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!"

""

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.

But the form is separable from the matter, that's how we know things through abstraction, the form of the vase is brought into the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

The form of a vase is not physically separated and brought into the mind, What we do in abstraction is mentally distinguish the form of the vase from its matter.

How does the form enter our mind? Dynamically, not physically. The form acts on us via our senses, but all the while, it remains inseparable from the matter of the vase. If it ever ceased to be in the vase, it would cease to be the form of the vase.

If the form of a vase were inseparable from the matter of a vase, you could not say that the form is immaterial because it would be of necessity united with matter, impossible to be otherwise, and therefore material. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not the definition of "material" I am using. "Immaterial" only means not made of matter. Something immaterial can be completely inseparable from matter, or it can exist apart form matter. If it can exist apart from matter, it is called "spiritual." Forms of vases and laws of nature are immaterial but require matter to be what they are, and so they are not spiritual.

As shown by mystical experience, human awareness can operate in ways not dependent on matter, and so is spiritual.

The existence of order does not necessitate the conclusion of intentionality, the existence of purpose does. — Metaphysician Undercover

When a process is ordered, in the sense I an using the term, it acts in a determinate way. If it acts in a determinate way, it will have a determinate end at any point in time. To have a determinate end is to have a purpose.

How about the activity of the earth orbiting the sun, or of things moving from gravity? These are orderly activities, described by laws, but unless we can determine a purpose for these activities we cannot conclude that there is intentionality. — Metaphysician Undercover

I disagree. We can determine their intentionality by applying Brentano's analysis or my logical propagator approach.

Also, the human failure to discern purposes is not an argument that there are no purposes

But you want to change this definition such that order is the essence of intention — Metaphysician Undercover

Not at all. Order is one sign of intentionality. Purpose is another. The ordering of means to ends is also a sign, Aboutness is a forth. Being a logical propagator is another. Being a product of intellect or will are still others.

Therefore the existence of the means, i.e. order, does not necessarily indicate intentionality. — Metaphysician Undercover

There are no means without ends they are subordinate to.

So you go on and on talking about forms, the immaterial, and intentionality, as if you think that these are real and you believe in them, when in reality you think that these are just the illusions of deluded minds. — Metaphysician Undercover

In a dialog, we should employ the principle of charity -- attributing intellectual integrity to our dialog partner, and looking for the interpretation of what is said that gives it the most sense and rationality. I've said nothing to indicate that I'm writing in bad faith, and I take offense that you have chosen to accuse me of bad faith simply because you don't grasp what I'm telling you.

If the form inheres in the vase, as the matter of the vase does, and is inseparable from the matter of the vase, then how is it anything other than the matter of the vase? I — Metaphysician Undercover

Because neither the matter nor the form are the actual being we call a "vase." Each is an aspect of the vase that we can separate in our minds, but not in reality.

I told you, a work of music, or art. It must be a sign because it has meaning, as is evident from the emotions which it arouses. — Metaphysician Undercover

Emotions are not meanings in the intellectual sense, just in an extended sense that does not apply to signs. Consider what you've said in relation to my original statement, which was that brain states are not signs of the contents they encode because they are neither formal nor instrumental signs. How does the fact that music and art can evoke emotions relate to my claim -- or support your objection?

Defining a word such that many things which are normally referred to by that word are excluded by your definition, in order to support an ontological position, is not good metaphysics. That part of reality excluded by your definition is also excluded from your ontology. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not at all. The question being examined is how neurally encoded contents relate to the ideas they support. This is a question about information, not emotions. So, the only relevant kind of meaning is that relating to information.

I am not denying the reality of emotions, nor the capacity of art to evoke them. I am only saying that is not what we are talking about now.

I don't think your realistic interpretation of three is necessary to make the sentence true. The referents in the sentence are the molecule and its atoms, which, if counted, will number three. — Dfpolis

It seems to me that you could say the same thing about the particulars. That is, the referent of the sentence is the world which, if observed in a specific way, would present as a water molecule and its atoms. — Andrew M

We need to think about the potential being actualized by each operation. For any potential to be actualized, there needs to an actual being with that potential.

Perhaps the actual being of a water molecule is smeared out in some quantum fashion that does not coalesce until it is observed. That is possible and if so, then the exact configuration we observe would not be actual until we interact with it -- observing it. Still, experience shows that every time we observe a water molecule, we find two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. So, whatever its unobserved state, that state is fully determined with respect to the kinds of atoms we will find. Since information is the reduction of possibility, and there is no possibility that we will find any other atoms, we can say it's atomic structure is fully informed.

So, we know there is some reality, prior to our observation, that is determinately H2O. Further, that reality is doing things. For example, it is contributing to the gravitational field.

Now, what about the "threeness" of the molecule? It is also a determinate potential, but it is not doing anything that the physicality of the molecule is not doing. It has no operations of its own. it is just a non-operational aspect of the molecule waiting for someone to come along and count it. Whe we do count it, we actualize its intelligibility, forming a subject-object relation with this aspect of the water molecule.

The whole reality of the <three> comes from us actually thinking it. In other words, the only activity specifically associated with the "threeness" of the molecule is us thinking about it. Apart form us thinking it, there is no activity associated with "threeness" -- so it is potential, not actual, when not actually thought.

Matter is an abstraction. The material is an abstraction. Ergo realities independent of matter is an abstraction. — Blue Lux

Matter is the foundation in reality for the concept <matter> (an abstraction), which is expressed by the word "matter." While the thought <matter> is an abstraction, its foundation in reality (the aspect of reality that elicits the concept <matter>) is not.

Think of volley balls, baseballs, soccer balls, rubber balls, ping pong balls, etc. All are real balls. None are abstractions. Each is able to elicit the concept <ball>. <Ball> is an abstraction because it leaves behind the information that makes any individual ball unique or a specific kind of ball. Still, when I speak of balls, I'm not referring to an abstraction but to real, spherical objects.

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

Communicating has nothing to do with getting others to see what you see, for that assimilation of theirs is going to label what you see as an abstraction, which will only reconfigure their own experience. No meaning is exchanged. And it can not be proven that there is actually an increasing meaning... Such an increasing would have to be objective... Transpersonal and devoid of meaningful meaning. — Blue Lux

In communication, meaning is not "exchanged." It is recreated. Our signs do not actually "carry" meaning. When an instrumental sign is received and interpreted, an association is invoked in the interpreter. If the interpreter sees smoke, she associates it with fire and the associated concept <fire> becomes the meaning of the cloud of smoke, considered as a sign, When you see the word "ball," then, by a learned association, you think of concrete balls and the abstract concept <ball> -- recreating in yourself the meaning I expressed in typing "ball."

