But that is still a dualistic way of expressing it. — apokrisis

Yes, and inescapably so, because we have two orthogonal (non-overlapping) concepts. Such concepts cannot both indicate the same aspect of reality -- the same notes of intelligibility.

The scientific question is how to actually model that functional unity — apokrisis

"Scientific" in the old sense that includes philosophical analysis, not in the modern sense of being in the domain of natural science. My discussion ot the fundamental abstraction shows why this is so.

That said, I do have a model, discussed at length in my book, and in more popular form in my video "#21 The Two Subsystem Mind" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWuS8DXc1l0).

I say this has been answered in the life sciences by biosemiotics. Howard Pattee's epistemic cut and Stan Salthe's infodynamics are formal models of how information can constrain material dissipation or instability. — apokrisis

But intellect and will do far more than "constrain material dissipation or instability." They have the power to actualize intelligibility and to make one of a number of equally possible alternatives actual while reducing the others to impossibility.

these are just different ways of spelling out some word. — apokrisis

No, they are not. The are ways of encoding the same information in irreducibly different media -- thus showing that information is invariant with respect to differences in the physical properties of its material substrate.

So the analysis has to wind up back at the question of how human speech functions as a constraint on conceptual uncertainty. — apokrisis

This is just backwards. Thought is temporally and logically prior to its linguistic expression. If this were not so, we would never have the experience of knowing what we mean, but not finding the right words to express it. If we only thought in terms of existing language, we would never need to coin new words. And so, language itself would never have come into existence -- for it began when our ancestors first expressed their thought in protowords and found them understood.

So "information" in the widest sense is about both the interpretation and the marks together — apokrisis

...

So given that any semantics depends on material marks - meaningfulness couldn't exist except to the degree that possible interpretations are actually limited by something "solid" — apokrisis

And where does thought not expressed in marks or sounds fit into your theory? I have just shown its priority, but it finds no place in your model.

As physical marks, that can be intentionally expressed, how do they constrain states of conception to make them just about "some single item"? — apokrisis

By convention.

Biology ain't trivial. It is amazing complexity. — apokrisis

No one is denying that. Still, it is only biology, and so it has noting to say about thought per se -- and neither does semiotics, which assumes the capacity to interpret, to know concepts and judgements.

But anyway, reason is explained by the evolution of grammar. — apokrisis

Again, just backward of what history and careful reflection show. As I have shown in other posts, the cupola "is" expresses our awareness of the identity of the source of the linked concepts.

Animals can abstract or generalise — apokrisis

This is confused. Animals and neural nets can generalize by association. Forming associations is not abstracting. Generalization is a kind of unconscious induction on the Hume-Mill model -- effectively assuming that other instances will be like the ones we've already encountered. Abstraction is conceptual and so never unconscious, and it does not generalize by adding the assumption of similarity, but by subtracting irrelevant notes of intelligibility. See my video "#35 Induction and Abstraction" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvqcL9LILiA).

So psychological science can explain the evolution of reason. — apokrisis

Please! Reason requires consciousness -- almost universally recognized as the "Hard Problem," and one shown by Dennett to have no solution on naturalistic assumptions.

Eventually that mechanical or reductionist narrative form became completely expressed itself as the new habits of maths and logic. — apokrisis

This is entirely inadequate. If math we just a habit, then 2+2=4 would be true usually and occasionally wrong. In fact, 2+2=4 always and everywhere. If logic were only a habit, there would be no fundamental reason why you not both exist and not exist at one and the same time in one and the same way.

Again he is using 'information' in terms specific to 'information science' whereas I'm considering it in a broader and more philosophical sense and in relation to the metaphysics of meaning rather than information science as such. — Wayfarer

This does not tell me that, or why, Shannon's definition of information does not apply. What specific difference in meaning do you see? Please remember that, as I have pointed out, the possibility by information is logical, not physical, possibility and logical possibility belongs to the order of reason.

This 'extra ingredient' is itself reason, which is not explained by science, but which science relies on. It is nowadays almost universally assumed that science understands the origin of reason in evolutionary terms but in my view, this trivialises reason by reducing it to biology ... — Wayfarer

I agree

quote="Wayfarer;209098"]But that is the main point of contention between naturalism and its critics. In other words, to accept the truth of that, is to reject naturalism[/quote]

That is why the subtitle of my book is The Irrationality of Naturalism,

my view is that mind/body or mental/physical is a real duality so I'm a lot nearer to dualism than the alternatives. — Wayfarer

As always, the devil is in the details. As a moderate realist, I agree that there is a foundation in reality for the concepts of <human intentional acts> and <human physical acts>. So, they indicate really different aspects of the person. Still, these are aspects of a single person, of a single substance.

I reject Descartes's opposition of mind and body. Obviously, the mind is dependent upon, but not fully explained by, the brain. So, the mind is partially of the body. Still, the brain's neural processing capabilities are only one subsystem of the mind. The other, which I call "the intentional subsystem" provides awareness and direction -- intellect and will.

But Shannon's definition of 'information' was wholly and solely concerned with what is required to encode and transmit information. — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree that Shannon was concerned with data transmission. That does not mean that, having abstracted a concept of information, that definition expressing that concept is inapplicable to other realms of discourse. If I actually inform you that your house is on fire, then the possibility that it is not on fire is eliminated, and so what is logically possible to you is reduced. This is a consequence of the Principle of Excluded Middle, which may be thought of as justifying logical possibility, and the Principle of Contradiction, that reduces it once we are informed.

the term itself is polysemic, i.e. its meaning varies, depending on the context and intention. — Wayfarer

Yes, most terms can be analogously predicated. The question is: Is being polysemic relevant here? When Landauer said ""whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind," was he using "information" in a different sense? I do not see that he was. He, like Shannon, is discussing encoded information. If you think they mean different things, please say what differences you see.

the fact that biological systems encode and transmit information has also been used by intelligent design advocates as an argument for an originating intelligenc — Wayfarer

the fact that biological systems encode and transmit information has also been used by intelligent design advocates as an argument for an originating intelligence — Wayfarer

I am familiar with ID, and don't think that it's a cogent attack on evolution. On the other hand, naturalists are certainly wrong in saying that evolution shows that nature is mindlessly random or that order can emerge from ontologically random processes. I take a middle ground in my paper "Mind or Randomness in Evolution," Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (2010) XXII, 1/2, pp. 32-66 (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution).

The argument revolves around the idea that the same information can be represented in a variety of ways. — Wayfarer

I agree: it can be.

the faculty which does this, is not itself physical - in fact, it seems closely related to Aristotle's intuition of the 'active intellect'. — Wayfarer

Yes.

So as that is not a physical capability, then it suggests a form of dualism, which is close in some respects to hylomorphic (matter-form) dualism. — Wayfarer

Yes, but the logical independence of intellectual (intentional) and physical operations does not justify substance dualism a la Descartes. There is no reason a unified human person cannot act both intentionally and physically.

mine is a novel metaphysical argument, although I would be happy to be proven wrong in this regard. — Wayfarer

I do not recall seeing the independence of information on media used in this kind of complete argument previously, although many people, including me, have pointed out that information is independent of medium.

I'm still finding it very unclear what it is that you think you are arguing — apokrisis

What I am arguing is that Descartes's doubts leave what he actually knows (that he is in his chamber) unaffected. What is being questioned is his belief about the deeper structure/nature of "being in his chamber" -- which is something he does not know, but believes he does. (He does not know if his experience of being in his room is due to continuous, extended "stuff" (res extensa), atomic interactions, or demonic activity.) We have known since Robert Grosseteste that the rational way to address his question is posit and test falsifiable hypotheses.

Maybe you are making the contrast between the roles played by coherence and correspondence in theories of truth. — apokrisis

No, I'm not discussing theories of truth. I'm pointing out that knowledge as awareness of present intelligibility is independent of whether we grant or withhold belief.

The coherence theory is too easy a target. Harry Potter's "world" is or easily could be, coherent.
Nor do I support "correspondence." There is no one-to-one correspondence between what we think and reality. Rather, what we think can be adequate or inadequate to reality. If it is adequate to reality. it is true.

there is the certainty (and doubt) that results from some generalised state of coherent belief. We have a world view that seems to work in reliable fashion. — apokrisis

Once you mention your worldview "working," you've started to test your beliefs against intransigent reality -- stepping beyond the bounds of strict coherence. You're asking "Is what I believe adequate to reality?"

We have a pragmatic set of interpretive habits that do a good enough job of understanding the world. This is what intelligibility feels like. — apokrisis

I agree, that our system of beliefs "works" in a general sort of way. Often, however, it does not work at all, because when we examine our detailed beliefs we find them inadequate to reality.

Intelligibility is characterized not by a "feel", but by power -- the power to inform -- to reduce what is logically possible to the actual given.

The world is experienced as having a stable rational structure - where dogs are dogs, horses are horses, the house on the corner is still blue like the last time we saw it, and we aren't concerned about the possibility it may have been repainted or knocked down in the last few days. — apokrisis

Sure. In living our daily lives we expect things to be more or less the same as they were when we last encountered them. (That's an adequate model.) Still, we aren't shocked when a store has closed or moved -- or the house on the corner has been repainted.

So when talking about Descartes, he does seem to be claiming that every fact is merely a particular, and so suffers the challenge of correspondence. — apokrisis

Yes, he could mean that, but, actually he doesn't. He tells us explicitly that he was in his chamber. So, there is no question of it having burned down or having been smashed by drunken rioters. It's still there. He sees it, and relies on it to shelter him.

It conflicts rather too violently with the rationality we find in knowledge as generalised correspondence. — apokrisis

Yes, that is why you need more than logical possibility to be rational. Chesterton makes the same point -- you don't need to bend the facts to be paranoid -- only your interpretation.

