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
That judgment is an IBE — Relativist
The same process is involved with historiography (which is also unfalsifiable, in principle). — Relativist
What you are "aware of" is belief. — Relativist
Even if your belief has sufficient warrant for knowledge, it is still belief. — Relativist
there are indeed contradictory metaphysical accounts — Relativist
in spite of the fact they are constructed just as you describe - based on "awareness of how the world interacts" with the metaphysician — Relativist
You are claiming that in certain types of change, "substantial change", there is a need to assume this "active potency". — Metaphysician Undercover
In natural living things, the source of substantial change is the soul of the living being. — Metaphysician Undercover
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
Matter, or hyle, is the principle by which the continuity of substance is understood — Metaphysician Undercover
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
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
I'm sorry, but that's absurd - you have some beliefs about metaphysics, and you draw inferences from those beliefs. — Relativist
You make a good case for looking beyond coherence -- considering adequacy to reality instead.
Instead?! Surely you misspoke. — Relativist
Note that this establishes a potential basis for abductively (as IBE) judging metaphysical claims. — Relativist
I prefer Kant's 'transcendental idealism' — Wayfarer
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
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
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.
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
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
It's the fact that 2 = 2 and always has an invariant meaning that makes it a universal. — Wayfarer
'thought is an inherently universalising activity - were materialism true, then you literally could not think'. — Wayfarer
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
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
let's say that there is a descriptive law which says that if the sky is clear, it is blue. — Metaphysician Undercover
the reason why the sky is blue is not that there is a law acting to make it that way. — Metaphysician Undercover
The activity here, which produces "the observed behaviour of matter" is the activity of observation. — Metaphysician Undercover
Hallucinatory things may be measured. — Metaphysician Undercover
So just because one provides a measurement of something, this does not mean that the measured thing is real. — Metaphysician Undercover
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
A faulty description of the thing measured means that the measurement is of a non-existent thing. — Metaphysician Undercover
You are completely ignoring the creative, imaginative, aspect of ideas. — Metaphysician Undercover
Ideas are an act of the subject, not an act of the "objective features of reality". — Metaphysician Undercover
"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
you describe it as an act of the thing being measured rather than an act of the measurer — Metaphysician Undercover
We can only measure quantities and intentionality is not a quantity. — Dfpolis
Then there ain't anything to meaningful to talk about. — apokrisis
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
For a start, it changes the subject at a basic level. — apokrisis
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
So intentionality ought to be measurable in terms of its objective satisfactions. — apokrisis
The aboutness is also always about something that matters — apokrisis
So intentionality ought to be measurable in terms of its objective satisfactions. It is not a free-floating subjectivity. — apokrisis
It can ask the question of what the Cosmos appears to be trying to achieve in general. — apokrisis
material energy and formal variety are not only both conserved quantities in nature, they are essentially exchangable — apokrisis
Nature - considered as a memory, a record of syntactical markings - is now understood as being composed of atoms of form. — apokrisis
We thus can move on from information as uninformed syntactical possibility — apokrisis
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
Analogous to: there is no actual electron until some measurement is taken. This is not coincidenta — Wayfarer
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
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
The way I try and express it, is to say that numbers are 'real but not existent', — Wayfarer
numbers (and here, 'number' is a symbol for universals generally) don't come into and go out of existence. — Wayfarer
But they're real, in the sense that the laws of mathematics are the same for all who think. — Wayfarer
Intelligible objects must be higher than reason, because they judge reason. — Wayfarer
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
Joseph Owens — Wayfarer
And you overlook the fact that this "proper method of metaphysics" leads in multiple directions. — Relativist
metaphysical theories are contingent upon the the imperfect mental processes that develop them. — Relativist
if you would educate yourself in coherent physicalist metaphysics — Relativist
Again, keep in mind that there are multiple metaphysical theories. — Relativist
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
BTW - a metaphysical theory can be falsified by finding incoherence. — Relativist
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 is contingent on a particular metaphysical theory. — Relativist
I am agnostic to naturalism/deism specifically because there are coherent metaphysical theories for each. — Relativist
"-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
I'm curious how you would describe a concrete scenario prior to sentient life emerging on Earth with respect to universals. — Andrew M
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