So, yes, communicating is entirely about getting others to "see," intellectually, what I see. If my communication succeeds, the recipient's mind is not merely "reconfigured." She starts thinking of what I am thinking of. Her thought is not my thought, but each of us think of the same reality from a different perspective.

Of course we can't "prove" that meaning is increased, because often it is not. Sometimes communication fails altogether. Still, we can see it. If I'm speaking of soccer balls, and she is a soccer fan, while I'm not, her associations, the meaning evoked in her mind, may far exceed mine. That's why good art can be so powerful: because it can evoke meanings in its audience which far exceed those in the artist. Thus Michelangelo's Pieta can evoke all of the feelings of sorrow and loss we have experienced -- feelings that are uniquely ours, not Michelangelo's. Still, we may feel as he felt.

So, the meaning of the Pieta is transpersonal. It is not confined to any one person, but shared by many. Yet each shares it in their own personal way -- calling to mind their own sorrow and loss, not Michelangelo's.

Nietzsche -> Freud -> Adler -> Maslow — Blue Lux

I've read a fair amount of Freud. Again there is no mention of Nietzsche. Just because Dirrida mentions the two of them together with Heidegger as strong influences, does not mean that Freud's views were strongly influenced by Nietzsche. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and online Britannica make no mention of Nietzsche in their articles \on Freud. Paul Vitz suggests that Freud's theories on the unconscious and libido reflect those of Aquinas, albeit unknowingly.

The de facto configuration of being intelligible by others is the source of in authenticity, namely of the they. — Blue Lux

We will have to agree to disagree. I see authenticity as arising out of knowledge by connaturality -- knowing one's self by being attuned to what "resonates" with us. Did you decide you were gay because "they" told you so, or because of experiences that resonated with your being?

The transpersonal label is what establishes the point of reference known as objectivity, which is metaphorically the source of all inauthenticity. — Blue Lux

I don't think that "the objective," what is intersubjectively available, is rightly called "consciousness." It is at the other pole of the subject-object relationship from awareness.

Being at the other pole of the relationship, the objective is neither authentic nor inauthentic. Only our response can be authentic or inauthentic.

The single consciousness is the consciousness of objectivity, which does not define consciousness as a whole but is consciousness in a very real degree. — Blue Lux

We may each be conscious of the same object, but our consciousness of that object is uniquely our own -- not only because we are different subjects, but because as different subjects we each have a different relation to the object (a different standpoint and a different set of associations).

There is no creation of existence. Existence preceeds essence. — Blue Lux

Yes, existence is prior to essence, and no, existence as a whole cannot be created. Still, individual existents, even whole universes, can be created, ex nihillo.

You're not being precise at all. You're simply saying that a certain set of rules are necessarily correct but have no reason for believing so. Anyone can say that, actually showing it has been my repeated argument against you. — MindForged

i am ceaselessly amazed how I can explain my position repeatedly, and spark no glimmer of understanding. You asked "What defines correct thinking?" I defined the term, saying "forms of thought that are salve veritate, not accidentally, but essentially. "Rules." were not mentionde.

Your reply doesn’t address a word of my response. Instead, you put in my mouth something I did not say. Further:
1. You didn’t ask for a justification, but criticize me for not giving one here.
2. I have previously given a justifying argument, but you claim I’ve given no reason for my position. Whether you agree with my reasons or not, saying I have given none is a lie.
3. In a good faith dialog, the partners do their best to understand one another, asking for clarifications when needed. They then respond, to the best of their ability, to what is actually said. You are not doing me that courtesy.

Moving on:

Logic is the enterprise of creating a system which preserves truth by not resorting to "principles of being" (which, again, you do not have some inherent claim to the correct principles of being without argument) but to principles of inference. — MindForged

First, if you "create" a system without foundational reflection, there is no reason to think its principles of inference will besalve veritate. Since truth is the adequacy of our thought to reality, any foundational reflection must include an understanding of reality, of being.

Second, the principles of being are not my personal discovery, nor are they limited by finite domain of human experience and cognition. Rather, just as our understanding of unity applies to anything that can properly elicit the concept <one>, so the principles of being apply to anything that exists.

Third, as first principles, they cannot be the conclusion of a more fundamental deduction. Still, we can examine the processes by which we come to them, and I’ve offered such an account. You have chosen not to criticize my account, nor have you offered viable counterexamples to the resulting principles.

You’ve made hand-waving remarks about the unreliability of human cognition. I could make similar, but substantiated, objections to the beliefs of symbolic logicians – say to Hilbert’s program and its demise at the hand of Goedel. Of course humans make errors. I've made plenty, but the strength of communal research lies in its power to identify errors and correct the processes leading to them. So, if you have a specific criticism of my abstractive justification of the principles of being, please spell it out.

The reason the symbolic side is more in vogue is precisely because the normative role of logic requires first having your inference rules and axioms laid out first. — MindForged

That is a good reason to begin with an examination of correct thought, as Aristotle did. It is no reason to "create" rules of inference that lack an adequate foundation in human thought or in the reality it seeks to reflect.

In Syllogistic, one cannot derive any arbitrary conclusion from inconsistent premises, e.g.

Some As are Bs
No Bs are As
Therefore, All As are As — MindForged

Your syllogism has an undistributed middle, and the conclusion, while true, is invalid.

Consider:
Some Americans are Hispanic.
No Hispanics are pure Irish.
We can draw no conclusion linking "Americans" and "pure Irish" from this data, so your "syllogism" is formally invalid. Substituting "American" for "pure Irish" does not make it a valid form.

What warrants accepting contradictory claims is that you might well have good reason to believe both and no (current) means of picking one over the other. — MindForged

With reasoning like this, no wonder we disagree! Knowing the truth of neither, warrants neither.

I have no good reason for believing p if I have a good reason for believing ~p. Why? Because reasons for belief do not work in isolation, but in the aggregate.

The "shaky" foundations of the calculus before the theory of limits was developed is not an example of your claim. No one using calculus in that era doubted that it was a reliable tool. No physicist used it despite thinking it was "false." Mathematicians recognized that its foundations needed work, but did not simultaneously believe it was well-founded.

Rational people do not accept contradictions. If they can't decide, they suspend judgement.

