Both, I guess. He has not presented a theory to explain consciousness, but he is saying there could be one.

Isn't that what is being sought after or abandoned as a hopeless cause?

I understand that and have participated in that practice too. Better an ostensive gesture than complete silence. But maybe only a little better.

At this point some are tempted to give up, holding that we will never have a theory of conscious experience. McGinn (1989), for example, argues that the problem is too hard for our limited minds; we are "cognitively closed" with respect to the phenomenon. Others have argued that conscious experience lies outside the domain of scientific theory altogether.

I think this pessimism is premature. This is not the place to give up; it is the place where things get interesting. When simple methods of explanation are ruled out, we need to investigate the alternatives. Given that reductive explanation fails, nonreductive explanation is the natural choice.

Although a remarkable number of phenomena have turned out to be explicable wholly in terms of entities simpler than themselves, this is not universal. In physics, it occasionally happens that an entity has to be taken as fundamental. Fundamental entities are not explained in terms of anything simpler. Instead, one takes them as basic, and gives a theory of how they relate to everything else in the world. For example, in the nineteenth century it turned out that electromagnetic processes could not be explained in terms of the wholly mechanical processes that previous physical theories appealed to, so Maxwell and others introduced electromagnetic charge and electromagnetic forces as new fundamental components of a physical theory. To explain electromagnetism, the ontology of physics had to be expanded. New basic properties and basic laws were needed to give a satisfactory account of the phenomena. — Chalmers, Facing Up to The Problems of Consciousness

The survey is amusing. It is like trying on different shoes at a Target store.

The criteria presume all the different possible opinions can be mapped out in relation to each other. But is that the case? The method may be helpful toward generating encyclopedias but runs the risk of turning everything into a Cliff note version of themselves on the way.

An excellent essay. The contrasts made between Aristotelian and Cartesian points of view are particularly appreciated. I will try responding after mulling it over.

Thank you.
Maybe I will bring it up in another context someday. I withdrew it because I realized that I was not participating in the OP because I did not try to connect the account to my thinking or what I believe.

Edited:Too much information.

That is the method.

In Plato, It is interesting to see how the results vary according to who is being interrogated.

Shrouded in the exhalations from his Gauloise, he is difficult to see. He was not arrogant, however. Ever elusive but not mean spirited. He will be unique amongst the banned, hopefully guided by a friendly Virgil.

I was asking you that since you seemed to suggest the discussion was missing the mark.

So, more of a silence? Talking about logos won't help?

Anyway, what I'm worried about is that we could be mistaken as to what the word "logos" means. Perhaps it doesn't have a meaning and is more like ... a reminder, a knot in the handkerchief. — Agent Smith

I guess this explains why you are disengaged from the various attempts made in this discussion to distinguish between different possible meanings. But I don't understand what you mean by likening it to a "reminder."

I feel like I am standing at the boundary of a private language.

I hope Heraclitus does not find this out. That would make the Oedipus story look like an ice cream headache.

The alpha of the beginning is tied to the omega of the risen Christ. John says the only way to salvation is through the Son. The First Word becomes the Last.

It is difficult to imagine a country further from the domicile of Heraclitus who says:

106. To God all things are beautiful, good, and right; men, on the other hand, deem some things right and others wrong. — ibid

I fail to see the John connection — Agent Smith

The connection to what? To Heraclitus? To your reluctant theism?

More cryptic than asking: "Like what?"

Are you asking me to present possible candidates for an argument I am not making? I was not asking a rhetorical question of Ludwig V. I don't know the answer. I am genuinely interested in any reply.

I am not the one who expressed dissatisfaction with the dialogue. Do you have an opinion on the matter?

I think Plato frequently used myths to paint pictures of our capacities and environment rather than completely explain matters. This is why I challenged Cornford's interpretation in the Socrates and Platonic Forms OP. The focus on immortality misses the role recollection plays in the dialogues.

