Where does logic come from? Some thoughts

Reply to tom111

Quoting tom111

Stage 4: Being itself generates logic The conclusion: Logic isn't a set of rules we invented to think clearly. It's not even something minds discover about reality. Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself. The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic.

Thoughts?

I love your explication of logic by way of your 4 stages. My only problem with it is that the very first stage already relies on an unrealized supposition concerning what being and reality are. Where do we get the notion of a being as that which is identical with itself? From ‘reality’ , or as the result of a human construction, an abstraction which idealizes experience in such as way as to invent the notion of pure self-identity? As Merleau-Ponty puts it:

“...the identity of the thing with itself, that sort of established position of its own, of rest in itself, that plenitude and that positivity that we have recognized in it already exceed the experience, are already a second interpretation of the experience...we arrive at the thing-object, at the In Itself, at the thing identical with itself, only by imposing upon experience an abstract dilemma which experience ignores”(The Visible and the Invisible)

Reply to tom111

There was a thread on this a while back you might find interesting: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14593/what-is-logic/p1

Stage 3: Even pure being implies logic Even if we take the concept of pure being, logic still arises. We are gesturing to a concept, being, and automatically differentiating it from its negation; the idea of nothingness. As we did earlier with the chair, we are taking a concept (pure being), differentiating it from something else (nothingness)< and from here emerges the fundamental laws of logic. If being is A, then we now know that A=A, A != not A, etc.

Or, as Hegel has it, it also "implies" much else, since sheer, indeterminant being ends up being indistinguishable from nothingness and collapses into its opposite. Houlgate's commentary is excellent here. For Hegel, this necessitates the sublation of nothing by being, leading to becoming, whereby being is constantly passing into nothingness.

You can describe this in information theoretic terms too (as Floridi has done). An infinite stream of just 1s, or the same 1 measured again and again, ad infinitum, is incapable of conveying information. Indeed, it can only "be a 1" as compared against some background that serves as a 0. Spencer Brown's Law's of Form are another way to get at this. Likewise, you can imagine a soundwave of infinite amplitude and frequency (the sheer fullness of being). All the waves will cancel out, due to the infinite frequency and amplitude, with each peak being offset by an identical trough, and the result will be silence (albeit a pregnant silence, the silence of the Pleroma if you will).

Stage 4: Being itself generates logic The conclusion: Logic isn't a set of rules we invented to think clearly. It's not even something minds discover about reality. Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself. The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic.

I think this is another thing that can be formulated quite well in information theory, although I have a suspicions that all these different ways of looking at it are isomorphic in a way.

Reply to Joshs Reply to tom111

Right, Stage 1 reminded me of the opening of the Phenomenology of Spirit, where sheer sense certainty collapses into contentless sheer abstraction. Of course here, it is experience that is most abstract (for Hegel at least). As Hegel quipped, "gossip is abstract, my philosophy is not." That the particular individual (or particular individual interval of experience) is less abstract (more real) is itself a sort of presupposition (one C.S. Peirce goes as far as to label satanic, lol).

And note that Hegel is not idiosyncratic here, but is following the classical tradition he drew so much from. This ordering would hold true for Plato, Neo-Platonism, Augustine, Aquinas, high scholasticism, much Islamic thought, and arguably Aristotle. It's worth considering here then that the inversion of this tendency in modern thought (the preferencing of immediate experience and the particular) was first only countenanced on epistemic grounds. That is, it applied to the order of knowing. But this already applied to the order of knowing in the classical thought, according to the Aristotlian dictum that "what is known best to us" (concrete particulars) is not "what is known best in itself" (principles). Yet materialism turned this epistemic stance into a full blown metaphysical dogma. Robert M. Wallace is pretty good on this sort of thing (i.e. the greater reality of form), at least in Hegel and Plato.

Still, something must account for why experience is one way and not any other. And this suggests a prior, determinant actuality, which must include difference.

I'll also note that I disagree here:

Now, you probably recognise that when we talk about separate objects like "chairs" and "tables," the mind is arbitrarily cutting up reality into conceptual pieces - these aren't necessarily fundamental divisions within nature itself. BUT the key point is that there must still be genuine differences between one part of reality and another, rather than complete uniformity. Even if our specific conceptual boundaries are arbitrary, there's still real distinctness and differentiation in the fabric of reality itself.

Strictly speaking, an entirely arbitrary relationship between reality and appearances destroys the very notion of a reality/appearance dichotomy. If the relationship were such, then "reality" doesn't really have anything to do with appearances, since it "effects" it completely randomly (and so doesn't really effect it at all). We could never have access to "reality" if it was arbitrarily related to appearances. Yet, if all we have is appearances, and it is all we can ever have, by what grounds do we posit this separate, arbitrarily related "reality?"

However, if there is only appearances, then appearances just are reality.

That said, I don't think we have any good reason to think appearances are arbitrarily related to reality. That there is being prior to our experiences, and that it is determinant, is implied by the regularity of experience and the very possibility of intelligibility.

Still, there is a difficulty in calling "logic," as relates to human practices, by the same term as the "logic" of being. The two would seem to be related analogously. I am not sure what term to use here. I have considered "logos" for the "logic of being," with "logoi" for the discrete principles (in line with Patristic/Scholastic Greek usage). I actually think the Book of Causes (which no one reads anymore because it is an anonymous "rip-off" of Proclus' Elements) is a decent lens for explaining this. Maybe.

IMO logic arose from observing the relationships between physical entities. Cause and effect and so on. But I admit to being very shallow on the origins of logic, and avoid "being"and other vague concepts.

You might be interested in Robert Sokolowski's framing of how predication emerges from the phenomenology of human experience. It doesn't really go against anything you've said, since everything we know suggests the dependence of experience on what is [I]prior[/I] to it, but it does show how predication is grounded in experience itself.

[quote]
[Husserl] tries to show how the formal, logical structures of thinking arise from perception; the subtitle of Experience and Judgment is Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. The “genealogy” of logic is to be located not in something we are born with but in the way experience becomes transformed. Husserl describes the origin of syntactic form as follows.

When we perceive an object, we run through a manifold of aspects and profiles: we see the thing first from this side and then from that; we concentrate on the color; we pay attention to the hardness or softness; we turn the thing around and see other sides and aspects, and so on. In this manifold of appearances, however, we continuously experience all the aspects and profiles, all the views, as being “of” one and the same object. The multiple appearances are not single separate beads following one another; they are “threaded” by the identity continuing within them all. As Husserl puts it, “Each single percept in this series is already a percept of the thing. Whether I look at this book from above or below, from inside or outside, I always see this book. It is always one and the same thing.” The identity of the thing is implicitly presented in and through the manifold. We do not focus on this identity; rather, we focus on some aspects or profiles, but all of them are experienced, not as isolated flashes or pressures, but as belonging to a single entity. As Husserl puts it, “An identification is performed, but no identity is meant.” The identity itself never shows up as one of these aspects or profiles; its way of being present is more implicit, but it does truly present itself. We do not have just color patches succeeding one another, but the blue and the gray of the object as we perceive it continuously. In fact, if we run into dissonances in the course of our experience – I saw the thing as green, and now the same area is showing up as blue – we recognize them as dissonant precisely because we assume that all the appearances belong to one and the same thing and that it cannot show up in such divergent ways if it is to remain identifiable as itself. [It's worth noting the experiments on animals show they are sensitive to these same sorts of dissonances].

[Such experience is pre-syntactical, nevertheless] such continuous perception can, however, become a platform for the constitution of syntax and logic. What happens, according to Husserl, is that the continuous perception can come to an arrest as one particular feature of the thing attracts our attention and holds it. We focus, say, on the color of the thing. When we do this, the identity of the object, as well as the totality of the other aspects and profiles, still remain in the background. At this point of arrest, we have not yet moved into categoriality and logic, but we are on the verge of doing so; we are balanced between perception and thinking. This is a philosophically interesting state. We feel the form about to come into play, but it is not there yet. Thinking is about to be born, and an assertion is about to be made…

We, therefore, in our experience and thoughtful activity, have moved from a perception to an articulated opinion or position; we have reached something that enters into logic and the space of reasons. We achieve a proposition or a meaning, something that can be communicated and shared as the very same with other people (in contrast with a perception, which cannot be conveyed to others). We achieve something that can be confirmed, disconfirmed, adjusted, brought to greater distinctness, shown to be vague and contradictory, and the like. All the issues that logic deals with now come into play. According to Husserl, therefore, the proposition or the state of affairs, as a categorial object, does not come about when we impose an a priori form on experience; rather, it emerges from and within experience as a formal structure of parts and wholes...

This is how Husserl describes the genealogy of logic and logical form. He shows how logical and syntactic structures arise when things are presented to us. We are relatively passive when we perceive – but even in perception there is an active dimension, since we have to be alert, direct our attention this way and that, and perceive carefully. Just “being awake (Wachsein)” is a cognitive accomplishment of the ego. We are much more active, however, and active in a new way, when we rise to the level of categoriality, where we articulate a subject and predicate and state them publicly in a sentence. We are more engaged. We constitute something more energetically, and we take a position in the human conversation, a position for which we are responsible. At this point, a higher-level objectivity is established, which can remain an “abiding possession (ein bleibender Besitz).” It can be detached from this situation and made present again in others. It becomes something like a piece of property or real estate, which can be transferred from one owner to another. Correlatively, I become more actualized in my cognitive life and hence more real. I become something like a property owner (I was not elevated to that status by mere perception); I now have my own opinions and have been able to document the way things are, and these opinions can be communicated to others. This higher status is reached through “the active position-takings of the ego [die aktiven Stellungnahmen des Ich] in the act of predicative judgment.”

Logical form or syntactic structure does not have to issue from inborn powers in our brains, nor does it have to come from a priori structures of the mind. It arises through an enhancement of perception, a lifting of perception into thought, by a new way of making things present to us. Of course, neurological structures are necessary as a condition for this to happen, but these neural structures do not simply provide a template that we impose on the thing we are experiencing...

-Robert Sokolowski - The Phenomenology of the Human Person

[/quote]

Quoting tom111

If charge and mass exist, for instance, as two separate properties, then we can draw the conclusion that charge, C, does not equal mass, M, that C=C, M=M, C != not C, and so forth. The only required feature is some amount of difference within reality. Again, even if minds do not exist, reality is still implicitly following the laws of logic through the fact that there are differentiated properties and things such as the gravitational force, electromagnetism, protons, higgs bosons, etc.

I would question the assumption in this passage. They are genuine distinctions as discerned through empirical inquiry, and they form the backbone of modern physics. But whether those distinctions entail that reality “follows the laws of logic” independently of any interpreting subject is far from settled.

As @Joshs quoted from Merleau-Ponty:

“...the identity of the thing with itself... is already a second interpretation of the experience... we arrive at the thing-object... only by imposing upon experience an abstract dilemma which experience ignores” (The Visible and the Invisible).

That is, logic doesn't arise from being as such, but from how we encounter and articulate being. To cite another source that might resonate with the OP's concerns, Charles Pinter (Mind and the Cosmic Order) argues that logic is not something inherent in the world itself, but relies on the cognitive and conceptual framework through which we interpret experience. Even mathematical objects, Pinter says, are not discovered are constituted through acts of mental abstraction. They are real, but their reality is not the same as physical existence. Pinter suggests that logical laws emerge when we attempt to refer—that is, when we try to single something out and hold it steady in thought. But this act is interpretive - we impose identity, distinguish boundaries, and construct exclusions in order to make sense of the flux. Logic is thereby a function of cognition, not a pre-existent feature of a mind-independent reality.

Quoting tom111

The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic.

I'd go even further and claim, in a Spinozist sense, that logic IS being and that the law of non-contradiction (LNC) entails differentiations (i.e. multiplicities, or discontinua (à la 'atoms flowing in void')). Though 'systems of logic' are invented (i.e. derived), my guess is the applicability to being of such inventions is discovered as any given landscape of modalities (i.e. phase space) is explored.

Reply to tom111 Are you happy with that answer, or are you looking for alternative views?

Your question, for example, "Where does logic come from?", supposes that logic is a thing that comes from somewhere. If you presume such an ontological status at the get go, it should come as no surprise when you find that logic has just such an ontological status...

Have you presumed your conclusion?

Or take a look at this:
Quoting tom111

When you point at anything and say "this is a chair," you're automatically doing several things: identifying the chair as itself (law of identity), implicitly distinguishing it from everything else in the room (negation - "not-chair"), and treating it as definitely either a chair or not-a-chair with no middle ground (non-contradiction and excluded middle).

All good stuff. But notice that these are all things you do. Don't these at least hint that logic may be something we do rather than something we find?

We can pursue these ideas further, if you like. Just don't reply, if you are not intersted in thinking criticaly about your OP.

Quoting Banno

Don't these at least hint that logic may be something we do rather than something we find?

Could it not be something we do in response to something we find? Counting is something we do, but the rules governing it are imposed on us by necessity.

Interesting topic. Does logic have any empiricity anyway?

On one hand, I assume that logic wasn't invented; it was discovered. Just like math, logic is a set of rules beyond physical and mental things. Even God, if one believes in him, is subject to logic.

On the other hand, quantum mechanics and their fuzzy superpositions require a special logic that adds a third state between true and false. That seems to indicate that logic does imply a certain empiricity. But there's no final answer to that.

On the middle hand, why should logic emerge from experience and not vice versa? Experience may emerge from logic! I guess logic is a superpower that is mightier than anything else; in other words: Logic is the basis of all basics, the root of all roots.

Reply to Wayfarer

Doesn't Merleau-Ponty's point only hold in cases where one intentionally seeks to "get behind" judgement—to attempt to enter something like Hegel's analysis of sense certainty? In everyday experience, we walk through forests full of trees and squirrels, rooms with tables and chairs, etc., nor streams of unmediated sense data. When we see an angry dog, we do not have to abstract from sense data and think: "ah, that sense data incoming from over there can conform to a large, angry dog, I better run away."

Rather, this sort of understanding is automatic, and people can recognize objects about as quickly as they can provide any other sort of motor reaction to stimuli. It takes serious additional extra mental effort to enter the world of unmediated sense data where each moment of the same object can be judged distinct and not part of a preexisting whole (and this move is often unsuccessful), which arguably makes [I]that[/I] more abstract. Animals seem to do the same thing. The sheep does not seem to require any process of induction to recognize the whole of the wolf from its "sense data," and to act.

I am not sure if the sort of assumptions underpinning empiricists like Locke might not be in play here. Or at least, there is a presupposition that elevated the many over the one.

That is, logic doesn't arise from being as such, but from how we encounter and articulate being. To cite another source that might resonate with the OP's concerns, Charles Pinter (Mind and the Cosmic Order) argues that logic is not something inherent in the world itself, but relies on the cognitive and conceptual framework through which we interpret experience. Even mathematical objects, Pinter says, are not discovered are constituted through acts of mental abstraction. They are real, but their reality is not the same as physical existence. Pinter suggests that logical laws emerge when we attempt to refer—that is, when we try to single something out and hold it steady in thought. But this act is interpretive - we impose identity, distinguish boundaries, and construct exclusions in order to make sense of the flux. Logic is thereby a function of cognition, not a pre-existent feature of a mind-independent reality.

Right, but if there is no logos, no determinant actuality prior to the senses or intellection, then why is experience and intellection one way and not any other? If the relationship between appearances and reality were arbitrary, then there is effectively only appearances (we have no grounds to posit reality, and it makes no difference to us). But if there is only appearances, appearances just are reality.

Logic comes from predictability. What works consistently over what doesn't that generally offers tangible benefit, usually life saving circumstance. Don't touch fire, or you'll get burned. Don't go into the wilderness by yourself, or you'll get eaten (never return). Etc. Logic, actually, came, or perhaps rather was passed down from, folk stories. Whether true or not, they ended up being the basis of many truths we hold today. Truths that if ignored often result in tragedy.

Fables are a prime example. The average person, whether they realize it or not, base their actions on "fables" or "hypothetics" ie. "constructed scenarios" they make in their head and in a way, live out, in the context of the thought process. So, for example, let's say I haven't changed my tires in a few years. I will imagine, an unfortunate tale of what could happen (yet hasn't) to me if I continue not to do so. This will often result in actual action of the individual into something that, hopefully, prevents such. It's all really fascinating. Truly.

The plight of the thinking man.

"I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened"
- Mark Twain

Quoting tom111

So I believe logic (by which I'm generally referring to the fundamental laws of logic such as identity, non-contradiction, etc) necessarily emerges from the concept of being itself (or at the very least, emerge from any amount of differentiation within reality).

Before I make specific comments on your post, I'll lay out my own understanding of what logic is and how it works. This understanding comes from two primary sources 1) intuition and introspection and 2) my readings in cognitive science and psychology. That being said, although I might claim to be a half-assed philosopher, I make no claim to be anywhere close to even a half-assed logician.

What we call logic is a formalization of one form of human thought. Thought itself is a complicated mix of various mental processes which, at some level, are a representation of neurological processes in the human nervous system. (No, I'm not making a claim about the hard problem of consciousness.) Another way of saying this is that the structure and function of human mental processes, our minds, is a function of our biological, neurological, and psychological human nature. As such, it has evolved along with our bodies as a capability that helps us survive and reproduce.

Quoting tom111

Logic isn't a set of rules we invented to think clearly. It's not even something minds discover about reality. Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself. The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic.

So...No. Logic is not inherent in existence itself, whatever that means. To the extent it is a discovery, it is a discovery about the way our minds work, not about anything in the world outside ourselves. This brings us to the fundamental problem with the premise of your OP. Your argument is fundamentally circular.

Quoting tom111

When you point at anything and say "this is a chair," you're automatically doing several things: identifying the chair as itself (law of identity), implicitly distinguishing it from everything else in the room (negation - "not-chair"), and treating it as definitely either a chair or not-a-chair with no middle ground (non-contradiction and excluded middle). The very act of singling something out of the wider tapestry of reality forces logical structure into play.

Quoting tom111

This requires differentiated being For this to work, things must exist as distinct entities. Now, you probably recognise that when we talk about separate objects like "chairs" and "tables," the mind is arbitrarily cutting up reality into conceptual pieces - these aren't necessarily fundamental divisions within nature itself.

This seems contradictory - differentiation is logical, but it's also arbitrary. It seems as if you're saying the arbitrariness of it is what makes it logical. In fact, the way we break up reality is not arbitrary at all. We do it in such a way that we can deal effectively with the world. As I noted, I believe we can do that because our minds have evolved along with our bodies to keep us alive.

Quoting tom111

If charge and mass exist, for instance, as two separate properties, then we can draw the conclusion that charge, C, does not equal mass, M, that C=C, M=M, C != not C, and so forth.

Again, this seems contradictory. You say that the properties of mass and charge exist. How can we say they exist if the difference between them is arbitrary. Does everything that can be differentiated by the human mind exist? I guess I would look at it the other way round - only things that can be differentiated exist. That makes existence the function of the human mind.

Quoting tom111

Even if we take the concept of pure being, logic still arises. We are gesturing to a concept, being, and automatically differentiating it from its negation; the idea of nothingness.

Are you saying that pure being itself is arbitrary? Are you saying this is true even if there's no one around to think it, to apply logic to it. But that's what you're trying to demonstrate, isn't it?

Quoting tom111

Being itself generates logic The conclusion: Logic isn't a set of rules we invented to think clearly. It's not even something minds discover about reality. Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself. The moment anything exists - anything that has potential for differentiation - logical structure emerges naturally. Where there's being, there's logic.

Where there's being, there's logic. But being is a concept, an arbitrary distinction.

Quoting tom111

Stage 2: This requires differentiated being

This is something like what I've said before in that mathematics is based on the idea that there are categories of things. For there to more than one of anything means that you have established some sort of categorical system where similar objects are part of the same group to say that there is a multitude of those things. If everything were unique the we would have no basis to claim that there is two or more of anything. There would only be one of everything. How can one do math if there was only one of everything?