Explosion didn't become standard in logic until Frege created classical logic. — MindForged

You mean there was no Principle of Pseudo-Scotus before Frege? In which of Frege's Latin works did he write "ex falso sequitur quodlibet"? Or "ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet? Was it in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik: eine logisch mathematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl? Oh, wait, that was in German, like the rest of hie works, wasn't it? Have you read anything about logic before Frege?

The way people form their concepts of being an existence are not the same. — MindForged

Yes? Are you going to explain?

Aristotelian logic does not map to the "ways of thinking". In fact, probably no logic does to any degree of usefulness (otherwise developing AI would be much easier). — MindForged

I suggest you read John Poisot's Ars Logica (translated in part as The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas) or Henry Veatch's Intentional Logic.

Confusing AI, implemented in with instrumental signs infinite state machines, with human thought, which employs formal signs, betrays an inadequate grasp of material logic.

The particles in question are, quite possibly, not identical to themselves — MindForged

Really? If that’s what you think, you have completely misunderstood the text. Let's look at it:

When you observe a particle of a certain type, say an electron, now and here, this is to be regarded in principle as an isolated event. Even if you observe a similar particle a very short time at a spot very near to the first, and even if you have every reason to assume a causal connection between the first and the second observation, there is no true, unambiguous meaning in the assertion that it is the same particle you have observed in the two cases.

Note that the "identity" being discussed here is not that expressed by the Principle of Identity (“Whatever is, is”) -- which is unitary -- but a binary identity linking two cases. Using one as a counterexample to the other is equivocation.

It does show that. If "Whatever is, is" holds for quantum objects as well (take Schrodinger's case of electrons) then they necessarily must be ontologically individuated. — MindForged

It does no such thing. "Whatever is" assumes no specific structure to reality. It applies to whatever is actually the case.

Can people defensibly have different accounts of an idea which goes by the same name? — MindForged

If you mean by “accounts” explanations of the genesis of the idea, then, of course, the same idea can have a different genesis in different people. If you mean essentially different definitions[\i] of the same idea[\i], then no, because essentially different definitions specify essentially different ideas.

If what you meant to ask was: Can one apply the same name, say “Principle of Identity,” to different ideas, then of course they can. The Principle of Identity in abstract algebra is not the Principle of Identity in ontology. Equating them can only lead to the fallacy of equivocation.

I said Aristotle gave this argument as a metaphysical example of where the Law of the Excluded Middle does not apply. Your response is to say that the rules are different there. Well, yea, that's what I was saying. — MindForged

No, I did not say the "rule" is different. The "rule" is exactly the same. What is different is that future contingents do not exist, and so fail to meet the conditions of application for the rule -- which applies to all existential situations. This goes to the heart of what I am saying, and what you fail to see -- namely, unless you understand the foundational role of the principles of being, you cannot understand when the conditions of application for logic are met, and when they are not.

I gave another example earlier, when I showed how simple it was to resolve the Liar and Jourdain's paradox if one understands the dependence of logic on being.

The particles in question are, quite possibly, not identical to themselves (it's a question of science and not one solved by recourse to abstraction from everyday experiences). To pretend that's not the argument I was making is a lie. — MindForged

I have pointed out that unary and binary identity are different, If you cannot or will not grasp this, there is no point in my pressing the matter further.

You can redefine "exists" if you wish, but doing so will not change what I mean by the term.

Ah the good ol' "My definition is inherently the default one" — MindForged

Not at all. I am only saying that you cannot claim to rebut my position when you do not use my definitions. If I am talking about the associative property of fields and you argue that there is no such property in a corn field, what you're saying may be true, but it's entirely irrelevant to my position.

if you cannot accept truth-values then you cannot even use modern mathematics. — MindForged

I do not reject all use of truth values. I simply see that they are not well founded for every well-formed formula. In other words that truth is a prelational, not na intrinsic property.

Rudeness begets rudeness my friend, and you have a habit of using it and pretending it didn't happen. — MindForged

I admit to being rude to you. When I encounter an uncivil jibe, I sometimes post rude rejoinders. I will try to be more charitable,

Kripke gives examples in "An Outline of a Theory of Truth", — MindForged

I suppose you are talking about this, from pp. 691f:

Consider the ordinary statement, made by Jones:
(1) Most (i.e., a majority) of Nixon's assertions about Watergate are false. Clearly, nothing is intrinsically wrong with (I), nor is it ill-formed. Ordinarily the truth value of (1) will be ascertainable through an enumeration of Nixon's Watergate-related assertions, and an assessment of each for truth or falsity. Suppose, however, that Nixon's assertions about Watergate are evenly balanced between the true and the false, except for one problematic case,
(2) Everything Jones says about Watergate is true. Suppose, in addition, that (1) is Jones's sole
assertion about Watergate, or alternatively, that all his Watergate-related assertions except perhaps (1) are true. Then it requires little expertise to show that (1) and (2) are both paradoxical: they are true if and only if they are false. — Kripke

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."

Since truth is the adequacy of our thought to reality, it is not intrinsic, but relational. Thus, not all statements have to be true or false. Some can be non-referential, having no relation to reality. and so neither true not false. Accordingly, if some of the subject statements are non-referential, it is a category error to assert that they are true or false.

So, Kripke's paradox just like Jourdain's. While either statement here, or in Jourdain's paradox, could be ultimately referential, in the scenario given, they are not. We can confirm this by a thought experiment. If we change anything about Watergate not covered by Jones' excepted statements, the change will not alter the supposed truth or falsity of either Jones' or Nixon's claims. Thus, just as in the Jourdain case, the sentences, considered jointly, are unrelated to reality.

The fundamental error here is assuming that truth and falsity can be assigned t statements which can't be cashed out existentially. The same principle shows the rationality of requiring universal propositions to have existential import.

So, you want me to seriously consider that I may never have encountered existence? I'm not following you down that rabbit hole either.

No, I'm saying that "reflecting" upon it does not by virtue of magic entail you have developed an adequate understanding of it — MindForged

I am not claiming to have an exhaustive knowledge of being. My understanding only needs to be adequate to justify the principles of being that underpin traditional logic.

If you have a supperior way of justifying fist principles, please be good enough to share iit. If you believe my grasp of being to be inadequate, you need only show that one or more of the principles of being implicit in it (as stated -- not as extended by you) is false. So far, you have not.

Yea, one which we can say true things about. — MindForged

No, one we can say conditionally true things about. The condition is what Aristotle called "the willing suspension of disbelief." If you impose this condition on a premise, then it remains imposed on any dependent conclusion. So, if you want to say "In an imagined world with Pegasi, some horses have wings," I would have no objection. But, that conclusion does not make your case.

