You quoted only one premise of the argument, the other stated the actuality. If X then Y. (Possibility). X (Actuality). Therefore Y (conclusion). — Metaphysician Undercover

This is modal nonsense. Possible errors do not imply actual falsity.

Each bit of knowledge is a judgement, and a description involves a bunch of judgements. But this doesn't really affect the issue. The description is still a matter of judgement, but instead of being one judgement it's a multitude of judgements, which is really what i meant anyway. I didn't mean to imply that an entire description consists of only one judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. First, there is knowing by acquaintance. It is not judgement, but an inchoate awareness of intelligibility. Second, we may parse or divide that awareness, abstracting property concepts. Judgement is a third movement of mind in which we reunite what we have abstracted, to form propositional knowledge. Thus, the abstraction (or knowing) of intrinsic property concepts is a necessary precondition for judgements about objects, and it is these abstracted concepts we compare to definitions in category judgements.

We never judge "A is B" in any unqualified way. We say "A is A", and "B is B", but not "A is B" because these two are different. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nonsense. We judge <This something (what I am experiencing) is a scorpion>. The concept <What I am experiencing> is not the concept <scorpion>. Similarly, we might judge <This something is six-legged> on our way to judging <This something is an insect>.

Your Lockean prejudices make you think that we know ideas, rather than objects, in the first instance. Yet, <This something is six-legged> is not a comparison of concepts, but of the source of concepts. The judgement means that the object that elicits the concept <This something> is the identical object that elicits <six-legged> -- not that the concept <This something> is identically the concept <six-legged>.

As per your definition of judging, every bit of knowledge is a judgement — Metaphysician Undercover

No. Knowledge as acquaintance is not propositional knowledge. It is prior to the act of judgement and the consequent propositional knowledge.

We need to allow that "judgement" requires knowledge, and can only be made after knowledge has accumulated, but this would undermine your argument of how judgement relates to description. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, we need knowledge as acquaintance to make judgements. So we need to know intrinsic properties prior to judging their type. This does not undermine my account of descriptions.

Sorry, I cannot grasp this at all. I've never heard of "essential causality". — Metaphysician Undercover

That is why I defined it for you. It is an essential concept in classical metaphysics, developed by Aristotle, not me. The terminology is Scholastic. You can look it up in my book.

But what's the point to this? — Metaphysician Undercover

To help you understand how humans actually come to know.

I don't see how it shows that at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is unfortunate. No one can make you see it. Either you can understand it, or you cannot.

Obviously he is talking about intelligible objects here, not sensible objects — Metaphysician Undercover

The same reasoning applies to both, as both instantiate the identity of action and passion discussed in Physics III, 3. I can show and explain Aristotle's insights. I cannot make you understand or accept them.

if Koons makes the same sort of error of equivocation, I'm not interested — Metaphysician Undercover

I suggest that you reflect on the state of mind called "invincible ignorance" in which the will closes the mind to evidence that would undermine a prior belief.

The quotes support the distinction which I claim. This one for example: "and yet the distinction between their being remains." and this one: "identical in character with its object without being the object." — Metaphysician Undercover

I never claimed that the subject as a whole becomes the object as a whole. So, these statements present no problem for me. On the other hand, the statements of intellectual identity are incompatible with your Kantianism.

you are equivocating between 'intelligible' object and 'sensible' object. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nego.

this says absolutely nothing about the knowing subject's relation with the sensible object. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, it does, because the vehicle of intelligibility is the phantasm or neural state encoding sensory content -- and it is identically the action of the sensible on our nervous system. So, it is the form or first actuality of the object, as expressed in the object's action (its second actuality), that the intellect grasps.

Wow, that's the first time I've been called a Kantian. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is the first time I've seen you appealing to Kant. Had you done so earlier, I would have pointed it out earlier. Do you prefer "closet Kantian"?

it's a strange world we live in. — Metaphysician Undercover

Inconsistency can do that.

You seem to have inverted the conditional. My argument is that if it is possible that we err in our knowledge, then our knowledge is not of the properties which are intrinsic to the thing known. — Metaphysician Undercover

If that is your argument, you need to rethink it. Possibilities do not imply actualities.

When I judge that the organism has appendages, and that the appendages are legs, and that the count of the legs is 6, I am describing the organism. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, you are not. Judging makes description possible, but it is not actual description. You are confusing potency and act. An actual description articulates a whole set of judgements in words or some other medium. Each individual property judgement is being aware (aka knowing) that the organism elicits the property concept. Judgement is not expression of a judgement.

And if I repeat these conclusions later, by writing them down, or telling someone else, I am just repeating the description I've already produced. — Metaphysician Undercover

You may define your technical terms as you wish, but if you do not say "By 'description' I mean what most other people call 'judgement'," then the result can only be confusion and misunderstanding.

Yet, even if you mean that we compare judgements, not intrinsic properties, to category concepts, you are confused. This is because making the relevant judgements requires grasping the intrinsic properties we judge. To judge <A is B> we must be aware that the entity eliciting the concept <A>, say <this something>, is identically that eliciting the concept <B> grasping some property. Were this not the case, if a <A> were elicited by one thing, and <B> by another, the judgement would be unsound. Thus, the eliciting of concepts is a prerequisite for any sound judgement about an entity. So we have the following operations in sequence (1) sensing, (2) conceptualization, (3) judgement, and then, possibly, (4) expression in a description.

The very expression "compare judgements" is deeply confused, because a judgement is an act of comparison. So, we could not compare judgements without first making the comparison that is the judgement we are comparing.

Good, the form of the known is a cause of the form in the knower is much better than that they are identical. — Metaphysician Undercover

In essential causality, the operation of the cause and the creation of the effect are one and the same event -- and so identical. The builder building the house is identically the house being built by the builder. Please do not confuse this with accidental, or Humean-Kantian, causality, which is the succession of separate events by rule.

"The sense organ sensing the sensible" is just another way of saying "the sensible being sensed by the sense organ". This makes no analysis of the relationship between the sensation and the sensible, which is what we are discussing. So how do you think it says anything significant? — Metaphysician Undercover

It shows (1) the subject sensing is inseparable from the object being sensed, and (2) the subject knowing is inseparable from the object being known. This means that there is no possibility of an intervening factor such as Aquinas's intelligible species, Locke's ideas, Kant's phenomena or your descriptions.

The law of identity clearly puts identity of the thing within the thing itself, therefore not in the caused form in the knower. — Metaphysician Undercover

II am not claiming that the whole object is identical with the subject's concept. Rather, in sensing, there is an identity between the object's action on the sense (action is an accident inhering in the acting substance) and the subject's passion of having its sense organ modified by that act (passion is also an accident -- inhering in the substance acted upon). In knowing, the identity is between the aspect of the object's intelligibility actualized (a property or accident of the object), and the agent intellect (an aspect of the knower) actualizing that intelligibility -- which is the corresponding concept.

if you still think that he uses identity in this way, bring me the direct quotes of the precise places where you find this. — Metaphysician Undercover

"[T]he actuality of that which has the power of causing motion is not other than the actuality of the
movable, for it must be the fulfilment of both." Physics III, 3, 202a14-16 (trans. Hardie and
Gaye). (Two things having the same actuality means they are identical)

"Generally, about all perception, we can say that a sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter..." De Anima II, 12, 424a18f (trans. J.A. Smith)

"The activity of the sensible object and that of the sense is one and the same activity, and yet the distinction between their being remains." De Anima III, 2, 425b26

"For as the acting-and-being-acted-upon is to be found in the passive, not in the active factor, so also the
actuality of the sensible [10] object and that of the sensitive subject are both realized in the latter." De Anima III, 2, 426a8-10

"The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassible, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object." De Anima III, 4, 429a15f

"Actual knowledge is identical with its object" De Anima III, 5, 430a20

This selection should suffice. If not, read R. C. Koons, (2019) "Aristotle's formal identity of intellect and object: A solution to the problem of modal epistemology," Ancient Philosophy Today 1, pp. 84-107.

