He also says, that in another sense "time" is what is measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

Where?

"Time" as that which is measured, is completely different from "time" as "the measure of...". One's the territory, the other the map, so to speak. — Metaphysician Undercover

In Aristotle's definition, the territory is the changing world. Time is a coordinate we place on its map.

This means that we must refer to an apprehended "before and after" to be able to employ time as a measure of change. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. We do this in light of the echos physical events leave in our memory. We remember what happened before now, not what will happen after now. We also see that our willed commitments can affect the future, but not the past.

we ought to start with the other definition, that time is what is measured. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not a definition because it is implicitly circular. The result of measurement is time. So, by your definition, time is both the source and result of measurement, which leaves us completely in the dark about what we are measuring. A's definition makes clear what we are measuring, viz. change, which he defines with no reference to time as "the actualization of a potency insofar as it is still in potency."

And, we can say deficiencies in the way that time is measured creates the appearance of inconsistency in before and after. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, it does not. It allows us to eliminate misconceptions about spatially separate events. Some events are before or after a given event, no matter how we measure time. Others are not. If we fix upon a single place, the sequence of events is never in doubt.

That time is what is measured is more consistent with our wider range of experience with the concept of "time" anyway. For example, when someone says what time it is. — Metaphysician Undercover

I look at a changing clock to see what the measure number is. If the clock does not change, I don't trust it to indicate the time.

And when we see the problems of measurement exposed by the relativity of simultaneity, we can start to apprehend the need for more than one dimension of time, in order to give us precise measurement. — Metaphysician Undercover

You seem not to understand relativity. It is all about how we measure things. As a result, Aristotle's concept of time is compatible with it, while Newton's concept of absolute time (which seems to be yours) is incompatible with it.

Intelligibility has existence independent of the perception and comprehension of agent intellect? — ucarr

It has actual existence as what it is, say an apple, but is potential with respect to our perception (sensibility) and comprehension (intelligibility).

Asking this another way, when a tree falls in the forest sans observer, is this event nonetheless an intelligible phenomenon? — ucarr

Yes, the event is intrinsically comprehensible, but the extrinsic conditions required to actualize that potential are missing.

Asking it obversely, does intelligibility propagate only in direct connection to the comprehension of the agent intellect (of the sentient being)? — ucarr

What propagates is a physical action that can inform sense organs (the Scholastics called this the sensible species). This is because the object is acting on its environment, say by scattering light, emitting sound or pushing back when touched. Without this sort of action, there would be no sensation. After that, it is up to the subject to attend to the sensation or not. Attending is the act of the agent intellect, and deciding to attend is an act of will.

Does intelligibility persist in the absence of sentience? — ucarr

The simple answer would have been: "As long as the intelligible object does. Not as a stand-alone entity." We now aware that objects are surrounded by a radiance of action (or sensible species) that may persist long after the core object has ceased to be. For example, a star may be long gone before we perceive and comprehend it.

Aristotle held that action is an accident inhering in the substance, even though its effect is spatially outside the substance. (The house being built is outside the builder building it.) In this view, which I think we should adopt, substances are not confined by the spatio-temporal boundaries we perceive, but also include their radiance of action. There is no text saying this, but it follows from what the texts say, and helps clarify issues of delayed perception. It makes sense of us saying "I see that star," when the core object may be long gone.

Consider: Intelligibility ≡ Order
The above statement is true? — ucarr

Well, order is intelligible.

I see two problems which make me hesitate to agree. The first is conceptual. Assuming that order and intelligibility are coextensive, they still differ in definition. "Order" names an intrinsic property, while "intelligibility" points to a possible relation -- the possibility of being an object in the subject-object relation of knowledge.

The second problem is that order is one of those things which we may know when we see it, but does not have an agreed upon definition. The definition in the Cambridge Dictionary online is: "the way in which people or things are arranged, either in relation to one another or according to a particular characteristic." This does not seem to capture the philosophical idea of order, for the arrangement may be quite disorderly. If you want to add that the arrangement has to be according to some intelligible principle, then we come close to what you are saying -- but I think metaphysical naturalists might object to such a definition as it implicates a source of intelligibility. Another problem with this definition is that we might want to say that unity is a form of order, and maybe even the highest form of order, and unity is not an arrangement of parts.

So, I cannot agree, not because I disagree with the insight, but because I do not see the connection clearly enough to commit to it.

Obversely, does non-teleological evolution preclude all linkage between intelligibility and order? — ucarr

I think "non-teleological evolution" is an oxymoron. Natural selection is selection by the laws of nature, which act to determinate ends.