Logic also involves causation. Logic is a type of thought process that we were born with. We take in information, integrate it with our current knowledge and produce meaningful outputs. We reason our way to conclusions. Conclusions must logically follow the premises to be considered proper thinking. We were also born with emotions and start from a place of almost complete ignorance - with very little experience to base our first perceptions of the world on. As we get older we begin to understand what good thinking entails - what thought processes produce the best results - and we call those thought processes "logic" to help us distinguish between logical fallacies and logical thought processes.

Where did logic come from? Natural selection.

Ask AI how did logic evolve and you something like this:
"In evolutionary psychology, logic is understood to have emerged as a cognitive adaptation to solve adaptive problems in ancestral environments. It's not a single, isolated trait, but rather a set of cognitive mechanisms that allow for effective problem-solving, decision-making, and reasoning, ultimately contributing to survival and reproduction."
-Google AI

Reply to Harry Hindu

Where did logic come from? Natural selection.

Yes, but this presupposes something prior that determined human logic.

Reply to Outlander

So does:

Logic comes from predictability. What works consistently over what doesn't that generally offers tangible benefit, usually life saving circumstance.

I get what you're saying, but I don't not think Reply to tom111 meant to conflate human logic, e.g. predicate logic, the writing of the Prior and Posterior Analytics, etc., with the "logic" that is intrinsic to being. As I took it, he is saying the former (human formal systems and patterns of speech/thought) depend on something that is prior to them. Indeed, human logic has to depend on [I]something[/I] prior to it in some way, else it would be uncaused and would have to spring out of the aether as is. So I guess the question would rather be whether there is a similitude between the human forms and what lies prior to them, and I think the point is "there must be such a similitude in some sense for anything to be 'anything at all.'" Which is also to say that the human mind doesn't create the logical intelligibility of the world as a sort of sui generis feature of reality.

However, supposing an isomorphism (or some sort of morphism) between this prior logic and human logic doesn't require that the two are one and the same thing.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Where did logic come from? Natural selection.

This is what Konrad Lorenz had to say:

This is the basis of our conviction that whatever our cognitive faculty communicates to us corresponds to something real. The 'spectacles' of our modes of thought and perception, such as causality, substance, quality, time and place, are functions of a neurosensory organization that has evolved in the service of survival. When we look through these 'spectacles', therefore, we do not see, as transcendental idealists assume, some unpredictable distortion of reality which does not correspond in the least with things as they really are, and therefore cannot be regarded as an image of the outer world. What we experience is indeed a real image of reality - albeit an extremely simple one, only just sufficing for our own practical purposes; we have developed 'organs' only for those aspects of reality of which, in the interest of survival, it was imperative for our species to take account, so that selection pressure produced this particular cognitive apparatus...what little our sense organs and nervous system have permitted us to learn has proved its value over endless years of experience, and we may trust it. as far as it goes. For we must assume that reality also has many other aspects which are not vital for us.... to know, and for which we have no 'organ', because we have not been compelled in the course of our evolution to develop means of adapting to them.
— Konrad Lorenz - Behind the Mirror

Reply to T Clark
Quoting T Clark

What we experience is indeed a real image of reality - albeit an extremely simple one, only just sufficing for our own practical purposes; we have developed 'organs' only for those aspects of reality of which, in the interest of survival, it was imperative for our species to take account, so that selection pressure produced this particular cognitive apparatus...what little our sense organs and nervous system have permitted us to learn has proved its value over endless years of experience, and we may trust it. as far as it goes

What’s missing from Lorenz’a account is the more recent appreciation on the part of biologists of the reciprocal nature of the construction of the real. It is not simply a matter of the organism adapting itself to the facts of its environment, but of those very facts being a product of reciprocal alterations that go back and forth between organism and the world that it sets up for itself. What the reality of an organism’s environment is is just as much a product of the organism’s actions on it as it is the environment’s effects on the organism. Put differently, the perception of reality isnt a matter of representation or imaging of a static outside, but of patterns of activity which modify the outside in specific ways , producing feedback which in turn modifies the organism.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Doesn't Merleau-Ponty's point only hold in cases where one intentionally seeks to "get behind" judgement—to attempt to enter something like Hegel's analysis of sense certainty? In everyday experience, we walk through forests full of trees and squirrels, rooms with tables and chairs, etc., nor streams of unmediated sense data. When we see an angry dog, we do not have to abstract from sense data and think: "ah, that sense data incoming from over there can conform to a large, angry dog, I better run away

For the phenomenologist, there is no ready-made world of objects. To perceive trees, squirrels and rooms with tables and chairs is to constitute them through the interplay between expectation and response.

“We must now show that its intellectualist [idealist] antithesis is on the same level as empiricism itself. Both take the objective world as the object of their analysis, when this comes first neither in time nor in virtue of its meaning; and both are incapable of expressing the peculiar way in which perceptual consciousness constitutes its object. Both keep their distance in relation to perception, instead of sticking closely to it.

Reply to Joshs

For some phenomenologists. Phenomenology could hardly have become so influential in Catholic thought (winning over two saints and a pope) if it was inextricable from the idea that man is the measure of beings, or that subsistent being was not prior to created being.

Joshs:To perceive trees, squirrels and rooms with tables and chairs is to constitute them through the interplay between expectation and response.

An expectation of what is the defining question here? There is the question of ontological priority, what causes experience to be one way and not any other.

But that wasn't really my point. My point was that the phenomenological perspective is not the default. I think the overwhelming number of readers would agree that Husserl or Marion provide far more abstract descriptions of experience than common narratives about what one sees in the woods.

The idea that the immediate is less abstract assumes a certain sort of framing. That's the point of Hegel's quip at least. To assume that the most general theories or philosophy, the universal, the higher principles, etc. are necessarily "more abstract," is to have already abstracted parts of reality from the whole, and decided the part is more fundamental. A focus on the specific over the general is itself the result of abstraction. It's still in the mold of materialism and reductionism, the smallism that developed in reaction to the overarching bigism of classical metaphysics. Now maybe one really is more warranted than the other, that's another question.

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

My point was that the phenomenological perspective is not the default. I think the overwhelming number of readers would agree that Husserl or Marion provide far more abstract descriptions of experience than common narratives about what one sees in the woods.

Interesting that you would use the word abstract to describe an approach whose aim is precisely to bracket and see beneath the abstractions that are commonly used to think about everyday objects. In doing so, one does not privilege the part over the whole. On the contrary, one arrives at an enriched understanding of the whole. I certainly agree that empirical reduction relies on abstraction, which is why Husserl warned against what Evan Thompson in his recent book called the blind spot of science, the tendency to forget that its idealizations are convenient simplifications derived from the actually experienced lifeworld (is temperature nothing but the kinetic motion of molecules? Is color simply wavelengths of light?).

Reply to Joshs

I think Neoplatonism would be the paradigmatic example of the opposite orientation, although the idea is central in Scholastic thought, "Golden Age" Islamic thought, and some Hindu thought. I think Shankara's Advaita Vedanta would qualify, since phenomenon is maya ("illusion"). The idea is that the higher principle is more real than the particular. What is most properly knowledge is the co-identity of form in the intellect. The idea is that the experience of particulars is always incomplete and refers outside the particulars and sense experience. These are not wholly intelligible in themselves (and so not wholly themselves), both the experience of particulars (or experience itself) and even physical particulars themselves. Experiences are incomplete. They only "exist" as a sort of "abstraction," a pulling away from the whole that is not wholly real, in that the separation is an affectation (the creature having no real existence outside the One, God, Brahman, etc.).

Now obviously, if "abstract" is defined as "separation from experience of particulars (or matter)," this won't be the case. But in a broader sense abstraction is often taken to mean a separation from reality or unity. That is, abstractions are "less real." They are ens rationis, interpretive creations of the mind that are ontologically posterior to experience. We "construct" them. Yet any metaphysical realism is going to reverse this to at least some degree, because the forms grasped by the intellect will be prior to experience. They will be ontologically prior, while experience will be merely epistemically prior to a grasp of the universal/form.

Plotinus' undescended intellect is probably the best example I can think of, but that's likely unfamiliar. I'll share Wallace below just in case you're interested because he makes Plato and Hegel fairly Neoplatonic. It's sort of an ancillary objection, I know. It just occurred to me in my reading that what is considered "abstract" is in a sense inverted in the early modern period.

By calling what we experience with our senses less real than the Forms, Plato is not saying that what we experience with our senses is simply illusion. The “reality” that the Forms have more of is not simply their not being illusions. If that’s not what their extra reality is, what is it? The easiest place to see how one could suppose that something that isn’t an illusion, is nevertheless less real than something else, is in our experience of ourselves.

In Republic book iv, Plato’s examination of the different "parts of the soul” leads him to the conclusion that only the rational part can integrate the soul into one, and thus make it truly “just.” Here is his description of the effect of a person’s being governed by his rational part, and therefore “just”:

Justice . . . is concerned with what is truly himself and his own. . . . [The person who is just] binds together [his] parts . . . and from having been many things he becomes entirely one, moderate, and harmonious. Only then does he act. (Republic 443d-e)

Our interest here (I’ll discuss the “justice” issue later) is that by “binding together his parts” and “becoming entirely one,” this person is “truly himself.” That is, as I put it in earlier chapters, a person who is governed by his rational part is real not merely as a collection of various ingredients or “parts,” but as himself. A person who acts purely out of appetite, without any examination of whether that appetite is for something that will actually be “good,” is enacting his appetite, rather than anything that can appropriately be called “himself.” Likewise for a person who acts purely out of anger, without examining whether the anger is justified by what’s genuinely good. Whereas a person who thinks about these issues before acting “becomes entirely one” and acts, therefore, in a way that expresses something that can appropriately be called “himself.”

In this way, rational self-governance brings into being an additional kind of reality, which we might describe as more fully real than what was there before, because it integrates those parts in a way that the parts themselves are not integrated. A person who acts “as one,” is more real as himself than a person who merely enacts some part or parts of himself. He is present and functioning as himself, rather than just as a collection of ingredients or inputs.

We all from time to time experience periods of distraction, absence of mind, or depression, in which we aren’t fully present as ourselves. Considering these periods from a vantage point at which we are fully present and functioning as ourselves, we can see what Plato means by saying that some non-illusory things are more real than other non-illusory things. There are times when we ourselves are more real as ourselves than we are at other times.

Indeed, we can see nature as a whole as illustrating this issue of how fully integrated and “real as itself ” a being can be. Plants are more integrated than rocks, in that they’re able to process nutrients and reproduce themselves, and thus they’re less at the mercy of their environment. So we could say that plants are more effectively focused on being themselves than rocks are, and in that sense they’re more real as themselves. Rocks may be less vulnerable than plants are, but what’s the use of invulnerability if what’s invulnerable isn’t you?

Animals, in turn, are more integrated than plants are, in that animals’ senses allow them to learn about their environment and navigate through it in ways that plants can’t. So animals are still more effectively focused on being themselves than plants are, and thus more real as themselves.

Humans, in turn, can be more effectively focused on being themselves than many animals are, insofar as humans can determine for themselves what’s good, rather than having this be determined for them by their genetic heritage and their environment. Nutrition and reproduction, motility and sensation, and a thinking pursuit of the Good each bring into being a more intensive reality as oneself than is present without them.

Now, what all of this has to do with the Forms and their supposedly greater reality than our sense experience is that it’s by virtue of its pursuit of knowledge of what’s really good, that the rational part of the soul distinguishes itself from the soul’s appetites and anger and so forth. The Form of the Good is the embodiment of what’s really good. So pursuing knowledge of the Form of the Good is what enables the rational part of the soul to govern us, and thus makes us fully present, fully real, as ourselves. In this way, the Form of the Good is a precondition of our being fully real, as ourselves.

But presumably something that’s a precondition of our being fully real must be at least as real as we are when we are fully real. It’s at least as real as we are, because we can’t deny its reality without denying our own functioning as creatures who are guided by it or are trying to be guided by it.13 And since it’s at least as real as we are, it’s more (fully) real than the material things that aren’t guided by it and thus aren’t real as themselves.

From Robert M. Wallace - Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present

The key thing here is "self-determination." But this can be taken to be "self-determination" in a more abstract, metaphysical sense as well.

[Hegel] thinks he has demonstrated, in the chapter on “Quality,” that the ordinary conceptions of quality, reality, or finitude are not systematically defensible, by themselves, but can only be properly employed within a context of negativity or true infinity...

Note: For instance, one cannot understand “red” atomically, but rather it depends on other notions such as “color” and the things (substances) that can be red, etc. to be intelligible. This notion is similar to how the Patristics (e.g., St. Maximus) developed Aristotle in light of the apparent truth that even "proper beings" (e.g., a horse) are not fully intelligible in terms of themselves. For instance, try explaining what a horse *is* without any reference to any other plant, animal, or thing. This has ramifications for freedom as the ability to transcend “what one already is,”—the “given”—which relies on our relation to a transcendent absolute Good—a Good not unrelated to how unity generates (relatively) discrete/self-determining beings/things.

[Hegel] has now shown, through his analysis of “diversity” and opposition, that within such a context of negativity or true infinity, the reality that is described by apparently merely “contrary” concepts will turn out to be better described, at a fundamental level, by contradictory concepts. The fundamental reality will be contradictory, rather than merely contrary. It’s not that nothing will be neither black nor white, but rather that qualities such as black, white, and colorless are less real (less able to be what they are by virtue of [only] themselves) than self-transcending finitude (true infinity) is…

From Robert M. Wallace - Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God

Quoting T Clark

Logic is not inherent in existence itself, whatever that means. To the extent it is a discovery, it is a discovery about the way our minds work, not about anything in the world outside ourselves.

Just as there is no ocean "outside of" ocean-waves, there is no "world outside ourselves" because we – our minds – are aspects of the world itself rather than a separate Cartesian substance. Maybe it's how you've expressed your point, T Clark, that doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, I'll go on: my point – maybe not quite the OP's – is not that "logic is inherent in existence" but, parsimoniously, that logic is existence (i.e. 'universes' themselves are logico-computable processes ~Spinoza ... Deutsch, Wolfram, Tegmark) about / from which we (can) derive abbreviated syntaxes & formulae (which are, in effect, maps yet often mistaken for terrain (e.g. Plato-Aristotle, Kant-Husserl, Russell-Carnap)). :chin:

@jgill @Banno

Logic comes from us, human beings. To do logic is to perform a human activity, although crows are capable of primitive logic acts. To me it’s just an activity of sentient beings. It didn’t come from anywhere but us.

Quoting Joshs

What’s missing from Lorenz’a account is the more recent appreciation on the part of biologists of the reciprocal nature of the construction of the real. It is not simply a matter of the organism adapting itself to the facts of its environment, but of those very facts being a product of reciprocal alterations that go back and forth between organism and the world that it sets up for itself.

So... living organisms, including humans, affect the environment and organisms and environments evolve together. Agreed. That's not "missing from Lorenz's account." It's just not particularly relevant to the specific point he, and I, are trying to make which is - human minds, including our intellectual capacities, evolved in the same manner that our physical bodies did. Logic is something we brought to the world.

Quoting 180 Proof

Just as there is no ocean "outside of" ocean-waves, there is no "world outside ourselves" because we – our minds – are aspects of the world itself rather than a separate Cartesian substance.

@tom111's whole argument is based on distinctions between aspects of the world, i.e. separate Cartesian substances. If you're going to forbid their use, the entire thread dissolves. Yes, there is a place where you and I can stand and see that all these distinctions are arbitrary. On the other hand, it is perfectly reasonable for us to pick a different perspective, one from which the distinction between what's inside me and what's outside me is useful. There is an interesting difference between a rock and the pain I feel when I drop it on my foot.

Quoting 180 Proof

Just as there is no ocean "outside of" ocean-waves, there is no "world outside ourselves" because we – our minds – are aspects of the world itself rather than a separate Cartesian substance.

I just realized my first response missed your point. I guess what it comes down to is that I don't recognize Descartes' thinking vs. extended substances as any different from any other kind of distinction.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, but if there is no logos, no determinant actuality prior to the senses or intellection, then why is experience and intellection one way and not any other? If the relationship between appearances and reality were arbitrary, then there is effectively only appearances (we have no grounds to posit reality, and it makes no difference to us). But if there is only appearances, appearances just are reality.

I didn't say, nor imply, that there isn't a determinant, that there is no external world. The relationship between world and mind is not arbitrary. The term that I believe is common to both phenomenology and Buddhism is that the world is 'co-arising'. This tends to subvert the whole question of whether logic or order are 'in the mind' or 'in the world'. Answer is: neither, or both.

[quote=The Blind Spot - Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson.]Merleau-Ponty ...writes in Phenomenology of Perception: “The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects.” This statement is meant to clear a path between two extremes. One is the idea that there is a world only for or in consciousness (idealism). The other is the idea that the world exists ready-made and comes presorted into kinds or categories apart from experience (realism). Instead of these two extremes, Merleau-Ponty proposes that each one of the two terms, the conscious subject and the world, makes the other one what it is, and thus they inseparably form a larger whole. In philosophical terms, their relationship is dialectical.[/quote]

The world Merleau-Ponty is talking about is the life-world, the world we’re able to perceive, investigate, and act in. The subject projects the world because it brings forth the world as a space of meaning and relevance. But the subject can project the world only because the subject inheres in a body already oriented to and engaged with a world that surpasses it. The bodily subject is not just in the world but also of the world. The bodily subject is a project of the world, a way the world locally self-organizes and self-individuates to constitute a living being.

You may want to say that the universe—the whole cosmos or all of nature—subsumes the life-world, so the strange loop pertains only to us and our life-world, not to us and the universe altogether. But quarantining the strange loop this way won’t work. It’s true that our life-world is a minuscule part of an immensely vaster cosmos. The cosmos contains our life-world. But it’s also true that the life-world contains the universe. What we mean is that the universe is always disclosed to us from within life

Excerpt from
The Blind Spot
Adam Frank;Marcelo Gleiser;Evan Thompson; Chapter 8: Consciousness.

Quoting T Clark

tom111's whole argument is based on distinctions between aspects of the world, i.e. separate Cartesian substances.

Ok - but isn't making that distinction an application of logic? So it can't server as the justification for logic...

Reply to Wayfarer

I didn't say, nor imply, that there isn't a determinant, that there is no external world.

No, but I said "determinant actuality prior to the senses." And this is a denial of that, right?

The term that I believe is common to both phenomenology and Buddhism is that the world is 'co-arising'. This tends to subvert the whole question of whether logic or order are 'in the mind' or 'in the world'. Answer is: neither, or both.

If both, it would be saying that the things we know are both prior and posterior to our knowing them, which is arguably a contradiction. That is, our knowledge of things would be both dependent and not dependent on their prior existence.

To say neither is to say that the knowledge of the knower is not dependent on or caused by the known. This seems problematic too.

Hence, the "both" option seems more promising, but now we have a cause that is posterior (and prior) to its effect. A self-moving cause. But why would a wholly self-moving cause (a spontaneous move from potency to act) have one effect and not any other? Whereas , if the process isn't wholly self moving (i.e. randomly generating) then [I] something[/I] is prior and determining the process, and so there is some "prior actuality," which was my only point.

This statement is meant to clear a path between two extremes. One is the idea that there is a world only for or in consciousness (idealism). The other is the idea that the world exists ready-made and comes presorted into kinds or categories apart from experience (realism)

I mean, given these quite unattractive framings of both idealism and realism, of course we want a via media. I am not sure if "human thought and the physical world are both (and neither) prior nor/and posterior to one another" is the only option though, or one without difficulties.