Life for us would remain the same despite it being "a grand illusion". — apokrisis

This is close to the point I am making. The "deep structure" of his chamber doesn't matter to the fact of "Descartes being in his chamber." We don't "know" (in the strictest sense) what the deep structure of the world is, but we do know we are in our room, and what we believe of the deep structure is adequate to our needs.

it remains important to see beyond the naive realism of the kind of "unity" of mind and world you appeared to be pushing. — apokrisis

I'm not a naive realist. That is one reason correspondence is a poor criterion for truth. There is no "red" in red apples. We experience red as the result of a complex interaction of objective and subjective factors -- not because the apple contains "redness." There is an objective reality, but it is far more complex than redness in apples. Still, complexity does not belie reality -- or the partial identity of subject and object by which we know it.

In psychological terms, the mind only appears to represent the world. The world is merely an image. And that creates a troubling epistemic gap. — apokrisis

This is precisely the error I am opposing. An apple acts on my senses. Its modification of my neural state is identically my sensory representation of the apple. There is no gap. There are only two names for, reflecting two ways of thinking about, the same reality -- a reality that belongs to both the sensed object and the sensing subject. Thus, we may say, there is an existential penetration of the object into the subject.

The other aspect of this identity was noted by Aristotle: the joint actualization of two potencies by a single act. Both the object's sensibility (its potential to be sensed) and the subjects capacity to sense are actualized are actualized in the single act of sensing. The object being sensed by the subject is identically the subject sensing the object.

So, there is no "gap" -- no separation of phenomenon and noumenon. In sensation the sensory representation is not dynamically isolated from the object -- it is the very mode of the object's presentation to the subject's awareness.

Saying, "The world is merely an image," reminds me of Locke's claim that we only know our ideas. Our ideas are not so much what we know as they are the means by which we know. It is only in retrospect, in reflecting on how we know, that we understand that the existence of ideas. In fact, ideas are not "things" at all. They are simply us thinking. The idea <apples> is just thinking of apples.

So, the world is not an image, the world dynamically projects into us as images, as phenomena.

globalised coherence creates a general certainty about what even counts as actually possible or actually likely. — apokrisis

I am happy to agree with this, but only as one projection of knowledge.

Perception begins with a state of reasonable expectation. — apokrisis

Sometimes it does. Other times it comes as a complete surprise.

Let us not get started on Bayesian probability.

You're welcome.

Stimulus, synthesis, and an act of judgment. — tim wood

I have not addressed it, but there are two kinds of knowledge we have been talking about. Aristotle's account of ideogenesis as the actualization of present intelligibility gives us knowledge as acquaintance: "Do you know the house on the corner?" "Yes, I do." In this case there is no judgement about the house. We are simply aware of its existence.

The second kind is what you are pointing out, judgement. In it we assert (or deny) some truth. "The house on the corner is painted blue." I discussed, in a backhanded way when we considered misjudging a "this" as a horse or dog, how judgement works when it works right. If the presentation that elicits <the house on the corner> is identically the presentation that elicits <painted blue>, then we are justified in thinking <the house on the corner is painted blue>. If the presentations are not identical, then we are not justified, for <the house> is elicited by one thing, and <painted blue> by something else.

This means that the copula "is" bespeaks identity -- not in the coupled concepts, but in the source object eliciting the concepts.

In light of this, I think we need to be careful in assenting to "synthesis" -- at least in the case I'm discussing. We're not bringing anything together that was not one before we abstracted distinct concepts out of it. All we're doing is acknowledging the unity that underpins the concepts we abstracted.

I'm having trouble with Kripke's paradox. — tim wood

The question is: are more than half of Nixon's statements about Watergate false? One of Nixon's statements that is supposedly about Watergate is his claim about Jones' statement. If he is right about Jone's statement, that supposedly tips the balance in favor of true and Jones' statement is false. On the other hand, if Nixon is wrong about Jones' statement, then the balance is tipped the other way and Jones is supposedly speaking the truth.

Cannot be assigned? That seems a stretch. — tim wood

How can you say if a claim is adequate to reality or not, if it says nothing about reality?

It is not clear to me that truth or falsity is ever assigned to any statements — tim wood

You're right, of course. Truth values are assigned. Truth is determined. I wanted a word that would cover both cases, "Assigned" isn't quite it. "Attributed" is probably a better choice.

I think your "actualization of a present intelligibility" works if you allow the addition of "for a present use"; "use" needing be no more than the bringing to consciousness of the knowledge itself. — tim wood

Sometimes we have no idea of a potential use. We just encounter being. We may take joy in it -- or we may not. I understand your extension of "use," but it seems perilous in an era of soundbites -- where "use" is liable to be separated from your extension.

Thanks for the reference

I appreciate you rounding out and balancing what I said.

Most philosophers today understand that the course of investigation presented in the Meditations wasn't Descartes central focus, but rather just a preliminary investigation into the conditions of certainty wrt scientific knowledge. — gurugeorge

I think this may be seeing more in Descartes than is there. I sympathize with his goal -- silencing radical skepticism. Still, the four rules in his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences pale in comparison with the elaborate account of the hypothetico-deductive method and the need for controlled experiments laid out in the scientific works Robert Grosseteste.

After Descartes, philosophers turn their vision more and more from being, to the question of what, if anything, we know. — Dfpolis

Is this the "distortion of the trajectory?" — tim wood

Yes, because after Descartes, philosophers confuse distinction (which means independent concepts) with separation (which means ontological independence). As a result, there is a strong tendency to reify concepts. Examples are:

Descartes' res cogitans vs res extensa. Where Aristotle and the Scholastics saw a unified human person capable of physical and intentional operations, Descartes saw two separate things.

Lockean ideas. Where ideas had been the actualization of prior intelligibility, Locke made them separate things -- so that what we knew (in his view) was only our ideas. At most, our ideas are the means of knowing their objects. Minimally, they are just us thinking about their objects.

Kant's separation of unknowable noumena from known phenomena. Instead of seeing phenomena as the inseparable acts of beings revealing themselves, they become separate "things" standing between us and true reality.

Russell and Wittgenstein's logical atomism which proposes a correspondence between true statements and systems of objects.

But maybe it's not a horse. Maybe it's a picture or a man in a horse suit or just a mistake in perception. Now we're stuck on just what knowledge is. I buy your definition - I appreciate that you trouble to define your terms - but it apparently only holds in terms of the object so far as I can say, "I thought it was a horse." Hmmm. Knowledge as intracranial activity, or as a relation in and to the world? — tim wood

I know what you mean. One day, walking home from high school, I was scared by a huge dog that suddenly pocked its head over a fence behind me. When I turn to face it, I saw a chestnut horse. What is happening in cases like this?

First, what we are aware of is a "this" -- a largely unspecified something making itself present to us. Of course our brain does not care what it is, but it has evolved to activate neural net complexes associated with (representing) various categories of experience -- in your case the "horse" complex, in mine, the "dog" complex. So, what is present to awareness is twofold: a largely unspecified "this" and an activated or associated representation ("horse" or "dog" as the case may be.) We are aware of both. One is part of our self (someone more used to seeing horses would probably not activated "dog" as I did, but "horse"). The other has an immediate external source.

Awareness is not judgement. Being aware of both "this" and "horse" is not judging <this is a horse>, but we do so judge, because we confuse the joint awareness of the two different contents with that of a single object that is both this and a horse. For <this is a horse> means that the identical thing that evokes <this> is evoking <horse>.

So, there is no lack of awareness of present intelligibility, but we are confusing association with identity.

does knowledge become certainty? As a practical matter it "certainly" does. — tim wood

I think we agree, knowledge becomes "practically certain," but that does not preclude all chance of error. Of course, there are degrees of certitude (e.g. metaphysical, physical and moral), each appropriate to a realm of discourse.

we still don't know what knowledge is except in terms of a functional definition — tim wood

Well, there is no a priori concept of knowledge handed down from on high. We look at various aspects of reality, forming concepts and expressing them with names. As long as we are careful in applying the concepts and do not think that our concepts exhaust reality, we can avoid errors while being open to further insight.

Here I'm channeling the idea found in the quote that the "essence of truth is the truth of essence," together with its qualification that a criteriological standard for a thing is not what a thing is. — tim wood

I am not sure what to make of this. We can think of "essence" as Aristotle does, as the foundation in reality for our universal ideas, or we can think of essence as the specification of an individual's possible acts. These ideas overlap, but they are not the same. While responding in a feminine manner may not be part of the Aristotelian essence of humanity, it may be very much of the essence of a transsexual male.

Stepping back, saying "essence of truth is the truth of essence," seems rather monadistic. I mean that a great part of truth is not about the essence of any one thing, but more ecological -- about how things relate and interact -- and we can never discover that except by observing actual relations and interactions.

I suspect he was driven to reflection by the tumult of his world. — tim wood

I agree.

Also, it's very dangerous to put oneself in the mind of God. It doesn't fit us.

So the disease of philosophy is the need to, combined with the impossibility of, stating the Truth... — Banno

It is quite possible to speak truth -- provided one does not aspire to be God, and believe that to know truly, one must know exhaustively

Why can't we stop? — csalisbury

Indeed; all that is needed is that one stop. — Banno

Bravo!

Could you expand on this a bit? — tim wood

Before Descartes philosophers were focused on reality. On being as such in metaphysics, on changeable being in physics and the philosophy of nature, and on thought about being in logic and philosophical psychology. After Descartes, philosophers turn their vision more and more from being, to the question of what, if anything, we know.

Aristotle was an empiricist. He based his understanding of reality on what we could learn from sense experience and scolded his students for not wanting to get their hands dirty. He understood that in the single act of awareness actualized two distinct potencies: The knower, with a prior capacity to be informed, is actually informed by the same act that makes the object's intelligibility actually known. Thus, a single act bridges gap between knower and known. Said in a different way, there is a partial identity between knower and known: The object being known by the subject is identically the subject knowing the object.

