Yes, there are three atoms independently of anyone counting them, but there is no actual number independently of an agent thinking it.

OK, but the usage in the analogy is other than your usage, so it doesn't actually explain your claimed convention. In the analogy there is a God who imposes law and order on nature, through His free will choices, but in your usage there are laws inherent in matter, with no free will act involved. — Metaphysician Undercover

Have I denied that the intentionality of the laws can be traced to God, or that God wills freely?

You are saying that Newtonian laws of physics were broken down by human intentions, — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I am saying that applying the laws of physics outside their verified range of application was and is unjustified. I am also saying that until well into the 20th century, we had no adequate data on whether human intentions modify the laws of nature. So asserting their invariance when human commitments are involved was unjustified.

That's why I insist that "laws of nature" ought not be used. It fosters deception through equivocation. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no equivocation if we define and apply terms with care.

But we do not need to perturb the "laws of nature" to have free will, if we properly expose, and represent "laws of nature". — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, if you use a different definitions, your expression of the same reality may well be different. We need only recognize the reality. Our different express of that reality is of minor import.

But if there are no such laws inherent in matter, as the concept of "matter" is normally understood, then matter is free to be moved according to infinite possibilities. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, and the success of physics is a stroke of completely unjustified good luck.

participating in the laws which move matter, rather than by overruling, or perturbing the laws. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your objection is purely linguistic. I see no real distinction between "participating in" the laws and "perturbing" the otherwise universal laws. I've never said we "overrule" the laws.

If you describe a human being as a unity of "physical" and "intentional" aspects, then you have distinguished these two parts as distinct. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not "parts" which can be physically separated, but aspects that can give rise to independent concepts.

If the "principle of action" inheres within, then we must identify which distinct part it inheres within, the physical or the intentional. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have already said that both our willed commitments and the laws of nature are intentional. The consequent motions are physical. So, there is no need to confine it to one "part" or another. Again, there are no "parts" -- only a whole that can be conceived in various abstract ways.

If it inheres within the physical part, as you claim — Metaphysician Undercover

I made no such claim.

Why not just place the principle of action in the intentional part, such that it can exercise freedom over the indeterminate physical part, thus allowing for freedom of will? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because doing so would mean that the laws of physics are entirely inapplicable to us. In point of fact, they provide reasonably accurate descriptions of our motions.

Let's be clear, because I think you are confused as to my position.
1. Our intellect and will both belong to the intentional order.
2. "The physical," as I conceive it is not reducible to a material state. It is what we study in the natural sciences. The physical world is both material (specified by state descriptions) and intentional (having a well-defined order I am calling "the laws of nature."
3. When we apply the methods of natural science to the human mind, we can grasp its physicality (its material structure and its operations insofar as we follow the so-called "universal" laws of nature). It cannot grasp (because of the fundamental abstraction) our subjectivity (our awareness and will). Thus it misses the dynamics that allow us to exercise freedom.

Do you recognize that a law is a form? — Metaphysician Undercover

It depends on how you define "a form." If you man a Platonic form, there are no such things. If you man a Scholastic Substantial Form, they are species specific, and do not grasp the "universality" of the laws of nature. If you merely mean "immaterial," yes the laws of nature are immaterial in the well defined sense of not having material constituents.

how can you say that all forms are immaterial, yet also reject the notion that there are laws extrinsic to matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

The laws of nature, not being spatio-temporal objects, have no intrinsic location. Instead, they "are" where they operate -- and they operate on and in matter. So they are "in" matter in an operational sense. So, if "by matter"nyou mean the empirical stuff that we can observe and experiment on, then the laws are intrinsic because they are revealed by such observations and experiments.

If you mean by "matter" an abstract principle, coordinate with form, we have had that argument and come to an impasse.

the law describes either what is or what ought to be — Metaphysician Undercover

A law of nature does not determine what is, the material state does that. it determines what will come to pass -- what potency will be actualized. That is the point of its being a logical propagator.

To say that God, as the creator of physical existence is not temporally prior to physical existence, is simply false. — Metaphysician Undercover

If God is perfect, he cannot change for every change would add or remove a perfection. Since time is the measure of change according to before and after, God is timeless. So we cannot predicate before and after of God.

Also the laws of nature necessarily act concurrently. If the law of conservation of mass-energy is not operative here and now, mass-energy is not conserved here and now.

Placing laws (Forms) as inherent within matter is clearly materialist. — Metaphysician Undercover

No it is not. Denying the existence of immaterial reality is materialist. I am not doing that.

How do you support an immaterial aspect of reality when you have already stipulated that the part of reality which some assert to be immaterial, i.e. laws and Forms, inhere within matter? — Metaphysician Undercover

I have not said that they are the only immaterial realities. They are not even essentially immaterial, as neither forms of matter nor laws of nature can exist independently of matter.

And what is this ontological priority of the 'laws of nature?' I assume you are saying that the laws of nature have a primacy over being-in-the-world?
And so you are fundamentally deterministic.
And in bad faith. — Blue Lux

My, my. A little charity, please.

Working backward:
1. I am a determinist when physics is an adequate abstraction.
2. I am not a determinist with respect to human will -- where physics is an inadequate abstraction.
3. I am not saying "the laws of nature have a primacy over being-in-the-world."
4. I am saying that they actualize a specific logically possible line of action.of insensate material being.
5. The ontological priority of laws of nature is that they actualize the potential motion of material being. What actualizes is ontologically prior to what it actualizes.

↪Dfpolis
And if nothing was there to acknowledge this abstraction of 'rock' it would too still exist?
Absurd — Blue Lux

If there was nothing (no one) to acknowledge the abstraction <rock> there would be no abstraction to acknowledge. There might still be actual rocks, as there were for billions of years before the advent of intelligent life.

That is a consequence of our 'instinctive naturalism', you might say. — Wayfarer

Yes. Aquinas would say that the human mind is ordered to the understanding of material being.

for example there is the absolute presupposition that nature is governed by invariant laws that is fundamental to the practice of the modern natural sciences. — Janus

Thank you for the explanation and reference.

I would agree that this is a presupposition of the physical sciences, but I have argued that they have a self-limited range of application -- viz. the portion of nature in which subjective intentionality can be successfully abstracted away.

I think this specific presupposition is no more absolute than Kant's forms of space, time and causality. Hume did away with the so-called necessity of (accidental or time-sequenced) causality, and Einstein with the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time. If our ideas of space and time were forms imposed by our mental machinery, then alternative concepts of space and time would be literally unthinkable.

If the universality and invariance of the laws of nature were an absolute (instead of a context sensitive) assumption, I could not be a physicist while entertaining the possibility that the laws are perturbed by human committed intentionality. Also, it is hard to see how one could maintain the possibility of multiverse whose universes have a variety of laws and constants.

t is the use of the word “representation” to describe phenomena such as neural conditions and signals that I object to, because none of its contextually-relevant connotations (e.g., picture, figure, image, idea) reasonably apply. Whereas, referring to phenomena such as paintings, sculptures, dance movements, and music as representations would be an appropriate use of the word. The difference being the latter are semantic (have meaning for a mind). — Galuchat

First, I think that we can agree that "representation" has many analogous meanings, and while there are good reasons to prefer your usage, if we are careful not to equivocate, we can use other meanings.

Second, I agree that thinking in terms of "neural representations" is projecting the reality of perceptions into a very incomplete conceptual space. The concepts of picture, figure, image, idea, etc. are left out of the neural projection, and so anyone who thinks solely in terms of neural representations is committing the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. That said, the firing of retinal rods and cones, for example, does create a neural representation that is processed by the brain -- and interfering with that processing degrades our perceptions. So, refusing to consider the role and reality of neural representation leaves our analysis critically incomplete.

Third, our neural representations are neither instrumental nor formal "signs." Instrumental signs are things that must first be understood in themselves before they can signify. For example, we must first grasp that the smudge on the horizon is smoke, and not dust, before it can signify fire. We must make out the lettering on a sign before it can tell us a business's hours. Formal signs, (ideas, judgements, etc.) Work in a different way. We do not first have to realize that <apple> is an idea before it can signify apples. If we know it is an idea at all, it is only in retrospect, as we we reflect on the mental instruments employed in thinking of apples. So, the whole being of a formal sign (all that it ever does) is being a sign. <Apple>, for example, does not reflect light, exert gravitational attraction, or do anything other than signifying apples.

As I said, neural representations normally are not signs in either of these ways. (One can imagine that some neuroscientist could examine our brain state and determine that the signs she is observing encode the image of the apple we're seeing, which would make it an instrumental sign, but that is not the normal case.) Normally, we do not know what our neural state is, and so the neural "representation" is not used as an instrumental sign of the thing we are perceiving. It is certainly not a formal sign, as its essential being is neurophysiological, not semantic.

So, theories that see ideas as brainstates suffer from semantic confusion, and theories that see self-awareness as a species of proprioception are equally confused.

Forth, as I said to you in relation to Damasio's observation on the biological representation of reality, it does not seem that a neural representation can encode enough information to allow us to distinguish between exteroception and interoception -- between representations of the environment and representations of bodily state. So, we need other channels of information to explain our experience.