Can there be unintelligible order? — ucarr

To judge that a system has order, it has to be capable of eliciting the concept <order>, which means that order is, by definition, intelligible. How can something unintelligible elicit any concept?

If not, must we conclude there can be no non-teleological evolution? — ucarr

That has long been my position for many theoretical and empirical reasons. See my "Mind or Randomness in Evolution" Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 22 (1-2):32-66 (2010) (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution).

If so, must we conclude mind takes the sensory input of the proto-order of the objective world and converts it into the following block chain: intelligibility_perception_memory-processing-comprehension_self — ucarr

I would start with sensibility, but I agree that we come to know our self, not a priori, but by reflecting on what we do -- both physically and intentionally.

Using the above statements, can I deduce agent intellect is ontologically present and active within the mind of humans? — ucarr

Yes. The historical question was whether it was a human or a divine power. I think that idenitifying it with awareness allows us to settle the question in favor of a human power. If it were a divine power, we would be aware of everything.

Moreover, can I conclude agent intellect lies somewhere between hard dualism at one end and hard reduction at the other end? — ucarr

The agent intellect is an essential part of a theory that stands between them.

thanks for the stimulating conversation. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are welcome.

Is this form a logical entity emergent from the neuronal processes of the brain? — ucarr

Philosophically, I can only say that what the agent intellect does cannot be deduced from physical considerations. So, it is ontologically emergent. When we cannot work out the dynamics, saying "from x" could be no more than a guess.

Is this form a logical entity emergent from the neuronal processes of the brain? — ucarr

Its ontological status is not logical (it really operates), nor is it an independent being. It is a power of a rational being.

Logical emergence is one type of category, neuronal grounding of same is another type of category? — ucarr

If we can show how it is grounded, that would mean that it is not ontologically emergent.

Are you looking to current philosophical inquiry for answers to these questions? — ucarr

No, I am looking for a better integration of the contingent facts of physical and intentional reality.

I regret that I cannot continue this exchange. Responding to you is very time-consuming, and not enlightening as we go over the same points repeatedly. So, there is no sign that we are approaching agreement.

Wishing you well, Dennis

To make a judgement is a type of experience — Metaphysician Undercover

You are conflating sense experience, which is how we know intrinsic properties, with the experience of mental processes, such as judging. It is not that judging is a type of experience, but that we experience judging.

it implies that the person's experience of judging was erroneous. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, this is confused. The judgement is wrong, not the experience of making a wrong judgement.

"Mistake" is best understood as a wrong choice, — Metaphysician Undercover

Associations are not choices, either.

So the majority of errors which human beings make cannot even be classed as errors by your restrictions. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am concentrating on truth and falsity because we are not discussing error in general, but having a false idea of an object's intrinsic properties. Other kinds of errors are irrelevant to that.

How do you think it is the case that some parts of the form are sensed, but not others, unless there is some type of selection going on? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because we inherit our sensory capabilities. We do not select them.

What do you believe, that the senses are programmed like a computer, or some other piece of machinery to respond automatically to specified stimuli? Who do you think does the programming? — Metaphysician Undercover

I base my claim based on the physics and neurophysiology of sensation. If you want to see this as programming, then the author of the laws of nature and the initial state of the cosmos would be the programmer.

So you agree that the object exists as a multitude of possibilities. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I agree that the object has a number of possible ways in which it could be sensed. The object is actual, its sensibility (possible informing interactions with sense organs) is potential.

Do you not understand that when a specific set of possibilities is actualized out of a multitude of possibilities, it is necessary to assume that something selects which possibilities will be actualized? — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that many possibilities are reduced to one actuality. I do not agree that the sensing subject has to choose what is sensed. Actual sensation is normally determined by the physical situation and the laws of nature.

if it was just a matter of determinist causation, then we could not truthfully say that there were any possibilities in the first place. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, we could. Potency alone does not entail free will. It just means that a change is possible.

Are you saying that it's a fact that we sense some things but not others, yet philosophers ought not ask why this is the case, because that's a question for neurophysiology? — Metaphysician Undercover

Philosophers can ask what they like. They do not have the means, as philosophers, to answer all the questions they ask.

Neurophysiology intends to explain how the senses work, it does not question why the eyes are designed to interact with light, and why the ears are designed to interact with sounds, and why there are some things which we cannot sense at all. — Metaphysician Undercover

In explaining how they work, we can see why they are limited as they are -- e.g. why the eye cannot respond to radio or sound waves. Evolution can also help explain why vision evolved to see the wave lengths we do -- they are the ones that penetrate water, where vertebrates evolved.

Also, philosophers cannot say why the eyes see, etc. Any attempt to do so would presume to know the mind of God.

