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.

If according to your philosophy, all knowledge is gained by experience, then dogs, horses and cows ought to be able to speak and count — Wayfarer

Really?

I assume that the unstated premise here is that dogs, horses and cows know as we know, If not, your claim makes little sense.

I think that the behavior of known non-human species can be explained by the known mechanisms of neural data processing -- without positing that they aware in the sense that makes intelligible contents known contents. If you have evidence to the contrary, I would be glad to consider it.

Neuroscience has done a good job in showing how neural nets can acquire and employ information. Their models do not require a knowing subject or an agent intellect because they do not involve the formation or deployment of concepts.

You seem to think that I'm claiming that sensory experience alone is sufficient for concept formation. I make no such claim. I have always said that concepts require the operation of awareness, Aristotle's Agent Intellect (nous poetikos).

That judgment is an IBE — Relativist

I have looked up "IBE" and still have no idea what you are referring to.

The same process is involved with historiography (which is also unfalsifiable, in principle). — Relativist

Which shows that there are rational approaches to reality other than the hypothetico-deductive method.

What you are "aware of" is belief. — Relativist

I can't imagine why you feel competent to comment on what I am aware of.

If I am aware of reality, most people in our culture would call that "knowing" reality.

If I choose to treat a proposition as true, most people in our culture would call that "a belief" -- especially if I did not have sufficient grounds to know it is true.

Even if your belief has sufficient warrant for knowledge, it is still belief. — Relativist

Knowledge is not a species of belief. I can know things are true, but chose not to believe the, especially if believing them would cause me pain. Again, Decartes tells us he was in his chamber when he was doing his philosophical reflection, but chose to doubt it -- thus knowing, but not believing. That would be impossible were knowledge a species of belief, as many contemporary philosophers teach.

Although the terms have many analogous uses, primarily, knowing is an act of intellect, and believing is an act of will. That is why Descartes' methodological doubt does not have anyting to say about knowing properly so-called.

there are indeed contradictory metaphysical accounts — Relativist

I never doubted that. The question is, are there contradictory accounts based on sound methodology?

in spite of the fact they are constructed just as you describe - based on "awareness of how the world interacts" with the metaphysician — Relativist

I am still waiting to see the sound arguments leading to contradictions.

You are claiming that in certain types of change, "substantial change", there is a need to assume this "active potency". — Metaphysician Undercover

No, Aristotle is claiming that. I'm merely agreeing.

In natural living things, the source of substantial change is the soul of the living being. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, Aristotle considers this possibility in Physics i, 9 and rejects it, because the form of a thing is simply its actuality and what makes a thing actual (its form) can't be the same thing that makes it not actual when it ceases to be. That would be a contradiction.

Nor can it be the new form, because the new form doesn't exist yet.

My interpretation is that substantial change, generation and corruption, whereby one thing ceases to be, or another thing begins being, requires a soul. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, when coal burns and becomes CO2 and ash, where is the soul?

Matter, or hyle, is the principle by which the continuity of substance is understood — Metaphysician Undercover

No. It is the principle of continuity in substantial change. You need to read Aristotle's discussion of the kinds of change. In it, substantial change and accidental change are equally changes.

I watched the second video, and noticed you asserting definitions of "existence" (power to act) and "essence" (specification of possible acts). These can be defined differently but equally plausibly, and this will lead one in different directions. — Relativist

You can define terms in any number of ways. Definitions are not claims about reality. They're ways of clarifying our meaning. If you use a different, incompatible, definition, it does not make either of us wrong. It just means that we're discussing different things.

The coherence of truth derives from the self-consistency of reality.

Yes, but the truths of reality are not apparent, and much of reality may be hidden to us. Consequently we need to apply good epistemology to identify what should be believed, and when we should withhold judgment. — Relativist

We agree.

I'm sorry, but that's absurd - you have some beliefs about metaphysics, and you draw inferences from those beliefs. — Relativist

No, I have some awareness of how the world interacts with me and I draw conclusions based on that awareness.

You make a good case for looking beyond coherence -- considering adequacy to reality instead.

Instead?! Surely you misspoke. — Relativist

Conclusions adequate to reality will automatically be self-consistent. So, self-consistency is not a separate consideration.

Note that this establishes a potential basis for abductively (as IBE) judging metaphysical claims. — Relativist

Falsification is not abduction. It is the basis for a sound deduction by the modus tolens,

I prefer Kant's 'transcendental idealism' — Wayfarer

I can't think of a single reason to support Kant's Transcendental Idealism. He invented it to avoid Hume's very sound analysis showing that time-sequenced ("accidental") causality is not necessary. Then, having done so, he invented anomalies that would not otherwise exist (such as the opposition between a supposedly necessary determinism and free will). It's better to go back to the Aristotelian moderate realism and avoid all these confusions.

But what scientific realists advocate is actually what Kant would describe as 'transcendental realism', i.e. the implicit acceptance that the world would appear just as it is, were there no observer. — Wayfarer

I would call that naive realism. Just because a Fuji apple, illuminated by by white light. has the objective capacity to evoke a red-quale in me does not mean that the apple has objective "redness." If I illuminate a "red" apple with green light, it will look black.

