, I agree with this sentiment. I see the advent of materialism as inextricably connected with abandonment of the understanding of universals (scholastic or Aristotelian realism.) Not that there wasn't a great deal of dogma in those musty schools that had to be jettisoned, but that something vitally important went with it. Why? Because of the very nature of universals or Augustine's 'intelligible objects': real but immaterial. And as you will know, it was the capacity of nous to apprehend those immaterial realities which was the very essence of the rational psuch?. Thereafter the link between intellect and faith was severed, culminating in Luther's salvation by faith alone and the fideistic nature of much of modern Christianity.
That's the background to the idea I'm trying to sketch out in the post I asked you to comment on. I think I might make it subject of an essay (even if I'm out of my depth in much of it.)
Why would you make "reality can be truly known" a condition of the preferred attitude? What principles would support this?
This reminds me of a book of D.C. Schindler's I really liked. It seems to me that a major problem of modernity is not only that consciousness is assumed to be simply a representation of reality, but one where the relationship between reality and appearance is more or less arbitrary. Reality does not entail consciousness; it and its contents are accidental and contingent.
And so, since we can never "step outside conscious," we can never step into reality. Yet this ignores the great reminder that Hegel offers, that the Absolute must contain both reality and appearance.
Schindler's book focuses on the Doctrine of Transcendentals, particularly our relation to Beauty. It's probably one of the more accessible works on this topic.
Anyhow, the second part of the book focuses on the idea that love is primarily oriented towards Beauty, not Goodness (recalling Plato's Symposium and St. Augustine's ascent via eros). Thus, love is not simply a desire, but in some sense prior to desire, and this agrees with the Patristics who saw man's fallen state as essentially derived from the misattribution and disorder of love. But, due to Beauty standing at the intersection of Goodness and Truth, it also means that love relates to will and intellect, not just will.
Such a view certainly makes more sense of Dante's Virgil, a stand-in for human reason who spends most of his time instructing the Pilgrim on "what and how to love," often through rational insights.
I suppose another way to look at it is the classical semiotic triad. There, the tripartite relation is irreducible. The sign vehicle/logos is what joins the thing known and the knower in a sort of nuptial union (a gestalt), making them one. The modern view tends towards the sign vehicle being an impenetrable barrier between knower and known, and then in the post-modern tradition the object of knowledge simply vanishes because it cannot be known and there is just sign vehicle floating free, constituting reality.
Or a longer, in-depth review: https://lonergan.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/LoveModernpredicamentSummary.pdf
'Modern culture, argues D.C. Schindler is largely a conspiracy to protect us from the real.
I have copped some hostility in the past for saying that the aim of modernity is to create a safe space for the ignorant. I'm sure it's the same idea.
I got a marvellous book a couple of years back, Radiance of Being, Stratford Caldicott (avery poignant story of his premature death from cancer too). I really related to his story, also, as he had been deeply studying Mah?y?na Buddhism before converting to Catholicism. There's a strain of Christian Platonism that I'm very drawn to, although I have real problems with the institution and its history.