This is completely unAristotelian. Essence is form, actuality. Essence does not specify possibilities. Possibilities are derived in another way. — Metaphysician Undercover

First, this confuses the first actuality of essence with the second actuality of the acts flowing out of a thing's essence. Second, the essence of sensible bodies is not simply their form. It also includes their matter, for if it did not, they would be essentially immaterial. Finally, if the acts of substances were determined solely by their essences, they could not interact with other things and would be monads.

matter must be understood as the essence of such objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, as I just wrote, their essences include both matter and form.

And since form is what is intelligible to us, this implies that we cannot know the essence of sensible objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not quite. We can know their essences, but not exhaustively.

Knowledge of a substance's accidental forms in no way implies knowledge of it substantial form, unless the principles required to bridge this gap (metaphysical principles) are produced. — Metaphysician Undercover

The principle is that accidents are aspects of the substance, inhering in it, not distinct entities. The more aspects we know, the more we know of the whole.

I believe you have already demonstrated that you misinterpret Aristotle. — Metaphysician Undercover

What follows is based on your misunderstanding of first and second act.

But what I also said was that the intellect is passive in relation to the soul, which is the source of actuality of the agent intellect. — Metaphysician Undercover

The soul is the actuality of the organism. That actuality includes the power of awareness, aka the agent intellect. So, the soul includes the agent as an aspect, specifically, as a power. Since it is not separate, it cannot be actualized by the soul, for then the soul would be actualizing itself.

How can you claim consistency between "the agent intellect is an efficient cause", and, "starting in the physical modification of the sense organ by the sensible object, and terminating in awareness"? — Metaphysician Undercover

I can because the process begins with physical operations, subject to physical analysis, and ends in an intentional operation, subject to intentional analysis.

How can the efficient cause (as the agent intellect) be at the end point as well as the beginning point in a chain of efficient causation? — Metaphysician Undercover

I did not say that the agent intellect was involved in physical stage of the process. It is only involved at the end in making the intelligibility carried by the phantasm or neural encoding actually understood.

An expression of the soul is an act of the soul. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. The soul is not a Cartesian res. It is the first actuality of a body. What acts is the whole -- the living organism, not some aspect of it. You are committing the mereological fallacy here.

What I am trying to impress on you is the priority of final cause over efficient cause, within the acts of the living being. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have no problem with this principle. My problem is with how you are applying it. The end of organic activity is the good of the organism = its self realization. The application to sensing and knowing is that information contributes to more effective living -- living better suited to our self-realization. Sensing and knowing could not do this unless they informed us of reality -- of the things we interact with as we interact with them. I am arguing that they do, and showing how they do.

you claim that judgements can only be of truth or falsity. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not my claim. My claim is that only judgements can be true or false, because only they make assertions about reality. Experience, concepts, associations -- none of them claim anything about reality. So, none of them can be true or false.

There are all sorts of different types of judgements — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree. For example, there can be practical judgements -- about what should be done -- or judgements of taste -- what we prefer and what we have no interest in. Still, this does not bear on whether we can know intrinsic properties.

But I appreciate the aspect where we see sensation from a similar point of view. — Paine

Thank you

No, Aristotle does not think in terms of representations. They appeared in the Muslim commentators and then in Aquinas (that is part of the paper I am writing) as the intelligible species. The presentation/re-presentation language is mine.

I do not know or think Aristotle held it, but I think that the passive intellect is the phantasm or neurally encoded contents as understood. So, concepts are not a new representations, but the neural presentation/intelligibility actualized.

I think part of the problem with theories of intellection is confusing presentations, which are direct acts of the intelligible object, with re-presentations, which are not.

The activity of the perceptible object, however, and of the perceptual capacity is one and the same (although the being for them is not the same). I mean, for example, the active sound and the active hearing. For it is possible to have hearing and not to hear, and what has a sound is not always making a sound. But when what can hear is active and what can make a sound is making a sound, then |425b30| the active hearing comes about at the same time as the active sound, and we might say that the one is an act of hearing and the other a making of a sound. — De Anima, 425b20, translated by CDC Reeve.[Aristotle] — Paine

This is what I have been saying. One event actualized two potentials: that of the sensible to be perceived (of the sounding to be heard) and of the organ to sense (of the ear to hear).

To really see the passivity, you have to read the account of sensation in light of the discussion of action and passion in Physics III, 4. I it quoted a few days ago.

I gave you an example of error in sensation, when you cannot distinguish what you are seeing. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not an error. Being unable to "distinguish what" means we did not sense enough to elicit a prior concept. It does not mean that we did not experience what we experienced. It is impossible not to experience what we experience.