Locke, Berkeley and Hume we not empiricists in the same way. Following Descartes, they begin by assuming a gap between knower and known -- falling to recognize the unity of subject and object in the act of knowing. Locke, for example, claimed all we could knew was our own ideas. This assumed separation of knower and known became total in Kant's Transcendental Idealism. Phenomenology gives up on being to focus on appearance, analytic philosophy to focus on language.

What is it you'd like to recover from the "lost" subjective experience? I don't question its value; I rather don't know what the value is you have in mind. — tim wood

In epistemology, we have to realize that knowledge is not abstractly "objective." Rather it is a subject-object relationship that is inescapably both objective and subjective. Reality is projected into one or more conceptual spaces and doing so reduces the information we actually consider. We can compensate for this by seeking out diverse projections and finding points seen in one but missing in others.

In the philosophy of mind, we need to understand (vs. Ryle's critique in The Concept of Mind) that every act of knowing contains information not only on the primary object (what we are "looking at"), but also ourselves as subjects knowing the primary object. We not only know x (the objective object). we know that we know x -- so that we are the subjective object of each cognitive act.

In the philosophy of nature, we have to see that intentionality (as revealed by our knowledge of subjectivity) is as much a part of the natural world as physicality. Our intentional life, often called our "spiritual life," is not something "supernatural" (taken as a term of disparagement), is as natural as our physicality.

This goes on, analogically, to such topics as interpreting quantum theory in which we need to include the physics of our detectors (analogous to the subjective object) in any explanation of the measurement process.

Is the knowledge of so-called "divine" knowledge the same knowledge I have when I know that it's raining? It seems to me it must be different - but where does that leave "knowledge"? — tim wood

There are two ways we can know God. Ratiocinatively or by mystical awareness. In reasoning we come to God as the actualizing source of the world of experience. In doing so, we do not experience God per se, but find indicators pointing to God as their Source. We do not have a positive concept, but a negative specification: not contingent, not limited in His ability to act, not limited in knowledge, etc.

In mystical experience, we have something akin to Rubin's vase (the picture that is bi-stable between appearing to be a vase or two faces looking at each other), When we think of our self, or the world, we normally see our self or the world. Yet, metaphysically, there is more to be grasped. The world, being maintained in existence by God is identically God holding the world in existence. And, of course, the same is true of our self.

So, if we are able to shift our intellectual focus (as we do with Rubin's vase), then, instead of being aware of the world (or self) that is held in existence by God, we become aware of God, Who is holding the world (or self) in existence. This is direct, not ratiocinative knowledge.

Whether we are aware of physical objects or of God, we are aware of present intelligibility.

I take it from this that you have not read De Anima iii. — Dfpolis

As if there were one reading of it. — apokrisis

One reading is far superior to total ignorance.

You know that there are many contrasting readings on what was meant by the intellect and how it was embodied. — apokrisis

Yes, but in all, the knower knowing the known is identically the known being known by the knower. Not one credible reading denies that knowledge is the actualization of present intelligibility. The main point of contention is whether the agent intellect is an aspect of the knowing subject, or a power of God, or perhaps the Neoplatonic Logos. Are you, then, claiming that the agent intellect is God or the Logos, rather than the subject's awareness?

Descartes published his Meditations on First Philosophy in 1641 and died in 1650. He was part of the background out of which the Enlightenment developed. — Dfpolis

Oh please. As if Galileo or Francis Bacon did not yet exist. — apokrisis

I suggest you review the names of the cultural movements of early modern Europe. The Late Middle Age ended c. 1500. It was overlapped by the Renaissance which ran from about the 14th to the 17th centuries. Then, as I said, the Enlightenment, began in the late 17th c. (after the death of Descartes). Galileo (1564 -1642) was not an Enlightenment, but a Renaissance, figure -- his work the culmination of late medieval developments in mathematical physics. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) died even earlier.

And I take it from this that you have not read what i wrote in my last post. — Dfpolis

Is this going to be your standard response? Anyone who dares to disagree with you must be merely failed scholars. — apokrisis

Not at all. You can disagree all you like. But, if you're responding to me (as your post indicated), then you should say why you disagree with me. If you don't want to do that, then please don't pretend you're responding to me. Just make an independent post.

You do realize that thoughts are not the same kind of signs as natural and artificial languages? — Dfpolis

But are thoughts things or processes? Are they the syntactical symbols, the mere marks, or the semantic acts of interpretation? — apokrisis

Thoughts are acts. They are not substantial things, nor need they be processes, though they can result from processes.

Thoughts are not syntactical symbols like words. They are essential signs. They are not any kind of "mark." Marks can be instrumental signs, Thoughts can be, but need not be, acts of "interpretation."

maybe you also want to say that thoughts can take mental images as their signs — apokrisis

No, I don't.

my position being that all sense data are signs in a syntactic sense. — apokrisis

I think you have not thought this through. What is the nature of sense data? Is it not neurally encoded information? If it is, then to interpret the supposed "sign" we would have to know our neural state, and then work out its meaning in the same way we first see marks on paper or a computer screen, and then interpret what they mean. Yet, clearly, we do no such thing. We have no idea which of our neurons is firing, nor their firing rate (which is how neural information is encoded). So, our neurally encoded information is not a sign like marks on a page that we "interpret."

Instead, we are aware of the information (or intelligibility) encoded in our neural state directly -- with no process of interpretation. Thus, your semiotic model simply breaks down under scrutiny.

Some yes/no question is being answered about the "state of the world". — apokrisis

We have no reason to think that the brain employs any sort of binary code and much reason to think it does not.

Would you care to back this up with specific texts that support your point? — Dfpolis

I made my argument. — apokrisis

Your "argument" proposes an interpretation of De Anima, but cites no text. That is a prima facie reason to reject your proposal.

Aristotle is remembered as the empirical antidote to Plato's rationalism - a proto-pragmatist — apokrisis

This shows, once again, that you do have no fear of making pronouncements on subjects you don't understanding. I suggest you read about praxis, theoria and the contemplative life in Aristotle.

So is the real debate about the accuracy of Aristotle's epistemology or the unreasonableness of Descartes's? — apokrisis

The debate is about what Descartes called into question. The background for that is the philosophical understanding of knowledge at the time he wrote. The sources for that are Aristotle's De Anima iii and Plato's distinction between episteme and doxa in The Republic v.

I think Aristotle's approach ... boils down quite nicely to a pragmatic and semiotic story. — apokrisis

I take it from this that you have not read De Anima iii.

I just see that he has a place in history as a particular reaction to the simplistic empiricism that characterised the dawning Enlightenment. — apokrisis

Then you need to read history. Descartes published his Meditations on First Philosophy in 1641 and died in 1650. He was part of the background out of which the Enlightenment developed. He was certainly not reacting to a movement that did not begin until the late 17th c.

Knowledge develops by beginning from some "leap of faith" - a willingness to take one hypothesis as a plausible truth and then judge that based on its "real world" consequences. — apokrisis

And I take it from this that you have not read what i wrote in my last post.

pragmaticism is about accepting that absolute knowledge is never going to be the case, then moving on. — apokrisis

We have many examples of metaphysically certain knowledge, but they are not of interest to those whose sole concern is praxis -- only to those interested in theoria -- those who want to know for the joy of knowing.

Pragmatism doesn't just acknowledge our finitude ... — apokrisis

We are not discussing pragmatism (which did not begin until c. 1870), but Descartes's methodological doubt and its implications for our prior understanding of knowledge and belief.

In this light, knowledge is all about the development of those kinds of regulatory habits. — apokrisis

As I said, there are many ways of defining knowledge. However, when you use a different definition, you reference a different aspect of reality. In this case, the aspect of reality you are referencing has little to do with either knowledge defined as awareness of present intelligibility or with knowledge defined as (causally) justified true belief. So, while what you say may be important to you, it is not relevant to the topic we are discussing.

all sense data is simply acts of measurement. — apokrisis

Measurement is a process whereby we ascertain numbers descriptive of physical states. Very little sense data is numerical.

Your scheme seems basically Cartesian in its dualism of mind and world — apokrisis

Really? When have i said that our minds are apart from the world? When have I asserted that we are a compound of thinking stuff and extended stuff? Haven't I said the opposite? That we humans are unified beings. That a major problem is the fundamental abstraction separating the objective and subjective.

And the reason Aristotle would have seen the discursive intellect as somehow coming from somewhere beyond the embodied and sensing animal soul is that its form indeed does come from the "beyond" that is human cultural development, with the "self" and the "world" that emerges there. — apokrisis

I have no idea what text you have in mind here. Do you?

I am stressing that the system of signs is Janus-like in that it encodes both "the real world" and "the real us". — apokrisis

You have not said what "signs" you are talking about. Thought? Natural language? A formal system?

You do realize that thoughts are not the same kind of signs as natural and artificial languages?

my main point here is that what Aristotle meant by the "intellect" maps very nicely to what we would understand about the social evolution of the human mind. — apokrisis

Having read De Anima a number of times, i fail to see any evidence of this. Would you care to back this up with specific texts that support your point?

Surely it's the other way around. He believed he was in his chamber. And what he felt he knew - by rational doubt - was that was just in fact a belief and no more. — apokrisis

Let's begin with a semiotic reflection. "Knowing" names a human activity. "Believing" names another. In common usage, the meanings of these terms terms overlap: Knowing is sometimes called "believing" and "believing" is sometimes called "knowing." So, as philosophers, we need to define these terms more precisely. What we should not do is define these terms in such a way that they no longer name a human activity.