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
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
Hence the conundrum posed by the ‘observer problem’ in quantum physics. — Wayfarer
so I don't hold with the notion of there being substantive qualia at all. — Janus
Surely the laws of physics are laws of nature? — Pattern-chaser
I do think I understand your position. I've read Hegel, etc., too. — gurugeorge
The only "subjective object" around is the person knowing, willing, etc., — gurugeorge
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
its qualities can be understood scientifically (e.g. its/our means of knowing, its/our capacity for knowledge, etc. — gurugeorge
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
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
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
How can you be theist and not believe in the soul? — Metaphysician Undercover
Actually there isn't really any foundation in reality for your concept of "laws of nature". — Metaphysician Undercover
We have descriptive "laws" such as the laws of physics which are really just inductive conclusions. — Metaphysician Undercover
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
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
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
It seems to me, then, that you’re actually rejecting Aquinas’ hylomorphic dualism. — Wayfarer
I don’t think your analysis can account for ‘the unreasonable efficacy [or predictive power] of mathematics’. — Wayfarer
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
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
Aristotle’s comments on the ‘nous poetikos’ are regarded as controversial, difficult and obscure and have generated centuries of analysis. — Wayfarer
a passage in Augustine on ‘intelligible objects’ that has always been a source of interest to me. — Wayfarer
So - I am drawn to a form of dualism, but emphatically not the Cartesian form. — Wayfarer
And so the crucial question becomes how do you measure intentionality in your scheme? — apokrisis
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
Armstrong (a physicalist and realist regarding universals) — Relativist
Hume's constant conjunction makes the success of science surprising — Relativist
it doesn't appear to be consistent with your thesis of intentionality, and that seems a flaw for your position. — Relativist
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
As I said, I can't remember where I encountered that item of information, but a google search yielded this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary/secondary_quality_distinction — Janus
I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names
that we are not aware of their being anything other than various arrangements of the size, figure, and motions of the parts of these objects — Janus
Differences are simply potentiality of values deviation between two observations. — Akanthinos
The determination of identity is the determination of a set of values. — Akanthinos
the FTA CAN be framed abductively (as an IBE), and this is a more comprehensive analysis than what you are arguing. — Relativist
if we allow any exception to the principle of causality, we undermine all science.
You're pontificating an absurdity. Science need concern itself with nothing other than identifying laws of nature (how things work) and working toward a basic understanding of what is physically fundamental in the world. — Relativist
Causation refers to something that occurs in the universe, a relation between physical things in the universe. — Relativist
There's no basis for claiming it to be more than that (such as a metaphysical principle) — Relativist
Either every phenomenon has an adequate explanation, or we have no rational grounds for requiring an explanation for any phenomena.
You're conflating physical causation with explanation. Explanations exist only in minds; causation exists in its physical instantiations. — Relativist
R: " Physicalism entails the non-existence of states that are "logically prior"
Physics problems often specify an initial state that is logically (and temporally) prior to the final state. Any information used as a starting point in reasoning is, by definition, logically prior to the conclusion.
You're conflating explanations (and "problems") with what actually exists. — Relativist
You're merely identifying the agents of causation, ignoring the temporal context - so your account is incomplete. No clear case of causation occurs other than in a temporal context. — Relativist
Of course it's temporal! You weren't thinking of me prior to our initial engagement on this forum. — Relativist
This again suggests you're considering life an ends. — Relativist
But you haven't provided a reason to think life is an "ends", and you haven't examined the other logical fork (that it is unintended). — Relativist
The claim, "the fundamental constants are a sign of intentionality " simply ignores the possibility that life is just a byproduct of the way the world happens to be, and depends on treating life as an "ends" - which you have not justified. — Relativist
he fact that multiverse is possible gives it the same epistemic standing as — Relativist
You don't seem to understand what I'm referring to. Symmetry breaking is the process by which a physical system in a symmetric state ends up in an asymmetric state. — Relativist
Your understanding is decades out of date: the Copenhagen interpretation ... — Relativist
So you really have no grounds for dismissing the physical possibility that the observed laws of physics might be a consequence of symmetry breaking ... — Relativist
I am baffled as to how you can justify dismissing one metaphysically possible hypothesis for its ostensible unfalsifiability whilst claiming victory for your preferred hypothesis that is (at best) equally unfalsifiable. — Relativist
Unfortunately, Aristotle thinks "in some cases the matter .. is such that it can initiate its own motion [italics mine], and in other cases it is not ...".