So, what our sensory interactions with the world reveals is the world's objective capacity to interact with our senses. This capacity is real, but potential until the world is actually interacting with our senses. So, it is not that we impose forms of sensation orforms of thought on the world. It is just that we activate some of the world's potential modes of interaction, and not others. We don't sense how Fuji apples scatter infrared our untraviolet light because we can't see infrared our untraviolet light. So, we know reality, but we don't know reality exhaustively.

We can reflect this in formulating our ontology by saying that existence is convertible with the capacity to act in reality, and essence is the specification of an object's capacity to act. Since actual sensory interactions give us information on (but do not exhaust) an objects possible acts, they inform us about the essences of things without beginning to approach divine omniscience. Necessarily, sensation also informs us of its object's existence.

Thus, phenomenal sensations put us in touch with noumenal reality, just not exhaustively.

But the entire vast universe described by science, is still organised around an implicit perspective - in our case, the human perspective, which imposes a scale and an order on what would otherwise be formless and meaningless chaos. — Wayfarer

I certainly agree that our knowledge is a projection (dimensionally diminished map) of reality. it is limited by perspective, by our limited sensory modalities and by the conceptual space we employ in representation and analysis. That does not mean that we impose order on nature.

First, we are not "apart" from nature, but part of nature. So, it is silly to say that order is not found in nature because we are its source. Since we are part of nature, necessarily, any order found in us is order found in nature.

Second, I see no evidence that we are the sole or even the main source of the order we find in nature. If order is found in our sensory life, then it is found in the interactions informing our sensory life. And those interactions are informed as much by their objects as by their subjects. How can completely disordered objects participate in orderly interactions?

Meaning is a semantic relation. Prescinding from theological considerations, it is a truism that there is no meaning apart from agents such as ourselves able to impart and interpret meaning. This is not a statement about insensate reality, but about the nature of semantics.

"Form" is quite different than "meaning" because it is not semantic, but constitutive, Form specifies an object's actuality -- the specific ways it can act here and now. If different kinds of objects did not have different forms, they would not interact with us in different ways. If an object did not exhibit continuity of form, it could not interact with us in similar ways over time. So, forms, unlike meanings, do not depend on subject-object interactions for their reality. They are ontologically prior to such interactions. If an object could not interact with us in this way, it cannot interact with us in this way.

for it has passed through the machinery and manufacture of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time.

Of course, there is no evidence that the human mind imposes "forms" as those of space, time and causality. So, before bringing in the vast structure of post-Kantian thought, you need to show that its foundations are deeper than Kant's unwillingness to accept Hume's counter-cultural observations.

Whether it exists, or the mode in which it exists, is exactly what is at issue. As you no doubt know, this question is at the heart of the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation' which says there's not an electron lurking within the probability wave until we measure it; the probability wave is all there is, until the measurement is made. — Wayfarer

There are a lot of mutually incompatible conjectures that call themselves "the Copenhagen Interpretation," and even more interpretations that do not. I assign no evidentiary weight to the many "interpretations" of quantum theory. I am happy to discuss the actual physics of the matter -- as supported by observational data and the successful application of mathematical formulae.

Quantum physics uses a deterministic formalism for everything other than observations. I have good, physical, reasons to think that the relative unpredictability of observations is epistic, not ontological. (it can be understood by modelling detection events using multi-electron models in a fashion consistent with other successful applications of the same physics.

But you have to know what 2 denotes - in other words, you have to be able to count - before you can make any deductions about the composition of water molecules. — Wayfarer

That's exactly what i said. The concept <2> arises from counting operations, not from the mystical apprehension of a Platonic Idea, *2*.

It's the fact that 2 = 2 and always has an invariant meaning that makes it a universal. — Wayfarer

What makes <2> universal is that it applies equally to all real and possible sets of two elements.

'thought is an inherently universalising activity - were materialism true, then you literally could not think'. — Wayfarer

Almost. Abstraction is universalizing, Awareness of a particular is also a form of thought, and is not universalizing.

I have no problem with the notion of incorporeal reality. I have a problem with substantial universals and with exemplar ideas.

No I don't think there's any surprise here. I know some physicists, and they recognize that the laws of physics are descriptive principles based in inductive reason, and not representative of some "laws of nature" which are operating to cause matter to behave the way that it does. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have already said that the laws of physics are human descriptions. I agree that these are arrived at inductively. When I say "laws of nature" I am not discussing the laws of physics, but that which they approximately describe -- the cause of the particular phenomena that are the evidentiary basis of our inductions.

However, when one goes on to say the laws of physics are "not representative of some 'laws of nature' which are operating to cause matter to behave the way that it does" one is making a claim inadequate to the actual practice of physics. For example, we explain the time-development of the cosmos in terms of the laws of nature. This makes no sense if the only "laws" are descriptions formulated by modern thinkers. Why? Because such laws did not exist during the epochs of the universe they are supposed to have effected. It is also difficult to see how human descriptions could effect purely physical process, even at the present time. Finally, descriptions that describe no reality are, by definition, fictions. If we're willing to imbue fictional descriptions with explanatory power, we should all study J. K. Rowling more closely.