I take it that here "experience" means "our experience." So the Earth becomes what it is because [I]we[/I] experience it, not because form is itself intellectual. Yet if nothing is prior to man (or life), if we rule out any distinctions in being that are actual prior to finite consciousness, why would consciousness be one way and not any other? Why would we be men and not centaurs? The sky blue and not purple?

There seems to me to be a crucial difference between acknowledging that the experience of finite creatures is always filtered through their cognitive apparatus and denying the actuality of being as such prior to creatures' finite conscious awareness of it. The latter move puts potency prior to act if the idea is that the two (finite mind and world ) are the result of self-generation, with nothing outside this process. The world becomes the result of a self-moving process which, having nothing prior to it, is random. That is, sheer potency moving itself to generate the world, potency "co-constituting itself" into determinant actuality ex nihilo (or eternally I suppose, but the eternal framing doesn't make the question of quiddity, why being is one way and not another, any less acute). It's the same sort of issue you get with the physicalist claim that being and quiddity are "brute facts."

Another difficulty is that if things' actuality is not prior to their being known, then it's hard to see how they could have any essence. All predication would be accidental (or essential, the difference is collapsed) and so there would be no pre se predication. Rather, things change what they essentially are when known differently. You get all the issues of Heraclitus, without the Logos as an ad hoc backstop. Presumably, there might be ways to iron this out, but it comes to mind.

Now, the idea that there is only flux prior to our "constructions" mentioned earlier strikes me as different. Here, flux is prior. But this still seems to me to be heading towards the idea of man as the source of the world, if not in the role of God, then at least a demiurge. Are the principles of things contained in the flux (say, virtually), or is the flux a sort of prime matter on which man imposes form and makes everything what it is? And if the latter, from whence this form?

But this act is interpretive - we impose identity, distinguish boundaries, and construct exclusions in order to make sense of the flux. Logic is thereby a function of cognition, not a pre-existent feature of a mind-independent reality.

For instance, here I'd like to ask "interpretations of what?" If things do not have any determinant identity before we "interpret" them then the interpretations would seem to be of "nothing in particular." But then I wouldn't even want to call them interpretations, since they aren't "of" anything. They would be more like "generations," in that [I]we[/I] would be imposing extrinsic form on them (which begs the question, how does this informing faculty work and what determines it)? The contrast to "things-in-themselves" and "mind-independent" reality make sense, given philosophy's continued focus on the Cartesian/Kantian dilemma, but I'm increasingly thinking that these are dragged out to be shot down as a sort of comparison case at least as often as they are actually embraced though.

The analogy I'd want to make is that just because we must always see a light after it passes through a tinted window doesn't mean that light isn't a light before it passes through the glass. But neither does it mean that there is anything to see without the light ("mind independent being") or that one can "see the light before it emits any light" (the sterile thing-in-itself).

Quoting Banno

Ok - but isn't making that distinction an application of logic? So it can't server as the justification for logic...

Is this response aimed at my position or his? I don’t see how it’s relevant to mine.

Reply to T Clark It was a scattershot.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

No, but I said "determinant actuality prior to the senses." And this is a denial of that, right?…. Whereas , if the process isn't wholly self moving (i.e. randomly generating) then something is prior and determining the process, and so there is some "prior actuality."

There is something prior to or outside of any cognition of it, but it is not really ‘something’ until it is (re)cognised by a subject. (This is what I take the in-itself to mean - something is, but as it has no determinate form or features, then it can’t be understood as any kind of existent or ‘thing’).

In Charles Pinter’s terms, cognition lights upon the features and form of objects and synthesises them as gestalts, meaningful wholes, in accordance with the sensory and cognitive faculties that the subject has (and not only human subjects, he demonstrates a similar faculty in the fairy fly, an insect so small as to be imperceptible to the naked eye.)

So there is ‘prior’ but it has not been ‘actualised’. It is ‘actualised by cognition’, so to speak.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

So the Earth becomes what it is because we experience it, not because form is itself intellectual. Yet if nothing is prior to man (or life), if we rule out any distinctions in being that are actual prior to finite consciousness, why would consciousness be one way and not any other? Why would we be men and not centaurs? The sky blue and not purple?

The word ‘world’ is derived from the old Dutch ‘werold’ meaning ‘time of man’. It implies that man is already intrinsic to the nature of world.

Planet Earth has a different meaning, that is as an object of study for the earth sciences, etc. And one is perfectly free to pursue that avenue of understanding, nothing said here contradicts that.

What ‘the world’ means, however, is not exactly the same as planet Earth. 'The world' means 'the totality of existence including the subject:

[quote=Erwin Schrodinger]The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.[/quote]

As for why we perceive colours the same way, all of us belong to a common species, and also share a common language and culture. If we were a different species with a completely different cognitive system everything might appear completely differently to what it does to h.sapiens. The evolutionary pathway gave rise to h,sapiens, not centaurs, and as a species, we share a common world (to an extent).

I should add, the passages I referred to are part of the book I mentioned, The Blind Spot of Science, by Adam Frank, Marcello Gleiser and Evan Thompson. The chapter those passages come from is on the topic of Consciousness, largely from Thompson’s perspective of phenomenology and embodied cognition. It introduces ‘the strange loop’ in the preceeding discussion, which is the sense in which our consciousness of the world provides the horizon of experience within which everything occurs, and yet we also know that the world which appears in experience, precedes any experience.

[quote=The Blind Spot]There is no way to step outside consciousness and measure it against something else. Everything we investigate, including consciousness and its relation to the brain, resides within the horizon of consciousness.[/quote]

It is not practical to try and summarise all of the preceeding argument but there's a blog post which elaborates a similar point in Schopenhauer's words:

...the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent upon the first conscious being (due to its being Idea), however undeveloped it may be; on the other hand, this conscious being just as necessarily entirely dependent upon a long chain of causes and effects which have preceded it, and in which it itself appears as a small link. These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye. Without this medium of knowledge it cannot be, and therefore it was not before it. But without that eye, that is to say, outside of knowledge, there was also no before, no time. Thus time has no beginning, but all beginning is in time.

Reading that against your quotations from Robert Wallace, I don't see any inherent conflict.

Logical form or syntactic structure does not have to issue from inborn powers in our brains, nor does it have to come from a priori structures of the mind. It arises through an enhancement of perception, a lifting of perception into thought, by a new way of making things present to us

(Robert Sokolowski - The Phenomenology of the Human Person)

Nicely said. We watch and learn.

Logical form or syntactic structure does not have to issue from inborn powers in our brains, nor does it have to come from a priori structures of the mind.

It doesn’t have to, but it does.

Reply to tom111logic is computation and logical structures are software, by analogy. This is developed in living bodies that have a central nervous system. Living bodies that don’t have a central nervous system, have an encoded system of responses to stimuli.

The material world has an inherent logical structure due to cascading effects of forces between atoms and groups of atoms and sub atomic particles. This is an inherent result of the extension of spacetime. The aforementioned encoding is an inherent result of the development of living bodies and the aforementioned computation is the inherent result of the development of the central nervous system.

The question I have is what comes next in this progression from cascading effects(1), to encoded responses(2), to computation(3). What is, or would be, number (4) in this sequence?

Reply to tom111 You are moving too quickly. You ask the question and then jump to the conclusion. A more careful approach might serve you better.

What presumptions do you make, in asking "Where does logic come from"? And what is logic, in the first place? Is it better to think of it as a thing, or as an activity? Is it better to think of it as how the bits and pieces in the world are related to each other, or just how the bits and pieces of our language are related to each other?

Folk here are too hasty.

To everyone who thinks logic and causality were the same. They are not.

The trigger before the explosion is not a logical reason; it's a physical cause. This cause is not based upon a logical law nor is it linked with it. It's not logical that the trigger causes an explosion. This is just an empirical observation and it's not guaranteed that this effect will be the same at all times. If this were logical and the effect would change, it would be like saying: "2+2=4 has been correct until now, but in the future it may be 2+2=3." -- This is not logic. Logic is independent of space and time.

Reply to Wayfarer

There is something prior to or outside of any cognition of it, but it is not really ‘something’ until it is (re)cognised by a subject. (This is what I take the in-itself to mean - something is, but as it has no determinate form or features, then it can’t be understood as any kind of existent or ‘thing’).

Hm, I don't think I'm misunderstanding then. This is very different from how Wallace understands Plato and Hegel, because there intelligibility always refers outside itself, ultimately to the Good/One/True Infinite/Absolute.

But here, if nothing is anything/something before finite creatures are conscious of them (and how would this work for finite creatures being aware of each other?), then this question seems quite relevant:

Now, the idea that there is only flux prior to our "constructions" mentioned earlier strikes me as different. Here, flux is prior. But this still seems to me to be heading towards the idea of man as the source of the world, if not in the role of God, then at least a demiurge. Are the principles of things contained in the flux (say, virtually), or is the flux a sort of prime matter on which man imposes form and makes everything what it is? And if the latter, from whence this form?

For instance, here I'd like to ask "interpretations of what?" If things do not have any determinant identity before we "interpret" them then the interpretations would seem to be of "nothing in particular." But then I wouldn't even want to call them interpretations, since they aren't "of" anything. They would be more like "generations," in that we would be imposing extrinsic form on them (which begs the question, how does this informing faculty work and what determines it)?

They're similar positions in that they deny the standard materialist position. I don't think that makes them that similar. I don't think for instance, think that Bernardo Kastrup's analytic idealism is consistent with the idea that things are nothing/nothing in particular prior to being perceived by us.

As for why we perceive colours the same way, all of us belong to a common species, and also share a common language and culture. If we were a different species with a completely different cognitive system everything might appear completely differently to what it does to h.sapiens . The evolutionary pathway gave rise to h,sapiens, not centaurs, and as a species, we share a common world (to an extent).

Right, but appealing to evolution from presumably non-conscious life (and prior to that, non-living dissipative processes) is appealing to something determinant that is prior to the perception of finite beings. You're making an appeal to determinant causes prior to the first finite mind. If the two (experiencer and experienced) are rather wholly co-constituting, as a self-moving cause, this doesn't work. There is no interaction prior to consciousness that shapes why consciousness is one way and not any other, because consciousness itself is the only thing that makes anything one way and not any other (i.e. actual). That's the whole idea of "nothing is actual until we constitute them," right?

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

This is very different from how Wallace understands Plato and Hegel, because there intelligibility always refers outside itself, ultimately to the Good/One/True Infinite/Absolute.

Thanks for these pressing questions, it's really making me think it through. I want to clarify: I’m not saying there is nothing at all prior to interpretation—certainly not “nothing” in a nihilistic sense. What I’m pointing to is something more like undifferentiated givenness—not sheer formless flux, but not determinately articulated being either. It’s not a thing or set of things waiting to be picked out, but a field of potential meaning that only becomes structured in relation to a subject (something like Peirce's 'firstness'). That's why I said 'neither existent nor non-existent', which is what I take the expression 'beyond being' to mean - beyond the flux of coming-to-be and passing away.

Which leads to the question of the sense in which the purported Good/One/True Infinite exists. Existence is precisely what 'the transcendent' is transcendent in relation to. To make of 'the One' something that exists is a hypostatisation (perhaps akin to Heidegger's critique of onto-theology).

I think, and you will know this subject better than I, that Eriugena's Periphysion articulates this far better than I could. From the SEP entry:

Eriugena proceeds to list “five ways of interpreting” the manner in which things may be said to be or not to be (I would prefer 'exist or not to exist'). According to the first mode, things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to be ('exist') , whereas anything which, “through the excellence of its nature” transcends our faculties are said not to be (i.e. 'exist'). According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to be (i.e. exist). He is “nothingness through excellence” (nihil per excellentiam).

Quite literally beyond existence, sheer out of this world. Not in the heavenly firmament above but beyond (or is it before?) any spatial or conceptual projection (see God does not Exist by Bishop(!) Pierre Whalon.) Whereas when you speak of the One as 'something that exists' prior to or outside any act of intellect, I think perhaps this is also an hypostatisation. You have something in mind when you say it, perhaps as a kind of placeholder.

As far as the forms are concerned - I don’t mean the Forms as existing objects pre-existing in metaphysical space. This touches on a deeper point I've been trying to work out—namely, the metaphysical necessity of forms. I agree with the concern that if cognition had no grounding at all—if it operated in a total void—it would be arbitrary, even solipsistic. But I don't think that's the case.

Universals—or forms—exist, or rather, are real, not as actual entities, but as structured possibilities. As Kelley Ross puts it, they "exist where possibilities exist," and we encounter them not only in the future, but also in what he calls the "imperfect aspect"—that is, in things that are still unfolding, in process, not yet completed. This is key: the world we engage with is not made of finished essences, but of meaningful potentials that become actualised or manifested through living beings.

So cognition isn’t either imposing form or simply making things up. It’s realising a potential that is already there in the world—not as a determinate object, but as an intelligible field of possibility. That, I think, is what makes form metaphysically necessary without requiring it to “exist” in the way physical objects do. It’s also why cognition can be both grounded and open-ended

The concluding point I'd llike to make is that all this really does have some bearing on 'where logic comes from' but I think I'll leave that open for now.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

You're making an appeal to determinant causes prior to the first finite mind. If the two (experiencer and experienced) are rather wholly co-constituting, as a self-moving cause, this doesn't work.

Hence that passage I quoted: [quote=Schopenhauer, WWI] These two contradictory points of view, to each of which we are led with the same necessity, we might again call an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge… The necessary contradiction which at last presents itself to us here, finds its solution in the fact that, to use Kant’s phraseology, time, space, and causality do not belong to the thing-in-itself, but only to its phenomena, of which they are the form; which in my language means this: The objective world, the world as idea, is not the only side of the world, but merely its outward side; and it has an entirely different side—the side of its inmost nature—its kernel—the thing-in-itself… But the world as idea… only appears with the opening of the first eye.[/quote]

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Where did logic come from? Natural selection.

Yes, but this presupposes something prior that determined human logic.

Like that the universe is causal and deterministic? Yes. Could a mind evolve in any other type of world?


Quoting T Clark

This is what Konrad Lorenz had to say:

This is the basis of our conviction that whatever our cognitive faculty communicates to us corresponds to something real. The 'spectacles' of our modes of thought and perception, such as causality, substance, quality, time and place, are functions of a neurosensory organization that has evolved in the service of survival. When we look through these 'spectacles', therefore, we do not see, as transcendental idealists assume, some unpredictable distortion of reality which does not correspond in the least with things as they really are, and therefore cannot be regarded as an image of the outer world. What we experience is indeed a real image of reality - albeit an extremely simple one, only just sufficing for our own practical purposes; we have developed 'organs' only for those aspects of reality of which, in the interest of survival, it was imperative for our species to take account, so that selection pressure produced this particular cognitive apparatus...what little our sense organs and nervous system have permitted us to learn has proved its value over endless years of experience, and we may trust it. as far as it goes. For we must assume that reality also has many other aspects which are not vital for us.... to know, and for which we have no 'organ', because we have not been compelled in the course of our evolution to develop means of adapting to them.
— Konrad Lorenz - Behind the Mirror

My response is that survival is the best incentive for getting your perceptions right about the world, and to be open to new information that might be useful because you never know what part of reality might be useful to promote one's survival. That is the direction evolution seems to be headed from instinctive, hard-coded behavioral responses to general stimuli to conscious minds capable of making finer distinctions and therefore finer behavioral responses as well being able to change one's behavior based on new sensory information effectively overriding those instinctive behaviors when they are not the best response in a given situation. We can change our behavior in almost real-time compared to instinctive behaviors which can take generations to change.

Quoting Quk

To everyone who thinks logic and causality were the same. They are not.

The trigger before the explosion is not a logical reason; it's a physical cause. This cause is not based upon a logical law nor is it linked with it. It's not logical that the trigger causes an explosion. This is just an empirical observation and it's not guaranteed that this effect will be the same at all times. If this were logical and the effect would change, it would be like saying: "2+2=4 has been correct until now, but in the future it may be 2+2=3." -- This is not logic. Logic is independent of space and time.

Bingo! Logic is about language, not about the world itself.

Reply to Wayfarer

. I want to clarify: I’m not saying there is nothing at all prior to interpretation—certainly not “nothing” in a nihilistic sense. What I’m pointing to is something more like undifferentiated givenness—not sheer formless flux, but not determinately articulated being either. It’s not a thing or set of things waiting to be picked out, but a field of potential meaning that only becomes structured in relation to a subject (something like Peirce's 'firstness'). That's why I said 'neither existent nor non-existent', which is what I take the expression 'beyond being' to mean - beyond the flux of coming-to-be and passing away.

Right, so is this "undifferentiated giveness" first in the order of being or in the order of our experience? It seems obvious that it comes first in our particular experience, yet the ontological priority of something wholly undifferentiated would seem to cause problems in terms of what follows from what is truly undifferentiated as a cause (which would seem to be, nothing, or nothing in particular). There is also Hegel's point about sheer, indeterminate being collapsing into nothing to consider as well.

One way to look at this would be to distinguish between "all finite experience" and "our particular experience." If all the finite experiences of all organisms is what "makes things the concrete way they are," (maybe something somewhat akin to "consciousness causes collapse") then, for those born in a world already teeming with life, in the midst of civilizations, the world would be in a sense "already divided." The collective experiences of all that have comes before us have already accomplished this.

This at least makes more sense to me, although I still see problems. Yet I often get the impression that the opposite is meant, and that this move is made because the order of our experience is conflated with the order of being (perhaps because bracketing has made phenomenology "first philosophy" by default). This would be the idea that there is no squirrel or owl prior to our knowing it as such, that our knowing makes it what it is. But this would be a sort of denial of other beings as prior, relatively self-governing, self-determining, organic wholes that are relatively intelligible in themselves. Plus, if this applies to animals at the level of individual human experiencers, I don't know why it wouldn't apply to other people. And so we would all live in our own self constituted worlds.

I think the difficulty here is finding a ground for per se predication versus per accidens, so that "what things are" is not determined by seemingly accidental relations vis-á-vis what we think or say of them.

I think, and you will know this subject better than I, that Eriugena's Periphysion articulates this far better than I could. From the SEP entry:

Right, but Eriugena is proceeding by affirmation and negation (like Plotinus and Dionysius), using analogous predication. He is not simply denying that God is, full stop. God cannot be the First Principle, First Cause, and ground of being if God is not prior to creatures (and we could say the same of any true infinite re the finite). And if creatures do not have a prior cause or ground, we have the question of why they are one way and not any other, but also have to affirm that they are truly subsistent being. Yet their essence would not appear to indicate their existence, so how are they subsistent except as a "brute fact," a spontaneous, self-constitututing move from potential to actuality.

Universals—or forms—exist, or rather, are real, not as actual entities, but as structured possibilities. As Kelley Ross puts it, they "exist where possibilities exist," and we encounter them not only in the future, but also in what he calls the "imperfect aspect"—that is, in things that are still unfolding, in process, not yet completed. This is key: the world we engage with is not made of finished essences, but of meaningful potentials that become actualised or manifested through living beings.

Isn't this to identify form with potency instead of actuality? Except, it's a "structured potency," and so already limited and determinant. But that's the same as saying they are a prior actuality, but that they also exist with potency (which must be true for all changing beings). However, it seems to me that the "structure" here just is the form, the actuality, and that we might want to avoid lumping it in with the potency. The actuality determines the potency.

So, I am not sure if there is anything objectionable there except that it seems like a confusing way to formulate the idea that beings are act and potency and that prior actuality does not fully determine them, that they have the potential to change (else they would be pure act, right?).

But that prior structure does set limits. Does a cat have the potential to become a frog? I would say no. An act of sorcery that accomplished this would simply be replacing one thing with a other. So there is an essential limit on what things are, else everything is potentially everything else. And I think those limits on what a thing can be are just what is meant by "substantial form." No doubt, we could break a cat down into its matter and make it into a frog. That's different though. That isn't a potential of the cat because the cat ceases to be. Another way to put this is that generation and corruption really occur because there really are beings as organic wholes.