But this is confused. What one perceives by the use of one's perceptual organs is an object or array of objects, sounds, smells, and the properties and relations of items in one's environment. It is a mistake to suppose that what we perceive is always or even commonly, an image, or that to perceive an object is to have an image of the object perceived.

I agree for the most part. Locke erred in saying that all we know is our ideas. Rather ideas are means of knowing reality. Still, I am not a naive realist. Apples are not "red" as we see red. Apples have objective properties (say an absorption spectrum) that, in normal light, with normal color vision we will see as red -- that will evoke a "red" quale. In other light, if we are color blind, etc. the evoked quale may differ.

This does not mean we aren't seeing what "is there," or that all we see is a construct. Instead it mans that "what is there" is more complicated than imagined by the unreflective mind. All of our perceptions are subject-object interactions -- inescapably both objective and subjective. (Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur -- Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the recipient.) Still, it is not constructed, but received.

I think we are agreed on "decoding."

Thanks for the references to John of St. Thomas, Henry Veatch, and your video on Ideas and Brain States. — Galuchat

You're very welcome. I found John of St. Thomas and Henry Veatch very useful.

We might be a little more explicit and say it is the science of correct thinking about reality -- because we want it to be salve veritate -- if our premises reflect reality, then we want "correct thinking" to be such that our conclusions will necessarily reflect reality. — Dfpolis

This seems incorrect. Logic has many uses which either have nothing to do with reality or else is used in a way we might not reason about reality. — MindForged

Of course "logic" can be defined in many ways, so it is not one thing, but many related things. That is why I defined what I meant by logic: the science of correct thinking (about reality). That is what I am offering to justify.

Of course, this does not mean that classical logic is unrelated to other forms of "logic." You raise he example of SQL. To apply SQL, we must first realize that, given our actual goals and the reality we are considering, SQL can be applied and doing so will advance our goals. This, of course, is thought about reality, and if our forms of thought did not yield true conclusions, the application of SQL would be irrational.

In the same way, you mention "Constructive Mathematics (based on intuintionistic logic) which rejects the Law of the Excluded Middle." Yet, if, in criticizing the proof of a theorem in Constructive Mathematics I were to say that in addition to an axiom you used applying or not applying there was some other possibility you had not considered, surely you would object. So, while you may construct a system which makes no internal use of the principle of excluded middle, in reasoning about that system, you would use the principle.

Second, whenever we apply any scientific principle to a particular instance, we necessarily use the syllogism in Barbara. Let p be a scientific principle and q describe sufficient conditions for the application of p. Then we think as follows:
All cases such that q are such that p.
A is a case such that q.
Therefore A is a case such that p.
So, when we apply mathematical or cybernetic algorithms, the reasoning justifying their application is quite Aristotelian.

Identity violations: See non-reflexive logics and quasi-set theory. — MindForged

I've said while we can think of impossible states, there can't be impossible states. You have not provided a single example of a real state violating the ontological principles of identity, contradiction or excluded middle.

statements like "so fundamental that once we come to grasp them, we understand that they apply to all being" are just question begging. — MindForged

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

Sure, if I accept all your definitions for "truth", your preferred inference rules, your semantics/metatheory, then yes they follow. But that simply makes the nature of the disagreements have an obvious location of disagreement (e.g. in the semantics and such). — MindForged

No. Definitions of terms point to aspects of reality that can be experienced and analyzed. So, the question is not about the self-consistency of semantic relations, but about the adequacy of my account to our experience of reality.

All winged horses are horses.
All winged horses have wings.
Ergo some horses have wings. — MindForged

As I said, logic is not about the consistency of language, but about salve veritate thinking. To save truth, you must start with truth. "All winged horses are horses" is not a truth, but an equivocation. "Winged horses" are not "horses" in the sense living equine creatures, which is the sense of "horses" required by the conclusion. In the same way, there is no true statement in which "the present king of England" is taken as having a substantive reference.

It speaks poorly of those who educated you in logic that you are unable to spot so obvious an equivocation. Correct thinking is not about matching letter sequences or manipulating word strings. It is about using conceptual representations rationally.

You think that a rock, which cannot act, therefore does not exist — Pattern-chaser

No, rocks scatter light, gravitate, resist imposed forces, etc., so thy exist.

I would agree that "being is convertible with the capacity to act", but I would say that refers to specific being, being as some kind of being and not to "being as such" or 'pure being". The "unreflective concept of a minimal existent as a passive blob" I agree is unhelpful and couldn't count as 'pure being'. The inability to say just what pure being is, is the reason that Hegel equates the idea of pure being with the idea of nothingness. Nothingness is no-thing-ness, and pure being is no-thing; passive blob or otherwise — Janus

I think "being as such" (being qua being) is not the same as what you're calling "pure being." When I say being qua being, I am thinking of any instance of existence, not considered as a specific kind of thing, or as having specific properties, but only insofar as it exists. On the other hand when I am thinking of "pure being," I am thinking of undelimited being, not of delimited beings insofar as they exist. In other words, I am thinking of God.

I touched on the idea that God is no-thing earlier. Denying the the kind of delimiting specification which characterizes things does not imply that undelimited being (no-thing) is nothing. Nothing can perform no act, while undelimited being can perform all logically possible acts -- so Hegel (or his sister) seems hopelessly confused.

In fact it is exactly on account of science being restricted to the knowledge and understanding of the actions of existents upon one another that Collingwood rejects the possibility of a science of pure being. He says that metaphysics is only viable as a historical science which examines, explicates and analyzes the 'absolute presuppositions' upon which the sciences, from the ancient to the modern, have been based. I must admit i find it hard to disagree with this. — Janus

Of course, our limited intellect and representational capacity, makes it impossible to form any proportional concept of undelimited or infinite being. Nonetheless, we can entertain a well-defined ostensive concept, i.e. one that points, uniquely, at infinite being. As the words "undelimited" and "infinite" indicate, this can be done by the via negativa. By asserting an ability to act while denying limiting characteristics, we form an indexical that points uniquely to pure being (God).

I have no idea what an "absolute presupposition" would be. As I have said, I think all so-called a priori proposition are a posteriori with respect to their foundational experiences, but may be applied "a priori" (without detailed reflection) thereafter -- this because they apply to all beings insofar as they exist.

Reading further, you seem to agree with me on a priori propositions, which leaves me wondering what kinds of things you see as "absolute presuppositions"?

We also seem to agree on mystical experience and its expression. I suspect we each have a lot more to say on the subject.

I have shown you the texts and the logic of the case. There is nothing more I can do.

OK, so the question is, will you adhere to the analogy? — Metaphysician Undercover

There is noting to "adhere" to. The analogy only explains the naming convention, not a prescriptive rule.

do you assume that the laws of nature order natural behaviour through the free will choices of matter? — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course not. Analogical predication is partly the same and partly different. I said what was the same. An important difference is that humans are free, rational agents and insensate matter is not.

What physicists choose to study is irrelevant, because the laws of nature, as you have described them are independent of what physicists study. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a little too facile. While the laws of nature exist independently of our knowing them, our knowledge of them depends on actual study. If physicists have not studied a dynamical regime, that regime will not be in physics' verified range of application. We saw this in the early 20th century when the descriptions of Newtonian physics broke down for relativistic and quantum regimes. So, until we studied the effects of human intentions on the laws, we could not say what those effects were. Now that we have some data, we can be assured that our intentions do perturb the laws.

The point is, that either matter is bound and determined to follow the laws of nature, as you claim, in which case there can be no free will, or matter is not determined by the laws of nature, in which case free will is possible — Metaphysician Undercover

You have not exhausted the possibilities here. The third option, which now appears to be the case, is that we do follow the laws of nature, but they vary in response to human intentions. So, physical change does follow the laws of nature, but our will is a factor in determining those laws.

you are only trying to create the illusion of free will — Metaphysician Undercover

Really? How does my saying that our will contributes to the determination of motion "create the illusion of free will"?

Either the activities of matter are determined by the laws of nature, or they are not, regardless of what the laws of physics say. — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed! But, if the laws of nature depend in part on our intentions, how does this undermine free will?

To imply that there could be an undiscovered law of nature which allows for free will is to state a deception intended to give an illusion that free will is possible under your assumptions. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am saying no such thing.

I am saying, first, that we have known for millennia, that our willed intentions cause observable motions. We have simply not put 2 and 2 together to conclude that to do so, they need to perturb the laws of nature. (Although the Scholastics came close by saying that "man by reason participates in divine providence" and that we are "co-creators" of the natural order.) And, second, that scientists who have chosen not to restrict their studies by the Fundamental Abstraction have now established, to a statistical certainty, that our intentions do modify the laws of nature.

Thus, I'm positing no "undiscovered law," but pointing out the nomological implications of discoveries already made.

o, I think it's impossible that human actions are not fully determined by the laws of nature, or that human actions could modify the laws of nature, if the laws of nature inhere within matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Since human beings are physical and intentional unities, our will, as part of that unity can be said to "inhere" in us. So, there is no intrinsic conflict a principle of action inhering in a physical being and exercising freedom.

I would like to know how you base this assumption that the laws of nature must act immanently. Traditionally, there is a duality between what you call "the laws of nature" (immaterial Forms), and material forms, (physical things). — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not sure what your objection to immanence is. Surely you reject the notion that there are substantial laws, extrinsic to the matter whose actions they order.