So, I have chosen to define "knowing" to refer to the process Aristotle described in De Anima iii -- a usage with a long tradition of philosophical usage. To wit, to know is to actualize present intelligibility. It is thus an activity of intellect -- of our capacity for awareness of information.

Coordinately, I have chosen to define "believing" as committing to the the truth of some judgement. Committing is an act of will, of our power to make choices, not an act of intellect. Thus, I have defined these terms in such a way as to ensure their orthogonality -- their meanings do not not overlap. This does not mean that knowing and believing are unrelated, only that they are independent acts.

Now I say he knew, the whole time. You say "he felt he knew." But, wasn't there an intelligibility present, the source of which we choose to call "Descates's Chamber"? And wasn't Descartes aware of this intelligibility? If this is so, then didn't Descartes actually know, and continue to know, that he was in his chamber?

So, what of his "rational" doubts? Of what he "he felt he knew"? (I personally think the notion of demons deceiving him is very irrational.) What he actually knew was that there was something adequate to present the system of intelligibility we call "Descartes's chamber."

What "he felt he knew" was that that something had a certain ontological structure, such that it was not the product of demonic activity. Of course, he never knew this at all. This was a construct, a hypothesis, inadequately supported by what he actually knew. Other hypotheses might be that the intelligibility he was aware of was the effect of an interacting set of atoms or that it was the result of a computer feeding inputs to his neural system.

Some of these hypotheses are falsifiable, others not. Some are supported by confirming data, others not. Still, all remain mere hypotheses -- constructs, not the awareness of present intelligibility.

I would suggest that underlying this crisis in faith about our knowledge is the cultural shift from a theological perspective to a humanistic worldview. The Scholastics were quite content to acknowledge that human beings are finite creatures, with limited intellects. They did not think that we should know anything exhaustively, as God knows it. Rather, we know only what sense reveals to us. Still, we know what sense reveals to us.

With the advent of Renaissance humanism came a great deal of optimism about human capabilities. Protagoras' view that "man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not," became widely current. So, the recognition that we have a limited knowledge of reality was replaced by the expectation the that we should have unlimited knowledge. Instead of "knowing" naming an actual human activity, Divine Omniscience became the paradigm of knowledge.

I call his view (that knowledge is only real when it is exhaustive) the Omniscience Fallacy. In its place, I see that all human knowledge is a projection (a dimensionally diminished map) of reality. Being reveals itself to us by acting on us in specific ways that inform us of some, but not all, of its possible acts. By combining multiple projections we can come to a fuller understanding of reality, but never an exhaustive knowledge.

So simple empiricism - the evidence of the senses - has a problem when it comes to being "knowledge". It is quite plausible that any sensory evidence is some kind of dream or illusion — apokrisis

No, it is not. For a theory to be "plausible" we need strong evidence supporting that theory. All we have is an unfalsifiable hypothesis lacking a shred of confirming data. In fact, it is not even clear what the theory proposes, for reality does not fit the phenomenology of dreams. I'm a lucid dreamer. When I don't like how a dream is going, I wake myself up. I can't do that with reality. Dreams have a finite duration against the persistence of reality. Dreams also lack the consistency, order and continuity characteristic of reality. I could make a similar analysis of "illusion." So, what does the hypothesis even mean by "some kind of dream"?

More fundamentally, the dream argument is an abuse of language. What we mean by "reality" is paradigmatically what we encounter in the lived world. The dream argument casts aside this fundamental meaning of "reality," conjuring in its place (ex nihillo) another, mythic, "reality" that we are (irrationally) to suppose is more "real" than reality. Thus, the conjecture seeks the self-contradictory goal of convincing us that reality is not real.

Psychology already reveals that. — apokrisis

Really? I missed that lesson.

Rather, it involved a willing suspension of belief, — Dfpolis

Explicitly the opposite. Descartes had to posit a relentless evil demon as the reason why it was logically possible he could be deceived, despite his wishes otherwise. — apokrisis

The belief that he suspended was that he was in his chamber. His meditation does not require anyone be committed to (believe in) the actual existence of demons -- only the admission that they are logically possible.

Finally, the possible deception doesn't involve what he knows (his awareness of intelligibility he calls "his chamber.") It involves a belief, inadequately supported by evidence, about the ontological structure of his chamber -- as I have discussed above. What is shown is not that Descartes does not know he is in his chamber, but that his knowledge of the ontology of his chamber is limited -- a point taken for granted by the Scholastics.

Well "the awareness of present being" is a hopelessly ambiguous term here. — apokrisis

Let me disambiguate it for you. I take "being" to mean anything that can act in any way. "Existence" means an indeterminate ability to act in reality, and "essence" is the specification of a beings possible acts. "Present" here means that a being has acted on a subject in such a way (say via our sensory system) as to be available to awareness. Finally, by "awareness" I mean our ability to actualize intelligibility -- making it actually known to the subject.

Since in acting on us to make itself present, is an actual act of a being, it is a possible act of that being. Thus, it informs us of both its existence (since it is acting) and, in part, of its essence (since it is acting in this specific way).

The correct answer in my view is the Pragmatic/Semiotic position taken by scientific reasoning. — apokrisis

That is an altogether reasonable approach to the justification of belief. It has little to do with knowledge as I have defined it and as it was understood before the era of modern phiilosophy. Of course, I realize that "knowing" can mean "(causally) justified true belief" in many cases. And, in these cases, the hypothetico-deductive method is a reasonable approach to justification. Still, what is justified is belief as commitment, not knowledge as awareness of present intelligibility.

This is good psychology. It is how brains function. Minds are pragmatic models of the world - a system of signs or an Unwelt, and not some kind of veridical direct representation as is usually naively presumed. — apokrisis

You seem to think that one projection of our our minds (not our brains) work, is all we need. Aristotle's analysis in De Anima iii gives us a different projection -- one justifying episteme, not doxa. No epistemology that ignores one in favor of the other can claim to be adequate to the reality of human cognition.

What we are in fact interested in - as modellers - is to reduce "the world" to an easily understood system of signs. — apokrisis

What we are interested in as humans is to know being as it reveals itself to us. To the extent that we can "model" it with a system of comprehensible signs, we make it easier to respond to. Still, to the extent that we confuse our models with reality, to the extent that we think our "reduced" world is the real world, we are guilty of Whiteheads Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. The real world is not our model and it is always ready to hit us with a shocking surprise to prove it isn't.

So knowledge becomes about certainty over our possible courses of action — apokrisis

If that is how you conceive of knowledge, it does not exist. Our actual system of episteme and doxa is always limited -- always open to shocking surprise. Our ability to predict, while real, is limited and uncertain. Failing to see this is a very dangerous form of hubris.

At the beginning of natural science, we make what i call the fundamental abstraction of natural science. Even though all knowing involves both a knowing subject and a known object, natural science chooses to abstract the objective from the subject. As natural scientists we care about what Ptolemy, Galileo, Newton and Hubble saw, not their experience of being a knowing subject seeing it. As a result, the fundamental abstraction leaves behind data on subjectivity. Having projected such data out of its conceptual space, it can form no judgement linking what it knows of the objective world to concepts reflecting our subjective experience.

Dennett and his ilk seem blissfully unaware of the fundamental abstraction. So, finding no place for subjectivity in their conceptual space, they assume it does not exist. The correct response is to approach the problem in a way that does not leave data on the table.

Yes, I think he distorted the trajectory of Western philosophy.

OK That is fair

I agree, but I still do not see what this observation adds to our understanding of his enterprise.

Don't you think that Descartes's awareness was supported not by a simple physical presence of the things in his room, but also, more broadly, by rootedness of the things in the world? — Number2018

While I would not deny this, I don't know what point you are making.

He he

Was he suspending belief or modulating attention (concentrated direction of mind by means of information selection)? — Galuchat

Descartes was on a quest for certitude. In this quest, he employed methodological doubt -- doubting everything he could reasonably doubt and ending at his famous Cogito, ergo sum -- which he believed beyond doubt. Currently, however, eliminative materialists, such as Dennett, have chosen to doubt mental experience. (Showing in my mind that you can will to suspend belief about anything.)

just sounds like a wordy way of saying that the correct way of thinking is the way of thinking that is correct ("preserves the truth of what we know of reality," etc.) Not terribly illuminating. — SophistiCat

Yes, that is why it is annoying to have to repeat it multiple times. Once, in my first post, should have been enough.

Once you get the point, the next obvious thing is to examine cases of truth preserving and fallacious thinking to discover rules that preserve truth, and then seek to justify them by showing how they reflect the nature of existence.

The next step cannot rationally be to posit axioms without examining how they relate to thought about reality.

You will be happy to know that Rudy Giuliani has come out in support of your denial of the Principle of Identity, asserting "Truth isn't truth!"

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How can we know that there is a being of anything other than consciousness, for is that not the 'method' by which anything supposedly 'other' materializes at all? — Blue Lux

<Self> and <other> are concepts elicited by different notes of intelligibility in our experience. Expressing these concepts with different words (for example labeling instances of both concepts "other" or labeling them "self") does not change the fact that notes of intelligibility that evoke the <self> concept do not evoke the <other> concept, and vice versa. No mediation is required to grasp that <other> is identical to <not self>, and so no "method" is required to justify intermediate steps.

I think it is true that consciousness is consciousness only (of) something it is not — Blue Lux

If this were so, then we would be unaware that we are conscious of the other.

Of the ones I enumerated, I would only call Platonic Ideas "independent forms," and, as you know, I have no reason to think Platonic Ideas exist. — Dfpolis

OK, so you do not believe that immaterial things exist. — Metaphysician Undercover

After my previous experience with you, and reading this response, I have decided that you are either arguing in bad faith or are constitutionally incapable of grasping the points I am making. In either case, it is my prudential judgement that responding to you further is a waste of my valuable time.