"All winged horses are horses" should come out as true — MindForged

Only in the dissociated world of symbolic logic where "truth" does not mean adequate to reality.

"Sorry mate, it's no longer true that zebras are black and white because, obviously, there are no zebras anymore!" — MindForged

Future contingents never had actual existence. Extinct animals had actual existence. We express this with past tenses. So, "Pterodactyls have wings (today)" is not true, while "Pterodactyls had wings (when they lived)" is true. Of course, common language isn't precise, so we have to consider the intention expressed, not just the words used. So, if someone says "Pterodactyls have wings," meaning "One characteristic of being a peterodactyl is having wings," she is speaking the truth, but imprecisely.

No, I ignored the "merits" because the "cost" includes rejecting modern logic and mathematics which make crucial use of the concepts you're dispensing with, not to mention rendering innumerable natural language expressions as mistaken — MindForged

I already pointed out that this is baloney. There is nothing in traditional logic that prevents anyone from stating a set of axioms and working out their implications. Knowing traditional logic only means that they will be able to bring greater insight to the task.

So, now that I've taken your fig leaf, and shown that there is no "cost," what is wrong with my solution?

Not the stupidity, the lack of usability. If it cannot even work for expressions such as that then its use of existential import (and the ill-defined notion of "correct thinking") just aren't worthwhile to keep. — MindForged

So, you you think its "useful" to be able to prove that some living horses have wings? And believe that "salve veritate" thinking is not "worthwhile"? I am trying to be charitable here, but it's not easy.

Perhaps you have in mind some theorem or empirical finding that cannot be arrived at using traditonal logic? I surely know none.

Without a theory of quantifiers (which we get in classical logic) one cannot, for instance, distinguish between the condition for the continuity of a function and the condition for uniform continuity. — MindForged

Universal quantification:
"For all n (a natural number), n has a successor." How is this more or less informative than "All natural numbers have a successor"?

Existential quantification:
"There exists an n such that n is q." How is this more or less informative than "some natural number is q"?

Or lets take a "problem" from the quantification article for Wikipedia:
1 · 2 = 1 + 1, and 2 · 2 = 2 + 2, and 3 · 2 = 3 + 3, ...
This sis supposedly problematic because it is infinite. But, it can be stated as a universal affirmative: "All natural numbers are such that 2 times the number is the sum of the number with itself."

Admittedly, modern notation is far less cumbersome. Still, that is not a problem of principle, but of notation.

Why have you recommended this work over those of modern semioticians (e.g., Saussure, Peirce, vonUexkull, Morris, Sebeok, Lotman, Eco, Deely, etc. )? — Galuchat

Because his distinction between formal and instrumental signs clears up a number of confusions found the philosophy of mind (e.g. in representational and cybernetic theories of mind), as well as theories involving "a language of thought." It also brings into question the primacy of language that undergirds analytic philosophy.

More generally an intentional approach to logic allows one to dispose of a number of paradoxes such as the Liar and Jourdain's. Arguably, it makes Russell's theory of types unnecessary and gives a simple resolution to issues such as those raised by Quine in Word and Object.

That said, I do not pretend to more than a smattering of Saussure, Peirce and Deely. If modern semioticians have resolved these issues, I would be happy to learn more of them.

Yes, you have denied this, not explicitly but implicitly. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I have not. I'm not responsible for you extrapolating beyond what i have said.

As such, these laws are explicitly material — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confusing being material with the laws being dependent on matter for their expression. For example, the form of a vase is immaterial (not made of matter), but it is inseparable from the matter of the vase. I have made it quite clear that the laws are immaterial -- it is a category error to ask what they are made of.

since God is understood to be immaterial, as the cause of matter and material existence in general, it is implied that the laws cannot be traced to God. — Metaphysician Undercover

This makes no sense. On the one hand you say that "God is ... the cause of matter." On the other that because the laws are material (which they are not), they cannot be traced to God.

You are saying that it is incorrect to associate invariance with the laws of nature. How are they even "laws" then, if they're subject to change? — Metaphysician Undercover

I am saying that over the widest field of their application the laws of nature are invariant and so rightly called "laws." Still a large range is not universality. Are American laws against speeding not laws because there is no speed limit on the autobahn?

This is completely different from "participating" in the law, which is to accept the law and act accordingly. — Metaphysician Undercover

In the Thomistic context in which I am using the term, "participating" in Divine Providence means being a co-creator with God.

It was your suggestion that the human being is a unity of intentional and physical. If these were not stated as distinct parts, then what do you mean by this? — Metaphysician Undercover

I mean that we can perform both physical and intentional operations, and that our intellect can discern the difference between these kinds of operations. In the same way, a rubber ball is not part sphere and part rubber. It is one thing with different aspects the mind can distinguish.

I think you and I have completely different notions of "intentionality". I associate intentionality with the will, the intellectual appetite. So "the good", as that which is recognized by the intellect as desirable, is at the root of intentionality. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not that we have different notions, it is that I am showing the intentionality of the laws by looking at their intrinsic character rather than their Source.

Human beings have physical bodies. They also have intention. To give priority to intention does not necessitate that the laws of physics are not applicable to the human body. It just means that the laws of physics are not applicable to intention. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not so fast. If decide to walk to the store, each step is a physical process closely described by the laws of physics. It is also a product of my intention to arrive at the store by walking. So, there is no either-or here. It is a both-and situation. An adequate account has to incorporate both the physical and the intentional realities at work here.

In #2, I see that you use "intentional" in a way completely different than I would. I would say that "intentional" means to act with purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you denying that God has a purpose in maintaining the laws of nature? I am not. I am just not bringing God into the conversation so as not to be drawn off on a theological tangent.

That premise would be that where there is order, there is intention. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is more than one way to skin a cat. I offered less contentious arguments, viz. my logical propagator argument and that based on Brentano's analysis of intentionality.

he proposition you made in the op, which I objected to, was that the laws of nature inhere within matter. So now you have contradictory positions — Metaphysician Undercover

We've discussed this before. The form of a vase inheres in a material vase, still it is immaterial.

in #3 you claim that we can understand the human mind's "material structure" by following the "laws of nature". — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not what i said. I was discussing the method of natural science and its self imposed limits, and pointing out the data excluded by this approach.

So how could we understand the material through the laws of nature, when the laws of nature are an aspect of the intentional? — Metaphysician Undercover

In 3, I said we can study the physical structure of the mind (the brain), by applying the method of natural science. I did not say we were studying the mind's "matter." Let me say it yet again: "Physical" does not mean "material." Describing material states is only a small part of physics. A much greater part is studying the laws of nature, which are intentional.