It is wrong to characterize this as a single act. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am sorry that you cannot see that one and the same act makes the object's intelligibility known and the mind informed. I cannot make it any clearer than I have: the subject knowing is inseparable from the object being known.

This is what I insist is not Aristotelian — Metaphysician Undercover

Then, you do not understand the texts I cited.

The issue though, is that in relation to final cause, intention, judgement, and choice, which is the type of activity proper to the soul, efficient cause is secondary, as the means to the end. — Metaphysician Undercover

The agent intellect is an efficient cause and essential to the other operations you enumerate. Unless we can know intelligibility, none of the other operations can succeed.

i didn't see it as relevant to our discussion of Aristotle. If you reject Kant, then I cannot use him as a reference, that's all. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is entirely relevant, as your Kantian commitments prevent you from understanding Aristotle, and through him, the nature of knowledge.

I don't think that this follows. This is because error, and mistake may be relative to some pragmatic principle of success. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your response does not support your original point, which was that we could not know intrinsic properties because of the possibility of error. Only errors resulting in the false apprehension of intrinsic properties need concern us, and to know that they are actual errors, we must have a true apprehension.

You said that intrinsic properties are what is compared to the definition. This is incorrect, the description is what is compared. — Metaphysician Undercover

We cannot describe anything without first judging what categories its propertied belong to. For example, I cannot say "the organism is six-legged," without judging that it has appendages, that the relevant appendages are legs, and that the count of those legs is 6. So, the apprehension and classification of properties is necessarily prior to any description.

What exists in the mind of the knower is "form" in the sense of the abstraction, and what exists in the material individual is "form" in the sense of of the actuality of the individual. Yet you insist that the form in the knower is somehow the form of the known. They are two distinct senses of "form", how do you reconcile this? — Metaphysician Undercover

The two senses of "form" are not equivocal, but analogous by an analogy of attribution -- in the same way that food is said to be "healthy," not because it, itself, is alive and well, but because it is a cause of health in those who consume it. Thus, the form of the known object, is a cause of knowledge in the knower.

Your, Locke's, and Kant's views miss the identity of sense and sensible, and of intellect and intelligibility, Aristotle discusses at length in De Anima: (1) the sense organ sensing the sensible is identically the sensible being sensed by the sense organ and (2) the intellect knowing the intelligible object is identically the intelligible object being known by the intellect. Your responses continue to ignore these essential points.

In each case, a single act actualizes two potencies. In sensing, the sensible object is actually sensed in the same act in which the sense organ's ability to sense is actualized. In knowing, the intelligible object is actually known in the same act as the intellect's ability to be informed is actualized. Since there is one act or event in each case, the lack of causal necessity argued by Hume does not apply. Why? Because he is analyzing a different kind of causality: one involving two events following one another by rule. It is possible for some disruptive influence to intervene between two events, but one event has no "between" in which an intervention might occur.

So, what is going on? The object's form or actuality specifies its possible acts. When we sense it, it is in virtue of the object acting on our senses in a specific way, and that way reveals part of what it can do (its eidos or form). Thus, its action on our senses informs us of some aspect(s) of its form. When the agent intellect attends to the resultant intelligibility (now neurally encoded), that intelligibility is actually understood, resulting in knowledge. Thus, the object's form or actuality is the source of the knowledge we derive from sensing it -- which is the eidos or form in our mind.

Answering question like this is just a form of description. — Metaphysician Undercover

The question is not whether we end up describing the object, but what steps are required to do so. I have already shown that we cannot describe before we apprehend.

This is not Aristotelian. — Metaphysician Undercover

Read De Anima on sensing and knowing.

your assertions that the form in the knower is the same as the form in the object is not consistent with this. — Metaphysician Undercover

My assertion is that our knowledge is specified by the form of the object. The form of the object also specifies much that we do not, and may never, know. I am not claiming that our knowledge is exhaustive, only that it grasps aspects of (a projection of) the object's form.

you need to acknowledge that there are two types of causation involved. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have no problem with that. In sensing, the object is the efficient cause of the neural effect. The effect it causes (a modification of our neural system), is specified by the form of the object, which can act on us in some ways, but not others. So, the effect carries information (the reduction of possibility -- for of all the ways we could be affected, we are affected in this specific way). This information is intelligible, and its intelligibility derives from the form of the object.

In the act of awareness, we are the agent. The object does not force its intelligibility on the intellect. Rather, we must choose to attend, and in attending, the agent intellect acts to make what was merely intelligible (the neurally encoded information) actually understood. Here the object, via its neural effect, is the material cause. It limits the possible result (for information is the reduction of possibility), but it does not actualize it. The result, of course, is our awareness of the intelligibility specified by the form of the object.

Oh, now you've revised it to a "partial identity". What could that even mean? — Metaphysician Undercover

It means that the object's action on our sense is only one aspect of (part of) the object's actuality. That action is identical with our sense being acted upon by the object. Further, our sense being acted upon by the object is not the whole of our actuality. So, while the relevant action and passion are identical, they are not the whole of either the subject or the object.

You are assigning all causation to the object, as that which informs. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I am not. I have explained the kinds of causation above.

the organism must have the capacity to sense. And, under Aristotelian conceptual space, the soul, as the source of internal actuality, or activity, must actualize that capacity. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confusing first and second actuality. The soul is the first actuality or "being operational" of a potentially living body. It is not the second actuality or operation of the body. So, in sensation, the capacity to sense is an aspect of the psyche, but actually sensing is due to the sensible object acting on the sense -- e.g. light being scattered into the eye, or a hot object heating the skin.

You have ignored my critique of Kant's epistemology. As St. Thomas Moore noted, "Silence is consent." (Qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit – He who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is seen to consent.)

Agreed. Both those we include and those we exclude. — Fooloso4

Yes.

'man' must be by nature something that distinguishes itself from all else. — Fooloso4

Still, our concept <man>, while founded on reality, is also based on the properties we choose to attend to.

Form is the being at work of an ousia. Form acts on, it actualizes a thing's potential. The form, the "what- it -is" of Socrates is not Socrates. Socrates is the ousia, not the form. The form, the what it is of Socrates, is man. — Fooloso4

As I said, eidos has two meanings: actuality (De Anima II, 1, 412a10) and the essential idea. e.g. <human>.

So I'm sorry for the tone, and I'm glad you appreciate insight. — Metaphysician Undercover

No more need be said. :)

This does not suffice. There are exceptions, mutations, and other problems which lend themselves to error. — Metaphysician Undercover

"To err is human." Still, the fact that we can recognize errors, means that we can grasp the truth. That is why science has a repeatability criterion. Results that can be repeatedly attained are not likely to be errors.

the important point is that (2) is a description — Metaphysician Undercover

No, intrinsic properties are not descriptions. They are what we seek to describe. If they were descriptions, descriptions would describe themselves, not aspects of nature. That is the error of Locke by a different name.

(1) Intrinsic properties exist in the organism, not as a word string. Then, (2) by the identity of knower and known which is knowledge, they may exist in an observer as an integral set of concepts. Finally, (3) the observer may seek to codify and/or communicate knowledge of the observed object, and so create a third, and derivative, instantiation of the information intrinsic to the organism -- a description.

we take a description and compare the description — Metaphysician Undercover

We may do so if we trust the observer, but first-rate scientists much prefer to see the data, or even better, the object. When my brother Gary, a world-renowned biologist, wished to confirm the species of a scorpion (his specialty), he did not send a description, or even a picture, of the organism to the taxonomist, but the organism itself.