In the Meno, for example, recollection is a myth being used in another myth:

Soc. I mean to say that they are not very valuable possessions if they are at liberty, for they will walk off like runaway slaves; but when fastened, they are of great value, for they are really beautiful works of art. Now this is an illustration of the nature of true opinions: while they abide with us they are beautiful and fruitful, but they run away out of the human soul, and do not remain long, and therefore they are not of much value until they are fastened by the tie of the cause; and this fastening of them, friend Meno, is recollection, as you and I have agreed to call it. But when they are bound, in the first place, they have the nature of knowledge; and, in the second place, they are abiding. And this is why knowledge is more honourable and excellent than true opinion, because fastened by a chain. — Meno, Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett

By saying "as you and I have agreed to call it", it becomes a dialectical X that can be treated as a known for the purpose of separating elements of our experience. It assumes the difference between knowledge and true opinion rather than arguing for that difference.

In Theaetetus, however, we find Socrates demonstrating that knowledge is not true opinion (as I summarize here and here).

But the example he presents in the Theaetetus is as I describe it. My point is precisely that the model of account is not helpful for the problem he is considering. He was quite capable of presenting a different kind of logos which would have been less obviously unhelpful. — Ludwig V

Do you think Socrates playing a mid-wife is withholding something from us?

I see. Is it disappointment I detect or is it elation? Perhaps that's irrelevant to a non-Christian or, contrariwise, even more so to one. — Agent Smith

I have many conflicting thoughts and feelings regarding these matters. Perhaps I should stay within an area of agreement we have reached when you said, "chronos is the X factor." John placed a significance in a moment in time that would be utter nonsense to Heraclitus.

What's important though, in me humble opinion, is what's implied by ॐ. Agree/disagree/don't give a damn? — Agent Smith

Whatever is implied, the meditation gives voice to a desire. Something like that is happening in this prayer:




Asking as a form of receiving some portion of the request.

Perhaps that element played a part in those early churches; We will never know.

But it does not reflect the expectation that the world was going to change because of their arrival upon the scene. Being a Christian is a job.

It is a case of arguing on the basis of authority and then changing what the authority said afterwards.

Please pardon my sulk of yesterday.

What I was trying to say about the use of a beginning in John is that it is different from how arche is used in the narratives about the primary elements. The latter attempts to see the order that brings about the changes we observe. The primacy of one or the other is presented against the backdrop of cycles that continue from the past and will continue in the future. In Heraclitus, for example:

34. Fire lives in the death of earth, air in the death of fire, water in the death of air, and earth in the death of water. — Heraclitus, Philip Wheelwright collection

Heraclitus is interesting for actively cancelling a creation story where arche is understood as the beginning:

29. The universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any man or god, but it always has been, is, and will be---an everlasting fire, kindling itself by regular measure and going out by regular measures. — ibid.

Xenophanes used the language of wholes and preceded Parmenides in speaking of the One:

1. God is one, supreme among gods and men, not at all like mortals in body or in mind.

2. It is the whole of [of God] that sees, the whole that thinks, the whole that hears.

3. Without effort he sets everything in motion by the thought of his mind.

4. He always abides in the selfsame place, not moving at all, it is not appropriate to his nature to be in different places at different times.

5. But mortals suppose that the gods have been born, that they have voices and bodies and wear clothing like men.

6. If oxen or lions had hands which enabled them to draw and paint pictures as men do, they would portray their gods as having bodies like their own: horses would portray them as horses, and oxen as oxen. — Xenophanes, the collection of Philip Wheelwright.

I think the use of Kosmos in relation to ornament and decorum plays a part in how a Logos of Kosmos came to be discussed. There is this from Heraclitus:

78. When defiled they purify themselves with blood, as though one who had stepped into filth were to wash himself with filth. If any of his fellowmen should perceive him acting in such a way, they would regard him as mad. — ibid

Yes. That is what I am trying to say.

Probably better not to go down that road in this thread. — Wayfarer

Agreed. Deserves its own lane.

Maybe it is time for a Gerson showdown. I understand Sachs as challenging the "Ur-Platonism" idea put forward by Gerson.

You don't wrestle with anything I have said but comment upon it like observing cows while riding a train.

Gracias for the history lesson, assuming it's accurate. — Agent Smith

I do not see my comment in your reply.

Nagel's argument reminds me of Joe Sachs, who sees the prevalence of mathematics in modeling phenomena as a less than an unqualified success. From his essay: The Battle of the Gods and the Giants.