Second, we cannot follow the laws of nature in the application of natural science even if we wanted to, because the closest thing we have is the laws of physics, but these are distinct. — Metaphysician Undercover

Did I say we were following the laws of nature? I said we were applying the method of the natural sciences.

What I would like to know is how you conceive of the laws of nature operating "in" matter without reducing the laws to being matter itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

In the same way that a vase's form inheres in the vase without being the matter of the vase.

how are these non-spatial laws, which are inherent within matter, anything other than matter itself? — Metaphysician Undercover

Same answer.

Second, how could these laws act? — Metaphysician Undercover

In the same way human committed intentions act -- by actualizing a specific potential motion.

But meaning is often vague and indefinite, so the sign does not need to be formal or instrumental. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you have an example of a sign that is neither formal nor instrumental?

This is the case with many emotions. Something triggers an emotion, that thing is a sign because it actualizes meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

An emotion is not a meaning, it is a state of being.

there is nothing specific which the sign "represents". — Metaphysician Undercover

Then, it is not a "sign" in the standard sense of the term. As you say " to be a sign, all that is required is to actualize meaning." Of course, you can equivocate on "meaning." I am taking a meaning to be informative -- to represent something,

consciousness does seem to be contingent on the material, although it is itself immaterial. — Blue Lux

If we can be aware of realities essentially independent of matter, then awareness need not be contingent on matter. I think mystical experience shows that we can, If you are interested, I suggest you start with W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy -- which is phenomenological, not religious, in perspective.

Stace makes the point that some types of mystical experience are completely free of sensory content -- and therefore of the need for neural processing.

Your own authentic position can only be understood by an assimilation, which loses meaning in the process. — Blue Lux

This need not be so. I try to communicate by getting others to stand beside me and see what I see. If I succeed, they see what I see, but from their own perspective, and as relevant to their own experience. So they may actually see more than i see -- increasing, rather than diminishing, meaning.

Consciousness is an objective, transpersonal entity in terms of the they — Blue Lux

I have no idea why you would say this. Consciousness is not a thing, not an entity, but a power that intelligent beings have. It is also ultimately personal -- it is what makes me the knowing subject in subject-object relations. If it were transpersonal, I would be directly aware of what others experienced. I am not.

meaning is often not communicated at all, and it is precisely in these meaningless structures of 'knowledge' or reference that constitutes the herd constitution of consciousness. — Blue Lux

Again, I don't know what this could mean. Yes, sometimes, even often, we fail to communicate but when you say "these meaningless structures of 'knowledge' or reference ... constitutes the herd constitution of consciousness," I'm at a loss. There is no awareness, no consciousness, without some object of awareness. If we communicate nothing, there is nothing to be aware of.

Maslow's hierarchy came after Nietzsche, and it is precisely the understanding that Nietzsche tries to communicate which sets the tone for an understanding of such a hierarchy at all — Blue Lux

I've read Maslow's paper. He does not mention Nietzsche. I've never read Nietzsche, but I had no problem understanding Maslow. So, it hardly seems necessary to know Nietzsche to understand Maslow.

The problem is not necessarily authenticity itself but alienation as well, which is not synonymous with authenticity. — Blue Lux

OK.

"There is no "having to be intelligible to others." — Dfpolis

This is not the case... It is that consciousness is often completely unintelligible in terms of the they. And an authentic consciousness would have as its object its being authentic. — Blue Lux

It seems to me that to be authentic is to act in conformity with your self-understanding -- not twisting yourself to conform to the expectations of others. If so, then doesn't "having to be intelligible to others" cut across the core of authenticity?

I'm not saying that we should ignore others, or even their efforts to understand us. I'm saying that if they refuse to understand us, or even if they try and fail to understand, that is their problem, not ours.

If there really were a single consciousness, everyone would value and devalue the same things — Dfpolis

This is not analytically true. — Blue Lux

I mean if there were a single consciousness, there would be a single mind. We would all know and see things the same way, and so value the same things.

If love is a mystical experience by your definition — Blue Lux

That is not what i said.

I provided an issue that falls out of using that definition. — MindForged

I disposed of.

Which

You are avoiding the issue though. What defines correct thinking? — MindForged

I have already said. Let me be more precise: forms of thought that are salve veritate, not accidentally, but essentially.

That is determined by articulating some formal set of rules, i.e. a logic, and arguing that such a system ought to be reasoned in accordance with. — MindForged

Not quite. It is observing that if you're reasoning, and want the truth of your premises to guarantee the truth of your conclusion, your reasoning needs to reflect the principles of being. Adhering to certain forms is one way of doing this.

That being that there's a difference between logic (a set of symbols and rules regarding their transformation) and the normative roles we give to a certain set of those rules (the correct rules for reasoning, or if you prefer, thinking). — MindForged

Since you admit there is a difference, between what you call "logic" ("a set of symbols and rules regarding their transformation") and the science of correct thinking, let us agree that what I am discussing is not what you call "logic"

Let us also agree that mere fact that two areas (correct thought vs the transformation of symbolic forms) differ is not a reason for the study of one to be more in vogue than that of another.

Classical logic says from a contradiction everything follows and yet it would be impossible to actually reason that way in everyday life (just recall how often you come across conflicting information). — MindForged

From a contradiction, anything does, in fact, follow. And yes, we are told conflicting things. ( I would not call both conflicting statements "information" because they cannot both reduce what is logically possible.) Does the mere existence of conflicting claims warrant treating contradictory statements as equally true? Hardly.

Do you think that the existence of conflicting claims is new -- that the people of Aristotle's time were not beset with half truths, misunderstandings, rumors, myths and outright lies? If they were, then there is no more reason now to ignore the study of correct thinking than there was when Aristotle taught invented logic.

Of course if you are not interested in truth, Aristotelian logic can be of little use. I want to be able to deconflict incompatible claims. I see the goal of philosophy as providing us with a consistent, experienced-based framework for understanding reality -- resolving the conflicts you find so overwhelming as to justify giving up on correct thought.

A finding which even your own apparent source (Aristotle) disagrees with. — MindForged

Please! I've already dealt with this absurd claim.