There is no direct connection between the organism and the category. That is the point of Kantian metaphysics. — Metaphysician Undercover

I cannot agree. I associate Kant with profound and damaging confusion. He seems not to have read Aristotle or the Aristotelian Scholastics, for he does not know or comment on Aristotle's argument that knowledge requires the identity of knower and known: The knower being informed by the known is identically the known informing the knower. In more contemporary terms, the brain state encoding information about a sensed object is identically the modification of the brain by the action of the sensed object. This allows no separation of knower and known. (I made this point in the paper we are discussing.)

The category is a concept, the actualization of notes of intelligibility intrinsic to its instances. We can see this in applications of the concept. If the instances were not able to elicit the category idea, we would be unable to judge them to be instances. Since they can elicit the concept in application, they can also elicit it in the first instance, in ideogenesis. Thus, the category depends on the intelligibility of its instances, as we agreed earlier.

The "phenomenon", or how the organism appears to the sensing subjects as observers, is intermediary. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it is not. It is the action of the sensed object on the sensing subject. Action is inseparable from the agent acting. E.g. when the builders stop building, building stops.

Again, this is the Kantian point. We have no access to the intrinsic properties "as they are", all we have is "as they appear to us". Therefore the best we can get is to be consistent with how the properties appear to us. — Metaphysician Undercover

This reflects a long line of increasing confusion, starting with the Muslim commentators on Aristotle introducing the concept of representations, passing through Aquinas's intelligible species, Locke's ideas and ending in Kant's phenomena. It fundamentally misunderstands the nature of knowing as a partial identity between knower and known.

Knowing is essentially relational. It is a partial identity as I explained above, and it is a subject-object relation, for there is no knowing without a knowing subject and a known object. Kant imagines the noumenon or ding an sich as the aspirational standard of "true" knowledge -- something that "real" knowledge would grasp, but we do not. This is utter and complete nonsense -- as absurd as square circles. Why? Because the idea of knowing without relating is self-contradictory. We can only know reality by relating to it, and we can only relate to it as it relates to us. This is as true for God in His divine omniscience as it is for us. Phenomena are not "intermediary". They do not stand between us and reality. Phenomena are us knowing reality. As I said in my article, qualia are the contingent forms of awareness.

he first thing to recognize is that there is a realm of intelligible forms, as the actuality of the thing itself, which we must come to understand directly through reasoning rather than through sensing. — Metaphysician Undercover

We cannot understand forms unless they inform us, and they inform us, not directly as Plato thought, but via sensation. So, reasoning is based on information derived from sensation. Logic does not provide its own content. In fact, it, itself, is derived a posteriori, from sensory data.

Contradictory properties are opposing properties, like red and not red. — Metaphysician Undercover

Read Aristotle on contraries.

an effective evasion, instead of addressing the question head on — Metaphysician Undercover

Don't you realize that this kind of hostile language, with the implication of bad faith, is what discourages dialog with you? You have insights to share, but the tone of many of your posts invites defensiveness and counterattack rather than an open exchange of views. We can disagree in good faith.

I mean how would you ground the supposed "right and wrong" of your claimed objectivity? — Metaphysician Undercover

It is simple. For example, if we encounter an organism with four or eight legs instead of six, or without a segmented body, it would be wrong (an intellectual, not a moral, error) to "assign it" to the insect category because it does not meet the agreed upon definition. The judgement of error depends on comparing (1) the conventional (human generated) definition of "insect" with (2) the objective (intrinsic) properties of the organism, e.g. having eight legs.

If it's the former, then you are just saying the same thing as me, the "form" which is "the species", is a construct of human convention. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here is the source of confusion. Aristotle's eidos ("form") has two meanings. One is a being's actuality (as opposed to its hyle/potency), the other is the universal concept this actuality elicits. Thus, when he says that Callias and Socrates are “the same in form; for their form is indivisible” (Metaphysics VII, 8, 1034a5), he does not mean they have the same actuality, or the same Platonic Idea, but that they elicit the same concept, <human>.

Still, Aristotle seems not to recognize that the same organisms can elicit different species concepts. As I explained in my two Studia Gilsoniana articles on metaphysics and evolution, there are at least 26 different ways of defining biological species and at least five ways of defining philosophical species. Each has a basis in, but is not dictated by, reality. Rather, the taxonomist chooses what type of properties to base classification on.

Different objective taxonomic schemes are possible because organisms are intelligible, rather than instances of actual (Platonic) ideas. When humans actualize potentials, we further specify them. We decide what to chisel from the marble or mold from the clay. We also choose which notes of intelligibility in an organism, or in a collection of organisms, to attend to and so actualize. The notes of intelligibility are the organism's. The choice of which to actualize is ours. So, the resulting concept (e.g. a species concept) is both objective and subjective.

Any property which inheres within a thing is intrinsic to that thing, even if it is accidental in relation to the category or species that the thing is judged as being in. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course. I made no contrary claim.

We judge the category by what is deemed as essential to that category. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is what I said -- here and in my Studia Gilsoniana articles.

Therefore, that the properties are intrinsic to the organism is accidental to the judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. It is essential that the classification be based on intrinsic properties once the category is defined. If it were not, there would be no connection between the organism and the category.

All that is relevant is the description of the organism and the definition of the species. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. For a correct classification, the description must not merely exist, it must be accurate -- reflecting intrinsic properties as they are.

What I said was that "members" can have contradicting properties. So, for example I can have a property which is contradictory to a property which you have — Metaphysician Undercover

What you are talking about is contrary, not contradictory, properties. Contradictories negate each other. Contraries are opposites, but do not rule each other out.

If you and I are both judged to have those essential properties, we are members of that species, regardless of all the various properties which are said to be intrinsic to you, and intrinsic to me. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes.

There is no such thing as two things with the same form. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, the confusion is the result of the two meanings of form (see above). While no two things have the same actuality. Two things may elicit identical ideas.

There is a 1 potential which must always have existed actually as I can count to 1.
There is a 2 potential which must always have existed actually as I can count to 2.
.... — Heiko

To give you the courtesy of an answer, possibility may always exist, potentials do not. There seems to have been a point early in the evolution of the universe, when it was not yet discrete objects (and so had nothing countable) and nothing measurable (because of problems associated with Planck scale objects). At that point, there was no basis in reality for our number concepts, and so no potential numbers -- only the possibility of numbers in the future when beings capable of counting, measuring, and conceiving numbers would come to be.

I see no difference between the claim that a number-potential is guaranteed to exist and the claim that a number is guaranteed to exist. — Heiko

So, you think a potential statue is no different from an actual statue? A block of marble and the Pieta carved from it are the same? I cannot believe that that is your position.

Where are those potentials? — Heiko

As I already explained, they are in the sets that can be counted or in the various things we can measure.

I think you are just giving the numbers a fancy name. — Heiko

So, you think there is no difference between a group of sheep and the number that results from counting them.

Philosophy is not about fancy names. It is about understanding human experience, including human mathematical experience, consistently. As any science, philosophy has technical terms so that its practitioners can speak and write with precision. Since numbers do not exist in the same way as rocks or fish, it is reasonable to ask what is meant by the phrase "there exists" as used in mathematics. I have given an answer that is consistent with our experience with numbers. It does not agree with your preconceptions. So, we have come to an impasse. I do not see that we are making progress, but if you think we are, let me know.

Wouldn’t the claim of the existence of such a bodily substance be an empirical claim? If it’s a substance, then either it can be detected by scientific means, or it can be declared a false hypothesis. — Wayfarer

Without judging the claim, a lack of data does not falsify a hypothesis. It may make it unnecessary and unparsimonious.