Emotions are not meanings in the intellectual sense... — Dfpolis

No, they aren't. But when humans encounter or consider meanings which they find to be significant, they become emotionally attached to them. So the presence of these emotions is evidence that the humans involved have recognised meaning. OK? — Pattern-chaser

Yes, art my be redolent of emotional events that are very meaningful to the person. But, that meaning comes from within. It is not latent in the art. The art is not a carrier, but a trigger.

Let me begin by saying that I've never had much interest in post-Kantian European philosophy, so you can't count on me to know the detailed positions of many of the luminaries. (I've tried reading many, but what they said did not seem central or grab my attention -- perhaps because I'd already dismissed Descartes, Lockean presuppositions and Kantian speculations.)

i'm more subject-oriented -- trying to understand reality rather than theories and personalities. So, I know a fair amount about traditional logic (formal and material), science, the philosophy of nature, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, ontology and fundamental issues in ethics, and much less about speculative metaphysics, existentialism and post modernism.

I am not the type to just regurgitate or resort to dogma. — Blue Lux

Excellent. The primary question in my mind is how adequate theories are to the full range of human experience.

consciousness is a type of being, but is separate from just any type of being, like that of the phone I am typing on. There is a difference between the being that has being as a question and the being that being would question. — Blue Lux

We need to be very careful in using "separate." I try to reserve the word for things that can be physically separated. Separate can also mean "dynamically independent" -- that the things we're talking about cannot interact. So, if you start by saying "consciousness is separate," you can create a lot of problems not found in reality. For example: (1) If there is no interaction between consciousness and the rest of existence, how can we know the rest of existence? (2) If they are separate, how our decisions have physical effects (the mind body problem. (3) Less obviously, we know ourselves in knowing the other. I only know that I can be aware because I am aware of objects. I only know that I can will because I will to do things. Thus, self knowledge is very problematic if our consciousness is separate.

A better term is "distinct." It means that the aspect of reality we are thinking about elicits a different concept than some other aspect of reality. The shape of a ball is distinct from its material, but shape and material are inseparable.

I see the questioning-being questioned polarity in terms of a subject-object relation. Unless I stand as a subject to some object, I can't question it. -- and that brings me back to the separation issue. Being in a subject-object relation is not being separate, but dynamically united. The subject knowing the object is identically the object being known by the subject. (These are just different ways of considering a single act)

It seems the two are tied together intrinsically, but this connection or entanglement is not transparent. — Blue Lux

Yes, they are, but no, it's not transparent how. Aristotle discusses this in De Anima iii in one of the most difficult passages in Western philosophy. He concludes that knowing is the joint (simultaneous) actualization of two distinct potentials. Before we are aware of an object, it is intelligible (has the potential to be known), but not actually known. At the same time, we have the potential to be informed, but are not actually informed (about the object). In coming to know, both potentials are made actual by the same act: the object becomes actually known and the subject actually knows in virtue of a single act. Thus, subject and object are united in the act of knowing. That means there is no separation to be bridged by some speculation.

Philosophical thought up until now, I think, takes for granted the conclusions made by Descartes about the subject, and furthermore about objectivity. — Blue Lux

Only post-Cartesian thought. Aristotelian and Thomistic thought has always seen Descartes as ignorant of the tradition and so confused. Doubt, in Descartes's sense, is not an act of intellect, but of will. Descartes writes that he was in his chamber, and so he knew his actual situation, but by an act of will, he chose to suspend belief in what he knew. As knowing is an act of intellect, not will, Descartes method did not challenge his knowledge, but his belief (his commitment to the truth of what he, in fact, knew.)

Modern philosophy wants to make knowledge a species of belief: "(causally) justified true belief," but it is not. I can know I'm in my room, as Descartes did, and choose not to believe it. I can go to a play or movie, know the events portrayed are fictional, but willingly suspend my disbelief to "enter into" the drama. In the primary sense, knowledge is an act of intellect, belief (and doubt), acts of will.

There is this contention that consciousness is a subject and the world is outside of consciousness as object. This seems obvious. — Blue Lux

Not to me. If I'm aware of seeing an apple, I have information on the apple as my intended object (the objective object), but the same act also informs me that I can see and be aware. Thus, I am also informed about myself (as the subjective object).

At the same time, the world is acting on and in me, informing me. If it did not, how could I be informed? The apple acts on me, penetrating me dynamically (existentially if you will). My representation of the apple is identically the apple informing me about itself. The representation is both mine and the apple's. The apple's modification of my sensory system is identically my sensory system being modified/informed by the apple. These are not two things, but the same thing being conceptualized in two different ways.

Kant has shown this is illusory. Being is not a predicate: being is the foundation of such a statement and is not a quality that one can have or lack — Blue Lux

Kant was hardly the first to recognize this. Aquinas is quite firm on the point.

Consciousness is what it is conscious of; however, it always escapes itself. — Blue Lux

When we are conscious of something, we are in a state of partial identity with the object we are conscious of (as I explained above). Still, consciousness does not escape us. We are aware that we are conscious -- that we have the power to be aware. There is no more to consciousness than that. There is no hidden power to be discovered. Consciousness is just a contingent fact of reality, viz. that we can be subjects in relation to objects.

Consciousness is not a thing. — Blue Lux

Right. It is a power humans have.

How is there something finite and singular that one can be aware of instead of simply everything? — Blue Lux

As Aristotle noted, things (substance = ousia) are ostensible unities. Systems with interdependent aspects. As we have finite minds and finite sensory capacity, we do not interact with everything equally, but focus on things we can point out (ostensible unities). The presence of physical things is mediated, and so more distant objects have less impact on us.

"Nothing is finite without an infinite reference point." This infinite reference point is consciousness. — Blue Lux

I think this is just word play. We have finite minds, and so we cannot grasp infinity per se. If we cannot and do not grasp infinity, it can't be a reference point.

We come to an understanding of infinity by the via negativa -- we start with knowledge of limited being, and then deny or mentally remove the limits. This leaves us without any positive concept of the infinite -- only the idea of removing determinations. As determinations inform us, the result is information-free.

Consciousness is 'founded' upon nothingness, and only upon this foundation can anything be. This is why we ask the question of why anything exists when it doesn't seem to have to exist, because consciousness, this transphenomenal being of 'the subject', is not unless it is (of) something it is not. — Blue Lux

Aristotle seems to have been the first to note that our intellect had to be determination free if it is to receive its determination from its objects. That does not make it non-being, but no determinate thing. It is not non-being because it is a power that is operative. If it were non-existent, if could not operate to make intelligibility actually understood.

This is what leads Aristotle to distinguish the active and passive intellects. The active intellect is our awareness -- our determinate power to make intelligibility actually known, The passive intellect is what is determination-free. It is our determination-free capacity to receive information.

This is why Husserl's Intentionality is so significant. — Blue Lux

As I pointed out, Aristotelians never had this problem. We always saw knowing as the union of knower and known described above

Consciousness is 'founded' upon nothingness, and only upon this foundation can anything be. — Blue Lux

I have no idea what this can mean. To be is to be able to act in some way. Consciousness is not a thing because it does not stand alone, Human consciousness is a power discovered in the organic whole that is a human person. So, it it is founded on anything, it is founded on a web of dynamic relationships.

Knowledge of something is inevitably infinite. — Blue Lux

No, all human knowledge is a projection (a dimensionally diminished map) of reality. To demand that it be exhaustive is to make Divine Omniscience the paradigm of human knowing. (I call this the "Omniscience Fallacy.") "Knowing" names something real humans actually do. The role of philosophy is not to deny that we do something we call "knowing," but to illuminate what is involved in doing it.

One can not absolutely know an object so to be that object. This is why the primacy of knowledge is an illusion. — Blue Lux

I have no idea what primacy you are denying here. Of course we cannot know or be known if we do not exist, so existence is prior to knowing -- an insight that goes back at least to Augustine. Still, we cannot will if we don't know the existential situation, so clearly knowing is prior to willing -- something also seen by Augustine.

This is not to say that we do not know anything, but that we know the Nothingness that is the foundation of our being so to have a conception of what we are not — Blue Lux

We do not "know nothingness" because it has no intelligibility to be actualized by our awareness, and it is impossible for nothingness to be a foundation because it no power to support anything. We know being, and then, by negation, come to understand the absence of being. So, our notion of nothingness is quite derivative and absolutely dependent on first grasping the notion of existence. To say that it can be the foundation of anything is unreflective word play.

So what are we if there is no absolute subject? — Blue Lux

I have no idea, again, what being an "absolute subject" could even mean. To be a subject is to be one pole in a subject-object relationship. To be an absolute subject, we would have to be an unrelated relatum. So, the idea is oxymoronic. We know ourselves in the act of thinking of the other.

In knowing thyself or knowing anything it seems that an ascertaining of infinity is essential. — Blue Lux

How can a finite mind know infinity? Only by first knowing what limits are, and then denying them. So, again, any knowledge of infinity is derivative on a prior knowledge of the finite.

The appearance of something does not hide the reality of that thing. It shows the series of its appearances: it is in itself an infinite series of appearances, contained finitely within an appearance. One can ascertain something, and thus apprehend its essence, which is its existence. The essence of existence is existence. — Blue Lux

Yes, appearance does not hide, but reveals a things essence -- not exhaustively, but in part.

I have suggested elsewhere on this forum, that existence is the bare capacity to act (to do any act), and essence is the specification of a thing's ability to act. When something acts to reveal itself - to present an appearance -- it is doing one of its possible acts and so is informing us of part of what it can do, an aspect of its essence. It could act, and appear, forever, and never exhaust its repertoire of possible acts -- even if it is a finite being -- for it may it may continually find itself in new contexts and relationships. So, even the most humble thing can be a source of constant surprise.