And again, reflecting on your own experience does not entail finding a necessity because your experience does not encompass the whole of how reality can be. — MindForged

Of course my "experience does not encompass the whole of ... reality. It does not need to. As with many lacking a adequate background in perennial philosophy, you are confusing induction on the Hume-Mill model with abstraction. Hume-Mill inductions are not reliable because, to reach a universal conclusion, they must add an assumption (that all other cases are like those already encountered), to the data. Abstraction is quite different, It does not add to the data, it removes some notes of intelligibility, fixing on others to form actual knowledge. So, to form our concepts of <being> and <existence>, all we need to do is remove any notes of intelligibility that specify the particularity of the being we are encountering.

So, it is completely immaterial that we have not encountered all possible beings, or even all actual beings. All that is required to apply our understanding of being is that anything to which we wish to apply it be able to evoke the concept <being> -- and all reality is.

My response was that your argument is valid in basically every logic. Ergo it wasn't resorting to Aristotelian assumptions. — MindForged

Let's be clear. The syllogism only reflects a valid thought process in words. Aristotelian logic is not about verbal forms. It is about the ways of thinking expressed in those forms. (See Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic.) So, no, the form of thought is not addressed in non-intentional systems of "logic." They only deal with rules of symbolic manipulation.

I gave you an example of a (potential) empirical violation of the Law of Identity. — MindForged

That is precisely the point. Your example has nothing to do with the Principle of Identity we are discussing. To continue to pretend that it does, after I have shown you its utter irrelevance is arguing in bad faith.

Your response was simply to claim that Identity is necessarily true (in the world) therefore my example is off the table because it posits the Law of Identity is only contingently true (only holding for some objects). — MindForged

My response was that granting the facts you put into evidence does nothing to show that "Whatever is, is" is false. Please do not distort my position. If it is the case that electrons are not indiviualizable, then it is the case that electrons are not indiviualizable. (BTW, I have no reason to doubt this.)

Nor is it useful to pretend that the Principle of Identity is something else. I am not following you down a Trumpian rabbit hole, so I am skipping the rest of your comments on identity.

This might contradict Relativity — MindForged

No, it does not. The Sea Battle (on earth) tomorrow is in the future in all frames of reference.

Since you brought it up again, her is what Aristotle actually says:

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. — Aristotle, De Interpretatione, 9

The reason Aristotle give is exactly that I gave, i.e. that because the case is not actual (does not exist) neither proposition can "be either actually true or actually false."

It's not obvious that the future doesn't exist, or at least, you've no experience on which to say anything about it. — MindForged

You can redefine "exists" if you wish, but doing so will not change what I mean by the term.

At this point you cannot even use modern logical systems, nor even modern mathematics based on those systems. — MindForged

I do not base the math I use on symbolic logic, as no mathematical system reducible to arithmetic can be shown to be self-consistent. I justify my mathematics by abstracting its foundations from reality -- thus guarantying its self-consistency.

Still, I wonder why you are not commenting on my simple resolution of the "insoluble" paradoxes, or jumping in with an actual defense against my charge that "truth value" is an incoherent concept. "Cute" is not a counterargument.

As it happens, your experiences (even ones you may think must be true) can be incorrect. — MindForged

So, you want me to seriously consider that I may never have encountered existence? I'm not following you down that rabbit hole either.

you've given no argument that it is actually necessary or how you know it to be so other than by saying "Upon reflection". — MindForged

I invite you, and all readers, to make a similar reflection and determine whether or not your understanding of <being> justifies the principles we've been discussing. I can only lead you to the standpoint, orient you, and bid you to look. I cannot put the insight in your mind.

That's not what I said. Pegasi do not exist. That does not mean I cannot define a meaning for "Pegasi". — MindForged

I was not talking about your example, but responding to your claim that I had made my case true by definition.

Rather, definitions point to the aspects of reality we're discussing.

... Definitions do not always point to actual things, sometimes they just point to ideas or concepts. — MindForged

Quite right, they do not always indicate some reality. I was imprecise. I should have said they specify concepts that may or may not be instantiated.

Still, unless we are discussing ideas or concepts, they do not just point to ideas or concepts. The definition of "Pegasus" is not the definition of an idea, but of a mythical beast.

Classical logic is the logic Frege created in the 1870s, Aristotle used Aristotelian logic. — MindForged

Yes, symbolic logicians have appropriated "classical logic" for a class of propositional "logics." In some sources, Aristotle's logic is the first example of a "classical" logic," and you have used the term to include the kind of logic I am discussing. ("Classical logic says from a contradiction everything follows.") Still, I don't want to confuse you, so I'll say "Traditional Logic" -- which has a long history of development after Aristotle.

That said, you have once again pettifogged instead of addressing my point, viz. that traditional logic is not primarily about linguistic forms, but about correct thinking, and the alternatives you raised look no deeper than the surface of formal expression.

And the Liar-type paradoxes have nothing to do with existential import, because the arguments don't have any quantifiers in them so your response here makes no sense. — MindForged

I did not say the sentence of the Liar paradox had existential import. I said that that the concepts of <truth> and <falsity> did not apply to the sentence because it made no reference to reality.

Stepping back, you're so dogmatic in your commitments that you will not even discuss the merits of my solution. instead, you employed the Trumpian tactic of raising other issues (T-schemes, existential import, etc) to distract from my proposal.

"All winged horses are horses" is obviously true unless you make the (now discarded) Aristotelian assumption about existential import. — MindForged

1. No, it is not true. Truth is the adequacy of what is inthe mind to reality, and your claim adequates to no reality.

2. You were trying to show the outright stupidity of Aristotelian logic, but you could only do so by violating its canons, specifically by ignoring the requirement that Universal affirmative propositions have existential import. That is shabby at best. It is like a high schooler trying to reject algebra by "proving" that 1=2 -- forgetting that there isw a prohibition against divideing by zero.

Otherwise we have this infinite class of perfectly analyzable statements (in ordinary language) and yet we cannot reason about them meaningfully. — MindForged

Again, you are closed to my fundamental point. Traditional logic is not about sentential or any other form of symbolic manipulation, It is about correct thinking. There is no explicit or implicit contradiction in requiring existential import of universal affirmative judgements about reality. If you think there -- have at it.

And a logic like that is so weak as to be inadequate in modern mathematics. — MindForged

Thank you for your faith claim.

1. I've already shown you that you cannot rationally apply axioms without the line of thought reflected by the syllogism in Barbara.
2. Nothing in traditional logic prevents you from postulating axioms of whatever sort and working out their consequences. The axioms can specify any of the systems of symbolic manipulation that so amuse you. So, understanding how to think correctly can do noting but help you think correctly about the several systems you choose to call "logics."

there would still be three atoms in a water molecule even if there were no intelligent agents in the universe. For that sentence to be true, none of the referents can depend on an agent's thoughts. — Andrew M

I don't think your realistic interpretation of three is necessary to make the sentence true. The referents in the sentence are the molecule and its atoms, which, if counted, will number three.

