Yes, I completely agree with this. And if you think that what I said confuses the issue, I apologize for that, it was not my intention. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was putting forth an alternative view. Neither of us should apologize for saying what we think.

I have listened to the Gerson lecture a couple of times. Do you know of a link to a printed copy? Each of his statements are proposals to discuss very specific topics.

I agree with Gerson's argument that Aristotle is not stepping outside of what 'urPlatonism' militates against. On the other hand, it seems that Aristotle worked hard to have the empirical inquiry of the natural world be worthy and capable of going forward, even if upon a problematical basis.

Is that a compromise, as Gerson would describe it? It seems to me that Aristotle's efforts to separate inquiries reflect an interest in avoiding putting matters in those terms of opposition.

The relevant question is whether a mind can know with "an immediate intuition" — Metaphysician Undercover

Your account of what Aristotle says the intellect depends upon confuses this question. Yes, a living creature who has the capacity to know is only possible because they also have other capacities needed by other living creatures. Yes, the more advanced forms of life depend upon the structure of the more basic forms. But this is not to say that what is possible for the more advanced form is framed only by the possibilities available to the less advanced. Otherwise, there would be no point in distinguishing between them.

There is a relationship between the types of soul that conditions what is possible and Aristotle describes this in a manner that addresses your question regarding 'immediate intuition'. From Posterior Analytics:

We have already said that scientific knowledge through demonstration is impossible unless a man knows the primary immediate premises. But there are questions which might be raised in respect of the apprehension of these immediate premises: one might not only ask whether it is of the same kind as the apprehension of the conclusions, but also whether there is or is not scientific knowledge of both; or scientific knowledge of the latter, and of former a different kind of knowledge; and further, whether the developed states of knowledge are not innate but come to be in us, or are innate but at first unnoticed. Now it is strange if we possess them from birth; for it means that we possess apprehensions more accurate than demonstration and fail to notice them. If on the other hand we acquire them and do not previously possess them, how could we apprehend and learn without a basis of pre-existent knowledge? For that is impossible as we use to find in the case of demonstration. So it emerges that neither can we possess them from birth, nor can they come to be in us if we are without knowledge of them to the extent of having no such developed state at all. Therefore we must possess a capacity of some sort but not such as to rank higher in accuracy than these developed states. And this at least is an obvious characteristic of all animals, for they possess a congenital discriminative capacity which is called sense-perception. But though sense-perception is innate in all animals, in some the sense-perception comes to persist, in others it does not. So animals in which this persistence does not come to be have either no knowledge at all outside the act of perceiving, or no knowledge of objects of which no impression persists; animals in which it does come into being have perception and can continue to retain the sense-impression in the soul: and when such persistence is frequently repeated a further distinction at once arises between those which out of the persistence of such sense-impressions develop a power of systematizing them and those which do not. So out of sense-perception comes to be what we call memory, and out of frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience; for a number of memories constitute a single experience. From experience again--i.e. from the universal now stabilized in its entirety within the soul, the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all---originate the skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science, skill in the sphere of coming to be and science in the sphere of being.

We conclude that these states of knowledge are nether innate in a determinate form, nor developed from higher states of knowledge but from sense-perception. It is like a rout in battle stopped by first one man making a stand and then another, until the original formation has been restored. The soul is so constituted to capable of this process. — Posterior Analytics, 99,20, translated by GRG Mure

Your account reflects the distinctions Aristotle is making. But the phrasing of this remark should be reconsidered:"

In contrast, when separated from the body, it reverts to its essential, contemplative state."

The intellect as the actuality bringing the potential into being is unchanged during generation and corruption as described in Metaphysics Book Lambda, chapters 6 and 7.

Starting with the latter, Spinoza argued against free will on the basis that everything that happens is caused to happen and that we don't understand these causes hardly at all. But he also strongly suggested that being less ignorant about why events happened improves our lives.

I don't understand. Are you saying that only people who agree to be judged should be held accountable? — T Clark

There are all kinds of reasons to hold people accountable, whether they agree or not. But the only people worthy of trust hold themselves accountable to something. The quality is not without its own uncertainties. But extending trust is more about this assumption of obligation than assuming the quality is 'free.'

The capacity to perceive other beings reaches the highest level when a being is actually what they are in one's presence. That is possible because of the activity of the intellect. Other forms of life share in some aspect of that activity but are revealed by their partial involvement in the dynamic.

Your description lacks any vision of what such a capacity would be good for.