Thus, unless the laws of physics are more than fictions, there is no reason to think that physics has any application to reality. I conclude that those holding these views are voicing philosophical dogma rather than reflections on the actual practice of physics.

There is no basis in reality to assume that there are corresponding active laws of nature causing the occurrence of what is described. — Metaphysician Undercover

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

let's say that there is a descriptive law which says that if the sky is clear, it is blue. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a hypothesis contrary to fact. In fact, it is not even a good generalization. Clear night skies are not blue.

Do you have an actual example you can use to make your point?

the reason why the sky is blue is not that there is a law acting to make it that way. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is false. We explain why the sky is blue by applying laws dealing with the scattering of light, which are based on Maxwell's electrodynamics.

The activity here, which produces "the observed behaviour of matter" is the activity of observation. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confused. Generally, our observations inform us of activity that happened before we observe it (in the case of astrophysics, often billions of years before).

Our observational interactions usually play an insignificant role in the activity being observed. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as quantum observations.

Hallucinatory things may be measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

First. I am not sure what you have in mind here. How do you measure a hallucination?

Second, hallucinations have a basis in reality. It's just not the basis that normally produces the "image." For example, instead of being caused by a pink elephantine animal, the image may be due to an intoxication induced neural lesion

So just because one provides a measurement of something, this does not mean that the measured thing is real. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, you're saying we can have hallucinations with no real cause?

Imagine that I find Bigfoot's print in my backyard and I take a measurement of that footprint. So I have a measurement of Bigfoot's footprint, but the marking I measured wasn't really a footprint from Bigfoot, it was caused by something else. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not sure how you confusing "something else" with Bigfoot advances your case. I never said you had to know what it was that you were measuring, just that it had to be real to be measured. In your example, the footprint (which is what you are measuring) is quite real.

A faulty description of the thing measured means that the measurement is of a non-existent thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is nonsense. A man robs a store. On the way out, he passes height marks by the door and is measured to be 6'2" tall. A witness says he has blue eyes, but really he has brown eyes. By your logic, the robber does not exist.

You are completely ignoring the creative, imaginative, aspect of ideas. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. I've said that we often bridge our ignorance with constructs that are not adequately supported by evidence.

Ideas are an act of the subject, not an act of the "objective features of reality". — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, ideas result from a subject-object interaction, not from either in isolation.

"Measurement" is an act carried out by the measurer. — Metaphysician Undercover

"Measurement" is an act carried out by the measurer. The thing being measured need not be active at all, in order for it to be measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

Please explain how this would work in a concrete case. I want to measure my grandson's height. I press a ruler down on the top of his head, and his head presses back (Newtons' third law) as I mark the wall. I want to measure the width of a fabric. I lay a tape measure across it, and compare its marking to the edge revealed by light the fabric scatters into my eyes. I want to weigh out a pound of sugar. I put it on a scale and it presses the pan down against the spring as the dial moves. I want to measure the momentum of a bullet. I shoot it into a ballistic pendulum, and see how far back the bullet moves it.

So, what is your counter example?

you describe it as an act of the thing being measured rather than an act of the measurer — Metaphysician Undercover

No, again. I say that the measurement results from an interaction, not from the act of either in isolation.

We can only measure quantities and intentionality is not a quantity. — Dfpolis

Then there ain't anything to meaningful to talk about. — apokrisis

Would you care to clarify how meaningfulness depends on being a quantity? It sounds like the long discredited claim of Logical Positivism.

Concepts have to be cashed out in their appropriate percepts. And it is clear that you are doing the usual dualistic thing of wanting to claim that intentionality needs to be measured in terms of it being a qualia - a feel, an affect, something mental, something ineffably subjective and hence beyond simple objective measurement. — apokrisis

My, what a bundle of confusion!

1. It seems from the context that by "percepts" you mean sensations of the physical world. The physical world is not something separate from us as mindful creatures knowing it. (I'm not saying that it depends on us for its existence, but rather, when we think and speak of it, we do so as part of nature, not as "gods" looking down on it.) Our intentions occur in, and are part of, the natural world. We are only able to think <physical world> because our intellect allows us to distinguish aspects of reality that are physically inseparable. The physical world as I conceive it is inseparable from me conceiving the physical world -- and so inseparable from my intentionality.

2. There is no a priori reason to give precepts of the physical world a more privileged standing than our awareness of mental acts. And, you can offer no a posteriori reason because your methodological dogmatism prevents you form considering, let alone judging, the data of self-awareness.

3. In speaking of "qualia," you violate your own methodological axiom, because the concept <qualia> cannot be "cashed out in ... appropriate percepts" of the physical world.

4. I am not a dualist, nor am i "doing the usual dualistic thing of wanting to claim that intentionality needs to be measured in terms of it being a qualia."
a. I am not a dualist. I have defined substances are ostensible unities The human capacity to perform different kinds of operations does not transform us into pluralities. Further, we only think of physical and intentional operations as "different" because we project them into different (intentional) concepts. In reality, my intending to arrive at the store and my walking to the store are simply different aspects of the single act of getting myself to the store.
b. I have said intentionality is not a quantity and therefore not measurable. So I'm not claiming
"that intentionality needs to be measured in terms of" anything.
c. I have not raised "qualia" in making my case, nor do I intend to do so.

