(See also The Unity of Intellect in Aristotle's D'Anima.) — Wayfarer

From what I have garnered so far from his references to Aristotle, Rödl’s book is not trying to frame "idealism" against a "materialism". In the footnote reference I quoted above, the key moment is:

That part of the soul, then, which we call mind (by mind I mean that part by which the soul thinks and forms judgements) has no actual existence until it thinks. — De Anima, 429a 16, translated by W.S Hett

Rödl also references:

But we must also distinguish certain senses of potentiality and actuality; for so far we have been using these terms quite generally. One sense of “instructed” is that in which we might call a man instructed because he is one of a class of instructed persons who have knowledge; but there is another sense in which we call instructed a person who knows (say) grammar. Each of these two has capacity, but in a different sense: the former, because the class (genos) to which he belongs, i.e., his matter (hyle), is of a certain kind, the latter, because he is capable of exercising his knowledge whenever he likes, provided that external causes do not prevent him. But there is a third kind of instructed person—the man who is already exercising his knowledge; he is in actuality instructed and in the strict sense knows (e.g.) this particular A. — ibid. 417a 22

The actual existence of thinking in both passages is a confluence of circumstances. A living person must come from a particular kind of matter and become capable of actually knowing and thinking. I agree with Wang that the "activity" is not outside of the creature but think he is looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope. All coming-to-be is from agency beyond the particular organism. That particular kinds of material are required is a rebuke to the Pythagorean view that Forms shape purely undetermined goo.

Maybe I will get Rödl’s book and find out what he makes of these texts.

I read the SEP and it makes distinctions between concepts that are conflated by your saying:

Well, that's what I'm often trying to do, apparently without much success, even though it seems quite clear to me. 'Metaphysical realism' is really just philosophy-speak for direct or naive realism, which phenomenology criticizes as 'the natural attitude' - the world just is as it seems, and if we can learn more about it, it can only be through science. By idealism I'm referring to the usual advocates - Berkeley, Kant, German idealism, and nowadays Bernardo Kastrup. I think there's a reasonably clear core of tenets, isn't there? — Wayfarer

The article says:

Metaphysical realism is not the same as scientific realism. That the world’s constituents exist mind-independently does not entail that its constituents are as science portrays them. One could adopt an instrumentalist attitude toward the theoretical entities posited by science, continuing to believe that whatever entities the world actually does contain exist independently of our conceptions and perceptions of them. For the same reason, metaphysical realists need not accept that the entities and structures ontologists posit exist mind-independently. — SEP 1

Your comments about phenomenology are inverse to the articles references to behaviorism as a challenge to 'metaphysical realism" on the basis of it being merely a product of language:

In psychology one may or may not be a behaviourist, but in linguistics one has no choice … There is nothing in linguistic meaning beyond what is to be gleaned from overt behaviour in observable circumstances. - Quine — ibid. 3.2

In the context of your theme of a reality lost in history, the conditions for it are closer to the claims of this realism than to any method of behaviorism. I understand your dissatisfaction with the isolation of the thinker from what is thought but find this formulation of realism does not conform to your history of philosophy.

The latest Trump statements on overriding the sovereignty of adjacent nations shows him hoping to ditch the "sphere of influence' thing and go for straight colonialism.

Putin knows where he is coming from.

More precisely, he [Kant] says that the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for all my representations must be capable of being thought. — J

That "must be able" component played a big part in Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego. His arguments are interesting even if one is not sold on swapping "existence" for "essence."

Since the minions will all be connected to the man as a minimum requirement for participation, it will not be like the Team of Rivals ascribed by some to the Lincoln administration.

Far from opposing the evils of government, the system of patronage will blossom during the impending administration.

The graphic part is annoying, but the music is good. The Daydream track is ensemble playing like it ought to be.