If you want to make sensation something other than this to support your erroneous definition of judgement, and your proposed faulty way of separating sense acts from mental acts, then so be it. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no error in defining terms unless the definitions are circular or self-contradictory. You have not shown that my definitions are either.

What is your argument now, that "association" (which my dictionary defines as "connect in the mind") is an aspect of sensation, but judgement is not? This is all becoming very incoherent to me. — Metaphysician Undercover

Neither is an aspect of sensation. Either or both may follow sensation.

How do you think that association occurs without the use of memory? — Metaphysician Undercover

I made not such claim.

why would you think that associations cannot be erroneous. — Metaphysician Undercover

I did not say that they cannot be, but, since you bring it up, they cannot be because associations are not assertions that could be true or false.

If the association made is not conducive to the desired end which caused it to be made, then it is erroneous. — Metaphysician Undercover

Baloney! Ends do not cause associations except indirectly.

Or is it your intent to remove final causation from "association", leaving no principle by which it may be judged as useful or not? — Metaphysician Undercover

Not being useful does not imply being erroneous. Also, a process can be useful without every result of the process being useful.

If so, then all associations would be random and this could not provide any foundation for any knowledge to be built upon. — Metaphysician Undercover

Association is not the foundation of knowledge. Sensation is.

your conception of "judgement' is leaving it without any real instances to correspond with. — Metaphysician Undercover

<This rod is wood> is an instance of a judgement.

This is what happened to Socrates and Theaetetus in the dialogue with that name. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not responsible for Plato's errors.

you exclude the use of logic as not a form of judgement — Metaphysician Undercover

Logic is not a form of judgement, but the science of connecting judgements in a truth-preserving way. Judgements are its material. So, some judgements must be prior to logic, even though others may result from its use.

Can you give an example of judgement which would not be a matter of association nor a matter of applying logic? — Metaphysician Undercover

See above. I did not deny that association may lead to judgement. I said associations are not judgements. Associations activate contents for review. They do not judge them. I may associate the setting sun with an orange beach ball or a romantic interlude, but I would not judge it to be either.

to me classification is just a form of association — Metaphysician Undercover

Philosophical discourse requires precision. I might associate a spider with insects, but that is not the same as judging it to be an insect. Again, association raises possibilities, but it does not classify. Judgement does.

Clearly there are "aspects" of the form which the sensing being senses. The being does not sense the entirety of the form. — Metaphysician Undercover

We agree.

The issue of "selection" is the question of how does the being select which aspects of the object's form will interact with it. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have not talked about selection in reference to sensing, but clearly we can choose to look at an object, or avert our eyes. The selection I was discussing was our choice to attend to some aspects of what is sensed, and not others. It does not select our physical interaction, but our mental response. We do this all the time. In racial profiling, police focus on a person's appearance instead of their behavior. We may be interested in the time displayed instead of a clock's mechanism (or vice versa).

From the perspective of the being, the object exists as a multitude of possibilities for interaction. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes.

Therefore the being must somehow "select" from those possibilities. That is the issue of "selection" which I was talking about. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have already said that we do not sense all the possible modes of interaction, and, as a result, our knowledge is limited rather than exhaustive. Still, there is no active selection by sense organs. They respond automatically, in a way specified by their intrinsic nature and current state.

The question is why does a sense organ respond to only a specific kind of stimuli, and not to other stimuli. This is a matter of "selection". — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not a philosophical question. It is a question for a neurophysiologist or an evolutionary biologist. From a philosophical perspective, it is a contingent fact that we can sense some forms of interaction and not others, and, as a consequence, our experiential knowledge is limited.

Now you need to acknowledge that what underlies "as they relate to us" is "as we select", in this matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. Our nature, which specifies our sensory range, is an ontological given, not something we select. Rarely, we choose to close our eyes or put our hands over our ears, but that is not the normal case. We can choose to correct some sensory defects, or to augment our range of exploration by inventing instruments, but neither changes our basic sensory modalities. Even if we could add a new sensory modality, say bat-like echo location, by some new technology, that would not change our fundamental relation to reality. We would still relate to it as it relates to us.

deficiencies in our selective processes leave us unable to know objects exhaustively. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not the basic reason we cannot know essences exhaustively. The basic reason is that essences specify a substance's possible acts, not just its actual acts. Even if we could sense every interaction it has, that would not tell us every interaction it could have. So we would have only a partial knowledge of its essence. Further, once we become a sensing party to (say) a binary interaction, it ceases to be a binary interaction, for now three relata are involved. So, we are not sensing the possible binary interaction, but an actual tertiary interaction. This is a fundamental problem in social fieldwork.

the fact remains that the form of the object which exists in the mind of the knower is not the same as the form of the object known, and this is very evident in what you say about Aquinas. — Metaphysician Undercover

I have no problem with this. In Scholastic language, you are saying that we do not know fully know substantial forms. That does not mean that we do not know accidental forms, which is all that I claim that we know.