Try to tell me what it _is_(contradiction number one) that is "potentially available" (we can predicate those potentialities that cannot exist as they would then be actual countable things) but not "actually there". What are you even talking about? — Heiko

Sure, easily. A set of 7 sheep has the potential to yield a 7 count, and so actualize the concept <7> in a person counting them. Still, the set of sheep having cardinality 7 is not the counting person having the concept <7>. So, the number can be potential (having a basis in the set of sheep), but not actual if no one thinking the count.

In your view the potentials are readily "at-hand" when needed to become numbers but - for some not understandable reason - not the numbers themselves. — Heiko

There is a difference between being countABLE (your "readily 'at-hand'"), and actually counted, eliciting an actual number concept in the person counting. Do you deny the difference?

Logical calculus has made serious progress over time. We can choose axioms as needed. — Heiko

No, what has changed over time is the meaning of "logic." Classically, logic was the science of correct (salva veritate) thinking. Modern logic is not concerned with thought, but with symbolic manipulation. Its concept of truth is an arbitrary value, not adequacy to reality.

The result of confusing these

Which is where you should stop - here the speculation over "potential existing numbers" is completely absent. — Heiko

two meanings can be seen in your claim. We cannot arbitrarily choose the thought processes that preserve truth. Some always do, and recognizing them is the basis of classical logic. Choosing to include or exclude an axiom cannot possibly change which thought processes preserve truth as adequacy to reality, and which do not. All it can do is define (hopefully) self-consistent abstract structures. I say "hopefully," because we cannot know most are self-consistent.

Boole wrote The Laws of Thought, as though thought was ruled by logical laws. It is not. We see illogical thinking everyday -- some of great consequence. There is no law that prevents me thinking the square root of 2 is a rational number, or that a circle can also be a square. Classical logic tells us how we must think if we want our thought to be consistent with reality. Because of this, the laws of classical logic reflect the nature of being. For example, the law of non-contradiction is based on the ontological fact that nothing can be and not be in one and the same way at one and the same time. If we think otherwise, our thought will not be applicable to being, and useless in life and in science, both of which are constrained by reality.

Finally, the exploration of symbolic structures, whether mathematical or "logical," has not dispensed with Aristotelian logic. Every application of a theorem involves a syllogism in Barbara. Suppose we have a theorem "A -> B". To apply it, we must recognize that we are dealing with an instance of A. So, the syllogism is:
All As are such that B follows.
The present case is an A.
The present case is such that B follows.

We are left to conclude that actual numbers result from counting and measuring operations. — Dfpolis
Which is where you should stop - here the speculation over "potential existing numbers" is completely absent. — Heiko

No, the countability and measureability (potencies) of the natural world were the basis of this conclusion -- reread what preceded this.

What get's realized? Where are those potentials? Are they really there? Are you sure about them? Contradiction! Fubar!! — Heiko

Once more: The countability and measureability of nature. Are you denying that discrete objects can be counted? Or continuous quantities measured? I am not sure what you are objecting to.

But why would it _need_ to be selected to be present? — Heiko

Again, I am discussing the claim that consciousness evolved. If you do not think it evolved, you can skip my response to that claim. I am content to say that it is present, but did not evolve.

Say evolution wants fire for the warmth but not the smoke but yet has to live with it. Things can be perceived in different ways because they have different effects. — Heiko

Of course, but that does not provide a naturalistic explanation. It just says we have no explanation, and I agree: there is no naturalistic explanation, so consciousness is ontologically emergent.

I don't see the necessity. — Heiko

"Necessary" was your term:

if conscious thought was a necessary side-result of "biological computational" activity leading to some behaviour the empiric observation would exactly be what it is. — Heiko

My computer and the software it is running has no reflection on all the transistors that change state, yet those generate output on the screen which is the effect of those state-changes. — Heiko

Yes. The difference is that we can completely explain everything we know about computers without assuming they are conscious, but we cannot do so for humans.

The character of interlocutors, that is, psychology, is not separate from philosophy. — Fooloso4

I agree. I got thrown off the Aquinas list some years ago for making exactly that point, and refusing to retract it.

What I understand of the philosophy of mathematics is, that as the idea of a non-existing number is self-contradictory, we have to ditch the law-of-excluded-middle (tertium non datur), to avoid having to conclude that all numbers exist. — Heiko

Don't you find abandoning logic irrational? There is no need to ditch excluded middle if we recognize that numbers are concepts and their "existence" is normally potential rather than actual. Still, just as a builder is a builder when he is not actually (but only potentially) building, so a number can "be" a number when it is not actually being thought. Still, there is a difference in mode between potency and act.

they surely follow their ideas with logical scrutiny. — Heiko

Logical scrutiny is of no avail if you have already abandoned logic.

Aristotle does not provide a full-blown philosophy of mathematics. Instead, he shows in numerous ways that Plato's theory of Ideas is irrational (which is why the Neoplatonists placed exemplar ideas in the mind of the logos), and he observes that quantity in nature is either discrete or continuous, and so either countable or measurable. Thus, it is potential, rather than actual, numbers.

We are left to conclude that actual numbers result from counting and measuring operations. Further, as a rule, when an agent actualizes a potential, the result can be partially determined by the mode of actualization (e.g. when material is formed into a work of art). So, there is every reason to expect that the result of a measuring operation will depend as much on the details of the operation as on the object measured. This expectation is borne out in special relativity and quantum mechanics, where measure numbers depend on how the measurement is done. You might think this would not apply to counting, but it does. In approaching a herd, we choose whether to count animals, eyes, legs, or whatever interests us. So, counts do not pre-exist counting operations.

Maybe they give insights into "more initial", "more naive" concepts but the handiwork is not up to par with modern standards. — Heiko

To say that older work adheres to the laws of logic is hardly a criticism. Increased comprehension counts in a theory's favor. It is much better to preserve logic while explaining mathematics than to abandon logic while trying to explain it. I already showed that the idea that mathematics is the work of pure reason is historical nonsense. You are pointing out that it also involves logical nonsense.

When a general principle (such as Excluded Middle) is abandoned in one case only, that is Special Pleading -- a common fallacy. To abandon such a principle, one needs to show its intrinsic weakness. This can be done by deep analysis, or by providing other examples of its failure.

There is no adaptive advantage ...

This is not how evolution works. We can say that advantageous properties have a tendency to reproduce and hence become more common, but this does not mean that all surviving properties are advantageous. — Heiko

Quite true. Still, it shows that the surviving property is not explained by the evolutionary process, which was the claim I was arguing against. On the other hand, if consciousness is causally potent, then conscious organisms could have a reproductive advantage and be selected by evolution.

... in being aware of a physically determined role, because such awareness is impotent.

Which does not allow for any conclusion whatsoever. — Heiko

On the contrary, it shows exactly what I said above: that consciousness, whatever its origin, cannot be selected unless it can do something that allows it to be selected.

The whole consciousness-thingy could be an accident and not a supreme telos. — Heiko

You are attacking a straw man. I did not argue that it was "a supreme telos," or speculate in any way as to the origin of consciousness. I merely accepted consciousness as a contingent fact of nature.

If you want to argue that it "could be an accident," you need to define "accident" and explain how an intentional effect can instantiate that definition when physics (the presumed source of the "accident") has no intentional effects.

In fact, if conscious thought was a necessary side-result of "biological computational" activity leading to some behaviour the empiric observation would exactly be what it is. — Heiko

Sadly, we know that it is not "a necessary side-result of 'biological computational.'" If it were, we would necessarily be conscious of all biological computation, and, as I showed in my article, we are not.

We could use "designate", "stipulate", "appoint", or whatever similar word, they're all very similar and also all forms of judgement. — Metaphysician Undercover

None are forms of judgement. They are all acts of will, not intellect. To judge is to see the truth of some connection, not to make an arbitrary decision.