Because existence is indeterminate -- the unspecified ability to act -- and essence is normally limiting (a finite being can do this, but not that), the essence and existence of finite beings is never the same, it is always distinct. Since an infinite being can do any logically possible act, its essence does not limit its existence, So, for an infinite being essence and existence are identical -- the unrestricted ability to act.

the active and the passive is fundamentally athropomorphic — Blue Lux

Not at all. The active is what actualizes a potency, and the passive is what has its potency actualized. No potency can be self-actualizing because it does not yet exist. And, surely, the actualization of a potency is an act and so requires existence. There is nothing anthropomorphic in one thing having existence prior to another.

Our being is not something active or passive, the result of something or its own cause. It is uncreated — Blue Lux

If we were uncreated, we would never have come to be. As it is, we were potential and now are actual, actualized by beings that were fully operational when we were merely potential. Further, our next moment of existence is as potential as our first once was, and so we require on-going actualization (creatio continuo).

Which is precisely what Descartes wished to do... Found being upon the primacy of knowledge. — Blue Lux

This does a disservice to Descartes, who was a poor philosopher, but not that bad. The primacy of knowledge in Descartes is epistemological, not ontological. Cogito is not the dynamic origin of sum, but its sign.

For is it not true that what can happen will happen? — Blue Lux

No. Definitely not. You can got to the store at a certain hour, and you can stay home at that same hour. You will not do both at that hour. You may do neither.

Activity (and change) is a characteristic of particulars, not universals. The number of atoms is simply a function of the water molecule itself, independent of human ideas about it. It is not merely potential information, it is actual information, even if the agent doesn't count the atoms or have a concept of numbers at all. — Andrew M

I'd say that if something is not involved in actual operations, it is entirely potential. So, the fact that the threeness of H2O is not doing anything of its own is sufficient to deny it actuality until it actually informs a mind.

Our discussion reminds me of a past thread entitled Is information physical. I'm curious whether or not you would agree that information is physical, in Rolf Landauer's sense. — Andrew M

I only read this far:

I am questioning whether information, generally speaking, is physical. I do have an argument as to why it not be considered physical, but I have found there is an influential point of view, from a researcher by the name of Rolf Landauer, that information is physical. The reason he says that, is basically because:

whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind. — Wayfarer

This seems to me to be confusing intelligibility with actual information. I follow Claude Shannon in defining information to be the reduction of possibility, and clarify by saying "logical possibility." Before we receive a bit in a message, the bit has been encoded and so in the real order it is actually a 1 or a 0, but to us, who have not yet received it, it is logically possible for it to be either. So, the kind of possibility that information reduces is logical, not physical.

That being so, actual information belongs to the logical, not the real order.

Of course, natural objects have the capacity to inform us. Encountering a horse elicits the idea <horse> not <rock>. But the capacity to inform is not actual informing, it is only intelligibility.

The case for coded messages having intrinsic information is even weaker. For example id we are using FM, we may decide that a frequency lower than the carrier is a 0 and a frequency higher is a 1, or we may decide the reverse. The signal has no idea what convention is being used, and so does not know if it means yes or no. The same is true of computer states. where not only is bit encoding arbitrary, but the order of bits in a byte or word is as well (are we to read bits right to left or left to right?).

So physical states can be intelligible, either intrinsically (as with horses) or conventionally (as with encoding). They are not, however, actual information until they act to reduce the logical possibilities open to some intellect.

So, realities independent of matter are realities that can act without depending on any material object. — Dfpolis

You are claiming that there are realities which are independent of matter here. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, I am only defining what I mean by "independent of matter" -- not making an existence claim. Examples could be Platonic Ideas, the "intelligences" Aristotle proposed to explain circular motion, angels, God as Aristotle's self-thinking thought or Ibn Sina's Necessary being. None of these require matter to exist, though many interact with matter.

Classically these realities would be understood as independent Forms. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of the ones I enumerated, I would only call Platonic Ideas "independent forms," and, as you know, I have no reason to think Platonic Ideas exist.

So what type of existence are you giving to these "realities which can act without depending on any material object? — Metaphysician Undercover

Aristotle's Self-Thinking Thought is a good example. Its sole activity is complete self-awareness. (I do not conceive of God as so isolated, but Aristotle did.) So, I would classify them as intentional, not material beings. Lacking matter, they have no potential to be other than what they are and so are immutable.

If it ever ceased to be in the vase, it would cease to be the form of the vase. — Dfpolis

This is not true though. It is how we have conceptions, blue prints, plans, these are forms of things which are not in the material thing which they are the form of. — Metaphysician Undercover

Our idea of a vase is a projection both the matter and form of a vase. We know that a vase shape is not a vase. Only that form in the right kind of matter is a vase. For example, forcing a gas or liquid into that shape would not make a vase. At the same time, the concept of a vase does not specify the kind of solid a vase is made of.

Also, it is an abstraction, not the actual shape of any one vase. The form of a Ming dynasty vase is not the form of an Art Deco vase, still both evoke the concept <vase>.

Of course, real vases, the concept of vases and blueprints for vases are all related, but they are not the same. The form of any actual vase has detail abstracted away in the concept <vase>. Blueprints are two dimensional while vases are three dimensional. So, again, while related, the form embodied in the blueprint is different from the form of any actual vase.

So, there is no single entity, no reified form, that passes from plan to physical vase to concept.

So the "form of the vase", without the accidents of the material vase, exists independently of the material vase. — Metaphysician Undercover

Look at this in a different way. Food, people and a urine sample can al be said to be healthy, but they are said so in different, but related senses -- by an analogy of attribution. Food is healthy, not because it is alive and well, but because it contributes to the health of those who eat it. A urine sample is not not alive and well either, but it can be a sign of good health. The meaning of "health" in these three cases is not the same (not univocal), but it is not entirely unrelated either.

In the same way, the "form" in a plan is not the same as the form of a real vase, but, as food contributes to health, the plan contributes to the making of a vase. In the same way, the "form" in the concept is not the same as the form in the vase, but it is a sign of the form of the vase. Thus, we are not dealing with one form moving from plan to implementation to cognition, but with three, dynamically related, analogically predicated, kinds of form

Something immaterial can be completely inseparable from matter... — Dfpolis

You keep insisting on this, and I've asked you to justify this assertion, which you have not. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I do insist on this because being mentally distinguished is not being physically separated. I have also explained it to the best of my ability, but you insist that I fit my explanation to your Platonic preconceptions. As with our discussion of hyle, my view is never going to fit your Platonism. All I can do is ask you to put aside your commitment to Platonism and consider the facts of the matter without preconception. If you cannot do that, we had best agree to disagree.

If something is completely inseparable from something else, then it cannot be identified as a distinct thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hurray! That is why I am not a Platonist or a Cartesian dualist. Distinct concepts need not imply distinct "things" -- only different notes of intelligibility in the same thing -- like rubber and sphericity in a ball.

If B is material, then by the law of non-contradiction, it is impossible that A is immaterial because this would indicate that the same thing is both material and immaterial. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. Even formally, your argument makes no sense. As long as A and B are not identical, there is no reason they can't have contrary attributes. Being rubber is not being spherical, but a ball can be both. Rubber is material, but it is a category error to ask what sphericity is made of. Still, there is no contradiction in the ball being both spherical and rubber.

The reason this works is because logical atomism is nonsense. There is not a one-to-one correspondence between independent concepts and the things that instantiate them. One thing can instantiate many logically distinct concepts.

In order to provide that the immaterial is united with the material, you must allow that they are separable, and identifiable as distinct and separable parts, to avoid violation of the law of non-contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover

They need to be logically distinct. They need not be separable in reality.

it can exist apart from matter, it is called "spiritual." — Dfpolis

Should I assume that for you, immaterial realities which are independent of matter, are "spirits" then? How is a spirit not a form? Why do you assume that a spirit, which is immaterial, can exist independently of matter, but a form, which is immaterial cannot exist independently of matter Do you think that a form is a type of spirit, or that a spirit is a type of form, since you class them both as immaterial? — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, I am defining a term, not making an existence claim.

So, I am not "assuming" anything here. I am saying if something can exist independently of matter, then I'm going to call it "spiritual."

Forms, like the form of a vase or a mouse, have one defining characteristic: to inform the matter of the vase or the mouse. If there is not matter to be informed, then they cannot be what they are.

For some aspect of reality to be independent of matter (for me to call it "spiritual"), it must have at least one function that it can perform without matter. For example, if humans can know something independently of matter, they have a spiritual aspect. If everything we can do depends on matter, we have no spiritual aspect.

I don't see how a process could possibly have a determinate end. — Metaphysician Undercover

I said a determinate end at any point in time. That does not mean the process is over -- only that it is well-defined -- that it has a determine form in time -- and that that determinate form in time is its "end." Of course, if the process is part of a larger system, its end need not be the end of the whole. It can be a means to a higher-level purpose.

You named several natural processes you see as exhibiting purpose. Those processes depend on the operation of the laws of nature. If those laws did not operate in a determinate fashion, spiders could not construct webs to catch food. So, the determinate operation of the laws is means to ends such as you enumerated.

I don't remember your logical propagator approach, could you describe it again for me please. — Metaphysician Undercover

I gave it in my second post on this thread (the third post on page 1). "Logical Propagators" is printed in bold at the beginning of the section.

But order without any indication of an end ought not be mistook for a sign of intentionality — Metaphysician Undercover

We have many reasons to think nature is ordered to ends, but I can't talk about everything at once. I barely squeezed my discussion of evolution into 35 journal pages. ("Mind or Randomness in Evolution," Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (2010) XXII, 1/2, pp. 32-66 -- https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution).