All forms are "immaterial" (not made of matter), even those that cannot exist without material support. I have never said that the laws of nature can be actual without material fields to order. Physical things are not forms, they are informed matter.

The Forms act to order natural processes because they are prior in time to these material processes, as God is prior to nature — Metaphysician Undercover

The laws of nature have an ontological rather than an temporal priority (as does God). To have ontological priority is to be an actualizing or an informing principle. But such principles must be concurrent with the processes they actualize and inform, or they could not fulfill their dynamic roles.

this move to materialism leaves intentionality unintelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover

What "move to materialism"? Have I not been discussing the essential role of intentionality as an immaterial aspect of reality?

Without a separation between matter and that which causes matter to behave the way that it does (Forms, or laws of nature), there is no room for possibility. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confusing "separation" which is a physical concept with "distinction" which is a well-grounded conceptual difference.

But the question is on what physical basis can we draw the distinction?

There is survival value to perceiving the world as it actually is (or at least a functionally accurate representation of it), since we have to interact with it to survive. What am I missing — Relativist

There is survival value in generating an "appropriate response." Whether you're moving in the right way in response to data on your internal state or on the state of the world makes no difference to survival.

It just is, and it does what it does without the need for any sort of support or guidance. No laws. No luck. Just reality, being real — Pattern-chaser

Of course, it is metaphysically impossible for nature to "just be" without a concomitant cause..

Why? Because an infallible sign of existence is the ability to act. If there is an action, then, necessarily, there is something acting. Nature changes, and its future states of nature are not actual in its present state. They are merely potential. As future states are not actual or operational, they cannot operate to make themselves actual; nonetheless, they are actualized, which is an action. So they need something else, something actual or operational to make them actual -- namely an operational cause.

Laws causing the regularity of nature is identical with the regularity of nature being caused by laws. — Dfpolis

No it isn't — Pattern-chaser

Of course it is. If A is doing B, necessarily, B is being done by A. There is no question here of master and disciple, only of different ways of stating the same reality.

cause and effect; they aren't interchangeable, as you seem to think they are. — Pattern-chaser

I do not think cause and effect are the same. Causes operate to actualize. Effects are operated upon to be actualized.

(2) Somehow we distinguish the object modifying our senses from the modification of our senses by the object -- even though both are encoded in a single neural representation. — Dfpolis

I would say that phenomena (physical actualities) are perceived, not encoded in neural representations.
Perception being the experience caused by sensation (sense function). — Galuchat

I like to project reality into different conceptual spaces -- to think about the same thing from different perspectives. I think doing so, and comparing the resulting "pictures," helps me understand an issue more fully. Often features that are prominent in one projection are missing in another. Trying to understand why this is so allows us to critique the alternate approaches. On the other hand, features common to different conceptual schemes are understood with greater depth.

Thus, I have no problem saying that we perceive physical reality (actualities), but I find it helpful to look at perception from from a neurophysical perspective as well. I third useful projection is semiotic, recognizing that neural states considered as instrumental signs are very different from concepts, which are formal signs. (A perspective gleaned from Henry Veatch's Intentional Logic: A logic based on philosophical realism.)

The problem I am discussing in (2) comes from reflecting on an observation of neurophysiologist Anthony Damasio that our knowledge of the external world started as neural representations of body state and evolved into representations of the external world as the source of changes in our body state:

... to ensure body survival as effectively as possible, nature, I suggest, stumbled on a highly effective solution: representing the outside world in terms of the modifications it causes in the body proper, that is representing the environment by modifying the primordial representations of the body proper whenever an interaction between organism and environment takes place. — Damasio, Descartes‘ Error, p. 230.

Now, for an animal merely processing data to generate adaptive responses, it makes no difference whether a neural state is conceived (by us) as representing a body state or a world state -- as an exteroception or interoception in your terminology. All that is required is that certain types of neural inputs generate corresponding adaptive outputs.

But for humans, with our powers of abstraction and conceptual representation, there is a world of difference between exteroception and interoception. Think of seeing an apple. The image projected on our retina results in a pattern of rod and cone activation that modifies our neural state. There is no difference between the neural state that would inform us of this pattern of rod and cone activation (and so be an interoception) and the neural state that would inform us of an apple being seen (and so an exteroception). Yet, when we see an apple, we become aware of the apple and not of our retinal state. How is this possible?

As I pointed out this distinction has no survival value, and so it is how to see how it could be selected by evolution. Further, there is no difference in the brain state encoding the exteroception and the interoception, so there can be no physical basis for the distinction. It is as if our intentionality, our interest in the apple rather than in our retina, is determinative of what we become aware of.

Of course, there is nothing mysterious about this when we think about seeing apples in the conceptual space of traditional epistemology or psychology. There, we have sensations and, in some cases, become aware of them -- perhaps abstracting concepts. What is problematic is how to integrate this projection of perception and ideogenesis with our neurophysical understanding of sensation.

I find the framework of communication it presents to be useful. — Galuchat

I agree both with the usefulness of the information theoretic framework and with the need to supplement it with semiotic considerations.

Thank you for the reference to Floridi's article. I confess complete ignorance of Merleau-Ponty.

1) Information becomes: communicated data (form), and
2) A process of physical communication provides a connection between phenomena and awareness. — Galuchat

I have no problem with this schema and only one problem with the example:

7) Received and decoded by the brain (Sensory Processing), — Galuchat

I have no idea what it means for the brain to "decode" the neural signal. It surely processes neural signals, but what difference can there be processing in which one form of neural signal is input and another form output, and "decoding" when the output is simple a neural signal?

A nitpicking objection is that I see the brain, with its data processing capabilities, as the information processing subsystem of the mind with awareness (the agent intellect) as part of another, intentional subsystem. So I would state (8) in a slightly different way, saying that the intelligible information carried by the neural signal is actualized by our awareness (aka the agent intellect).

I have no idea what a neural representation is. — Galuchat

A neural representation is a modification to our neural state that encodes information in the same way that an E-M signal carries a representation of transmitted information.

For my cognitive psychology project, I have found it very useful to maintain a physical/mental distinction in conceptual analysis — Galuchat

I agree. I suggest you look at John of St. Thomas' distinction between Instrumental and formal signs, which is quite useful in articulating this. I got it from Veatch and discuss it in my book. The most convenient place to see it is in my video "#25 Mind: Ideas vs. Brain States" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMiQKYCEj14). Failing to make this distinction can lead to considerable confusion.

i have no problem with your formulation. Mine attempts to accommodate a neuroscientific approach to mind as much as possible.

I see no point in continuing to beat the poor, dead equine.

I can't see how a science of being as being is possible, except perhaps as a phenomenology which would have to start, as Heidegger did, with dasein: human being. — Janus

I think of being in terms of what i call "Dynamic Ontology" in the hope of reducing confusion by being more explicit in the meaning of my terms. I was inspired in this by a suggestion of Plato in The Sophist 247e:

I suggest that anything has real being that is so constituted as to possess any sort of power either to affect anything else or to be affected, in however small a de-gree, by the most insignificant agent, though it be only once. I am proposing as a mark to distinguish real things that they are nothing but power — Plato

Cornford points out that this is only a mark (horos) of being that would be acceptable to a materialist, not a definition (logos) of being, and that the question of what reality is remains open later in the dialogue. Still, I think we can make good use of it after a little refinement.

First, adding “or to be affected” to “to affect anything” is redundant. If I claim to be acting on x, but no effect is produced in x, then however much I am exerting myself, I am not acting on x at all. If I am not acting upon x, x is not being acted upon by me. Unless x is capable of re-acting in some way when acted upon by something, it is incapable of being acted upon by anything. So the condition “or to be affected” does nothing to increase extension. Second, “else” in “any sort of power either to affect anything else” is unnecessarily restrictive. If something can act on itself, then it exists, even though we may be unable to know its existence.

Being, then, is convertible with the capacity to act. Every thought of an existent involves some ability to act: to reflect light, to occupy space and so resist penetration, to affect thought. In fact, any “thing” unable to affect thought would be unknowable, and would never be considered an entity. Since this contrasts sharply with our unreflective concept of a minimal existent as a passive blob, it may help to recall that quantum field theory reveals all matter as constantly oscillating and abuzz with virtual particles.

In classical ontology, existence is the basis in reality for our saying that a being is, and essence that for our saying what a being is. In dynamic ontology, existence represents an unspecified capacity to act, and essence specifies an individual’s possible acts. Given these definitions, any act by an object (1) evidences its existence and (2), by being a specific act of which the object is capable, projects its essence.

If we can agree on these starting points, then at least some minimal science of being qua being is possible.

Collingwood also has good arguments to support the view that metaphysics can only be a science of the absolute presuppositions — Janus

I reject the notion of a priori knowledge, however fundamental. All that we know can be explained in terms of our awareness of interacting with reality. If I am aware of something acting on me, I am aware that it exists. Since it is acting on me in a specific way, I know it can act in that way and so have some minimal projection of its essence -- of its possible acts. In reflecting on my experience of existence, I see that existence entails principles such as identity, the impossibility of both being and not being at one and the same time in one and the same way, and that a possible being is either actual or not actual.

Then, I see that if my thinking is to apply to being, it must reflect these characteristics of being. These are not laws of thought. They are laws of thought about being. I can think that there is a plane figure that is both a triangle and a square, but there cannot be a plane figure that is both a triangle and a square.