Thinking in relation to others changes the authenticity of your own meaning into its herd analogue. — Blue Lux

"Thinking in relation to others" is the inescapable foundation of successful communication. If you have not already, you will find that I'm quite able to maintain my own, authentic position while communicating with others. I think you are capable of the same.

This will to a lack of ambiguity and a demonstration of human life that attains the value of absolute or normal or conventional is that which boxes the human into a construction of their own lives as not with reference to their own subjective feelings and meanings but with regard to everything they are not, which is all that is communicable — Blue Lux

Yes, there are people who twist themselves into knots to "fit in," but they are rather low on the path to satisfy Maslow's heirarchy of needs or growth in Fowler's stages of faith. There is certainly nothing "universal" here.

I am gay. My thoughts about my life, if this was fifty years ago, would be overruled by the genius of the species, — Blue Lux

Only if you let it. If you know history, you know that many have stood proud of their orientation. Of course there have been, and are, social pressures and even criminal penalties, but many found ways to work around these while continuing to be authentic to themselves.

I love someone. When I communicate this... This love that is 'mine' becomes just another relationship. When I create something significant to me, I communicate it to the world, consciousness delivers me over to the herd mentality where I have to be intelligible by others, which is not guaranteed, and thus what I have created loses in a very real sense its meaning, because its meaning can not be apprehended by everyone. — Blue Lux

We all have thoughts and feelings that others do not or will not understand or accept. We feel cut-off and long for a union of souls that most of us never achieve in this life. (Perhaps mystics do.) There is no "having to be intelligible to others." It is rewarding when we are, but we create value by valuing. if you value your creation or your love, it is valuable. If you do not, it is valueless for you.

So, your creations do not loose value when others fail to appreciate them, however disappointing that may be. You imbue them with value when you value them. If others also value them, they add new value, but if they don't, they can't take away the value you have imbued them with unless you allow it.

If there really were a single consciousness, everyone would value and devalue the same things. It is your uniqueness that allows you to create value where none existed before.

Mystical experiences are at base experiences. They are not different than ant other experience. — Blue Lux

Oh, but they are. Other experiences are defined by the information, the reduction of possibility they convey. Most mystical experiences convey no information. They do not reduce what is possible. They open us to new possibility. Mystical experience shows us that it is possible to achieve the unity that we long for in love.

I accept that that is your faith position. Thanks for sharing.

But they don't act! Rock are passive; actions are, er, active. — Pattern-chaser

Scattering light and attracting bodies gravitationally are actions.

What would be immaterial? — Blue Lux

Anything not composed of material constituents.

I can deny the existence of immaterial realities and still not accept the notion that consciousness or being is the result of interactions of matter or the material. — Blue Lux

Either consciousness is made of matter or it is immaterial. If consciousness is made of matter, then it "is the result of interactions of matter." If you deny this, you are left with consciousness is immaterial.

Presumably there is only one reality, but we know there are many logics so there seems to be an inherent problem with your definition. — MindForged

There is no problem with my definition. I am not denying that "logic" can have many meanings. I'm specifying the meaning I'm using.

Namely, the contradiction with having multiple correct ways of thinking about reality based on different, inconsistent logics. — MindForged

I defined what I am talking about as the "science of correct thinking." The "logics" you are thinking of do not study thinking. Mostly, they study systems of symbolic representation and manipulation. So, while they may be correct ways of thinking about various formal systems, they do not study the structure of correct thought, as does classical logic.

You are simply assuming the Principle of Excluded Middle in your metalanguage and then pointing out how it then appears in the object language. — MindForged

No, I am not.

First, I am not even discussing language. I am discussing thought that may or may not be expressed in language.

Second, I am not "assuming the Principle of Excluded Middle." I am finding that, when I reflect on the understanding of existence I have abstracted from my experience of reality, I see that some conjectured state must either be or not be. This is not an "assumption," but a finding. Futher, it is not a finding about about language, or even about thought. It is a finding about reality.

As I said, this and other Non-classical logics have their own metatheories that make do not accept Excluded Middle. — MindForged

I am not denying that, because I am not discussing systems of symbolic manipulation and their metatheories. I am confining myself to the study of thought, and specifically, thought that is necessarily salve veritate. This requires us to look at the relationship between thought and reality, not the relationship between systems of symbolic manipulation and their corresponding metatheories.

So, when we apply mathematical or cybernetic algorithms, the reasoning justifying their application is quite Aristotelian.

I sincerely hope I don't sound rude, but are you kidding me? — MindForged

I note that you did not comment on the syllogism I offered in evidence. Is your claim, then, that to apply a principle to a concrete case we do not need to recognize that the concrete case meets the conditions of application? Or perhaps that we can validly apply principles that are not thought of as universal? Or perhaps you want to claim that if the conditions of application can be stated in words that can describe, in another sense, the case at hand, we can still rationally apply the principle to that case?

Check Newton da Costa's work (based on work by early pioneers in quantum mechanics) about indistinguishable quantum objects. That is, objects that are such that they are *ontologically* indistinguishable (it's not an epistemic limitation), non-individuated objects. Schrodinger himself explicitly endorsed this, hence the old phrase that quantum objects had "lost their identity". — MindForged

You see not to understand the Principle of Identity. it does not make contingent claims about reality, saying, for example that electrons are individually identifiable or even that they are individuals. What is says is: "Whatever is, is." So if it is the case that electrons are not individuated, then that is the case.

Now, do you have an actual example of a violation of the Principle of Identity?

Aristotle disagrees with you. He believes there are metaphysical violations of Excluded Middle: contingent statements about the future — MindForged

I am sorry, but this does not contradict my position, but a confirms it. The reason the linguistic expression of the Principle of Excluded Middle does not apply to future contingents is that they do not exist. Since they have no being, there is no justification for applying a principle founded in our understanding of existence.

Non-contradiction: The Liar paradox. — MindForged

Again, my position offers a simple solution to the Liar paradox, Jourdain's paradox and other conundrums based on the notion of "truth value." It simply shows that "truth value" is an ill-defined construct. Actual truth, however, is not. The liar who says "I am lying" is making no statement about reality. Therefore, what he says cannot be either adequate to or inadequate to the referenced reality. So, the concepts <truth> and <falsity> have no application.