That reference to De Anima in the footnote does point to a particular expression of "self-consciousness":

It is necessary then that mind, since it thinks all things, should be uncontaminated, as Anaxagoras says, in order that it may be in control, that is, that it may know; for the intrusion of anything foreign hinders and obstructs it. Hence the mind, too, can have no characteristic except its capacity to receive. That part of the soul, then, which we call mind (by mind I mean that part by which the soul thinks and forms judgements) has no actual existence until it thinks. So it is unreasonable to suppose that it is mixed with the body; for in that case it would become somehow qualitative, e.g., hot or cold, or would even have some organ, as the sensitive faculty has; but in fact it has none. It has been well said that the soul is the place of forms, except that this does not apply to the soul as a whole, but only in its thinking capacity, and the forms occupy it not actually but only potentially. But that the perceptive and thinking faculties are not alike in their impassivity is obvious if we consider the sense organs and sensation. For the sense loses sensation under the stimulus of a too violent sensible object; e.g., of sound immediately after loud sounds, and neither seeing nor smelling is possible just after strong colours and scents; but when mind thinks the highly intelligible, it is not less able to think of slighter things, but even more able; for the faculty of sense is not apart from the body, whereas the mind is separable. But when the mind has become the several groups of its objects, as the learned man when active is said to do (and this happens, when he can exercise his function by himself), even then the mind is in a sense potential, though not quite in the same way as before it learned and discovered; moreover the mind is then capable of thinking itself. — De Anima, 429a 16, translated by W.S Hett

Aristotle's point in the quote from Parts of Animals is not an opposition to "materialism" as depicted by Gerson but a basis upon which to study material beings. While arguing for first principles and causality, Aristotle said this in regards to Empedocles:

For instance, when he is explaining what Bone is, he says not that it is any one of the Elements, or any two, or three, or even all of them, but that it is “the logos of the mixture” of the Elements. And it is clear that he would explain in the same way what Flesh and each of such parts is. Now the reason why earlier thinkers did not arrive at this method of procedure was that in their time there was no notion of “essence” and no way of defining “being.” The first to touch upon it was Democritus; and he did so, not because he thought it necessary for the study of Nature, but because he was carried away by the subject in hand and could not avoid it. In Socrates’ time an advance was made so far as the method was concerned; but at that time philosophers gave up the study of Nature. — Parts of Animals, 242a 20, translated by Peck and Forster

I am curious what Rödl will make of Aristotle's enthusiasm for empirical study while formulating his concept of "Idealism".

The hammer only sees nails.

The question of causality on the cosmological scale of Metaphysics book Lambda is itself a product of trying to distinguish "active" and "passive" elements of individual things.

Your question about scholars making that connection is less important to me than looking for how nous is something we can learn about through our experiences and thinking about it. I am not arguing for a "subtlety" as much as for a difficulty.

Edit to add: The point I was making about the connection of DA Book 2' references to nous in the other works concerning life is what will make the discussion in Book 3 seem less of a one-off as you described it to be.

I am proposing that he is talking about it many times but with the humility of being a mortal creature who only can remotely glimpse the divine. Note how often he uses "perhaps" in Book 3. He does not state as a matter of fact that nous is separable. In Book 2, Aristotle is more comfortable with locating the "act of knowing in the context of the individual as receiving (some of) the power from the kind (genos) they come from. The same immediacy of the actual is being sought for without the naming of the agent in Book 3.

Your link points to another important reference:

Another passage which is traditionally read together with the De Anima passage is in Metaphysics, Book XII, Ch. 7–10.[2] Aristotle again distinguishes between the active and passive intellects, but this time he equates the active intellect with the "unmoved mover" and God. He explains that when people have real knowledge, their thinking is, for a time receiving, or partaking of, this energeia of the nous (active intellect). — ibid.

More important for the use of "active agent" in De Anima is the inquiry in Metaphysics of how potential and actual "energeia" relate to each other. These investigations are contiguous to the fact that Book 2 of De Anima echoes many elements of Parts of Animals, Coming to be and Passing away, and History of Animals.

As those titles suggest, Aristotle did not say that personal (or individual) lives survived death. The Neoplatonists who were popular when the "Medieval' period began did promote various versions of such personal immortality. That is the batter Augustine used to cook his pancakes.

I have looked at a preview of Rödl’s book. It is an interesting challenge to the mind/object dichotomy of Descartes and Kant (and many others).

I see your quote came from page 55 and that a footnote accompanies the reference to Part of Animals. Does that note give the Bekker line number for the reference?

The preview also let me see from 118 to 123. His account of De Anima 417a 21ff is solid as well as the references to Metaphysics Gamma. The distinction between different kinds of potentiality (powers) is a helpful touchstone to the rest of De Anima.

That example is not comparable to the situation in the U.S.A.

But the citation does show you think the problem was manufactured.