Pure being is, as Hegel points out, coterminous with nothingness, and how could we have a science of nothingness? — Janus

No, being is not coterminous with nothingness. That's unreflective word play. No-thing has no properties, including terminal boundaries. Since it has no boundaries it cannot be co-terminus with anything.

Perhaps it could be said that mysticism is a science of nothingness; but in the domain of mysticism there would seem to be no possibility of the kind of definitive intersubjective corroboration that is necessary for a domain of inquiry to count as a science. — Janus

Being trained as a physicist, I used to poo-poo anything "mystical." Then I read W. T. Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy which provides a detailed phenomenology of mysticism. Since then, I have read extensively on mysticism and its cognitive value. While each experience is personal, many are tokens of a common transcultural typology.

St. John of the Cross, in reflecting on his mystical experience characterizes God as "todo y nada" (all and no-thing), and Eastern mystics frequently speak of and experience of "nothingness." I think mystics mean by this that that object of their experience cannot be classed as a phenomenal thing. Stace points out that one type of experience is completely free of sensory qualia, while his other type adds no sensory content to our perceptions. Both involve a profound awareness of unity.


To return to your basic thesis, could you give an argument for the impossibility of a science of being?

OK, so my point is, that if the thing being described is reality, then why not call that thing being described "reality" rather than "laws of reality"? And if the thing being described is nature, then why not call that thing "nature", rather than "laws of nature". — Metaphysician Undercover

Because "reality" and "nature" are so general no one would know which aspects we are referring to.

To say that the thing being described is "laws of nature", rather than "nature", just because the descriptions are formulated as "laws", makes no sense. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, the primary use of "law" in this context, (going back to Jeremiah) is to name the regularity of nature. It's derivative application (by an analogy of attribution) is to human approximate descriptions of the laws of nature. The underlying analogy is that as civil laws order social behavior, so laws of nature order natural behavior (an analogy of proportionality).

Matter behaves in particular ways which are regular, orderly, and which we describe with laws, the laws of physics. I think we both agree on this. Where I disagree is when you jump to the conclusion that there are another type of "laws", "laws of nature", which are inherent within matter acting within matter, causing it to act in these regular, and orderly ways. I've been asking you to support this conclusion, or assumption, whatever you want to call it, but you've been beating around the bush. — Metaphysician Undercover

When you say that "Matter behaves in particular ways which are regular," you are admitting the existence of laws of nature -- unless you go on to say that the observed regularity is purely fortuitous. So, are you saying that the regularity is purely fortuitous, occurring for no reason, or are you saying that there is some aspect of nature that makes it so? I am saying the latter.

"Laws of nature" does not name substantial things. It names the aspects of reality you are describing as regularity in behavior. So, there is no need for me to justify more than you have admitted in your first sentence above. Let me state it in the form of an identity: Laws causing the regularity of nature is identical with the regularity of nature being caused by laws. In other words, if nature is reliably orderly, whatever the explanation of that reliable order is, I am calling it "the laws of nature."

Here's the reason why I do not agree with you. If there are such laws inherent within, and acting within, matter, then free will is impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

I wish you'd said this earlier. When I started this discussion, I pointed out that the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science prescinds from the consideration of the knowing subject. The knowing subject is also the willing subject. So, when I am discussing the laws of physics and the laws of nature they describe, I'm not discussing reality in all of its complexity, but only the aspects of reality delimited by the Fundamental Abstraction -- which does not have the data to justify conclusions on knowing and willing -- on subjective awareness and freedom.

To forget the self-imposed limitations of natural science is to commit Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness. We cannot assume that a science adequate to the physical world in abstraction from the knowing and willing subject is adequate to dealing with subjects knowing and willing. I began turning my attention to this yesterday in an exchange with Janus beginning with:

I find nothing to disagree with here, unfortunately. — Janus

So, to respond to your objection, if the universal laws of nature, as described by physics, fully determined the actions of knowing subjects, then yes, free will would be of no avail. But, we have no reason to think that the laws, as described by physics, apply to more than the abstract world physicists have chosen to study. Specifically, we have no reason to think that these laws fully determine the actions of subjects, given that natural science has chosen, ab initio, to exclude subjects as such from its consideration.

As I discussed in more detail with Janus (and in even greater detail in my book), since both the laws of nature and human commitments are intentional (species of logical propagator), it is reasonable to ask whether human intentions might not perturb (modify) the "universal" laws of nature. Experiments provide us with statistical certitude that human intentions do perturb the so-called universal laws. So, we have every reason to believe that human actions are not fully determined by the "universal" laws of nature.

If instead, you want to continue with your position that there are real "laws of nature" acting in the universe, then you ought to place them outside of matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Clearly, the laws of mature must act immanently to order natural processes.

I have not suggested here that the intentional nature of the laws points to an ordering Mind (as Aquinas does in his fifth way, and I do in my book). As I have said before, I do not want to side-track the conversation by bringing up the contentious issue of the existence of God. Still, to make my position clear to you, I agree with Jeremiah in seeing the laws of nature as divine ordinances. So, theologically, we can say, with Aquinas, that "man, by reason, participates in Divine Providence." In other words, that we are granted the power to be co-creators so that our will, combined with the Divine Will, controls the course of nature. In this projection, the "universal" laws of nature are God's general will for matter and we are granted the limited power to add further specificity by making willed commitments.

I hope that this clarifies my position for you.

Thanks

the most basic quality of physicality, phenomenologically speaking, is extension. — Janus

That is arguable. What impressed the Greeks the most about nature (physis) is that it changes. Still, Aristotle might argue that change is only possible because natural bodies have parts outside of parts (are extended).

I would say that it is that but also much more than that, just as having a mind is much more than just being a subject. — Janus

Agreed.

At least, that is the way I am beginning to see it based on my reasonably fair familiarity with German Idealism and my admittedly scanty acquaintance with Scholastic thought. You seem to be making a similar point. — Janus

Yes, but my background is the reverse of yours -- I'm fairly well-versed in Platonic, Aristotelian and Augustinian and Scholastic thought, but have a sketchy knowledge of Kantian and post-Kantian European thought.

I find this passage intriguing, but I fear I am not familiar enough with the background against which you are making your suggestions to make any intelligent comment. — Janus

We're sailing in largely uncharted waters. So, I'd rely more on look-outs than charts.

I've mentioned a couple of problems. (1) In becoming aware of neurally encoded intelligibility, we have no idea at all of the neural matrix which encodes it. (2) Somehow we distinguish the object modifying our senses from the modification of our senses by the object -- even though both are encoded in a single neural representation.

The science specified by the primary nature was accordingly the one science that, under the aspect of being, treated universally of whatever is: it dealt with being qua being.

Yes. Aristotle calls First Science "theology." We only call it "metaphysics" because the book appears after the Physics in the corpus. First Science or theology is concerned with the most fundamental subject possible -- being as being.

There is a continuity in the underlying dynamics (dynamis = hyle), — Dfpolis

Which accounts for the possibility of the immortality of the soul, does it not? — Wayfarer

Hyle is a principle of physical continuity. Arguments for the immortality of the soul point out that there are human operations that do not depend on matter. The idea is that the Agent Intellect, which I am identifying with subjective awareness, makes intelligibility actually known. There is nothing in the actualization of intelligibility that necessarily depends on matter. Thus, we have a power (our awareness) that can continue to operate after our body decays.

In my person view, this is confirmed by mystical experience. I think that a very good case can be made for a direct awareness of God. If so, we have examples of awareness that do not depend on neural processing.

It cannot come from the matter because then the matter would have both the old form and the new form, at the time prior to the substantial change, and this would be contradictory. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is the argument of Parmenides that Aristotle answers with the concept of dynamic potency in hyle. Matter is never either the old or new form. It is always a principle of potency, never a principle of actuality -- that is what form is. Thus, there is no violation of the principle of contradiction.

In other words, they are seeking to describe what is. — Dfpolis

I don't see your point. You appear to have misunderstood me. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you are describing "what is," your description is based on reality. I am calling that reality, the one being described, a "law of nature."

If I am misunderstanding you, I am truly sorry. Perhaps you could correct my misunderstanding.

physicists expect things to continue to be, in the future, the way that they have been in the past, just like we expect the sun to shine in the day, and it to be dark at night. This has nothing to do with whether or not they believe that there are laws acting to ensure that this will continue, that's just your ontological assumption — Metaphysician Undercover

So, your position is that this expectation is entirely irrational -- ungrounded in reality?

I agree that there must be reasons why we expect that things will continue to be, into the future, as they have been in the past, but I disagree that the reason why we expect this is because we believe that there are laws of nature acting to ensure this. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not an argument about reality, but about what to call the aspect of reality effecting the continuing order. I am quire flexible on naming conventions. What name do you suggest/like?

We have experienced in the past, that things continue to be, into the future, as they have been in the past, except when something acts to change this, so we conclude by means of inductive reasoning, that that this will continue. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a reason why we might expect them to continue, viz. intellectual laziness (the unwillingness to consider the possibility of change). It is not a reason why they actually continue to behave as they have.