5. I have not mentioned any "feels." I have pointed out that the act of seeing an apple, for example, not only gives us data about the apple (as objective object), but also about ourselves (subjective object) -- for example that we can see, be aware, direct our attention, etc. None of this involves "feels." So please spare me the typical physicalist pap.

6. As I pointed out above, you have made no case reducing "meaningfulness" to measurability.

7. If you wish to deny that we have a power of awareness, or that in being aware of sensory representations they become actually known, please do so. Just direct your comments to what i actually say instead of what you wish I said.

For a start, it changes the subject at a basic level. — apokrisis

You're quite right. I want to put the conversation on a track that will resolve the problems that have confused Western philosophers since the time of Descartes -- not go around the traditional squirrel cage.

We could say that there is that general quality of first person perspective which makes awareness intrinsically a matter of "aboutness". But that now leaves out the goal-centric nature of an embodied mind. — apokrisis

No, I have already discussed intentions that are commitments to goals -- e.g. my going to the store.

So intentionality ought to be measurable in terms of its objective satisfactions. — apokrisis

First, we have intentions independently of whether our desires are met, and second, knowing is also a kind of intentionality, but generally doesn't commit us to a goal. Still, if satisfaction is a topic that interests you, I encourage you to investigate it.

The aboutness is also always about something that matters — apokrisis

When we first become aware of an aspect of reality, we have no idea if it will be "important" or not. It's only after we have mulled it over, examining how it relates to the rest of what we know, that we come to judge its importance.

So intentionality ought to be measurable in terms of its objective satisfactions. It is not a free-floating subjectivity. — apokrisis

I have not been talking about "free-floating subjectivity" but about subject-object relations.

It can ask the question of what the Cosmos appears to be trying to achieve in general. — apokrisis

This is a philosophical or religious question, not one for natural science, which is concerned with the nature and history of the physical world.

material energy and formal variety are not only both conserved quantities in nature, they are essentially exchangable — apokrisis

I know of evidence supporting this claim. "Formal variety" is not a physical concept, nor is it a conserved quantity on physics. Further, there is no relation in physics linking energy and form as there is linking energy and mass.

Nature - considered as a memory, a record of syntactical markings - is now understood as being composed of atoms of form. — apokrisis

Really?? By whom? What does "atom of form" even mean?

We thus can move on from information as uninformed syntactical possibility — apokrisis

That is not the well-accepted definition of Shannon -- who has defined information as the reduction of possibility -- which is surely not "uninformed syntactical possibility."

As you have completely lost me, there is no point in my commenting on the rest of the post.

When you have no adequate evidentiary basis for a claim, it is made on faith.

My view is that the mind is inextricably involved in every judgement about every matter, even those things that are so-called ‘mind-independent’. — Wayfarer

Of course, for judgements are acts of mind. That does not mean that existence depends on our judgement of existence, a la Berkeley's esse est percipi.

Analogous to: there is no actual electron until some measurement is taken. This is not coincidenta — Wayfarer

Not quite. Necessarily, before anything can be measured, it has to be measurable. If the electron did not exist, it would not be measurable.

Let me suggest that existence is convertible with the capacity to act in some way. For anything to be measurable, it has to respond to our efforts to observe it. Imagine "something" that did not interact with anything in any way. it would be impossible to observe, let alone measure. If if had no interactions, it could not evoke the concept <being>, and so would not be an instance of being.

Real numbers [and the like] don’t begin to exist by virtue of there being someone around who learns how to count. The mind evolves to the point where it is able to count, that is all. — Wayfarer

There's no reason to think numbers exist before someone actually counts -- although nothing can be counted that isn't countable. If you have an argument to the contrary, I'd be glad to consider it.

The same goes for ideas and universals, generally. They are the constituents of the ability to reason but they’re not the products of reason. Otherwise they would be merely subjective or socially constructed. — Wayfarer

Not on the view I am defending. Rather than being baseless subjective or social constructs. ideas are the actualization of objective features of reality, i.e. the intelligibility of the known object.

Let's reflect on your view that universals are real. Lets take *2* (a substantial universal as an example. If this were so, then in knowing the "twoness" of H20, I would either know *2* or I would not. But, if the object of my knowledge were the substantial idea *2*, it would not be the hydrogen in the water molecule. If *2* were not the object of our knowledge, then *2* plays no role in the formation of my concept <2>. So on your theory, either we don't know the "twoness" of the hydrogen in H2O, or *2* plays no role in knowing it. Either way, *2* does play no role in us knowing there are two hydrogen atoms in a water molecule.

Now consider the judgement <a water molecule has two hydrogen atoms>. On my account, the same neural representation that evokes the concept <a water molecule> also evokes the concept <2>. If this were not so, if something else evoked the concept <2>, then we could not attribute "twoness" to the water molecule -- it would belong to whatever evoked it.