The fact of the matter is, that we appoint things to the category which is their species, they do not just naturally place themselves into these categories, they are appointed to the appropriate categories — Metaphysician Undercover

No, things do not place themselves in species, nor was that my claim. I said that species are defined by objective commonalities. We decide which commonalities define a category, but, having decided that, whether a new object is an instance of the category is an objective question, with a right and wrong answer.

hese properties are intrinsic to the organism, not willed by us in an act of designation. — Dfpolis
No, I think that this is false. The essential properties of the species are intrinsic to the concept, but all internal properties, are intrinsic to the organism. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a confused, as it is on the basis of intrinsic properties that an organism fits or does not fit into one of the categories we have defined. If it has 6 legs and a segmented body, it is an insect. If it has scaled wings, it belongs to the order lepidoptera, etc.

And that is also why members of the same species often have contradicting intrinsic properties. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nothing can have contradicting properties. Either it has a property, or if does not.

What is intrinsic to the organism is not necessarily essential to the concept. Those are the accidents. — Metaphysician Undercover

We agree. The accidental notes of comprehension are abstracted away in forming our species concept.

I'm afraid I do not understand you, because this makes no sense to me. — Metaphysician Undercover

If we have two things with the identical form, they are two (different) in virture of being made out of different instances of stuff. If we take a batch of plastic and make different kinds of things with it, they are not different because they are plastic, but because they have different forms.

I believe it is the human mind which distinguishes one form from another (individuates), so I would need some further explanation to understand what you are proposing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, the mind distinguishes objects. The question is what aspect of the object does the mind latch on to in telling two objects with the same form, or with the same kind of matter, appart? The distinction is not purely arbitrary, but has an objective basis.

By Ch-8-9 he explains why actuality is necessarily prior to potentiality, thus excluding the possibility that prime matter is something real. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that the notion of prima materia is not well-founded, but potentials not being primary or actual does not mean they are not real. There is a present basis for furture form.

The actuality which is prior to matter must be immaterial. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course. It has to be. If that is all you are saying, I think we have been misunderstanding each other.

These premises clearly give the conclusion that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know, prior to them all and more divine than they. (269a 30) — Fooloso4

A bodily substance is not immaterial.

Mind you, when you have 7 things, you have 6,5,... as well. — Heiko

Yes, but it is not the number that you can think of that is actual. It is the number you do think of.

The point is that numbers are not things. They are thoughts, specifically concepts. Thoughts only exist as long as someone is thinking them. If no one is thinking them, they remain possible thoughts, but not actual thoughts -- and if they are number concepts, they are possible numbers, but not actual numbers.

Numbers are actual only while being thought, because they are abstractions and so instruments of thought. — Dfpolis

Sorry, I still do no understand what you mean by thinking a number. We have explored a few different directions and approaches already. I am afraid I simply will not get it. I'll stay with a formal argument:
The set of non-existing numbers has to be empty per definition. They are a contradiction in themselves. — Heiko

You know the difference between thinking of 7, as when you are thinking of the seven dwarfs or the seven days of the week, and not thinking of 7. That is what I mean by thinking of the number 7. Similarly, for all the other numbers.

The set of potential numbers is not empty. It is all the numbers that could possibly be thought. The problem is that mathematicians reflect on mathematical, not ontological, problems. That makes them sloppy when it comes to thinking about existence.

If the set of non-existing numbers has to be empty per definition, and the set of potential numbers (numbers that could be thought but are not) is not empty, and what is only potential does not actually exist, how could potential numbers be non-existing? Clearly, some distinctions are required.

Some philosophers, called rationalists, claim that we have a special, non-sensory capacity for understanding mathematical truths, a rational insight arising from pure thought. But, the rationalist’s claims appear incompatible with an understanding of human beings as physical creatures whose capacities for learning are exhausted by our physical bodies. — Wayfarer

I am sure that some make this claim. A claim is not an observation or an experience.

Again, consider how we apply conclusions to concrete cases. In order to apply some mathematical theorem to physics, I have to recognize that the case I am considering instantiates some mathematical concept, <MC>. For that to happen, my case must be able to elicit the concept <MC>, because if it did not, I could not see that it was an instance of <MC>. But, if it can elicit the concept in application, there is no reason it cannot elicit the concept de novo. Finally, if nature can elicit a new mathematical concept, a Platonic source for the concept is unnecessary.

How do we know the proofs of mathematics? Through pure reason, I was always taught. — Wayfarer

That is not how we know the relevant concepts. In kindergarten or 1st grade, you learned to count pennies, oranges, apples or whatever until you were able to abstract the act of counting or enumeration from what was being counted. So, you learned number concepts from experience. The same with operations such as addition, subtraction, etc. Geometry came from land measurement after the floods of the Nile. The Greeks developed harmonic analysis to work out astronomical epicycles. The idea of a limit came from medieval physicists trying to define instantaneous velocity; vector decomposition from medieval architects working out the forces on their buildings. At a higher level, the examples from which we abstract are number systems, vector spaces and so on that were earlier abstracted from physical systems.

Of course, when we look at a finished, axiomatized system, it looks like it sprang whole from pure reason. It did not.

As the first passage says, it's challenge to physicalism. — Wayfarer

What is a challenge to physicalism is the existence of conceptual knowledge, and the consciousness required to produce it. Abstraction cannot be a physical act, as many concepts can be founded on one physical representation.

I still believe that Aristotle insists on the reality of universals - that they're more than simply mental constructions of names. — Wayfarer

They have to be for the application of universals to reality to work. The answer is moderate realism, first hinted at by Peter Abelard. There are no actual universals in nature, but there is an objective basis for us forming them. All the instances of a universal idea must be able to elicit that idea. That capacity (intelligibility) is an objective property, but it is not an actual idea.

What is necessary is true in all possible worlds, but how can perception see into other possible worlds?

Possible worlds talk is a terrible basis for approaching modality. Modality needs to be based on actual experience, which is our only means of knowing.

The scholastics, the Aristotelian Catholic philosophers of the Middle Ages, were so impressed with the mind’s grasp of necessary truths as to conclude that the intellect was immaterial and immortal.

I think this is bad history. The arguments for immortality I know are not based on our grasp of necessity.

We are able to do what you said for every number that can be written and we know that we can do it. How then are there numbers that do not exist? — Heiko

"Being able" means that we have the potential to do so. Numbers are actual only while being thought, because they are abstractions and so instruments of thought. Your argument shows that they all have the potential to be thought, not that anyone is actually thinking them.

The consciousness impasse, the root of The Hard Problem, is a conflation of type replicability with token replicability, the latter being an impossibility. — ucarr

The argument about token replicability is intended to meet the objection that first person observations (aka introspection) is not properly scientific because it is private. I am saying that it does not matter if an observation is public or private. It is scientific if it is replicable -- if other observations of the same type produce the same results.

Then, given that 1st person observations are not methodologically problematic, we can add data from them to data previously allowed by the Fundamental Abstraction (3rd person observations). This allows us to come at consciousness from both ends: using 3rd person data to investigate neurophysical mechanisms and the content they encode and process, and the 1st person experience of awareness of content to see how that (merely intelligible) content becomes actually known.

The above claim posits conceptualize and intend within an equation. — ucarr

I am not trying to equate conceptualizing with intending (in the sense of committing to) a course of action. I am saying that conceiving courses of action is a causal step in voluntary behavior.

The rest of the paragraph grasps my point. Rational behavior seamlessly integrates intentionality and physicality.

The agent intellect is the self who does introspection: pattern recognition in response to present intelligibility; logical manipulation of information: deduction; inference; interpolation; extrapolation; inferential expansion; information combinatorics, etc. — ucarr

The primary function of the agent intellect is to make what was merely intelligible actually understood. I think the brain does a lot of the processing of data -- holograpically encoding similar stimuli, activating associated contents and so on. Still, as I explained in the article, judgements require awareness of contents, and so involve the agent intellect. So, while association does not require the AI, judgement does.