The same applies to Jourdain's paradox. You may recall that it is a card that says on one side "The statement on the other side of other card is true," and on the other "The statement on the other side of other card is false." Jointly these sentences make no claim about reality, and so, again, the concepts <truth> and <falsity> have no application.

So, we see that founding logic in a reflection on being provides us with a simple solution to problems for which, as you point out, "Professional logicians have no standard resolution."

And if one is, as I am, a Platonist about mathematical and other abstract objects like propositions, one is (as I am) committed the accepting the existence of inconsistent objects from what seems to be an argument from commonly accepting rules for reasoning. — MindForged

I am sorry to see you committed to so many errors.

No, it is not question begging. It is an experiential claim to which you have provided no counter example or rebutting argument — Dfpolis

It's question begging. You made the argument that in even assessing e.g. Constructive Mathematics one has to use Excluded Middle because you think it results in an situation where you're... violating Excluded Middle. — MindForged

The assertion of first principles is not question begging. Every line of argument, to avoid circularity, must have first principles. That does not mean that those principles cannot be justified. it only means that they they cannot be deduced. They can, for example, be justified by an appeal to experience. My claim, which you refuse to address, is that the principles of being are abstracted, a posteriori, from our understanding of existence.

You have tried, but failed, to provide counter examples. If you have more to offer, please do so. If you have no more to offer, show how the principles cannot be based on our experienced-based understanding of reality. Claiming that experienced-based knowledge is "question begging" will not do.

You said this:

"Thus, these principles are not a priori, not forms of reason, but a posteriori understandings that are so fundamental that once we come to grasp them, we understand that they apply to all being."

All this really says is that "once you assume my definitions of the relevant terms and their scope of application is global in all possible domains, you'll see they apply to all of reality" — MindForged

Note that while my claim addresses what can be known from our experience of reality, your reply fails to address what we can know from experience. it is, therefore, nonresponsive.

we have definitions for things which do not exist in reality so I don't really know why you're insisting on thinking about definitions in that way. — MindForged

Of course we can't define things into existence. Rather, definitions point to the aspects of reality we're discussing. They suggest that our dialogue partners look in that direction in the hope that they will see what we see. If they do look, and see that we are wrong, they can do us the service of pointing out our error. However, if our partners refuse to look, because they believe there is nothing to see, there is no more we can do.

The argument I gave there is *valid* in Aristotelian Logic, having the form: All A's are B's, All A's are C, Therefore some B's are C. — MindForged

What you refuse to grasp is that classical logic is not concerned with linguistic forms, but with correct patterns of thought. Aristotle spent a great deal of time pointing out fallacies -- many of which (such as the equivocation in your example) use apparently correct linguistic forms to mask manifestly incorrect thinking.

Take up existential import with Aristotle, modern logics don't have this issue. — MindForged

That is why they cannot resolve paradoxes such as the Liar and Jourdain's.

As for Aristotelian existential import being an "issue," make your case.

its clearly not an obvious equivocation — MindForged

I spotted it instantly. Are you claiming that "horse" is univocally predicated in "some horses have wings" and "winged horses have wings"?

Also, you have not applied the little you know about Aristotelian logic. You claim to know about existential import in Aristotelian logic. If so, you know that "All winged horses have wings" is false because it lacks existential import. So, you should have seen that not only does your syllogism have an undistributed middle (because of equivocation) but also that its major premise is false.

For something to be a sign, for it to signify, all that is required is that it has meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am sorry, but no. To actually signify a sign must actualize meaning in a mind. If it does not do this, it is only a potential sign.

we can recognize that a thing is a sign, without having any idea of what it signifies — Metaphysician Undercover

We can recognize it's potential to be a sign. If it does not actualize a meaning in a mind (and meanings exist only in minds), it is not an actual sign.

For example, when I hear people speaking a foreign language I recognize the sound as meaningful without having any idea of the meaning. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a different case. The language is actually signifying to those using it, just not to you.

And, I can say things without clearly knowing what I am saying. So there is no need that the sign be either formal or instrumental in order to be a sign. especially when that which is signified is vague and unclear. Hence ambiguity is very real. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you are speaking, the sign is instrumental. Your audience must first recognize your words for them to convey your meaning..

Of course communication can be defective. Your utterance may be malformed. It may not be correctly understood. That has nothing to do with the question of what constitutes a well-formed, operational signs.

My idea, as you can see, is that consciousness does not really belong to the individual existence of man but to his community or herd nature; — Blue Lux

I have a problem with this, because if awareness were one and communal I would be aware of every other persons experience and they of mine. I am not. I am directly aware only of my interactions with the world -- of myself standing as a subject to the objects I encounter.

our thoughts themselves are constantly overruled by the character of consciousness--by the genius of the species--dominating them--and translated back into herd perspective. — Blue Lux

I do not find my thoughts "constantly overruled by ... the genius of the species." I often find myself at odds with the thinking of others and with anything that could pass for a "herd mentality." Nor am I alone in thinking that, at times, I am "a voice crying in the wilderness."

Rather than my thoughts being "overruled by the character of consciousness," I find them informed "by the character of consciousness" -- as I become aware of some aspect of reality apparently missed by others. And, again, I do not find myself alone in this. Each person has their own standpoint and subjectivity -- giving rise to their own, unique subject-object relationships.

All our actions are at bottom incomparably personal, unique, endlessly individual, there is no doubt; but as soon as we translated them into consciousness, they no longer seem so — Blue Lux

I do not find this in my experience. Perhaps you can provide an example to help me see what you see.

the nature of animal consciousness is such that the world we can be conscious of is only a world of surfaces and signs — Blue Lux

Mystical experience stands as a counter to this -- being the awareness of an underlying ineffable unity.

We simply have no organ for knowing, for truth, we know (or believe or imagine) just as much may be useful in the interests of the human herd, — Blue Lux

Again, mystical experience stands as a counter to this -- it does not "inform" us -- does not limit what is possible, but expands it. So, we have an intellect that can and does know what is.

It as absolutely absurd to think that without consciousness there still exists anything. Consciousness is uncreated. — Blue Lux

If you are talking about God, I agree that the cosmos is utterly dependent on Him. Still, I don't think that God's existence is so easy to see that atheists are missing the obvious.

Rationality requires that everything have an adequate explanation, even if we don't know it, So, any ultimate explanation must be necessary and self-explaining. What is necessary cannot change, because any change shows that the aspect that changed was not necessary. So, it must be distinct from the changing universe -- not part of it.