Right, but the point is that to produce a separation in the mind, which is impossible to produce in reality, is to produce a piece of fiction. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, fictions are statements that do not reflect reality. Our understanding generally reflects reality, but always in an incomplete way. To be incomplete is not to be fictional. All abstractions are projections -- partial understandings, but they may still be adequate to our human needs.

Existence is not a subject. It doesn't seem to me that it is. — Blue Lux

i took the following as granting subjectivity:

Existence making something, namely that which is beyond itself (objectivity) is absolutely impossible for such a subjectivity could not even have the representation of an objectivity, — Blue Lux

If Existence is not limited by essence, it can do any logically possible thing, including knowing itself -- which means it is a subject.

If you go to a university library, you can look at the journals and see which ones have similar articles. Then look up the submission and format guidelines for the ones that interest you. If one rejects your article, make the improvements they suggest, and resubmit it, or submit it to another.

Creation ex nihilo means a creation out of nothing or from nothing. This is absurd.

Existence making something, namely that which is beyond itself (objectivity) is absolutely impossible for such a subjectivity could not even have the representation of an objectivity, much less be affected with the will to create it. — Blue Lux

You will have to do better. The claim of absurdity is not showing logical impossibility.

If existence is a subject, it can only be such in relationship to itself as object -- thus knowing objectivity. In understanding its own capabilities, it understands its power to share existence.

The obvious criticism I can see is that your claim is making an unsubstantiated comparison. Just because there are two similar mechanisms that doesn’t mean they have the same metaphysical origin but are perhaps similar but convergent and parallel phenomenon. — schopenhauer1

Thank you for your comment.

I am not suggesting the primacy of will. We can't will eftectively unless we know the existential situation.

I would suggest that my approach answers the question of how human intentions can have physical effects -- in the same way as the laws of nature do. It is also supported by observational data confirming that intentions have a measurable effect on physical processes.

I've been thinking about your perceived connection between Freud and Nietzsche. If this is your personal discovery, and you can back it up with textual parallels and research, then I strongly encourage you to write an article for publication. Seriously.

Freud and Nietzsche are absolutely entwined! As well as Jung!
If you know Nietzsche well... It is all in Freud! Totem and Taboo. The interpretation of dreams. And many more. — Blue Lux

Does that also mean that Freud is about Thomas Aqunias?

How does Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is empirical, come out of these speculations?

I disagree with everything you said to me...

What should I do now? Is it even worth replying? — Blue Lux

Dialog depends on shared ground. So, for me it starts with common experience, not our separate theories.

How a creation ex nihilo is possible and prove i — Blue Lux

If, as you say, existence is prior to essence, then the power to act is prior to limitations on that power. That means that Existence, able to do any logically possible act, is most primary.

While there is a contraction in non-being acting to create, there is no logical contradiction in Existence making something without prior matter (which is what creation ex nihillo means).

As for Jung, he rejected Freud to found his own school.

The bottom line is that Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an empirical finding that does not depend on the theories of his predecessors.

You are unbelievable. I, again, repeat: What makes them (let's speak plain english) "correct thinking"? You haven't answered that, you simply said they are not accidentally so, but essentially so. No argument is given, you're just saying they are. — MindForged

Speak of unbelievable! You asked about about correct thinking, which is singular. I replied in the singular. You, in the plural, speaking of "them." As I mentioned no "them" you must be confusing me with someone else.

Somehow, for the 3rd or 4th time, you have skipped over the core of the answer: Thinking about reality is correct when it preserves the truth of what we know of reality (is salve veritate) -- and preserves that truth, not accidentally, but in virtue of the processed followed (i.e. essentially). This is an operational, goal-oriented definition.

It is amazing that, while noting that I said, "essentially, not accidentally," you seem unable to grasp what essential note is required. Just so you do not miss it again the essential note is truth preserving (salve veritate),

I am not discussing any "them" such as rules, but the definition of correct thinking.

"Foundational reflection" will necessarily presuppose other principles. — MindForged

This claim fails to see that being aware of reality as given in

ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet — Dfpolis

experience is not a deductive process based on the application of prior principles. It is simply the actualization of present intelligibility.

There's no reason to think the rules you presuppose in entering such reflection are inherently correct. — MindForged

As no "rules" are presupposed, the question of their correctness cannot arise.

The problem is such an examination will require reasoning. — MindForged

Awareness of present intelligibility is an immediate, not a mediated, process.

And correct reasoning (or form of thought, correct thinking, whatever) already presupposes a set of correct logical rules you are abiding by. — MindForged

No, it does not. It presupposes a scientific examination of the kinds of reasoning that work and do not work, and then discovering why some methods of reasoning preserve truth, while others do not.

Let me give you an example. Any sensory representation that can properly evoke the concept <apple> is identically a representation that can elicit the concept <fruit>. This identity justifies the judgement <All apples are fruit>. In the same way, any representation that can evoke the concept <fruit> is identically a representation that can evoke <a plant product>. The principle of identity then allows us to see that any representation that can evoke <apple> is identically a representation can evoke <a fruit product>.

This line of thought can be expressed by a syllogism in Barbara:
"All apples are fruit."
"All fruit is a plant product."
"Therefore, all apples are a plant product."

We see that the reasoning in the process is not dependent on the specific concepts we are thinking about. So, we can abstract the form of reasoning from specifics of the example. Thus, the validity of Barbara is not an assumption, but a consequence of the role of identity in the corresponding thought process.

You don't get around this by recourse to "reality" (an already contentious concept; people consider many different things part of reality). — MindForged

We can discuss this another day. i think we can eliminate much of the contentiousness.

I gave an explosive argument in Aristotelian terms but which is not valid because contradictions do not imply anything in traditional logic. — MindForged

You are confused. Just because you could not formulate a valid example does not mean that there are none. An argument with contradictory premises cannot be sound, but it can be valid.

The following example is from https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion:

Assume two contradictory premises: A.) 'All ice cream is frozen.'; B.) 'Not all ice cream is frozen.'

Now, just to show that it's possible, say one wants to use those two premises to prove that: C.) 'Words don't exist'.

To do so, construct a disjunction out of A and C:

'All ice cream is frozen or words don't exist.'

This statement appears to be perfectly acceptable here because it holds true under any of these three circumstances:

1. All ice cream is frozen.
2. Words don't exist.
3. All ice cream is frozen and words don't exist.
(Of which at least the first one is true because it was assumed as a premise.)

Now use that disjunction for a disjunctive syllogism:

'All ice cream is frozen or words don't exist.
Not all ice cream is frozen.
Therefore words don't exist.'

This also appears to be perfectly acceptable here because if it is said that at least one of A or C are true, then when it turns out A is not true (which is B, which has been accepted as a premise), at least it can be held that C is true.

Please do not tell me there are no disjunctions in Aristotelian logic, because the Principle of Excluded Middle involves one.

I didn't say Frege created the principle of explosion, I said it was not what you might call logical orthodoxy until Frege made it part of Classical Logic. — MindForged

OK. I admit that the history of the principle is complex. Pseudo-Scotus stated it in the late medieval period, but the Scholastics were more concerned with consistency and truth, than inconsistency. So, the point of arguments such as that above, was to show that forms cannot be applied blindly, Thus ex contradictione was not a major principle.

The works of medieval logicians cannot in any way be said to have been the standard logic, ever. By Kant's time they had been lost to history and not even remembered. — MindForged

Only in Protestant countries -- due to prejudice against the Scholastic tradition. For example, John Poissot's Cursus philosophicus Thomisticus, which includes his famous Ars Logica, was reprinted in 1883 -- the year before Frege published his Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik.

"Two case" as in two cases of observation, not two cases of different objects. Schrodinger goes to pains to make clear that the object is not self-identical despite the reasonable assumption of there being a causal connection between what one observes. — MindForged

As you have just pointed out, in addition to identity, your example requires additional assumptions that you consider reasonable, but those of us who've studied the matter don't. Once you grasp this, you see that your example is not a valid argument. ~(~(p && q) => ~p)

In addition to assuming a causal connection between the observations, you need to assume that the causality involved ensures object persistence. It does not.

Just so you know, one of many possible ways (Feynman diagrams) to get two successive electron observations is for a second electron to leave the Dirac sea of negative energy electrons and the first electron to fill the resulting hole. (This process can be described in other ways, involving virtual positron creation and annihilation.) Thus, when you understand quantum field theory, your assumption ceases to be "reasonable."

Still, you do not need to know QFT to see your error. All you really need to know is that 2 != 1.

Identity entails that objects are individuated. If some object (or set of objects) lacks individuation conditions, then they are not self-identical. — MindForged

Yes, if a putative "object" is not individual, then it is not individual. That has nothing to do with the ontological principle of identity which only requires that whatever is the case, be the case.

Consider an ocean wave field. It is the superposition of many waves of a range of wavelengths, so that there are no "individual" waves, except as abstractions. Still, if the wave field, or a portion thereof, existents, it exists.

I did not say the rule was different, I said the rules were different. I went on to say that, according to Aristotle (as per your quote), Excluded Middle does not apply to future contingents. — MindForged

You seem not to understand scientific principles. They are not bare propositions, they also have conditions of application (the "such that" phrase of universal quantification). The condition for applying traditional logic is that we are dealing with an existential situation. The fact that future contingents are not such that they are existential situations does not change the principle. It simply makes it inapplicable.

In the case of future contingents, we can still reason about them. Aristotle does not say Non-contradiction no longer applies, nor does he say that Identity fails to apply. But that Excluded Middle no longer does. — MindForged

First, the existential condition can be granted conditionally. That is to say that we can reason on the assumption of actual existence, even when there is no actual existence, but in doing so, we must remember that our conclusions are not categorical, but conditional.