"Self" is a problematic term. I would say that the AI is the self in the sense of being the center of our subjectivity, but not in the sense of being who we are, because we are psychophysical wholes.

Key Questions -- Aristotelian awareness contains a physical component: Does agent intellect = self? Does agent intellect as self possess form? Does awareness possess boundaries? — ucarr

The physical component of awareness is the neurophysiological encoding of the contents we are aware of. The intentional component is the agent intellect by which we become aware of those contents.

I think the agent intellect has a form/actuality, since it is a determinate power. It actualizes intelligibility, not some other potential.

Boundaries? That is a hard question. Normally the AI is directed to contents encoded in our brain, but in mystical experience it seems to have some awareness of God, at least in His agency. (This is a very complex subject. A good start, but only a start, is the phenomenology discussed by Bucke, James and especially W. T. Stace.)

Form and matter are two modes of organization, viz., matter = extension/extendability; form = context/configurability. — ucarr

That is why "matter" is a terrible translation of hyle. Hyle is defined as "that out of which." It is a potential for new form. So, it could be something extended like bronze or clay, but it can also be axioms that can be formed into theorems, the tendency for a seed to become a mature plant, or the potential of a tree to be a piece of furniture.

Herein activity = physical-intentional complex, viz., present intelligibility ⇔ sentience. — ucarr

Intelligibility is what allows objects to be known. It is an object's capacity to inform a mind. The activity here is thinking of apples. When we stop thinking about apples, the concept no longer exists, but the brain encodes the content of the <apple> concept in our memory. So we "know" it in the sense of being able to think <apple> again without sensing an apple.

Representation = present intelligibility. — ucarr

Yes.

here’s no self who comprehends the present intelligibility of the data. — ucarr

Exactly.

Abstraction is the reductive actualization of intelligibility. — ucarr edit

That depends on what you mean by "reductive." If you mean that we reduce the amount of information, we do. I said "selective" because I wanted to make the point that we "shape" our understanding of reality by actively choosing what to look at, and what to ignore.

An idea can never hold identity with a thing-in-itself. — ucarr

In a way and in a way not. We can never have exhaustive knowledge on a divine paradigm. We can and do identify with the aspect of the object that is informing us, because the object informing me is identically me being informed by the object. These are two ways of describing the same event -- a case of shared existence.

Key question – Is abstraction, a subtractive process, necessarily a reductive process? — ucarr

I am not sure what you mean by "reductive."

Key question – Can agent intellect generate anything other than abstractions? — ucarr

Its prime function is knowing. It is because it does not know exhaustively that it produces abstactions. In mystical experience it knows something undefinable, and so not limited by a de-finition.

The physical-conceptual complex of Aristotelian animism is a corrective reversionist paradigm. However, this reversionism is not retrograde because it meshes cleanly and closely with much of scientific understanding evolving henceforth from antiquity. — ucarr

this reversionism is not retrograde ... — ucarr

I am suggesting that we add to, rather than replace, the contemporary view.

I'm confused. Does the number 10^1000 exist or not? It is written there, but you won't find or be able to think that many things. "Thinking the count" just shift the question one level higher. — Heiko

It does not exist in virtue of being written. The string "10^1000" exists. It is not a number, but a symbol capable of eliciting a number concept, specifically, the concept <10^1000>. When no one is thinking <10^1000>, the number 10^1000 does not actually exist. Still, it is capable of being thought and so is a potential number.

The existence of a number does not depend on our being able to imagine the corresponding number of objects. It depends on actively thinking the concept and knowing what the concept intends -- knowing how to recognize an instance were we to encounter one. "How" is by counting to 10^1000. Knowing this does not require actually counting to 10^1000. This could be reformulated in terms of the successor operation.

I don't know if that is Plato's view. From everything I read, the basic tenet of mathematical Platonism is that numbers are real independently of any mind. — Wayfarer

Yes, that is mathematical Platonism. There is a related kind of extreme realism, which holds that measured values pre-exist measurement. This was promoted by Plato when he speculated that nature is made of numbers, geometric figures, and/or regular polyhedra. Opposed to all of these forms of extreme realism is Aristotle's view that numbers are abstractions based on our experience with counting and measuring operations.

We could not apply mathematical concepts to nature unless natural objects were countable and/or measurable, and so elicit numeric concepts. Thus, we know that nature can elicit such concepts. Since nature can, there is no need for a supernatural world of ideal mathematical objects to explain our knowledge of mathematics.

This is not forgetting "pure" mathematics, as most of it is abstracted from, and so generalizes, the structures of applied mathematics. The remainder is hypothetical.

The notion of mathematical Platonism also has psychological problems, as I said. How do we know its structures. In my experience, I need an example to truly understand mathematical concepts. I think this is the experience of most mathematicians. The concepts are then abstracted from the example(s). Second, our best understanding of how the mind works is that it uses neurophysical representations of contents. Mathematical Platonism requires a different, spiritual, mechanism that has not been observed or experienced. If mathematical thought were brain-independent, brain trauma would not diminish our mathematical ability.

Yet one could say that the mode of existence of x+1 changes, when x is determined. — Heiko

Yes.

What would be meant by thinking a number? — Heiko

It depends on how we are thinking of it. If we are considering a few objects, it would be thinking the count of the objects. If we are considering a string of digits, it would be the count represented by that string, even though we cannot imagine exactly that many objects.

As I explained, your definition refers to nothing real — Metaphysician Undercover

So, we always attend to every aspect of sensation and never prescind from some aspects to focus on others?

Of course we designate species members rather than finding them. We find things, and judge them to be of a specific species, thereby designating them as members of that species. — Metaphysician Undercover

We do not find them, we find them.

Consult a good dictionary. "Designating" is appointing, not judging. Appointing is an act of will, judging of the intellect. To rightly judge that a found organism is a member of a species, it must have properties that elicit the corresponding species concept. These properties are intrinsic to the organism, not willed by us in an act of designation.

First, the same thing can be in different places, just not at the same time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Pettifogging.

Without form all matter would be the same thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

I see you finally understood the texts I posted from the article I am working on. Matter (stuff) is the principle of individuation of form, and form is the principle of individuation of matter.

No, we very much do find prime matter discussed in Aristotle's Metaphysics. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you have any text(s) to support this claim? You might mean that he is rejecting Plato's chora, but that is not "prime matter" in the sense used by the Scholastics.

Where he explicitly states this in "On the Soul", Bk1, when he addresses various different ideas about the relation between the soul and the body. He dismisses Plato's account of the circular motions of the heavens in Timaeus, starting with "Now, in the first place it is a mistake to say that the soul is a spatial magnitude." — Metaphysician Undercover

This is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Since matter is potentiality, this actuality must be immaterial. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is equivocating on "matter." Proximate matter, "this flesh and bones," which is actualized by psyche, is not pure potency.

You're not even allowing for pure mathematics. Also for the role that mathematics has had in disclosing things about nature that we could never, ever deduce through observation alone. And I humbly suggest that it is your depiction of Platonism that is 'naive'. — Wayfarer

I spent some years studying pure mathematics, so I am unlikely to forget about it.

Being "pure" does not give mathematics any more existence than being applicable. For the most part, pure mathematics is abstracted from mathematical structures abstracted from nature. A small part is not, and is therefore hypothetical -- and we may not even know if it is consistent with the part that is abstracted.