In reflecting on this, you need to realize that accidents are not separate from substances, but aspects of them. So, a growing knowledge of a substance's accidental forms is a growing knowledge of its substantial form.

Now, can you take the next step, and grasp the reality that if the object exists as potential to the sensing subject, there must be a process of selection which determines which potentials will be actualized? — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, "selection" is the wrong word. It has connotations of willed agency.

There is a specification, as there always is in actualizing a potential. Potentials are not "pure," not the possibility for any kind of actualization, but the basis for a limited range of actualities. (You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.) So, the sensed object acting on a sense can only produce a limited range of sensations.

And, this selection is caused, and that type of causation is what is known as final cause? — Metaphysician Undercover

This is confused. Sensing has all four kinds of cause. The final cause of sensation is to inform the organism of its environment so that it may respond in furtherance of its good (aka self-realization). The efficient cause is the sensible object acting on the sense organ. The material cause is the organ's receptivity to that kind of stimulation. The formal cause is the sensory information.

You keep refusing to recognize that the act of sensation is an act of the sensing being. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is because it is the passion of the sensing subject. In seeing a setting sun, I am not the agent specifying sun-information, the sun is. It acts on me to inform me. It emits light that enters my eyes and modifies my retinal state, and so my neural state.

You know that the soul is active, actual. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, this is confused. The soul (psyche) is not a thing as Descartes imagined, but the actuality of a thing (here a human being). Being the actuality of something is not actually being something. The psyche is the being alive of an organism. It is not "being alive" that acts, but the organism that is alive.

the object sensed exists as potential, from the perspective of the active soul — Metaphysician Undercover

This is also confused. The object is actual, not potential. Founded in that actual object (as any potential must be) is the potential to be sensed, aka sensibility. That is a potential, not of the object to exist, but of the object to affect sense organs -- which it could not do unless it already existed.

See, you even talk about this "actual sensing", as if the organism is carrying out the act, "sensing". — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I am calling the event "actually sensing" and explicitly saying it is the action of the sensible object and the passion of the sense. Aristotle is quite clear in De Anima, that the sense organ changes in sensation. Being changed is undergoing passion.

You are completely ignoring Aristotle's designation of the soul as the first actuality of the living body, and the very fact that "living" is an activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I am not. I am saying that actual things can be modified by other actual things. That is what happens in sensation. We are informed by the sensed object.

This means that in relation to the soul, the intellect exists as potential, passive, to be actualized by the soul. And when it is actualized by the soul it is the active intellect. — Metaphysician Undercover

You need to reread De Anima III. The role of the agent intellect is to make intelligiblity actually understood. The actualization of potential information (intelligibility) requires an agent in act, viz. the agent intellect.

So you do not recognize that in Aristotle's conceptual space, the act of sensing is an act of the immaterial soul, through the operation of the sense organs, rather than a physical process. — Metaphysician Undercover

There are two issues at stake here. (1) What did Aristotle mean? (2) What is an adequate account?

With regard to (1) I think Aristotle thought of sensation holistically, starting in the physical modification of the sense organ by the sensible object, and terminating in awareness, which is an intentional process. So, I half agree with you: immateral operations are involved in his model, and in them (but not in the physical operation of the sense organ) the agent intellect is an efficient cause. However, Aristotle did not see the operation of the agent intellect in awareness of sense data. He belived its proper object was universal knowledge. That was an error on his part.

With regard to (2) we need to correct Aristotle's error and assert that the agent intellect acts any time we are aware of anything -- singular or universal. There is a difference between data that is automatically processed (e.g. driving safeley while thinking of someting else), and sense data we are aware of, and that difference is the operation of the agent intellect to produce awareness of sensory contents.

No, you are misrepresenting, "sensation" in an unAristotelian way, as a physical process, instead of as an act of the soul. — Metaphysician Undercover

Being physical does not mean that it is not an act of the organism and so an expression of (not an act of) the soul as the actuality of the organism. Remember, even tunips have a psyche. The soul does not act because it is not a thing or a being.

Here, you recognize that being a living organism is a type of act, but you refuse to recognize that the things which living organism do are also acts. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I do not. If I see a spider, it is acting on me. All I am doing is recognizing that we not only act, we are also acted upon (aka suffer passion). Interaction involves both acting and being acted upon.