Yet I don't know what it means for an essence to be "unfinished." To be sure, we have the "staying-at-work-being-itself" of physical beings, their struggle to maintain their form and achieve the good/perfections related to that form. Since forms exist only where they are instantiated, this means there is no such thing as a completed form, except perhaps as a principle in the absolute unity of the transcendent One as a sort of "idea." And yet there has to be something determinant there for final causation to have any purchase.

But the idea that essences are a sort of project is tricky. I think there is a sense that this is true, from an evolutionary perspective and the unfolding of history. Yet I don't think this is true if it is an attempt to deny final causality and any telos (which seems to deny the goal directedness of life and the role of aims in giving beings, wholes, unity). I think resistance to essences is often based on a misunderstanding of them as "Platonic forms" or calcified logical entities, but also a psychological aversion to telos due to a misguided understanding of freedom primarily in terms of potency/power, the capacity to "choose anything."

Actually, I think Chat-GPT is a good demonstration of this because it has been fed so many papers. Ask it about contemporary philosophy that denies essence, and you get a straightforward narrative of why essences are problematic, as is final causality, and often something that seems to potentially deny the possibility of per se predication. But ask it then how essences were understood by the figures being critiqued, and it suddenly switches gears to give a very different narrative. I would imagine, this is due to pulling from different sources.

Reply to ChatteringMonkey

Bingo! Logic is about language, not about the world itself.

Human logic is clearly not physical causality. However, logic isn't "about" anything but language? So:

Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore Socrates is a mortal.

Is about the words "man" and "Socrates" and not ever about men and Socrates? Wouldn't this lead to a thoroughgoing anti-realism and an inability of language to signify anything but language, such that books on botany are about words and interpretations and never about plants (only "plants")?

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus Wel words do usually signify something in the world, though not allways. Those words are abstractions from the world, and it's to some extend arbitrary where lines are drawn.

Logic then applies to statements we make with those abstractions, not directly to the world itself. Insofar those statements are about the world, maybe you could say it's also about the world indirectly. But only if those statements are about the world, which they don't have to be. Logic isn't concerned with epistemics per se.

Only 'about language' was maybe a bit loose and fast.

Reply to ChatteringMonkey

There was a very long running debate over whether terms signify concepts in the mind (Aristotle) or whether they signify things (through a triadic semiotic relationship, Augustine). I've always been partial to Augustine here, but I can see the impetus in the other direction as well, and language plays a crucial role in either case.

So:

Logic then applies to statements we make with those abstractions, not directly to the world itself. Insofar those statements are about the world, maybe you could say it's also about the world indirectly.

I think in either case you're right, it's about the world in at least some way. It's mediated, so "indirect." I'm not sure if anything is ever truly unmediated; that's another question. Logic and language only ceases to be "about the world," if the terms/concepts cease to be determinantly related to the world in any way. So, even on the view that signification is of concepts (usually universals), this isn't overly problematic because universals come to us from things via the senses. It becomes a difficulty only when that linkage is somehow severed.

Here, I don't really mind the Kantian interjection that what we say about things is always "things as we know them." That's fair. Surely we are not speaking about things as we don't know them. Where it gets dicey is in the idea that there is no determinant linkage between things and what is known, in which case, it doesn't even seem like the knowledge can be "of" the things.

Quoting Harry Hindu

That is the direction evolution seems to be headed from instinctive, hard-coded behavioral responses to general stimuli to conscious minds capable of making finer distinctions and therefore finer behavioral responses as well being able to change one's behavior based on new sensory information effectively overriding those instinctive behaviors when they are not the best response in a given situation. We can change our behavior in almost real-time compared to instinctive behaviors which can take generations to change.

I think this is an over simplistic understanding. This is from William James’ book “What is an Instinct?”

“Nothing is commoner than the remark that Man differs from lower creatures by the almost total absence of instincts, and the assumption of their work in him by “reason.”...[But] the facts of the case are really tolerably plain! Man has a far greater variety of impulses than any lower animal; and any one of these impulses, taken in itself, is as “blind” as the lowest instinct can be; but, owing to man’s memory, power of reflection, and power of inference, they come each one to be felt by him, after he has once yielded to them and experienced their results, in connection with a foresight of those results…

…It is plain then that, no matter how well endowed an animal may originally be in the way of instincts, his resultant actions will be much modified if the instincts combine with experience, if in addition to impulses he have memories, associations, inferences, and expectations, on any considerable scale…

…there is no material antagonism between instinct and reason…”

This was written more than 100 years ago, but it is consistent with other things I have read that are more recent.

Reply to T Clark

That's a fantastic quote. I'll probably reuse it. It gets at a common mistake which is that if something is always filtered through something else (e.g. human nature, "instinct," is always filtered through habit and culture) then it cannot be prior to what it is always filtered through. Perhaps this is a side effect of the tendency towards thinking of causes exclusively in terms of temporal ordering. At any rate, it misses that, in order for human culture to exist, humans have to exist. This doesn't entail that any humans ever exist without culture. It merely entails that, because humans are one thing, and not any other, this will always shape human culture.

Likewise, the realities faced by all living things, the demand to maintain homeostasis and form in the face of entropy, etc. are more general principles that will effect all cultures, human, or any other intelligent species.

More general principles explain more things, but less determinantly. So human nature explains all human cultures, but it is less definite then how cultures shape us. And thus, it can easily seem like "culture all the way down," because culture drives the particular specific details we take notice of, yet these are always against a particular background of biology, physics, etc.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

There was a very long running debate over whether terms signify concepts in the mind (Aristotle) or whether they signify things (through a triadic semiotic relationship, Augustine). I've always been partial to Augustine here, but I can see the impetus in the other direction as well, and language plays a crucial role in either case.

Augustine views seems close to Peirces theory on semiotics. I could get on board with that I think.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I think in either case you're right, it's about the world in at least some way. It's mediated, so "indirect." I'm not sure if anything is ever truly unmediated; that's another question. Logic and language only ceases to be "about the world," if the terms/concepts cease to be determinantly related to the world in any way. So, even on the view that signification is of concepts (usually universals), this isn't overly problematic because universals come to us from things via the senses. It becomes a difficulty only when that linkage is somehow severed.

Here, I don't really mind the Kantian interjection that what we say about things is always "things as we know them." That's fair. Surely we are not speaking about things as we don't know them. Where it gets dicey is in the idea that there is no determinant linkage between things and what is known, in which case, it doesn't even seem like the knowledge can be "of" the things.

They are related to the world, but in an abstracted way.

I think particulars come to us via our senses, which I would consider unmediated (stricly speaking maybe not as sense-organs, nerves etc are involved, still I think we have a sense of the world).

As in Heraclitean 'metaphysics' only particulars/only becoming exists in space and time, that is the world of our senses anyway... panta rhei.

When we name a particular thing and abstract it into a universal concept we are equating and lumping together things that are similar but not identical, and take them out of their spacio-temporal context (the spirit/the eternal).

That is fine and can be usefull as long as we don't forget that universals are not really real like Plato (contra Cratylus).

Reply to T Clark

Quoting T Clark

So... living organisms, including humans, affect the environment and organisms and environments evolve together. Agreed. That's not "missing from Lorenz's account." It's just not particularly relevant to the specific point he, and I, are trying to make which is - human minds, including our intellectual capacities, evolved in the same manner that our physical bodies did. Logic is something we brought to the world.

I get that that is your point, but the point of Lorenz’s comment is that we evolved sense organs for adaptive purposes , organs which allow us to see only those aspects of reality we need to see in order to achieve our evolutionarily shaped goals. Unlike recent biological thinking, he does not claim that the very reality of the organism’s environment is co-constructed by the organism’s patterns of functioning in it. Instead, he assumes the reality of that environment is external to, and independent of, the organism’s limited, adaptive perception of it.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

This would be the idea that there is no squirrel or owl prior to our knowing it as such, that our knowing makes it what it is

What about the natural numbers and the law of the excluded middle. Do they exist before our knowing them as such?

Quoting Joshs

he does not claim that the very reality of the organism’s environment is co-constructed by the organism’s patterns of functioning in it. Instead, he assumes the reality of that environment is external to, and independent of, the organism’s limited, adaptive perception of it.

Sorry. I don't get it. In the context of the question at hand, why does it matter whether human cognitive systems evolved in response to the environment or coevolved in concert with the environment?

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

That's a fantastic quote. I'll probably reuse it.

It's a very short book and you should be able to get it free online. It has other good stuff too.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

At any rate, it misses that, in order for human culture to exist, humans have to exist. This doesn't entail that any humans ever exist without culture. It merely entails that, because humans are one thing, and not any other, this will always shape human culture.

Likewise, the realities faced by all living things, the demand to maintain homeostasis and form in the face of entropy, etc. are more general principles that will effect all cultures, human, or any other intelligent species.

More general principles explain more things, but less determinantly. So human nature explains all human cultures, but it is less definite then how cultures shape us. And thus, it can easily seem like "culture all the way down," because culture drives the particular specific details we take notice of, yet these are always against a particular background of biology, physics, etc.

The seems like a description of emergence at the levels of human neurology, psychology, and sociology. Psychology must operate consistent with human mental processes from below, but it is also heavily influenced by social and cultural systems from above. For some reason, I thought you are a skeptic about emergence.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore Socrates is a mortal.

Is about the words "man" and "Socrates" and not ever about men and Socrates? Wouldn't this lead to a thoroughgoing anti-realism and an inability of language to signify anything but language, such that books on botany are about words and interpretations and never about plants (only "plants")?

What makes the syllogism valid is that whatever you substitute for "Socrates" "Man" and "Mortal", the syllogism holds. That's why we can write it as ((f(a) & U(x)f(x)?g(x)) ?g(a).

It is not about Socrates and Man, it is about the structure of the three sentences. It is about the language used.

Logical validity is a property of forms, not of names or referents. This formal property does not imply that logic is only about language, nor that language is only about itself. In fact, the ability to generalize over arbitrary constants (like “Socrates”) is what allows logic to apply to the world. Far from anti-realist, this is precisely what gives logic its extensional power.

Reply to Banno

:up:

Right, we're in agreement with Reply to ChatteringMonkey

Reply to T Clark

For some reason, I thought you are a skeptic about emergence.

Jaegwon Kim has a series of monographs that are widely considered devastating for the idea of strong emergence given certain presuppositions (roughly a supervenience substance metaphysics where things just are what they are made of, e.g. things as ensembles of particles). This doesn't make me skeptical of emergence though, quite the opposite, it makes me skeptical of the metaphysics that seems to imply that emergence is impossible.

However, I think the whole idea of "emergence" is only required because of that general metaphysical approach. So I guess I am "skeptical" in that sense. In the broader sense of things operating on different scales and levels, I'm all on board.

What I do object to is when people present an accounts of physicalist theory of mind that simply ignore the Hard Problem with an appeal to emergence that is thin. In those cases, it seems like an ad hoc way to avoid the largest objection.

P.S. Meh, I should read all responses before adding mine.

But I'll add one thing: What question the OP is asking? It is never entirely clear. Is it about anthropology? Developmental psychology? Metaphysics (whatever that might mean for them)? Before we jump to formulating answers, we should get clarity about the question.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Human logic is clearly not physical causality. However, logic isn't "about" anything but language? So:

[1] Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore Socrates is a mortal.

Is about the words "man" and "Socrates" and not ever about men and Socrates? Wouldn't this lead to a thoroughgoing anti-realism and an inability of language to signify anything but language, such that books on botany are about words and interpretations and never about plants (only "plants")

[2] Socrates is a fork.
All forks vacillate.
Therefore, Socrates vacillates.

[3] X ? Y
?Y P(Y)
? P(X)

[2] and [3] have the same logical structure as [1]. They are the same logical statements. But, clearly, they are not about the same thing, are they?

Logic is only about something insofar as we make it to be. It can be something perfectly sensible, like [1], or frivolous, like [2], or even nothing in particular, like [3].

Quoting SophistiCat

[2] and [3] have the same logical structure as [1]. They are the same logical statements.

They don't and they aren't, but leaving that aside, are you gainsaying the thesis that logic is about something other than language?

Quoting SophistiCat

Logic is only about something insofar as we make it to be. It can be something perfectly sensible, like [1], or frivolous, like [2], or even nothing in particular, like [3].

Which of them do you say is about nothing other than language?

Reply to Leontiskos I use "about" in its intended sense - the semantics of logical sentences.

Reply to SophistiCat

This is the thesis that post was responding to:

Quoting ChatteringMonkey

Logic is about language, not about the world itself.

Since you disagreed with the person who disagreed with this thesis, I am assuming that you affirm the thesis. Please correct me if you do not affirm the thesis.

Reply to Wayfarer

Whose the knower? An individual man, or mankind? It seems to me that the natural numbers must be prior to individuals, since they are already around and known by others before we are born.

Now, if mankind is the only species with the capacity for intellectual knowledge, I think there might be a sense in which the natural numbers could be said to be posterior to man, but they also seem obviously prior in another sense.

The sense in which the natural numbers are prior lies in the fact that there were discrete organisms, organic wholes with a principle of unity, long before man existed. There were many tyrannosaurs, trees, fish, etc. There were beings, plural. And so multitude exists there. But if man is the first "physical being" to be capable of abstracting the principle of multitude and notions of unity as measure (unit), then there is a sense in which natural numbers first exist in the mode of the (finite) intellect with this abstraction. So the existence of this abstraction is dependent on man and posterior to him. It has to exist in the intellect, and man has to first be and have an intellect for anything to exist in it.

So I would say both, but with a distinction of modes.

That's probably confusing so let me try an easier example. We have the idea of "humanity." We would not say "Socrates is a humanity." Humanity is the form of man abstracted from any determinate matter. Socrates can be a man, and he can possess humanity, but he cannot be a humanity.

Likewise, we can think of tyrannosaurusity. Yet such an abstraction only exists in beings with intellects, and if only man has an intellect, obviously he will be the first to have accomplished this abstraction. That said, obviously there has to be a tyrannosaurus for this.

Similarly, if one considers God or any sort of First Principle/Prime Mover, these principles are going to be prior there too.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Jaegwon Kim has a series of monographs that are widely considered devastating for the idea of strong emergence given certain presuppositions (roughly a supervenience substance metaphysics where things just are what they are made of, e.g. things as ensembles of particles). This doesn't make me skeptical of emergence though, quite the opposite, it makes me skeptical of the metaphysics that seems to imply that emergence is impossible.

Yes, I remember now. After you mentioned Kim’s article, I downloaded it and started reading it. I only got about a quarter of the way through and I wasn’t impressed. I should probably go back and finish. There are certain ways of thinking that are really important to me, and I don’t think I do enough to find skeptical views to put my own to the test.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, so is this "undifferentiated giveness" first in the order of being or in the order of our experience? It seems obvious that it comes first in our particular experience, yet the ontological priority of something wholly undifferentiated would seem to cause problems in terms of what follows from what is truly undifferentiated as a cause (which would seem to be, nothing, or nothing in particular).

This might be a point where we’re crossing conceptual wires a bit—because I think there’s a distinction to be drawn between ontological and temporal priority.

When you ask whether “undifferentiated givenness” is first in the order of being or in the order of experience, I wonder whether that’s still considering the question from a temporal perspective. The eternal is not temporally prior, because it’s outside of time—so it can be said to be ontologically prior, as the ground or condition of temporal existence. But treating it as temporally prior still risks a kind of reductionism.

So perhaps we’re better off thinking in terms of dependence relations, rather than temporal or linear sequences. The structured world depends on this givenness to be disclosed; but the givenness itself depends on deeper conditions—what might traditionally be called the Logos or the Good—not as temporal precursors, but as metaphysical grounds. Which is why cognition is constrained by the forms through which the One manifests.

This connects with something I’ve been reflecting on in terms of the distinction between the horizontal and vertical axes of being.

The horizontal axis is what we ordinarily think of as “the order of experience”: time, causality, physical phenomena, the unfolding of events—everything science deals with. It’s the world as it appears, structured into before and after, subject and object. When we talk about whether something comes “first” in this order, we’re already inside a temporal sequence.

But the vertical axis isn’t about temporal sequence—it’s about ontological dependence, or what grounds the very possibility of appearance. It’s what makes the horizontal axis intelligible at all. This includes not only the subject as knower, but also what precedes and grounds both subject and object: what Kant might call the noumenal, or the in-itself. It also includes the metaphysical principles that shape intelligibility—form, the Good, intelligible structure—not as things that happen within time, but as conditions for time and experience to arise at all. But we can't know that as object or in an objective sense (which is precisely why positivism rejects it as 'meaningless'.)

I think this is where a reference to Plotinus is pertinent. For Plotinus, the One is not a being among beings—not even the highest or most perfect being. The one is beyond existence—not because it’s less real, but because it is more real than anything that can be said to exist (i.e. what is coming-to-be and passing away). The source of existence is not something that exists! That means it does not ‘exist’ in the same way anything else does—it's not simply a very special thing among other things. It’s beyond existence, not any thing (which is also what Eriugena says.)

This is also what I take “beyond existence” to mean—not nothingness, not a void, but that which grounds existence without itself being an existent. It’s not non-existent, but it doesn’t exist the way things do. It’s “no thing,” but not nothing. Any statement that attributes existence to the One, as if it were a definable entity, risks collapsing that distinction. As Paul Tillich put it, “To say that God exists is to deny him”—because what is ultimate cannot be reduced to the category of an existent.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Whose the knower? An individual man, or mankind? It seems to me that the natural numbers must be prior to individuals, since they are already around and known by others before we are born.

Now, if mankind is the only species with the capacity for intellectual knowledge, I think there might be a sense in which the natural numbers could be said to be posterior to man, but they also seem obviously prior in another sense.

The sense in which the natural numbers are prior lies in the fact that there were discrete organisms, organic wholes with a principle of unity, long before man existed.

Again, the question is the sense in which numbers are prior. Numbers do not exist at all on the phenomenal plane - you won't find them anywhere, except in the act of counting. So they are not temporally prior, even though there were obviously numbers of things that existed before anyone was around to count them.

[quote=Richard Tieszen, Phenomenology, Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics, p13]We can evidently say, for example, that mathematical objects are mind-independent and unchanging, but now we always add that they are constituted in consciousness in this manner, or that they are constituted by consciousness as having this sense … . They are constituted in consciousness, nonarbitrarily, in such a way that it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions for them or that there ever be awareness of them.[/quote]

So, what consciousness are they constituted in, if it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions of them or awareness of them? I'd be wary about entering an answer to that question. Suffice to say they are real possiblities that can only be apprehended by a rational intelligence - not neccessarily yours or mine (definitely not mine, as I'm bad at math.)

But bad at it or not, maths deals in necessary truths. And it’s precisely this sense of necessity that makes the question “where does logic come from?” so important. We’re not just talking about how humans happen to reason, or how nature happens to behave, but about the conditions that make truth, structure, and intelligibility possible at all - how reason is imposed upon us.

Reply to T Clark Quoting T Clark

Sorry. I don't get it. In the context of the question at hand, why does it matter whether human cognitive systems evolved in response to the environment or coevolved in concert with the environment?

The issue is whether it is possible to make a distinction between the organism's perception of its environment and its evolution with respect to its environment. Put differently, is perception the organism’s representation of a reality, or is it the enacting of a reality? In the first case, what is represented is presumed to be external to the perceiver. In the second case, the real is produced through the organism-environment interaction.

Quoting Joshs

The issue is whether it is possible to make a distinction between the organism's perception of its environment and its evolution with respect to its environment. Put differently, is perception the organism’s representation of a reality, or is it the enacting of a reality? In the first case, what is represented is presumed to be external to the perceiver. In the second case, the real is produced through the organism-environment interaction.