On your theory, there are universals: *water molecule*, *hydrogen*, *2*, etc. Presumably, these inform the corresponding concepts: <water molecule>, <hydrogen>, <2>, etc. If so, then what justifies the judgement <this water molecule has two hydrogen atoms>? First, we need a connection between the universals and this water molecule -- raising the participation problem that Aristotle used to destroy Platonic Idealism.

Second, we need connections between these various concepts. On my account this is provided by one thing (this water molecule) having all the required notes of intelligibility -- so that in knowing that object, all the relevant notes of intelligibility are present. On your account, there is no basis in reality for the judgement.

The way I try and express it, is to say that numbers are 'real but not existent', — Wayfarer

This is the problem Aristotle solved with the concept of potential (dynamis). Intelligibility is the power to evoke a concept without actually being that concept. Thus, it is real, but not yet actual.

numbers (and here, 'number' is a symbol for universals generally) don't come into and go out of existence. — Wayfarer

Certainly, intelligible bodies and universal ideas in our minds pass in and out of existence.

But they're real, in the sense that the laws of mathematics are the same for all who think. — Wayfarer

Because they reflect the same notes of real intelligibility.

Intelligible objects must be higher than reason, because they judge reason. — Wayfarer

Your "intelligible objects" must have minds or they could not judge, could not be aware of the truth of a proposition.

It makes no sense, however, to ask whether these normative intelligible objects are as they should be: they simply are, and are normative for other things'. — Wayfarer

It certainly makes sense to ask if norms are justified. We do not receive norms from on high, but develop them as a result of experience.

Joseph Owens — Wayfarer

Yes, he was very learned. I have a book with his collected articles.

And you overlook the fact that this "proper method of metaphysics" leads in multiple directions. — Relativist

There's nothing wrong with fruitfulness. Variety in conclusions don't necessarily mean inconsistency. If two arguments lead to contradictory conclusions, at least one is unsound.

metaphysical theories are contingent upon the the imperfect mental processes that develop them. — Relativist

Following the method I suggested will avoid this. If you have a specific example of contradictory arguments, I would be happy to comment on them.

if you would educate yourself in coherent physicalist metaphysics — Relativist

Coherence is no guaranty of truth. J. K. Rowling tells very coherent tales.

Since metaphysics is concerned with the nature of being, it must be based on our experience of being -- not on a priori assumptions, however "coherent" they may be. That's why I require metaphysical principles be abstracted (not induced) from experience. See my videos "#35 Induction and Abstraction" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvqcL9LILiA) and "#36 Abstraction & Metaphysics" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ohvFQn1J0).

Following a path we find fruitful does not mean other paths are "blind alleys," We all have to judge how to spend our limited time. If you present some pivotal insight(s) I'm missing by not studying Armstrong, I will be glad to discuss them.

Again, keep in mind that there are multiple metaphysical theories. — Relativist

There are also thousands of well-written, coherent works of fiction.

If your arguments persuasive power depends on one such theory, and fails with another, how can it be said to truly have persuasive power? — Relativist

First, the FTA is not "my argument." I use abstraction and deduction in metaphysical reasoning, not probable arguments. That does not prevent me from analyzing the FTA and the counter arguments -- judging their strengths and weaknesses.

Second, not all theories are equally credible. I won't pretend they are.

BTW - a metaphysical theory can be falsified by finding incoherence. — Relativist

I agree. Still, being coherent does not imply being true. The coherence of truth derives from the self-consistency of reality.

physicalism has a problem with consciousness. If not for that problem, I'd lean more strongly toward physicalism rather than being on the fence. — Relativist

It's always good to give reality a bit of weight in your reasoning.

It is contingent on a particular metaphysical theory. — Relativist

No, it is not.

I am agnostic to naturalism/deism specifically because there are coherent metaphysical theories for each. — Relativist

You make a good case for looking beyond coherence -- considering adequacy to reality instead.

"-1" electric charge is a property that exists in every instance of electron. Four-ness exists in every state of affairs that consists of 4 particulars. These are universals. — Relativist

No, they are a bunch of particulars with the same intelligibility -- the same power of evoke concepts.

Until a concept is actually evoked, there is no actual universal.

I'm curious how you would describe a concrete scenario prior to sentient life emerging on Earth with respect to universals. — Andrew M

There were no actual universals prior to subjects thinking them. There was common intelligibility. In the biological world, this can be traced back to the genetics of common descent. In the inorganic world, common structures often (but not always) reflect a common dynamics. For example, I suspect that most planets have the same origin story. Geological laminae are typically due to sedimentation. Spheroidal surfaces are mostly due to surface tension (drops and bubbles) or gravity (large astronomical bodies).

For example, consider a molecule of water consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Among the universals here are the kinds water, molecule and atom, the numbers one and two, and the relations between the atoms. — Andrew M

All of these are intelligible aspects of the molecule, not actual universal ideas. If we could see on hydrogen atom, we could form the universal <hydrogen>. Because other hydrogen atoms have the same notes of intelligibility, they have the objective capacity to evoke the same idea <hydrogen>. The universality of an idea rests on each of its instances having the objective capacity to evoke the same idea.