Your proposed response would have led to much more of that.

Hardly a response to my challenge. I take it you are not equal to it.

So, you were onboard with much more death than happened.

Unless you are one of the people who believe the attempts to control the disease were causes of the event.

Please advise.

That note is a reasonable generality of the different views.

There is comparison of different jobs in the literature. It is easier to understand the work of the butcher than that of a leader. The difference being asked for is not easy.

The customary explanation is that Confucius (Kung Futzu) represents social propriety and custom while the ‘true man of the Way’ is basically unbound by such niceties. — Wayfarer

The literature includes many examples of previous social orders that were deemed superior to a present state of affairs. The Daoist writings include such narratives.

That account does not include the talk about a natural world where the evils of the present world are not necessary.

There was that opposition. And it carried on over a number of centuries in the form of different narratives. I will try to round up examples that you are asking for. It is an old data set. It won't happen tomorrow.

One interesting aspect of Chuang Tzu's depiction of Confucius is that it represents him learning stuff.

It helps to compare these statements with the words from Confucius and the role of Mohists as sources of legislation. The statements were made in a particular context.

That is not to say that an appeal to a universal truth is to be disregarded.

We live in a dynamic time. It is not my original thought but I think that rates of change between generations are different for different people in different circumstances.

I share your questions as a person but am reluctant to make a history from them.

I might as well conclude that outside reality doesn't exist; It's just me and you — A Realist

As far as I know, you are not me. You have invited others to your solipsism party.

It will be interesting to see if a similar change of message will happen with agricultural labor.

Perhaps you could actually quote Wittgenstein. So far, you seem to be tilting against a windmill.

I don't see that it matters where or how a disposition arose, as that is not going to affect how effective it is at enabling communication between people. — Clearbury

It was your idea. You presented it as what made communication possible.

But the position you are opposing is not making a claim of necessity.

Your remark about probability does not address the question of "disposition" you introduced.

Where does that come from?

Where did my "disposition" to have such a belief come from?

I think that's wrong. All that's required for a language is effective communication. — Clearbury

You include the word "communication" in your argument against the activity happening. How will the "same information" be the "same" if it is only what is happening in each individual?

This is the part that many people find it very difficult to grasp. What's worse, it seems to me that some people who one might expect to have grasped it seem to forget it when it's needed. Hence a long and pointless argument about "illusionism". — Ludwig V

Good points. The method Wittgenstein incorporates pitches conflicting points of view of what is the best response. His knack for voicing views different from what he might opine makes him difficult to pin down.

I think it’s a different story when it comes to neurophenomenology and enactive embodied cognitive science. Like Witt, these approaches reject the idea of inner, computational processes in the head in favor of practices of interaction immersed in the world. — Joshs

Is that the only problem for "elemental" languages, a mistake in what those elements are?

As it happens, I wouldn't want to argue the breaking down one set of terms into simpler sets can never improve our understanding of them. W's point, for me, is that applying that approach to a general understanding of descriptive (true or false) language not only doesn't help, but throws up further problems. Hence the need to change the subject. — Ludwig V

I don't read the Blue Book or PI as saying there is no use for reduction in all cases. The objects of shared experience do not have the same problems as what is experienced by us as persons. The discussion of mental states thrusts us into an unknown. To say that nothing more can be learned would be a kind of nominalism. The following from the PI put a finger on the issue:

383. We do not analyse a phenomenon (for example, thinking) but a concept (for example, that of thinking), and hence the application of a word. So it may look as if what we were doing were nominalism. Nominalists make the mistake of interpreting all words as names, and so of not really describing their use, but only, so to speak, giving a paper draft on such a description.

308. How does the philosophical problem about mental processes and states and about behaviorism arise? —– The first step is the one that altogether escapes notice. We talk of processes and states, and leave their nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we’ll know more about them - we think. But that’s just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter. For we have a certain conception of what it means to learn to know a process better. (The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one that seemed to us quite innocent.) - And now the analogy which was to make us understand our thoughts falls to pieces. So we have to deny the yet uncomprehended process in the yet unexplored medium. And now it looks as if we had denied mental processes. And naturally we don’t want to deny them. — ibid.

That "sometime perhaps we'll know more about them" militates against imagining ourselves at the end of explanations.