I still don’t get it. Let’s leave it at that.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Jaegwon Kim has a series of monographs that are widely considered devastating for the idea of strong emergence given certain presuppositions (roughly a supervenience substance metaphysics where things just are what they are made of, e.g. things as ensembles of particles). This doesn't make me skeptical of emergence though, quite the opposite, it makes me skeptical of the metaphysics that seems to imply that emergence is impossible.

After my last post, I went back to Kim's paper. I immediately remembered why I disliked it so much. He seems to have missed the point. He focuses on causation between hierarchical levels of scale, especially causation from above. In past discussions on the forum, in particular by Apokrisis, as well as my own reading, it is not causation from above that is central to emergence, it's constraint from above.

Another thing that undermined the credibility of the paper for me is the fact that he never mentioned Anderson's "More is Different," a paper, written in 1972, which is still considered important today.

Quoting T Clark

This was written more than 100 years ago, but it is consistent with other things I have read that are more recent.

I would prefer that you provide links to those other things because the language used in your quote is unwieldy.

Instincts are useful or else they would not have been selected. They are like a general purpose tool for handling a variety of situations or situations that rarely change. Conscious behavior allows an organism to adapt one's behavior in real-time in dynamic environments. This is why humans have been able to spread into all sorts of environments, including space.

"Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape—he is a shaper of the landscape. In body and in mind he is the explorer of nature, the ubiquitous animal, who did not find but has made his home in every continent."
Jacob Bronowski

This also speaks to our curiosity. We always want to know what is over the horizon. We are natural explorers. It is in our nature to see the world more openly - to seek out new worlds and new civilizations - to boldly go where no man has gone before, because you never know what part of reality might be useful for something.

Reply to Wayfarer

This might be a point where we’re crossing conceptual wires a bit—because I think there’s a distinction to be drawn between ontological and temporal priority.

We probably did. An important distinction is efficient causes as contingent, temporal linear series versus as hierarchical causal series. The former is something like a chain of dominoes knocking each other down. The first domino knocked over is prior to the last in a contingent linear ordering. But we also have hierarchical causal series of efficient causes, like a book sitting on a table. The table needs to be there for the book to be sitting on it, but the table can be there without the book sitting on it. One is dependent on the other, but they aren't mutually dependent. The dependence is there at every moment, not in some linear sequence.

This is a common source of misunderstanding in St. Thomas' Second Way, BTW. People understand it as "the universe must have a temporal begining," but actually he thought reason and observation alone (at least what he had access to) couldn't decide if the cosmos was eternal. He merely thought that Aristotle had failed to demonstrate that it was definitively eternal. But even if the cosmos is eternal, we still need a first cause in a hierarchical causal series.

I guess this would be relevant in a few ways. Substantial form doesn't exist outside substances or the intellect. There is the form "cat" 'in' cats themselves and 'in' the intellect of knowers. But the form has to be to be to be informing these things in the same way a table must exist for a book to rest on it. Yet it seems possible for there to be cats but not creatures with intellects. The existence of the form vis-á-vis cats is not dependent on the existence of the form in finite intellects.

Of course, we might say the reverse is true. However, in terms of a temporal linear ordering, it does seem that cats had to exist before people could sense them and abstract their form.

This is obviously a framing in terms of Aristotleian metaphysics but I think the concepts at play are isomorphic to many other systems.

When you ask whether “undifferentiated givenness” is first in the order of being or in the order of experience, I wonder whether that’s still considering the question from a temporal perspective. The eternal is not temporally prior, because it’s outside of time—so it can be said to be ontologically prior, as the ground or condition of temporal existence. But treating it as temporally prior still risks a kind of reductionism.

I may have misunderstood you. I didn't think “undifferentiated givenness” meant to refer to anything eternal, but rather the immediacy of sense certainty without any mediation. So I was thinking in the order of experience. In the order of created, changing (physical) being, my thoughts would be that for anything to be anything at all, it has to have some sort of actuality. So the temporal priority of an entirely undifferentiated being that is then actualized by consciousness strikes me as somewhat like the Platonic demiurge, giving form to nothingness. The example of consciousness causes collapse is sort of apt here, but not really, because that doesn't presuppose sheer potency prior to collapse, but rather a delimited sort of indeterminacy.

Again, the question is the sense in which numbers are prior. Numbers do not exist at all on the phenomenal plane - you won't find them anywhere, except in the act of counting. So they are not temporally prior, even though there were obviously numbers of things that existed before anyone was around to count them.

Wouldn't their existence in the intellect be on the phenomenal plane?

But if numbers of things existed temporaly prior, and the natural numbers come to be in the intellect by abstracting the form of magnitude and multitude, how is that not temporal priority?

That's at least the idea behind the abstraction of form. Things exist in one mode in material beings and another in the intellect of finite beings. But then finite beings don't create the form, but rather abstract it. We could say there is a generation of the intellectual mode (a reception of form by potency) but not a creation (something new).

So, what consciousness are they constituted in, if it is unnecessary to their existence that there be expressions of them or awareness of them? I'd be wary about entering an answer to that question. Suffice to say they are real possiblities that can only be apprehended by a rational intelligence - not neccessarily yours or mine (definitely not mine, as I'm bad at math.)

It's a tough question, but I would object to the idea that mathematical objects are "mind independent." If they have no intelligibility, no quiddity, no eidos, then they are nothing at all, but to possess these is to have intellectual content. I don't think anything is "mind independent" in the sense this is commonly meant, a sort of Kantianesque "noumena" of being devoid of intelligible content.

So, I guess I would try to explain this the way David Bentley Hart does in All Things Are Full of Gods, that the notion of bare noumenal "material" existence is a mistake, an inversion of the proper order.

But bad at it or not, maths deals in necessary truths. And it’s precisely this sense of necessity that makes the question “where does logic come from?” so important. We’re not just talking about how humans happen to reason, or how nature happens to behave, but about the conditions that make truth, structure, and intelligibility possible at all - how reason is imposed upon us.

Yes, that makes sense to me.

Quoting Harry Hindu

I would prefer that you provide links to those other things because the language used in your quote is unwieldy.

The quote seems clear and fully wieldy to me. I don't know of any other source who expresses it's point as well as it does.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Instincts are useful or else they would not have been selected. They are like a general purpose tool for handling a variety of situations or situations that rarely change. Conscious behavior allows an organism to adapt one's behavior in real-time in dynamic environments. This is why humans have been able to spread into all sorts of environments, including space.

Going back to the quote from James, humans are just as instinctual as other animals and sentient animals learn from experience just as much as humans. Animals also adapt their behavior in real-time in dynamic environments. That is the whole point of the quote.

Quoting Harry Hindu

"Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape—he is a shaper of the landscape. In body and in mind he is the explorer of nature, the ubiquitous animal, who did not find but has made his home in every continent."
Jacob Bronowski

Animals; and plants, fungi, bacteria and all other living organisms for that matter; shape the landscape. Beavers build dams that create lakes that provide habitat for fish that provide food for eagles. Grasses prevent erosion and create prairies. They are are also explorers of nature and have migrated to every continent.

Reply to Harry Hindu

This also speaks to our curiosity. We always want to know what is over the horizon. We are natural explorers. It is in our nature to see the world more openly - to seek out new worlds and new civilizations - to boldly go where no man has gone before, because you never know what part of reality might be useful for something

Or simply because "men by nature desire to know," or because they desire the glory of achieving the difficult.

Quoting Leontiskos

Logic is about language, not about the world itself. — ChatteringMonkey


Since you disagreed with the person who disagreed with this thesis, I am assuming that you affirm the thesis. Please correct me if you do not affirm the thesis.

I was only disputing the idea that logic is about the world, which is to say, that there is some kind of inherent correspondence between logical statements and "things out there."

That's not to say that there isn't a connection between logic and the world at some level. But what sort of connection? That question gets back to the issue that I have with this whole discussion thread: it's not clear what "aboutness" anyone is talking about. Are we talking about metaphysics? Language? Evolutionary origins of cognitive faculties? Developmental psychology? It all kind of gets mixed together.

Quoting SophistiCat

it's not clear what "aboutness" anyone is talking about. Are we talking about metaphysics? Language? Evolutionary origins of cognitive faculties? Developmental psychology? It all kind of gets mixed together.

This is not an uncommon problem here on the forum, and I assume in philosophy in general. In this case in particular, we’re not talking metaphysics or language. We’re talking about the facts of how human cognition and evolutionactually work.

Quoting T Clark

The issue is whether it is possible to make a distinction between the organism's perception of its environment and its evolution with respect to its environment. Put differently, is perception the organism’s representation of a reality, or is it the enacting of a reality? In the first case, what is represented is presumed to be external to the perceiver. In the second case, the real is produced through the organism-environment interaction.
— Joshs

I still don’t get it. Let’s leave it at that.

@Joshs would you mind having a go at explaining this further? This idea appeals to me, as it goes to the heart of what we think we are and I’d like a more educated formulation of it than the slight understanding I currently have.

I guess this asks us whether perception is simply a picture of an external world or a process that helps create reality through interaction. If perception just reflects the world, then reality exists independently of the organism; but if perception enacts reality, then the organism and environment co-create what is real. This distinction must have significant implications in how we understand knowledge, life, and what we dub 'reality' particularly academic subjects such as biology, psychology, and philosophy.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

men by nature desire to know

Do you think non-human sentient animals don’t also desire to know? Some of them certainly do.

Quoting Tom Storm

Joshs would you mind having a go at explaining this further? This idea appeals to me, as it goes to the heart of what we think we are and I’d like a more educated formulation of it than the slight understanding I currently have.

For the record, I wasn’t really arguing against @Joshs point - only that it isn’t clear to me how it is relevant to this specific issue.

Quoting T Clark

For the record, I wasn’t really arguing against Joshs point - only that it isn’t clear to me how it is relevant to this specific issue.

No worries. I added a bit where I have tried to interpret the point as best I can. Pretty sure I have missed something.

Quoting Tom Storm

I guess this asks us whether perception is simply a picture of an external world or a process that helps create reality through interaction.

To start, it’s important to realize that Lorenz wasn’t talking about perception alone, he was talking about our entire cognitive system - not just our eyes and ears and nose, but our brains and nerves, our thoughts, our consciousness, our emotions.

If you go back to the original Lorenz quote I posted, he definitely thinks that the world represented in our minds is real. I don’t necessarily agree with him. Deciding what is real and what’s not is a metaphysical process, not a scientific one.

Quoting T Clark

To start, it’s important to realize that Lorenz wasn’t talking about perception alone, he was talking about our entire cognitive system - not just our eyes and ears and nose, but our brains and nerves, our thoughts, our consciousness, our emotions.

I'm not pursuing the Lorenz connection, I'm focusing on enactivist accounts of co-creation. I read Lorenz a generation ago and have forgotten it.

I'm currently more interested in postmodern thought, phenomenology, and other non-essentialist accounts of experience. I’m also aware that you align with Collingwood’s view of metaphysics as a historical/conceptual framework and not true or false as such. Personally, I would argue that science is itself a form of metaphysics, or at the very least, it rests upon one: the assumption that the world is intelligible. And yes, science can perform some remarkable tricks. But the implication of @Joshs contribution asks us what exactly is it that is intelligible and what are we understanding?

Reply to T Clark

"Curiosity killed the cat," right? There is a sort of anthropological/metaphysical question of if animals can "know" as in, intellection, but obviously they can know in different ways, e.g. "sense knowledge," memory, etc. Both sensing and knowing involve a sort of union with the known.

But the quote is from Slick Ari at the opening of the Metaphysics and he only mentions man because that's his focus.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

. Substantial form doesn't exist outside substances or the intellect. There is the form "cat" 'in' cats themselves and 'in' the intellect of knowers. But the form has to be to be to be informing these things in the same way a table must exist for a book to rest on it. Yet it seems possible for there to be cats but not creatures with intellects. The existence of the form vis-á-vis cats is not dependent on the existence of the form in finite intellects.

I agree that from an empirical perspective we encounter particulars first, and then abstract the form. But I wonder whether that perspective risks treating the form as derivative —something we derive from the object. In the Platonic (and arguably Aristotelian) sense, form is not something posterior to the object, but that in virtue of which the object is what it is.

That is, form isn’t just a feature we discover by experience—it’s the condition that makes experience possible. It's because of the reality of the form that we can identify the particular. It’s ontologically prior, even if not temporally so. This is where I’d place form in a “vertical” rather than horizontal order—closer to what Neoplatonism or even certain strains of phenomenology suggest.

I wonder whether framing form as something abstracted from sensible experience is more of an empiricist perspective (e.g. J S Mill) than Aristotelian.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't think “undifferentiated givenness” meant to refer to anything eternal, but rather the immediacy of sense certainty without any mediation. So I was thinking in the order of experience. In the order of created, changing (physical) being, my thoughts would be that for anything to be anything at all, it has to have some sort of actuality.

When I speak of “undifferentiated givenness” or the in-itself, I don’t mean it as some kind of vague or latent actuality, waiting to be identified. To say it must have “some sort of actuality” is already to try to give it form—to insert it into the order of knowable, nameable things, to say what it is. But the point is: we can’t do that without distorting what we’re trying to indicate. Here is where 'apophatic silence' is precisely correct.

That’s why I describe it as “neither existent nor non-existent.” It’s not an actualised thing, but it’s also not mere nothingness. This is something I’ve taken primarily from the Madhyamaka tradition in Buddhist philosophy, which insists on the middle way (hence the name) - between reification (it is something!) and nihilism (it doesn't exist). In that framework, we are dealing with what is empty of intrinsic existence, but not therefore non-existent. It’s not a substance, but nor is it nothing. It’s a kind of ontological openness. That is the meaning of ??nyat?.

So yes, it’s a very difficult conceptual point—one that sits uneasily in the categories of Greek metaphysics, which are more comfortable with ousia and actuality. But I’d argue that the in-itself is precisely what resists actualisation, and that’s why we can’t approach it as “some kind of actuality” without losing what the idea was trying to preserve in the first place. This review of The Silence of the Buddha by Raimon Panikkar may be of interest. It’s a remarkably careful attempt to think through how the Buddhist idea of the Unconditioned—which is beyond being and non-being—can speak to theological and metaphysical questions in the West, including the issue of God and Being. It also addresses some of the points we’ve been discussing, particularly about ultimate ground, causation, and the intelligibility of existence.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I would object to the idea that mathematical objects are "mind independent." If they have no intelligibility, no quiddity, no eidos, then they are nothing at all, but to possess these is to have intellectual content.

That seems right to me. I’d say mathematical and logical truths are independent of any particular mind—they aren’t invented by us or dependent on individual thought—but they’re also only accessible through mind. So in that sense, they’re not “mind-dependent” in the subjective or psychological sense, but they are only perceptible to the mind (the pre-Kantian meaning of 'noumenal').

I think this is where Plato’s notion of metaxy is relevant—that humans occupy a kind of in-between status, as participants in both the sensible world of becoming and the intelligible world of being. We’re the bridge between the two, and it's in this role that we encounter things like numbers and forms: not as physical entities, but as realities that can only be grasped from within the horizon of intelligibility.

This “in-between” condition—neither purely empirical nor purely intelligible—is what makes the Platonic view so compelling in discussions like this. It avoids collapsing ideas into mere mental projections, while also refusing to treat them as physical facts. They’re real, but their reality is of a different order—something we participate in rather than simply observe.

Quoting Tom Storm

Personally, I would argue that science is itself a form of metaphysics, or at the very least, it rests upon one:

That is exactly what Collingwood was saying - not that science is metaphysics, but that metaphysics provides the foundation for science.

Quoting Tom Storm

But the implication of Joshs contribution asks us what exactly is it that is intelligible and what are we understanding?

I’ll say it again, and then leave it alone. I just don’t get it. I don’t see what the big deal is about the fact that living organisms and the environment co-evolve. Of course they do. I guess what annoyed me about Josh’s statement is that it claims somehow Lorenz missed that. Of course he didn’t, it just isn’t particularly relevant to the specific issue he was discussing.

Reply to T Clark I think it leads to a more robust questioning of science and reason than many of us would accept. I’m not convinced Lorenz aligns with enactivism and this approach would probably question the realism and evolutionary biology that underpins Lorenz’s work. But this isn’t my area.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

There is a sort of anthropological/metaphysical question of if animals can "know" as in, intellection, but obviously they can know in different ways, e.g. "sense knowledge," memory, etc.

As I understand it, there is no controversy about the fact that sentient non-human animals can learn from experience and act based on that learning. How is that not knowledge? Just because they can’t put it into words doesn't mean they can’t use it in effective, and perhaps even self-aware, ways in their everyday lives. Perhaps our differences only reflect a difference in our understanding of the definitions of “knowledge” and “intellect.”

Quoting Tom Storm

?T Clark I think it leads to a more robust questioning of science and reason than many of us would accept. I’m not convinced Lorenz aligns with enactivism and this approach would probably question the realism and evolutionary biology that underpins Lorenz’s work.

Did I mention that I don’t get it?

Reply to T Clark I guess it would mean that his assumptions are less fully developed and his conclusion missing important information. But let’s leave it there.

Quoting Wayfarer

Numbers do not exist at all on the phenomenal plane - you won't find them anywhere, except in the act of counting.

What's your definition of counting? Is counting an act outside the phenomenal plane?

When I'm experiencing a 400 Hz tone, does this particular tone-quale express the number 400 in a phenomenal way? I would say, yes. I think, this phenomenon refers to the counting of 400 eardrum deflections per second. Eardrum deflections are separated by a forward and backward motion.

When I see two things, I have counted to 2 because I noticed a separation between them. This separation is based on different phenomenal forms and qualities. How slow must a counting be in order to define it as a counting rather than a quale corresponding to a number of light or sound waves per time?

("quale" = singular of "qualia")

If this thread is about the logical question why there is logic, then this thread is attempting an infinite regress, I think.

If this thread is about the cause of logic's birth, then this thread considers logic a physical thing, and that's a misconception in my view.

Logic is a supergoddess. There's no further background.
She's mightier than the abrahamic god -- for logical reasons.

That's my conclusion as an agnostic.

Quoting T Clark

Do you think non-human sentient animals don’t also desire to know? Some of them certainly do.

Absolutely. Every brain owner is curious. Humans are not the only brain owners. Curiosity is the motor of brain development. No curiosity, no brain.

Quoting Quk

What's your definition of counting? Is counting an act outside the phenomenal plane?

Phenomena are what appears. The act of counting is performed by the subject to whom phenomena appear.

Quoting SophistiCat

That question gets back to the issue that I have with this whole discussion thread: it's not clear what "aboutness" anyone is talking about. Are we talking about metaphysics? Language? Evolutionary origins of cognitive faculties? Developmental psychology? It all kind of gets mixed together.

But that's just characteristic of the plight of modernity - the collision of all of these different and in some ways incommensurable perspectives. We've inherited all of that and are trying to make sense of it.

In terms of philosophy, I think the disconnect between physical causation and logical relationships can be traced back to Hume.

Hume famously argued that our idea of causation—that one event necessarily brings about another—is not grounded in either rational insight or logical necessity. Instead, it arises from habit or custom: we observe that event A is regularly followed by event B, and we come to expect B after A. But this expectation is psychological, not logical.

There is no contradiction in imagining A occurring without B. This means causal connections are not logically necessary. They’re not like mathematical truths, where denying the conclusion entails contradiction.

Hume distinguishes sharply between:

• Relations of ideas (necessary truths, a priori, such as mathematics and logic), and
• Matters of fact (empirical, contingent truths, such as causation in the natural world).

The upshot: causation is observational, not rational. It’s a habit of mind, not a structure of reality. Combine that with the division of the world into the primary (measurable) and secondary (subjective) domains, and the Cartesian division of mind from world, and the rupture is complete.