Does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will? — T Clark

Outside of the context of the compulsion to comply, the practice of holding other people accountable is closely bound by how much responsibility is accepted by said individuals. Such acceptance may be necessary from a point of view of causes we do not understand. But as a matter of practical decisions about people, agents who bind themselves to obligation are the only one's worth arranging anything with. That is the mark of voluntary action well beyond the apportionment of blame. Are such willing agents free?

A little Spinoza might help here. He noted that we select what draws us closer to what is desired or takes us further away from what is feared. But the degree of our knowledge and understanding is an influence of outcomes, despite the role of necessity. Consider Proposition 6 of Ethics 5:

Insofar as the mind understands all things as necessary, to that extent it has greater power over the emotions or is less acted on by ​them.

Proof The mind understands that all things are necessary (by 1p29) and are determined to exist and operate by an infinite nexus of causes (by 1p28); and therefore (by the previous proposition) it ensures to that extent that it is less acted on by the emotions arising from them and (by 3p48) it is less affected toward them. Q. E. D.

Scholium

The more this cognition that things are necessary is concerned with particular things that we imagine quite distinctly and vividly, the greater the power of the mind over the emotions. Experience itself also testifies to this. For we see that sadness for the loss of some good thing that has perished is mitigated as soon as the person who lost it considers that that good thing could not have been saved in any case. Thus we also see ​that no one pities an infant ​because it does not know how to speak or walk or reason and because it lives for so many years as it were unconscious of itself. But if most people were born as adults and only one or two as infants, then everyone would pity every one of the infants, because then they would consider infancy itself not as a natural and necessary thing but as a fault or something sinful in nature; and we could give several other instances of this sort. — Spinoza: Ethics: Cambridge University Press

Another aspect to consider is that being compelled to do what you were designed to do is much different than becoming bound to others or dire circumstance.

De Anima went into why the different kinds of life are different from each other. The potentials of what can be experienced are sharply contrasted against each other. From that point of view, the observation:
"soul" would mean something different for every particular, distinct living being" is exactly the point.

How the universal works is harder to observe than the singular quality of each life as a life.

Maybe it is true that the 'anima' is the same in many forms of life. What Aristotle introduced is a correspondence of perception. Plants respond to other forms of life, but they cannot change location. Animals respond in various ways according to how well they move in response to others. Humans can wonder why things change and put such matters as problems for the mind.

From that perspective, the idea is not so much about what is stuff or not but what is the overriding design that keeps showing up in stuff.

I am referring to the writers who ventured to speak of the fundamental elements of the world. So, starting with Thales up to the contemporaries of Socrates.
The primary writing is sparse and influenced and or preserved by later writers. I don't have the chops to have an opinion about competing translations. The reading is more dependent upon the efforts of scholars than many other works. I have started reading a collection of essays by Alexander P.D. Mourelatos that deal with a number of changes with the use of key words and expectations during this period. I know that many other arguments take other points of view. With that said, I still look at the project as chance to have a more direct relation to those texts.

As regards the physical effort, I mean exercise and therapy. Use it or lose it.

some beaty is immediately arresting and other forms involve a measure of time to glimpse.
in Homer, realizing that one is present before a god was oddly piecemeal.
that neck does not fit. why are the sounds so harmonious?

ugly is bound up with time and circumstance too. but in a different way.

You equate the desire for more information with some more corrupt intention.

That is not what I said at all.
Whatever, dude.

If it is only something that cannot be demonstrated to others, then only silence will suffice.

That must be really cool for you but useless for your brothers and sisters.

We live in the bit of experience life offers to us.
The notion that you have information is suspect as such. Who made you the wizard of worlds not available to us ordinary humans?

Why should anybody be interested in what you think?
So far, you have only offered rhetorical responses.

Your resolution is very hardy.
My resolution is to read the writers before Socrates (in the Greek tradition) more carefully.
And get this old frame to perform better.

The opportunity to get data about the early universe is seriously important.

They are not the audience, either for Lewis' article or for this thread. — Banno

Got it. Good to know. Go ahead and explain everything. The world is your oyster.

Go Webb Telescope!
What a delicate instrument, where so many parts can fail, being sent to such a precarious place.
If it works, it will change what we can ask about the universe.

I respect Gerson, especially as someone who wrestled with the texts of Plotinus.
But I am not convinced that Aristotle is arguing for the neat division you or he suggests.
A discussion for another time, perhaps.

But none of those claims regarding voting fraud could be proven in the light of day. The power to expose such crimes was in the hands of those most interested in proving it. They failed to do it, even with an AG inclined to help.