Until you can explain this statement on your theory, the case is closed. — Dfpolis
I already explained this. In these cases there is a form inherent within the material body, a source of activity called the soul. It's quite well explained in "On the Soul". — Metaphysician Undercover
Where he makes the statement you quoted above, he goes on to compare this type of movement with that of a stone. — Metaphysician Undercover
So the laws cause matter to behave the way that it does, by informing it? I assume that they exist as information then. — Metaphysician Undercover
How could matter interpret the information which the laws provide, in order to act according to the laws, if it is not aware of that information — Metaphysician Undercover
Don't you think that information is useless without something to interpret it? Do you know of any cases where information does anything without something interpreting it? — Metaphysician Undercover
Well that' a really bad analogy then. — Metaphysician Undercover
Why would you even think that matter exhibiting orderly dynamics is a case of matter obeying laws, when this has nothing in common with what we know as "obeying laws"? — Metaphysician Undercover
As I see it, knowing and willing are objective relations; their intentional objects are not subjective, but objective (and shared, public). — gurugeorge
Broadly I take a view on causality that is Aristotelian and Peircean. — apokrisis
Which then cashes out in the kind of current physicalism which sees information and entropy as bridging the old mind-matter divide. — apokrisis
Talk of an "informational realm" is pretty general. — apokrisis
You can inquire about the location of an event, or the momentum of an event, but not get a complete answer on both in just a single act of measurement. — apokrisis
your proposal strikes me as having a particular problem. It seems to have to presume a classical Newtonian backdrop notion of time - a spatialised dimension. And modern physics would be working towards an emergent and thermal notion of time as a better model. So any logical propagator would have to unfold in that kind of time, not a Newtonian one. — apokrisis
But the bare physical world - the world that does not have this kind of anticipatory intentional modelling of its tomorrow - has only its tendencies, not its plans. So it is "intentional" in an importantly different way. — apokrisis
All this is a great advance on the old notion of transcendent laws floating somewhere above everything they regulate in some kind of eternal and perfect fashion. — apokrisis
Yes, the full physical description needs to recognise final and formal cause. — apokrisis
So everything can be brought back to the notion of constraints. — apokrisis
This means that in the case of sense knowledge, the form is still encompassed with the concrete characters which make it particular; and that, in the case of intellectual knowledge, the form is disengaged from all such characters. To understand is to free form completely from matter.
Moreover, if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized.
But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.
the intellectual stage, wherein agent intellect operates upon the phantasmal datum, divesting the form of every character that marks and indentifies it as a particular something.
Abstraction, which is the proper task of active intellect, is essentially a liberating function in which the essence of the sensible object, potentially understandable as it lies beneath its accidents, is liberated from the elements that individualize it and is thus made actually understandable.
The A of "A at T1" and "A at T2" are identical because they are the same A, not because of any other attributes such as composition or spatial location. — Akanthinos
A is identical to A is identical to A is ... But each instances are different and identifiable. The phenomenal compound of "A on pick 1" and "A on pick 2" are different. — Akanthinos
Attributes and relations do not constitute objects, they reveal something about them. — Akanthinos
I think it may have started with Galileo — Janus
Why would we need to be agnostic when intentionality is something neurocognition studies? We have reason to make a definite distinction between brains and universes, purposes and laws. — apokrisis
Given that it is probability states that evolve deterministically, then I would say that makes it literally part of the equation. — apokrisis
And classical determinism is an emergent feature of reality at best. — apokrisis
So you are taking an approach to the laws of nature that seems really dated. — apokrisis
The idea that transcendent laws could some how reach down, God-like, to regulate the motions of particles was always pretty hokey. An immanent view of nature's laws is going to be more useful if we want to make sense of what is really going on. — apokrisis
Sounds good. But I'm not getting much sense of how you mean to proceed from here. — apokrisis
Talk of "laws" is definitely nonsense if we are to understand that as meaning anything like the kind of law-bound behaviour of reasoning social creatures like us. — apokrisis
But the irony, as I say, is that our human concept of law is all about reification. We create these abstract constructs like truth, justice and good, then try to live by them. A lot of hot air is spent on debating their "reality". — apokrisis
The problem is that they don't work very well - at least to explain "everything". — apokrisis
So first up, science just is modelling and hence abstractions are how it goes about its business. That won't change — apokrisis
Second, physicalism can now be better understood in terms of information and entropy rather than mind and matter. — apokrisis
And that semiotic view even explains why science - as an informational process - should be a business of abstractions ... so as to be able to regulate the world insofar as it is a concrete and entropic realm of being. — apokrisis
Why on earth should anybody care about their subjective experiences? They're of interest only to them. — gurugeorge
We care what Ptolemy, Galileo, Newton and Hubble saw, not about their subjective experience in seeing it. — Dfpolis
Eh, we still don't care. — gurugeorge
This is what I'm trying to get at in this thread: Is it valid to say that an elephant and a rock and the feeling of looking at a sunset are all merely different names/forms of X (consciousness in this case)? Or do these things 'possess' some sort of essence/identity that make them ultimately unique, despite their all being sublated by consciousness? — rachMiel
So I agree that being is not a "prior substrate" and would say that the very notion of a prior substrate, or passive substance, is really incoherent. — Janus