Plato's view that there are actual numbers in nature, which is what I was talking about, is naive for the reasons I gave. It is also unnecessary, as abstraction provides an adequate account of most mathematics (see above). Further, it is psychologically naive. It provides no way in which we can (a) learn Platonic ideas, or (b) having learned them, no reason why what we "learned" should be applicable to scientific measurements. Aristotle's view, that numbers are based on counting and measuring operations ties them directly to scientific practice, and has survived the transition to modern physics -- being able to explain how we get different results depending on how and what we choose to measure. So, yes, mathematical Platonism is naive.

Sorry, I have to counter this with an out-of-context Hegel quote

Nothing, however, is only, in fact, the true result, when taken as the nothing of what it comes from; it is thus itself a determinate nothing, and has a content. — Heiko

Nothing is not determinate, for if it had determinations, it would be something determinate -- something with properties.

X in your example is indeterminate as a number, but determinate as a concept, for it represents an arbitrary number of the type being discussed. And, specifying X specifies X+1. Still, neither exists (as a number) until it is specified and thought. And that is the point: mathematical "existence" is not actual existence, but a convenient shorthand for a certain kind of potential.

So, what kind of existence is mathematical existence? — Dfpolis

Mathematical platonism says that intelligibles such as number are real even if not existent, being the same for all who think. Mathematical ratios and relationships are deeply embedded in the fabric of the cosmos, hence the 'unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in the natural sciences'. — Wayfarer

Yet, to find the numbers, we have to measure nature, not intuit them mystically, as Plato believed. So, Aristotle's theory is far superior. There are no actual numbers in nature. There is discrete and continuous quantity. Discrete quantity is countable, eliciting actual number concepts. Continuous quantity is measurable, eliciting numerical value concepts.

If there were actual numbers in nature, then when we measured, we would invariably obtain those numbers -- for while a system can have many possibilities, it can only have one actual state. Special relativity and quantum physics show that measure numbers depend jointly on the system measured and the measuring process. Since different ways of measuring yield different results, the result is only potential (measurable) before measuring actualizes one of the possible results.

So, numbers are deeply rooted in nature, but not in the naive way Platonism imagines.

When I say "For every natural number X there exists a number X+1", does such a number exist for every natural number of your choice? It is widely accepted that, it does of course, because it must exist per definition of the natural numbers itself. — Heiko

The problem is confusing this kind of "existence," which has no ability to do anything, with metaphysical existence, which invariably can do something -- even if it can only make itself known. What does nothing is indistinguishable from nothing, and so is nothing.

So, what kind of existence is mathematical existence? It is not an actual, but a potential, existence. When we say "there exists a number X+1", we do not mean that X+1 actually exists, because if it did, we would be actually thinking a specific number. Why? Because numbers are concepts, and concepts actually exist only when we are thinking them. When we are not thinking them, they are potential -- able to be thought, but not actually thought. So, "there exists a number X+1" means that, for any natural number X, X+1 can be thought, and when it is, it will be a natural number. This potential is well-founded, but it is not actual existence -- not even actual mental existence.

I am sure that you realize that we cannot define anything into actual existence. All we can do is define them into mental existence (entia rationis).

One can make the argument that there is something like a space of all possible concepts. Like the rules of mathematical syntax. It is already defined which concepts can be formed and which cannot. — Heiko

The problem with this is that potential being is not actual or operational being, and so it cannot do anything -- like limit how we think.

If you want this space to be actual, then, since it is populated with concepts, there must be a super mind thinking it. (Concepts are beings of reason, existing only when actually thought.) You then need to explain how the super mind actually imposes its limitations on human minds. Further, if the concepts come from the super mind (or anything other than the reality instantiating them) they are not based in their instances, and there is no way to recognize a new instance when we encounter one.

On the other hand, if concepts are elicited by their instances, one mechanism explains both their genesis and their application to new instances. That conforms to experience and is also more parsimonious.

(Still, it's an incorrect/bad translation.) — Alkis Piskas

Yes, now it is. When it was made, the sexist connotation escaped notice.

"Abstraction" is an extremely broad, and vague term, covering a wide variety of mental processes. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is why I defined it for you.

I see no point to restricting "abstraction" to a subtractive process and denying that it involves any additive processes. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then you are talking about something else, not responding to what I said.

"Still, we can abstract aspects that are common to a species or genus, and these aspects are grounded in the form of the species or genus members." It appears strangely circular to me, so how do you propose a grounding here?[/q]
A species definition is not an inductive proposition because it is not a proposition. If a species definition is not grounded in the actual nature of some organisms, the result is not a false claim, but an empty taxon.
— Metaphysician Undercover

Lets say there is a named species, and it has some designated members. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is confused. We do not "designate" species members. We find them, or don't.

Where is the grounding you propose, and how is the designation of which beings are properly called members of the species anything more than arbitrary? — Metaphysician Undercover

Your hypothesis is contrary to fact. As I said, we do not "designate" species members, we find them. If we find an organism that does not elicit one of the species concepts already in our taxonomy, we form a new species concept. This is not "designation," but ideogenesis, because the instance comes before the concept. If and when we find other organisms that elicit the same species concept, we are justified in assigning them to the same species. Since the concept is based on the intelligibility of its instances, it is well-grounded, not "arbitrary." Could we develop a different taxonomy with different species definitions? Absolutely. In two recent Studia Gilsonianna articles, I noted that there are at least 26 ways of defining biological species and at least 5 of defining philosophical species. Each is based on intelligible properties of organisms or instances, and so has an objective, rather than an arbitrary, basis.

What I see is an issue with the nature of "matter", as fundamentally unintelligible through the violation of the excluded middle law. — Metaphysician Undercover

There would only be a violation of Excluded Middle if matter/potentiality existed in the same way as form/actuality. It does not.

the easy answer as to how they differ is "the matter". But this is really just a way to avoid answering. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not at all. We know they are different because they are not in the same place, and they cannot be in the same place because they are made of different stuff. So, we have a causal explanation for their non-identity. Of course, that different bits of stuff cannot be in the same place is a contingent fact, known a posteriori. But, then, we know everything a posteriori.

Also, you are confusing two meanings of "matter." Aristotle does not say that Socrates differs from Callias because they have different hyle (potency), but because they have different flesh and bones -- different "stuff," not different potencies.

So the atomists propose a fundamental indivisible, which Aristotle describes in his Metaphysics as a "prime matter". — Metaphysician Undercover

The atomists proposed an indivisible stopping point, atoma. Aristotle roundly rejects the hypothesis of atoma, and answers instead that potential division is not actual division, so there is no actual infinite regress.

Also, will not find "prime matter" in Aristotle. It is an invention of the Scholatics, found in Aquinas, and confuses Aristotle's hyle with Plato's chora. (See my Hyle article.)

He implies that at the base, or foundation, of material bodies, is something truly immaterial. — Metaphysician Undercover

By "implies" I take it you mean that there is no text in which Aristotle actually says this. If there is, please cite it.

But in metaphysical analysis, and ontological studies we come to understand that this produces an infinite regress of always needing a further underlying matter, and this renders the basis of material existence as fundamentally unintelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not Aristotle's position, and your reasoning is flawed for the reasons I gave.

The above translation --which I have located in the Web --with the only difference "by nature" instead of "naturally" which mean the same thing-- sounds as if Aristotle was sexist. The original Greek text is "πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει", which means --if correctly translated-- "All people by their nature desire knowledge". The main idea is the same, but the difference between "men" and "people" is enough to insinuate sexism. — Alkis Piskas

I translate, "All humans naturally desire to know." Still, Aristotle was a racist and a sexist. He opposed Alexander's liberal policy of granting citizenship to conquered races and explicitly thought females were defective males, ranking women between men and slaves.

Yes. Still, we can abstract aspects that are common to a species or genus, and these aspects are grounded in the form of the species or genus members. — Dfpolis
I think I would disagree with this. When we abstract what is common to a species, this is grounded in the individual instances. — Metaphysician Undercover

The species or genus members are

. — Metaphysician Undercover

The individual instances of the species or genus.