We do not expect that things will continue to be as they have been because laws of nature are acting to ensure this, and this is evident from the fact that we allow that things change. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, we recognize that nature changes. These changes have nothing whatsoever to do with us "allowing them." Since we do recognize that nature is continually changing, the constancy of the order ("laws") of nature is all the more surprising and indicative of a reality effecting that constant order.

Newton's laws refer to the activities of "forces", they do not refer to the activities of "laws". — Metaphysician Undercover

It would be best to research your sources before making claims. Let's read a bit of Newton's Principia. In the preface, he tells us "I had begun to consider the inequalities of the lunar motions, and had entered upon some other things relating to the laws and measures of gravity, ... and the figures that would be described by bodies attracted according to given laws..." [italics mine]. in presenting his famous three laws, he labels them collectively "Leges Motus," and each individually a "Lex."

Why would anyone think that the cause of uniform activity is magic? — Metaphysician Undercover

That is for you to explain -- you are the one denying that they have a natural cause.

If the conditions of existence are the same here as they are over there, then there ought to be a uniformity of activity between these two places. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only if the same logical propagators are operative in both places -- in other words only if the laws of nature are universal.

In physics initial conditions ("the conditions of existence") alone do not determine final states. To arrive at the same final states we need to apply the same dynamics (aka "laws") to both sets of initial conditions.

It is you who is suggesting that gravity is not real, not I. — Metaphysician Undercover

Please! Where have I said any such thing? To say that there is a law of gravity is not to say gravity is unreal, but that gravity acts in a consistent way over space and time -- something essential to the practice of astrophysics.

Nothing you say later in your post requires additional comment.

All the predictions of logic are true? — creativesoul

Who claims his?

When something ceases to be, or comes to be, this is, by definition, discontinuity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only a discontinuity in form, not in all relevant aspects of being. There is a continuity in the underlying dynamics (dynamis = hyle),

In other words, they are seeking to describe what is. — Dfpolis

I don't see your point. You appear to have misunderstood me. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you are describing "what is," your description is based on reality. I am calling that reality, the one being described, a "law of nature."

If I am misunderstanding you, I am truly sorry. Perhaps you could correct my misunderstanding.

physicists expect things to continue to be, in the future, the way that they have been in the past, just like we expect the sun to shine in the day, and it to be dark at night. This has nothing to do with whether or not they believe that there are laws acting to ensure that this will continue, that's just your ontological assumption — Metaphysician Undercover

So, your position is that this expectation is entirely irrational -- ungrounded in reality?

I agree that there must be reasons why we expect that things will continue to be, into the future, as they have been in the past, but I disagree that the reason why we expect this is because we believe that there are laws of nature acting to ensure this. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not an argument about reality, but about what to call the aspect of reality effecting the continuing order. I am quire flexible on naming conventions. What name do you suggest/like?

We have experienced in the past, that things continue to be, into the future, as they have been in the past, except when something acts to change this, so we conclude by means of inductive reasoning, that that this will continue. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a reason why we might expect them to continue, viz. intellectual laziness (the unwillingness to consider the possibility of change). It is not a reason why they actually continue to behave as they have.

We do not expect that things will continue to be as they have been because laws of nature are acting to ensure this, and this is evident from the fact that we allow that things change. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, we recognize that nature changes. These changes have nothing whatsoever to do with us "allowing them." Since we do recognize that nature is continually changing, the constancy of the order ("laws") of nature is all the more surprising and indicative of a reality effecting that constant order.

Newton's laws refer to the activities of "forces", they do not refer to the activities of "laws". — Metaphysician Undercover

It would be best to research your sources before making claims. Let's read a bit of Newton's Principia. In the preface, he tells us "I had begun to consider the inequalities of the lunar motions, and had entered upon some other things relating to the laws and measures of gravity, ... and the figures that would be described by bodies attracted according to given laws..." [italics mine].

Why would anyone think that the cause of uniform activity is magic? — Metaphysician Undercover

That is for you to explain -- you are the one denying that they have a natural cause.

If the conditions of existence are the same here as they are over there, then there ought to be a uniformity of activity between these two places. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only if the same logical propagators are operative in both places -- in other words only if the laws of nature are universal.

In physics initial conditions ("the conditions of existence") alone do not determine final states. To arrive at the same final states we need to apply the same dynamics (aka "laws") to both sets of initial conditions.

It is you who is suggesting that gravity is not real, not I. — Metaphysician Undercover

Please! Where have I said any such thing? To say that there is a law of gravity is not to say gravity is unreal, but that gravity acts in a consistent way over space and time -- something essential to the practice of astrophysics.

Nothing you say later in your post requires additional comment.

There were no actual universals prior to subjects thinking them. — Dfpolis

Isn't that conceptualism about universals rather than moderate realism? — Andrew M

Not unless I also denied that the universals we think have a foundation in reality. I do not. I have said that universals result from the actualization of notes of intelligibility in objects of experience. So, I am a moderate realist.

For a moderate realist the universal is immanent in the particulars, not the mind. — Andrew M

Intelligibility is the immanence of universals in the object. This immanence is potential, not actual. It is the objective power of the object to properly evoke specific universal concepts.

he one fine point here, made by Aristotle in his definition of "quantity" in Metaphysics Delta, is that there are no actual numbers independent of counting and measuring operations. — Dfpolis

I can't find this - could you quote the specific text you're thinking of there? — Andrew M

1020a "'Quantity' means that which is divisible into constituent parts, each or every one of which is by nature some one individual thing. Thus plurality, if it is numerically calculable, is a kind of quantity; and so is magnitude, if it is measurable."

It is just so funny how you repeat the standard comforting formula of words as if they could make sense.

There is "me" who sees "my mind", and even sees the "me" seeing its "mind". And what is this mind seeing. Why, its "the world". Or no. In fact its sees the one reality. Or is that "the one reality", given that reality is whatever any mind happens to make of it? I mean "it". — apokrisis

Do you have an actual argument? Can you point to an error of fact or reason here? Or does your entire critique rest on the claim that my position is "so funny," You are entitled to your sense of humor, I to my facts and analysis.

I find nothing to disagree with here, unfortunately. — Janus

I am not sure why agreement is unfortunate.

I would like to note, though, that if mind is considered in the way Spinoza does, as an attribute rather than a substance, and if extensa and cogitans are understood to be incommensurable ways of understanding organic entities, then it would be a category error to say that mental phenomena cause physical phenomena and vice versa: instead there would be a kind of parallelism between them. — Janus

I don't think i'd call mind an "attribute," but i know I wouldn't call it a "substance." I'd prefer to call it a "power" or "combination of powers." It may be nitpicking, but I also wouldn't say "phenomena" cause things. I'd say "actions" cause things. Still, I see the point you're making.

The Fundamental Abstraction doesn't partition the world into the mental and the extended, but into subjective experience and objective physicality. Of course, our experience of being a subject is an experience of having a mind, but having a mind is more than being a subject. In the same way, being objectively physical is more than being extended, and even more than being a physical state. It also includes observable orderly behavior, which is the foundation in reality for our concept <laws of nature>. I have been arguing that the laws of nature are intentional in a well-defined sense that puts them in the same genus as our committed intentions (aka acts of will).

Because Descartes got the partition boundary wrong, modern philosophy has struggled with the very question you raise: how can the mental and the physical interact? Let us be clear, it was Descartes who got this wrong. Aristotle saw ideas as arising from sensory experience and sensory experience as firmly in the physical order. He even dissected bodies to find the conduits conveying sensory signals. The Scholastics followed him in this combined view. Aquinas, for example, insisted that there could be no concept without a correlative phantasm (what we now call a bound neural representation).

Because of Descartes confusion, naturalists feel that if they show the mind depends on the brain, they have somehow reduced the mental order to the physical order. But, as I have just pointed out, the notion that human thought depends on depends on physical instrumentality goes back at least to Aristotle.

So, we must not think of "mind" as belonging to some separate, dynamically isolated order of reality. Clearly, normal thought depends on the brain, and the brain is a data processing organ and control system. On, the other hand, because of the Fundamental Abstraction prescinds from data on being a subject, the natural sciences lack the data and concepts to form judgements involving the concept <subjectivity> or <subjective awareness>. Absent such judgements, no line of argument can end with the conclusion "Therefore, we have subjective awareness." So, we cannot rationally reduce our experience of being a subject to a process fully describable by natural science.

This problem, this irreducibly, is not a problem with reality, but with the conceptual space we have chosen to employ and with naturalist's hopes and expectations for it. Clearly, our minds are integrated wholes. The brain processes data by firing neurons, emitting neurotransmitters, etc, and we are subjectively aware of some of the contents so processed. Thus, knowing involves both physical and intentional operations. In the same way, we choose (will) to attend more to one aspect of experience than another, and the corresponding physical representations are activated. So, again, in willing, our minds seamlessly combine physical and intentional operations.

May we not wonder, then, if our conceptual space is failing us? We have <idea> and <neural representation> concepts, but our <knowing> concept is not sufficiently robust to reflect the dynamics connecting these abstractions. Similarly, we have <interest> and <neural activation> concepts, but our <attending> concept misses the dynamics linking them.

This is why I've reflected on the concept of logical propagators, pointing our the generic similarity between the evolution of physical states according to the laws of nature, and the implementation of a willed goal. I think this is the key to understanding the link between willing and willed movement. Although, i have mentioned it above, we need not leave the mind to see instances of this. If our willing to attend more closely to some contents were not supported by an appropriate neural response, the relevant contents would not be activated. Thus, intentional commitments must have physical effects even to think.