Hume’s Famous Verdict

“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section XII

This isn’t just upstart empiricism. It’s a rejection of the entire Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical tradition, where formal and final causes underpinned the intelligibility of the cosmos.

(And never mind that Hume’s treatise falls by those same criteria!)

Before and After Hume:

In pre-modern thought—especially in Aristotelian and Scholastic realism —causation was metaphysically grounded. Causes had real powers or essences, and effects flowed from them necessarily. Causal necessity was built into the intelligibility of nature itself.

After Hume, this conception collapses. Causation is no longer a rational structure but a pattern of observed regularities. This shift paves the way for positivism, empiricism, and the modern view that physical laws are descriptive, not prescriptive: they summarize what happens, but don’t explain why. This is the basis for the charge that modernism is in some sense irrational (despite its constant appeals to science).

The Broader Consequences:

Scientific laws come to be seen as contingent, not expressions of an intelligible order.

The gap between rational necessity (in logic and mathematics) and physical causation (in nature) becomes unbridgeable. Hence Wittgenstein says in TLP "The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena." Why an illusion? Because we mistake description for explanation. We observe regularities, formulate laws (e.g., Newton’s laws, or later, field equations), and then treat those laws as if they explain what they describe.

Hume's message, in effect: you think causation is rational, but you're just projecting your expectations onto the world. And how often do we see this sentiment echoed in debates on the Forum?

Quoting Wayfarer

The act of counting is performed by the subject to whom phenomena appear.

[off-topic]
I think the subject is embedded within the phenomena; i.e. the subject is not an evacuated cinema visitor.
[/off-topic]

Reply to T Clark

Perhaps our differences only reflect a difference in our understanding of the definitions of “knowledge” and “intellect.

Yes, we are. Intellect in the older faculty psychology refers specifically to the understanding of universals, of form. It's not the same thing as memory or what gets called the estimate/cogitative power that allows for problem solving and inductive pattern recognition. There is a whole big literature on this and if animals can "use language" in the ways that even young toddlers can.

Reply to Wayfarer

I agree that from an empirical perspective we encounter particulars first, and then abstract the form. But I wonder whether that perspective risks treating the form as derivative —something we derive from the object. In the Platonic (and arguably Aristotelian) sense, form is not something posterior to the object, but that in virtue of which the object is what it is.

That is, form isn’t just a feature we discover by experience—it’s the condition that makes experience possible. It's because of the reality of the form that we can identify the particular. It’s ontologically prior, even if not temporally so. This is where I’d place form in a “vertical” rather than horizontal order—closer to what Neoplatonism or even certain strains of phenomenology suggest.

I wonder whether framing form as something abstracted from sensible experience is more of an empiricist perspective (e.g. J S Mill) than Aristotelian.

I think the bolded is very important to keep in mind. And yes, I'd agree that the form that has been abstracted by the intellect has to be posterior to the form in what is known. The empiricists are copying Aristotle so they do sound similar, but for them "abstraction" has become a sort of inductive pattern recognition, whereas for Aristotle it's the active/agent intellect making the form of what has been sensed (form being communicated through the senses) come to be present in the intellect.

When I speak of “undifferentiated givenness” or the in-itself, I don’t mean it as some kind of vague or latent actuality, waiting to be identified. To say it must have “some sort of actuality” is already to try to give it form—to insert it into the order of knowable, nameable things, to say what it is. But the point is: we can’t do that without distorting what we’re trying to indicate. Here is where 'apophatic silence' is precisely correct.

That’s why I describe it as “neither existent nor non-existent.” It’s not an actualised thing, but it’s also not mere nothingness. This is something I’ve taken primarily from the Madhyamaka tradition in Buddhist philosophy, which insists on the middle way (hence the name) - between reification (it is something!) and nihilism (it doesn't exist). In that framework, we are dealing with what is empty of intrinsic existence, but not therefore non-existent. It’s not a substance, but nor is it nothing. It’s a kind of ontological openness. That is the meaning of ??nyat?.

Interesting stuff. I am not familiar with it. It reminds me of the chora in the Timaeus or some versions of matter. Eriugena has the distinction of nothing through privation and nothing on account of excellence. But then latter would in some sense be the fullness or all possibility, total actuality. One image I like is a sound wave of infinite amplitude and frequency, which of course leads to every infinite peak and trough canceling each other out. The result is a silence, but a pregnant silence. I mean, it's an imperfect example. Dionysius and Eriugena don't think God is a sound wave. It's more about the fullness defying finite description.

This “in-between” condition—neither purely empirical nor purely intelligible—is what makes the Platonic view so compelling in discussions like this. It avoids collapsing ideas into mere mental projections, while also refusing to treat them as physical facts. They’re real, but their reality is of a different order—something we participate in rather than simply observe.

:up:

Quoting tom111

Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself.

The Law of Identity is one of the three traditional laws of thought. By the Law of Identity, a being is identical to itself.

I tend to agree that our thoughts can never be independent of the world, as we are an intrinsic part of the world.

However, the issue of time may complicate matters.

The Law of Identity states that Being A is Being A, where Being A is identical to Being A.

But the Law of Identity is always about one moment in time, and at this moment in time, Being A does not change from being Being A.

But what is "one moment in time"? "One moment in time" is defined as a moment in time when there is no change.

Note: a Being may or may not change with time, but the Law of Identity is not referring to identity through time but rather is referring to identity at one particular moment in time.

Therefore, the Law of Identity is a tautology that is dependent upon a definition. IE, the Law of Identity states that at one moment in time Being A does not change into Being B, where a moment in time is defined as a moment where a Being does not change. As a tautology dependent upon a definition, it cannot tell us about the reality or the logic of the world.

In fact, there could be a Law of Identity that at one moment in time being A is not being A, where one moment in time is defined as a moment in time when there is change.

In practice, we don't define "one moment of time" as a moment in time when there is change, but there is no logical reason why we couldn't. The Law of Identity is about logic, not about the choices we make.

The Law of Identity, that at one moment in time a being is identical to itself is dependent upon the definition of "one moment in time". It is therefore a tautology dependent upon a definition and therefore cannot tell us about the reality or the logic of the world.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Eriugena has the distinction of nothing through privation and nothing on account of excellence. But then latter would in some sense be the fullness or all possibility, total actuality.

Just so.

Quoting T Clark

Going back to the quote from James, humans are just as instinctual as other animals and sentient animals learn from experience just as much as humans. Animals also adapt their behavior in real-time in dynamic environments. That is the whole point of the quote.

All you need to do is make some basic observations of animal behavior to realize that this is not true. To say that other animals are "just as" humans simply does not fit our observations. Humans are obviously capable of much more complex behaviors than other animals.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that humans are the only logical organisms. A brain is a logical organ. It receives inputs and processes them to produce meaningful behaviors. Instincts are logical processes. Natural selection is a logical process. By "logical", I mean that it is causal and deterministic - similar causes lead to similar effects. Similar inputs can lead to similar behaviors. The issue is that any logical process is limited by the type of input it receives and the type of process that handles the input. There are different logical process meant to handle specific input. If you try to enter the wrong input into a logical system that was not designed to handle that input, you will get logical errors. Junk goes in, junk comes out.

A moth that flies around your porch light is mistaking the porch light for the Moon. It is only behaving illogically from our perspective because we can distinguish the difference between a porch light and the Moon. The moth, however, is doing what it was designed to with the information it was designed to perceive. It does not adapt it's behavior in real-time. It flies around the porch light until it dies of exhaustion.

Quoting T Clark

Animals; and plants, fungi, bacteria and all other living organisms for that matter; shape the landscape. Beavers build dams that create lakes that provide habitat for fish that provide food for eagles. Grasses prevent erosion and create prairies. They are are also explorers of nature and have migrated to every continent.

Has any of these organism made it into space using their own (brain) power? If what you say is true, we wouldn't be able to distinguish between humans and other species. There is an obvious exponential difference in scope.

Quoting RussellA

It is therefore a tautology dependent upon a definition and therefore cannot tell us about the reality or the logic of the world.

I think the Law of Identity, which is a tautology, is useful in analyses: "The person the photo refers to is identical to the person who wrote that letter." This example discusses two reference arrows; the one is a photo and the other is a letter. Both arrows point at the same object, in this case a certain person. This is good to know. I.e. a tautology is not neccessarily useless. It's an operational tool for analyses.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

This also speaks to our curiosity. We always want to know what is over the horizon. We are natural explorers. It is in our nature to see the world more openly - to seek out new worlds and new civilizations - to boldly go where no man has gone before, because you never know what part of reality might be useful for something

Or simply because "men by nature desire to know," or because they desire the glory of achieving the difficult.

"By nature" meaning that they were naturally selected to be curious because being curious allows one to be open to new solutions to existing problems.

Reply to Harry Hindu

Sure, but the fact that some particular process led to man's desire for truth as such doesn't preclude the fact that man can now desire truth for its own sake. That is, man can seek truth for the sake of truth and not for the sake of evolutionary advantage.

Reply to Wayfarer Your precis on causality is well taken, but I don't think it is very relevant to the present discussion. Causation was not thought to be a law of logic, even in Hume's time. Aristotle, whose doctrines on both these subjects were predominant in Western philosophy, certainly didn't present it in that way. While Hume's analysis sharpened and clarified the distinction, he wasn't breaking any new ground with this observation. It was rather his austere empiricist take on causality that distinguished his view, but that is about more than simply noting that there is no logical contradiction in denying any particular instance of causation.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, but the fact that some particular process led to man's desire for truth as such doesn't preclude the fact that man can now desire truth for its own sake. That is, man can seek truth for the sake of truth and not for the sake of evolutionary advantage.

I doubt we seek truth for the sake of seeking truth. We seek truth to acquire some kind of advantage (knowledge) about how to improve our lives to some degree. But that doesn't mean we don't acquire knowledge that does not have a direct effect on our survival. We do.

Like I said, survival is the best incentive to get your perceptions about the world right, and that may require that we pick up things that don't have a direct impact on our survival. Understanding that there are other planets that we can colonize to improve the chances of humanity avoiding extinction is one thing, but understanding how to do it another thing. You'll need to know about all the physics that goes into designing a rocket ship to accomplish it, which is in itself not knowledge that has a direct impact on our survival.

Quoting SophistiCat

Causation was not thought to be a law of logic, even in Hume's time. Aristotle, whose doctrines on both these subjects were predominant in Western philosophy, certainly didn't present it in that way. While Hume's analysis sharpened and clarified the distinction, he wasn't breaking any new ground with this observation. It was rather his austere empiricist take on causality that distinguished his view, but that is about more than simply noting that there is no logical contradiction in denying any particular instance of causation.

Can you perform logic without causation or without determinism being the case? What is logic? What does it mean for a conclusion to "logically follow" from the premises? Is reasoning a causal process?

Quoting Quk

I think the Law of Identity, which is a tautology, is useful in analyses: "The person the photo refers to is identical to the person who wrote that letter."

Suppose Dimitri was photographed in May and wrote the letter in June. In what way is Dimitri in May identical to Dimitri in June? There are many ways in which Dimitri could have changed. He could have learnt how to cook moussaka, been on a diet and lost weight or lost a parent and emotionally suffered.

Is anyone the identical person that they used to be?

Quoting Quk

Absolutely. Every brain owner is curious. Humans are not the only brain owners. Curiosity is the motor of brain development. No curiosity, no brain.

Yes.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Intellect in the older faculty psychology refers specifically to the understanding of universals, of form. It's not the same thing as memory or what gets called the estimate/cogitative power that allows for problem solving and inductive pattern recognition.

You're right. I used the wrong word. I should have said "intelligence" instead of "intellect," although you might not like that any better. In a book I like very much, "Feeling & Knowing," Antonio Damasio discusses how intelligence and knowledge manifest in organisms up and down the phyletic scale. He uses language that is different from what we are using here and I can't think of an easy way to make his points simply and briefly, so I'm going to leave it at that for now.

Quoting Harry Hindu

All you need to do is make some basic observations of animal behavior to realize that this is not true. To say that other animals are "just as" humans simply does not fit our observations. Humans are obviously capable of much more complex behaviors than other animals.

I guess I confused things when I wrote "just as much." I didn't mean sentient animal's minds and behaviors are as complex as human's. I meant their minds, their intelligence, are just as big a part of their nature. Animals are capable of using their minds to make images, remember, communicate, create abstractions, and solve problems, obviously, some more than others.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Has any of these organism made it into space using their own (brain) power?

You, or rather Jacob Brownoski, wrote "he is not a figure in the landscape—he is a shaper of the landscape." I responded that animals shape the landscape too, some with their brains some not. What does that have to do with going to the moon?

Quoting RussellA

Suppose Dimitri was photographed in May and wrote the letter in June. In what way is Dimitri in May identical to Dimitri in June? There are many ways in which Dimitri could have changed. He could have learnt how to cook moussaka, been on a diet and lost weight or lost a parent and emotionally suffered.

Is anyone the identical person that they used to be?

It depends on the definition of that identified object.

For example, the identified person is the one which is named Dimitri and which was born in Athens in 1855 and died in 1911, and whose parents were Athena and Ioannis Papadopoulos. Dimitri is unique. There has been no second person with these attributes.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Has any of these organism made it into space using their own (brain) power?

Has any of these humans made it into the sky using their own wings?

Your anthropocentrism is using the method of cherry picking. And your conclusions are naturalistic fallacies.

Quoting tom111

Thoughts?

Good post.

I would add that logic is ineluctable, to a certain extent. If someone tries to be altogether illogical they will fail. Their unconscious mind is logical, and often moreso than their conscious mind. This is part of why emotions and intuitions posses an intrinsic logic, and can be unraveled.

Quoting tom111

For this to work, things must exist as distinct entities.

Is this right? Or is it sufficient that we be able to treat things as distinct entities?

Couldn't this be mistaking method for ontology? Mistaking what we do for how things are?

So again, I'm far form convinced that you are not presuming your conclusion.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Can you perform logic without causation or without determinism being the case?

There are many things without which you cannot perform logic - breathable atmosphere, for example. What's the point of this and the rest of your questions?

Again, there doesn't seem to be a clear direction of inquiry here - just random things being thrown out.

Quoting Quk

I think the Law of Identity, which is a tautology, is useful in analyses: "The person the photo refers to is identical to the person who wrote that letter."...For example, the identified person is the one which is named Dimitri and which was born in Athens in 1855 and died in 1911, and whose parents were Athena and Ioannis Papadopoulos. Dimitri is unique. There has been no second person with these attributes.

The Law of Identity states that a thing is identical with itself.

Yes, the name Dimitri Papadopoulos, born in Athens in 1855, points to a particular unique person. Assume that Dimitri in 1855 had a height of 50cm and weight of 3.3kg and in 1911 had a height of 180cm and weight 70kg.

In what way is something having a height of 50cm and weight of 3.3kg identical to something having a height of 180cm and weight of 70kg?

Does the Law of Identity apply in this situation?

Quoting RussellA

Does the Law of Identity apply in this situation?

If you compare the magnitude of two weights, the reference will be just that magnitude and no other attributes.

Now it depends on whether or not you allow a magnitude to be a "thing". If you do, we can test this:

Compare the weight of this table with the weight of this Dimitri. If the scale is balanced, their magnitudes are identical. 99 is identical to 99.

If we define Dimitri solely by his weight during the years and nanoseconds, Dimitri is changing his identity from one Planck time to the next.

However, If we define him by constants, his identity will remain constant.

That's my view. What do you think?

Quoting Quk

However, If we define him by constants, his identity will remain constant.

The Law of Identity is about identity in logic and is not relevant to personal identity.

Dimitri's weight, which changes through his life, certainly doesn't define his identity. Even his personal identity may change throughout his life.

The only constant thing through his life, his identity, will probably be the label "Dimitri".

Quoting tom111

Logic isn't a set of rules we invented to think clearly. It's not even something minds discover about reality. Logic is the automatic byproduct of existence itself.

If the OP is correct, in that logic is the automatic by-product of existence itself, then Kant's project in his Critique of Pure Reason has failed.

The Law of Identity states that each thing is identical to itself.

Kant in the CPR argues that we can never know anything about the thing-in-itself.

But if we know that the thing-in-itself follows the Law of Identity, and that the thing-in-itself is identical to itself, then we do know something about the thing-in-itself. IE, it is identical to itself.

The question is, where do things such as chairs exist. Do they exist in the mind as a concept in thought and language, or do they exist in a world independent of any observer?

If things only exist in the mind as a concept in thought and language, then the Law of Identity also only exists in the mind as a concept in thought and language.

Reply to RussellA

In this context I understand "personal identity" as the identity by the person's biography which consists of much more than just the label "Dimitri". His biography from birth to the present time will not change; it will just grow into the future. Dimitri's true history is unique; it refers to just this person. If you understand "identity" as the forename in the passport, then yes, the name can change. But then every Joe would be the same person; all Joes would be identical with each other. What is this reduction-to-name useful for? It can't be used for passport systems nor for philosophical explanations. I think it's more important to see that the history of Joe Miller is not identical to the history of Joe Smith. By the history you can see if it's that Joe which needs a new chair and not the other Joe which needs a new table. They are not identical. I think the reason for this lies in the difference between their histories. The names are just labels. "Joe," "chair", "table" are universal labels. A history is hardly universal.

Quoting Quk

A history is hardly universal.

There is the concept of "chair" in the mind in thought and language and particular instantiations of it in the world, such as "this chair". Similarly, there is concept of "Dimitri" in the mind in thought and language and a particular instantiation of it in the world, having, as you say, a unique history.

Reply to RussellA

You mean the etymology of the word "Dimitri"?

Quoting Quk

You mean the etymology of the word "Dimitri"?

No, more as you said "His biography from birth to the present time"

Quoting T Clark

I guess I confused things when I wrote "just as much." I didn't mean sentient animal's minds and behaviors are as complex as human's. I meant their minds, their intelligence, are just as big a part of their nature. Animals are capable of using their minds to make images, remember, communicate, create abstractions, and solve problems, obviously, some more than others.

Then we agree that animals think and behave logically given the way they are designed and the sensory information they receive as inputs, just as I explained with my example with the moth.

Has any of these organism made it into space using their own (brain) power?
— Harry Hindu

Quoting T Clark

You, or rather Jacob Brownoski, wrote "he is not a figure in the landscape—he is a shaper of the landscape." I responded that animals shape the landscape too, some with their brains some not. What does that have to do with going to the moon?

Again we are talking about degrees of complexity where humans are exponentially more complex in the way they perceive and behave in the world than the other animals. They all use their brains to shape the landscape. Name an animal that can shape the landscape without a brain, or that when shaping the landscape they are not using their senses and brain. For what reason are they shaping the landscape? How do they know when to stop shaping the landscape?

Quoting Quk

Has any of these organism made it into space using their own (brain) power?
— Harry Hindu

Has any of these humans made it into the sky using their own wings?

Your anthropocentrism is using the method of cherry picking. And your conclusions are naturalistic fallacies.

Your response does not address what I said. Read what I said and respond appropriately.

Humans have made their own wings. Has any other animals designed complex machinery that adds functionality to the human body? Have other organisms designed other body parts to replace failing ones using their brains? Sure lizards can regrow tails, but that is a biological function, not a logical one. I did say that the brain is the logical organ. Your legs, hands and mouth are not logical organs. They are driven by your logical organ.

I'm not saying that humans are special. I'm saying that they are different in respect to their brains and how they use them. This is not an anthropocentric stance. It is merely an observation.

Humans are the only ones at this moment that stand a chance of saving themselves from extinction from dangers that the other animals aren't even aware of - asteroid impacts, black holes, the sun expanding and consuming the Earth, human activity destroying the environment, etc.

Quoting SophistiCat

Can you perform logic without causation or without determinism being the case?
— Harry Hindu

There are many things without which you cannot perform logic - breathable atmosphere, for example. What's the point of this and the rest of your questions?