That is inductive reasoning, making a general statement which is derived from observation of a multitude of individuals. — Metaphysician Undercover

Abstraction is not inductive reasoning. Abstraction is a subtractive process, in which we focus on certain notes of intelligibility to form a concept, while prescinding from others. Induction is an additive process in which we add the hypothesis that the cases we have not examined are like the cases we have. No hypothesis is added in abstraction. Rather, we see that certain things do not depend on others, e.g. by seeing that counting does not depend on what is counted we come to the concept of natural numbers and the arithmetic axioms. In the case of species, if a new individual has all the notes of intelligibility required to elicit a species concept, it is a member of that species. If not, not.

We do not derive the universal from an independent Form which is the form of the species, we derive it from the individuals. — Metaphysician Undercover

I did not say that we did.

I must say that I can't really interpret what you are saying in these passages, by simply reading them with no context. — Metaphysician Undercover

Try reading it by first skipping the footnotes. I am saying that sometimes Aristotle uses matter to individuate form, and sometimes he uses form to individuate matter. So, he has no single principle of individuation. Aquinas is forced to do the same.

I would not say that any of these problems were solved by Aristotle. — Fooloso4

Again, we must agree to disagree.

Such as? — Fooloso4

The problem of change, the source of universal knowledge, the nature of time, the reality of mathematical objects, etc., etc.

In both cases there is not only an awareness of something lacking but a desire to obtain it, but we have found no way to move past the aporia raised in these texts. — Fooloso4

Who is "we"? Aristotle solved a number of the problems, and others have been resolved since.

This necessitates that there is a form unique to each an every individual. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. Still, we can abstract aspects that are common to a species or genus, and these aspects are grounded in the form of the species or genus members.

Here is a fragment about the principle of individuation from an article I am working on:

"... in some texts Aristotle follows Plato by making matter the principle of individuation, but in a different way: “And when we have the whole, such and such a form in this flesh and in these bones, this is Callias or Socrates; and they are different in virtue of their matter (for that is different), but the same in form; for their form is indivisible.” (Metaphysics VII, 8, 1034a5). [Note: Since eidos can mean either “form” or “idea,” we could translate the last as “the same in idea; for their idea is indivisible” – giving the text an epistemological rather than an ontological meaning. This reading is more plausible when we remember that, for Aristotle, the idea in the mind is identical with the known object.] While this substitutes proximate, intelligible matter (this flesh and these bones) for Plato’s unintelligible chora, it retains the Platonic notion of a single, indivisible form shared by diverse individuals. [Note: The indivisibility of forms does not make them substances: “it is plain that no universal attribute is a substance, and this is plain also from the fact that no common predicate indicates a ‘this’, but rather a ‘such’.” Metaphysics VII, 13, 1038b35.]

"Elsewhere, he takes a different approach. In DA II, 1, 412a6-10, Aristotle says that eidos makes hyle a tode ti. Aquinas concurs: “through the form, which is the actuality of matter, matter becomes something actual and something individual,” (materia efficitur ens actu et hoc aliquid, De Ente et Essentia 2, 18). Hoc aliquid (this something) is the Latin equivalent of tode ti. St. Thomas uses this principle, not matter, to argue that the resurrected body is one with the former body. [Note: “… if [a statue] is considered according as it is given in genus or in species by form, then I say that the same thing is not remade, but another, because the form of this is one thing, the form of that is another. But with the body it is not so, because in the body there will be the same form (in corpore erit eadem forma).” Quodlibet XI, 6, ad 3, trans. by Edward Buckner, 2010. http://www.logicmuseum.com/authors/ aquinas/aquinasquodlibet-xi-6.htm.]'

…consciousness emerges in a specific kind of interaction: that between a rational subject and present intelligibility. — Dfpolis
The agent intellect is the mediator between a rational subject and present intelligibility. — ucarr-paraphrase — ucarr

I would not say "mediator," as if it stood between the subject and object. Rather, it unites the subject and object, for the object informing the subject is the subject being informed by the object. In the sentence you quote, I was discussing emergence -- trying to complete an analogy between properties like charge, which cannot be observed in isolation, and the agent intellect, which is only experienced when we become aware of something intelligible.

A neural network instantiates order and thus intelligibility; the agent intellect is necessary to effect comprehension of present intelligibility by the act of reading and comprehending it. This is the action of consciousness. — ucarr-paraphrase

This is a reasonable paraphrase. I would add that this order instantiates the intelligibility of a sensed object because it is the sensed object acting on our neural net. So, it is not "other" than the object, but a form of shared existence -- the object's action and our representation.

A neural network is first-order organization whereas consciousness is second-order organization? — ucarr

I would not say it is a matter of degrees of organization. The same organization of the neural net is the vehicle of intelligibility we are not aware of it, and the vehicle of understood content when we are aware of it. "The vehicle of" is awkward, but I want to distinguish between the net's intrinsic intelligibility as a neural structure, and the intelligible information it encodes, which is what we understand.

This leaves a great deal to be explained, specifically about how we grasp the information encoded rather than the encoding structure. Still, we do. So I hope to clarify the issues rather than solve them. Aristotle writes of the phantasm as an "image," but it is not in any literal sense.

Since consciousness is an interweave of the physical and the inter-relational, consciousness is, ontologically speaking, a hybrid of the two under rubric of Aristotelianism? — ucarr

Aristotle does not divide things as we do. His "matter" (hyle) is not our "stuff," and his concept of the physical is that it is changeable being, i.e. being that has the potential to be something else. Once we come to understand intelligibility, that understanding cannot change. We can add to it. We can deny it. Still, it, itself, is just what it is and can never be something else. So, it is immutable and non-physical.

On the other hand, it is two kinds of completion (entelecheia) -- the completion of the object's capacity to be understood, and of the subject's capacity to be informed. So, you could say it is a hybrid, but Aristotle does not. He thinks of it in terms of union.

Is the agent intellect a synonym of the self; does the agent intellect possess matter and form? — ucarr

Aristotle is not very concerned with the issue of personal identity. It became an issue for Christians, especially given the doctrine of resurrection of the body (not the soul!). (That, the hypostatic union, and the Trinity lead Christian theologians to elaborate a theory of person as a rational subject of attribution).

Aquinas was very concerned with the agent intellect, as he saw it as the immortal aspect of humans, and so argued against Avicenna's interpretation that identified it with the Prime Mover. In Aquinas view, humans are intrinsically physical and so the surviving "soul" is not the self, but the incomplete residue of a human being. So, he sees resurrection as needed for a complete afterlife. Alternatively, one could see death is a metamorphosis to a "higher" form.

Wayfarer — Wayfarer

I believe dfpolis was arguing that the accidents inhere within the matter itself so that when an individual thing comes into existence (generation), the form of that thing, complete with accidents, emerges from the matter. Dfpolis referred to the example of the acorn and the oak tree. But Aristotle describes in Bk 7 why the form of the individual, complete with accidents, must be separate, and put into the thing from an external source. So what dfpolis did not properly consider is the requirement for proper environmental conditions required for the acorn to grow into an oak, as well as the external factors put into the production of the acorn. — Metaphysician Undercover

I hold none of these positions. I think accidents inhere in substances, as aspects of their actuality or form. I think that potentials, such as that of an acorn to be an oak, are not self-triggering, but are triggered by something already in act.

How would your respond to the suggestion that to return to Aristotle from the vantage of the 21st century is to filter his ideas through the entire lineage of Western philosophy that came after him and transformed his concepts? — Joshs

I think the way to avoid this is to stand beside Aristotle, look at what he is looking at, and try to see what he sees. This can never get us into Aristotle's mind, but it can result in seeing reality in a fresh and important way.