Second, in the context of assuming that the see battle will occur, we can apply all of the principles of being, including excluded middle. (Contrary to your claim, "Future contingents require dropping Excluded Middle to reason about them") For example, it is rational to say "Either the enemy commander will be killed, or the enemy commander will not be killed." Similarly, we can apply all the principles on the condition that the battle will not occur.

What we cannot do is combine conclusions conditioned by the occurrence of the battle with conclusions conditioned by the nonoccurence of the battle. This is what the paradox attempts to do.

One way to see this, that chosen by Aristotle, is to say that propositions conditioned by the assumption of an existential state can be neither true nor false (for they are not adequate to reality, but to assumed conditions). Thus, the logical principle of excluded middle, dependent as it is on the impossibility of a a state both existing and not existing, does not apply. This is not changing the rule, just abiding by its conditions of application.

Note the explicit reference to reality in the following:

When the subject, however, is individual, and that which is predicated of it relates to the future, the case is altered. For if all propositions whether positive or negative are either true or false, then any given predicate must either belong to the subject or not, so that if one man affirms that an event of a given character will take place and another denies it, it is plain that the statement of the one will correspond with reality and that of the other will not. — Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 9

Later in the chapter, Aristotle makes it clear that the reason we cannot apply Excluded Middle is not because the principle is false, but because truth and falsity are not well-defined:

in some instances there are real alternatives, in which case the affirmation is no more true and no more false than the denial — Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 9

To make clear that the Principle of Excluded Middle is not false, but merely inapplicable when truth is ill-defined, Aristotle gives us its correct usage near the end of the chapter:

A sea-fight must either take place to-morrow or not, but it is not necessary that it should take place to-morrow, neither is it necessary that it should not take place, yet it is necessary that it either should or should not take place to-morrow. — Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 9

And to make clear that his logic is ontologically based he concludes:

This is the case with regard to that which is not always existent or not always nonexistent. One of the two propositions in such instances must be true and the other false, but we cannot say determinately that this or that is false, but must leave the alternative undecided. One may indeed be more likely to be true than the other, but it cannot be either actually true or actually false. It is therefore plain that it is not necessary that of an affirmation and a denial one should be true and the other false. For in the case of that which exists potentially, but not actually, the rule which applies to that which exists actually does not hold good. The case is rather as we have indicated. — Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 9

It's a view that liar-type sentences are not well-formed, not that truth-values are not well-formed. — MindForged

Yes, I know how the analytically inclined try to bend language to their preconceptions. Still, as shown by Jourdain's and Kripke's Paradoxes, this is at best a patch. My solution works for all three paradoxes.

Note that "Everything Jones says about Watergate is true." is not a statement about the reality of Watergate, but one about Jones' statements. Similarly, "Most of Nixon's assertions about Watergate are false," is not a statement about Watergate, but about Nixon's locutions. Thus, it cannot be counted among "Nixon's assertions about Watergate."

Statements that people make are real. Statements made about other statements are common, — MindForged

Quite true, but that does not make statements about sentences statements about Watergate.

I've no idea how you came to that conclusion. If Jones only says Nixon is mostly lying about Watergate, and Nixon says everything Jones says about Watergate is true, then the issue is these cannot be jointly true and yet they *entail* each other. — MindForged

I came to the conclusion by reading the text (as you suggested). The text refers to certain statements, not to events at the Watergate apartments.

To be true, a statement must be adequate to reality. If a statement, or a system of statements, cannot be cashed out in terms of one or more claims about reality, then it is neither true nor false, but simply non-referential. Here the system of statements makes no empirical claim.

Your suggested revision does nothing to make the system referential.

You went beyond that, you said your understanding was sufficient to claim (as you did) that the principles are true essentially, rather than accidentally. — MindForged

You continue to ignore and distort what I actually said. For the 6th or 7th time, I define correct thinking as thinking that is salve veritate, not accidentally, but essentially. So, I gave "essential, not accidental" as an attribute of correct thinking abstractly considered, not as an attribute of principles or rules. Once you have the goal of understanding correct thinking, the scientific approach is to study thinking that is actually truth preserving or fallacious, and see what rules can be extracted and how they may be justified by our understanding of being. So, the rules are not the starting point, but the result of a scientific process.

My point is your experience doesn't generate anywhere near the justification for that. Experience is fine for generation provisional assumptions that go into your logic, but that's not what you've argued for. — MindForged

The reason you think "experience doesn't generate anywhere near the justification for" infallible principles of being is that you are stuck with the Hume-Mill model of induction. In it, I experience a certain, hopefully large, number of cases, and frame the hypothesis, that all cases are like those I've experienced. Treating this as a true universal requires adding the assumption that all other cases are like those I have observed. As the extending assumption has no intrinsic justification, the resulting universal judgement is inadequately justified.

There is another type of induction that avoids problem inherent in the Hume-Mill model. Suppose I count apples for my job, and notice that after I've counted 2 apples, if I count two more apples I always have four apples. On the Hume-Mill model, I can only hypothesize that 2+2=4, and assume that other cases will give the same result.

However, that is not what actually happens. After children count apples, pennies and pebbles, they notice that the counting process does not depend on what is counted. (I call this the "arithmetic insight.") Once you have the arithmetic insight, you understand that the relation, 2+2=4, does not depend on what is counted, and so is universally true.

How does this differ from the Hume-Mill case? In the H-M case, we have to add an assumption to arrive at a universal judgement. In the second case, we abstract, which is to say that we subtract information actually present to arrive at the universal judgement. (Specifically, we abstract away from the kind of thing being counted.) As this is a subtractive process, no assumptions are added.

The same thing happens with the principles of being. We understand that an apple is an apple, a penny is a penny, etc. Then we have an ontological insight, and see that the identity in these cases does not depend on what is being considered, so, for all reality, whatever is, is -- and similarly, whatever is not, is not. That is how we come to know (and justify) the Principle of Identity.

If you're interested in pursuing this further, you might want to look at Aquinas's Commentary of the De Trinitate of Boethius.

You think there is one correct way of thinking and that traditional logic corresponds to that thinking (correct me if I'm mistaken). — MindForged

You persist! Yes, you are wrong again -- and on this very point. For the 8th or 9th time, to think correctly is to think in a way that preserves truth, not by accident, but because the way we are thinking will always preserve truth. This makes no a priori assumptions about what ways of thinking preserve truth, and what ways don't. To discover that, we have to examine actual ways of thinking, find those that seem to work invariantly, and then find justifications for the claim of invariant correctness.

With the lack of conditionals in traditional logic I'm not even sure this is consistent with the logic being proposed. — MindForged

The lack of a formal theory of conditionals is not a lack of conditionals. For example, in the discussion of the sea battle (above) Aristotle is quite clear about the conditions under which the Principle of Excluded Middle applies.

An imagined world is by definition non-existent so how are you reasoning correctly about it? After all, the principles which apply to existing things is not supposed to apply to that which has no being. — MindForged

As I said, we grant "existence" by a willing suspension of disbelief. This means that we treat the imagined world as if it existed and instantiated the principles of being.

What I was saying was that if we take your view that truth-values are an "incoherent concept" (as you said), then modern maths/logic are not usable because they make crucial use of this and other concepts (conditionals), and dispenses with aspects of traditional logic (existential import is not assumed in quantifiers). — MindForged

Once you realize that truth is a binary relation (the adequacy of thought to reality) and truth-value is a unary property of propositions, it is clear that they are very different concepts. The fact that truth-value is problematic is shown by the paradoxes we have been discussing.

So you can define whatever you like (including truth-values) and work out rules to try to make your set of posits self-consistent (creating meta-linguistic structures, Russellian type theories, etc, etc.). If you take that course (and traditional logic is open to it), then in view of Goedel's work, you may never know that the system you have defined is actually inconsistent and you have wasted your life's work.

Alternately, you can abstract systems from reality, or from systems traceable to

And I don't see how traditional logic has done anything to further knowledge in these areas — MindForged

reality -- and you will be guarantied that you are dealing with a self-consistent structure (because reality is self-consistent) and know that you will not have wasted your life's work on a possibly self-contradictory system.

Strange, I just showed you how a single insight can dispose of a whole series of paradoxes you admit vex modern logicians.

In the traditional case, it only meets this criterion if we only talk about what we know to be true about reality, so it's application to hypothetical and mathematical cases becomes less useful — MindForged

As with the sea battle, we can apply logic to any premises we assume true for methodological purposes.

Science woks quite well applying the hypothetico-deductive method with the deductions using traditional logic. Just because we are treating a hypothesis as conditionally true does not mean that we cannot work out its consequences with a view to confirming or falsifying them.

I already pointed out examples of what I was talking about (e.g. uniform continuity vs continuity of a function). — MindForged

And I showed you how to restate quantified sentences in traditional proposition form.

Traditional logic had no theory for the quantifiers it used, the quantifiers weren't detachable, and that's in part why its application to mathematics was so limited and thus Frege had to develop a new logic. Prior, until the medieval logicians there was no real understanding of them, and even the medieval logicians treated quantifiers sort of like names. Frege made them clearer by making them a new kind of linguistic object. — MindForged

Without going into the innards of modern logic, either it deals with correct forms of thought, or it deals with other subject matter, such as linguistic forms or rules of symbolic manipulation that can be isomorphic to features of systems we are interested in.

If it deals with correct forms of thought, it is part of what I've been talking about, and if it presents new, correct ways of thinking, these are to be greeted with jubilation. If it deals with other subject matter, as scientists we need to think about that subject matter in truth-preserving ways -- and so employ traditional logic (as founded by Aristotle and advanced subsequently).

It is my view that modern logic is not concerned with correct thinking (as its object), but has for its object of study the manipulation of symbolic forms that may be isomorphic to various systems of scientific interest.

So, I see comparing them as involving a category error.