The Republic, Bk 6, specifically 508b — Metaphysician Undercover

My sincere thanks. It has been 65 years since I read the Republic.

Why do you say "no" here? It appears like you are saying the same thing as me, but in a different way. If the will is drawn towards the good, and also directs the agent intellect, then if the agent intellect judges, this is done in the direction of "the good". — Metaphysician Undercover

I am trying to assign operations to the proper powers, but the result is as you say.

I really do not understand your way of conceiving judgement. it appears like you want to make judgement distinct from choice and selection, but why? — Metaphysician Undercover

My way of defining judgement is pretty standard among Thomists and neo-Aristotlelians. You might look at Jacque Maritain's Degrees of Knowledge or Henry Veatch's Intentional Logic. My views on ideogenesis and judging are close to theirs. I suspect that they dervive from João Poinsot's Ars Logica which is partially translated as The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas. (Material logic deals with the insturments of thought (concepts, judgements and arguments) rather than the valid forms of thought). The insight that only judgements can be true or false is central to Aquinas' theory of truth.

I, being lazy, use "time" to signify: What flows is the sequence of events that change produces.... — ucarr

I have no problem with figures of speech that are recognized to such.

You are confusing "error" with "falsity". I already explained this to you, error does not necessarily mean false, it simply means mistaken, and this is "unsuccessful". It is very clear that "Knowledge as acquaintance" is very susceptible to error, poor memory, poor recognition, etc.. — Metaphysician Undercover

We are not talking about memory, but sensation. The "recognition" that is subject to error is judgement. You have provided no example of an error in experience per se. Again, we experience whatever we experience. There can be no error at this point. Further, if the result is not falsity, whatever you are calling "error" is irrelevant to our being acquainted with intrinsic properties.

something within the experiencing subject must select from that experience the aspects of it which will be remembered, and how they will be remembered etc. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, we are not discussing memory, but sensation.

Sorry df, this nonsense has no sway over me. — Metaphysician Undercover

I do not expect to "sway" you. I answer your arguments to prevent others from being deceived.

The processes which occur without this form of judgement are much more riddled with error. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course, judgement is superior to mere association. Still, a judgement not rooted in a knowledge of reality is baseless. What makes judgements superior is their ability to reflect reality.

How can it consist of intelligible forms? — Metaphysician Undercover

I have already explained this a number of times. I refer you to my previous responses.

what is the point of judgement? — Metaphysician Undercover

The point of judgement as classification is to reduce the footprint of knowledge. It takes fewer neural resources to think in terms of a few abstractions than many individual instances.

the ones which get rejected in judgement — Metaphysician Undercover

I have no idea what you are talking about. Judgement is not a process that rejects notes of intelligibility. Abstraction selects some notes, but it does not reject the others. It just leaves unattended notes alone for the present.

So we have the issue of "selection" here, which I've been mentioning and you have not been addressing. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. We do not. The object does not typically select anything, as most objects have no will by which they could select. They simply interact with their environment, including organisms capable of sensing some forms of interaction. We are one of those organisms.

Since there is a need for judgement, we must assume that the content of awareness contains many aspects which are unintelligible, illogical or nonsensical — Metaphysician Undercover

Non sequitur. To be contents in the sense I am using is to be intelligible.

Don't you think that there must be selective mechanisms built right into the sense organs, and the neurological system? — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confusing "selection" with specific responsiveness. Sense organs respond to specific kinds of stimuli, but they do not select what they respond to. Their response is automatic, not by choice. Consequently, we cannot and do not know objects exhaustively, but only as they relate to us. I have said this a number of times. This is what Aquinas means when he says that we do not know essences directly, but only via accidents.

how can you say that they are accidental causes — Metaphysician Undercover

I did not say they were accidental causes. I said action is an accident inhering in the agent in the scheme of Aristotelian categories.

things caused for a purpose are not accidental — Metaphysician Undercover

You are equivocating on "accidental." I made no claim that sensation was purposeless.

However, we still have to address the selective process which is inherent and intrinsic within the sensing subject — Metaphysician Undercover

I discussed this above.

the object's actuality consists of possibilities, potentials, from the true perspective of the sensing subject — Metaphysician Undercover

Tada!! YES. That is why I keep saying that the object is sensible.

This would mean that the sense organs are not receiving forms from the sense object, but matter (potential) from the sense object. — Metaphysician Undercover

No! Because what is merely potential cannot act, and, in particular, cannot act on the sense organ. What Aristotle pointed out, and I keep repeating, is that one and the same event (actually sensing) actualizes two potentials: (1) the object's potential to be sensed (its sensibility) and (2) the subject's capacity to sense. The sensing event is an action of the object and a passion of the subject. Both action and passion are Aristotelian accidents, and so inherent in the object and subject respectively. Since the action and passion are the same event, differently conceived, we have one event inherent in two substances -- a case of shared existence and the identity involved in sensation.