Thus, there is an objective basis for universal ideas, but there are no actual universals until some mind e3ncounters their instances.

there's the second question of whether the relations between the atoms, their structure and their quantity would also have been real prior to sentient life on Earth (i..e, that a water molecule really has two hydrogen atoms independent of mind). — Andrew M

All of these are real and intelligible, but not actually known until someone becomes aware of them.

The 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. So, while counting the hydrogen atoms in a water molecule will always give <2>, there is no actual number 2 floating around the molecule.

In the same way, as we learned from Special Relativity, it we measure the distance between the nuclei, the answer will depend on how we perform the measuring operation.

Other, qualitative aspects of cognition are then relegated to the subjective [and implicitly secondary] domain. That is the main characteristic of scientific naturalism, is it not? That what is real is measurable? — Wayfarer

Yes and yes.

Hence the conundrum posed by the ‘observer problem’ in quantum physics. — Wayfarer

Yes, but the observer problem goes even further -- abstracting away the observing apparatus (even though it is physical and subject to physics). Thus, the observer's apparatus is lumped in with the human observer as part of the neglected subjective object.

so I don't hold with the notion of there being substantive qualia at all. — Janus

Nor do I. I see "qualia" as naming the contingent forms of human sensation.

Surely the laws of physics are laws of nature? — Pattern-chaser

I am using these as separate terms of art. By "laws of physics" I mean approximate human descriptions of the ordering relations in nature. By "laws of nature" I mean the laws operative in nature that effect the observed order.

As to the question of how laws of nature relate to human legislation, that is more about naming conventions and the psychology of analogy and association. I am not trying to make any philosophical point from the fact that the same word ("law") is used in both cases -- although clearly Jeremiah thought that the laws of nature were divine ordinances.

I do think I understand your position. I've read Hegel, etc., too. — gurugeorge

Since I haven't read Hegel, and don't particularly want to read Hegel, the fact that you mention him gives me strong reason to think that you're burdening me with (Hegelian) baggage that isn't mine -- and so don't understand my position at all.

The only "subjective object" around is the person knowing, willing, etc., — gurugeorge

Agreed.

that is just the objective human animal accessible to all, and its qualities can be understood scientifically (e.g. its/our means of knowing, its/our capacity for knowledge, etc. — gurugeorge

Of course, the physical aspects of the human animal are available to all, but since the intentional aspects of the human animal have been excluded from natural sciennce by the Fundamental Abstraction, they are not physical. Experience shows that my intentionality is not intersubjectively available, though parts of it can be inferred from behavior. Further, the behaviorist approach to psychology has long since been discredited.

So, what can be known by a purely physical inspection of the human animal is limited, and does not exhaust its intelligibility.

its qualities can be understood scientifically (e.g. its/our means of knowing, its/our capacity for knowledge, etc. — gurugeorge

I agree that we can know our intentional operations "scientifically," if we mean by "scientifically" via empirically based rational analysis (without a priori limits on the kinds of experiential data allowed).

If, on the other hand, by "scientifically" one means to restrict, a priori, the data to the space of physical concepts, then such an approach is both non-empirical (being based on an a priori exclusion of experiential data) and irrational (being based on belief system inadequate to the full range of human experience).

On the other hand, if you mean something like "the knowing subject caught in the act of present knowing," then that's a misunderstanding of what knowledge is.. — gurugeorge

"Knowing" is a term with a vast range of analogous meanings. Preference for any one meaning does not invalidate other meanings of the term, So there is no "misunderstanding of what knowledge is." At most, my preferred meaning is not your preferred meaning. I am happy to concede that, but doing so does not grant your preferred meaning privileged status -- nor do I claim privileged status for my meaning.

I have defined what I mean by "knowing" as "awareness of present intelligibility." If humans are aware of neurally encoded information, then "knowing" in this sense exists. If knowing in this sense exists, there is no rational grounds not to examine its nature insofar as possible. If you wish to examine "knowing" in your preferred sense, I encourage you to so so.

It's actually not a momentary subjective relation in that sense (the momentary, present relation between a notional abstract subject and the abstracted contents of that subject's knowing). — gurugeorge

My definition does not speak to the duration of "knowing." It is not restricted to transient awareness, nor does it require eternal awareness. So, criticisms based on the assumption of a "momentary, present relation" address no essential feature of my concept of knowing. And, to avoid any confusion, I accept that "knowing" in a different sense can name the possession of latent, neurally-encoded contents. In the same way, I'm not considering "knowing how" (= the acquired ability to perform a task) -- and on and on as you note. It's not that there's anything "wrong" with these kinds of knowing - they're just not the kind of "knowing" I'm considering here.

So, now that we're agreed that "knowing" can mean many things, and that knowing in the sense of awareness of present is a subject-object relation, maybe you can say what you are objecting to.

We need to agree to disagree on what Aristotle means by "hyle.

It appears like you have not read "On the Soul", if you think that the movement of living things is due to the activity of matter, and not the form which is called "the soul". — Metaphysician Undercover

1. I have read De Anima a number of times and parts in Greek.

2. You are confusing our understanding of life with our understanding of substantial change (aka generation and corruption). The context in which hyle as a determinate, active potency appears is substantial change -- in which one kind of thing becomes another kind of thing. The soul, which Aristotle defines as "the actuality of a potentially living thing" is the form of a single, living kind of thing -- not the principle of dynamic continuity in substantial change.