How are we to understand this? If the laws of nature and committed intentions are two species of the same genus, there is no reason why our intentions cannot perturb the laws of nature. The brain has evolved as a control system, and it is the nature of control systems to use small inputs to effect large outputs. Thus, a small perturbation to the laws of nature is all that its required to effect our willed commitments.

This possibility (that human intentionality can perturb natural intentionality) is one that can be and has been investigated experimentally, with results that rise to the level of statistical certitude (z= 4.1, 18.2, 16.1, and 7+ depending on study) -- as I discuss in my book, and in my video "#22 The Mind Body Problem" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJwNSzzxhLM).

This leaves unresolved how neurally encoded contents inform our concepts.

The old definition of logic, as "the science of correct thinking" still works for me. We might be a little more explicit and say it is the science of correct thinking about reality -- because we want it to be salve veritate -- if our premises reflect reality, then we want "correct thinking" to be such that our conclusions will necessarily reflect reality.

The first thing to be noticed about this definition is that language does not enter into it. Logic is not about expressions or words. it is about how to think.

The second point is that it is about the relation between thinking and reality, so we should not be surprised that to think correctly about reality, we need to think in a way that reflects the nature of reality, of being.

As to justification: Obviously, we cannot "prove" logic because any proof would presume the validity of logical forms. But, we need not prove a proposition to know it is true. We can abstract it from reality. For example, we can reflect on our experiences of being -- abstracting away details that are not common to all existence -- in order to come to an understanding of what it is to be.

When we do this we can see that whatever is, is (the Principle of Identity), that it is impossible to both be and not be at one and the same time in one and the same way (the principle of contradiction) and that a putative reality either is, or is not (the Principle of Excluded Middle). 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.

If we think about what makes a judgement true, we will see that it reflects an underlying identity of source between subject and predicate. If I think <this ball is rubber>, is it not because the object that evokes the concept <ball> is identically the object that evokes the concept <rubber>? In other words the copula of categorical propositions expresses identity, not of concepts, but of the source of concepts.

Working through the valid forms of syllogism with this understanding, we can see how the role of identity in propositions, together with the principles of being, justifies them

You have shown me no connection between my understanding that we know the world from a unique perspective, and the possibility of performing counting and/or measuring operations on all that we know. — Dfpolis

Hah. Your replies depend on such diligent misrepresentation of my arguments that it is pointless pushing them further. — apokrisis

I have done my best to understand your position and arguments. My present conjecture is that by "measure" you do not mean an operation that produces a number, but "observe." I have given you a number of chances to clarify this, but you have not done so.

So of course the nature of a sign or act of measurement is quite different at each of these levels. — apokrisis

I see no clear relation between the nature of a sign and the nature of an act of measurement. Certainly we use signs to record measurements, but we use signs in many, many cases with no relation to measurement.

As a scientist, you will know how a logical structuring of your perception results in you literally seeing a different world than before — apokrisis

No. I would see the same world with greater attention to detail, not a different world. As philosopher, I recognize that my representation of the world is only a projection of reality -- a dimensionally diminished map. So, I am not surprised, nor do I think I am dealing with a new reality, when some new dimension is added to my representation -- when, for example, I learn to recognize the difference between African and Indian elephants.

So you can't escape the fact that all mind is modelling. — apokrisis

This is a very vague and questionable statement. First, my mind is not only information (which you might call "models" and Aristotle calls the "passive intellect"), but the capacity to be aware of that information (the "agent intellect"), and the capacity to direct my attention and other actions to effect ends (the will).

Second, with regard to the information itself: Do I have instruments of thought such as concepts, judgements and chains of reasoning that are distinct from their reference? Of course. Do any of my instruments of thought exhaust reality? Of course not. Are these instruments all "models" in the sense of including constructs covering areas of ignorance? Of course not. Do I have any such constructs? Yes. Do I have models that include both accurate information and constructs bridging ignorance? Certainly. Is that all I have in my mind? Certainly not.

You see things "properly" when it comes to natural phenomena, in contrast to the ill-educated layman you were just before. — apokrisis

There is nothing "improper" in having an <elephant> concept while not having distinct <African elephant> and <Indian elephant> concepts -- unless you are in a role that requires understanding these distinctions. Claiming otherwise may boost one's ego, but it does not reflect a rational understanding of what is proper. What is "proper" is what is required by your circumstances.

All human understanding is limited. So, there is no need to apologize for limited knowledge, unless those limitations are the result of being closed to reality. The relevant question is: Is our knowledge adequate for attaining our goals.

But it seems - your presentation is confusing - that you are happy to collapse this triadic psychological process to a dualistic mysticism. — apokrisis

I have no idea what you're talking about. I assume the triad is Peirce's. As we have not discussed my understanding of signs, I don't understand how you can pass any rational judgement on it. Also, I have repeatedly said human beings are intrinsic unities, not dualist compounds.

We look and we see the data that is there. — apokrisis

You seem not to have internalized anything i have said.

The mind has just regressed in familiar homuncular fashion — apokrisis

Who have you been reading? I have made no appeal to a homunculus.

But what world is this "mind" now in that it can see both inwards and outwards? — apokrisis

There is only one reality. If you would reflect on it, you would find that your mind is not only aware of the elephant you are seeing, but the fact that you are seeing it. If you find this puzzling, simply accept it as a contingent fact of reality. If it does not fit your theory, then your theory does not fit the facts.

Thank you for the lucid explanation, no further questions at this point. — Wayfarer

You are quite welcome.

Your ramblings are rather meaningless until we define substantial change. — Metaphysician Undercover

By "substantial change" Aristotle means generation (in which a new form comes to be), and corruption (in which a form ceases to be), as opposed to accidental change in which a thing retains its essence while its accidents change.

I rejected your earlier definition because it allowed discontinuity.

I take it that all you mean by this is that what you term "awareness" (which I would call 'reflexive self-consciousness' to distinguish it from animal awareness) cannot be adequately explained in terms of sheer physics? I would agree with that and say that this is also true of biology in general. — Janus

Yes, I mean that subjective awareness (as distinct from medical consciousness), is outside of the competence of physics because the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science leaves behind andy and all data on intentionality.

Biology is also outside of the competence of physics, for a related, but slightly different, reason. When we are doing physics, we abstract aware the data contextualizing the entities (e.g., electrons) we are considering. Meanwhile, the core concern of biology is part of the very contextual data physics abstracts away. Physics allows any number of structures to be possible, but biology is concerned with actual living structures and their interactions. Because information is not possiblity but the reduction of possibility, physics does not have the information that constitutes biology.

Or are you suggesting that it is part of some separate (supernatural or transcendent) order? If you are asserting the latter, then I can't see how you should not be classed as a substance dualist in the Cartesian sense. — Janus

"Supernatural" is an ill-defined term of opprobrium in naturalism. Unless you define "natural" clearly, it is hard to define "supernatural." So, if you're identifying as "nature" the subject area of the natural sciences, then since the Fundamental Abstraction excludes data on intentionality, you could say that intentionality is "supernatural." But, if you define "nature" as the object of human experience, then intentionality is completely natural.

I am also quite wary of "separate." To me it implies either physical distance, or dynamic independence. I do not say how we can justify thinking of intentionality as either. As intentional objects are not measurable, the concept of physical separation is inapplicable. As we form concepts by experiencing physical reality, and our commitments find fruition in physical behavior, I do not see how we can say that the physical and intentional orders are "separate."

They are, however, distinct: intentional concepts are not physical concepts.

I certainly do not see myself as a substance dualist. We each a single, unified being, but a being that is able to act both physically and intentionally. The fact that we can form disjoint concepts of physicality and intentionality does not mean that these concepts have separate foundations in reality.

Consider a red rubber ball. It is an adequate foundation for the concepts <red>. <rubber> and <sphere>, but the disjoint nature of these concepts does not justify a triadic theory of toys.

If reflexive self-consciousness is dependent on, and evolved along with, language, and linguistic capability confers survival advantages (which it obviously does), then I don't see why reflexive self-consciousnesses could not have evolved. — Janus

Language does give us an important evolutionary advantage. Still, one of my arguments against epiphenomenalism is that if consciousness can have no physical effects, we could not speak of it -- for we could form no neural representation of it. So, my argument is about the inadequacy of physicalist assumptions in explaining it -- not against evolutionary selection per se.

A related issue is that for evolution to select awareness, it has to first arrise. As Dennett points out in Consciousness Explained a physicalist model explaining the data of consciousness is impossible

I know some physicists, and they do not practise physics as if the descriptive laws of physics represent some "laws of nature"[. They work to understanding existing laws of physics and establish new ones, without concern for whether there is such a thing as laws of nature. Like I said, this is an ontological concern. — Metaphysician Undercover

Effectively, you are saying that, regardless of their misguided philosophical beliefs, they practice physics as if there are laws operative in nature. When "They work to ... establish new ones," are they making up the new laws out of whole cloth -- as a fiction writer would -- or are they looking at the results of experiments and observations to see how nature actually operates? If they wish to retain their positions, I am sure they are doing the later. In other words, they are seeking to describe what is.