Again, there doesn't seem to be a clear direction of inquiry here - just random things being thrown out.

You're trying to finish the race before starting it. Most people on this forum, once they realize the direction of inquiry, start to dance around the issue. Does a newborn baby have a direction of inquiry when trying to understand and make sense of what its senses are telling it? Don't worry about the direction of inquiry right now and just answer the questions as posed. If there is a problem with the question or you need some definitions for the words in the question, just say so.

Your answer to my quoted question seems to imply that a breathable atmosphere is required to to perform logic. While that wasn't my question it does show that determinism and causation are required - that there are certain circumstances that have to exist prior to other circumstances existing.

My question was more about the logical process itself, not what preceded its existence.

Reasoning takes time. It is a process. As such it is causal.

You provide a reason for your conclusions. Your reasons determine your conclusion. Your premises determine the validity of the conclusion. As such it is deterministic.

Quoting Banno

Is this right? Or is it sufficient that we be able to treat things as distinct entities?

Couldn't this be mistaking method for ontology? Mistaking what we do for how things are?

So again, I'm far form convinced that you are not presuming your conclusion.

It depends on the goal. Sometimes it is useful to treat things as distinct entities. Sometimes it isn't.

If treating entities one way or the other produces useful results in that you are able to realize your goal, then there must be some semblance of truth to the way we are treating it. Can there be distinct entities that form relations between other distinct entities? Yes. You just have to ensure you're not conflating the relation with the distinct entity when you're trying to solve a problem or achieve some goal.

Having goals is the reason we categorize and organize reality into labeled boxes, and we can store boxes within larger boxes. Each box is a tool for solving a problem.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Then we agree that animals think and behave logically given the way they are designed and the sensory information they receive as inputs,

It seems to me, although I am not certain, that logic requires higher mind functions and perhaps self-awareness. I'd say rather that animals think and behave effectively.

Quoting Harry Hindu

just as I explained with my example with the moth.

Many animals have much more complex and intelligent behaviors than that. I think, although again I don't have specific knowledge, moths aren't attracted to the moon but to a bright light against a dark background. This is, I assume, a genetically encoded instinct and is not learned. That's not logic or even logical.

Quoting Harry Hindu

humans are exponentially more complex in the way they perceive and behave in the world than the other animals.

This is just not true.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Name an animal that can shape the landscape without a brain, or that when shaping the landscape they are not using their senses and brain.

It's clear, at least to me, that organisms without brains have had a much greater impact on the environment than those with them. This is from Wikipedia:

Quoting Wikipedia - Great Oxidation Event

The Great Oxidation Event (GOE) or Great Oxygenation Event, also called the Oxygen Catastrophe, Oxygen Revolution, Oxygen Crisis or Oxygen Holocaust, was a time interval during the Earth's Paleoproterozoic era when the Earth's atmosphere and shallow seas first experienced a rise in the concentration of free oxygen. This began approximately 2.460–2.426 billion years ago (Ga) during the Siderian period and ended approximately 2.060 Ga ago during the Rhyacian. Geological, isotopic and chemical evidence suggests that biologically produced molecular oxygen (dioxygen or O2) started to accumulate in the Archean prebiotic atmosphere due to microbial photosynthesis, and eventually changed it from a weakly reducing atmosphere practically devoid of oxygen into an oxidizing one containing abundant free oxygen, with oxygen levels being as high as 10% of modern atmospheric level by the end of the GOE...

...The oxidative environmental change, compounded by a global glaciation, devastated the microbial mats around the Earth's surface. The subsequent adaptation of surviving archaea via symbiogenesis with aerobic proteobacteria (which went endosymbiont and became mitochondria) may have led to the rise of eukaryotic organisms and the subsequent evolution of multicellular life-forms.

It's clear to me you and I are not going to come to any common understanding on this issue. I've already started repeating myself. Let's leave it at that.

Quoting T Clark

It seems to me, although I am not certain, that logic requires higher mind functions and perhaps self-awareness. I'd say rather that animals think and behave effectively.

Sure. I can agree with that. It depends on how we're defining "logic". If I were defining "logic" in more broad terms, I would say that it is a means of processing inputs to produce accurate/useful outputs, and all brains (and computers) do that.

Quoting T Clark

Many animals have much more complex and intelligent behaviors than that. I think, although again I don't have specific knowledge, moths aren't attracted to the moon but to a bright light against a dark background. This is, I assume, a genetically encoded instinct and is not learned. That's not logic or even logical.

As I said, the moth's behavior only appears illogical because we can distinguish the difference between the porch light and the Moon. So of course many animals are capable of more complex behaviors because they can make finer distinctions thanks to their larger, more complex brain.

Moths use the Moon to navigate. They use the distant light source to keep an angle that allows them to fly straight. If you were to take the position of the Moth, having evolved in an environment where there were no porch lights, this method works, and would continue to work until the Moon ceases to exist as a light source. If we were living in a time before there were porch lights and observed the moth's behavior, it would appear completely and utterly logical. The environment changed and now the method is not as useful as it once was. We can tell the difference, but the moth cannot. It was designed to handle a different problem, or handle different input.

Quoting T Clark

humans are exponentially more complex in the way they perceive and behave in the world than the other animals.
— Harry Hindu

This is just not true.

Please, explain why it isn't. What other animals are aware of their own extinction and have the power to do something about it?

Quoting T Clark

It's clear, at least to me, that organisms without brains have had a much greater impact on the environment than those with them. This is from Wikipedia:

Environmental scientists are saying that we're doing the same thing - modifying the atmosphere on a global scale. We even have theories of how to do it on Mars.

Reply to Harry Hindu

As I noted, I'm repeating myself and we're not getting any closer to a common understanding. I have nothing new to add.

Quoting Harry Hindu

You're trying to finish the race before starting it.

Nobody needs to start your off-topic race.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Can you perform logic without causation or without determinism being the case? . . . Is reasoning a causal process?

These are key questions. So:

Quoting Harry Hindu

Reasoning takes time. It is a process. As such it is causal.

You provide a reason for your conclusions. Your reasons determine your conclusion. Your premises determine the validity of the conclusion. As such it is deterministic.

Is this a partial answer to the above questions? Do reasons determine a conclusion in the same way that a physical cause determines an effect? Not trying to back you into that position, just intrigued whether you do see them as the same.

Reasoning is a process.
Reason is not a process.

Reply to Quk

Reason is a product of minds, usually. And so to answer the question of where did logic come from it’s from our minds (specifically brains). Therefore it’s of human (maybe animal) origin and logic cannot exist without minds so the answer to the question of where logic came from is that it emerged with us human beings.

Reply to kindred

When my mind is blacked out, logic is still valid.

Quoting Harry Hindu

You're trying to finish the race before starting it. Most people on this forum, once they realize the direction of inquiry, start to dance around the issue. Does a newborn baby have a direction of inquiry when trying to understand and make sense of what its senses are telling it? Don't worry about the direction of inquiry right now and just answer the questions as posed. If there is a problem with the question or you need some definitions for the words in the question, just say so.

If this is going somewhere, please dispense with Socratic questions and get to the point. On the other hand, if you have no clue, as you seem to imply, then go and have a good think, and get back to us when you have something to even start a conversation. I am not interested in watching you stumble in the dark.

Reply to Quk

If you were the last mind alive capable of logic and ceased to exist the concept of logic would cease to exist with you for there would be no minds to conclude 1+1 = 2. These concepts only exist as processes in minds. They’re not out there but for us to make sense of the world.

Reply to kindred

What's the reason you think your hypothesis is true?

Reply to Quk

What would be there to do logic but minds? Therefore no minds = no logic.

Quoting kindred

no minds = no logic.

Is this statement meant as an empirical observation or as a logical rule? If it's empirical, I see no evidence. If it's logical, it stands transcendentally a priori to the possibility of a mental existence. In other words: Logic is there before you can even think about it.

Reply to Quk

No it’s not. Logic is one of the many properties of minds. A rock can’t do logic. Where would you find logic in world without minds?

Quoting kindred

A rock can’t do logic.

I agree. Logic cannot be done; neither by a rock nor by anything else.

You set a different premise than I do. Your premise is that logic is an action. My premise is that logic is not an action.

Reply to Quk

Is logic not reasoning then? Something done by minds ?

Quoting kindred

Is logic not reasoning then? Something done by minds ?

Reasoning is done by minds, yes.

But reasoning is not a logical rule. In my view, reasoning is a subjective act and may lead to wrong results when certain logical rules are incorrectly applied. -- Logical rules per se, however, are constant, timeless, objective, and in any case valid.

It's similar to math. Mathematical rules are not acts; they are rules. Rules don't do anything. A rule shouldn't be confused with the act of calculating. Calculations may be wrong. Joe calculates 123+321=999, and Jane calculates 666. -- Mathematical rules per se, however, are constant, timeless, objective, and in any case valid. So I think logic and math were not invented by minds; they were discovered. And I guess in logic and math there is even more to discover; we are just not intelligent enough yet. The unknown is already there. It's just not discovered yet. You think there is no unknown at all? You think everything new that surprises you in this moment is something you just invented yourself in this moment? I don't believe in solipsism.

Quoting Quk

What's the reason you think your hypothesis is true?

It’s not a hypothesis, there is no empirical test that could be performed that would verify or falsify it.

Quoting T Clark

It’s not a hypothesis, there is no empirical test that could be performed that would verify or falsify it.

That's why I call it a hypothesis rather than a thesis. A thesis can be tested. A hypothesis doesn't claim to be testable as it's just an idea.

Quoting Quk

A hypothesis doesn't claim to be testable as it's just an idea.

I went and checked and you’re right. An hypothesis can be a metaphysical statement or a scientific one. A scientific hypothesis does need to be testable.

Quoting SophistiCat

If this is going somewhere, please dispense with Socratic questions and get to the point. On the other hand, if you have no clue, as you seem to imply, then go and have a good think, and get back to us when you have something to even start a conversation. I am not interested in watching you stumble in the dark.

"Socratic questioning is a form of disciplined questioning that can be used to pursue thought in many directions and for many purposes, including: to explore complex ideas, to get to the truth of things, to open up issues and problems, to uncover assumptions, to analyze concepts, to distinguish what we know from what we do not know, to follow out logical consequences of thought or to control discussions. Socratic questioning is based on the foundation that thinking has structured logic, and allows underlying thoughts to be questioned. The key to distinguishing Socratic questioning from questioning per se is that the former is systematic, disciplined, deep and usually focuses on fundamental concepts, principles, theories, issues or problems."
-Wikipedia.

Quoting J

Is this a partial answer to the above questions? Do reasons determine a conclusion in the same way that a physical cause determines an effect? Not trying to back you into that position, just intrigued whether you do see them as the same.

What does "physical" mean? Your question seems to stem from a dualist perspective in that somehow mental processes not part of the "physical" world, or are somehow distinct from "physical" processes. Its all process. I don't see "physical" as a useful distinction when a process can encompass both physical and mental - like participating in a philosophical discussion on an internet forum. Reading involves the process of looking at the scribbles on your computer screen (what you might call a physical object) and processing the input to produce a valid response by typing on your keyboard and clicking the submit button.

What caused you to look at your computer screen? What caused you to interpret the scribbles on the screen the way you did? What caused your response to appear on others' computer screens? It seems to me that there was a whole lot of causation crossing "physical" boundaries here, appearing to be without any regard to "physical" things. Is the term even necessary?

Don't we point to "physical" states of affairs as reasons to act certain ways? For instance, when you see a Stop sign, is that not the reason you stop? A stop sign is a "physical" object that somehow becomes a mental construct - a reason - to perform an action - to stop. Why did you stop? Because there was a stop sign. You might also run into the stop sign and stop by the stop sign impeding your movement forward. Was the stop sign the reason you stopped in both cases?

Quoting Quk

But reasoning is not a logical rule.

Reasoning is using reasons to support a conclusion - logic.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Your question seems to stem from a dualist perspective

Yes, at least dualist in terms of how we talk about these things. Let's bracket the question of whether we're right to do so. I'm interested in seeing whether our ways of talking about, say, a broken tree limb causing a window to break is the same way we talk about the premises of an argument causing me to reach a certain conclusion.

I think we don't talk the same way about these things, and have different operations in mind for each. Would you tend to agree with that? Again, we may be wrong to talk this way, but we might as well start with what we do in fact say.

Reply to J That's why I mentioned what happens at a stop sign. What caused us to stop? Is what caused us to stop the same as the reason why we stopped?

A broken tree limb caused the broken window. The broken tree limb was the reason the window is broken. What's the difference?

I think the stop sign example is better because the process crosses those "physical" boundaries into the mental. The tree limb breaking the window does not include a mind in the process like the stopping at a stop sign does.

Is our reasoning merely representing the causal process? If we assert there are causal process in the world, why would that not be applied to our minds being that our minds are part of the world? If we were omniscient, we could predict every effect of every cause, and that would include the causes of others' behaviors - the reasons they use to act certain ways.

Reply to Harry Hindu Yes, I understand. I'm trying to take a slower path, through the Land of How We Talk, before getting to things likeQuoting Harry Hindu

A broken tree limb caused the broken window. The broken tree limb was the reason the window is broken. What's the difference?

That's a good question, of course, but before trying to answer it, I want to look at what we normally understand such questions to be about. So: Do you think it's the case that, in our everyday talk, no one would find a meaningful difference between what caused the broken window, and the reason why the window broke? What I have in mind is that reasons generally are broader, and to ask an interesting
question about reasons is often to require an answer that talks about more than some efficient cause like a tree limb.

Eventually, that may get us to this:

Quoting Harry Hindu

Is our reasoning merely representing the causal process? If we assert there are causal process in the world, why would that not be applied to our minds, being that our minds are part of the world?

Here again, I think we ought to start by noticing that this is not how we have to talk about reasoning. Some people don't think that everything in "the world" is caused, or that minds are in the world in the same way that trees are. Right or wrong? Let's defer that, and ask into why this would represent a common way of thinking and talking.

(And my personal view is that any talk of "the world" is going to be a matter of stipulation, as there is no agreement on how to use such a term.)

Quoting J

Do you think it's the case that, in our everyday talk, no one would find a meaningful difference between what caused the broken window, and the reason why the window broke?

I'm not sure. This is the first time I'm asking this question of anyone, including myself. It does appear to be the case given how they are using the terms. I would have to ask that if they do mean something different, what exactly is it that is different.

Quoting J

What I have in mind is that reasons generally are broader, and to ask an interesting
question about reasons is often to require an answer that talks about more than some efficient cause like a tree limb.

I don't know. It seems to depend on what we are talking about. It seems to me that we can give specific reasons or broader reasons as to why some state-of-affairs is the case, and those reasons correspond to the causes as to why some state-of-affairs is the case. We could talk about more broader causes of the tree limb breaking in the tree had to grow to a certain height to have one of its branches break the window, another tree had to begat the tree near the window, all the way down to the Big Bang, or we could talk about the more immediate (specific) cause/reason as to why the window is broken - a tree limb broke and hit the window.

Quoting J

(And my personal view is that any talk of "the world" is going to be a matter of stipulation, as there is no agreement on how to use such a term.)

If you don't agree that the world is something we share, then I don't know how to talk to you about anything and we would just talk past each other all the time. Do you think that we are always talking past each other when talking about the shared world?

Quoting Harry Hindu

If you don't agree that the world is something we share, then I don't know how to talk to you about anything and we would just talk past each other all the time. Do you think that we are always talking past each other when talking about the shared world?

That's a bit dire. I didn't say there was no such thing as a shared world, or that we can never decide how to talk about it meaningfully. I just meant that, taken out of any context, the term "the world" is going to refer to different things for different people. If you and I, or anyone else, want to introduce the term into a conversation, it would be a good idea to first agree on some rough reference. We could locate our usage on a map of well-known usages, such as physicalism, idealism, intersubjectivity, Platonism, et al.

I would say there's no wrong way to do this -- it's only a term -- we just need to stipulate how we'll use it. Then we can indeed talk about our shared world, and if it turns out that our way of using the term isn't as perspicuous as we wanted it to be, we can revise.

Reply to Harry Hindu I am pretty sure I had almost this same conversation re reasons versus causes with Reply to J, using the stop sign example. Maybe it was a stop light :rofl: .

I would just suggest that a difficulty here is that "causes" is often used very narrowly, as always referring to a linear temporal sequence (either as extrinsic ordering, or a sort of intrinsic computation-like process), but also very broadly as encompassing the former, but also all "reasons." Or, causes might also be used narrowly in a counterfactual sense. "Reasons" often tend to include a notion of final and formal causality that is excluded from more narrow formulations of "cause."

So, it's tricky. Lift is a "cause of flight," but you won't find the "principle of lift" as an observable particular in any instance of flight. Likewise, moral principles are causes of people's actions, but you won't find them wandering about the world.

It's probably the one of the most challenging disambiguations. There was once an extremely influential book called the Book of Causes that is hardly ever taught any more because no one knows who wrote it (and it is derivative of Proclus' Elements). I mention it because it's a great example of how extensive the understanding was in former epochs. Essentially, anything that did not occur spontaneously for "no reason at all," (which was presumed to be nothing) was considered to have a cause, and indeed many causes, because proximate causes were arranged under more general principles. Which is interestingly, not a position that demands any particular ontology, and works as well for idealism as physicalism despite its rather stark decline.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

It's probably one of the most challenging disambiguations.

Reply to Harry Hindu

It sure is, and the "reason/cause" subspecies of disambiguation has always seemed to me especially important to understand. The problem can be put sort of crudely, in the context of free will: If we believe we are free to make choices, in more or less the ways we commonly think we are, then that means we are also free to make mental choices. We will not be caused or forced to think any particular thing, or at least we needn't be.

So a "reason" for thinking something -- say, that a conclusion follows from its premises -- has to have a dual character. We want to say, on the one hand, that nothing has compelled us to this conclusion, at the level of brute neuronal activity. We have freely chosen to think that X is true, based on reasons. But on the other hand, we want to say that the reason is compelling at the logical or epistemological level. We do not have a choice, at that level -- not if we want to think what is true.

So we're looking for a way to differentiate a cause from a reason, at the propositional or mental level, that can account for both these aspects. I would say additionally that, as we work on this problem, we want to pay attention to our usual ways of talking about it. We don't, for instance, say that I am caused to believe the Pythagorean theorem. We tend to reserve "cause" for physical events (this is a big generalization, of course) and "reason" for things we choose or decide. Understandably, if there is no choice or decision -- if one adopts a hardcore physicalism or determinism -- then the distinction rather collapses.

Quoting J

That's a bit dire. I didn't say there was no such thing as a shared world, or that we can never decide how to talk about it meaningfully. I just meant that, taken out of any context, the term "the world" is going to refer to different things for different people. If you and I, or anyone else, want to introduce the term into a conversation, it would be a good idea to first agree on some rough reference. We could locate our usage on a map of well-known usages, such as physicalism, idealism, intersubjectivity, Platonism, et al.

I would say there's no wrong way to do this -- it's only a term -- we just need to stipulate how we'll use it. Then we can indeed talk about our shared world, and if it turns out that our way of using the term isn't as perspicuous as we wanted it to be, we can revise.

When someone says that "world" is going to mean different things for different people then you're saying that all qualifiers for "world" are up for debate, including "shared". You could be a solipsist for all I know.

Terms are not really the issue. It is what we are referring to with those words that is the issue. We might use different terms to refer to the same thing, or maybe the boundaries of our terms might overlap in some way. So what if I were to define the world as everything that was, is and will be?

I'm not sure if this line of questioning is going to be useful. Suffice to say, I am a monist and a determinist, so am going to view the world as seamless where there are no "physical" boundaries with the mental. Causes and reasons are the same thing from different views. One monist might say everything is physical. Another might say that everything is mental, or ideas. I like to try to merge the best of the two together and say that everything is information. The world consists of deterministic causal relations - information.