I think Ludvig V's question about facts is germane. If the beginning of PI and the talk of live versus dead signs in the Blue Book puts a certain understanding of learning language in doubt, that has consequences for attempts to form scientific theories about such activities. I offered Chomsky as an example but there are many other areas of human development which are implicated by the question.

I may be misreading this.
The argument (comments on) the idea of elements certainly includes logical atomism but is based on an alternative view - roughly that an atomic view of them is misleading because it tries to think of the elements independently of the overall structure that gives them their meaning. — Ludwig V

I read the problem as more about priority than independence from circumstances. W does not care about Aristotle's objections to a separate world of forms. What is being questioned is whether analysis breaking down one set of terms into simpler sets will reveal a more fundamental set of conditions. The matter is directly addressed in Philosophical Investigations:

62. Suppose, for example, that the person who is given the orders in (a) and (b) has to look up a table coordinating names and pictures before bringing what is required. Does he do the same when he carries out an order in (a) and the corresponding one in (b)? - Yes and no. You may say: “The point of the two orders is the same.” I would say so too. - But it is not clear everywhere what should be called the ‘point’ of an order. (Similarly, one may say of certain objects that they have this or that purpose. The essential thing is that this is a lamp, that it serves to give light —– what is not essential is that it is an ornament to the room, fills an empty space, and so on. But there is not always a clear boundary between essential and inessential.)

63. To say, however, that a sentence in (b) is an ‘analysed’ form of one in (a) readily seduces us into thinking that the former is the more fundamental form, that it alone shows what is meant by the other, and so on. We may think: someone who has only the unanalysed form lacks the analysis; but he who knows the analysed form has got it all. - But can’t I say that an aspect of the matter is lost to the latter no less than to the former?

64. Let’s imagine language-game (48) altered so that names signify not monochrome squares but rectangles each consisting of two such squares. Let such a rectangle which is half red, half green, be called “U”; a half green, half white one “V”; and so on. Could we not imagine people who had names for such combinations of colour, but not for the individual colours? Think of cases where we say, “This arrangement of colours (say the French tricolor) has a quite special character”.

In what way do the symbols of this language-game stand in need of analysis? How far is it even possible to replace this game by (48)? - It is just a different language-game; even though it is related to (48).

65. Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations. For someone might object against me: “You make things easy for yourself! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what is essential to a language-game, and so to language: what is common to all these activities, and makes them into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you the most headache, the part about the general form of the proposition and of language.”

And this is true. - Instead of pointing out something common to all that we call language, I’m saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common in virtue of which we use the same word for all - but there are many different kinds of affinity between them. And on
account of this affinity, or these affinities, we call them all “languages”.
I’ll try to explain this — ibid.

Your comparison with Gestalt psychology is interesting. Will ponder.

Could you explain to me, please, what ‘Plato’s Betrachtungsweise’ is. (Google Translate was foxed as well!) — Ludwig V

It just means a point of view. In this case, a general assignment of Plato to being the champion of the "ideal" versus whatever is assigned to what that is not. Soulez is not faulting either for that, just putting it into a context of what concerned Wittgenstein.

Aristotle took recourse to a distinction between the eternal and the "temporary" to arrange his cosmology:

Now there are two meanings of “cause,” one being that which, as we say, results in the beginning of motion, and the other the material cause. It is the latter kind with which we have to deal here; for with cause in the former sense we have dealt in our discussion of Motion, when we said that there is something which remains immovable through all time and something which is always in motion. To come to a decision about the first of these, the immovable original source, is the task of the other and prior branch of philosophy, while, regarding that which moves all other things by its own continuous motion, we shall have to explain later which of the individual causes is of this kind. For the moment let us deal with the cause which is placed in the class of matter, owing to which passing-away and coming-to-be never fail to occur in nature; for perhaps this may be cleared up and it may become evident at the same time what we ought to say about the problem which arose just now, namely, about unqualified passing-away and coming-to-be. — Aristotle, Coming to be and Passing away, 318a

The arguments made against Parmenides in that work do not subtract from the transition of something from "nothing" that happens with actual beings but puts those events into a larger context. Potentiality is not a feature of eternal beings.

Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words. The study of language games is the study of primitive forms of language or primitive languages.