Further, when they posit a new or improved law, do they merely see it as describing the results of past experiments and observations, or do they expect it to describe future phenomena? All the physicists I've worked with expect the latter. And if you ask if this is a rational expectation or a baseless faith position, surely they would say it is entirely rational, i.e based on some reason. Certainly they are not such egotists as to think that they, or the description they have formulated, is the reason why nature will continue to operate in accord with the order it exhibited previously. So, despite any errant philosophical views, they expect nature to continue to conform to their description, not irrationally, or because of an extrinsic reason, but for reasons intrinsic to nature -- reasons we call "laws of nature."

Why would you think that this law of physics represents a law of nature, rather than thinking that this law represents a description of how the activity of matter is affected by something called gravity?" — Metaphysician Undercover

These are not contradictory views. We can project the same phenomena into different conceptual spaces and so give differing, non-contradictory accounts.

Why do I say that the concept <law of nature> is instantiated here? Because the phenomenon is not a "one of." Similar phenomena, exhibiting the same underlying order, occur through space and time. That is how Newton came to understand that the laws we formulate here, in the sublunary world, are universal -- operative throughout nature. Of course, we can forget Newton's great insight, but then we have no rational ground for thinking we understand the dynamics by which the universe developed or life evolved. If the order we describe here is not universal, anything could have happened at any time -- and we'd never know. It is only by positing that the same laws act now as in the past that we are able to understand the time-development of the universe.

Still, when we speak of "gravity" in physics, we are not just saying "things fall," but that of all the possible ways of falling, actual falling always follows a unique, mathematically describable, pattern. Since information is the reduction of possibility, the the exclusion of other possible patterns tells us that actual falling is informed. Informed by what? In your thinking, by nothing -- it happens by magic. For those with a more scientific turn of mind, it is informed by a determinate potential, an intrinsic intentionality, that generations have thought fit to call "the law of gravity."

The fact that laws of physics can be extrapolated, projected, to a time when there was no human beings, doesn't support your claim that these artificial laws represent natural laws. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, it could be magic? Yes, if we reject the entire structure of scientific thought -- based on the thesis that all phenomena have an adequate explanation. As I've pointed out, rejecting this principle allows one to say that any confirming or falsifying observation or experimental result is a "brute fact" that "just happened" -- and so of no value in understanding the structure of reality. For example, on your magical account, the results of the 1909 Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment could be a "brute fact" requiring no cause. Fortunately, Ernest Rutherford rejected this nonsense and saw that they could be caused by a dense atomic nucleus.

The laws of physics are descriptions with very wide (general) application, so they are generalizations. In order that they are real, true laws of physics, it is necessary that the things which they describe (gravity, Pauli's exclusion, etc.,) are real. There is no need to assume that there is a "law of nature" which corresponds. That is just an ontological assumption. — Metaphysician Undercover

First, I have been careful to distinguish "the laws of physics" which are approximate human descriptions from "the laws of nature" that they describe.

Second, I would challenge you to test your suggestion that gravity is not real by stepping off a tall building, but charity prevents me from doing so. Remember, "real" does not mean "substantial." The real need not stand alone. It can be an intelligible aspect of something else.

Third, it is metaphysically necessary that whenever a potential is actualized, it is actualized by a cause adequate to actualize it.

So, your claim is that physics is a species of fiction writing. — Dfpolis

You've obviously misunderstood what I've been saying. I hope that I've made it clearer for you. — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand that you see the laws of physics as generalizations of past events -- events that are similar, not for any objective reason, but purely by chance. I infer that you see their success in new cases as equally uncaused and fortuitous. Thus, if you began floating instead being weighted down by gravity, or if your keyboard disappeared in midword, you would see no deficiency in physics -- because you see no reason why the past behavior of nature foreshadows its future behavior.

the footprint (which is what you are measuring) is quite real. — Dfpolis

No it is not, that's the point, it is not a footprint, therefore "the footprint" is not real. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is pettifogging. You called the depression you were measuring a "footprint." I accepted this, not as a statement of origin, but as a naming convention. My point was not that you were measuring a footprint, but that, whatever you call it, what you were measuring is real. If there were no depression, you could not measure the depression. Even if you do not name it, it is real.

No, by my logic his "blue eyes" do not exist. Where's the nonsense in that? — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not what you claimed earlier, viz. that what you were measuring was unreal because you mischaracterized it as a "footprint." Naming conventions have no affect on the reality of what is named.

I take a ruler and lay it beside something, measuring that thing. Why do you claim that it is necessary for that thing to interact with me in order for me to measure it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Because if the object you are measuring did not scatter light into your eyes you would not know what to measure.

The existence of a medium is completely immaterial to the question of interaction. A number of media lay between us, still we are interacting. Media are only relevant to how we are interacting.

I think from my cursory reading of the texts that Aristotle's 'Agent Intellect' amounts to something considerably more than 'awareness'. Again, animals have awareness and are the subjects of experience, but humans are distinguished by rational intelligence (and I hope the definition of the human as a 'rational animal' is not controversial.) — Wayfarer

Animals have what we might call "medical consciousness" -- an objectively observable state of responsiveness. We have no evidence that other animals have consciousness as subjective awareness. The only evidence that we humans do is our own personal experience, the testimony of others and reasoning by analogy.

Animals don't provide us with accounts of their own subjectivity and it seems to me that purely neuro-physical model of animal psychology is adequate to explain their behavior. I do not claim to know that animals don't have subjective awareness. I just do not see any reason to believe they do. This may seem hardhearted, as we empathize with animals, but empathy is not evidence.

Returning to Aristotle, let me ask you: in your experience, when do sensations pass from merely intelligible to actually known? Is it not when we become aware of them? If so, then what we call "awareness" is what Aristotle calls the nous poetikos. In focusing our awareness on various aspects of the sensible representation, are we not actualizing different notes of intelligibility? Abstracting different concepts?

I am happy to call us rational animals. Reason, as opposed to neural data processing, requires us to be aware of the data we are processing.

what is it that makes objects intelligible. — Wayfarer

In a different post, I suggested (based on Plato's Sophist) that we explicate "existence" as the bare ability to act in reality. So that anything that can act in any way exists. We can also reflect that any "thng" that can never so anything (can't resist penetration, scatter light, etc., etc.) is indistinguishable from no thing.

Similarly, we can think of essences as specifying an object's possible acts. For example, humans have immanent activity (so we are alive), are able to sense, reason, beget, etc. and it is these capacities that define us as human.

In sensing things our interaction with them modifies our neural state. Their modification of our neural state is (identically) our neural representation of them. Because of this dual attribution (its action on us = our representation of it), we can think of the sensory object as existentially penetrating us.

This puts data about the object's essence in us -- because its action on our nervous system is one of the possible modes of action specified by its essence.

When we become aware of the contents of the neural representation, we become aware of some of what the object can do, and so are informed (in part) about the object's essence.

That is how I see the object's intelligibility (its essence) informing us.

There are at least two profound mysteries here:
1. What we are aware of is not our neural state. We are unaware what neurons are firing or even that we have neurons. What we are aware of is the intelligible contents encoded in the neural representation -- but not all of them:
2. The same neural state that encodes data about the object also encodes data about the state of our sensory system. For example, the state encoding the image of an apple also, and inseparably, encodes information on the activation of rods and cones in our retina. Yet, when we become aware of the neurally encoded contents, it is not information on our retinal state that we know, but information on the object we're looking at.
I can think of no physical mechanism that can separate these two kinds of inseparably encoded data. It seems to require an additional factor -- something connected with "apple" data that is not connected with "retina" data. It is almost as if we can make a direct, intentional connection with the apple as the target of our interest.

I hope this helps answer your question.

But then, that is rather like Brennan's account that you previously criticized. So here: — Wayfarer

OK. To be clear, I am not denying that awareness/ the agent intellect, can and does produce universal ideas. I'm saying it can do more -- that we can also be aware of particulars -- for if we did not have the capacity to grasp both the universal and the particular at the same time. with the same faculty, we could never form judgements like <John is human> -- joining a particular and a universal.

At stake in particular was in what way Aristotle's account of an incorporeal soul might contribute to understanding of the nature of eternal life.

Yes. The issue was, was the agent intellect part of the human person (which grounded an argument for immortality) or was it outside of the human person (God making intelligibility actually known) which would undercut the argument for human immortality. I see this as resolved (in favor of an intrinsic power) by taking the phenomenological approach I'm suggesting.

Knowledge (epistēmē), in its being-at-work, is the same as the thing it knows -- Aristotle

This is the point i was driving at above in identifying our neural representation with the object's action. The same reasoning applies to knowing: The subject knowing the object is identically the object being known by the subject. This identity underwrites an ontological inseparability.

Whereas at this point, I'm at a loss here to see how your account differs from today's mainstream orthodoxy of evolutionary psychology. — Wayfarer

First, I do not see awareness as belonging to the physical order.
a. For all of the standard reasons you quoted from the Catholic Encyclopedia.
b. Because it is excluded from the physical order by the Fundamental Abstraction of natural science.
c. Because it can separate (via abstraction) the physically inseparable.
d. Thoughts, as mental signs are radically different from physical signs such as brain states.
e. Because Daniel Dennett showed that no physical model can explain the data of consciousness.
f. Because some instances of awareness are devoid of physical content, and so not dependent on neural representations. (I'm thinking of the vast literature on mystical experience and especially of W. T Stace's phenomenology of introvertive mystical experiences.)