This is not material causality on the part of the object because the object is an agent acting to modify the state of the sense organ. So, objects are efficient causes in sensation, and the specification of a substance's causal power is its first actuality or form.

As I explained, in awareness, the neurally encoded content is the material, not the efficient, cause of knowing. — Dfpolis

This is consistent with what I just wrote above. However, if we take this approach we cannot say that the sensing subject receives the form from the sense object, because within the neurological system there is only the material content, rather than the form. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are confusing sensation as a physical process with awareness, which is an intentional process. In sensing, the object is an efficient cause. In awareness, it is a material cause.

Matter cannot be the "intelligible form", that is contradictory. — Metaphysician Undercover

Matter (hyle) is a potential principle. The same thing can be actual in one respect, say being a living organism, while being potential in different respects, being sensible and intelligible.

So the good (the end) is the cause of the intelligible object in the sense that it is what makes it intelligible — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you have a citation in Plato for this? I would like the reference to compare Plato's with Aristotle's doctrine.

if the agent intellect has this selective capacity, then what is selected from must be possibilities, potential, therefore material. — Metaphysician Undercover

Finally! That is why I said intelligible contents are the material cause of awareness.

And, the agent intellect selects on the basis of "the good", or "the end", not on the basis of intelligibility. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. The will, which does the selection and directs the agent intellect, is drawn to the good.

Final cause and selection are prior to "intelligible properties". — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, the Unmoved Mover is prior to all else, but it is not a proximate cause of empirical knowledge.

Does your statement above describe a situation containing two temporal progressions — ucarr

We need to define time in order to avoid confusion. Aristotle's defines time as "the measure of change according to before and after." If we accept this definition, then time is not a thing, but a measure number specified by both the change measured (say, the number of cycles of some process) and the details of the measuring process. We see this in special relativity, where time measure numbers depend on the frame of reference used in measuring change.

Given this definition, it is difficult to see how there could be more than one time dimension. Possibly a physical state could change along one time-like axis and while no change would be perceptible along another. So, we would have a universe in which different, independent, kinds of change occurred -- a continuous sequence of universes orthogonal to the base universe and its "normal" time.

Such a second time dimension might have its own laws of motion and a reason that we could not experience it. But, if we could not experience it, it would not be parsimonious to propose it.

Of course, you could change the definition of time, but then you would need to ensure that it agreed with our normal time when the new definition reduced to that case.

Also, time does not flow, because it does not exist independently of being measured. What flows is the sequence of events that change produces, and that we use to produce a time measure number.

This obviously does not fit with the Cartesian models you have criticized. But Aristotle says they do not fit with what came before him. The idea of the completely random is in a wrestling match with some kind of order. — Paine

I like Reeve's translation of the passage. It presents the line of thought clearly. Yes, the Aristotelian tradition reflects order in nature. That is the matrix for intelligibility.

Melodie Stenger, with the support of Aristotle, suggests that the reason why something appears to one person to be one thing appears to another to be another is that the action of phantasia moves in both directions. To put it differently, things do not appear to be as they are simply because of how they are but because of how the particular person is. It is not simply the work of the imagination but of the imagination of a particular person, of their character, of their beliefs and experiences. — Fooloso4

I have said that our knowledge is as much subjective as objective. In my model, the subjective side is depends on (1) what we select to attend to, and (2) the conceptual space into which we project our experience. The selection reflects our interests and the space reflects our prior experiences.

While we can choose not to taste, look or touch, I think we have no direct control over what happens (the phantasm created) once we do. It is a physiological response.

The Nicomachean Ethics quote seems very conditional -- like A. is discussing a possible position.

Thank you for the reference. I will look at it.

P.S. the phantasia is imagination. The phantasm is the sensory "image" resulting from a particular sensory encounter.

Possible errors do not imply actual falsity. — Dfpolis
Your categories are very confused Df. We were not talking about falsity, we were talking about identity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Let me remind you of your argument. It did not involve the identity issue directly. I said that in classification, we compared intrinsic properties to the class concept. You said that we do not because we cannot know intrinsic properties because of the possibility of error. I countered that the recognition of falsity implies that we can know the truth. You said the very possibility of error implied falsehood. My response is above.