But the necessity that every object of intellect have an image must have some cause.
What can it be? I am sure that some of you are there ahead of me. After all, everyone
knows that Aristotle rejected Plato's belief in separate forms, and taught that the universals
that the intellect deals with are produced by the act of abstraction. If the universals came
out of the sensible particulars in the first place, then the images of those particulars would
also be images of the corresponding abstractions. There is only one problem with this
solution. Like most of the things that everyone knows about Aristotle, this one is not true.
It is not even close. It is so spectacularly wrong that it blocks the understanding of anything
Aristotle thought. It is not a tenable doctrine in the first place, as I will try to show. But
worse than that, the belief that Aristotle held such a view makes the Physics a closed book,
and that in turn deprives us of the most powerful alternative we might consider to the
physics we are accustomed to. The idea of abstraction, as we use it and as we tend to
impose it on Aristotle, abolishes the idea of nature.

A word in the sense of a word in a language or something else? — Agent Smith

Augustine was navigating between two distinctly different cosmologies, the one developed by the Greeks and the one brought forward in Genesis. Much ink and blood has been spilt over the results of this collision. For the sake of discussion, let's work with Augustine's' version where they become one big happy family.

Augustine speaks of the Logos being with God before the acts of creation. That places it outside of the realm of the 'basic ingredient' you employed to speak of ἀρχή. So, the story speaks of a start before the start of us and the cosmos. The 'basic ingredient' is not a self-sufficient concept but is conditioned upon Time, as happens in a process of becoming as contrasted with some Being that does not change.

One can see a similar role of 'basic ingredients' in Daoist cosmology. The principle of Yin/Yang generates the 5 elements of earth, fire, water, metal, and wood. Due to our circumstances, we are ill situated to say what brought the Tao into being. As that wizened metaphysician Dirty Harry once said, a man needs to know their limitations.

What is the word? — Agent Smith

Are you asking that in the context of your OP saying it is pointless to look for an origin? Are you asking for a way to hear the Logos without the theological frame it was brought forward within? Are you asking how the Word is used within that framework?

An answer that might wrestle with one of those questions leaves the others uninvolved.

The result is apparent in this forum. Folk think philosophy easy, a topic for dabbling dilettanti. — Banno

The one-eyed king surveys his blind subjects.

Christianity, it's the void — Agent Smith

For John, it was the Word. Augustine interpreted that to say:

“In the beginning, O God, you made heaven and earth in your Word, in your Son, in your Power, in your Wisdom, in your Truth, speaking in a wondrous way, and working in a wondrous way. … ‘How great are your works, O Lord, you have made all things in wisdom!’ (Ps 103:24) That wisdom is the beginning, and in that beginning you have made heaven and earth.” — St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 11, Chapter 9

The different examples of context you present are interesting.

One element in that regard is how Plato reported objections to the 'Q and A" technique (you referred to earlier) employed by Socrates in order to shape conversations, The dialogues have many instances of central characters complaining about this practice.

That clear expression of authorial intent makes it different from establishing the historical circumstances Descartes wrote within, for example.

I figure all the kinds of psychology are joined at the hip with philosophy because each system demarcates what will be recognized as phenomena and what will be excluded. This condition obviously includes the presuppositions about what is happening but also includes the praxis of therapy and evaluating what is helpful or not.

I think this has clear parallels with the argument about 'false judgement'. Just as real knowledge is only possible with respect to what truly is, Socrates denies that it is possible to act against your better judgement. — Wayfarer

The discussion of false opinion was not an acceptance of some principle of individual judgement but a component of Socrates' demonstration of its inadequacy. He dismisses the concept at the end of it:

Soc: Then, my boy, doesn’t the argument give us a beautiful rebuke, and point out that it was not correct for us to look for false opinion before knowledge, leaving that alone? But the former is something one has no power to recognize before one gets a sufficient grasp of what knowledge is. — Plato. Theaetetus, 200d, translated by Joe Sachs

I think the ratio you apply between knowledge and action is incorrect. Genuine knowledge cannot be wrong but our actions can be. By saying we always choose what seems good for us, Plato is framing the circumstances of our ignorance. If we start with the assumption that what is best for us is an essential agent in our constitution, the need emerges to understand what causes all the evils and suffering we experience.

The Timaeus gives a number of narratives to show what looking for those causes could reveal. The circumstances of becoming embodied lead to being strongly affected by our physical constitution. That is why so much emphasis is placed on the health of bodies and regimes throughout the dialogues.