The mail voting element has not been proven to show anything of significance by even the Fox people.

Crying foul is one thing. Engineering an alternate result is another. How legitimate could that alternate reality be if the grounds for it was not substantiated beyond mere suspicion?

I think Gerson misses an important circumstance that Aristotle observes in De Anima. For whatever reason it might be possible, we come into the presence of beings who actually exist. Something about how we are constituted allows this to happen through means that retreat from the attention in order to permit the arrival of such beings.

That is different than stating that our means of perception and intellectual processes amount to something equal to what exists beyond those means.

Another aspect of equality in the Aristotelian view is how it suspends the comparisons of 'greater' and 'smaller.' To that extent, the condition is not a step toward 'identity' It points to something that works but we don't know why it works.

But the situation in this case is not just one side tarring another side.

The proponents for overturning the election did that openly in the name of opposing a crime they said was being perpetrated. If I was convinced that such a crime had been perpetrated, I would not readily accept the results either.

But nobody has shown that such a crime has, in fact, been perpetrated. The courts have thrown out all suits claiming as much. The media still advancing the idea can only conjure the most ridiculous reasons why the crime is not visible to ordinary mortals.

Measles.
Rubella.
Polio.
Tetanus.
Diphtheria.
Smallpox.
Influenza.

Your idea of the utility of exposure flies against the face of previous experience.

I love the old books. I am better versed in them than more recent ones. I own the biases of my preferences.

I don't agree that the old writers all accepted what has been discarded today. They fought each other tooth and nail. I think you are romanticizing the past. I realize that the 'present' has much to be questioned and struggled against. That is what Socrates said about his situation.

Your account is interesting, and I have had my own experiences struggling against decisions made by those who make them. I figure all the sides in the arguments are made by scientists doing science. At least as the matters regard outcomes we personally care about.

Then I must not have grasped the nuance of this seemingly unqualified statement:

So what is one to make of the moral character of folk who hold someone who tortures folk unjustly in the highest esteem?

I see Lewis' point

The rest of my comment was given to show that generations of reactions to such declarations has also become what is 'Christian.'

That is not apology. I have my own objections as someone who wants to see things a certain way. Who knows, maybe you are right; No good can come from these beginnings.

But the assumption that this point of doctrine includes all who understand themselves to be Christian is a self-fulfilling prophecy. That will be all that you see.

Why would my observation be based on what people have been charged with as a matter of law?

A group of people tried to hang on to power after having been voted out. If the situation is much different from that description, the situation needs to be seen in a different light.

But that light has not yet shined. Go ahead, enlighten me.

Why ask me?
The intentions of the proceedings at the time are pronounced clearly by those interested in the results.

I accept that the models created through science end up getting involved with other kinds of narratives beyond what they claim to claim as science per se..

But the notion that such an influence is beyond the realm of effective ways to do things versus not having those means escapes me.

Take the problem of mental illness as an example. We have the means to understand all kinds of suffering to be outside of the means of 'society' to manage. But our politics are far away from dealing with this thing science has put at our feet.

I will become more interested in the problems of 'scientism' as a pattern of thinking when it proves itself unable to meet the challenges it has already given itself.

The riot was incited to keep him in power after that date.

I am not sure what you are trying to say here.

They were not done to change who was in power.

Your proposition asserts that all points of views are arbitrary by default. Then you ask if anyone could come to a different conclusion after accepting those premises.

A more philosophical approach would move toward the premise as the matter of interest.

Are you suggesting you have no way to figure it out by yourself?

But certainly, that allegory cannot be condensed into a metaphor, "Life is a shadow", or something like that... — jancanc

That leads me to wonder at what point a metaphor is different than other predicates. From a certain point of view, there is always a Two; The one being said to be another.

Is that use of the one being said to be another thing a particular problem of speech?

The war won't happen.
Previous wars broke out because there were competing forms of production.
The only forms of production in the U.S. are dominated by corporate entities. The hold outs are various forms of finding opportunity despite that; Not a countervailing movement but more like a bunker. It is not a sustainable model.

It is true that people have used the arguments of justification to support terrible acts. Christianity became a dominant idea through violence, both physical and rhetorical.

The Christain idea also brought up various renouncements of that power. The element of personal testimony has long since been a thorn in the sides of dogma, however it is expressed.

Outside of saying what happened versus what did not happen in history, the arguments between sincere belief are our inheritance.

So, are you arguing that such discussion is no longer necessary? The past is a mistake and the future is ours?