Reply to Harry Hindu OK, so if we were going to continue conversing, I'd have a pretty good idea what you meant by "world," and could phrase my own thoughts accordingly.

Quoting Harry Hindu

You could be a solipsist for all I know.

Or a Communist! :wink:

I think the point is that we'd have to talk about it, and find out whether our ideas of a "shared world" are congruent. It's not so much a debate that's needed, about whose construal is better -- that might come later. We can't debate if we don't first figure out what we're talking about. And it's been my observation that very ordinary terms like "shared" become complex when we enter the Philosophy Room, hence requiring discussion.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I am pretty sure I had almost this same conversation re reasons versus causes with ?J, using the stop sign example. Maybe it was a stop light :rofl:

Great minds think alike :cool:

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I would just suggest that a difficulty here is that "causes" is often used very narrowly, as always referring to a linear temporal sequence (either as extrinsic ordering, or a sort of intrinsic computation-like process), but also very broadly as encompassing the former, but also all "reasons." Or, causes might also be used narrowly in a counterfactual sense. "Reasons" often tend to include a notion of final and formal causality that is excluded from more narrow formulations of "cause."

It depends on how we want to look at causes. Causes are an interaction of two or more things (like a broken tree limb and a window, or like a stop sign, a car and a driver) to create a new set of circumstances - an effect (the broken window, or stopping at a stop sign). Physicists often describe it as a transfer of energy. We should also consider that every effect is also a cause of subsequent effects, and that our current goal is what makes us focus on specific parts of the ongoing causal chain of events - that the boundaries between a cause and its effects are arbitrarily dependent upon the current goal in the mind.

You can raise your hand, or I can do it for you. Both of our wills are the causes of your hand being raised. You might resist me in which case it would be both a battle of wills and of strength, but our comparative strengths only come into play if our wills are still battling - I intend on raising your arm, while you intend on resisting. How can a will cause anything? If a will can be a cause why can't a reason?

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

So, it's tricky. Lift is a "cause of flight," but you won't find the "principle of lift" as an observable particular in any instance of flight. Likewise, moral principles are causes of people's actions, but you won't find them wandering about the world.

I'm not sure if I'd agree that lift is a cause of flight. It seems to me to be part of what flight is. If you are flying you have lift. A cause would be what preceded the act of flying, just as what preceded the act of stopping at a stop sign. The cause of flight is the interaction of wings and air before one declares flight has been achieved. At what point in the process of running, flapping ones wings and jumping in the air does one achieve the effect of flight? It seems to me that lift is something you have already achieved to say that you are flying - not something that preceded the act of flying.

Just because we don't see moral principles "wandering about the world" (and I assume you mean wandering around independently of minds) does not mean that moral principles do not exist in the world.
They do - as mental constructs, or reasons, for determining one's actions. Morals exist only as characteristics of minds, just as ripeness only exists as a characteristic of of fruit. We don't see ripeness wandering about the world either. If that were the case the world would be a fruit, or the world a mind in the case of morals. They are properties of specific things in the world, like minds and fruit, not properties of the world itself.

Quoting J

Understandably, if there is no choice or decision -- if one adopts a hardcore physicalism or determinism -- then the distinction rather collapses.

Not necessarily. I am a determinist and a free-will Libertarian. How do I reconcile the two? I see freedom as having access to as much information as possible. By having access to as much information as possible, you are able to make more informed decisions. By having access to more information, you might choose differently, or you at least have the power to choose differently than you would have if you didn't have the information.

Many people make this assertion that determinism implies that you have the feeling of being forced into something you didn't want to. I say that determinism implies that you have a feeling of naturally choosing what decision is best. Your decisions and actions would feel natural, not forced, if determinism is the case. You always make the best decision with the information you have at that moment. It is only your fear of the consequences that you cannot foresee that make it feel forced. Thinking that you should have chosen differently only comes after the consequences have been realized (after you have more information).

Reply to Harry Hindu

I'm not sure if I'd agree that lift is a cause of flight.

Fair enough, I'd agree in a sense. A principle is something that unifies a diverse number of causes. It is what makes many instances of lift, natural selection, etc. the "same" whilst obviously being different in each instance, thus allowing for "the many" to be known through a unifying "one" (e.g. entomologists can know insects well, even though there are 60 million individual insects for each human, and one never closely observes even a tiny fraction of these).

The particulars need not have absolute priority though (either epistemically or ontologically). For instance, the difficulty in saying that "infection" is never the cause of infectious disease, but only individual interactions between viruses/bacteria and cells, is that this itself can be further broken down. We could also have the demand that virus/cell interaction is always [I]really[/I] caused by molecular interactions. This is the drive towards reductionism/smallism. Yet it has to make certain assumptions, for instance, that wholes are always nothing more than the sum of their parts, else the continued decomposition ceases to be warranted. And, while smallism is not prima facie anymore reasonable than "bigism" from an ontological point of view, it is also unwarranted from an epistemic point of view, given that even the basics of molecular structure cannot be reduced to physics.

I'll thow out here the difference between linear (temporal) causal series, which are accidental, and hierarchical causal series. The first is the classic example of one domino knocking over another, or a ball breaking a window. The second is the example of a book resting on a table, or a chandelier hanging from a ceiling. For the book to be on the table, the table had to be there. This has to be true at every moment or interval; there is a vertical—as opposed to horizontal—element to efficient causation.

Likewise, the chandelier hangs due to its linkage with the ceiling at each moment. Neither the ceiling nor the table are dependent upon the book or chandelier sitting/hanging on them, but there is dependence (priority) in the other direction. So even efficient causes have these different elements of priority and posteriority that help our analysis. The plane is generating lift at each interval, unless it is stalling (this is a larger principle of fluid dynamics). And at each interval it has to be the case that fluid dynamics is such that lift works in this way (formal causality). Or, for another example, we could consider human decisionmaking. Man being man (a particular whole) is always prior to man making a decision as man, and this is a sort of vertical priority that affects both efficient and formal causes.

Not necessarily. I am a determinist and a free-will Libertarian. How do I reconcile the two? I see freedom as having access to as much information as possible. By having access to as much information as possible, you are able to make more informed decisions. By having access to more information, you might choose differently, or you at least have the power to choose differently than you would have if you didn't have the information.

Many people make this assertion that determinism implies that you have the feeling of being forced into something you didn't want to. I say that determinism implies that you have a feeling of naturally choosing what decision is best. Your decisions and actions would feel natural, not forced, if determinism is the case. You always make the best decision with the information you have at that moment. It is only your fear of the consequences that you cannot foresee that make it feel forced. Thinking that you should have chosen differently only comes after the consequences have been realized (after you have more information).

Why would this not be comptiablism?

Anyhow, you highlight a very important element that is missing from many considerations of freedom, both the idea that ignorance is a limit on freedom, and the idea that freedom involves understanding why one acts. I tend to want to frame liberty in terms of (relative) self-determination and self-governance (as opposed to being undetermined).

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I'll thow out here the difference between linear (temporal) causal series, which are accidental, and hierarchical causal series. The first is the classic example of one domino knocking over another, or a ball breaking a window. The second is the example of a book resting on a table, or a chandelier hanging from a ceiling. For the book to be on the table, the table had to be there. This has to be true at every moment or interval; there is a vertical—as opposed to horizontal—element to efficient causation.

Not just a table, but a person that put the book on the table. A cause is not necessarily just two interacting things, it could be a multitude of things interacting. Can you explain how the book came to be on the table by just explaining the table? Can you explain how a murder occurred if you only explain the interaction between a victim and the weapon? How would you know if the person was murdered or committed suicide?

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Likewise, the chandelier hangs due to its linkage with the ceiling at each moment. Neither the ceiling nor the table are dependent upon the book or chandelier sitting/hanging on them, but there is dependence (priority) in the other direction.

It also hangs due to gravity. If there was no gravity the chandelier would float and not hang. I think the issue here is you're simply leaving out ALL the necessary causes that preceded an effect (like our observation).

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Why would this not be comptiablism

It may, but I'm not concerned with labels - only what makes sense which might not always fit neatly in one philosophical "framework" that we've given a name as many philosophical frameworks have holes in them that an opposing view might fill but has holes itself.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I tend to want to frame liberty in terms of (relative) self-determination and self-governance (as opposed to being undetermined)

Which you can only have by having access to information.

Reply to Harry Hindu

It also hangs due to gravity

Exactly. Gravity, the weak force, electromagnetism, etc. must be what they are at every moment.

If there was no gravity the chandelier would float and not hang. I think the issue here is you're simply leaving out ALL the necessary causes that preceded an effect (like our observation).

Right, the examples are just there to show the difference between the linear (horizontal) series and hierarchical (vertical series), and the difference between metaphysical and temporal priority/posteriority, not to claim the dominoes falling have "one cause."

Which you can only have by having access to information.

Exactly, although this is necessary but not always sufficient. One tendency I've noticed in modern philosophical anthropology is that it tends to play down the possibility of "weakness of will." The idea being that is science could only "tell us what to do clearly," our issues would be solved (e.g., Sam Harris, Stephen Pinker, Francis Fukuyama, etc.). I think this stems from the liberal presumption that, barring major dysfunction or misfortune, all people achieve a similar baseline level of freedom and self-determination by age 18 simply through natural maturation, which is quite different from Epictetus' claim that most masters are in fact slaves to their passions and appetites.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, the examples are just there to show the difference between the linear (horizontal) series and hierarchical (vertical series), and the difference between metaphysical and temporal priority/posteriority, not to claim the dominoes falling have "one cause."

I'm trying to understand your notion of hierarchical (vertical series). I only see causation as temporal. Upper vs lower levels of reality do not play a causal role on each other. They are simply different views of the same thing - in that the different levels are a projection, not how the world really is. The world is seamless and it is our goals that break up reality into regional spaces (views). It's not that the top has influence on the bottom. It is that the bottom and the top are merely different views of the same thing (zoomed in vs zoomed out).

Quoting 180 Proof

Anyway, I'll go on: my point – maybe not quite the OP's – is not that "logic is inherent in existence" but, parsimoniously, that logic is existence (i.e. 'universes' themselves are logico-computable processes ...) about / from which we (can) derive abbreviated syntaxes & formulae ...

Consider this empirical support for transitive inference by nonhuman animals:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376635708000818]



@tom111 @Banno @Wayfarer @T Clark @kindred

Quoting 180 Proof

Consider this empirical support for transitive inference by nonhuman animals:

As long as there are minds to do logic then logic can be said to exist. Doing logic then seems to be a property of minds.

Without minds planets would still revolve around the sun in a logical ways held in place by laws of physics. The planet itself does not compute paths or such things, its obeying laws which it cannot know exist.

It’s only in minds that these laws can be inferred and deduced.

Quoting kindred

Doing logic then seems to be a property of minds.

And minds are governed – constrained – by laws of nature so that, in actuality, logic is also "a property of" nature. Nonhuman animals do not 'invent' transitive inferencing: they embody it (since their "minds" are embodied) in nature.

Reply to 180 Proof

Laws of nature are logical, there’s no denying that. So to say that logic is embedded in nature is a totally valid. Perhaps it’s not necessary to separate the two.

All things however, embody the laws of nature, living or non-living yet logic as an activity only came to be when minds developed in the world.

So you’re right logic is a property of the laws of nature but in answer to the OP of where it came from it’s not so much where (nature) but when (evolution).

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I take it that here "experience" means "our experience." So the Earth becomes what it is because we experience it, not because form is itself intellectual. Yet if nothing is prior to man (or life), if we rule out any distinctions in being that are actual prior to finite consciousness, why would consciousness be one way and not any other? Why would we be men and not centaurs? The sky blue and not purple?

I found your ideas interesting, loaded with questions. Here: Someone like Rorty would say a discussion like this is just bad metaphysics, and thereby creates its own issues removed from what the world "gives". I don't agree with Rorty on many things, but here he is right. "Prior" refers to some substratum of the "world" without the perceptual act's contribution. But such a term is borrowed from familiar contexts only and to bring it into a conversation necessarily brings ordinary delimitations to bear upon it, and this finitizes what stands outside finitude, meaning this: appearances cannot be treated as derivative or contingent on what what cannot be identified at all. Why is the sky blue? is a question that belongs to science, and philosophy, I argue, has nothing to say about this. But to bring the principle of sufficient cause, looking for a "cause" on the "outside" side of experience that makes experience what it is, carries the assumption that talk of causes belongs to metaphysical relations, and the question follows on the heels of this: What metaphysics are you talking about if this is supposed to be about what is "outside" of experience? Stepping beyond experience....does this make sense?

Not to say something like experience is a radical delimitation of all meaningful propositions, for the point here is not to defend any delimitations at all. The world remains the world, and what is discovered in this world is open. I am arguing that a lot of philosophy deals with invented issues. But then, if you want responsible metaphysics, there really is such a thing in the world, and it is in clear sight, if neglected and "forgotten" sight, and it is all too forthcoming.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

There seems to me to be a crucial difference between acknowledging that the experience of finite creatures is always filtered through their cognitive apparatus and denying the actuality of being as such prior to creatures' finite conscious awareness of it. The latter move puts potency prior to act if the idea is that the two (finite mind and world ) are the result of self-generation, with nothing outside this process. The world becomes the result of a self-moving process which, having nothing prior to it, is random. That is, sheer potency moving itself to generate the world, potency "co-constituting itself" into determinant actuality ex nihilo (or eternally I suppose, but the eternal framing doesn't make the question of quiddity, why being is one way and not another, any less acute). It's the same sort of issue you get with the physicalist claim that being and quiddity are "brute facts."

Filtered? Well, what is being filtered?

What is arbitrary, really, is the failure to acknowledge the world as it "is" as a stand alone givenness. To understand what this is requires first to be alert to its presence and no more, and there is nothing arbitrary about this, nothing needed to stabilize its presence, for such a need is, again, lifted from a totality finite possibilities, then needlessly thrust into a meta-explanation about what is NOT existence. We cannot have a discussion like this that makes apriori demands about requirements "behind" the solid presence of things, for there is no "behind" to conceive. A bit like talking about two continental plates colliding, erupting into mountains and volcanic activity, etc., and then asking about the nature of the collision apart from erupting into mountains and vocanic activity. But the collision IS the eruption, the seismic movements, the friction and its heat, and so on. The essence of the cup on the table is discovered in the revealed features of the cup on the table, and nothing more. Its being there is exhausted by the evidential ground of its being there.

You wrote, "sheer potency moving itself to generate the world, potency "co-constituting itself, yet in order for something to co-constitute itself, there must be two of something in the constitution, and this is not the case. One can go two ways in discussing ontology: One is Heidegger's, and this would be to talk about equiprimordiality at the basic level, which just means when analysis turns to issues of ontology, one is faced with the structure of experience (dasein) which is complex. The other is where my thoughts lie: There really IS a foundational primordiality to existence (and I do not divide "my existence" from "existence"; they are one. A very difficult point to understand, for generally, one is analytically bound to divisive categorical thinking, and this pins thought), and this lies in its transcendental phenomenality, transcendental because it is stand alone, or, standing as its own presupposition (what you call co-constitution). There is no interposing intentionality that undoes the absolute immanence. Michel Henry takes the structure of existence, our existence, which is the only, well, "place" you will find existence (and this by no means at all closes analytical possiblities), and pursues Husserl's Cartesian reduction beyond Husserl, and exposes a radical disclosure at the heart of being-in-the-world. Pure phenomenality cannot be gainsaid, and this most emphatically is about the affective or meta ethical/meta aesthetic dimension of our existence. This is, notwithstanding Heidegger, one "true" (truth as alethea) reality (presumptuous as it sounds).

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Another difficulty is that if things' actuality is not prior to their being known, then it's hard to see how they could have any essence. All predication would be accidental (or essential, the difference is collapsed) and so there would be no pre se predication. Rather, things change what they essentially are when known differently. You get all the issues of Heraclitus, without the Logos as an ad hoc backstop. Presumably, there might be ways to iron this out, but it comes to mind.

But for this you would have make a move to actuality that has never been, nor can be witnessed. A fiction. But to be aligned with what is given in the world, a thing's actuality IS its being known. It has to be overcome that things have some secret identity, perhaps like Kantian noumena, that simply must be there. In fact, your claim that "all predication would be accidental is a LOT like Kant's attempt to explain the need to postulate noumena. You can see how uncomfortable Kant is having to talk like this, given the way he annihilates metaphysics: noumena is "just a concept" that has no meaning at all, a place holder for an undesirable absence, because...there must be "something"! Fo course, he gives no gravity to, or not nearly enough, there more basic insight that 'something' is a concept, and belongs to finitude's phenomena.


Of course, there are things here and there and over there, next to the mountain, and so on, but these are declared to be what they are in OUR existence, and not only the Kantian synthetic structures of pure logic, but moods, attitudes, memories, anticipation, contextuality, and so on (as well as the "uncanniness" of Being). The "over thereness" of that train depot simply cannot be conceived "outside" of its "hereness". The trouble that it can is the residuum of naturalism that intrudes into philosophy, which is understandable given how pervasive it is in general affairs and education; but naturalism falls away when basic questions are raised almost instantly.


Essence, what something IS. Of course, language is inherently contingent (accidental, if you like) in that concepts are part of a totality that gives contexts for meanings to arise, and essences are conceived, historical, part of a cultural evolvement. In philosophy, essences deal with basic ideas, like what it is for something to be/have an essence, and if I understand you, essences require consistency, repeatable results, if you will: what IS nitroglycerin? Part of its essence lies in the fact that if hurled, of a certain quantity and velocity, against a hard surface, it will explode, and consistently repeatably explode in rigorous testing. Of course, there is nothing apriori about this essence, and logic would not bat an eye if tomorrow it stopped doing this. Anyway, this is how objects can come by their essences. We create essences, also. What IS Toyota, the car maker? This essence was made.

So what does it mean to require the world itself, where essences' possibilities are grounded (due to consistencies like nitro's), to have an essence? Prior to talk about some abiding metaphysical essence, what makes the world as such "consistent," we have to look at what is IN the basic analysis, and this is Time, the apriori structure of existence. It is not that there is nothing outside of time. But that to think about it itself is a temporal act. Heraclitus? Time is Heraclitus' river. The point of this is that the substratum you support has a more basic analysis, and this lies with Time as a foundational feature of existence. Time is ontically (to borrow Heidegger's term referring to, well, normal affairs of thinking and naming) linear, sequential, but analysis shows it is here we find the true ground for metaphysics, evidenced in the ecstatic nature of Time's structure. Long discussion on this.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Now, the idea that there is only flux prior to our "constructions" mentioned earlier strikes me as different. Here, flux is prior. But this still seems to me to be heading towards the idea of man as the source of the world, if not in the role of God, then at least a demiurge. Are the principles of things contained in the flux (say, virtually), or is the flux a sort of prime matter on which man imposes form and makes everything what it is? And if the latter, from whence this form?

Phenomenological analysis takes the issue to its core. This form stands as its own presupposition.
If it is entirely laid aside that objects, the world, is given to the "openness" of our existence, then analysis has strayed from it content, due to the residuum of naturalistic thinking, the kind of thinking that looks at an object and considers it apart from the perceptual act that produces it. This is disingenuous on the part of many philosophers who got tired of Kant and idealism. Naturalists and scientific metaphysicians know that the epistemic/ontological problems they generate cannot be dealt with on their terms.

Reply to Astrophel

I think you’ve captured well the phenomenological move, common to writers as varied as Henry, Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida, abandoning the need for an adequation between how things are perceived and the way things ‘really, really are’. The fecundity of time consciousness reveals the way things ‘really, really are’.

Reply to Joshs
I can only approach understanding this philosophy, never be as solid as you. I am convinced that Henry is close to, well, heh, heh, the one true view.