My argument is that the possibility that the form in the knower is mistaken indicates that they are not the same. — Metaphysician Undercover

This confuses knowledge as acquaintance, by which we know forms or properties, with propositional knowledge, which results from judgement, and which alone can be true or false. Knowledge as acquaintance, which is what the actualization of intelligibility is, makes no assertion that could be true or false. We just experience whatever we experience. The possibility of error comes in categorizing what we experience. We might, for example, judge the tall pointy thing on the horizon is a church steeple when it is actually a pine.

This example also shows why the recognition of error implies an ability to recognize the truth. To know that the tall pointy thing not a church steeple, we must recognize that its actual properties are not those of a church steeple.

This analysis shows that your conclusion is unfounded. The error does not result from the lack of a form in the knower (we experience a tall, pointy thing), but from the misclassification of that form. The misclassification is the result of adding associated, imagined or hypothetical elements not in the experienced form. (We add that it is a human artifact, that it sits atop an unseen structure, etc., etc.) This kind of "filling-out" may have evolutionary advantages, (the two eyes we see in the darkness might belong to a predator), but its results are unreliable.

Let me ask you now, what is this "awareness" which is divided in the second stage? What is the content? Obviously, you would not be talking about the sense object itself being divided, in this process of abstraction, it is the "awareness" of it which is being divided. Where does this awareness come from, and how does it exist? Would you agree that the "awareness" you speak of here, from which properties are abstracted is a property of the sensing subject, and not a property of the object sensed? How then is the "form" which comes from this abstraction "the same form" as the "form" which we call the actuality of the sense object? — Metaphysician Undercover

Excellent questions!

Awareness has two aspects: intelligible contents (forms), and the awareness of those contents. In the first instance, we are aware of being -- that there is something present, something acting on our senses in empirical knowledge. The content of this inchoate awareness is Aristotle's tode ti (this something). If we choose to attend to it more closely, we begin to distinguish various notes of intelligibility, e.g. shape, color(s), dimensions and so on. These aspects of the whole are the "accidents" of Aristotle's Categories.

Where does our awareness come from? In my paper, I argue that it is ontologically emergent, meaning that it cannot be deduced from physical considerations. Christian theologians generally see it as a "Special Creation" of God, but that is a faith claim, not a philosophical conclusion. I see no empirical difference between these two claims, but theoretically, ontological emergence is less specific as it leaves open the possibility of emergence via secondary (natural) causes, while Special Creation does not.

I argue that the capacity to be aware of intelligibility is what Aristotle calls the "agent intellect" and it is a power of individual subjects. The intelligible content we are aware of is both an act of the object, and encoded by a modification of our neural state. Thus, it is a case of shared (accidental) existence. I say "accidental" because the action is an accident of the object, and the modification is an accident of the subject.

This answers your last question. The action of the object on our neural state is an aspect of the object's actuality or form. More precisely, it is the second actuality, or operation, of the object's form. For example, the object has intrinsic optical properties (aspects of its form) that interact with light and our eyes to create a visual image. That image is both the action of the object, and an aspect of our neural state.

First I was Kantian in my bias, now I'm Lockean. — Metaphysician Undercover

The error began with Locke and metastasized into utter confusion with Kant.

By your own description above, it is not the sense object which elicits the concept, it is "awareness" of the object which does that. — Metaphysician Undercover

I chose "elicit" because it means to call forth a response. To call forth is not to be an efficient cause. As I explained, in awareness, the neurally encoded content is the material, not the efficient, cause of knowing. Think about it. Intelligibility is a potential, so it needs an agent already in act, already operational, to make it actual knowledge, viz. the agent intellect. In every change, whatever is acted upon, whatever will be actualized, is the material cause. So, the intelligible form is the material, not the efficient, cause of knowledge. Since it is what is acted upon, the phantasm or neurally encoded contents becomes the passive intellect once the agent intellect understands it.

Let's place these "intrinsic properties" now, which you keep referring to. Since the content, "awareness" is what is abstracted in the described analysis process, the "intrinsic properties" are intrinsic to the awareness. Do you agree? — Metaphysician Undercover

No. Awareness is not what is abstracted, but the act of making what was intelligible actually known. Abstraction occurs when our awareness (the agent intellect) attends to some aspects of the object to the exclusion of others. So, we can be aware of the inchoate whole (tode it, the substance), and/or of some specific intelligible aspect(s) (accidents). These intelligible aspects are the intrinsic properties we are discussing. Since intelligibility is a precondition of knowledge, intelligible properties are prior to, and independent of, the act of knowing.

According to your explanation above, (2) is not "sensory content", it is "awareness". — Metaphysician Undercover

You misunderstand -- see above.

I really don't care how people classify me, but there's a lot worse names to be called than "Kantian". — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not name-calling. I am trying to understand your conceptual framework, and the source of your incomprehension.

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.