Second, there is no viable model for the evolution of awareness.
a. There is no physical model of awareness, so there is no plausible mechanism an evolutionary theorist can work to explain.
b. To be consistent, physicalists either have to:
i. Deny the reality of consciousness (Eliminative materialism) -- in which case there is nothing to evolve, or
ii. See awareness as an epiphenomenon -- along for the ride, but having no causal efficacy. But, if it has no causal efficacy, it can have no effect on reproductive fitness. That leaves evolution with no way of selecting it. Thus, evolution cannot explain the advent of awareness.

There are many more differences (discussed at length in my book) but these should give you an idea.

Something like pattern recognition, that the organism has evolved all the better to cope with the exigencies of survival? — Wayfarer

This is a common confusion. Proficiency in pattern recognition and other data processing techniques can certainly evolve, but "pattern recognition" involves no actual "recognition" -- no awareness of the data being processed. To have an idea, not only do we need content (which can be neurally encoded and processed), we also need awareness of that content. We have no physical model of awareness, and no hint as to how to discover such a model. (David Chalmers' "Hard Problem of Consciousness.")

And, you can offer no a posteriori reason because your methodological dogmatism prevents you form considering, let alone judging, the data of self-awareness. — Dfpolis

The reason would be that I have studied the relevant neuroscience and psychology. Self-awareness is a cultural meta-skill, a gift of language. And so all its "data" is socially constructed. That is the place I would start on that subject. — apokrisis

I have also studied neuroscience and modern psychology, and found nothing in them to suggest that introspection was dispensable. So, being open to reality, I accept introspective ans well as physical data. Data selection is a great sin in science, but here you are trying to defend it.

As i note in the sentence you quoted, you are in no position to judge the data of self-awareness because you refuse to examine it. When I studied science, we started with observational data and used it to judge theories. Apparently your education had you to start with theories and them use it to reject data.

Neither the a priori selection of data nor giving primacy to theory over data reflect the scientific worldview. Instead, what I see in your response is a worldview laden with unexamined cultural presupposition. You state your faith position that "Self-awareness is a cultural meta-skill, a gift of language," without offering a shred of evidence or a line of argumentation. Then you follow up with the dogmatic non sequitur that "all its 'data' is socially constructed.

Let's see why this view is absurd. We may begin by asking how language works. Contrary to your apparent presupposition, it does not magically transfer ideas from speaker to listener. Rather, it causes the listener to re-construct the thought the speaker is trying to convey by reflecting on her own experience. If you tell me that a musical passage is redolent of Haydn, and I have never experienced Haydn's music, I have no idea what you mean. Thus, the effectiveness of language is based on shared experience.

Thus, were i to speak to you of "awareness" or "self-awareness" and you had no experience of either, you wouldn't suddenly develop a baseless theory of subjective experience (as you want us to believe). You'd nave no idea what I'm talking about. Thus, your claim that "self-awareness is a cultural meta-skill, a gift of language" is not only unsupported, it assumes a magical theory of language,

Moving on to your dogma that "all its 'data' is socially constructed." This does not follow even if we assume that self-awareness is "a cultural meta-skill." A skill is an acquired proficiency in doing something. If I'm learning microbiology, I may be able to look into a microscope without much training, but it is only with the acquisition of our culturally-transmitted scientific heritage, i.e, with a specific skill, that I will be able to identify what I'm looking at as Yersinia pestis. Does this mean all data on Y. pestis "is socially constructed"? Of course not. So, your conclusion is a non sequitur.

Return to the fundamental question, what rational justification do you have for ignoring the data of subjective experience?

The natural world for us is an umwelt - a system of meaningful sign. — apokrisis

If you mean the natural world in se, it is more than, and metaphysically prior to, the umwelt, If you mean the world as understood by us, we certainly do understand it via the instrumentality of essential signs. Language uses instrumental, not essential, signs and so is of minor interest in relation to nature either in se, or as understood.

But still, the mind is the product of forming that model of the world. — apokrisis

This is at best confused, at worst simply wrong. If you mean by "mind" the contents we know, then yes, they necessarily enter into our model of reality, but that is a non-standard meaning of "mind." If you mean our capacity to be aware, process information and direct our activity, mind is clearly ontologically and temporally prior to the contents entering our models.

We experience our own umwelt - .... — apokrisis

This, again, is confused. We do not primarily experience our experience (the umwelt). We primary experience the objective world from our own standpoint. The totality of that experience is our umwelt. Of course, being self-aware, we also know that we are experiencing the world.

... - our experience of a world with "us" in it. — apokrisis

This is different from "experiencing the umwelt." I said earlier that knowing is a subject-object relation. So, of course we experience the world with our self in it. (There's no warrant for scare quotes.) Still, the primary object of experience is objective reality, not our experience of objective reality. It's simply that our experience of reality is not exhaustive, but limited.

There is an irreducible complexity here. A triadic Peircean story. — apokrisis

What might that "irreducible complexity" be? Instrumental signs are physical structures. Objects are either intelligible aspects of reality or mental constructs, and interpretants are thoughts evoked in an intellectual subject. Which is "irreducible"? Which cannot be further analyzed?

And that is why I stress the necessity of being able to cash out any concept in acts of measurement — apokrisis

How does the Peircean triad entail the necessity of measurement? This seems more like free association than logic.

Look, I see an elephant. It is grey. It is angry.

A chaos of physical possibility has just been reduced to a collection of signs that have meaning for me. — apokrisis

What "signs" are you thinking of? If they are your thoughts, they do not fit Peirce's analysis of instrumental signs. Your thought of the elephant before you is your awareness of the dynamic presence of that very elephant. Your neural representation of the elephant is identically the elephant's modification of your neural state and that iws what I'm calling the elephant's "dynamic presence." So, it is not a "sign" of the elephant you're aware of, but the elephant acting on you that you're am aware of.

Again, if the "signs" you are thinking of are your thoughts, there's no difference between those signs and their "interpretants." Here, sign and interpretant are identical. So, the triad becomes a dyad -- meaning that our thoughts are a different kind of sign from those considered by Peirce. But, if that is so, it is an error to apply Peircean semiology to thoughts.

The satisfaction of theories are always negotiable. — apokrisis

This is baloney. No amount of "negotiation" will make Martian "canals" into evidence of Martian civilization. Your example depends on a linguistic ambiguity that can be resolved with adequate care. Posits stated in the same words, but with different meanings, are not the same theory, but different theories. Claiming they are the same is the fallacy of equivocation, not "negotiation."

And qualities are only intelligible to the degree they can be particularised or quantified. — apokrisis

This is a faith claim, not an argument. Of course only particulars are intelligible, because there are no substantial universals to be intelligible, but that does not imply that only quantities are meaningful.

Don't you have an actual reason for your claim that only quantities are meaningful? (I note that the claim itself is not a quantity, and so entails its own meaninglessness.)

You can't actually have a clear conception of something - like intentionality - unless you can point to its specific located examples. — apokrisis

Another faith claim -- which is manifest nonsense. Mathematicians have the clear ideas such as <irrational number> and <Hilbert space>, but there isn't an example of either on display for your examination. I have a clear idea <habitual mendacity>, but it's exampples are not confined to specific locations.

Induction from the particular to the general and then deduction from the general back to the particular again. — apokrisis

You seem to have missed the difference between induction and abstraction, despite my pointing it out.

If "intentionality" is an intelligible construct, you will be able to present the specific instances which support the general case - the acts of measurement which make sense of the claims of the theory. — apokrisis

1. Intentionality is not a construct. It is an idea abstracted from intelligible instances.
2. I have given specific examples. Here are more: Jill knowing she's sitting, John hoping for continued good health, Mary willing to go to school, etc.
3. Providing examples is not an act of measurement.
4. A concept is not a theory. It is not even a judgement.

our subjective self is what emerges along with the objective world as the result of there being that modelling relation — apokrisis

Subjective awareness does not "emerge" from modeling. It is our objective capacity to know intelligible contents. if we lacked subjective awareness, we could not know the world, let alone model it. What can emerge is the concept of being a subject, but the emergence of concepts is not the emergence of the reality conceptualized.

an organismic level of semiosis — apokrisis

This is word salad. There is no actual signing without agents creating and/or understanding signs. So there is no "non-organismic level of semiosis."

This is where the dualism normally starts - the mind becoming something actually separate from the view it is taking. — apokrisis

Anyone who thinks the mind is "separate" from the objects it knows has undercut the very basis of knowing -- a dynamic interaction of subject and object.

There is nothing intrinsically dualistic in abstracting concepts of subject and object, for different concepts can be grounded in the same, unified object. It is only when one forgets this, as Descartes did, that dualism results.

Our percepts are already only a self-interested system of signs. — apokrisis

This is certainly not the view of Peirce. Signs do not know as selves know, nor are they capable of having interests, They are merely instruments of knowledge.

If you actually do take an ecological and embodied view as you say, then you ought to find it natural that intentionality can be quantified. — apokrisis

You have shown me no connection between my understanding that we know the world from a unique perspective, and the possibility of performing counting and/or measuring operations on all that we know.