How can you be theist and not believe in the soul? — Metaphysician Undercover

God and the soul are distinct issues. One can affirm one and deny the other. I happen to affirm both the existence of God and that of the soul, defined as "the actuality of a potentially living thing." Clearly, every living thing can be alive and is actually alive.

Actually there isn't really any foundation in reality for your concept of "laws of nature". — Metaphysician Undercover

This would come as a surprise to most scientists. We do not see ourselves as engaged in fiction writing, but in describing reality and especially how specific phenomena reveal and fit into the order of nature.

We have descriptive "laws" such as the laws of physics which are really just inductive conclusions. — Metaphysician Undercover

This contradicts the previous sentence. How can you say there is no basis in reality for the concept of laws and then say that we arrive at the concept by induction from an evidentiary basis (a foundation in reality).

Does Newton's hypothesis of universal laws of nature go beyond its evidentiary basis? Certainly. That is the nature of hypotheses. Does that mean that there is no foundation in reality for the concept? Of course not. The hypothesis has been confirmed by over 300 years of observational data.

But just because the inductive conclusions are called "laws" it doesn't really follow that whatever it is in nature that is causing matter to act in consistent ways,.is anything like a "law", it's more like a cause. — Metaphysician Undercover

First, "cause" and "law" are not mutually exclusive terms.

Aristotle and the medieval logicians explained this kind of naming convention. They knew terms can be predicated not only univocally (with the same meaning) and equivocally (with completely different meanings), but also analogically (with different but coordinated meanings).

One type of analogical predication is an analogy of attribution. For example, food and a urine sample are not "healthy" in the sense that a person is healthy; nonetheless, the senses are related by an underlying dynamic. Food is not healthy because it's alive and well, but because eating it contributes to personal health. Similarly, a urine sample is not healthy in itself, but as a sign of good health.

In the same way, the laws of nature are not same as the laws of physics, but they are dynamically related and so laws in an analogical sense.

Whatever it is which acts on matter, causing it to behave in the way that it does, can't really be anything like any laws that we know of. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course the laws of nature don't work like legislative acts. Still, the analogy is sufficient for the "fixed laws" to have been called "laws" or "ordinances" since their first appearance in Western literature (in Jeremiah 31 and 33).

Since you agree that something acts to produce the observed behavior of matter, it is pointless to argue about naming conventions.

Would you agree with me that the matter in motion is just a reflection of the real activity which is the laws in action? — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course. The concept <laws of nature> is one way to think about the order of nature. That does not mean that other ways are wrong. I am discussing <laws of nature> because it plays an important part in our current conceptualization of nature..

It seems to me, then, that you’re actually rejecting Aquinas’ hylomorphic dualism. — Wayfarer

I don't reject hylomorphism, but I do reject Aquinas's version. See my "A New Reading of Aristotle's Hyle" The Modern Schoolman 68 (March, 1991): 225-244 (https://philpapers.org/rec/POLANR).

I don’t think your analysis can account for ‘the unreasonable efficacy [or predictive power] of mathematics’. — Wayfarer

And as I answered before, the integration of constant laws over time gives us the predictive power of physics.

I see the metaphysics of it like this: that the types or forms of things correspond to their original ‘ideas’ in the divine intellect. — Wayfarer

Having been schooled in the Thomist tradition, I have given a lot of thought to this point.
1. The Divine Mind is perfectly simple -- leaving us with no ground for distinguishing diverse ideas in God.
2. Ideas are abstractions. Abstractions leave certain notes of intelligibility behind to focus on others in order to scale the complexity of reality down to human representational limitations. Thus, they are a "stupid human trick," and completely unnecessary in God, Who knows reality exhaustively, "numbering the hairs on our heads."
3. The well-documented evolution of species shows that there are no fixed species "forms."
4. As God is unchanging and so timeless, there can be no before and after in God. Thus, there is no need for exemplar ideas ("design plans") prior to the creation of individual members of a species. In other words, God does not "design" in any way analogous to human engineers.

God does intend what He creates, but we need to avoid thinking of creation in anthropomorphic terms.

The rational soul [unlike the sensory faculties] is able to grasp those forms or ideas by identifying their kind, type, etc; this is the role of the ‘active intellect’. — Wayfarer

I agree that the agent intellect (our power to be aware) actualizes the intelligibility encoded in sensory representations (phantasms) -- giving rise to ideas -- ideas of both species and of accidents. So, I see no reason to believe we're any more aware of essential than of accidental notes of intelligibility. Through experience we come to see what is common and what variable in various examples of a species, and so form, for example, a better defined <human> concept. Aristotle gives us the analogy of a military unit falling in, man by man, until its formation is clear.

Aquinas agrees that we have no direct knowledge of essences, but know them through accidents.