And the preceding Greek religion was likewise an attempt to explain why things happen. — frank

A myth that gives a vivid narrative for events is different from developing explanations that are pitted against other explanations in the expectation that some are better than others. Some social structures make the latter conversation possible. Others don't.

The question does not come down to deciding between religion and science as we have come to think of it. That would be projecting the way we developed the difference between beliefs and the 'objective' that could stand apart. We were looking for something outside of belief in order to not drown in it.

I take your point that this was not happening in Greece in the 5th and 4th century before the CE. To that extent, it would be presumptuous to say the opposite was happening; That the pursuit of understanding had no resistance from received ideas.

However, that is the internalised concept of self as a conscious process but there may a rudimentary self beginning in the womb. Memory itself may be the basic brain aspect of this, in the form of ego consciousness. Even during dreams the sense of ego differentiates and self is in a state of becoming. — Jack Cummins

That is what Lacan is talking about but he does not depict it as an either/or regarding ego seen as a capacity but a stage where it shapes all future experience. That is why he frames it as a prematurity that collides with the circumstances or situation that will be marked by the collision.

It is not there is no continuity between the potential and what emerges. But if you explore it as a decisive break, it is no longer a theory that can be set side by side with another theory of the same thing.

Anaxagoras belonged to this school. In identifying mind as the prime motive force in the world, he was in keeping with the a worldview that goes back to the end of the Bronze Age. — frank

Anaxagoras did express himself within the structure of Parmenides' injunction against saying 'coming into being' or that 'beings moved'. But the texts we have clearly show a keen interest in the phenomena that we face in our natural world. The SEP article you linked to includes a helpful paragraph:

One way to think of Anaxagoras’ point in B17 is that animals, plants, human beings, the heavenly bodies, and so on, are natural constructs. They are constructs because they depend for their existence and character on the ingredients of which they are constructed (and the pattern or structure that they acquire in the process). Yet they are natural because their construction occurs as one of the processes of nature. Unlike human-made artifacts (which are similarly constructs of ingredients), they are not teleologically determined to fulfill some purpose. This gives Anaxagoras a two-level metaphysics. Things such as earth, water, fire, hot, bitter, dark, bone, flesh, stone, or wood are metaphysically basic and genuinely real (in the required Eleatic sense): they are things-that-are. The objects constituted by these ingredients are not genuinely real, they are temporary mixtures with no autonomous metaphysical status: they are not things-that-are. (The natures of the ingredients, and the question of what is included as an ingredient, are addressed below; see 3.2 “Ingredients and Seeds”). This view, that the ingredients are more real than the objects that they make up, is common in Presocratic philosophy, especially in the theories of those thinkers who were influenced by Parmenides’ arguments against the possibility of what-is-not and so against genuine coming-to-be and passing-away. It can be found in Empedocles, and in the pre-Platonic atomists, as well as, perhaps, in Plato’s middle period Theory of Forms (Denyer, 1983, Frede 1985, W.-R. Mann 2000, Silverman 2002).

This is, of course, a general remark The precise connections between the 'pre-Socratic' philosophers are a matter of much scholarly debate. A.P.D. Mourelatos' writings and reactions to them are a good place to see that.

Without sorting all that out, the article shows a critical element: Rational consideration of phenomena as what we are able to observe and the attempt to find out why events happened predates subsequent methods for doing that.

A resident of the iron age would not have understood what we mean by "physical." — frank

Certainly not the part where we can write: F=MA. But I think you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater:

In the Cratylus, Socrates mentions “the recent doctrine of Anaxagoras that the moon receives ( ἔχει) its light from the sun” (409A11-B1). Here Plato’s testimony on the issue of who was first appears to be clear and unambiguous: as Plato sees it, Anaxagoras was first. Insofar as Graham does not discuss the Cratylus passage, his case for taking Anaxagoras and Empedocles to have regarded Parmenides as an empirically minded scientific reformer is significantly weakened. Further, the Cratylus passage fits well with the traditional view that Anaxagoras (and Empedocles) sought to rescue natural science from Parmenides’ stultifying rationalism. — John E Sisko

It is not self-evident to me how this dialectic "goes back to the end of the Bronze Age."

I believe you are referring to the parable concerning the soul of a lover in Phaedrus, composed of a charioteer and two horses of opposite dispositions.