Don't these remarks invite distracting arguments about whether they are factually correct? Do w need to say more than this approach is a useful way of analyzing language and understanding how it works? — Ludwig V

It seems to me that the limits to analysis being put forward by Wittgenstein are arguing for a particular set of facts over others. In Philosophical Investigations, he challenges the role of elements which various theories could be reaching for:

“A name signifies only what is an element - of reality a what cannot be destroyed, what remains the same in all changes.” - But what
is that? - Even as we uttered the sentence, that’s what we already had in mind! We already gave expression to a quite specific idea, a particular picture that we wanted to use. For experience certainly does not show us these elements. We see constituent parts of something composite (a chair, for instance). We say that the back is part of the chair, but that it itself is composed of different pieces of wood; whereas a leg is a simple constituent part. We also see a whole which changes (is
destroyed) while its constituent parts remain unchanged. These are the materials from which we construct that picture of reality. — PI, 59

The question of elemental structure is clearly directed toward such as Russell and Whitehead but also to language theorists like Chomsky. Looking for a language underneath the one we use requires employing certain kinds of assumptions. We are being asked to consider an alternative approach to what is "primitive", but it is not being presented as a competing analysis.

Another example of the argument establishing a set of facts is the treatment of solipsism as a mistake. It does not work by offering a competing view of the elements.

Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness.
— p. 18

Certainly, respect for science is often exaggerated and it may explain some metaphysics. Plato is a particularly clear example. But I think that W may be over-generalizing here. — Ludwig V

The scientific method, as we know it, was not a model for Plato. Wittgenstein does not seem interested in Plato's own problems with analysis. There are the many times when the singular essence is sought for and not found. I agree with an observation made by Antonia Soulez:

His reading of the ancient text was unrefined, indifferent to authenticity, careless about the historical distance between the ancient and the contemporary. What then did he look for?

Did he look for a better model of the analysis of meaning? As we know from Baker and Hacker, Wittgenstein would rather attack ‘Plato’s Betrachtungsweise’, including Russell and himself (as expressed in the Tractatus) with Plato, in order to reshape his method of ‘comparison’ with paradigms. To his eyes, Plato’s problem illustrates a misleading model or picture of logical analysis that he wanted to get rid of. This illustration in turn could be addressed to and against Russell’s conception. His contention in §48 is rather constructing a new language game in order to confute logical atomism than, in the spirit of a critical method, trying to discuss Russell’s distinctions one by one. Wittgenstein was as little interested in critical arguments or analytical sorts of discussions with ancient authors as with modern or contemporary ones. — Soulez, How Wittgenstein Refused to Be ‘The Son Of’

You are keeping you alive when you eat and all that stuff. — Darkneos

And I suppose that applies to all the other desires I have.

There are different kinds of desires and pursuing their consummation is an engagement with one's life. That is why apathy and depression factor into some considerations of suicide. On the other hand, the rush of risk taking also leads to a lot of death. I find both extremes unnecessary for myself.

What I had in mind about one preserving life is the way one jumps out of the way of the truck or jumps to save a colleague. These actions are not on a drop-down menu. The person who does them is just as alive as the other agents of choice.

I have worked in a dangerous industry for most of my life. The epistemology of learning what is stupid has joined forces with this person who is always alert for the bad things. It is a beautiful partnership that I am grateful for.

Anabasis of Alexander the Great by Arrian.

Arrian's style of critical admiration with concise recounting of events is awesome.

Every day you don’t off yourself is a choice to live. It’s not really the default. — Darkneos

But that ignores your life. Whatever is keeping you alive does not care a whit about your logic.

I would be interested in the drones being captured by helicopters and studied afterwards.

Power (might=right) is someone’s goal of what is good. Is it the most worthy goal? No, but it still exists in the world, and it gets dismissed because it doesn’t meet the standard Socrates wants. — Antony Nickles

I do not read the Republic to say that the equation of Thrasymachus did not exist. The work does not solve the problem but shows how it is surrounded by other problems. Using the individual soul to measure the body politic is not done by Wittgenstein but his self-imposed limits upon the discussion of ethics suggests he was not assigning the problem of the good to being simply another case of craving generality.

To me arguments for staying alive or for meaning only work if you HAVE to live. — Darkneos

I don't understand this view of compulsion. Whatever this life thing is, it has its own life. I have survived a number of crises because something took over while I was being stupid. We are more than we can talk about. Your premise assumes the contrary.