Aristotle’s comments on the ‘nous poetikos’ are regarded as controversial, difficult and obscure and have generated centuries of analysis. — Wayfarer

This is true. The way to avoid the controversy is not to try to get into Aristotle's mind (an impossible task) and not to treat Aristotle as an authority. Rather, we should treat Aristotle as a colleague -- standing beside him, and looking at what he is looking at. When I do that, I ask myself what aspect of my experience is he calling the "agent intellect" (nous poetikos)? What experience makes encoded information actually known to me? This is the phenomenological approach.

It seems clear to me that my awareness makes sensory data actually known. I can react to sensations, automatically (without awareness) and then i do not "know" what I'm doing, but as soon as I become aware of a bit of sensory data, it is no longer merely intelligible,but actually known. Thus, nous poetikos is just Aristotle's name for our power of awareness.

a passage in Augustine on ‘intelligible objects’ that has always been a source of interest to me. — Wayfarer

Yes, St. Augustine is a man of great insight. The more of him I read the more I see.

I also appreciate a sensible and respectful dialogue.

So - I am drawn to a form of dualism, but emphatically not the Cartesian form. — Wayfarer

First, I think we are all pretty much agreed that Galileo distinguished primary and secondary qualities without calling them by those names.

Second, the dualism I see is a consequence of what I have been calling the Fundamental Abstraction of Natural Science. It partitions reality into the physical and the intentional, but one point I hope to make is that physicality and intentionality are not separated in nature -- only mapped onto orthogonal (non-overlapping) conceptual subspaces.

Our conceptual space has a foundation in reality, but its structure is not predetermined. (Making our earlier discussion of Exemplar Ideas even more relevant.) We can abstract alternative concepts and project our experience into the resulting space.

Reading Aristotle, it seems clear that he didn't partition reality into the physical and intentional. The discussion in De Anima, for example, moves fluidly from the physical mechanisms of sensation to the intentional mechanisms of ideogenesis. In Physics i, 9 which I have been discussing in another thread, he explains physical change using "desire" as an explanatory principle. He brings "desire" in again to explain how lesser beings can be moved by the Unmoved Mover.

So, the duality of modern thought is culturally caused -- embedded in the way we have chosen to conceptualize reality.

And so the crucial question becomes how do you measure intentionality in your scheme? — apokrisis

We can only measure quantities and intentionality is not a quantity.

Information and entropy complement each other nicely as measurements in the two theatres of operation as physics and biology are coming to understand them. If you have some personal idea here, then you will need to say something about what would count as a measurement of your explanatory construct. — apokrisis

"Intentionality" does not name a construct. Constructs are inventions designed to bridge our ignorance. The concept of <Intentionality> is evoked when we experience an aspect of reality, the essence of which is to be "about" a target,i.e. that which it intends.

Information is related to intentionality, but quite different. Information is the reduction of (logical) possibility. It can be merely intelligible (capable of being known), or it can be actually known. My knowing information is an instance of intentionality because my knowledge is about what I have been informed of.

Merely intelligible information is not intentional. It's defining characteristic is not being about some intended target, but being an aspect of physical reality. Bits encoded in my computer's memory are electronic states with no intrinsic meaning. (The same computer state can encode many meanings as discussed in my "#24 Mind: Just a Computer?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57466ekUlGE). It is only when my computer's encoded information informs an actual thought that we have intentionality.

Armstrong (a physicalist and realist regarding universals) — Relativist

These seem like incompatible positions. Physics has nothing to say about the logical order and universals belong to the logical order.

I see no reason to think that universals exist independently of the minds thinking them. They have a foundation in reality, in the potential of each instance to evoke the same concept, i.e in the intelligibility of their instances. But, being potential is not being actual.

As universals have no actual existence outside of the mind, they can have no actual relations outside of the mind.

Hume's constant conjunction makes the success of science surprising — Relativist

If that is all you are thinking about, it certainly does. Hume was not addressing the ground of necessity in nature, but the ground of our idea of necessity. So, we need to look beyond Hume's epistemological analysis to a more ontological one.

it doesn't appear to be consistent with your thesis of intentionality, and that seems a flaw for your position. — Relativist

I am not sure what flaw you are thinking of. So, just explain how the concurrent ("essential") causality of the laws of nature can give rise to Humean-Kantian or "accidental" causality (time sequence by rule). If the laws remain the same at each instant of time, integrating their operation over time gives us laws with a determinate connection between successive events. So constant intentionality explains the success of physics. (As anticipated by Jememiah.)

Yes, many people think hypothetical reasoning is the only kind of reasoning.

I meant "is an argumentum signum quia," of course. I corrected my post.

Subjective experiences are "tokens of types of experiences such as knowing and willing" only in the case of knowing and willing about one's subjective experiences. (I had a dream, wish I didn't feel anxious, etc.) — gurugeorge

I think we are misunderstanding each other. By "subjective experiences" I don't mean experiences, such as dreams, devoid of objective content. I mean experiences informing us about our self as a subject in a subject-object relation.

I pointed out earlier that even our most objective experiences inform us not only about a physical object (the objective object, e.g. what we're looking at), but also about ourselves as experiencing the physical object (the subjective object, e.g. ourselves as able to see, know, direct our attention, etc.).

The Fundamental Abstraction of natural science, then, focuses on the objective object (the thing seen and known) to the exclusion of the subjective object (us seeing and knowing).